MOOG INC., East Aurora, N.Y., agreed to acquire Raytheon Aircraft Montek Co., a subsidiary of Raytheon Aircraft Corp.. for $160 million. Closing is expected in late November. Montek, Salt Lake City, supplies flight control actuation systems and makes steering controls for tactical missiles as well as servovalves. The company reports revenues of about $90 million per year, with one-third coming from aftermarket sales. "Raytheon Montek is a perfect strategic fit for us," said R.T. Brady, chairman and CEO of Moog.
Requirements finalized within the past few weeks put no fewer than three Royal Air Force transport procurement programs in prospect over varying time-scales.
European space officials termed yesterday's qualification flight of the big new Ariane 5 booster a "total success," but the start of commercial operations remains uncertain because of payload delays.
Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, commander of U.S. Central Command, said Iran could have a nuclear capability in five years, placing it ahead of Iraq as a top threat to the U.S. "Iran potentially in five years could have a nuclear capability," Zinni told reporters at a breakfast in Washington yesterday. He said Iraq has "remnants of a program" to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but "in the longer term, Iran is the greater threat."
Lufthansa ordered 10 A340-300 and six A321 airliners, making it Airbus' largest airline customer with 164 aircraft now on order including 80 singe-aisle aircraft and 41 A340s. Lufthansa was a launch customer for the A340 and recently ordered 10 of the higher-capacity A340-600s. Its A340-300s will seat up to 247 passengers in three classes while the A340-600s will seat up 335. Both have the same range, 7,300 nautical miles.
Two sets of numbers were transposed in "DOD's electronics budget seen growing 7% over next 10 years," an article in The DAILY of Oct. 19. The FY 1999 baseline for the electronic content in the RDT&E, Procurement and O&M accounts should read $57.6 billion, not $56.7 billion. The defense topline for FY '99 should read $261 billion, not $216 billion.
A hearing is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 28 on Pemco Aeroplex's legal challenge concerning a U.S. Air Force decision to award the Ogden Air Logistics Center a contract to take over maintenance work being outsourced from the Sacramento ALC. Pemco and the Air Force on Oct. 14 agreed to a temporary restraining order without involving the courts. Initially, it appeared that a judicial hearing would take place by Oct. 19, but now it is slated for Oct. 28, an Air Force told The DAILY yesterday.
GUY MITAUX-MAUROUARD is retiring after a 30-year career with Dassault Aviation, much of it as chief test pilot at the company's Istres Flight Test Center. Mitaux-Maurouard, who has just turned 60, was a pilot in the French Air Force. He is a graduate of the French Test Pilot School at Salon and has test flown virtually every Dassault fighter, starting with the Mirage G8 in 1968 and culminating with the Rafale C01. He announced his retirement at NBAA.
New and updated Cessna models introduced at this week's annual National Business Aviation Association show in Las Vegas have produced sales of 166 aircraft valued at $1.4 billion. The sales are the result of briefings with existing Citation users and prospective customers in the weeks before the show, according to Cessna Vice Chairman Gary Hay. Advance firm orders for the CJ2 stood at 76, and at 79 for the Citation Sovereign as of Oct. 20. The company also introduced the Citation CJ1 and Citation Ultra Encore at the show earlier this week.
TWA ANNOUNCED acquisition of four 757s from Boeing to be delivered next year. It also will take delivery next year of a 767-300ER from International Lease Finance Corp. This will give TWA 27 757s and five 767-300ERs. TWA plans to retire its remaining 727-200s when it gets the 757s to help it meet the Stage 3 deadline of January 2000. Chairman Gerald Gitner said that "by the end of the decade, TWA will have replaced more than 40% of its fleet within just 3 l/2 years." The carrier recently acquired three 757s from ILFC and 24 MD-83s from Boeing.
Larry Clarkson, the Boeing senior vice president who has served as president of Boeing Enterprises, and who is slated to retire from the company on Feb. 1, said yesterday that the new Boeing Modification and Engineering Services unit will be up and running Jan. 1.
