It was business as usual at the Pentagon yesterday as the 200,000-plus not-absolutely-essential Defense Dept. employees worldwide returned from their three and a half days of involuntary vacation, rejoining the 400,000 or so who were unaffected by the shutdown.
ADM. RICHARD C. MACKE returned to his duties as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii yesterday, but Pentagon officials expected him to retire this week following controversial remarks he made last Friday at a breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington (DAILY, Nov. 20, page 287). His second in command and chief of staff of CINCPAC, Army Lt. Gen. David Bramlett, would logically assume his duties in the interim during the search for a successor.
EXIDE ELECTRONICS GROUP INC., Raleigh, N.C., which provides power management and power protection solutions for a range of applications including military and aerospace, said it will acquire Deltec Power Systems Inc., a manufacturer of uninterruptable power systems, for $195 million. Deltec designs, manufactures, markets and sells services, products and software through Deltec Electronics Corp. in San Diego, Calif., and FPS Power Systems, based in Helsinki, Finland.
Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit, as a member of the Siemens Plessey Systems team developing the U.K.'s Lychgate air intelligence project (DAILY, Nov. 16, page 268), said it will supply software similar to that included in the U.S. Air Force Mission Support System (AFMSS), a Sanders product that helps aircrews plan their flights.
The U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center yesterday released the draft request for proposal to develop and build a decoy intended to confuse an enemy and increase protection for friendly aircraft. The Miniature Air Launched Decoy (MALD) is being developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency as one of the Dept. of Defense's 1996 Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations. The main requirement to be met by the winning contractor is a unit cost of no more than $30,000.
Loral's Command and Control Systems unit yesterday detailed roles of its teammates in the Theater Battle Management Core Systems (TBMCS) program, expected to be worth $143 million through 2001.
Rockwell's Rocketdyne Div. withdrew from the competition to power a proposed Atlas booster variant in September, citing the difficulty in meeting Lockheed Martin's schedule with a "real derivative" of its MA-5A rocket engine, according to a Rocketdyne spokesman. The spokesman said the U.S. enginemaker also had "some funding questions," since Lockheed Martin invested in both Russian-built engines under consideration for the Atlas IIAR-the NPO Energomash RD-180 and the NK-33 developed in Samara for Russia's N-1 moon rocket.
Less than a month after Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski put off a decision on multiyear procurement of McDonnell Douglas C-17s in an effort to win even better prices from subcontractors, a major supplier - Northrop Grumman - has worked out a deal with MDC cutting costs on its parts of the plane by some 35%.
McDonnell Douglas hopes a recent $26.7 million U.S. Navy award to support the adversary strike mission at four different sites turns out to be the spark for a whole new business line in the maintenance and support arena. MD Aerospace's Services Company unit defeated incumbent Lockheed Martin for depot-level aircraft maintenance and support on F-14s, F-5s, F/A-18s and helicopters (DAILY, Nov. 14, page 252), and it's "the first time where we've competed and won a maintenance contract like this," a company spokesman explained.
EMBRATEL, BRAZIL'S national telephone company, has signed a $70 million order with Hughes Space and Communications International for another HS 376W telecommunications satellite, similar to the Brasilsat B-1 and B-2 platforms already in orbit. Designated Brasilsat B-3A, the new satellite is scheduled for launch late in 1977 aboard an Ariane booster. It will carry 28 C-ban transponders for voice, data, business network and television service to Brazil. The order was placed as an option to Embratel's 1990 Brasilsat B contract.
Israel's Tadiran Ltd. will supply the Swiss Army with ground control systems and data links for remotely piloted vehicles. Tadiran said yesterday that its Communications and Systems Group is part of a consortium serving as subcontractors to Oerlikon-Contraves, which will supply Switzerland with about 30 RPVs worth about $200 million. Tadiran's share of the work is about $35 million.
The U.S. Air Force's new Joint Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system program office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, will spend much of the next two years assessing acquisition issues related to the UAVs it will manage, according to the director of the office. Lt. Col. Thomas J. Di Nino told The DAILY in a telephone interview that his focus will be to "identify some of the challenges we face" in acquiring the systems.
Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada, filed a $50 million action against the Canadian government, the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other government officials in response to "false and reckless allegations" that he received illegal payments to influence Air Canada's acquisition of Airbus Industrie aircraft. Air Canada Airbus declined comment.
The Loral team that won the U.S. Air Force Spacelift Range System competition last month will redesign the system architecture, including instrumentation, communications and control and display, at both the Eastern Range at Patrick AFB, Fla., and the Western Range at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
Embryonic strategic and political thinking about the future of information warfare has left investors scrambling to pick companies poised to gain from the changes IW will bring, even though it isn't clear how those changes will ripple down to industry, said Merrill Lynch aerospace analyst Byron Callan.
Some 32,500 Boeing workers are slated to vote today on a new contract that could put them back to work by tomorrow, Boeing and union officials said. Members of the International Association of Machinists ended a 45-day walkout Sunday after winning what the union described as "path-breaking contract protections against off-loading and subcontracting of work," along with expanded benefits for laid-off workers and sharply higher pensions.
House and Senate defense authorization conferees in large part agreed with their appropriations counterparts on how to fund in fiscal year 1996 unmanned aerial vehicles, but the authorizers also funded the development of a marinized version of the Hunter Joint Tactical UAV.
The Senate Tuesday night gave final congressional approval to the fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference report which now goes to the White House - and an expected veto by President Clinton. The Administration's principal objections are that the bill mandates deployment of a national missile defense by 2003, that it could lead to abrogation of the ABM Treaty, and that it exceeds the president's request by $6.9 billion.
Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch told the House Intelligence Committee that the authority of the DCI should be increased. He said the changes would be "marginal," because the "DCI has most of the authority he or she needs."
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are in the final stages of preparing for launch an Atlas IIAS rocket that would place an experimental satellite at the neutral gravity point between the Earth and sun. The Lockheed Martin-built launcher is slated for liftoff on Nov. 23 between 1:54 a.m. and 3:24 a.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., Lockheed Martin said yesterday. It would be the tenth Atlas launch from the Cape this year. One launch this year took place at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
FAA gave a green light yesterday to a Boeing/General Electric proposal to modify fan tip clearances on GE90 turbofans powering 777 widebody twins due for delivery to British Airways and program executives hope to have the aircraft ready to go before the end of the week.
