MCDONNELL DOUGLAS, St. Louis, received an additional $52.1 million from the U.S. Navy on Oct. 3 for on-site maintenance and support of the T-45 Training System at NAS Kingsville, Tex. The contract was awarded by Naval Air Systems Command.
M TECHNOLOGIES, Huntington Valley, Pa., will carry out engineering and manufacturing development of the BRU-55 smart bomb rack for U.S. Navy and Air Force aircraft. U.S. Naval Air Systems Command awarded a $6.2 million sole source contract for the work on Oct. 3. The effort will be performed in Horsham, Pa., and is to be completed by April 1997.
ALLIEDSIGNAL ENGINES chief Jim Robinson is leaving the company to take over as executive VP of Learjet after 20 years in the engine business, AlliedSignal confirmed yesterday. Greg Summe, who heads AlliedSignal's General Aviation Avionics unit, was named Engines' president.
NASA may drop its planned launch of a Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) spacecraft on Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Pegasus XL booster, as continued delays getting the booster ready to fly threaten to make the mission redundant with a Japanese TOMS launch scheduled next summer. Vernon J. Weyers, director of flight projects at Goddard Space Flight Center, told The DAILY yesterday that the TOMS program office at NASA headquarters has asked him to study the cost trades on various options for launching TOMS, including no launch.
The U.S. Army's Communications-Electronics Command is issuing a draft request for proposals for an air traffic control system for use by the service in South Korea. CECOM said in an Oct. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice that the RFP for the HF Communications Flight Following System (HFCOM-FFS) would be available today for industry review on an electronic bulletin board.
THE SHANGHAI SPACE BUREAU, producer of China's Long March 4-A and 2-D rockets, has been granted a $7.2 million loan from the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Bank for further research and production of carrier rockets.
The U.S. Navy fully supports the Joint Attack Strike Technology fighter program but its big hurdle will be cost, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Boorda said yesterday. "We have no [advanced aircraft] program other than JAST right now," he told reporters in Washington during a breakfast meeting; "it has to produce for us."
NASA plans to begin drop-testing a 15,000-pound lifting body/parafoil combination next month in a technology validation effort that could lead to development of a low-cost, U.S.-built lifeboat for International Space Station crews. U.S. space agency managers describe the Assured Crew Rescue Vehicle- Experimental (ACRV-X) project at Johnson Space Center as a relatively inexpensive effort to demonstrate the technology that would be needed to deploy a rescue vehicle for non-Russian Station crews after the orbiting laboratory is completed in 2002.
COMMUNICATIONS&POWER INDUSTRIES' Satcom Div., Santa Clara, Calif., formerly Carian Electron Devices, has introduced its new VStar(r)II antenna-mounted amplifier. The device is designed specifically for ground transmitters of commercial satellite communications operating in either extended C-band or extended Ku-band frequency ranges.
LORAL'S Federal Systems Div., Owego, N.Y., is in line for a U.S. Navy contract to assess specifications for integration of Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) with the SH-60R helicopter. Naval Air Systems Command said in an Oct. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice that the job will include "defining requirements for system architecture and the Multi-Mode Radar (MMR) Missile Detect Mode, defining requirements for incorporation of the Ku-band Datalink, and interface requirements between the MMR and the Integrated Mission Processor."
The U.S. Army is putting in place the final pieces of its Nov. 6-18 "Warrior Focus" exercise at Ft. Polk, La., which will feature 73 technology initiatives. The exercise will cap a series of tests that the participating units have undergone since the beginning of the year to examine the benefits of high technology for the Army.
DIRECTV, Hughes' direct-to-home broadcast satellite venture, has received an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Outstanding Achievement in the Sciences of Television Technology. The award was presented Oct. 12 at a special ceremony in New York.
FIRST LAUNCH of EER Systems' Conestoga booster has been rescheduled for Oct. 20 at Wallops Flight Facility, Va., NASA reported. High winds and a "precipitous drop" in hydraulic pressure on the gimballing mechanism of two of the rocket's five first-stage motors forced a delay of the first launch attempt of the all-solid rocket just before liftoff Aug. 13 (DAILY, Aug. 16, page 245). The booster carries the NASA-sponsored Meteor spacecraft, a modified version of its old Commercial Experiment Transporter (COMET) vehicle.
