BOEING COMMERCIAL AIRPLANE GROUP has purchased General Electric Information Services' Enterprise System, which will allow Boeing to track design and parts information over the Internet and through private data networks. Boeing said it will use the system for traceability and accountability of electronic exchanges of data between Boeing Commercial, suppliers, design partners and customers.
Editor's note: Following are excerpts of comments to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington made Sept. 17 by Robert Walpole, National Intelligence Officer on the staff of the Director of Central Intelligence for Strategic and Nuclear Programs. Carnegie said he gave "the first declassified summary of the intelligence community's annual report to Congress on the ballistic missile threat." It said the comments "closely mirrored classified testimony ... presented to Congress on Sept. 24."
RON WOODARD, 55, former president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, will retire from the company Nov. 1. Woodard was replaced as president of the unit by Alan Mulally, 53, the former president of the Information, Space&Defense Systems (DAILY, Sept. 2).
Changes in Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical's San Diego production facility have caused "substantial dislocation in [the company's] business plans" that could affect the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle program, congressional defense authorizers disclosed in their report on the fiscal 1999 Pentagon budget.
TELEDESIC, Kirkland, Wash., has opened offices in Brussels and Madrid, its first two in Europe. The Brussels office will be run by Matthew Shears, who has a decade of experience in international public policy and government affairs. The Madrid office will be managed by Julian Sesena, a veteran European regulatory expert.
RAYTHEON ENGINEERS&CONSTRUCTORS has won a turnkey contract from Boeing Co. to design and build a $250 million, 45-acre space launch complex at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., for the Delta IV rocket. Raytheon said yesterday that it will engineer, procure and construct the launch pad, the control center, the fixed umbilical tower, the mobile service tower, and a propellant systems facility for the area, to be known as Space Launch Complex 37. Construction is underway and first launch of the Delta IV is planned for mid-2001.
SECOND F-22 GROUND TEST ARTICLE is being readied for assembly by Lockheed Martin following shipment last week of the mid-fuselage to the company's Marietta, Ga., facility from its plant in Fort Worth, Tex. The article will be used for fatigue testing. The mid-fuselage for the other ground test article was delivered to Marietta earlier this year. It will be used for static load testing.
THE NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE's Space Technology Experiment (STEX '98), originally scheduled for launch Oct. 1, will now be launched Oct. 2 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., the AF said yesterday. Orbital Sciences Corp., which builds the Taurus launcher that will be used for the mission, asked for the delay to go over some hardware issues. STEX '98 carries a variety of experiments and technologies that could be used on future satellites. It is built for an on-orbit life of two years.
Orbital Sciences Corp. said it has delivered, launched and performed orbital checkouts of 30 satellites since July 1, 1997, a company record. "In the last 15 months, with strong support of other groups in the company, Orbital's satellite team completed, delivered, launched and checked out more satellites than in our previous five years of operations," said Robert Lovell, OSC's executive vice president and general manager of space systems.
The Senate yesterday approved by a vote of 94-2 the $250.5 billion fiscal 1999 defense appropriations conference report, completing congressional action and sending the bill to the White House for President Clinton's signature. The House approved the compromise bill Monday night by a vote of 369-43.
Boeing Co. on Monday rolled out the first production WAH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter for the U.K. at its Mesa, Ariz., plant. The attack helicopter was delivered two days ahead of schedule to prime contractor GKN Westland Helicopters Ltd., of Yeovil, England. GKN Westland is the first customer to acquire Apaches under a commercial contract. After a test and evaluation program, GKN Westland is slated to deliver its first WAH-64 to the British Ministry of Defense in early 2000. The helicopter flew for the first time on Sept. 25.
Space Access LLC of Palmdale, Calif., which envisions a multi-stage reusable launch system featuring an aircraft-like first stage powered by ejector ramjets, is using funds from two recent government contracts as well as private financing to move into the preliminary design phase, the company's president said yesterday.
Boeing Co. may be ramping up production just as aircraft orders and deliveries begin to decline, according to Prudential Securities. "Currently anticipated large commercial aircraft output of 800-850 planes in the 2000-2002 time period is likely to prove far more than the 625-675 planes that will actually be required to meet the global airline industry's replacement and growth needs at the end of the decade," Prudential says, reducing its 1998 estimated per-share earnings of Boeing to 95 cents from $1.10.
FAA is developing technologies that are expected to maximize the potential benefits of Free Flight, but "some of these technologies have not been designed to work together," the General Accounting Office said in a report to Congress. GAO noted that FAA expects to implement Free Flight Phase 1 by 2002, and that FAA currently is developing a plan that will provide more details on how this is to be accomplished.
Due to an editorial error, the Sept. 29 issue of The DAILY incorrectly reported that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 80.07 points. In fact, the Dow was up 80.07 points.
OCT. 1 LAUNCH of the National Reconnaissance Office's Space Technology Experiment '98 has been scrubbed. The delay is related to the Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus launcher, an NRO spokesman said. The launch hasn't been rescheduled.
Boeing yesterday won a $1.2 billion competition to support U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command aircraft. The Integrated Weapon System Support Program work will cover modifications, upgrades, repair and maintenance of AC-130H and AC-130U gunships, as well as the fleet of MC-130E and MC-130H Combat Talon aircraft. Boeing will be responsible for the work through fiscal 2009, the Pentagon said.
The Galileo spacecraft completed its latest flyby of the Jovian moon Europa on Sept. 25, but did so in cruise mode without gyroscopes because the gyros activated a fault protection program on Sept. 24, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. "The onboard star scanner was used instead as the primary reference for determining the spacecraft's orientation in space." The gyro anomaly, it said, is prompting "some observations taken by the near-infrared mapping spectrometer will be of less-than-optimal quality."
The Pentagon disagrees with a General Accounting Office ruling that the U.S. Air Force's bundling of work at a California logistics center for a winner-take-all outsourcing competition did not comply with federal acquisition regulations.
Next fiscal year will see two critical milestones for U.S. Navy mine warfare - a demonstration to validate that the CH-60 helicopter can replace the MH-53E in the airborne mine warfare role, and a competition for development of an Airborne Laser Mine Detection System.
Fairchild Fasteners signed an agreement with Boeing Co. to provide aircraft fastening components over the next five years, Fairchild reported yesterday. Further details will be announced at a later time, the company said.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff ran into resistance yesterday from the normally supportive Senate Armed Services Committee when they presented requests for fiscal year 2000 budget increases for all four U.S. military services amounting to over $17 billion, not counting pay and retirement increases. Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, chief of staff of the Army, said his service needed an additional $5 billion a year in the FY 2000 budget and an equal amount throughout the future years defense plan.
A 69-DAY STRIKE of 1,400 local workers at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, has been settled by local labor officials and the U.S. Air Force's 39th Wing. The AF said the agreement was signed yesterday, and grants the employees a 20% wage increase, four $400 quality of life payments, seven quarterly cost of living adjustments and one lump sum payment of $800.
