Texas Aero Engine Services Ltd., based at American Airlines' Alliance Airport facility in Fort Worth, Texas, opened for business this week following receipt of its Part 145 certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. TAESL, a joint venture of American Airlines and enginemaker Rolls-Royce, will work on Rolls RB211 and Tay 650 turbofans, and plans are under way to give the plant the capability to work on Trent 800 widebody engines early next year. American holds firm orders for 34 Trent-powered Boeing 777 widebody twins.
The xenon ion engine aboard NASA's Deep Space 1 technology testbed was performing well after more than a week of continuous thrusting, giving engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory a chance to check out the relationship between different engine thrust levels and the electric power required to produce them.
BMW Rolls-Royce's BR710 Mk.101 turbofan has finished altitude testing at the U.K. Defense Equipment Research Authority's Pyestock test site, Rolls reports. Under development for the Royal Air Force's Nimrod MRA4 next-generation reconnaissance aircraft since 1996, the Mk.101 is due to finish testing by the summer in time for certification and flight in the new Nimrod version in 2000. Four weeks of altitude testing took the engine through its paces up to maximum operational altitude.
RAYTHEON STX CORP. will support research and development and provide routine data operations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center under a $33,212,570 contract announced Wednesday. In support of Goddard's Space Science Data Operations Office and the National Space Science Data Center, the Lanham, Md.-based company will process space science data and handle the acquisition, modeling, analysis, archiving and dissemination of data and other information to the scientific community and the general public. The two-year contract, which stared Dec.
GE Aircraft Engines' F110-GE-129 turbofan is enjoying a flawless U.S. Air Force field service evaluation on the Boeing F-15 twin-engine fighter, buoying program executives who think they're winning a key battle in a larger marketing war to power F-15 and F-16 fighters for export.
BOEING CO. won a $16 million contract that constitutes the first step in providing a more modern computing architecture for operators of the U.S. Airborne warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. Under the contract, from the U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Center, Boeing will provide seven Electronic Control Signal Programmer (ECSP) kits and seven A3 circuit cards. Boeing said the kits and cards will allow use of a Windows-like environment, better maps, additional colors and symbols, and improved airborne tracker.
NASA has picked Litton/PRC to handle the sounding rocket program managed out of Wallops Flight Facility, Va., in a service contract consolidation potentially worth $572.5 million over 10 years.
Corporate debt-watcher Moody's Investors Service thinks enginemaker Rolls-Royce is in better shape than other aerospace companies to weather the coming aviation order downturn, and just rated some $600 million worth of new Rolls debt securities at A3 as a result.
A problem with the ring-laser gyro that will require upgrades has forced another six-month slip in the planned launch of Space Imaging's Ikonos 1 commercial remote sensing satellite, the Thornton, Colo.-based company said yesterday. Originally planned for launch in June and delayed by software development problems until late this year (DAILY, June 16), the Lockheed Martin-built satellite now will not be launched until June 1999 to give time for installation of an upgraded ring-laser gyro.
The U.S. Air Force is looking to begin a demonstration program for a hypersonic vehicle capable of delivering small munitions. The Fast Reaction Weapon would deliver such weapons as a 300-pound-class bomb, Brilliant Anti-Armor Submunition, and Low Cost Autonomous Attack System, the Air Force Research Laboratory said in a Dec. 3 Commerce Business Daily notice. The AF also was considering having the weapon carry air-to-air missiles.
All four Pratt&Whitney Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) engine candidates for the competing Boeing and Lockheed Martin JSF designs are now in simultaneous testing, P&W reports, noting it brought the engines to test within only 23 months of contract award. The enginemaker's Florida-based military engine unit says that by testing the engines simultaneously "on a fast-paced development schedule," cycle time and development cost are "significantly" reduced.
Fairchild Corp. yesterday announced a bid to acquire the remaining 15% of outstanding common and preferred stock in Banner Aerospace Inc. not already owned by Fairchild in a merger of Banner with a new Fairchild subsidiary. Under the proposed merger, shareholders would receive about $9.75 per share of Banner stock, paid in Fairchild Class A Common Stock. The deal would leave Banner as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fairchild.
