Mistakes in the use of an airborne laser designation system and actions by two U.S. Air Force officers were blamed for a July incident at Ft. Sill, Okla., in which an Army captain was killed and nine other soldiers were injured.
THE DEFENSE DEPT. will begin a series of satellite broadcasts to alert government and industry acquisition officials to procurement process changes, DOD said yesterday. The broadcasts will air Oct. 19, 24, 26, 31 and Nov. 2.
The Orbital Sciences Corp.-led Orbcomm venture has completed all testing of its two low-Earth orbit satellites and ground stations, paving the way to begin phasing in commercial service. In an address at the Telecom 95 conference in Geneva yesterday, Orbcomm President Alan Park laid out an implementation plan that will see the Orbcomm system transition to full, real-time transmission of messaging, paging and global positioning services around the globe via hand-held receivers by mid-1997.
Fast-growing overhauler Greenwich Air Services won a few more years on the U.S. Joint STARS program with a new contract to provide overhaul and "modification" of the Boeing 707 airframes' Pratt&Whitney JT3D engines. It's a three-year deal worth $22 million from the U.S. Air Force's Warner Robins Air Logistics Center near Macon, Ga., and GASI President Eugene P. Conese Jr. credited "our company's track record for meeting the high standards for this critical program" as a "major advantage in our ability to win this contract."
Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski told the U.S. Air Force to look at potential cost savings in the Joint Direct Attack Munition program through foreign military sales. Kaminski on Sept. 20 signed the acquisition decision memorandum that gave JDAM the go-ahead for engineering and manufacturing development (DAILY, Sept. 25, p. 459).
A letter sent to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Reed Hundt on behalf of the executive branch urges the commission to hold up Comsat Corp.'s proposed investment the Inmarsat-P mobile communications venture. The Sept. 29 letter from the U.S. State and Commerce departments expresses concern that Inmarsat-P, a commercial spinoff of the Inmarsat maritime satellite consortium, not be given an unfair advantage over potential competitors, which include the U.S.-based Iridium, Odyssey and Globalstar mobile communications satellite ventures.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS has delivered the 22nd production C-17 airlifter to the U.S. Air Force a month ahead of its Oct. 31 contract date, the company said. The plane arrived at Charleston AFB, S.C., on Sunday, flying from MDC's plant at Long Beach, Calif. It was the 10th consecutive ahead-of- schedule delivery of the aircraft by McDonnell Douglas.
Bath Iron Works President Duane D. Fitzgerald was named yesterday a corporate VP of General Dynamics, which bought Bath last month. Fitzgerald will remain Bath's chief, while James E. Turner, Jr., who had headed GD's Electric Boat submarine unit as president, becomes an executive VP in charge of General Dynamics' Marine unit. Fitzgerald will report to Turner, as will Turner's replacement, John K. Welch. Welch joined GD six years ago as division VP for program management and development at Electric Boat, and was named VP for programs last year.
The Defense Dept. has signed-off on a list of nine core software acquisition Best Practices and 43 other software acquisition recommendations drawn up to reduce the problems associated with software development and to save money.
A distributor of foreign language programming has leased capacity on an Intelsat satellite through Comsat World Systems to provide programming in Arabic to Latin America. Kelly Broadcasting, Orange, N.J., will use the capacity on the Intelsat-K spacecraft to beam round-the-clock programming supplied by Emirates Dubai Television (EDTV) to Latin America, Comsat said. The lease will run for seven years and is valued at $10.7 million.
Lockheed Martin is drawing on the experience of its Astro Space unit with NASA's Advanced Communications Technology (ACTS) to develop a $4 billion, nine-satellite Ka-band telecommunications constellation aimed at high-bandwidth customers. A company spokesman said yesterday that plans call for work to begin on the first A2100-class "Astrolink" satellite about eight months after approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the project, with the network to begin operating about five years after that.
John W. Douglass, assistant U.S. Navy secretary-designate for research, development and acquisition, gave a thinly veiled boost to the idea of a carrier-based version of the Air Force's stealthy F-117 in his Senate Armed Services testimony. Douglass, testifying on his nomination before SASC last Friday, said the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, rolled out last month by McDonnell Douglas, "is an excellent step toward the Navy's long term needs, but the Navy will need a new first-day survivable strike aircraft."
The U.S. Air Force plans an Oct. 26 briefing for contractors on the Airborne Laser program. The briefing, at Phillips Lab, Kirtland AFB, N.M., will be "specifically focused on the acquisition approach and upcoming Request for Proposal (RFP)," the AF said in an Oct. 2 Commerce Business Daily notice. The concept design, or Phase 1, effort is being carried out by Boeing Co. and Rockwell International, and they probably will be the only companies to compete in the demonstrator phase, but "all responsible proposals...will be evaluated," the AF said.
NASA controllers have stopped communicating with the 22-year-old Pioneer 11 planetary probe as its signal fades, bringing an end to a scientific program that turned up important data about Jupiter and Saturn. Controllers who had been using the Deep Space Network to tune in to the spacecraft eight to 10 hours a day were scheduled to cut back Saturday to about two hours every two to four weeks. Pioneer 11 is about 4 billion miles away, and its signals take more than six hours to reach Earth.
AEROTHERM CORP., Mountain View, Calif., beat four other companies to win a $19.5 million contract from the Phillips Laboratory, Kirtland AFB, N.M., for evaluation of certain countermeasure concepts against United States defense systems. The contract was awarded Sept. 28.
LORAL SYSTEMS CO., Akron, beat two other competitors to win an $8.6 million contract from U.S. Naval Air Systems Command for the production of 127 AN/AAR-47 missile warning sets for the U.S. Navy (57), U.S. Air Force (43), and the government of Canada (27). The contract was announced Sept. 29.
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, Dallas, received a contract Sept. 29 from the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Div., Lakehurst, N.J., for 18 forward looking infrared sets for the HH-60H helicopter and related data and technical support.
September 27, 1995 Allied Signal Engines Allied Signal Engines, Stratford, Connecticut, is being awarded a $6,224,952 cost sharing/cost reimbursement contract for downsizing of the Stratford Army Engine Plant. Work will be performed in Stratford, Connecticut, and is expected to be completed by December 31, 1995. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated in March 1995. The contracting activity is the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command, Warren, Michigan (DAAE07-95-C-A007).
PACIFIC-SIERRA RESEARCH CORP., Santa Monica, Calif., received a $5.3 million contract Sept. 19 from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory for research and development in infrared countermeasure technologies. NRL received four offers under a broad agency announcement.
Countdown for launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia on a 16-day Spacelab microgravity research mission resumed yesterday, after workers removed a leaky hydrogen valve that forced postponement of a launch attempt last week. The countdown for STS-73, the second U.S. Microgravity Lab flight (USML-2), restarted at 4 a.m. EDT yesterday. If all goes as planned, NASA's oldest Shuttle will lift off at 9:40 a.m. EDT Thursday.
Texas Instruments has received a $236 million contract from U.S. Naval Air Systems Command for engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) of the unitary variant of the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW).
Acquisitive Tracor Aerospace is ready to buy again, signing a definitive agreement yesterday to buy electronics house AEL Industries for about $115 million.
The number of geostationary commercial communications satellites that are orbited will continue to rise through the 1997-98 timeframe, but will then decline sharply as new, less costly low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites begin to dominate the market, a new 10-year forecast by the Teal Group concludes.
