Boeing Co. is still evaluating the fate of its tiltrotor unmanned aerial vehicle project, even though it said two weeks ago it planned to build a second Heliwing to replace one that crashed in June (DAILY, July 18, page 77). A Boeing spokesman called premature last week's announcement that Boeing's Military Aircraft unit would replace the Heliwing prototype that lost power and crashed in a test flight near Moses Lake, Wash. (DAILY, June 15, page 421)
The four congressional committees with primary responsibility for overseeing Pentagon funding have weighed in with their recommendations for the fiscal 1996 national defense budget. Below are selected aircraft procurement funding amounts passed by the House National Security Committee (HNSC), Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), House Appropriations Committee (HAC) and Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC). Future tables on funding in areas such as RDT&E and space programs will appear in upcoming issues of The DAILY.
The second flight test of the Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) missile on Monday was aborted after its velocity exceeded parameters and led to a conflict with range restrictions. "At burnout the missile was going too fast, its velocity was high, higher than anticipated," a spokesman for the U.S. Army Missile Defense Program Executive Office said yesterday. The THAAD was launched at about 12:30 p.m. EDT at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., on a simulated intercept (DAILY, Aug. 1, page 155).
British Aerospace is finalizing arrangements for its stake in the new Airbus Military Company, which will manage Europe's Future Large Airlifter, or FLA, program from Toulouse.
Russia's Lavochkin Science&Production Association (NPO) has offered an upgraded propulsion module developed in the 1980s for Phobos and Mars spacecraft to be used as the basis of a future Chinese moon probe. Officials from Lavochkin and China's Academy of Launch Vehicles met here last week to discuss cooperation in the implementation of the proposed Chinese moon mission. The envisioned deal might include delivery of three or four flight-rated propulsion units for about $20 million.
EVANS&SUTHERLAND said Airbus Industrie has chosen it to supply fully integrated visual systems for A320 and A330/340 aircraft flight simulators. E&S said the competitively bid multi-million contract marks its entry as the first independent supplier to the civilian aviation simulation system market. E&S said the systems will be included in simulators installed in Airbus' Beijing, China, training site in fourth quarter 1996 and its Toulouse, France, training site in late 1998.
A July 26 test of a GPS-Aided Munition (GAM) from a B-2 bomber marked completion of the exploration of all aspects of the weapon's footprint, Northrop Grumman said. The test, at the China Lake, Calif., Land Ranges, was the most accurate of the three tests so far, the company said.
BEECH AIRCRAFT CORP., Wichita, received a $6.6 million modification to an earlier contract for updated AQM-37C aerial targets, portable mission loader/verifier aerial target test sets and related services and data. U.S. Naval Air Systems Command awarded the contract on July 28.
HARRIS CORP. said yesterday that its win of a $39 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to provide the Next Generation Target and Control System (DAILY, July 25, page 120) will enable the USAF to increase the number of targets in an exercise and extend the size of a range area that can be used. Harris, teamed with Interstate Electronics and Lockheed Martin Services, said it will provide a modern target-control system based on Global Positioning Satellites to operate ground, sea and airborne drone targets at Pt.
PRB ASSOCIATES, Hollywood, Md., will integrate the AN/TSQ-142 Tactical EA- 6B Mission Support (TEAMS) system with the Tactical Aircraft Mission Planning System (TAMPS) under a contract being negotiated on a sole source basis with U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. "This two phase development program will span a 24 to 30 month period, during which a fully functional and operationally approved EA-6B Mission Planning Module will be provided," NavAir said in a July 18 Commerce Business Daily notice.
NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER, Training Systems Div., Orlando, Fla., is soliciting industry for a program to replace the visual system in a P-3 Operation Flight Trainer (OFT). The center said in a July 12 Commerce Business Daily notice that the solicitation will include the following requirements; seven additional OFT replacement options, options for Contractor Field Services, options for training, option for additional Visual Scenes, and an option for an Off-line database modeling system.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Joint Project Office is getting ready to test a communication data relay on a Hunter Joint Tactical UAV. "It's the idea of using the UAV like a surrogate satellite" to improve communications for forward deployed troops, said Robert Glomb, UAV JPO's director for joint programs and demonstrations. "The ground troops can get extended range with their radios," he said.
Military users and planners see a variety of applications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, but a shortage of funds is constraining development of payloads, a UAV official says. "Being very, very limited funding-wise, we couldn't take a strategy that we were going to develop any new kinds of payloads ourselves, so basically we're looking at what's on the shelf that we can get," Robert Glomb, director of Joint Programs and Demonstrations at the UAV Joint Project office, said during an interview in his office.
LORAL SYSTEMS CO., Akron, Ohio, on July 11 was awarded an $8.7 million modification to an earlier contract for one platoon level precision range integrated maneuver exercise system trainer and logistic support services for Kuwait, and three months of contractor logistics support for the U.S. Army's precision range integrated maneuver exercise system trainer located at Ft. Hood, Tex.
JOHNSON CONTROLS WORLD SERVICES INC., Cape Canaveral, Fla., on July 24 received a $126,463 increment for a 60 day phase-in period under a contract potentially worth $109.4 million to provide installation support services to the National Training Center.
Tropical Storm Erin has complicated planning at Kennedy Space Center for field repairs to the Redesigned Solid Rocket Motors (RSRMs) poised to lift the Space Shuttle Endeavour to orbit later this month, forcing managers to consider rolling the Shuttle stack back to the Vehicle Assembly Building today to avoid high winds.
The U.S. Army yesterday conducted the second of 14 scheduled demonstration/validation tests of the THAAD interceptor. The missile for the Theater High Altitude Air Defense program was launched from White Sands Missile Range, N.M., against a simulated target. Plans called for it to be put through "fairly severe maneuvers" to test its structure and control system, according to an Army spokesman, but results of the test were not immediately available.
Israel fired the first Arrow 2 interceptor in a test on Sunday. The missile, the tactical prototype of the interceptor planned for use in an Israeli missile defense system, "performed as planned," prime contractor Israel Aircraft Industries and the U.S. Army's missile defense program executive office said in a joint statement. Earlier tests used a prototype referred to as Arrow 1. Arrow 2 is smaller and has two solid fuel stages rather than the single stage of the earlier version.
