NASA said yesterday it will cut nearly half of its 1,430 Headquarters employees by Oct. 1, 1997. Administrator Daniel Goldin said in a message to workers that the "disturbing and unwelcome" move responds "to increasing budget pressures" and "accelerates the timeline for our existing downsizing plan." He said it means "a Reduction in Force at Headquarters [will have] to be completed by October of 1997."
Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin assured U.S. Vice President Al Gore that the Russian Space Agency will keep its end of the bargain on the Space Station and get development of the service module back on track before it results in any budget shortfalls, NASA leaders said yesterday. Wilbur C. Trafton, NASA associate administrator for the Office of Space, told the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee that Chernomyrdin also said RSA and NASA should restate Space Station milestones and provide updates on those milestones periodically.
Two warheads designed to destroy enemy chemical and biological weapons plants will be studied under a research effort led by the Defense Nuclear Agency. Vayl Oxford, director of counterproliferation programs for DNA, said that a heavy steel warhead and one made of tungsten will be evaluated in the Counterproliferation Support advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD).
Defense Dept. officials concerned with ABM Treaty compliance have prevented the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization from letting the U.S. Army write the software needed for external cueing of the Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system, BMDO Director Lt. Gen. Malcolm R. O'Neill testified yesterday. He told the House Appropriations national security subcommittee that if THAAD didn't have external cueing, it wouldn't be able to remain in development because it would be unable to see out far enough to detect the threat.
The U.S. Navy lost another F-14 fighter yesterday, only a day after service officials testified to Congress about the fatal Jan. 29 crash of one of the planes near Nashville (DAILY, April 17). An F-14B stationed at NAS Oceana, Va., crashed on approach to the field at about 11:30 a.m. yesterday, the Navy said. Both crewmen ejected safely and suffered only minor injuries, a Navy spokesman said. They are attached to fighter squadron VF-101.
ALLOY SURFACES CO., Wilmington, Del., is in line to supply the U.S. Navy with 800 MJU-27/B expendable decoys for use with rotary and fixed wing aircraft. "These devices shall be subjected to various types of testing for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the MJU-27/B unit against infrared-seeking missiles," U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, Ind., said in an April 15 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Congressional appropriators won't approve the Administration's most recent request to rescind about $400 million because it conflicts with the current budget resolution, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, said yesterday. The request takes money from defense and puts it towards non-defense items, Stevens said during a committee hearing on the U.S. Air Force's fiscal 1997 budget request. He said that "we will not approve it."
The U.S. Air Force has doubled its investment in an R&D effort to find and demonstration efficiencies in the exploitation of digital information from intelligence sensors. An April 12 Commerce Business Daily notice from the AF's Rome Lab, Griffiss AFB, N.Y., said the funding level for the effort, which concentrates on such things as textual reports and annotated imagery, has gone from $1.5 million to $3 million.
Some U.S. Army officials have proposed starting a $9.5 million M1A1 tank overhaul program because they are concerned that maintenance deficiencies that don't show up in routine inspections could surface during wartime, the General Accounting Office reports. Army officials told GAO that over a 20-year life cycle, an overhaul program for 17 tanks would yield operating and support cost savings of about $28.8 million.
TRACOR INC. plans to close its Cross Systems Div. plant in Alpharetta, Ga., at the end of June. Work on its two product lines - head-up displays and electronic combat systems - will be moved to other Tracor facilities. The EC work, which includes a radar environmental simulator, will be shifted to Tracor Flight Systems, Fort Walton Beach, Fla. HUD production will go to Tracor Aerospace facilities at either Lansdale, Pa., or Austin, Tex. Some 120 workers are affected, although about 40 will be given the option to relocate.
The recovery has taken root in the aerospace industry worldwide, with companies across the globe posting strong earnings gains this week against year-ago results, in many cases turning in double-digit improvements.
The U.S. Air Force hopes to have four leased VIP jetliners stationed at Andrews AFB, Md., for the 89th Airlift Wing by February 1998, and says it expects to spend just under half a billion dollars on the transports and their maintenance through the end of the decade.
The U.S. Air Force's acquisition corps should keep an eye on the long term and consider the environment in which weapons will be operating decades after they have been fielded, says Air Force acquisition chief Arthur Money. He told The DAILY during an interview in his Pentagon office that "acquisition should be looking out 30 or 40 years," or more.
