04 Dec 03. Boeing is more than a year behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget on a classified program to build reconnaissance satellites for the U.S. government, The New York Times said on Thursday. The report, citing senior government officials, said it has forced the government to shift an estimated $4bn from other spy programs. The fact that the satellite program is behind schedule and over budget has been well known in the intelligence community and the military industry, the paper said, but the decision to move large sums from other programs had not been reported.
03 Dec 03. Lockheed Martin UK Ltd, Rolls-Royce plc and VT Group plc formally announced the name of their consortium team bidding for the UK Ministry of Defence’s Military Flying Training System (UK MFTS) programme. The team will be known as ASCENT. The three companies had previously signed a Letter of Intent in September 2003 at London’s Defence Systems Equipment International exhibition to team for the procurement of a Training Systems Integrator for UK MFTS. Since September, the team has continued to support the UK MoD as the programme has progressed through its Convergence Phase.
2 Dec 03. Barco is introducing its Embedded Visualization System ‘EVS6000’, the next generation high-performance graphics accelerator for 2D and 3D applications. The new rugged EVS6000 board is designed for integration in land-, sea- and air-based defense and security systems requiring high-performance graphics processing. With its broad video I/O capability, the EVS6000 offers a flexible solution for integration in a wide variety of applications, including vehicle embedded computers, embedded training and simulation systems, and cockpit displays. Barco’s latest graphics controller comes as a PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) and is available both in convection-cooled and conduction-cooled formats.
03 Dec 03. Belgium, an advocate of closer defence integration in Europe, plans to cut its fleet of F-16 fighters by one-third by 2015 and modernise its remaining planes as part of smaller but more flexible armed forces.
04 Dec 03. Lockheed Martin demonstrated a revolutionary new system for air battle management – one that enables warfighters at all levels to react and respond in real time to the constantly changing battlefield situation. The Total Integrated Warfare (TIW) initiative, showcased today in a Capstone demonstration, combines today’s deployed, proven systems with experimental technologies developed by Lockheed Martin to deliver unprecedented capabilities for real-time battle management and execution.
02 Dec 03. Curtiss-Wright Corporation is to acquire Systran Corporation of Dayton, Ohio, for approximately $18 million. Systran will operate as a business unit of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc., a subsidiary of Curtiss-Wright Corporation. Systran is a leading supplier of highly-specialized, high-performance data communications products for real-time systems, primarily for the aerospace and defense, industrial automation and medical imaging markets. Key applications include simulation, process control, advanced digital signal processing, data acquisition, image processing, and test and measurement. Systran reported sales of approximately $15m for the year ended September 30, 2003.
02 Dec 03. The Pentagon postponed action on an $18bn Air Force deal for 100 Boeing Co. 767 tankers until the deal is investigated following Boeing’s firing of two officials for ethics violations. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told leaders of the Senate Armed Service Committee in a letter dated Dec. 1 that he was ordering a “pause in the execution” of the Air Force contracts to lease and buy the mid-air refueling tankers, a major setback in Boeing’s two-year effort to sell the planes.
01 Dec 03. Lockheed Martin announced it is changing the name of its Orlando-based Information Systems business to Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training & Support to better describe the company’s