Defense Secretary William Perry will use a week-long trip to former Soviet republics, beginning today, to promote non-defense spending and pitch investment of private U.S. capital, a senior defense official told reporters at the Pentagon. Perry will be accompanied on his trip to Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan by executives from a dozen American companies and by representatives of Oversees Private Investment Corp., which has assisted joint ventures between U.S. companies and firms in the FSU. The group will to try to bolster U.S.
Texas Instruments Defense Systems & Electronics Group said yesterday that the U.S. Air Force has completed operational tests of the 4,700-pound, 19-foot-long GBU-28A/B Paveway laser guided bomb. The tests are part of a product improvement program contract awarded to Texas Instruments in 1993 to improve the performance of the GBU-28 "bunker buster," first deployed in the 1991 Gulf War. With support from Lockheed Corp. and TI, the weapon was designed, developed and built in only 27 days.
The U.S. Air Force's National Air Intelligence Center plans to award a five-year contract to support exploitation of measurement and signal intelligence (MASINT) data.
Taking aim at the Pentagon's prioritization of readiness over modernization, a former Defense Dept. research and engineering chief called for defense leaders to "significantly" reduce the force structure to free money for the development of new technologies and procurement of new weapon systems. Donald Hicks, now chairman of Hicks and Associates, used the example of a soldier with a machine gun battling a dozen adversaries with clubs to make his point that state-of-the-art technologies are force multipliers.
The U.S. Air Force will need 120 replacement Lockheed F-16s and 18 to 20 McDonnell Douglas F-15Es to meet its plans to maintain 20 fighter wing equivalents in the coming decade, a senior service official said yesterday. The planes will be needed to plug a "very serious" attrition problem that will emerge between 2000 and 2010, Brig. Gen. David J. McCloud, director of operational requirements for the Air Force, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on airland forces.
The Pentagon's avionics needs greatly exceed current budget allocations, a situation that will force industry and government to find new ways to cut costs, according to a new study by the Electronic Industries Association. The study, described Tuesday at an EIA conference in Washington, predicted that avionics dollars would remain steady between about $6 billion and $8 billion for procurement, and around $8 billion to $10 billion for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E). Richard Peal, who headed EIA's commercial avionics study, and Charles W.
A commission has been convened to investigate why the new Start launcher failed to orbit a triple international payload after what at first seemed to be a successful launch on March 28 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. During ascent of the solid-fueled booster the Strategic Rocket Forces' tracking station serving Plesetsk detected normal ignition of the fifth stage. However, the Rocket Forces facilities do not permit monitoring of the final orbital insertion and payload separation phase.
UNISYS CORP. said it has received a $1.1 million contract to provide live- fire training equipment and installation services to the Royal Saudi Infantry Corps School at Khamis Mushayt in Saudi Arabia. The McLean, Va., corporation also said it has received $4.4 million in funding for the second year of a five-year contract from the U.S. Army for similar equipment and services.
An Ariane 44LP successfully placed two satellites in orbit Tuesday evening, marking a successful return-to-flight for Europe's Arianespace consortium. The rocket lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 6:14 p.m. EST carrying the 3,916-pound, Hughes-built Brasilsat B2 telecommunications satellite and 3,960-pound, Aerospatiale-built Hot Bird 1 European direct broadcast satellite. The flight, the first since Arianespace experienced a third-stage failure in December (DAILY, Dec.
Top defense officials yesterday reviewed 15 candidates for fiscal 1996 Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations, including one industry-proposed idea to build a helicopter with low life-cycle costs. Under the so-called Low LCC Helicopter program, the Navy would run an open competition to lease sealift helicopters and crews at fixed per-year costs, according to Larry Lynn, who will soon leave his post as Defense Dept. advanced technology chief to become the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency. "We are supporting the Navy on that," Lynn said.
The U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command has released Mission Area Plans (MAPS), documents that identify its modernization needs and acquisition and R&D priorities for the next 25 years. In a March 30 Commerce Business Daily notice, ACC said the classified documents are available to qualified parties. "The U.S. Air Force uses the MAP products as major guides for changing tactics, training, and procedures and investing scarce dollars to modernize its forces," ACC said.
Investigation of the technology risks of transitioning communications, navigation and identification modules of the F-22 fighter to current aircraft, including the F-15 and F-16, is the aim of a U.S. Air Force research effort.
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman sounded a strong warning to the military and its customers yesterday, warning that tomorrow's combat power depends on how well defense leaders cope with today's political and budget realities. "If we're going to survive, we've got to understand [the Cold War] was an aberration and move forward with fresh ideas," Fogleman advised at a Defense Dept. conference on government reinvention in Arlington, Va.
