Thales and EADS/BAE/Finmeccanica affiliate MBDA have agreed to expand seeker collaboration for the Mica medium-range air-air missile and Aster surface-air weapon system to cover the Meteor beyond-visual-range air-air missile, as well as future modifications and derivatives. The two companies, which together will produce seekers for more than 6,000 missiles, have tried without success to combine their missile activities.
Industry officials are touting NATO's Prague Summit capability ``transformation'' agenda as a key opportunity to make progress finally on a long-standing, if unfunded, requirement for an alliance equivalent of the U.S. E-8C Joint-STARS airborne surveillance platform. When NATO heads of state meet in Prague in November, they will unveil a follow-on to the 1999 Defense Capabilities Initiative (DCI).
THE DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY chose four contractors for a 12-month concept study to develop requirements for a new generation of economically viable, scalable, high productivity computing systems (HPCS) for national security and industrial users. The goal is to field the revolutionary computers by 2007-10. At stake is the U.S. lead in supercomputing, which slipped a notch in April when a Japanese weather supercomputer became the world's fastest computer.
An experiment-carrying microsatellite launched by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1994 has reentered the atmosphere. Darpasat was designed as a one-year demonstration of advanced technologies, but had a three-year lifetime goal. Built by Ball Aerospace, the 128-kg. (282-lb.), spin-stabilized microsatellite wound up working for eight years, thanks to careful management of battery life and thermal loads. It carried two government-provided payloads--one undisclosed and one a GPS receiver--and met or exceeded all operational performance objectives.
The U.S. government is attempting to demonstrate its willingness to make a substantial contribution to global warming and other key environmental issues, including the funding of new space-, air- and surface-based hardware, despite its failure to endorse the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Europe and Japan recently ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and Europe in particular is attempting to take advantage of perceived U.S. foot-dragging in environmental matters to seize the initiative in this increasingly sensitive domain (AW&ST June 18, 2001, p. 88). A U.S.
The four Eurofighter partner nations received a welcome fillip last week when Austria selected the Typhoon to replace its obsolete Saab J35D Draken fighter aircraft. The Austrian selection, for 18-24 aircraft, marks the Typhoon's second success in the export arena. Greece selected the Eurofighter last year. However, some industrialists believe the competition in Greece will be reopened in 2004. If contract negotiations are successful, they will mark the first contracted export sale for the Typhoon, after a string of disappointments, most recently in Australia.
Joseph H. Rothenberg, a former NASA associate administrator, has been named to the board of directors of Universal Space Network Inc., Newport Beach, Calif.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin decided that the bulk of SNPE's Toulouse chemical plant, which sustained severe damage in an accident last September, will be permanently closed. Local officials will meet on July 11 to recommend whether to exempt the section of the facility devoted to launcher and missile propellant from the decision. Regardless, the closure will have a severe effect on SNPE, which generates nearly 20% of its revenues in Toulouse, and probably require an additional capital boost for the state-owned company.
Realizing that one hurdle to the use of product design software is the amount of training required, PTC has simplified the operation of its Pro/Engineer program, calling the new version Pro/Engineer Wildfire. It doesn't lose any power, but becomes easier to use via extensive graphical previews, drag handles for intuitive geometry changes, simpler view manipulation controls, substituting a ``dashboard'' for dialog boxes, and other changes.
President Bush won a commitment to accelerate multilateral transport security at last week's summit in Canada of the G-8, the world's wealthiest nations plus Russia. A follow-on to a prior G-8 accord to freeze terrorists' financial assets, the new coordination plan calls for bolstering airport and seaport security, reinforcing passenger and cargo screening, ensuring more secure traveler identification documents and sharing of access to departure and travel lounges.
The performances of Aviation Week's Aerospace 25 and Airline 25 stock market indexes last week had to be jarring for anyone with an equity stake in either sector. Both lost ground, as did the Standard & Poor's 500 (see opposite page). Readers of this column can take some consolation, however, in knowing that the rout in aerospace/defense shares probably had less to do with fundamental weaknesses in any of the principal players or the sector as a whole than it did with other circumstances.
