ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL CORP.'s Collins Avionics&Communications Div., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was awarded a $7.4 million sole source contract by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command for the Data Transfer System.
NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery arrived in Palmdale, Calif., late last week to begin a nine-month overhaul period to prepare it for assembly operations at the International Space Station, a process at least two more of the three Shuttles will undergo.
Ranking Senate Armed Services Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) has set this week for an announcement on whether he plans to seek re- election next year. Although most Nunn watchers expect him to announce his retirement, the senator, in typical fashion, has taken steps that could point in either direction.
ORBITAL IMAGING CORP., another Orbital Sciences subsidiary, has selected Satatlantic, Inc. of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as the exclusive distributor of SeaStar data services in Canada. Scheduled for launch in the first half of 1996, the SeaStar satellite will provide Earth surface color imagery.
STORM INTEGRATION, Herndon, Va., has been selected to provide systems that will be utilized for integration and test, orbit analysis, and real-time on-orbit command-and control of the Indostar direct broadcast satellite. Indostar is being developed by CTA International, Rockville, Md., under a con-tract from PT. Media Citra Indostar of Indonesia.
Contractors, after several years of waiting for the final RFP for the close range, or Manuever, variant of the Joint Tactical unmanned aerial vehicle, may get some relief-at least in terms of the length of the document. Dwight Williams, deputy director of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, says the statement of work has been cut down from more than 700 pages to less than 12. Williams says Friday at a conference in Washington on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems that the RFP will be issued in less than eight weeks.
The Marine Corps needs tactical unmanned aerial vehicles in part because the Hunter UAVs, with its requirement for a runway, was "never fully satisfactory," Blot says. "Our real desire is to have a UAV which can land and take off vertically." At the same time, he says, the ground station and the sensors are more important than the airframe.
The House, fueled by its large conservative Republican freshman class, Friday overwhelmingly rejected the $243 billion fiscal 1996 defense appropriations conference report by a vote of 267-151. The practical effect was to put Defense Dept. funding under the fiscal 1996 continuing resolution, which would permit spending on any line item at 5% less than the average rate of operations supported by the House and Senate defense appropriations bills.
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP., Baltimore, is in line for a 24-month contract from U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command for work on a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) neural network. CECOM said in a Sept. 19 Commerce Business Daily notice that the work will continue an effort already underway.
COMSAT CORP. has signed 11 leases with News Corp. for a total of 950 MHz of Ku-band satellite capacity to distribute direct-to-home programming throughout Latin America. The five-year lease, valued at more than $100 million, will be accommodated on the Intelsat VII-A satellite scheduled for launch later this year, Comsat said.
The Netherlands will buy 200 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) under an agreement signed Friday in The Hague. The missiles are being bought as foreign military sales items through the U.S. government at a cost of about $107 million and will be fitted on Dutch F-16 fighters (DAILY, Sept. 28, p. 483B). The Dutch missiles will be part of the U.S. Defense Dept.'s 1996 Lot 10 AMRAAM buy. AMRAAM manufacturers Hughes and Raytheon will compete for the Lot 10 split.
KOLLMORGEN CORP. investigate will the feasibility of incorporating a weapon control system in an up-armored HMMWV. U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command said in a Sept. 19 Commerce Business Daily notice that if that upon satisfactory completion of the effort, the company will proceed with the integration itself.
The U.S. should not try to emulate Japan's economic model, House Science Committee Chairman Robert Walker (R-Pa.) tells reporters. "The fact is that in the major areas in which we compete, and the things that we want to do to define the 21st century economy, we have been more successful in many of those areas than the Japanese have been," he says. "My concern about following the Japanese model is that the Japanese are not particularly a model that I think is in the long run successful."
