Denial of funds to develop a short-takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) would be a "crippling blow to the future of [U.S.] Marine Corps aviation," the Pentagon has warned Congress.
The General Accounting Office has raised a number of questions about the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile program, including whether technical challenges can be resolved during development. "Compared to past programs with similar goals, the JASSM acquisition plan contains schedule and cost risk," GAO said in a report titled "Precision Guided Munitions: Acquisition Plans for the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile" (GAO/NSIAD-96-144).
Pratt&Whitney yesterday described as "unique" the fracture of an engine on a Delta Air Lines MD-88 Saturday. The JT8D-219 came apart as the plane was taking off from Pensacola, Fla., killing two passengers and injuring others. The takeoff was aborted after a run of 1,500 feet. "According to the physical evidence thus far, the fracture seems to be up in the fan area," a Pratt spokesman said. "The fracture of the fan hub is unique, something we have never seen before."
July 1, 1996 Lockheed Martin Corporation Lockheed Martin Corporation, Marietta, Georgia, is being awarded a $47,302,000 face value increase to a firm fixed price contract to provide for two C-130T aircraft and associated data for the Navy Reserve. Contract is expected to be completed December 1996. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. ASC/LBA, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F33657-90-C-0071-P00082).
LITTON INDUSTRIES said yesterday that the U.S. court of appeals in Los Angeles upheld it appeal in patent-infringement litigation against Honeywell. Honeywell said it was "surprised and disappointed" and will pursue "all appellate remedies." A jury earlier found that Honeywell had "willfully infringed a Litton patent" related to development and production of precision ring laser gyroscope navigation and guidance systems. The jury verdict awarded Litton $1.2 billion. The verdict was overturned in January 1995 in the U.S. district court in Los Angeles.
Airbus Industrie's supervisory board decided yesterday in Paris to restructure the consortium into a private company. It wants to reach a binding agreement to shift from Airbus' current status as a groupement d'interet economique (GIE) by the end of the year, and to a private company by 1999. The board, under Chairman Edzard Reuter, plans to move "within the minimum timeframe possible" and to "start immediately negotiations between Airbus' partner companies on the technical aspects of the transformation from a GIE toward a single corporate entity."
July 1, 1996 Lockheed Martin Corporation Lockheed Martin Corporation, Denver Colorado, is being awarded a $40,525,756 contract to transfer all remaining Titan launch systems launch operations effort from the 1985 Titan contract to the new Titan launch operations contract. Contract is expected to be completed September 2003. Contract funds of $14,309,533 will expire September 1996. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles, California, is the contracting activity (F04701-96-C-0012, P00007).
JAPAN'S Automatic Landing Flight Experiment (ALFLEX) flew successfully for the first time yesterday, landing safely at Woomera Airfield in South Australia after a drop-test flight that lasted about one minute, the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) reported.
REP. BILL YOUNG (R-FLA.), chairman of the House Appropriations national security subcommittee, was resting comfortably yesterday at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Md., after a quadruple heart bypass operation Sunday. Young, 65, is expected to remain in the hospital until the end of the week, a spokesman said. He said Young did not suffer a heart attack.
The House and Senate should drop restrictions in the fiscal year 1997 defense authorization bill on how the Pentagon should proceed with the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), as well as any direction to accelerate portions of the program, the Defense Dept. has told Congress.
The first GPS-aided munitions for B-2 bombers were delivered this week to Whiteman AFB, Mo., where the planes are based. The 17 weapons were the first of 128 slated for delivery to the base this year, according to the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command. They will allow the B-2 to hit within 20 feet of a target.
July 1, 1996 Boeing Company Boeing Company, Wichita, Kansas, is being awarded a $8,692,353 face value increase to a firm fixed price contract to provide for two shipsets of the Multipoint Refueling System (pods for wing tanks) applicable to the KC-135 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed August 1996. Contract funds of $8,692,353 will expire September 1998. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F33657- 95-C-0046, P00013).
The crash last April of the DarkStar unmanned aerial vehicle has prompted the Defense Dept. to improve operator training and the procedures used to abort a takeoff. A synopsis of a report by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, released yesterday, recommends the steps in addition to engineering changes to the vehicle itself.
An article in The DAILY of July 3 stated that last week's launch of NASA's latest Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) was one year late because of developmental problems with the Pegasus XL booster. While the TOMS launch had been scheduled for July 1995 until the second Pegasus XL failure in June 1995 (DAILY, June 23, 26, 1995), TOMS was originally scheduled to launch in July 1994. That 1994 launch was delayed by the first Pegasus XL failure (DAILY, July 14, 1994), making last week's launch a total of two years late because of problems with the Pegasus.
Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), ranking Democrat on the House National Security R&D subcommittee, questions the U.S. Navy's projection of a rapidly rising learning curve for production of the 1,000 planned F/A-18E/F strike fighters. Cost per plane is supposed to drop from $111.9 million in fiscal '97 when the first 12 are produced to $32.4 million in 2015 when the last 72 come off the McDonnell Douglas line (FY '90 dollars). Pentagon procurement chief Paul G.
Even without the Joint Strike Fighter program, the Defense Dept. will have to spend about $8 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars through 2014 to pay for all present major airpower investment programs, the General Accounting Office has concluded. This is about three times the fiscal 1997 request of $2.7 billion for tactical aircraft programs.
Lockheed Martin's X-33 reusable launch vehicle prototype is of such high fidelity to the company's proposed operational RLV that the commercial vehicle should have an easier time finding financing on Wall Street than its two competitors, but the X-vehicle still has some difficult technical issues to resolve.
Meanwhile, the Senate is expected to plow through a number of defense measures. On Wednesday morning it's slated to vote on final passage of the FY '97 defense authorization bill. Also, debate and votes are scheduled on the Defend America Act, substitutes to that legislation, and the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty. All three are controversial, and the schedule could be thrown into a tailspin.
The U.S. Air Force and Army have been testing a new laser radar, developed by Textron, that has applications for missile tracking and space surveillance, the company said. In tests at the Air Force's Maui space surveillance site in Hawaii, the ladar "has been successful providing data on uncooperative targets not equipped with reflectors, including satellites and rocket bodies located in orbits nearly 1,000 miles above the Earth," Textron said.
Vice President Gore hammers home the California angle in announcing the selection of Lockheed Martin to build the X-33 prototype, claiming at least 2,000 high-tech jobs as a result for the vote-rich state. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the importance of this moment," he tells an enthusiastic crowd under the California sun at JPL. Not only will the half-scale reusable launch vehicle be built at the Skunk Works, but it will be based at Edwards AFB, Calif., and will land on various California runways during its 15-flight test series.
Encouraged by strong test results, Aerojet plans to continue development of a new tripropellant preburner assembly with its Russian partners, even though the tripropellant RD-0120 engine program itself has been dropped, Aerojet's Jim Hulka told an engineering conference here.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) plans to strike out of the Senate Appropriations fiscal 1997 defense money bill funding for the two F- 16s the Air Force didn't request and $120 million added for conversion kits for the OH-58 helicopter, which the Army didn't seek. Levin notes that neither request was in the original Administration budget nor in the services' wish list. He originally planned to make the changes in the defense authorization but was persuaded to wait for the appropriations bill, which will be on the Senate floor either at the end of this week or next week.
