E-WARFARE: Airborne Tactical Advantage Co. of Newport News, Va., has been awarded a $9.7 million contract modification for airborne threat simulation capabilities. The company will train shipboard and aircraft squadron weapon systems operators and aircrew on how to counter potential enemy electronic warfare and attack operations using supersonic and subsonic aircraft, the Navy said late April 28.
Net sales rose 20% but net earnings were down 7% for Curtiss-Wright Corp. in the first quarter of 2005, the company said April 28. Net sales totaled $258.5 million, compared with $214.9 million in the first quarter of 2004. Purchases made in 2004 and 2005 added $35.8 million in incremental sales in the first quarter of '05, the Roseland, N.J.-based company said. Net earnings fell to $14.5 million, or 67 cents per share, from $15.6 million, or 74 cents per share, for the same period a year ago.
NASA has postponed the launch of shuttle Discovery on mission STS-114 until July, giving the agency time to conduct additional troubleshooting and analysis as well as install a heater to eliminate ice formation at an area of concern on the external tank's liquid oxygen feedline.
UAV AGENT: Gen. John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, is defending a Pentagon push to increase coordination among unmanned aerial vehicles, citing the proliferation of various types of UAVs flown by the military services. The Defense Department is considering designating the Air Force as the executive agent for UAVs, but the term "scares the hell out of everybody because it means that, 'oh my God, you might have a say over budgets,'" Jumper says.
Net income was up $27.6 million and revenue jumped 25% for ITT Industries Inc. in the first quarter of 2005, the company said April 29. The technology products and services provider also increased its '05 earnings target to $5.10-5.25, compared with the previous target of $5-$5.15. ITT's first quarter '05 net income rose to $116.5 million, compared with $88.9 million for the same period last year. Revenue was $1.9 billion, compared with $1.5 billion in the first quarter of '04, the company said.
MOBILITY STUDY: The Mobility Capability Study (MCS), which the Defense Department hoped to finish in April, will take a little more time than expected and is now slated for completion sometime in May, a Pentagon spokeswoman says. Proponents of the Air Force's Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules hope the MCS, which is looking at DOD's overall mobility needs, will support their case for reversing DOD's decision to stop production of the transport aircraft. Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita says DOD hopes to finish reassessing its C-130J decision "soon."
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is exploring the possibility that moisture in an interceptor silo contributed to a recent failed test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.
PERSONNEL EXPERIMENT: Navy engineering, acquisition and aviation engineering duty officers would receive "demonstration authority" under a Defense Department proposal to experiment with changes to officer personnel management. DOD officials want to test changes in compensation, promotions and retention. Among other changes, the project would allow for lateral entry into positions normally reserved for workers who have risen from a lower position. Army foreign area officers also would be subjected to the demonstration.
CLOSING IN: NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has photographed its quarry, the comet Tempel 1, and is closing in for its high-speed July 4 rendezvous, NASA says. "With daily observations beginning in May, Tempel 1 will become noticeably more impressive as we continue to close the gap between spacecraft and comet," says Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, Deep Impact's principal investigator.
EA-18G MODS: The Boeing Co. has finished building the first of two F/A-18F Super Hornets that will be adapted for use as EA-18G flight-test assets, a company spokeswoman says. The jet will now undergo about a year of modifications in St. Louis to equip it for the U.S. Navy's EA-18G electronic attack program. Boeing expects to finish building the second F/A-18F May 12 before converting it to an EA-18G test jet. The EA-18G program plans to begin flight-testing in September 2006.
SPACE CADRE: Gen. Paul Hester, commander of Pacific Air Forces, has only a small number of space personnel spread throughout the Pacific, but can supplement them as needed with a "plug" of personnel from Air Force Space Command, he says. "It's similar to our cooperation with Air Mobility Command," Hester says. "When we see a tension that requires a ... more significant focus on air mobility, then Air Mobility Command sends us a plug of people - a specially trained group of people to come and sit in our air ops center." Similarly, AFSPC Commander Gen.
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NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has approved Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to begin preparing for a fifth space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Griffin had promised to revisit previous Administrator Sean O'Keefe's decision to cancel the mission, known as SM4, following the space shuttle's return to flight (DAILY, April 20). Now that the shuttle's launch has been postponed to July, "we're going to start early in reviewing the Hubble decision," Griffin said April 29.
MATURED TECH: The U.S. Army Science and Technology directorate is paying particular attention to accelerating mature technologies with promising capabilities into the current force, according to the consulting company Federal Sources Inc. These technologies include: networked battle command and logistics systems; networked precision missiles and gun launched munitions; improved intelligence sensors; active and passive protection systems; unmanned ground and air systems; and low-cost, multispectral sensors.
The U.S. Navy said April 27 that Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. of Sunnyvale, Calif., is being awarded an $11.4 million contract to support the fiscal 2006 award for the United Kingdom Technical Services in support of the Trident Strategic Weapons System. The work will be performed in Sunnyvale and should be finished by March 2006. The contract was not competitively procured, the Navy said.
Net sales for body armor producer Ceradyne Inc. jumped 90% in the first quarter of 2005 and net income climbed 20%, the company said April 28. Net sales increased to $69.8 million from $36.7 million in the first quarter of 2004. Net income rose from $5 million to $6 million, the company said. Earnings per share for the first quarter of '05 grew to 24 cents per share compared with 21 cents a year ago, the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based company said.
Goodrich Corp. reported first-quarter 2005 sales of $1.3 billion, a 10% increase over the same period of last year. First-quarter net income per share was 47 cents, a 21% increase over 2004, the company said April 28.
A panel of expert witnesses warned House Science Committee lawmakers about the possible consequences of NASA's proposed scaling back of its efforts in Earth science observation during a hearing April 28.
Potential nuclear Earth-penetrating weapons, which could be used by the United States against hardened enemy bunkers, still would lead to thousands - if not more than a million - civilian surface deaths in dense cities, depending on the bomb's yield and other factors, a committee of experts convened by the National Research Council has concluded. "A nuclear weapon burst in a densely populated urban environment will always result in a large number of casualties," the group said in a report.
Combat vehicle and weapon builder United Defense Industries Inc. reported a drop in net income from $41.9 million in the first quarter of 2004 to $32.7 million for the first quarter of 2005. UDI said April 28 that the decrease mostly is due to an earnings loss from the company's Turkish joint venture and to expenses from its pending acquisition by BAE Systems.
About 123 remote sensing satellites worth an estimated $14 billion are scheduled for production between 2005 and 2014, a new market study from Forecast International says. "Efforts to protect the Earth's natural resources are propelling the need for remote sensing satellites and the imagery products they generate," John Edwards, Forecast's international space systems analyst, said in a statement.
