Making dire forecasts about the Chinese military threat has become a cottage industry in political Washington. Lawmakers grow hoarse raving about a China supposedly embarked on an all-out military expansion, a nascent superpower picking up where the Soviet Union left off. Ex-policymakers who made a career of exaggerating Soviet prowess warn that a new Cold War--``as bad as the last''--will engulf the Pacific if 21st-century China realizes its expansionist ambitions.
Although the U.S. spook community predicted immediate and dire consequences, disclosure of the total Fiscal 1997 intelligence budget on Oct. 15 appears to have had a negligible impact on U.S. national security. Well, surprise, surprise!
THE GALILEO SPACECRAFT completed its primary mission at Jupiter this month, and started the Galileo Europa Mission (GEM) that will run until December 1999. The GEM plan includes eight flybys of Europa, four encounters of Callisto, and ends with two flybys of volcanically active Io.
In a further consolidation of the regional aircraft manufacturing industry, Saab Aircraft will end production of its two regional turboprops--the 30-37-seat Saab 340 and 50-seat Saab 2000--by mid-1999.
Lockheed Martin's proposed acquisition of Northrop Grumman is expected to close in February, although the Justice Dept. views radar and electronic warfare systems businesses as sources of potential antitrust problems.
Despite an unprecedented two-for-one ticket offer, Cathay Pacific Airways continues to feel the effects of a declining economy in Hong Kong and said last week that it will delay converting 25 options for Boeing 747-400, 777s and Airbus A330/340s. The airline will take delivery of 13 firm orders over the next two years for A330/A340s and 777-300s. An official said it will retain the right to ``revisit'' options on the other aircraft.
THE INSPECTOR FREE-FLYING robotic camera system, intended for use on the International Space Station, failed to orient properly after release from the nose of a Progress resupply vehicle on Dec. 17. This forced program managers to direct the system away from the Mir space station and abort plans to qualify the $15-million system, built by Daimler-Benz Aerospace. The mission had called for Inspector to approach to within about 100 meters of Mir and then to orbit around it for five days.
RAYTHEON, HAVING COMPLETED its $9.5-billion merger with the defense unit of Hughes Electronics last Thursday, plans to form a new Washington-based operating company to oversee its greatly expanded military- and government-related business. Folded into the new Raytheon Systems Co. will be the defense- and government-related operations acquired from Hughes, Texas Instruments and E-Systems, as well as Raytheon Electronic Systems. It will account for nearly three-fourths of Raytheon Co.'s $20 billion in revenues on a 1997 pro forma basis.
BOEING PLANS TO TRIM its commercial transport production line workforce by as much as 12,000 in late 1998 as manufacturing efficiencies take hold. Attrition and transfers within Boeing would account for most of the workforce reduction. However, layoffs will occur in specific areas, according to Boeing Chairman and CEO Phil Condit. Turnover at the 230,000-person company normally runs about 4-7% a year, although released production line workers may not qualify for positions in defense, space and other company business sectors.
If the French government's economic policies are not rapidly modernized, outdated concepts will endanger France's prominent role on the global aerospace scene and imperil Europe's aerospace endeavor. Without further delay, France should select the right path, favor free enterprise, privatize state-owned companies as well as Air France, and support international alliances. By doing so, it would not only preserve its long-time aerospace legacy but also contribute to forge a fair and balanced playing field.
Twenty-two large U.S. carriers have vowed to have their entire fleets fitted with advanced terrain-collision warning devices within five years to combat controlled-flight-into-terrain accidents, and FAA officials said they would mandate such gear for all turbine-powered aircraft with six seats or more. The airlines, members of the Air Transport Assn., said that they would install AlliedSignal Aerospace's enhanced ground-proximity warning system (EGPWS) or similar, FAA-approved units from other vendors by 2003 in at least 4,500 aircraft.
The United Arab Emirates has announced plans to acquire 30 Dassault Aviation Mirage 2000-9 multirole fighters and to modernize 33 existing Mirage 2000 SAD8s presently in service to Mirage 2000-9 standard. The purchase, worth FF20 billion ($3.4 billion), was revealed by UAE Chief of Staff Sheik Mohamad Ben Zayed Al-Nahyane during a visit by French President Jacques Chirac last week. The contracts are expected to be finalized in about six months. New aircraft would be delivered from 1998-2001. The retrofit schedule was not specified.