Texas Instruments and Lockheed Martin unveiled the first production Javelin missile round and the associated Command Launch Unit in a ceremony Friday at Troy, Ala. The joint venture has received two production contracts for the anti- tank fire-and-forget infantry weapon. The first, for $204 million and awarded in June 1994, was for 703 missiles and 55 CLUs. The second, for $180.7 million and awarded in March 1995, was for an additional 872 Javelins and 97 CLUs, with deliveries to extend from October 1996 to September 1997.
AlliedSignal said Friday that it will vacate a plant in Statford, Conn., by mid-1997 following congressional acceptance of a government decision to close the U.S. Army-owned facility. The company said Friday that production of both military and commercial aircraft engines will continue at the Stratford plant through 1996, but that the workforce of 1,200 will begin to be reduced in the third quarter of that year. Production will be moved to other AlliedSignal facilities, with Phoenix operations being the company's "first choice."
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Space Bob Davis says he signed out a memo to Pentagon Comptroller John Hamre on Sept. 22 ordering the establishment of a "joint financial budgetary oversight mechanism" to oversee NRO finances. "It's clear now, there's agreement, that the OSD comptroller and the intelligence community management staff will begin providing joint financial budgetary oversight of the NRO," Davis tells a Washington audience.
The former chief United Nations inspector for Iraq says more intelligence, not less, is needed to deal with the proliferation concerns of the post-Cold War world. David Kay warns a Washington audience that many nations will try "dual use" approaches in areas such as nuclear development. The programs are advertised as civilian-and in fact do meet civilian needs-but "suddenly pop up as a military threat," he says.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced settlements with seven defendants it accused of insider trading related to Martin Marietta Corp.'s unsuccessful bid to acquire Grumman Corp. last year.
DIRECTV, Hughes' DBS venture, has filed its first suit against a commercial establishment-a Pittsburgh bar-for displaying its programming under a less- costly residential subscription. Hughes filed the suit in federal court in Pittsburgh.
Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit said the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (ATIRCM) engineering and manufacturing development program contract it has received from the U.S. Army could be worth up to $150 million. The Nashua, N.H., company last was awarded the first increment of the $97.6 million contract last week (DAILY, Sept. 28, p. 483). It said that more than $50 million in options could raise the value to $150.4 million.
Raytheon Aerospace, Madison, Wis., said it will absorb the Aircraft and Logistics Programs of Serv-Air, a unit of E-Systems, which was acquired by Raytheon in May. Under the plan, the Greenville, Tex.-based Air and Logistics Programs operation, which conducts maintenance, modification and repair on numerous types of military and commercial aircraft, will become part of Raytheon Aerospace by the end of the year.
Europe's new Ariane V booster won't fly until late April at the earliest, a three-month slip from its planned Jan. 17 first flight. Problems with the cryogenic main stage, including an oxygen leak and a design flaw in the high pressure oil distribution system for the Vulcain engine, had to repaired, forcing the schedule slip. A verification test of the repairs to the main stage is scheduled early this month at the Ariane launch facility in Kourou, French Guiana.
Lockheed Martin has delivered the first two production reconnaissance systems for the F-16 fighter to the Virginia Air National Guard. The deliveries, at company facilities in Fort Worth, Tex., on Sept. 28, marked a milestone in shifting the U.S. Air Force's manned tactical reconnaissance mission from the RF-4C to the F-16, Lockheed Martin said.
GLOBALSTAR L.P., the Loral-led low-Earth orbit mobile communications satellite venture, announced that a company has been formed to offer Globalstar services in Thailand. Tentatively named Globalstar Thailand, the company was formed by Thaisat Ltd., a Thai telecommunications company, and Hyundai/Dacom, a Korean consortium comprised of Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Dacom Corp. and Hyundai Corp.
The U.S. Marine Corps' V-22 tiltrotor aircraft "is coming into the system," but "its coming in too slowly for our requirements," says Lt. Gen. Harold W. Blot, the Marine Corps' top aviation official. "We're going to do everything that's in our power to speed that up," he tells industry representatives during a meeting in Quantico, Va. He says he'd like to buy the planes at a rate of 36 per year, "if we can afford to do that."
