Rockwell International Corp., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was awarded on Dec. 13, 2001, an $8,915,759 firm-fixed-price contract modification to provide for an extension on the reliability warranty on the Pacer Compass Radar and Global Positioning system line replacement units through November 30, 2011. At this time, the total amount of funds has been obligated. The Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., is the contracting activity (F34601-00-C-0042, P00025).
FAREWELL: The mission of NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft comes to an end Dec. 18. The spacecraft, launched in 1998, tested 12 advanced technologies and conducted a successful fly-by of Comet Borrelly. Deep Space 1 will continue to orbit the sun after its ion engine is turned off, and its radio receiver will be left on "in case future generations want to contact the spacecraft," according to NASA.
One of the key roles the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) sees for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be so-called "prodded" surveillance missions, according to John Stenbit, assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications, and intelligence. Rather than simply relying on images from satellite or spy plane passes, with prodded surveillance a UAV is sent over a specific area to monitor the results of a pre-arranged military operation.
The time is right for a new thrust to promote the use of remotely operated aircraft (ROA) in national airspace, according to a California company. The company, American Technology Alliances of Redwood City, Calif. - one of hundreds responding to a post-Sept. 11 request to industry from the Department of Transportation on ways to increase security for a range of transportation modes, nuclear facilities and oil and gas pipelines - says the need is urgent for several reasons.
HAMILTON SUNDSTRAND of Windsor Locks, Conn., has acquired Magnaghi Hydraulic Systems Division, an aerospace actuation supplier in Brugherio, Italy. The business will continue to operate in Brugherio and will become part of Microtecnica, a subsidiary of Hamilton Sundstrand headquartered in Turin, Italy. "Magnaghi's expertise in primary flight control actuation nicely complements Hamilton Sundstrand's already strong actuation capabilities," Jim Gingrich, president of Hamilton Sundstrand Flight Systems and Services, said in a statement.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Orlando, Fla., was awarded on Dec. 13, 2001, a $15,043,566 firm-fixed-price contract modification to provide for aircrew training for C-130 aircrews, maintenance and support of courseware, and flight simulators. At this time, the total amount of funds has been obligated. This work will be complete September 2002. This effort will be performed by Lockheed Martin Corp., in Building 1230A, Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. (74%), and by CAE USA Inc., Tampa, Fla. (26%).
A House-approved cut in the Bush Administration's fiscal 2002 budget request for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) would "jeopardize" the Defense Department's weather-monitoring capabilities and result in layoffs at several major aerospace companies, according to DOD. NPOESS is to replace the constellations of DOD's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and NOAA's Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) program. The first NPOESS satellite is supposed to be ready for launch in June 2008.
The prototype for the engine that could eventually power NASA's Second-Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle will begin initial testing early next year, according to contractor Aerojet. The company is partnered with Pratt&Whitney on the Co-optimized Booster for Reusable Applications (COBRA) - one of two prototype engines being developed under NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI). The other engine is Boeing Rocketdyne's RS-83 (DAILY, Aug. 17).
Joining the list of companies offering e-business marketplaces and e-business products to aerospace suppliers and vendors, First Index USA of Whippany, N.J., has launched a new web-based, e-sourcing software package to help buyers find suppliers for custom-made products. The package, called findFAST PRO, enables aerospace buyers to find suppliers capable of doing custom machining, metal forming, plastics injection molding, casting, forging and custom electronics work.
Raytheon Company of Andover, Mass., is being awarded a delivery order amount of $11,960,212 as part of a $13,486,766.57 fixed price redetermination contract for antenna elements for the Patriot Missile System. Work will be performed in Andover, Mass., and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2005. Contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Bids were solicited on May 25, 2000 and one bid received. The contracting activity is the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., (DAAH01-00-D-0062).
Northrop Grumman Corp., Rolling Meadows, Ill., is being awarded a $65,111,239 firm-fixed-price contract modification to provide for 23 AN/ALQ-135 Band 1.5 internal countermeasures sets applicable to the F-15E aircraft. At this time, the total amount of funds has been obligated. This work will be complete December 2002. The Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-98-C-0037, P00033).
SHUTTLE HOME: Space Shuttle Endeavour landed at Florida's Kennedy Space Center Dec. 17, returning the Expedition Three crew to Earth after they spent five months aboard the International Space Station. Endeavour delivered the Expedition Four crew to the station as part of its mission.