ROLLS-ROYCE won a further order from Virgin Atlantic with the airline's selection of two more Airbus A340-600 aircraft powered by Trent 500 engines. Rolls valued the engine order at $80 million. Virgin, an original launch customer for the A340-500/600, has 10 firm orders and eight options with a total value of $720 million to Rolls. Virgin gets its first A340-600 in 2002.
Williams International is launching a new engine and a new derivative at the National Business Aviation Association convention in Las Vegas, and three aircraft manufacturers, including Cessna, are announcing new applications for Williams engines. Williams now has engines in production or under development that cover the range from 700 lbst. to 2,400 lbst., leaving no sizable gaps for a competitor.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Science Committee and a longtime critic of Russia's role in the International Space Station project, yesterday praised NASA - faintly - for proceeding to build its own Station propulsion module to backstop Russian hardware. In response to a letter from Administrator Daniel S. Goldin on space agency plans to remove Russia from the "critical path" to Station completion, Sensenbrenner said the decision to buy long-lead items for a U.S. Propulsion Module was "good news."
TITAN CORP., San Diego, won two additional production option awards to its contract with the U.S. Navy for Mini-DAMA UHF satellites communications terminal. Total value of the two awards is $4.5 million, the company said. The terminal versions included in the options, according to Titan, are for use on aircraft, surface vessels and submarines. Titan said they will be produced by its subsidiary, Linkabit Wireless of San Diego.
The board of directors of Aydin Corp., Horsham, Pa., has removed its chairman and chief executive officer. Gary I. Bard was removed, and Warren Lichtenstein will take over as chairman, the company said yesterday. It also said that James Henderson, the current chief financial officer, will become president and chief operating officer.
The special House Committee investigating whether Beijing has benefited militarily from launching American satellites on Chinese rockets has basically stuck to the announced investigations, although it has made brief forays into other technology transfer issues, congressional sources said.
A Lockheed Martin Atlas IIA vehicle orbited the U.S. Navy's ninth UHF Follow-On communications satellite early yesterday after a 24-hour weather delay. Liftoff of the Atlas came at 3:19 a.m. EDT, and the satellite reached its transfer orbit 27 minutes later. The mission cost about $200 million, Navy officials said.
The Solar Orbit Transfer Vehicle (SOTV) Boeing is developing for the U.S. Air Force as a low-cost way to lift satellites from low Earth orbit to geosynchronous altitudes has passed its first U.S. Air Force technical review. Boeing said the program, conducted by the company's Phantom Works under a $48 million Air Force Research Laboratory contract, passed the systems requirements review. The review covers Boeing's product and technology development plans and its requirements for both space experiments and operations.
Lockheed Martin's divestiture of businesses representing more than $2 billion of annualized sales led to a 4% drop in both sales and earnings for the third quarter of 1998, the company reported yesterday. Lockheed Martin earned $318 million on sales of $6.3 billion, down from earnings of $331 million on sales of $6.6 billion in the same period in 1997.
Raytheon Co.'s acquisition of the defense businesses of Hughes continues to pay off in the sales area, but previously announced restructuring charges to eliminate excess capacity eroded any profit gains in the third quarter of 1998, the company said yesterday. Raytheon reported earnings of $295 million, excluding non-recurring charges, on record sales of $4.7 billion in the third quarter of 1998, compared to earnings of $211 million on sales of $3.4 billion in the same period in 1997.
PREMIER I, dubbed the first of a new generation of business jets by its manufacturer, Raytheon Aircraft, is entering the flight-test phase of its certification program this month at the company's facility in Wichita. The first production model of the new, entry-level jet was rolled off the assembly line on Aug. 19. The test phase includes system ground tests, high-speed taxi tests, and a first flight expected later this month.
The defense supplemental conference report providing $1 billion additional for ballistic missile defense programs does not earmark any of the money, but requires the secretary of defense to notify Congress 30 days before allocating additional funds to a specific program. The key provision says the secretary of defense shall use the $1 billion "only to accelerate development and enhance testing of theater and national ballistic missile defense programs."
Business aviation is at an all-time high in the U.S., and there's room for further growth, according to Jack Olcott, president of the National Business Aviation Association.
