Astronics Corp. of Buffalo, N.Y., announced April 19 that the U.S. Air Force exercised the final option on its contract to provide night vision lighting upgrade kits for the AF's fleet of F-16s. The option calls for deliveries worth over $10 million. The contract, originally awarded in 1998, included an initial award and three options, the company said. By exercising all of the options, the AF has purchased lighting kits to modify over 1,000 aircraft.
Lockheed Martin and other companies' employees could be involved if U.S. officials get their wish for some sort of engineering team to be given access on the ground to the stranded U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane now sitting at China's Lingshui airfield on Hainan island, the Pentagon says.
Georgian aircraft manufacturer TAM and defense electronics company Elbit Systems Ltd., of Haifa, Israel, announced they have upgraded TAM's Su-25 "Scorpion" with an advanced avionics system, including a Weapon Delivery and Navigation System (WDNS). An upgraded Scorpion made its official maiden flight on April 18 at the TAM airfield in Tbilisi, Georgia, the companies announced. It will also be displayed at the Paris Air Show in June. The Su-25 is a close-air support aircraft that can carry a variety of weapons on 10 underwing pylons.
IAM, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, supports a national missile defense program to deal with threats, the union said April 18. "Prudence dictates that we pursue a national missile defense system that works," IAM International President R. Thomas Buffenbarger said. He said the union also supports "a robust, realistic testing program."
Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., are using electron beam technology on the sub-molecular scale to create microscopic sensors for spacecraft and aircraft of the future. Their work on JPL's new electron beam lithography system - one of only three in the world - could lead someday to significant reductions in mass and cost of flight vehicles, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported.
NASA is evaluating five proposals for a relatively inexpensive mission to Pluto, even though the Bush Administration's budget for NASA doesn't contain any money for such an effort. NASA's Pluto-Kuiper Express was intended to explore the distant planet, its moon Charon and icy objects in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune.
Despite a decline in second quarter net profits, Rockwell International announced Wednesday it was able to meet Wall Street estimates thanks to a strong performance from its avionics and communications unit, Rockwell Collins.
ORBITAL SOFTWARE of Framingham, Mass., and Edinburgh, United Kingdom, has been selected by NASA's Johnson Space Center to provide its Organik knowledge-sharing and collaborative software for a NASA's Information Systems Directorate.
PANAMSAT CORP. announced the company's new PAS-10 Indian Ocean Region satellite has arrived in Kazakhstan in preparation for a May launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. PAS-10 will be rocketed into space aboard a Proton launch vehicle and will provide digital video, data and Internet services throughout a 30-million square mile footprint, the company announced. PAS-10, which contains 24 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders, will succeed the PAS-4 Indian Ocean Region satellite at 68.5 degrees East longitude.
A Pentagon-established panel's recommendation that the Marine Corp's V-22 Osprey program should proceed - but with changes - drew differing opinions from an outspoken congressional supporter of the program and an arms control group that wants the program killed. "I am pleased to learn that the panel of experts has recommended that the Marines continue to pursue the development of the V-22 Osprey," said Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, in an official statement issued April 18.
Mercury Computer Systems, Inc., of Chelmsford, Mass., has been awarded a $2.2 million Air Force contract for signal processing systems for target recognition research. The contract is to supply two of the recently announced RACE++ PowerStream systems for the Department of Defense's High Performance Computing Modernization Program, the company announced April 18. The Air Force Research Laboratory, Sensors Directorate, at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, will use the systems to develop algorithms for recognizing unique target characteristics.
At NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, the unpiloted X-43A demonstrator is being prepared to take a record-breaking one-way trip into the Pacific Ocean next month. The flight will mark the first time a non-rocket engine has powered a vehicle at "hypersonic" speeds - higher than Mach 5. After a captive-carry flight at the end of this month, the test flight is scheduled to occur in mid-May.
MICROSEMI CORP. of Irvine, Calif., announced its electromechanical zero gravity, low dissipation battery bypass switches have been successfully deployed on THURAYA-1, a satellite built by Boeing Satellite Systems for THURAYA Satellite Telecommunications in the United Arab Emirates. The Microsemi switches were manufactured using a patented design provided by Boeing Satellite Systems. The THURAYA-1 satellite is part of a turnkey mobile communications system.
