Less than a year after being set up as purely a marketing and sales organization, the Aero International (Regional), or AIR, joint venture of France's Aerospatiale, Italy's Alenia and British Aerospace is looking into plans to develop a regional jetliner, AIR chief Henri-Paul Puel said yesterday.
HUGHES AND RAYTHEON divided $300 million in U.S. Air Force contracts for the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) yesterday. Hughes received $159.5 for production of 674 missiles, and Raytheon was awarded $140.6 million for 623 missiles. In each case, 68% of the effort supports foreign military sales to Korea, Turkey, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The contracts are expected to be completed in November 1998. The contracting office is the Aeronautical Systems Center, Eglin AFB, Fla.
The Defense Dept.'s decision this month to rescind $820 million of National Reconnaissance Office funding to pay for operations in Bosnia (DAILY, Jan. 24) has raised new questions about the agency's forward funding, the Senate Intelligence Committee said late Friday.
McDonnell Douglas Corporation, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, St. Louis, Missouri, is being awarded a $12,358,978 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-94-C-0058 to provide additional funds to the advanced acquisition for the FY 1995 production program of 12 T-45 training systems. Work will be performed in St. Louis, Missouri (70%) and Salmesbury, United Kingdom (30%), and is expected to be completed in September 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Japan's top-level Space Activities Commission (SAC) has mapped a new 10-year plan that will see the H-II booster upgraded and a significant effort to demonstrate gigabit-class high-speed satellite communications. Under the plan released here Jan. 24, Japan would also develop a Space Station supply system with automatic rendezvous and docking capability, and pursue robotic satellite payload replacement technology first proposed under the $46 billion "fully reusable space infrastructure" (FRSI).
NASA is proceeding as though President Clinton didn't veto its fiscal 1996 funding bill in the wake of Friday's enactment of a congressional continuing resolution funding the U.S. space agency at the FY '96 level adopted on Capitol Hill last year.
GENERAL DYNAMICS/ELECTRIC BOAT was awarded a $1,468,800,000 cost-plus- fixed-fee letter contract for the U.S. Navy's New Attack Submarine (NSSN) program, the Pentagon announced yesterday. The contract, awarded by Naval Sea Systems Command, covers design and technical documentation plus lead time material for the lead ship of the class.
One thing that defense contractors can do now to begin implementing Defense Secretary William Perry's Single Process Initiative (SPI) is to convert their operations to the ISO 9000 standard of the International Standards Organization, according to Allen E. Powers, corporate vice president of Litton Industries and president of the company's Data Systems Div., Agoura Hills, Calif.
The launch of a Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., which was aborted last Thursday when the missile failed to respond to the launch command, has been postponed indefinitely until a launch analysis group can determine the cause of the failure. One source at Vandenberg said the missile had been "pulled out of the hole and taken back to the depot" for the investigation, but this could not be confirmed last Friday.
The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense and Space Group, Military Airplanes Division, Seattle, Washington, is being awarded a $5,461,010 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-95-C-0136 for the installation of an Orbit Improvement System, which includes the Electronic Horizontal Situation Indicator/Electronic Attitude Direction Indicator/Built-in Test Equipment and Global Positioning System/Sole Means Navigation System in 14 E-6 aircraft.
Orbital Sciences Corp. has called for an overhaul of the X-34 small reusable launch vehicle (RLV) development effort, leaving its partners Rockwell International and NASA uncertain as to the future of the program. OSC representatives made the request at a meeting last week with Rockwell and NASA officials, arguing that the liquid-fuel winged booster would not meet performance requirements as designed. Problems picking an engine for the vehicle remained unsolved, although OSC said the difficulty went beyond the choice of an engine.
Rockwell International Corporation, Anaheim, California, is being awarded a $13,971,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for repair and modification of navigation inertial equipment to United States and United Kingdom ships to include a Ships Inertial Navigation System (SINS) and Electrostatically Supported Gyro Monitor Navigator (ESGM/N) instrument and component repair; ESGN refurbishment/conversion; Electrostatically Supported Gyro (ESG) Spinner production; Interferometric Fiber Optic Gyro (IFOG) evaluation; and Level-of-Effort support.
