Raytheon Aircraft Company, Wichita, Kan., is being awarded an $8,226,989 firm-fixed-price contract for the procurement of 35 AQM-37 aerial drone targets and associated kits, spare and repair parts, and data for the U.S. Navy. Work will be performed in Andover, Kan., and is expected to be completed by November 2001. Contract funds in the amount of $976,734 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity (N00019-99-C-1358).
FORE Systems, Inc., Warrendale, Pa., is being awarded a $29,556,646 cost- share contract to perform research and development to improve high-speed networking equipment that is currently being used by the Navy to provide improved bandwidths and lower output times for future telecommunication systems. This contract contains options, which, if exercised, will bring the cumulative value of this contract to $46,029,612. Work will be performed in Warrendale, Pa., and is expected to be completed by June 2002.
The U.S. Marine Corps is ready to turn the Kaman Aerospace K-MAX helicopter into an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) known as Broad-Area Unmanned Responsive Resupply Operations (BURRO) prototype, according to Lt. Col. Jim McMains, who leads the project.
United Technologies Corp., West Palm Beach, Fla., is being awarded a $6,183,720 modification to firm-fixed-price contract F34601-98-G-0005-0020- P0003 to definitizes acquisition of 120 inlet guide vanes applicable to the TF33 engine on the B-52, E-3, and KC-135 aircraft. There was one firm solicited and one proposal received. Expected contract completion date is Jan. 31, 2001. Solicitation issue date was Jan. 7, 1999. Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker AFB, Okla., is the contracting activity.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Vought Systems Division, Grand Prairie, Texas, is being awarded a $25,170,000 modification to firm-fixed-price contract DAAH01-98-C-0093 to exercise a not-to-exceed option for 30 Army Tactical Missile System Block I Foreign Military Sales Variant Guided Missile and Launching Assemblies (GMLAs) for the country of Greece. Work will be performed in Dallas, Texas (95.4%); and Horizon City, Texas (4.6%), and is expected to be completed by Feb. 28, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
The House Armed Services Committee the week of July 19 plans to mark up legislation that would lift controls on encryption. Defense Dept. officials last week urged HASC members not to lift the controls. The committee is slated to hear industry's side of the story after the July 4 recess, prior to marking up the bill. The high tech industry says current export controls on encryption are hurting their business. The HASC vote is expected to be a very close one.
LOCKHEED MARTIN has produced a fully functional radiation-hardened four- megabit static random access memory (SRAM) device for the Pentagon. Under a contract sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Lockheed Martin Space Electronics&Communications, Manassas, Va., has produced a single- chip device able to withstand a total dose of 1Mrad(Si).
NASA WILL HOLD a Contractor Open Forum meeting Aug. 12 at its Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., to solicit questions, views and opinions of persons interested in the agency's procurement policies. NASA's associate administrator for procurement will make a presentation on the policies, followed by a question-and-answer session. The meeting will be from 9-11 a.m. PDT at the Space Science Auditorium, Building 245, second floor, North Warehouse Road, at Moffett Field.
The House defense appropriators will be ready to mark up their version of the fiscal year 2000 defense bill the week of July 12 when lawmakers return from the week-long July 4 recess. As the appropriators get moving, the Senate and House defense authorizers should begin their conference meetings to resolve differences.
The AIM-9X Sidewinder short range air-to-air missile completed its first guided launch, intercepting a QF-4 drone Wednesday at the Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division, China Lake, Calif, Raytheon reported.
Rocketdyne plans to ship the first XRS-220 linear aerospike rocket engine it has built for the NASA/Lockheed Martin X-33 reusable launch vehicle prototype this week. A truck is to deliver the innovative engine from Canoga Park, Calif., to Stennis Space Center on the Mississippi Gulf coast on Friday for ground testing later in the summer. Rocketdyne is building four of the engines, which link leftover Saturn-era J-2 turbomachinery with new components. These include an actively cooled exhaust "ramp" that proved so hard to manufacture the program was delayed (DAILY, Oct.
