One way for U.S. industry to avoid government regulations on space launches from other countries is to move launch platforms out to sea, says Jerry O. Tuttle, Oracle Corp. vice president. The proven U.S. proven sea-launch capacity would provide the additional benefits of a large safety zone if a launch goes bad and the extra lift capacity that comes from launching near the equator.
An official involved in the drafting of updated regulations for licensing U.S. commercial remote sensing systems said they may contain clearer provisions as to when the government can "shutter" the imaging satellites. The Commerce Dept. is "hoping" to issue proposed regulations within 30-60 days, John Milholland, chief counsel of atmospheric and space services at Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said.
The first upgrade to the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) Thursday passed part one of its critical design review by Army Missile Command, which clears prime Loral Vought to start placing vendor orders and working toward flight tests. "It was a very successful design review," Lt. Col. Barry Ward, the Army's program manager for improved ATACMS, told The DAILY.
The full Senate is scheduled to vote this week to confirm John Deutch as director of central intelligence (DCI). The Senate Intelligence Committee approved the nomination by a unanimous vote on May 3.
Airbus Industrie executives have dismissed what they describe as unfounded but lingering safety concerns among pilots-and in the mass media- over technologies introduced on Airbus aircraft. In press briefings in Toulouse Thursday, Airbus human factors experts denied that the consortium designs its cockpits "in the laboratory," without participation by pilots. And senior captains from United, Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific all gave their vote of confidence following experiences with the introduction of Airbus aircraft into their airlines' fleets.
U.S. information systems have been attacked in the past, and with many countries capable of conducting information warfare (IW) the Defense Dept. will have to examine how to protect its systems, the co-chairman of the Defense Science Board task force on information for the battlefield said last week.
Loral Corp. closed on its deal to buy Unisys Defense Systems for $862 million in cash, boosting Loral's air traffic control, ship defense and C3I businesses while marking the final step in Unisys' drive to evolve from a computer-maker into an information-management company.
The U.S. should cease protectionist practices and open its defense market to international competition, the British Defense Ministry's top materiel official in Washington said last week. Simon Webb, the defense materiel minister in the British Embassy, Thursday urged the U.S. to loosen tight export controls and match the U.K.'s open markets, arguing that easing export controls would benefit greater transatlantic cooperation.
Prodded on rumors that package carrier Federal Express is unhappy with range performance on Pratt&Whitney-powered MD-11 trijet freighters, McDonnell Douglas' chief financial officer, Herb Lanese, quips "you must have been talking to Boeing." The rumor, in fact beginning with some of FedEx's rivals, is that headwinds are hurting the planes' ability to fly long Asian routes. But Lanese says that "engine deficiencies...have been corrected." Correcting the record led Lanese to spill the beans on FedEx's plans for new aircraft.
The Air Force has no plans to try to get the Milstar military communications satellite effort killed, Brig. Gen. Robert Dickman, director of space programs in the service's acquisition office, assures Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), who is concerned about past AF efforts to eliminate the costly program. "I think the history of Milstar terminations is behind us," Dickman says "...We're now on contract [with Lockheed Martin] for the full constellation of four Milstar II satellites. We are committed to that, that's a done deed."
The McDonnell Douglas/Northrop Grumman team for the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) probably will not make an internal downselect between its two designs, Keith Hertzenberger, McDonnell Douglas's vice president, advanced aircraft programs tell The DAILY. Rather than choose one design over the other, he says, the new thrust will be to combine systems from both designs and put them into one.
The defense budget for the next seven years will be frozen at about the $270 billion level for budget and authority, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services acquisition and technology subcommittee said Friday. Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) opened up a subcommittee hearing Friday with the remark that it was important to develop specific strategies for funding the technologies for the battlefield of the future because "we're looking at a flat (defense) budget for the next seven years, with literally no growth."
ABOUT 70 FEDERAL AGENTS under the direction of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles raided six Northrop Grumman plants in Hawthorne and El Segundo, Calif., Wednesday, Justice Dept. and Navy Criminal Investigative Service officials confirmed yesterday. The facilities make parts for Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighters and flying target drones used by the Navy, but officials wouldn't say what they were looking for.
The Air Force chose a TRW/Hughes team to design the Brilliant Eyes Space and Missile Tracking System, continuing a program begun in December 1992, and bringing the initial contract value to $249 million, TRW reported yesterday.
Eurocopter, the French-German helicopter consortium, is accusing the Dutch government of favoritism following a Cabinet decision last month to buy McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache helicopters instead of Eurocopter's Tiger, and apparently hopes to persuade the Dutch parliament to reverse the choice.
TRW's patent on the use of medium-Earth orbits (MEO) for its Odyssey mobile communications satellite project is the "functional equivalent of Boeing trying to get a patent for [a] new airliner to carry passengers at altitudes of between 30,000 and 45,000 feet," an executive involved in a competing venture charged.
The Defense Dept. wants to change the way industry can protest contract awards in the face of large numbers of protests clogging the acquisition system, said Colleen Preston, DOD's acquisition reform chief. "We are pursuing change in the bid process," she told an audience largely of industry executives at this week's Global Air&Space conference. "We can't be doing it wrong 40% of the time."
NASA's top access-to-space official has blasted Marshall Space Flight Center for releasing a preliminary design study that appeared to favor Rockwell's winged-body approach to the agency's Reusable Launch Vehicle over competing concepts from Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas.
HERON, Israel Aircraft Industries' long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, established a new system endurance record Tuesday by flying 51 hours and 20 minutes with a 440-pound payload. IAI said the UAV operated "flawlessly." Heron is slated to be presented during the Paris Air Show.
NASA, General Electric Aircraft Engines and Pratt&Whitney continue to notch successes in making environmentally friendly components for engines powering the U.S.'s hoped-for Concorde SST successor, and have demonstrated the ability to reach low nitrogen oxide levels and to meet Stage III noise requirements.
Senate Armed Services ranking Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn (Ga.) said yesterday that he won't decide whether to try to add B-2 stealth bomber funding to the fiscal 1996 defense authorization until he reviews the Heavy Bomber Force Study assumptions.
Loral Corp. has applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a license to build and operate a high-speed digital telecommunications satellite in the Ka-band frequencies over the western U.S.
Latvia demolished the 19-story building of the uncompleted Russian early warning radar at Skrunda yesterday despite numerous calls from Russian scientists and specialists to convert the large phase array structure into an international space watch facility.
Lt. Gen Malcolm O'Neill, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization director, yesterday told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. and Russia could live with a demarcation between theater and strategic missiles that limited theater systems to velocities of five kilometers per second. O'Neill stressed that he was speaking as an acquisition executive and not as a warfighter. He said the limitation would "not impede our program."