Chrysler Technologies Airborne Systems, Incorporated, Waco, Texas, is being awarded a $37,605,524 modification to previously awarded contract N00019- 94-C-0224 to modify E-6A TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) aircraft to an E-6B configuration by incorporating equipment from the Air Force EC-135 aircraft into the E-6A aircraft. This upgrade will allow the aircraft to perform Airborne Command Post missions. Work will be performed in Waco, Texas, and is expected to be completed by July 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
ECHOSTAR DBS CORP. was high bidder Friday in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission auction for the second of two Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) slots, bidding $52,295,000 for the DBS orbital location at 148 degrees West longitude serving the U.S. West Coast and Pacific Rim nations. Bidding closed after 25 rounds, but did not approach the high- stakes competition for the domestic U.S. slot at 110 degrees West won by MCI for $682.5 million (DAILY, Jan. 26).
SMALL MINORITY-OWNED and women-owned businesses are invited to take part in a two-day conference on high-tech subcontracting opportunities to be held March 5 and 6 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Call 818- 354-6093.
The commander of the U.S. Army Engineer Center told Congress that "there is no silver bullet" for dealing with the landmine threat in Bosnia, but that the Army has high, medium and low tech approaches, and that any equipment of promise is a candidate for fast-track development.
Wireless, mobile communications down to the tactical level is part of five-year project launched by the Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Md., to seek systems solutions for its proposed digital battlefield. The laboratory has contracted with an industry-university team headed by Lockheed Martin/Sanders, Nashua, N.H.
The Predator UAV could benefit from testing on the Pioneer and Hunter of the Common Automatic Recovery System (CARS), intended to cut UAV losses due to human error. UAV JPO's Dillon says CARS testing will begin in April and that a study will be undertaken to integrate the system on the Predator.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are studying whether the balky tape recorder on the Galileo Jupiter orbiter can be used safely to store images of the planet and its moons after the tape stuck Jan. 18 during a test prior to playback of data from the spacecraft's atmospheric probe.
Creation of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) has raised some questions about who has authority over a vital part of a typical UAV system. Aircraft, manned and otherwise, fall under the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO), and the images they deliver belong to NIMA. But Terry Ryan, DARO's deputy for plans and programs, asks, "Where do the tactical ground control stations fit in?"
Cessna's Citation Ultra on Friday won the competition for the U.S. Army's C-XX medium range transport aircraft program with the award of an initial $8.37 million as part of the total $156.97 million program, the Pentagon announced. The initial award is for two aircraft and life-cycle contractor support for one year and training. The total contract covers the delivery of 35 C-XX aircraft, training and life-cycle support. Cessna's team members include DynCorp and Flight Safety International. The contract will run over five years, Cessan said.
Administrators called in to decide the fate of beleaguered Dutch airframer Fokker continue to hold out hopes that the 76-year-old company could be kept intact - hopes that were bolstered Friday when the Dutch government granted Fokker enough bridging aid to keep it in business for another six weeks.
Westinghouse and Raytheon, competing in a development effort to provide the U.S. Army with the Airborne Standoff Minefield Detection System (ASTAMIDS), are eying the prospect of the most promising system being tested this summer going to Bosnia for additional evaluations. The opportunity comes at a time when Congress, spurred by deployment of U.S. troops to the former Yugoslavia, is prepared to generously fund anti-mine programs. As of late last week, there had been 11 mine incidents in Bosnia, but no deaths, since deployment of U.S. forces.
With the Pentagon trying to figure out how to do standoff jamming, U.S. Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall says "I don't think it will be a separate aircraft, that's my own personal view." Instead, she tells The DAILY in an interview, "my guess is it would be pods and other kinds of add-ons." She points out that although the Air Force will retire its EF-111 standoff jammers and rely on Navy EA-6B Prowlers, the add-on variants would allow the Air Force to maintain the jamming mission.
A 16-foot-long graphite composite liquid hydrogen tank has passed ground tests at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and will be installed in the McDonnell Douglas DC-XA reusable launch vehicle (RLV) prototype for flight testing in May, the U.S. space agency reported. Dan Dumbacher, NASA's DC-XA project manager, termed the ground tests "a breakthrough."