U.S. and Russian space operations managers have decided to prepare collision avoidance commands for the International Space Station in advance, after it took almost 12 hours to prepare commands last month as a spent rocket body threatened to intersect the Station's orbit.
Heico Corp.'s Electronics and Ground Support Group (EGS) has acquired all of the capital stock of privately held Leader Tech Inc., Heico reported. Leader Tech, based in Tampa, Fla., makes niche electromagnetic and radio frequency shielding for circuit boards used in aerospace, telecommunications and microwave applications. Customers include Boeing, Harris, Hughes Electronics and L-3 Communications.
One of the first orders of business after Kosovo is to "take a look at low-density/high-demand assets where demand outstrips assets," says U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Marvin R. Esmond. Aircraft such as the EA-6B, U-2, Joint STARS and E-3 were stellar performers during the air campaign where more than 700 surface-to-air missiles were fired at allied aircraft and claimed only two planes and no lives.
Strap-on kits that turn dumb bombs into precision guided munitions will be in demand following the air war in Yugoslavia, according to Dick Caime, vice president of strike weapons at Lockheed Martin Electronics and Missiles in Orlando, Fla.
Taiwan is redefining its national defense structure and will be buying more systems to counter a growing threat from mainland Chinese missile programs, according to Dr. Parris Chang, senior member of Taiwan's parliament. Taiwan has built an arsenal of tanks and anti-armor capability to counter a potential amphibious attack by Beijing, Chang, a former chair of Parliament's Foreign Relations and National Defense committees, said last Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
NASA has scrapped its plans to land a robotic spacecraft on a comet, but Europe is going full steam ahead with the Rosetta mission to the Comet Wirtanen. As outlined by the European Space Agency last week, Rosetta is scheduled for launch on an Ariane 5 in January 2003. It will get a gravity boost from Mars in May 2005 and from Earth in October 2005 and October 2007. It will also pass through the asteroid belt twice, collecting images and data before heading off to meet Wirtanen in May 2012.
The U.S. Marine Corps might want to rethink its plans to eliminate TOW missiles from its inventory, according to early reports from the service's Urban Warrior experiments. The missile works well in an urban environment- where attack helicopters like the AH-1 Cobra "will be very important," says Lt. Col. Jim McMains, head of advanced technology at the Warfighting Lab in Quantico, Va.
Though the Senate passed legislation last week clearing the way for Intelsat privatization and Lockheed Martin's purchase of Comsat, the real fight awaits in the House where several provisions in the bill are strongly opposed. The Senate on Thursday passed the bill, which calls for the privatization of Intelsat and clears the way for Lockheed Martin's purchase of at least 49% of Comsat, the U.S. signatory to Intelsat. The bill - Open- market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) - passed in a voice vote.
Lockheed Martin will create a new U.K.-based company, Lockheed Martin U.K. Limited, that will combine all of Lockheed Martin's U.K. defense and commercial business interests under a single U.K.-registered company, the company reported yesterday.
The B-52 program office at Tinker AFB, Okla., and Air Combat Command are compiling an electronic combat roadmap to direct the bomber through the next decade, says Col. Wes Heidenreich, director of electronic warfare management at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Ga. Parts obsolescence is haunting the program as technology advancements come on line at a rapid rate, and as the market responds more to commercial consumers than military desires.
Stennis will be a busy spot this summer. In addition to the linear aerospike, the NASA test center plans hot-fire test series of Rocketdyne's new RS-68 rocket engine and a prototype hybrid rocket engine under development by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Lockheed Martin Michoud Space Systems in New Orleans. The RS-68 is the largest LOX/hydrogen engine ever built, and will power the Boeing Delta IV. The hybrid engine, which uses LOX to burn a stable rubberlike solid fuel, is intended for sounding rockets able to lift 1,200 pounds to 175 miles.
A team led by Northrop Grumman's Logicon Inc. won a 30-month, $53 million contract to provide the Joint Mission Planning System for the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Special Operations Command. The Windows-based JMPS is the successor to such current Unix-based systems as the Navy's Tactical Automated Mission Planning System (TAMPS) and the Air Force's Mission Support System (AFMSS).
