PREDATOR WEAPON SYSTEM TRAINER is required by the U.S. Marine Corps, according to a notice from Naval Air Warfare Training System Div. in the Jan. 12 issue of Commerce Business Daily. The trainer for the man- portable anti-armor weapon will satisfy force-on-force and gunnery training requirements, the CBD notice said. Target date for delivery of the trainer is the second quarter of fiscal year 1999, it said.
Herbert W. Anderson has been appointed corporate vice president and general manager of the company's Data Systems and Services Division, effective Feb. 1. Anderson will replace Gerald H. Sandler, who is retiring after more than 30 years of service. Albert F. Myers, previously corporate vice president-business strategy, has been elected corporate vice president and treasurer. Myers succeeds John R. Rettberg, who has retired after 32 years of service.
If Congress passes the balanced budget amendment, there will be no Defense Dept. by the end of the decade, predicts former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. "There's nowhere to go but to the department for resources," Schlesinger remarks caustically. He also questions whether the Pentagon's capabilities match its increasing number of non-combat operations. "If [DOD] continues along the humanitarian route, [it] won't need any F-22s under those circumstances," Schlesinger says.
Integration into the F/A-18 of an Embedded Global Positioning System Inertial Navigation System (EGI) is planned by the U.S. Navy, and the work would be done by McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. Naval Air Systems Command said in a Jan. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice that only MDA could do the work.
The Sunnyvale facility appears to have an edge on remaining in place, for purely political reasons. The merger will eliminate Lockheed's headquarters in California, leaving only the Missiles&Space and Skunk Works facilities. Insiders say Lockheed Martin will want to keep some presence in California to maintain influence with the state's huge congressional delegation.
Lockheed Advanced Development Co. this week begins refurbishing two SR-71A Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, a company spokesman said Friday. On Thursday, an SR-71A from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, Calif., made the short hop to the U.S. Air Force's Plant 42 at Palmdale, Calif., arriving there at about 10:30 a.m. local time. "It was very low and slow," an AF spokesman said. "[The flight] was just to get it there." The plane is capable of flying at Mach 3.
General Electric's GE90 commercial turbofan will have to wait until at least the middle of this month, and maybe a little longer, to get its certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, government and program officials said. GE stressed that there's nothing wrong, and it's just a matter of giving FAA officials enough time to evaluate all the test data they received-just before the Christmas holidays.
In the first of two planned tests with the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army on Jan. 11 fired a prototype Block IA Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., the Army Missile Command said. Through the tests, the services will determine the feasibility of adapting ATACMS missiles to meet the Navy's long-range, surface-to-surface fire support requirements.
ARMY MISSILE COMMAND intends to modify a contract with Texas Instruments for additional effort on the HMMWV configuration of the ARPA Reconfigurable Simulator Initiative (ARSI), according to a Jan. 12 Commerce Business Daily notice.
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP., Baltimore, has received a $1.4 million contract from the U.S. Army Missile Command for work on an unmanned ground vehicle capable of early entry survivability. The contract was awarded on Dec. 19.
The U.S. Army RAH-66 Comanche program office's chances of postponing a Defense Acquisition Board meeting scheduled for March are dimming as the Office of the Secretary of Defense continues to make the release of withheld program funds contingent on the DAB review, sources told The DAILY Friday.
Gorman also calls for an end to federal funding of defense conversion, which he calls "defense preservation." Instead of "investing in the weak sisters of defense...let them die a dignified death and put the money with the strongest companies," he says. Gorman denies that TRW is a "weak sister," calling it instead a "survivor" (DAILY, Jan. 13, page 59).
The NASA mishap investigation board studying an Oct. 16, 1994, incident in which astronaut Bonnie Dunbar suffered a severe allergic reaction to a tracer chemical administered as part of a kidney function experiment wants more time to polish its recommendations. The panel, headed by Daniel R. Mulville of the headquarters Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, slipped its reporting date at least two weeks, and now will not make its recommendations until next week at the earliest.
Julie Schlueter, formerly manager of order fulfillment process at Air Transport Systems in Phoenix, Ariz., has been appointed director of contract management.
Congressional sources who favor building more B-2 stealth bombers than the 20 already planned say that Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) was approached about staying out of the expected battle over additional planes, but declined. He is said to have responded that if there's a fight, he'll be involved. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, which is handling the Republican balanced budget amendment, Kasich is viewed as influential with conservative Republican freshmen.
Peter D'Angelo, previously vice president and corporate controller, was named chief financial officer, succeeding Sheldon Rutstein, who has retired after 36 years with the company.
Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch is non-plussed about publicity over his Jan. 3 memo to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) promising that Raytheon will win a contract to keep its PAC-3 multimode team together. Continuing to fund Raytheon's team, which lost to Loral last year in the PAC-3 missile contest, "has always been the plan," Deutch told The DAILY. He then emphasized that the Raytheon team would stay together "if we have the money.
U.S. defense and industry officials are beating the drum for a better relationship with China. TRW CEO Joseph Gorman, predicting at a Washington dinner last week that China's economy eventually will surpass that of the U.S. and Japan and that its military will become the most powerful in the world, says, "It's almost unfathomable not to have China in some form of alliance with the U.S., Europe, Japan.
Technologies for use in an air-droppable satellite communications terminal are the subject of a market search being conducted by the U.S. Fort Gordon, Ga. It said in a Jan. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice that it "is seeking Tri-Band (C, Ku and X band) SATCOM terminal technology which will support a forced entry with no air head." The aim of the search, it said, "is to identify technology that could be evaluated against Army requirements."
Benjamin T. Fought, former director of signal processing and advanced technology systems at the Bell Laboratories division of AT&T Federal Systems Advanced Technologies, has been appointed executive vice president, business development, for the company's Electronic Systems Group.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has already decided on its recommendation growing out of the incident and a similar but apparently less dangerous one that occurred in orbit. Members were dismayed to learn that there is no independent review of spaceborne medical experiments that could pose a threat to astronaut health and safety, and will call for outside oversight of such experiments in the future. The panel, which will officially report its recommendation at its next meeting March 23, plans a rigorous followup to make sure its advice is heeded.
Craig L. Dobbin has relinquished the position of chief executive officer to concentrate on his role as chairman of the board of directors and chairman of the newly formed executive committee of the board. Rudy Palladina has been appointed chief executive officer.