An addition to the F-15E aircraft's Tactical Electronic Warfare System (TEWS) is being flight tested at Edwards AFB, Calif., according to the U.S. Air Force. It said the new hardware and software, known collectively as Band 1.5, is intended to allow TEWS to jam not only radar systems operating in high frequencies - such as short-range surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery and airborne threats - but mid to low frequency threats such as long-range radars as well.
Moog Inc. has completed its acquisition of Raytheon Aircraft's Montek subsidiary for $160 million in cash. The deal was announced in October (DAILY, Oct. 22). Montek, Salt Lake City, Utah, supplies flight control actuation systems and servovalves, and makes steering controls for tactical missiles. Moog, of East Aurora, N.Y., makes precision control components and systems for aircraft, satellites and launch vehicles.
BFGoodrich said yesterday it will close four facilities as part of a restructuring of its Aerostructures Group. The shutdowns, scheduled in late 1999, will affect a composite bonding facility for commercial aircraft in Hagerstown, Md.; two assembly sites in Heber Springs and Sheridan, Ark., that manufacture thrust reversers, fan cowls, inlet cowls and exhaust nozzles; and an assembly-service facility in Hamburg, Germany.
Boeing President Harry Stonecipher told reporters yesterday that "We see really no market growth, the growth rate has dropped out from under us." Stonecipher, explaining the sharp production cutbacks the company revealed the day before (DAILY, Dec. 2), said he and Boeing Chairman Phil Condit had talked with Asian customers, and "it is not a pretty picture. It is not improving. We are trying to get out in front of what we think is about to happen." Boeing's stock fell $6.750 yesterday to $33.625.
Raytheon Co. has won the competition to build the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) for the National Missile Defense system, defeating Boeing's rival design, industry and government sources told The DAILY yesterday. The decision, which came well before some observers had expected, was made in recent closed-door meetings, sources said. The Pentagon, Boeing and Raytheon declined to comment on the selection, although one Defense Dept. official said an announcement may be made by the end of this week.
Seven companies and industry teams have declared their intention to compete for the multi-million dollar program to develop a space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator capability known as Discoverer II.
Airbus Industrie plans to increase airliner production next year by about 26% to 293 aircraft, up from 234 this year. The latter figure represents an increase of 30% from last year. Airbus also plans to maintain its workforce at current levels, saying yesterday that the Asian crisis hasn't had as much effect on it as it has on Boeing. Airbus said it has had no widebody aircraft order cancellations. The consortium has a backlog of 1,300 firm orders.
The Pentagon, prompted by North Korea's Aug. 31 test of a three-stage Taepo Dong ballistic missile and anticipating a second test soon, is considering budgeting the first procurement money for the National Missile Defense program.
NASA and Boeing yesterday signed a modification to the $7.1 billion International Space Station prime contract that gives Boeing another $163.4 million "to supply additional engineering support and pre-launch testing," the U.S. space agency reported. NASA said the increase will support multiple-element integrated testing (MEIT), as well as sustaining engineering for Station elements and engineering support "required after a component has been constructed and delivered to NASA."
Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques Gansler said the Defense Dept. is trying to determine the best way to maintain its technology security interests while still allowing globalization of the defense industry to proceed. "In addition to continuing to look for increased efficiency, and continuing to look for maintaining competition, we have to worry about security technology transfer" in international industrial mergers, Gansler told the Center for Naval Analysis yesterday in Arlington, Va.
The impending boost to the U.S. Defense Dept.'s budget topline won't be enough to halt a "death spiral" in which operations and maintenance demands drain modernization accounts, Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques S. Gansler said yesterday. "We may get some increases for quality of life kinds of things, and we may get some readiness increases, but we're not going to get the kind of money ... to pay for the modernization" requirements of all the services, Gansler said at a symposium in Arlington, Va., sponsored by the Center for Naval Analysis.