ABM HEARINGS: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) is considering holding hearings early next year on the Bush Administration's Dec. 13 move to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, according to a Biden spokeswoman. The senator believes that withdrawal was not necessary to continue missile defense testing and could spark an Asian arms race.
The Navy may not be able to begin construction of the new DD(X) destroyer in fiscal 2005 as planned if the House-Senate conference committee for the FY '02 defense appropriations bill accepts a House-approved program cut of $483 million, according to the Defense Department.
TANKER BUY: Japan's Air Self-Defense Force announced Dec. 14 it will buy four Boeing 767 tanker-transport aircraft. The first 767 is scheduled to be delivered in 2006, said Boeing spokesman Paul Guse. One aircraft is scheduled for delivery in each of the three succeeding years, but Guse said that schedule could be compressed.
NASA R&D: Given the commercial aerospace industry's reliance on NASA for advanced aviation technologies, NASA's research and development budget will have to be increased for advanced safety and security measures to be in place by the time the industry experiences an upswing in 2003-2004, says John Douglass, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association. "The biggest structural problem relating to homeland defense that NASA has to deal with is [that] the FAA and the people in the homeland defense effort depends mostly on NASA for future security systems.
Automated rendezvous in space, which the United States has never demonstrated, will be a critical need both for NASA's Second-Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) and for resupply of the International Space Station (ISS), according to NASA. "We actually have identified it as an enabling technology for practically all the [Second-Generation RLV] architectures that are in the contracts right now," said Chris Calfee of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
NASA has started work on implementing the recommendations of an outside panel that suggested ways to continue the International Space Station without going billions over budget, outgoing NASA associate administrator Joe Rothenberg said. The ISS Management and Cost Evaluation suggested NASA should build the station to a "core complete" stage - with a crew of only three, not six or seven - and then decide whether to finish it with its full slate of modules and equipment to provide for a larger crew.
A representative of the BAE Systems-Saab consortium known as Gripen International says landing a $1.4 billion deal to supply the Czech Republic with a fleet of Gripen single-engine, multirole fighters should strengthen the consortium's position in central and eastern Europe. Gripen says the deal - coming on top of Hungary's decision last month to lease 14 of its aircraft - has raised its hopes of winning similar tenders in neighboring Austria, Poland and Slovakia and, in the longer term, Romania.
BAE SYSTEMS Information&Electronic Warfare Systems, of Nashua, N.H., will conduct a technology demonstration program for the United Kingdom's Fast Jet Directed Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) laser system under a two-year, $5.6 million contract. The company will develop a robust, miniaturized, laser-capable acquisition, pointing and tracking system.
BANDWIDTH WOES: While the Defense Department hasn't run out of bandwidth yet, there are certainly concerns that the new pressures created by military operations in Afghanistan are stressing the military's bandwidth capacity, says John Stenbit, the assistant secretary of defense for command control, communications and intelligence. "If the commercial world has problems [with bandwidth], we've got it in spades," Stenbit says. He spoke Dec. 10 at the Shephard's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle conference in Arlington, Va. Immediately after Sept.
BOEING BASHING: The Boeing Co. could pay a high political price for cutting jobs at its rotorcraft facility in Ridley Township, Pa., according to U.S. lawmakers who represent the Philadelphia area.
The tactical utility of the 15,000-pound BLU-82/B "daisy cutter" bomb used in Afghanistan (DAILY, Dec. 13) is relatively limited, officials say. Developed in the late 1960s by Sandia Lab and the Air Force Weapons Lab at Kirtland AFB, N.M., to clear helicopter landing zones in Vietnam, the weapon is fearsome but it is not precision-guided and must hit within 500 feet of its target to kill or incapacitate and cause material damage.
Financial analysts have reacted cautiously to the Boeing Co.'s plan to maintain its struggling 717 regional jet program and to reduce staff at its Ridley Township, Pa. helicopter plant by up to 1,500 employees (DAILY, Dec. 14). Aerospace and defense analysts with Standard&Poor's affirmed the company's credit ratings in a Dec. 13 report but declined to remove Boeing from CreditWatch, where analysts had placed it Sept. 21.
INTEL BILL: The fiscal 2002 intelligence authorization bill is a presidential signature away from becoming law. The Senate passed the conference committee version Dec. 13, a day after the House. The bill adds funds to the Bush Administration's budget request to improve the intelligence community's ability to analyze information gathered by its collection systems (DAILY, Dec. 10).
