ORBCOMM, Orbital Sciences Corp.'s low-Earth orbit satellite system, has entered reseller agreements with Innovating Computing Corp., a provider of software and systems integration technology to the transportation industry, and Caribbean Satellite Services, Inc., which provides tracking and monitoring for shipping equipment and cargo to customers in the Caribbean and Latin America.
While the services are cooperating on information warfare doctrine and technology development, the Pentagon's Joint Staff isn't ready to consolidate their efforts, says Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, the JCS director for command, control, communication and computer systems. "I could not argue for centralization of the efforts because we are at such an early stage in development of this warfare capability that I don't want to close out people," he said at last week's AFCEA conference in Washington. "But I do encourage cooperation."
House National Security Committee Chairman Floyd Spence (R- S.C.) says that if the congressional budget resolution conference now underway winds up splitting the difference on national security budget authority, the committee will have to cut back in the conference with Senate Armed Services on the fiscal 1996 defense authorization. "It's all that we can do," he says. House NSC, following the lead of the House Budget Committee, marked up its bill to a budget authority figure of $267.3 billion, $9.7 billion over the Administration request.
Administrator Daniel S. Goldin says he has found a sympathetic ear among the leadership of both parties, in both houses of Congress, for his argument that cutting NASA R&D to trim the deficit is penny wise and pound foolish (DAILY, June 1, page 341).
Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the B-2 bomber's most important supporter in the Senate, says what happens in the House on the National Security Committee's $553 million B-2 add-on won't necessarily determine whether he seeks funding for additional B-2s in the Senate Armed Services Committee markup in two weeks. "The main factor will be the Senate committee mood and the mood of the Senate," Nunn tells The DAILY, "and I'll have to assess that as we go along."
When U.S. Air Force acting acquisition chief Darleen Druyun talks about acquisition reform, she likes to use the Global Positioning System program office as an example of streamlining. The current System Program Office, or SPO, including system engineering and federally funded research and development center support, contains about 500 people. Seven or eight contractors are working on the ground system. The government is the system integrator.
NASA is forming plans to use the Orbital Sciences/Rockwell X-34 reusable launch vehicle as a Mach 12 testbed for technology experiments that could lead to hypersonic flight in the coming century. Once the X-34 enters regular commercial operations late this decade, the agency wants to use the two-stage-to-orbit X-34 to test hypersonic technology as well as to launch spacecraft, according to top agency managers.
Acquisition reform, ballistic missile defense and the B-2 bomber will be principal issues under consideration when the House takes up the $267.3 billion fiscal 1996 defense authorization tomorrow. Under the rule written by the House Rules Committee to govern the time for floor consideration of the bill, these three areas will come in for major attention. The House starts work on the bill tomorrow, and is expected to complete action by Thursday evening.
Unless Congress approves the U.S. Air Force's entire request for its command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) infrastructure, the number of installations slated for upgrade in the future year defense plan (FYDP) may slip by as much as 25%, a top AF C4I official said Thursday in Washington. The service's FY '96 request for the C4I infrastructure upgrade is about $500 million, up from $350 million in FY '95, according to Lt. Gen. Carl G. O'Berry, the Air Force's C4 deputy chief of staff.
Boeing and General Electric are working together to try to understand whether and how a fan balance problem on the GE90 turbofan will affect first delivery of a GE90-powered 777 widebody twin to British Airways, scheduled for September, Boeing sources told The DAILY yesterday. Officially, GE and Boeing executives say they're still assessing the effect of the modification on the September delivery date, and GE "continues to work toward delivery" in September, GE said yesterday.
NASA managers have set July 13 as the launch date for the Space Shuttle Discovery once workers have repaired more than 100 holes drilled in its external tank insulation by a pair of Northern Flicker woodpeckers. Discovery was moved from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center back to the Vehicle Assembly Building early yesterday, and repairs to the foam insulation were scheduled to begin last night.
NATO has accepted Defense Secretary William Perry's offer to send the Tier II Predator unmanned aerial vehicle to Bosnia for intelligence operations, sources said yesterday. The General Atomics' medium-altitude drone probably won't arrive in the area until early next month, as it is participating in a classified mission with Special Operations Forces in the U.S.