President Clinton told the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in a letter Monday that the U.S. "remains committed to provide Global Positioning System signals to the international civil aviation community and to other peaceful users of radio navigation and positioning systems." A statement by Dept. of Transportation Secretary Federico Pena revealed, however, that an agreement with the Defense Dept.
HARRIS CORP., Melbourne, Fla., has received a $3.5 million (U.S.) contract from the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Dept. for an air-to-ground high frequency radio system for the new Check Lap Kok Airport. Under the contract, Harris' RF Communications Div., Rochester, N.Y., will design and integrate system, which will provide primary air-to-ground HF communications and meteorological information broadcasts for controllers and pilots. Harris said it will also supervise the installation and provide technical and other support.
E-SYSTEMS' Montek Div., Salt Lake City, Utah, has received a $740,000 contract from the U.S. Army to develop and demonstrate prototypes of a Drop Zone Assembly Aid (DZAA), intended to allow troops to locate air- dropped loads and assemble air-dropped personnel at desired locations. E- Systems said the DZAA uses the Global Positioning System to tell troops the direction and the distance to an assembly point. Previous systems could only point the direction to the assembly point. Included is a wrist-mounted locator unit, and a beacon for the load or the assembly point.
For the second time in a row, the Navy failed to intercept a theater ballistic missile target with a kinetic kill vehicle, the Pentagon said yesterday. Rockwell's Lightweight Exoatmospheric Projectile (LEAP) flew on a Hughes Standard Missile launched from a Navy cruiser off the coast of North Carolina. The target was launched from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. The interceptor missile performed normally through boost, second-stage separation, nose cone ejection and third stage separation.
SAIC, Dayton, Ohio, has won a $24 million contract from the U.S. Air Force's National Air Intelligence Center. SAIC said the contract, for support of Project Have Star, is a rebid of existing work by SAIC's Operations Analysis and System Engineering Operation. The company said it will continue to provide intelligence analysis on future weapon systems, subsystems and technologies affecting the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense program, the Air Defense Initiative program, the Air Base Systems program and other new U.S. Initiatives as they develop.
Ground controllers struggled to contact satellites built by Israel and a Russian/Mexican team yesterday after their successful launch on a converted SS-25 ICBM from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Engineers continued to hope they could contact the spacecraft, but they remained silent several hours after they were orbited by the Russian Start space launch vehicle. Start was launched by the Strategic Rocket Forces from their State Test Range at Plesetsk, with liftoff at 10:00 GMT (5 a.m.
BOEING Commercial Airplane Group, Wichita Div., has delivered to Atlas Air the first of four 747-200 combi aircraft it has under contract for modification into full freighter configuration. The airplane arrived in Wichita last November, Boeing said. The last one in the contract is to arrive in November of 1995, and be redelivered in early 1996.
For the fourth year in a row, California won about 20% of all Defense Dept. procurement monies in fiscal 1994, according to a Pentagon study released Monday. In FY '94, California received $22.6 billion of $125.9 billion in defense procurement dollars, down slightly from $22.9 billion the year before. Texas ranked second, receiving 7.4%, or $8.1 billion, followed by Virginia with 7.3%, or $8 billion. The other states rounding out the top 10 were Missouri, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia, New York and New Jersey.
A top Navy officer yesterday appealed for another $170 million for the Sea Based Theater Wide (Upper-tier) missile defense system, contending that "we are very close to having [such a] capability." Vice Adm. Thomas J.
BFGOODRICH AEROSPACE, Akron, Ohio, said it has been chosen to supply a new aft anti-collision/position light for retrofit into Delta Air Lines' fleet of 120 MD-88 aircraft. These light assemblies are direct replacements for original equipment units, BFGoodrich said. More than 900 are now in service.
LORAL Information Display Systems is in line to supply the U.S. Navy will 52 Programmable Tactical Information Displays (PTIDs) for the F- 14 Update program. Naval Air Systems Command said in a March 23 Commerce Business Daily notice that an option for follow-on production of about 18 PTIDs will be included in the contract.
The House and Senate Budget Committees appear to be moving on a legislative timetable that will not produce a congressional budget resolution until mid-May at the earliest-at least a month behind the normal congressional schedule. A spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R- N.M.) said Monday that the committee wouldn't go to markup until after the Senate's Easter recess, which runs from April 7 to 21. A spokeswoman for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) said, "We are pretty much waiting for the House.