The U.S. Army yesterday selected Lockheed Martin and a Hughes Aircraft/Raytheon joint venture for the project definition and validation phase of the Corps Surface-to-Air Missile medium-range air-defense program, or Corps SAM. The two were chosen over a team of Loral, TRW and Westinghouse. Apart from the Army work, the decision means the two teams will represent the U.S. as participants in the international Medium Extended Air Defense System.
Congress can potentially trim $4.85 billion from the Pentagon's fiscal 1996 budget, a General Accounting Office (GAO) report released yesterday concludes. Leading the list was depot maintenance funding for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army, which GAO said could be cut by $888 million. That's because the services are using large amounts of money provided by Congress for depot maintenance for other purposes, says the report, "1996 DOD Budget: Potential Reductions to Operation and Maintenance Program" (GAO/SNIAD-95- 200BR).
A McDonnell Douglas official, still elated yesterday after the company's win Wednesday of the competition for the Joint Direct Attack Munition program, said the market for the precision guided weapon could ultimately be worth between $3 billion and $5 billion. "We're really excited about having won JDAM," said Charlie Dillow, MDC's JDAM program manager. "It's an important win to reestablish ourselves in the strike weapon business," particularly following MDC's loss to Hughes Aircraft last year of the final phase of Tomahawk cruise missile production.
PANAMSAT CORP. has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to operate international communications satellites in two orbital locations that have traditionally been used for domestic U.S. satellites. The slots-80 degrees West and 103 degrees West-would be used to provide international communications over the C-band and Ku-band frequencies. PanAmSat said the international services would allow it to expand its broadcast and telecommunications services "throughout the Americas by the year 2000."
The U.S. Army has chosen a team of Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Hughes Aircraft Co. to demonstrate an all-weather, multi-sensor engagement capability for tanks. Under a 38-month, $16.5 million contract from the Army's Communications and Electronics Command, the team will pursue the Target Acquisition Advanced Technology Demonstration program. It is aimed at the M1 Abrams tank and future main battle tanks, and uses aided target recognition to cut engagement timelines and increase lethality, Westinghouse said yesterday.
With the announced departure of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the dominant Senate figure on defense, the Armed Services Committee faces a loss of stature in the Senate that could rival the decline of the Foreign Relations Committee. Under Chairman J. William Fulbright, Foreign Relations became the forum for challenging Johnson Administration policy on the Vietnam war.
ASTRA 1E European television satellite is scheduled for launch on Saturday at 8:38 p.m. EDT aboard an Ariane 42L rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite is the third in a series of six ordered from Hughes by the Luxembourg-based Societe Europenne des Satellites (SES).
GE Aircraft Engines agreed to sell its engine controls manufacturing and service business to Lockheed Martin, a deal that will re-unite the controls design and manufacturing operations separated two years ago when then- Martin Marietta bought General Electric's Aerospace units.
The Defense Dept. has embarked on a number of initiatives to cut overhead and flow the savings back into readiness and modernization, but Andrew Krepinevich of the Washington-based Defense Budget Project says those savings may not be sufficient. DOD is "resting recapitalization on some mighty thin reeds," Krepinevich said Wednesday in Arlington, Va. Lack of sufficient savings will force DOD to look at low-cost options for leveraging advances in technology, he said during a Technical Marketing Society of America conference on digitizing the battlefield.
MILSATCOM JOINT PROGRAM OFFICE will hold an informational briefing for industry to acquaint potential offerors with government requirements for the Military Integrated Satellite Communications Study. The briefing will be held on Oct. 20 at the Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif. Classification will be at the "Secret/NOFORN" level. For details, contract Ms. Hayley Philbrick, SMC/MCK, Los Angeles AFB, in writing at least three working days before the briefing. Fax: (310) 336-2011.
The electronic warfare industry should be more aggressive in trying to get programs started, the Electronic Industries Association recommends in its ten-year forecast released this week. "Get proactive," EIA told industry in its annual report. It said that "if you can make impact, demo it," and don't wait for the Dept. of Defense to issue requests for proposals.
THIRD U.S. NAVY UHF SATELLITE LAUNCH OF 1995 has been scheduled for Tuesday between 4:15 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. EDT at Cape Canaveral. The UHF-6 satellite is slated to be orbited on a Lockheed Martin Atlas rocket. The launch will mark the first time in 19 years that three Hughes-built satellites were launched in the same year for the same customer.
