The U.S. Navy awarded Raytheon Co. a $36 million fixed-price incentive contract for the low-rate initial production (LRIP) of the Tactical Tomahawk, the latest variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile, the company said Oct. 9. The contract calls for Raytheon to produce and deliver 25 Tactical Tomahawk All-Up Round missiles, according to Raytheon. The company received a $24.1 million contract last month for tooling and test equipment for LRIP and full-rate Tactical Tomahawk production.
The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) is taking a 50 percent share in 3Sigma, a Greek supplier of air defense target drones, the company said Oct. 9. The company will trade under the name EADS 3 Sigma. Its facilities are located at Chania, Crete. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. EADS' move will expand the company's capabilities in the field of aerial drones. EADS 3 Sigma builds the Aklyon, Iris and Perseas systems, largely for the Greek forces, with other major customers including the Netherlands and France, EADS said.
NASA intends to eliminate a $46 million deficit in space shuttle operations partly by negotiating lower fees paid to private firms - including subcontractors for Boeing's Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power unit, which makes engines for the shuttle - according to an outline of the plan. Decreases in fuel prices, reduced support costs for shuttle emergency landing sites, and adjustments to the modification schedule for shuttle training aircraft also are expected to help close the gap, the document says.
BOEING COMMERCIAL AIRPLANES, Brussels Marlin Dailey has been appointed vice president of European sales. Daniel da Silva has been named vice president of customer support - Europe. CONNEXION BY BOEING, Seattle Beverly Wyse has been named director of the new Deployment and Installation organization. ENGINEERED SUPPORT SYSTEMS, St. Louis Ronald W. Davis has been promoted to president, business development. Ronald W. Hauser leads the new Planning and Market Research Group.
BAE Systems will guarantee the availability of the United Kingdom's 21 Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft under a 75 million pound (nearly $117 million) maintenance contract announced Oct. 9. The pay-for-performance deal should cut the Royal Air Force's (RAF) support costs by 20 percent, and covers Nimrod maintenance during the transition to the new Nimrod MRA.4s.
Raytheon Co. is protesting the Air Force's choice of Boeing Co. as winner of a competition for the Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminal (FAB-T), a $273 million effort to develop secure satellite communication terminals for a variety of platforms (DAILY, Sept. 24). The Air Force picked Boeing on Sept. 20, and Raytheon filed a protest with the General Accounting Office on Sept. 30, Raytheon spokeswoman Pat Perlini said. Perlini did not elaborate, saying it is company policy not to comment on issues in litigation.
SAAB WORK: Saab Nyge Aero will provide maintenance, modifications and technical support for Swedish military SK-60 aircraft under a three-year, $8.3 million contract extension. The extension is to a previous five-year contract, the company said. Saab Nyge Aero, part of the Saab Group, provides maintenance and modifications to aircraft and helicopters, and also provides flight services such as target flights, calibration and testing for military and civilian customers. The SK-60 work primarily will take place in the company's workshops in Ljungbyhed.
Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station Oct. 9 as the two vehicles flew over western China, NASA said. The shuttle crew - Commander Jeff Ashby, Pilot Pam Melroy and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus, David Wolf, Piers Sellers and Fyodor Yurchikhin - entered the station for the first time at 11:51 a.m. CDT. Three spacewalks will be conducted during the 11-day mission to install and outfit the station's 45-foot Starboard 1 truss. The first spacewalk is slated for Oct. 10, and will be conducted by Wolf and Sellers.
An experimental targeting system demonstrated the ability to destroy multiple moving targets using modified munitions first designed to strike fixed targets, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Oct. 9. The Affordable Moving Surface Target Engagement (AMSTE) program is a network-centric targeting system in which data from multiple airborne ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar sensors are fused to provide precision-guided weapons with real-time target position updates while in flight (DAILY, Sept. 7, 2001).
The Boeing Co. announced Oct. 9 it is opening an office in Scotland to provide technical support to the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (MOD). The new office, located in Glasgow, will support the MOD's Corporate Technical Services branch, which is part of the nearby Defense Logistics Organization (DLO). The Glasgow office is part of Boeing's strategy to build partnerships with non-U.S. military services, company officials said in a statement.
TEST SET: The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) will conduct the seventh developmental test of its Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system on Oct. 14. A modified Minuteman II target carrying a mock warhead and decoys will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., with the ground-based interceptor to be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The intercept is planned to take place 140 miles above the central Pacific Ocean.
Merrill Lynch is maintaining its positive outlook for the aerospace and defense sector despite recent a recent public opinion poll showing declining support for increased defense spending. "There is no change to our opinions or earnings estimates for the 'buy' rated stock we cover," senior aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan says in an Oct. 8 report.
LONDON - Competition between the Boeing Co. and Eurocopter for a 1.3 billion euro ($1.27 billion) contract to replace about 28 MBB Bo 105ATH Spanish army attack helicopters is heating up. Spain plans to buy 20-25 new helicopters, and for the past year has been considering Boeing's AH-64D Apache Longbow and the smaller Eurocopter Tiger.
Moog Inc. and Parker Hannifin Corp. were awarded a $113 million contract by Lockheed Martin Corp. to produce the primary flight control system for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter during the aircraft's system development and demonstration phase. Under the contract, the companies will produce the electro-hydrostatic actuation system, which controls the aircraft's major flight surfaces including the flaperons, rudders and horizontal tails. The companies also will produce the controls for the ailerons on the F-35C, the Navy's carrier-borne JSF variant.
NEW DELHI - India has agreed to buy ground radars, unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs] and thermal imaging systems from Israel, a senior Indian defense official said. India will buy more than 1,000 portable radar systems, worth $80 million, from El-Op of Israel and deploy them along its border with Pakistan to monitor cross-border infiltration, the official said. El-Op beat out France's Thales and Sagem for the work. However, the official said India still is considering buying sensors from the United States to help detect border incursions.
The Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems unit of Lockheed Martin Corp. hopes to install two additional radars in November as part of a $55 million weather radar system for the Romanian government, work that also is in demand for other countries, the company said. The project, called the National Integrated Meteorological System, involves the integration of five Lockheed Martin-made Doppler S-band radars with four C-band radars, company officials told The DAILY Oct. 8.
MOSCOW - The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos, and ORT-First Channel, the country's main national TV network, announced a new "reality" show based around a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station scheduled for next year. ORT director Konstantin Ernst and Rosaviakosmos head Yuri Koptev announced Oct. 8 that they have signed an agreement for a one-week space station visit in fall 2003 on a routine Soyuz flight.
Fueled by a projected $1 billion growth spurt in sales, a BAE Systems subsidiary in the U.S. is planning to distribute the largest share of its new orders to suppliers - but only suppliers ready to pass a higher standard for quality and performance will be allowed to compete.
LAUNCH: The European Space Agency's International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellite is scheduled to be launched Oct. 17 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Proton vehicle, ESA said. INTEGRAL is an international mission involving cooperation from all ESA states, the U.S. and Russia.
RAPTOR READY: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics's Palmdale, Calif. facility has completed the upgrade and modification needed for Raptor 8 to begin dedicated initial operational test & evaluation (DIOT&E), the company said Oct. 8. This is the first of three F/A-22 Raptors scheduled for DIOT&E readiness modifications at Palmdale. DIOT&E is planned for next year.
