In Brief

July 1, 2004

Radstone Technology moves to new headquarters

Radstone Technology moved to its new headquarters building at Tove Valley Business Park in Towcester, England, last month. The new $18 million building, which occupies a six-acre site, includes 35,000 square feet of office and laboratory space over three floors and a state-of-the-art 40,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. Work started on site in August 2003 and the development has been completed on schedule and within budget.

"Yesterday was a milestone day for all of us at Radstone. These new facilities will give us the headroom for further growth as well as the ability to deliver even better support to our customers worldwide," says Jeff Perrin, chief executive at Radstone.

Approximately 225 employees — including the core of the group's engineering and technology work force — will be based at Tove Valley. The Radstone Group also has its U.S. Sales and Support Headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., as well as core operations in Ottawa following the acquisition of Interactive Circuits and Systems (ICS) Ltd. last fall.

For more information about Radstone Technology PLC, visit the Web site at www.radstone.com.

Northrop Grumman's Defense Travel System improves implementation process

The Defense Travel System (DTS), designed and developed by engineers at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems in Reston, Va., has been enhanced with two new tools to make implementing the system easier and quicker for travel administrators at hundreds of military sites.

DTS, designated as the Department of Defense official travel system, is expected to be fully operational across the department in 2006.

Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems sector released the Site Set-Up Tool and Self-Registration Tool in a recent software upgrade. The Site Set-Up Tool provides site administrators an easy, step-by-step approach for creating the necessary software infrastructure that will allow users at the site to book travel on DTS. Once a site begins using DTS, this Web-based tool will be accessible to site administrators through the DTS Web site, www.defensetravel.osd.mil.

Curtiss-Wright signs agreement to acquire Primagraphics

Officials at Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. in Gastonia, N.C., agreed to acquire Primagraphics Limited, the command and control, video, and graphics specialist in Cambridge, England, for approximately $21 million. Curtiss-Wright Controls is the motion-control business segment of Curtiss-Wright Corp.

The acquisition of Primagraphics will bolster Curtiss-Wright's position as a supplier of systems for the aerospace, defense, and in particular, naval markets, Curtiss-Wright officials say. Primagraphics will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Curtiss-Wright Controls and part of a group of complementary businesses, which include Dy 4 Systems in Kanata, Ontario, Vista Controls in Santa Clarita, Calif., Peritek in Oakland, Calif., and Systran in Dayton, Ohio.

"The addition of Primagraphics to the Curtiss-Wright family will further strengthen our reputation in naval-command and control markets worldwide," says George Yohrling, president of Curtiss-Wright Controls.

Primagraphics develops radar processing and display systems for military and civil applications. Its cards and solutions for VME, PCI, CompactPCI, and PMC formats are in use throughout the world for airborne and shipborne command-and-control consoles, vessel tracking, air-traffic control, and air-defense systems. Primagraphics had 2003 sales of around $12.5 million.

For more information about Primagraphics, visit www.primagraphics. com. For more on Curtiss-Wright, go to www.curtisswright.com.

Lockheed Martin–built AMC-11 satellite launched from Cape Canaveral

The AMC-11 telecommunications satellite — designed and built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems engineers in Newtown, Pa., for SES Americom in Princeton, N.J. — launched in May from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas IIAS rocket provided by International Launch Services (ILS) in McLean, Va.

Initial contact with the satellite, called "acquisition of signal," was confirmed from the Lockheed Martin satellite-tracking station in Uralla, Australia.

AMC-11 carries 24 of the 36-MHz C-band transponders and will be used to provide cable TV services to all 50 U.S. states, Mexico, and the Caribbean. AMC-11 will take the place of Satcom C-3 at orbital location 131 degrees west longitude, expanding SES-Americom's worldwide fleet of satellites, which provide global distribution of cable, broadcast television and radio programming, mobile communications, business television, broadband data and telecommunications services.

Brashear LP delivers airborne-laser turret ball to Lockheed Martin

Officials at Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, Md., cite the arrival of the flight-turret ball from subcontractor Brashear LP in Pittsburgh, as the beginning of the final integration of the flight-turret assembly for the Airborne Laser (ABL) program. ABL will be the world's first megawatt-class laser-weapon system integrated on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft to autonomously detect, track, and destroy hostile ballistic missiles. Lockheed Martin is responsible for the system that will accurately point, focus, and fire the laser to provide sufficient energy to destroy the missile while it is still in the highly vulnerable boost phase of flight — before separation of its warheads.

The program is managed by the Missile Defense Agency and is executed by the U.S. Air Force from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. Lockheed Martin engineers have begun integrating the turret ball into the Flight Turret Assembly (FTA), which will enable the turret ball to precisely yaw and roll in flight.

The FTA — the flight-turret ball complete with a 1.5-meter telescope/beam director, and the lightweight, composite-roll shell structure — is what visually distinguishes the ABL aircraft from any other 747. It is the distinctive "nose" of the aircraft from which the high-energy laser will be "fired" at threat missiles.

The flight-ball completion is the culmination of a six-year development effort, during which time the program stabilized the supplier base for large optics and high-performance coatings. Among the key contributors to the flight ball were Brashear LP, as the telescope lead and integrator; Corning, providing the rough-finished primary mirror for the 1.5-meter telescope and conformal window; Heraeus, providing the glass; Optical Coating Laboratory Inc., coating the conformal window; Applied Aerospace Structures Corp., providing the ball structure and gimbal ring; Composite Optics Inc., providing the telescope-metering structure; and Barr, coating the small optics. Lockheed Martin plans to deliver the complete turret assembly to ABL contractor-lead Boeing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., later this summer.

Air Force awards DigitalNet system-networking contract

Officials at the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, awarded DigitalNet in Herndon, Va., the Air Force System Networking (AFSN) contract valued at $16 million.

DigitalNet has provided network-computing, software-development, and maintenance services to the Air Force Materiel Command since 1992. DigitalNet will continue to support the AFSN Program Office at the Standard Systems Group headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., modernizing portions of the Air Force's worldwide network-communication infrastructure. The company will provide management of Air Force classified- and unclassified-data networks that meet mission requirements of all Air Force, Guard, and Reserve activities wor.ldwide, DigitalNet officials say.

DigitalNet designs, builds, integrates, and manages enterprise network-computing solutions. For more information, see www.digitalnet.com.

Harris delivers Sierra to JTRS Cluster 1 Cryptographic Subsystem team

Engineers at the Harris Corp. RF Systems Division in Rochester, N.Y., delivered the company's Sierra II Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and core cryptographic software to the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Cluster 1 Cryptographic Subsystem development team for integration and testing on a JTRS cryptographic-subsystem board.

"Harris developed Sierra to address all of the cryptographic requirements of the JTRS programs," says Dick Rzepkowski, Harris RF Communications Division vice president, Government Systems and Programs. "Sierra's software programmability provides a low-cost upgrade path for embedded communications security equipment."

The JTRS — named "radio of the future" by the U.S. Department of Defense — will include a family of software-reprogrammable radios sharing a common digital architecture that can be applied to multiple platforms and support multiple waveforms.

Harris previously announced it expects to provide more than $500 million in radio-system design, development, and production for the JTRS Cluster 1 program as part of the Boeing-led industry team. Harris also is on the NetForce 5 team in pursuit of JTRS Cluster 5, and the Boeing-led team in pursuit of the Airborne, Maritime, Fixed-Station (AMF) JTRS.

For more information on Harris, visit the company's Web site at www.harris.com.

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