23 Oct 03. Following an international competition, BAE SYSTEMS has selected Thales Communications UK to provide the Line of Sight (LOS) Transmission Sub-system for the proposed BAE SYSTEMS solution to the first increment of the UK Ministry of Defence’s FALCON theatre communications system requirement. Thales is providing the BAE SYSTEMS FALCON team with the transmission sub-system comprising principally the TRC 4000 tactical LOS microwave radio for Bands IV and complementary radios for Bands I and III+. Link encryption will utilise a solution based on the proven Thales e-Security Datacryptor® product range. The Thales TRC 4000 equipment is in service, with large numbers of terminals ordered by the French, Swiss and Swedish Armed Forces.
Oct 03. Radstone Technology has announced G4DSP-X quad MPC7410/7447 PowerPC card with planned support for ICS’s latest 5xx PMC range to create integrated Multimission Software Radio blades. G4DSP-X processing power is delivered by 4x 500MHz MPC7410 compute nodes at launch and 4x 1GHz MPC7447 compute nodes within six months to provide the massive processing performance needed for applications in Radar, Sonar, Signal Intelligence and EW. Each of the four compute nodes is comprised of a large amount of DDR 266 SDRAM (>2GBps peak), FLASH, L2 Cache (7410 only) and a Marvell Discovery(tm) II dual 64 bit/100MHz PCI-X host bridge which lies at the heart of G4DSP-X’s FastPath architecture.
29 Oct 03. Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA – News) and Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC – News) could be forced out of the U.S. warplane design and development business, leaving only Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT – News), a Rand Corp. study released on Wednesday said. “In the absence of near-term action, it is not clear that the incentive will be adequate for Boeing and Northrop Grumman to maintain their fixed-wing military aircraft design and development capabilities into the next decade,” said the report, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
30 Oct 03. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday he would “dearly love” Congressional backers of a $22 billion Air Force deal to acquire new Boeing Co.(NYSE:BA – News) 767s as refueling planes to strike a compromise with critics who call the deal too expensive. He seemed to signal acceptance of a scaled-back lease proposed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, alone among four congressional oversight panels to spurn the original plan, valued at more than $22bn, to lease then buy 100 planes.
27 Oct 03. Demand for unpiloted spy planes will soar to new heights over the next decade as the United States and other countries snap up flying machines that can survey enemy territory without risking lives, an industry report said on Monday. By the end of this year, the Pentagon and international governments will have bought about $850 million worth of surveillance and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), said Forecast International, a defense market research and consulting firm. Within 10 years, that figure should climb to a total of $10.6 billion as governments use drones for intelligence gathering and bomb attacks on targets like convoys or buildings, said Forecast International, which surveyed government reports, company documents and economic indicators.
30 Oct 03. United Defense Industries, Inc. (NYSE:UDI – News) announced today that certain of its stockholders, primarily affiliates of The Carlyle Group, sold 1.5 million shares of its common stock, or approximately $50.5 million, in a public offering led by J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. United Defense Industries will not receive any proceeds from the offering.