General Dynamics, the fourth-largest U.S. defense contractor and parent of business-jet maker Gulfstream, beat Wall Street estimates in the first quarter backed by strong sales in combat systems. First-quarter profits rose 15% over the same period last year, including a nearly 40% leap in the company's combat systems division, which provides electronics for tanks, submarines and armored vehicles, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported.
Cubic Defense Systems, a subsidiary of San Diego-based Cubic Corp., has won add-on business under its contract to provide data links for Joint STARS, the Army's battlefield management system, the company announced April 18. The Cubic-built data link is one of the key elements of Joint STARS, an acronym for Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System. The $517,000 contract brings the total Joint STARS work awarded to Cubic since 1993 to nearly $182 million.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S Consolidated Space Operations Contract announced it plans to support an Advanced Space Communications Demonstration at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention being held in Las Vegas on April 23-26. The demonstration, the first of its kind, will deliver High Definition Television content and advanced multimedia applications from a simulated International Space Station location to numerous sites across the continental United States in real time.
In an April 18 news story about EADS opening a U.S. office, CEO Philippe Camus was misquoted. The third paragraph should have read: "We do not want to stay at this level," he said. Aerospace Daily regrets the error.
Bush Administration officials said April 18 that the White House is still considering which weapons to approve for sale to Taiwan, days before an expected announcement of the package. "No decisions have been made yet, and the president has not yet received any recommendations" from his advisers, an Administration official told The DAILY. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed news reports indicating that Administration staff members have made recommendations to the president.
COMPAQ COMPUTER CORP. is supplying almost 500 custom-configured computer workstations to the NASA Johnson Space Center under a $4.7 million contract awarded by Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is using the workstations to upgrade the Mission Control Centers for both the space shuttle and the International Space Station, under its Consolidated Space Operations Contract with NASA. The color monitors and workstations will be used to monitor and control both ISS and shuttle flights.
EDO M. TECH, a division of EDO's Integrated Systems and Structures Group, will open an expanded engineering and production facility in Huntington Valley, Pa., the company announced April 18.
India on Wednesday launched its new Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) into orbit - joining the world's elite club of nations capable of offering commercial satellite launches, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported. The rocket lifted off on schedule from the Sriharikota launch site in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, placing a 1.5-ton experimental satellite called GSAT-1 into geosynchronous orbit around Earth.
Despite numerous problems with the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, the blue ribbon panel chartered to study the program inside-out will recommend to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that once all the shortcomings are fixed, the aircraft should be fielded. In a painstaking four-hour meeting in Arlington, Va., April 18, panel members dissected the entire V-22 program as they conducted their final deliberations and aired their recommendations on the future of the program. The panel will brief Rumsfeld on April 24 and face Congress on May 1.
Chinese F-8 fighter jets that intercept U.S. Navy EP-3Es likely carry Chinese-made PL-9 missiles based on 20-year old Israeli technology, sources tell The DAILY. Videotaped footage and photos of the F-8s aggressively maneuvering around an EP-3E show the F-8 was carrying a missile that resembles an Israel Python-3. However, according to several sources, China now makes its own version of the short-range air-to-air Python-3, called the PL-9, based on Israeli technology. Israel sale of Python-3 to China
The U.S. Air Force's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle will attempt to set an aviation record on Sunday, April 22, when it attempts to cross the Pacific Ocean, flying non-stop from Edwards AFB, Calif., to Edinburg Air Base in Australia. If the flight is successful, it would be the first time than an unmanned, powered aircraft will have crossed the world's largest ocean, the Air Force Flight Test Center of Edwards AFB announced April 17.
U.S. and Chinese negotiators will be carrying very different agendas when they sit down April 18 to begin tense talks in Beijing over whether and how the U.S. will get its stranded EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane back from Hainan Island. According to the terms of a U.S. diplomatic letter to China that won the crew's release last week, the talks were supposed to be about the plane, its return, its April 1 collision with an F-8 fighter, and ways to avoid any more such incidents.
