The Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles AFB, Calif., has tapped Lockheed Martin to continue its Mark IVB weather system, awarding the company a contract potentially worth $42 million over nine years, according to a Lockheed release. A company Web page defines the Mark IVB as a “meteorological data ingest, processing and dissemination system.” The system has been redesigned to collect data from all currently defined satellites and will be fully net-centric and machine-to-machine capable. It already supplies data to all coalition operations centers and Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps elements.
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.