U.S. FORCES OF UNDETERMINED number will remain in Bosnia indefinitely after President Clinton's informal June 1998 deadline expires. Senior White House officials said the mission, size and nature of a follow-on force will be hashed out with NATO allies in the next 60-90 days. Until those decisions are made, the annual cost of the residual force will remain unknown, they said. The goal of the follow-on force is a ``self-sustaining peace,'' they said. U.S. forces in Bosnia now number 8,500, down from a high of 27,000.
Israel Aircraft Industries and Galaxy Aerospace Corp. have scheduled the maiden flight of the super midsize Galaxy business jet for late this month or early January, beginning an ``aggressive'' flight test program aimed at achieving Israeli and U.S. FAA certification late in 1998, according to company officials.
Henry Shii has been named general manager of Nihon Veeco KK, the Japanese operation of Veeco Instruments, Plainview, N.Y. He was general manager of marketing and technical support for Seiko.
Aero International Regional has canceled the proposed AIRjet twinjet program that was tentatively scheduled to go ahead in the next few weeks. Aerospatiale, Alenia Aerospazio and British Aerospace, AIR's partners, decided ``unanimously'' to cancel the $1.2-billion program in the absence of ``a more global European approach in the 70-120-seat [aircraft] market segment.'' The three partners also cited the need to comply with divergent priorities in funding new European programs.
JAPAN'S NATIONAL SPACE Development Agency got a scare two days after the Nov. 28 launch of the ETS-7 engineering test satellite. Ground controllers discovered that the spacecraft's attitude control was being maintained by thrusters rather than the reaction wheel. Individual components of the attitude control system--such as the reaction wheel, sensors and propulsion system--were tested and found to be performing nominally. NASDA switched to ETS-7's backup attitude control system. The spacecraft was reported stable late last week. But NASDA cannot explain the anomaly.
NewMonics Inc. of Ames, Iowa, is adding reliability to the Java programming language to suit critical real-time aerospace tasks. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding two-thirds of NewMonics' $1.3-million project to demonstrate that Java can be extended to real-time embedded applications. Java is a recent language designed to not need custom compiling for different types of computers, so one program can serve many machines.
Gerard R. Rossi (see photo) has been appointed sales and marketing manager for ARC Euro Ltd., the Scotland-based European subsidiary of ARC Global Technologies Inc. of Chicago. He was associate director of John McGavigan Information Technology, Glasgow, Scotland.
NASA/GODDARD'S QUICKSCAT scatterometer mission--which is intended to replace the Japanese Advanced Earth Observing Satellite lost last summer--will be constructed on a commercial satellite bus to enable a launch in November 1998. For the first mission under NASA's new Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition process, the agency awarded Ball Aerospace&Technologies Corp. a $39-million contract. The pact encompasses Ball's Global Imaging System bus, interface systems, integration, test, launch support and mission operation for two years.
The National Transportation Safety Board was able to recover the Fairchild Model A-100 cockpit voice recorder from TWA Flight 800's wreckage. It yielded more than 31 min. of good quality audio, despite an extremely distorted exterior and a wet tape. The recording started at 7:59:40 p.m. EDT while the aircraft was at the departure gate, and stopped when electricity was interrupted at 8:31:12 p.m.
An offensive is underway to reverse cuts in the E-8 Joint-STARS fleet. A group of 88 representatives and 13 senators signed two letters to Defense Secretary William Cohen late last week, asking him to reinstate a purchase of 19 of the airborne ground surveillance aircraft. Due to the Army's waning financial support, the fleet size had been cut to 13, on the assumption NATO would buy another 4-6 aircraft. But the alliance ruled that out, even as the Air Force readied a new cut to 12 as a Fiscal 1999 belt-tightening measure.
DON FUQUA INTENDS to leave the Aerospace Industries Assn. next year. The former Florida congressman became AIA president in 1987 and led the association through the industry's post-Cold War downsizing and restructuring. He plans to return to Florida, the AIA said.
Results of an initial analysis of flight data from the second Ariane 5 qualification flight on Oct. 30 have confirmed that the premature shutdown of the booster's Vulcain main-stage cryogenic engine was caused by higher than expected roll torque. The incident caused the Maqsat-H dummy communications satellite to be released into a lower than planned geostationary transfer orbit (AW&ST Nov. 10, p. 42).
SBS Technologies of Carlsbad, Calif., has come up with data acquisition software that will run on standard PCs using Windows NT open architecture, while providing the high performance of traditional proprietary systems using costly workstations, the company claims. The first version of DataXpress software is intended for pulse-code modulated telemetry, satellite monitoring and avionics testing.
