General Atomics has demonstrated at-sea control of a Gnat 750 unmanned aerial vehicle with a Tactical Control Station, under development as a common system to control an array of remotely piloted aircraft. In the week-long evaluation, which involved the USS Tarawa near San Clemente Island off Southern California, the UAV flew six missions and logged a total of 50 hours, according to the company.
The Pentagon has selected four organizations to divide approximately $16 million to upgrade high performance computers. The selected organizations are the Air Force Research Laboratory at Rome, N.Y.; the Maui High Performance Computing Center, Hawaii; the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, San Diego.
Thiokol Corp. has left the Alliant Techsystems team competing for the U.S. Air Force's ICBM sustainment program but remains on the TRW team, a Thiokol spokesman said yesterday. "The relationship no longer exists," the spokesman told The DAILY. On Nov. 6, Thiokol, the managing partner for propulsion in the joint venture, told Alliant in writing that Alliant was "proposing to the Air Force in a manner which was inconsistent with our joint venture agreement, and with those inconsistencies, it validated the agreement."
Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) will give up the Senate Armed Services Committee chair at the end of next year, when he will be 96, his office announced yesterday. Thurmond will remain on the military authorization panel until his term expires in 2002. He has already said he will not seek reelection. Although he has been a member of the panel for almost 40 years, most of that in the minority. He will have served as its chairman for four years at the end of 1998.
VICOR CORP., Andover, Mass., authorized a common stock repurchase program of up to $30 million. The board of directors authorized the buy in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions. The program includes $6.5 million remaining from a prior stock buyback program.
The U.S. Air Force Ogden Air Logistics Center has awarded Hughes Training an $11.8 million contract for continued training and maintenance operations associated with the joint AF E-3 and Navy E-6 Flight Crew Training Systems program. This is the fifth year in a row that the Arlington, Tex., unit of Hughes Aircraft Co. will provide training services for the E-3/E-6 flight crews, Hughes said yesterday. The contract is expected to run through next September.
NASA's Lunar Prospector, a bargain-basement $20 million probe designed to pick up where Apollo left off in exploring Earth's moon, is scheduled for a Jan. 5 launch on the untried Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle-2, now known as Athena 2.
BAI Aerosystems Inc., Easton, Md., has won a $1.1 million contract from the U.S. Marine Corps to design and produce up to 42 daylight pan-tilt-zoom cameras for the Dragon Drone unmanned aerial vehicle. BAI, which developed the UAV and its predecessor, the Exdrone, said the laser range-finder-equipped camera "is expected to significantly increase the targeting accuracy of the Dragon Drone...."
After winning places for both its auxiliary power unit and environmental control system on Raytheon Aircraft's new Hawker Horizon jet, AlliedSignal Aerospace now has a deal with the airframer to tie those products together in an integrated package, offering lighter weight, better performance and a single point of contact for Raytheon and its customers.
PRECISION STANDARD INC., Denver, won two C-130 contracts and a B727-700 contract. Subsidiary Pemco Aeroplex won a contract from Ogden Air Logistics Center, Ogden, Utah, to modify seven C-130 transport aircraft and a separate contract, in partnership with Derco Aerospace, from the South African Air Force for maintenance of two C-130s. Subsidiary Pemco World Air Services Inc. won a contract from Champion Air, Minneapolis, for the maintenance of a B727-200.
HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO., El Segundo, Calif., won a contract from Kaman Aerospace International Corp. to supply 11 mid-wavelength (MWIR) staring infrared imaging systems for the Royal Australian Navy's Super Seasprite helicopters. Terms of the contract were not disclosed. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in April 1999 and be completed in February 2000.
NATIONAL TECHNICAL SYSTEMS INC., Calabasas, Calif., signed a contract with the U.S. Air Force to take over and operate the Science and Engineering test laboratory facilities at McClellan AFB, Sacramento, and to provide the Air Force with testing services from those facilities. The contract, effective through April 1999, has a maximum potential revenue value of $10.5 million and includes a backlog of $2 million in aircraft related test and evaluation work.
UNITRODE CORP., Merrimack, N.H., authorized a plan to repurchase up to one million shares of its common stock, dependent upon the availability of shares at acceptable price levels.
CORRECTION: Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) sponsored a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that Russia take "concrete actions" to stop assisting Iran's missile program, not Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), as reported in The DAILY of Nov. 13 (page 243). The Congressional Record identified Kohl as the sponsor.
Top executives from GE Aircraft Engines and Pratt&Whitney have decided to keep their Engine Alliance in place following meetings to review the collaboration last week, and in 1998 managers plan to step up marketing efforts for the proposed new 75,000 lbst.-class turbofan and firm up contractual arrangements with Airbus Industrie.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman said a press report from Israel that the company was prepared to buy Israel Aircraft Industries was "wholly unrealistic and entirely premature." The newspaper Haaretz reported yesterday that former Lockheed Martin chief Norman Augustine expressed interest in buying IAI during a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month. But the Lockheed Martin spokesman said the "subject was never broached," and that any such move would have to wait until Israel had resolved privatization issues.
Eyeing a total potential market of anywhere from 300 to 900 engines or upgrade kits, GE Aircraft Engines unveiled a self-funded program to flight- qualify an enhanced version of its F110 fighter engine for Lockheed Martin's F-16C/D and Boeing/McDonnell Douglas' F-15E in December 1999.
In an unusual dinner speech at a symposium here Wednesday night, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) blasted a packed room of senior military officials and defense contractors for focusing on bottom lines and petty turf wars rather than coming together to support theater and national ballistic missile programs. Following the speech, one industry official told The DAILY that the congressman "said what a lot of us have been thinking and know is true."
Two Hughes telecommunications satellites were orbited in separate launches Tuesday evening, only 18 minutes apart in time but a hemisphere apart in distance. First up was JCSAT-5, a body-stabilized HS-601 spacecraft launched at 5:52 p.m. EST from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou aboard an Ariane 44P. It was followed by Astra 1G, also an HS-601, aboard a Russian Proton lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 6:10 p.m. EST.
ENCORE COMPUTER CORP., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Raytheon bought a Digital Alpha AXP-based, five processor computer system in support of the Aegis program and a second multi-processor system to support the Patriot Missile program.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense within the next day or two is expected to sign off on a program budget decision (PBD) providing $44 million for the international Medium Extended Area Defense System (MEADS) program in fiscal year 1999. While Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, who will have final say on the PBD, told The DAILY yesterday in Washington that he had not yet reviewed the document, industry sources said it is headed for his desk. And they expect the $44 million option to be approved.
NASA started raising its Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite to a higher orbit yesterday to extend its service life and provide broader coverage to compensate for loss of a Japanese satellite carrying an identical TOMS instrument.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) cited faulty communication and coordination on the part of air traffic controllers as a factor in a Feb. 5 incident off the U.S. east coast in which the crew of a Nations Air 727 airliner maneuvered to avoid what it thought was a dangerous approach by an Air National Guard F-16 fighter. The proximity of the F-16 activated the traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) on the 727.