David Van Buren has become president/chief operating officer of CPU Technology Inc., Pleasanton, Calif. He was president of RF Components, Raytheon's microelectronics unit, and president/CEO of Tecstar Inc.
Focusing, energizing and strengthening a business of any size is no easy job under the best of conditions, but it was especially difficult for airlines and aerospace/defense contractors in 2001. Both groups of companies were forced to cope with the double whammy of an economic slowdown exacerbated to the nth degree by a punishing financial blow stemming from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. For many organizations, especially U.S. airlines and small contractors heavily dependent on civil aviation markets, it was the worst of times.
Things are back to normal at Singapore Airlines, the highest-ranked large airline in AW&ST's Index of Competitiveness for 2001. The carrier is readying a new children's menu, having conducted taste tests among ``Singapore-based young [age 3-12] frequent fliers.'' It has begun flying the SpaceBed, a lie-flat business-class seat to be installed in the coming year on 45 747s and 777s, for use on its longest routes. This month, passengers will be able to use in-seat equipment to send text messages to e-mail addresses or mobile phones.
The FAA, as part of an ongoing effort to improve the nation's air traffic control system, plans over the next year to upgrade the Tower Data Link Services system now in use at 58 high-density airport towers in the U.S. Improvements will be made on system hardware, software and supporting technical documentation.
NASA Ames Research Laboratory is developing a large electronic display system that will let engineers and scientists on the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission share and annotate rover data. The device is called MERBoard, and derives from IBM's BlueBoard interactive display system that uses a 50-in. touch-sensitive plasma screen, and also runs on regular PCs.
Messier-Dowty unveiled its new landing gear test center in the U.K. The 3,000-sq.-meter (32,280-sq.-ft.) facility, 60% bigger than its predecessor, is the latest in a series of investments to the Gloucester site by the Snecma Group. The largest test rig weighs about 250 metric tons, is 10 meters (33 ft.) high and has a 30-sq.-meter template with a loading capacity of 1,000 metric tons of force. Forces equivalent to a fully loaded Airbus A340 can be applied in sequences to simulate extended periods of operational use, according to the company.
Representatives of the Boeing Co. and the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) are negotiating to replace a contract for 26,100 commercial airplane workers in three states, set to expire at 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 2. The formal negotiations were kicked off cordially last week in Wichita, Kan., with pledges by both sides to do everything possible to avoid a strike.
When it comes to managing a portfolio of disparate businesses, General Dynamics Corp. might well set the standard for other large aerospace/defense companies to emulate. That's not to say it's perfect. Productivity and margins in GD's shipbuilding operations are lagging. The division is shifting to a higher proportion of new programs from mature ones that typically generate healthier profits.
United Airlines and US Airways, whose attempt to merge was shot down last summer by federal antitrust authorities, are back in the shooting gallery with the two biggest applications under the federal airline loan guarantee program. Both carriers face serious hurdles, including elements of their recovery plans that they haven't lined up yet, uncertainty about how their proposals will be evaluated, and the disappearance of the political consensus that created the loan guarantee program in the first place.
Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk fleet has accumulated 1,000 hr. of combat flight time in support of operations in Afghanistan. The RQ-4A aircraft has been flying from an undisclosed base in the United Arab Emirates for most of the conflict. As a hedge against increasingly sophisticated air defenses for sale in the world marketplace, an ``industry day'' is set for November to reevaluate the high-altitude, unmanned reconnaissance aircraft's self-defense capability. There is at least one clue about what the Air Force is looking for.
Fairchild Dornier's fate will be decided in the next 2-3 weeks when Finmeccanica/Alenia Aeronautica, Swiss investors and U.S.-based Dimeling, Schreiber & Park complete their evaluation of the bankrupt company's business units. A team of 15 Alenia executives last week arrived at Fairchild Dornier's corporate headquarters located at Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, near Munich, to examine the merits of several company divisions, a revival of earlier discussions covering envisioned business links.
Robert Wernersbach and Thomas Ransom have become Eastern U.S. and Western U.S. regional directors, respectively, for Atlanta-based Mercury Air Centers Inc. Wernersbach was regional director of operations for ACE Parking Management, while Ransom was vice president/general manager for U.S. Technical Inc.