GLOBALSTAR has won approval from the Russian government to market its planned global low Earth orbit satellite communications services in Russia. The U.S. "Big LEO" has formed a joint venture with Russia's Rostelecom Joint Stock Company, which will manage the service in Russia and obtain any licenses necessary under the decision of the Governmental Commission on Electrical Communications.
RADA ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIES of Israel has received $4 million in reorders for automatic test equipment and an air combat evaluation system. British Airways and the Israeli Air Force reordered "Smart Cats" ATE, and the Royal Netherlands Air Force reordered ACE (Autonomous Combat Evaluation) systems. Rada said the original versions of both, developed for the Israeli Air Force, are in use by the Israeli Army and Navy as well as other military forces and commercial aviation companies.
SPAR AEROSPACE AND TRW INC. have tested the developmental model of the antenna TRW plans to use aboard its Odyssey low Earth orbit communications satellites to receive wireless telephone signals from the ground. Spar is developing the antenna under contract to TRW, which is a founding shareholder in Odyssey along with Canada's Teleglobe Inc. The testing showed the L-band receive antenna can produce 61 beams in a circularly symmetrical pattern, according to Martin Melnick, TRW's Odyssey payload manager.
LORAL CORP. plans April 22 for distribution of common stock of the newly formed Loral Space&Communications. It said the distribution was set to coincide with expiration of the Jan. 8 Lockheed Martin tender offer, and is subject to successful conclusion of the offer. Lockheed Martin offered to purchase all outstanding shares of Loral Corp. for $38 net cash per share. In addition, Loral shareholders will receive one share of Loral Space&Communications Ltd. for each share of Loral held on the record date.
ARIANE V preparations have lagged slightly at the Guiana Space Center, according to the European Space Agency, which reports first flight of the huge new booster "may have to be put back very slightly" from its mid-May launch date. Installation of protective casings on the new rocket has taken longer than expected, forcing the Launcher Countdown Rehearsal into conflict with the planned April 20 launch of an Ariane IV. As a result, the rehearsal will be slipped from April 16 to April 23.
The Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday asked the Senate Budget Committee for the maximum ceiling of $267 billion in fiscal 1997 budget authority - the amount requested by the House National Security Committee for its budget authority, and $12.9 billion over the Administration's request. In a letter to the budget panel signed jointly by SASC Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and ranking Democrat Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the committee said, "we realize this number [$267.3 billion] may have to be adjusted for inflation."
In the wake of the fatal crash of a U.S. Air Force T-43 transport that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in Croatia, Secretary of Defense William Perry has asked each military service to review equipment carried by its passenger airplanes, and to identify additional safety systems that might be needed, a senior Air Force official said yesterday.
The U.S. Air Force should modify its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program to focus solely on the heavy lift problem, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence says in a new staff study report. The report, released yesterday, was the basis for the "Intelligence Community in the 21st Century (IC21)" plan introduced earlier this year by Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-Tex.). Its aim is to overhaul the intelligence community (DAILY, March 1).
USBI CO. will create about 175 space-related jobs at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, using State of Florida tax breaks and training incentives as it moves its headquarters and operations from Alabama and Louisiana to Florida as part of the Space Shuttle program restructuring. Under the Qualified Targeted Industry tax refund program, the Pratt&Whitney unit will get tax refunds for each new job, while the state's Quick Response Training program will reimburse the company for workforce training at Brevard Community College.
The U.S. Marine Corps' ranking aviation executive said yesterday that the program to remanufacture older AV-8B day attack aircraft to the AV-8B II radar-equipped night attack configuration has cut the Harrier accident rate in half, and appealed to a House National Security subcommittee to increase the conversion rate.
With the House National Security Committee's procurement and research and development subcommittees working toward markup of their portions of the fiscal 1997 authorization on April 30, the parade of lobbyists is well underway, and many are former congressmen. Former Rep. Marvin Leath, the Texas Democrat who came close to defeating the late Les Aspin in a Democratic Caucus vote for the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee, is a registered lobbyist and has Lockheed Martin, Thiokol and United Defense among his clients.
NEGOTIATORS meeting in Europe to try to get France to sign a memorandum of understanding on the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program broke off talks yesterday, but plan to continue today, a Pentagon spokeswoman said. Germany, Italy and the U.S. stand ready to sign a statement of intent in support of the program (DAILY, April 16). Officials say France wants at least another month to decide whether it will join the program or bow out.
