Computer Sciences Corp. has won a $280-million contract from the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency to provide technical support on the ground-based leg of a planned shield against ballistic missiles.
Perhaps the biggest contradiction in "Shareholder Value: Contradictions Galore!" was the absence of a simple definition (AW&ST Oct. 14, p. 34). Shareholder value is maximized when net present value of a company's activities is maximized. While the ability to predict NPV is difficult, primary drivers are cash flows, time and interest rates. Strategy, investment and execution offer control over the first two.
Jones is also cool to Rumsfeld's plan to cut four-star service chiefs' command stints to two years from four. "It's worth considering," he said. "The chairman [of the JCS] and vice chairman both serve two-year tours." But he said the service chief jobs are "very difficult, very complex. You do need more prolonged stays to really make any change. The possibility of doing anything of great substance in two years is not much."
Troubled regional aircraft manufacturer Fairchild Dornier has received a last-minute reprieve, giving it one final chance to strike a deal to save its mothballed 728.
Dec. 3-5--Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul Asia Conference & Exhibition. Singapore. Mar. 10-11--European Transport Leaders Conference. Landmark Hotel, London. Mar. 12-13--Toulouse Symposium. Toulouse (France) Congress Center. Mar. 27-28--Defense Budget Conference. Holiday Inn, Rosslyn, Va. Apr. 15-17--MRO 2003 & MRO Latin America. Broward County Convention Center, Fort Lauderdale Fla. May 12-14--Aerospace Defense &Finance Conference. Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York.
Finn K. Neilsen has been named president/CEO of Summit Aviation Inc., Middletown, Del. He was director of the U.S. Energy Dept.'s Office of Nuclear and National Security Information and Office of Contingency Planning.
GE Aircraft Engines last week emerged as the victor in a four-way fight to supply the power plant for China's ARJ21 regional jet program. This leaves the choice of prime contractor for the glass cockpit as the remaining outstanding decision.
Airshow China 2002, which was held Nov. 4-7 in Zhuhai, attracted exhibitors from 28 countries. The low-key show was memorable as much for what was not displayed, such as China's J-10 fighter, as it was for what was shown. Irrespective, what continues to be apparent is China's ambition to develop its military, commercial and space sectors, and the potential markets for collaborative development in these arenas.
Oliver Evans has been named executive vice president of Swiss WorldCargo, effective Dec. 1. He has been vice president-global sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for BAX Global.
Spot Image has signed Raytheon Australia to distribute Spot products and services to government, commercial and academic markets in Australia, passing the halfway mark in its bid to establish a global network of marketing and distribution alliances (AW&ST Jan. 28, p. 33). The agreement, which follows a deal with Resource21 in September for U.S. civilian government and academic markets, includes installation of receiving and processing equipment for the new Spot 5 spacecraft.
The European Space Agency has given final approval to a mission to Venus, following a decision by Italian space agency ASI to fund a Virtis high-resolution spectrometer. Virtis will be a replica of the instrument developed for the Rosetta comet probe at a cost of 25 million euros ($25 million). Italy will also provide a planetary Fourier spectrometer and a neutral atom sensor for Venus Express, which is to be launched in the second half of 2005.
NASA has spiked a $15,000 monograph on the Moon-landing hoax theory, which holds that Apollo astronauts were actually in Arizona, or something. Originally intended as a serious study of that theory's origins, it "became a distraction" after news reports described it as a government-funded effort to debunk a wigged-out myth. "It was never our intent to produce a book to convince the conspiracy theorists that the moon landings were not a hoax," an official said. The freelancer hired to produce the study got away with a $5,000 down payment anyway.
Frank Richey has been appointed president/academic dean of the National Transportation Safety Board Academy in Washington. He was a professor of applied aviation sciences and department chairman at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Fla.
Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) President Stuart Matthews is calling for the airline industry worldwide to consider "implementing flight data telemetry systems and equipping flight decks with video cameras" while simultaneously improving the capabilities of cockpit voice recorders and digital flight data recorders.
Coast Guard taps Bell Eagle Eye UAV For wide-area surveillance and homeland security missions 18 National Airlines ceases operations Vanquished by bankruptcy, rejection of loan guarantee application 21 Chinese J-10 fighter absent from Zhuhai air show But country maintains ambition to develop aviation and space sectors 21 WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS European court sets stage for airline metamorphosis
The cautious mating dance between China and the U.S. on possible manned space cooperation took another turn in late October when Chinese President Jiang Zemin got a VIP tour of astronaut training and Mission Control facilities at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Jiang stopped at JSC on his way to visit President Bush at his Texas ranch, just after attendees at the World Space Congress in Houston roundly criticized the U.S. for thwarting visa requests from about half of China's representatives to the congress.
Lufthansa has completed the first satellite e-mail transmission for its Connexion by Boeing high-speed onboard Internet access service. The transmittal, on Oct. 25, used a standard portable connected to a corporate intranet across a protected and secure VPN hookup installed on a 747-400. Lufthansa executives said they also had completed the first internal tests on hardware to be utilized on its service, dubbed FlyNet. Initial tests on the dedicated Lufthansa Web site, developed with Tomorrow Focus, have also been performed.
Last week's U.S. mid-term election results generally are expected to help sustain the momentum behind defense stocks, one of the few sectors of the market that has seen absolute price increases in 2002.
Qantas Airways has ordered LTN-92 Inertial Navigation Systems for installation in its fleet of Boeing 747-300 aircraft from Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Navigation Systems Div.
NTSB investigators are scrutinizing the engines and propellers of a Beechcraft A100 King Air that crashed Oct. 25 at Eveleth, Minn., killing U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone and seven other people. A safety board representative said the probe is continuing to focus on a number of key areas, including the weather, the airplane's anti-ice and deicing systems, and operation of both Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-28 turboprop engines and Hartzell propellers.
Thomas A. Gendron has been promoted to president/chief operating officer from vice president/industrial controls general manager of the Woodward Governor Co., Rockford, Ill.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones has come out against giving authority to combatant commanders to buy the joint command-and-control equipment needed for network-centric warfare and against setting up a joint office to direct the effort. His boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is proposing both concepts (see p. 32). "If the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, headed by the vice chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], is not doing its job, how is another layer of bureaucracy going to help?
