REAR ADM. WILLIAM COBB will become the Navy's new program executive officer for Theater Surface Combatants. He replaces Rear Adm. George A. Huchting, who is retiring. As the PEO, Cobb will be in charge of the Aegis program and Theater Air Defense.
U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen yesterday ordered the large-scale build-up of U.S. combat aircraft in countries around the Arabian Gulf in preparation for possible military action against Iraq.
DRS Technologies has received a $2.3 million contract as part of its long-term agreement with Team Cormorant - comprised of Italy's Agusta and the U.K.'s GKN Westland - to supply British Royal Navy EH-101 Merlin helicopters with the EAS-3000 Emergency Avionics System. The order adds to about $6.5 million the Parsippany, N.J.-based company has logged for the emergency avionics system.
President Clinton yesterday released $1.1 billion in military readiness funding as part of a omnibus supplemental appropriations package passed by Congress prior to adjournment. The funds will be used to beef up the services' readiness accounts, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff have said are eroding.
Maxwell Technologies Inc., San Diego, signed a letter of intent to acquire Space Electronics Inc. (SEi), also of San Diego. Maxwell, which specializes in pulsed power technologies, said the transaction is structured as a merger, with SEi shareholders receiving Maxwell stock as a consideration. Maxwell expects SEi to operate as a unit of Maxwell's Systems Division business. SEi offers a line of microelectronic devices designed to minimize the effects of radiation.
Changes in air service agreements between nations, open-skies policies and the availability of economically efficient twinjets may increase point-to-point operations between North America and Asia and lead to North Pacific extended-range twin-engine operations (ETOPS) rivaling the current level in the North Atlantic, according to Boeing Co.
Delegations to the European Space Agency's science program committee have approved an ESA mission to Mars in 2003, but funding for a British lander remains uncertain. Meeting in Paris on Nov. 2, the science program committee's 14 delegations approved the "Mars Express" probe, stipulating that the overall ESA science program not be affected by spending on the new spacecraft. But the Beagle 2 lander, under development by the Open University of the U.K., will be funded separately, so ESA agreed to hold space on Mars Express for the British contribution.
The U.S. Marine Corps will conduct an experiment next week to see if it can cut the response time for air support to Marine ground troops from 90 minutes to 20 minutes. Limited Objective Experiment 3, being conducted by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, will allow aircraft to engage targets based on plans of the ground commander, rather than getting specific instructions to engage a particular target, the Marine Corps said Tuesday.
A U.S. Defense Dept.-wide study of mobility requirements for 2005 and beyond could slightly increase the amount of required airlift, although it is expected to generally validate already articulated requirements, according to Gen. Charles T. Robertson, commander-in-chief of U.S. Transportation Command.
Fairchild Corp. said that the sale of the Banner Hardware Group and PacAero units led to a decline in revenues in its fiscal 1999 first quarter, but that earnings more than doubled because of improved operating performance in the Fairchild Fasteners business. Fairchild, Dulles, Va., earned $1.2 million on sales of $148.5 million in its 1999 first quarter, compared to a year ago, when it earned $492,000 on revenues of $194.4 million, which included $66 million in revenues from Banner and PacAero. The two units were sold to AlliedSignal in January 1998.
Ground controllers around the world are doing what they can to prepare the spacecraft they operate for the Leonid meteor storm that peaks next Tuesday, but in some cases all they can do is hold their breath and cross their fingers.
General Dynamics completed its purchase of NASSCO Holdings Inc., the parent company of National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) for $370 million plus the assumption of $45 million net debt, GD reported yesterday. The 30-day waiting period mandated by the Hart-Scott-Rodino pre-merger notification act was terminated early by the Federal Trade Commission, on Nov. 6. The business will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of GD, becoming the company's third shipyard, along with Bath Iron Works and Electric Boat (DAILY, Oct. 9).
LITTON'S ELECTRO-OPTICAL SYSTEMS DIVISION, Woodland Hills, Calif., signed an agreement with Thomson-CSF Optronique, Guyancourt, France, that assigns Litton the marketing and sales responsibility in the U.S. for Thomson's Sophie handheld Infrared Thermal Imager.
U.S. Marine Corps and Navy program officials are hoping to boost the rate of remanufacturing aging Cobra and Huey helicopters into new AH-1Z and UH-1Y versions to 36 a year, an increase of 15 from the current peak rate of 21. The $3 billion procurement program will involve 180 Cobras and 100 Hueys. Life cycle cost savings are estimated at up to $1.9 billion.
Moog Inc. posted its third consecutive year of record earnings, with profits of $19.3 million on record sales of $536.6 million in its 1998 fiscal year, up from profits of $13.6 million on sales of $455.9 million in its 1997 fiscal year.
SIGNAL TECHNOLOGY CORP., Danvers, Mass., received a $2.2 million sole-source production contract to make oscillators and amplifiers for an Asian air-to-air guidance systems. Signal's Arizona operation will perform the work over the next year.
TASC INC., Reading, Mass., won a one-year contract with four one-year options from Strategic Systems Programs, the U.S. Navy program office for the Trident Submarine Fleet Ballistic Missile weapons system. The contract, totaling $10.8 million, is for an array of engineering and analytic services and continues work TASC has done for SSP since 1966.
U.S. Air Force testers have determined that the C-17 airlifter can conduct dual-row airdrops, but not simultaneously because the cargo platforms collide in the air. The 418th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards AFB, Calif., ran an extensive program to determine how to conduct a dual-row airdrop, which would make best use of the aircraft's cargo space.
FLIR SYSTEMS INC., Portland, won an $8 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command to upgrade the U.S. Marine Corps UH-1N helicopter fleet with Star SAFIRE systems. The contract calls for 25 systems, with three option years for the remaining, which would raise the total value of the contract to $40 million.
Top Pentagon acquisition officials have verbally given the U.S. Air Force a green light to begin a 40-month engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) program. "We're waiting now for the acquisition decision memorandum," JASSM program director Terry Little said in an interview from Eglin AFB, Fla.
British Airways signed a purchase agreement for 59 singe-aisle Airbus aircraft, Airbus Industrie said. The carrier last August announced that it would break a tradition of ordering U.S. aircraft and buy up to 188 airliners from Europe's Airbus consortium. The order is for 39 A319s and 20 A320s. BA also switched from a favorite engine supplier, General Electric, to International Aero Engines, which will supply the V2500 powerplant. GE and Snecma make the competing CFM56 engine.
Intelsat's management is working toward a March 2001 deadline for privatizing the international communications satellite consortium, drawing on the Inmarsat model as it shifts to commercial operations while maintaining "lifeline services" to small nations that would otherwise be cut off from the world telecommunications network.
LEXTRON CORP., Jackson, Miss., won a $100,000 contract from Boeing to build 84 cable assembly adapters for aerospace ground support equipment. Boeing said the assemblies are for various programs conducted by the Phantom Works.
