A Russian space imagery firm plans to launch an advanced mapping satellite next year that will provide two-meter-resolution scenes of the Southeast U.S. in bulk to a consortium of U.S. firms. If the deal goes ahead as planned, it will be the first time that Americans have paid Russians to photograph the U.S. from space.
July 27, 1995 McDonnell Douglas Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri, is being awarded a $8,446,968 Firm Fixed Price contract for FY1995 post production support for the F-15 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed September 1995. Contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Solicitation began August 1994 and negotiations were complete April 1995. This effort includes support for foreign military sales to Israel. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F33657-95/C-2007).
The Congressional Budget Office has put the procurement cost for buying 20 additional B-2 bombers at $18 billion in fiscal 1996 dollars, but says the costs could be "perhaps $2 billion" lower if the Defense Dept. accepts Northrop Grumman's offer to build the bombers according to the schedule and specifications it offered in a fixed price contract.
LORAL FEDERAL SYSTEMS CO., Manassas, Va., on July 27 received a $9.3 million contract from U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, Training Systems Div., Orlando, Fla., to incorporate a change to the Semi-Automated Forces software portion of the U.S. Army's Close Combat Tactical Trainer.
July 25, 1995 AAI Corporation, Hunt Valley, Maryland, is being awarded a $7,382,153 face value increase to a Cost Plus Award Fee contract for development of modifications for 2 prime mission equipment maintenance training sets applicable to the E-8C Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS). Contract is expected to be completed July 1996. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah is the contracting activity (F42630-94/C- 0325, P00011). July 26, 1995
Despite Lockheed Martin's best efforts to sell the Defense Dept. a reconnaissance version of its stealthy F-117 fighter, Pentagon recce managers aren't interested. "[F-117s] have tremendous leverage in hitting high-value, tough-to-get targets," U.S. Air Force operational requirements director Brig. Gen. David McCloud said in an interview. "I don't want to go taking pictures. I want to drop bombs with those airplanes."
The U.S. Navy's decision to put Airborne Self-Protection Jammers on F/A-18D strike aircraft flying over Bosnia is a one-time solution and not something that will be extended to other Hornet aircraft, Rear Adm. Brent Bennitt, Navy director of air warfare, told The DAILY.
The Czech Army appears to be heading for a showdown with parliament over plans to upgrade its MiG-21 jet fighters. In June, the Parliamentary defense and security committee voted against the planned upgrade even though it had approved and funded the $138 million effort as part of the five-year defense budget last year. Now Defense Minister Vilem Holan has announced the Army will prepare two modernized MiG-21 prototypes "for evaluation."
The dozen McDonnell Douglas C-17s flying in the Reliability, Maintainability and Availability Evaluation, or RM&AE, logged 404 hours during the test's two wartime surge days July 17 and 18, averaging more than 16 hours per day per aircraft the first day and topping 17 hours on the second, AF officials confirmed Friday.
The U.S. Air Force is expected to issue two long-awaited pre-EMD contracts Thursday for the Air Force's Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS). Three teams are competing for the two contracts-Hughes-TRW, Northrop Grumman-Harris and Lockheed Martin-Loral-Aerojet. The Hughes-TRW team is seen having an inside track because Hughes builds the sensor that the Air Force wants to base the new early warning constellation on. The AF plans to downselect to a single contractor in about 15 months.
Caldarella doesn't predict that countries will end this shared-satellite system, either. "Motorola's about to launch the Iridium system, which will give everyone a built-in, world-wide command and control access system and everybody will be on that," he explains. Now that Cold War is over, 85%-90% of all DOD communications are transmitted commercially. Satellites are only part of this new type of MADness, Caldarella (Cont. p. 147) says. Most of the world's bulk data runs through fiberoptic cables.
The objective price of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) has gone up $100,000 a copy-and the Mission Needs Statement hasn't even been approved yet. The Pentagon wants JASSM's average unit procurement price to be $600,000 in fiscal 1995 dollars, according to a "sources sought" announcement in the July 31 Commerce Business Daily. But an announcement one month ago listed the desired price at $500,000, also in FY '95 dollars (DAILY, June 5, page 369).
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $14 million increase to the Joint Surveillance/Target Attack Radar System in fiscal 1996 to support NATO activity, but at the same time cut $12 million out of development of JSTARS' airborne component.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-Tex.) is joining his Senate counterpart, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in mulling an idea to establish a "director of national intelligence." As Combest sees it, such a director could be appointed for a fixed term and serve over three major intelligence chiefs: a director of military intelligence, who would be a four star general and possibly a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; a director of civilian intelligence; and a director of collections, who could be in charge of coordinating the wide array of intelligence collec
Meanwhile, the AF's plans to issue an RFP for the Global Positioning System GPS Block IIF satellites by today have been pushed back in the wake of a move to scale down the contract from 55 to 33 satellites. The anticipated RFP release date is now Sept. 12, and a contract award is now expected in early 1996 instead of December 1995.
The current IW funding level is sufficient to support DOD's effort, which for now amounts mostly to organizing and creating doctrine, Caldarella says. "I'm not sure if Congress said 'I can rain money on you in the IW world' that we would know how to spend it effectively," he says. "...This thing's so far from maturing, we're probably on the right track right now."
Lockheed Martin has received a $34.4 million contract for engineering and manufacturing development of pre-planned product improvements (P3I) for the LANTIRN system. P3I for LANTIRN-Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared System for Night-includes integration of a laser spot tracker in the AN/AAQ-14 targeting pod. It will also increase the laser designator's maximum operational altitude from 25,000 feet to 40,000 feet.
Czech radar maker HTT Tesla Pardubice has announced that it will sell one of its Tamara counter-stealth passive detection systems to an as-yet unidentified country of the former Soviet Union. According to company officials, the unnamed country is "trustworthy and politically stable," and will not likely spur any opposition from the U.S. They said they do not want to identify the country because rival companies could exert pressure to scrap the deal.
LITTON SYSTEMS INC., San Jose, Calif., received a $54.4 million increase to an earlier contract from the U.S. Air Force on July 21 for 87 AN/ALR-56M Advanced Radar Warning Receivers for F-16 aircraft operated by Taiwan. The contract was awarded by Air Force Material Command.
The German government has delayed its selection of a new targeting pod for Tornado aircraft that are undergoing a mid-life upgrade. Initially slated for July, a decision on a supplier for the roughly 20 pods is now not likely to be made before the German parliament reconvenes in September. An industry official said the Luftwaffe wants to take a closer look at the proposals.
Combest's IC21 intelligence review has turned up a lot of concern about human intelligence (HUMINT) assets and a good deal of praise for technical collection capabilities, including satellites. But that doesn't mean Congress has no concerns about technical issues. Sen. Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, worries about long lead times for collection systems in an era when targets are evolving and changing much more rapidly than in the past.
Fixing the F119 Advanced Tactical Fighter turbofan's high-pressure turbine vibration problem involved changing the stator count and re-tuning the turbine blades to change their curvature, Pratt&Whitney's F119 VP, Walt Bylciw, told The DAILY. The redesign worked well enough that P&W and the U.S. Air Force decided last month to drop efforts to come up with a back-up turbine design (DAILY, June 28, page 492), but until this week details on that design were sketchy.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has added $135 million to the U.S. Air Force's request for the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) and directed the service to accelerate deployment of the low-Earth orbit (LEO) portion of the early warning satellite constellation.