The latest update of the U.S. Navy's "Copernicus" command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) architecture addresses information warfare (IW) issues for the first time. "Copernicus...Forward," the fourth reincarnation of a document released in 1990, is the "Navy and Marine Corps vision to ensure Copernicus remains a viable and evolving construct to fully support the warfighter" and the Navy's "From the Sea" strategy, according to Vice Adm. Walter Davis, the Navy's space and electronic warfare director.
NASA plans a fiscal 1997 startup of the prototype science institutes it is developing as a way to stretch research dollars, and will seek "up- front commitments" from industry and academia to share the costs of operating the institutes, Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said yesterday. In an interactive question and answer session with NASA employees broadcast on the agency's internal television network, Goldin said the institutes are one way agency managers hope to minimize the pain of downsizing to meet a shrinking federal space budget.
LORAL DEFENSE SYSTEMS, Litchfield, Ariz., has received contracts valued at about $1 million to supply equipment for a weapons guidance and targeting demonstration for the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program.
In the summer of 1961, just five months after he took office, President John F. Kennedy found himself on the receiving end of a blunt face-to-face threat from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Either pull out of the western sectors of Berlin, the bombastic Soviet leader warned, or face war. Kennedy was ultimately able to call Khrushchev's bluff because of Corona, a highly secret U.S. reconnaissance satellite program that recorded its first successful mission less than a year earlier.
In the wake of yesterday's rescue of the U.S. F-16 fighter pilot who was shot down one week ago over Bosnia, electronic warfare experts continued to puzzle over how such an incident could have happened in the first place.
The Defense Dept. will privatize much of its infrastructure and lease weapons systems on a multi-year basis-at least according to Adm. William Owens' vision of DOD in the year 2005. "Entire platforms are run and managed and built by contractors, some of which are huge things, perhaps aircraft," Owens, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said yesterday at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's annual conference in Washington.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said yesterday that he is concentrating on winning Senate Armed Services Committee funding for the third Seawolf submarine (SSN-23), even though the Connecticut House delegation is looking to him to restore congressional backing for the U.S. Navy's plan to let General Dynamics' Electric Boat build the New Attack Submarine. "Do or die priority is the third Seawolf," Lieberman told The DAILY in a brief interview. "My first priority is to keep the [EB] yard [in Groton, Conn.] alive."
While no one is doing it officially, Boeing and its enginemakers are all converging on plans to develop a roughly 747-sized 777 widebody twin with engines running at nearly 100,000 lbst., a panel discussion here made clear Wednesday.
EFW INC., Fort Worth, Tex., a subsidiary of Israel's Elbit Ltd., has received a contract for engineering and manufacturing development of the Bradley A3 Turret/Hull Processor Unit (T/HPU). Elbit said the initial contract, for $2.8 million, was awarded April 25 by United Defense LP, and calls for 12 pre-production units to be delivered beginning next April as part of the Bradley modernization program. It said an award for low rate initial production (LRIP) is scheduled in 1997 and could lead to a total production quantity of 3,200 processor units.
GENERAL DYNAMICS Land System, Tallahassee, Fla., has received a $7.5 million modification to a contract for the Single Channel Ground and Airborne System (SINCGARS) System Improvement Program (SIP). The contract was awarded by the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command.
A German research center bought a ride on a Russian submarine-launched ballistic missile late Tuesday, flying a gravity-research module from a submarine in the Barents Sea across the Russian Federation to a soft landing on the Kamchatka peninsula. The experiment, built by the Space Technology and Microgravitation Center (ZARM) in Bremen, Germany, was launched on an SS-N-18 which was slated for dismantling as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), according to Christoph Egberts, ZARM's project manager.
FMC-ARABIA LTD., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, received a $23.3 million modification to a contract for Saudi contractor logistics support for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle Systems. The Dept. of Defense said May 31 that the contract was awarded by the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command.
Unshaken by House-proposed funding restraints, the U.S. Navy intends to accelerate the Stand-off Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response program in order to upgrade SLAM missiles a year or more earlier than expected, according to Navy program director Capt. Rob Freedman. The main problem associated with shrinking development and production schedules has been identifying an additional $3 million to buy two more flight test missiles and to run an extra flight test. The baseline program calls for 12 missile flight tests.
