Raytheon Co. set records for second quarter earnings and sales, the company reported yesterday, continuing to benefit from acquisition of the defense operations of Hughes and Texas Instruments. Raytheon earned $269.5 million on sales of $5.1 billion during the quarter, up from earnings of $209.5 million on sales of $3.3 billion in the second quarter of 1997. Raytheon also posted records in the first quarter of the year (DAILY, April 29).
With Congress considering an increase in U.S. Air Force procurement funds to buy parts of the electronic warfare suite for the F-15E dual role fighter a year early, the AF is trying to determine how it can compress the test schedule for the system to eliminate or at least reduce concurrency between the end of testing and the beginning of system acquisition.
A shareholders' action brought against Northrop Grumman Corp. in a California state court yesterday charges top Northrop executives "looted Northrop's corporate treasury of $150-$160 million" by withholding information about potential government opposition to the company's proposed acquisition by Lockheed Martin.
An article in The DAILY of July 22 incorrectly stated the duration of a telemetry blackout from NASA's Galileo probe. The blackout lasted 12 hours, 21 minutes.
Alliant Techsystems was chosen by the U.S. Air Force to supply the DSU-33B/B proximity fuze, settling the second of three fuze competitions that were required after Motorola decided last year to stop building military fuzes. Alliant Techsystems will build an initial 5,152 of the fuzes for the Air Force and Navy under a $7.3 million contract, the Pentagon announced Wednesday. The fuze will be used on the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) weapons (Mk. 82 and Mk. 84) and the M117 bomb.
International Space Station hardware is starting to arrive at an accelerating pace at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., for final processing as the date for the first Station element launch draws closer.
Northrop Grumman has received a $4 million contract to build a variant of the AN/APN-241 combat delivery radar for use on the HS-748 navigator trainer aircraft. Northrop Grumman is developing and building the radars under a subcontract from British Aerospace Australia. The APN-24NT will incorporate a new antenna designed specifically for medium-size transports like the HS-748, Northrop Grumman said.
Republican lawmakers, reacting to Iran's test Wednesday of a ballistic missile capable of hitting Israel and the rest of the Middle East, criticized the Clinton Administration for accepting what they said were inadequate intelligence reports, failing to move more aggressively to deploy missile defenses, and export control policies that they said need to be strengthened.
PanAmSat Corp. was assigned a "Prime-2" rating yesterday by Moody's Investors Service, which said the rating reflects growth in Panamsat's ability to generate cash flow as it increases the number of on-orbit satellites that are mostly under long-term contracts with big video and telecommunications company's. Moody's said the rating "also recognizes PanAmSat's high debt levels and its 81% ownership by Hughes Electronics Corp...., which also has a Prime-2 commercial paper rating."
VISICOM, San Diego, won a $1.3 million order for its Antares computer boards to be used in the U.S. Navy's AN/UYQ-70 Advanced Display System. The company, announcing the award yesterday, said it has supplied its products for the UYQ-70 since 1994 for a variety of military users to support development work for programs such as Aegis and the New Attack Submarine.
Reduced commercial aircraft profit margins, including a $78 million charge related to the termination of the MD-11 trijet program and additional late delivery costs associated with the Next-Generation 737, continued to hurt Boeing's earnings in the second quarter of 1998, the company reported yesterday. While Boeing's stock lost $6.25 yesterday to finish at $41.50, Boeing executives unveiled a series of financial goals for use in measuring the company's progress in increasing shareholder value.
The U.S. Air Force has started flying the test variant of the Airborne Warning and Control System, known as TS-3, which has been equipped with parts of an open system architecture with improved processing capability to be implemented throughout the AWACS fleet in coming years. TS-3, modified by Boeing, flew for the first time last week in preparation for the Air Force's EFX '98 demonstration in September, an AF official said. Nine check flights are planned before the experiment.
Raytheon has received a $6.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to operate and maintain a simulation facility for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Contract options for the next five years could increase the contract value to $35 million, the company said. Support will include the Crew Station Evaluation Facility (which Raytheon has supported in the past), Vehicle/Pilot Integration Laboratory, Engineering Flight Simulation Facility, and Simulation and Analysis Facility.
The Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday rejected the nomination of Florida State Sen. Daryl L. Jones to be Air Force Secretary on a tie vote, and the Clinton Administration began its search for a new candidate. After two open and two executive sessions on Jones, the lines were sharply drawn in the committee. Republicans expressed concern that Jones, a former fighter pilot, may have misstated his record.
ALAN B. SHEPARD JR., the first U.S. astronaut to fly into space, died Tuesday night at 74. He had leukemia. On May 5, 1961, Shepard rode a modified Redstone rocket on a 15-minute suborbital flight that took him to an altitude of 116 miles before splashing down in the Atlantic.
Iridium LLC has shuffled upcoming replenishment launches to accommodate malfunctions among its 72 satellites orbiting in low Earth orbit, according to a company spokesperson. A two-satellite launch on a Chinese Long March originally scheduled this week to fill a hole and add a spare in plane No. 6 of the Iridium constellation has been rescheduled for mid-August following another satellite malfunction in plane No. 6.
NASA's Galileo Jupiter probe lost almost all of the data it gathered during a flyby of the icy moon Europa on Monday after an anomaly that apparently was triggered by debris in the slip ring between the two halves of the spacecraft. Galileo's redundant command and data subsystems (CDS) "worked exactly as we wanted it to" when the primary CDS detected the fault, according to Jim Erickson, Galileo project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The primary CDS shut down and turned over control to the backup, which also detected the problem.
Representatives of the U.S. vertical flight industry are in line to participate further in deliberations on the use of satellite navigation in the National Airspace System. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey met with representatives of the industry on July 13 to discuss the need for a better vertical flight infrastructure, and ways to meet FAA goals of better safety and system efficiency.
France's Aerospatiale will merge with Lagardere's Matra High Technologies, which holds all of Lagardere's aerospace and defense activities, forming the largest European defense company, Aerospatiale and Lagardere said yesterday. The combined Aerospatiale-Matra will have sales of 80 billion francs ($13.4 billion), ranking it fourth in the world behind Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, Aerospatiale said.
Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Matra Marconi Space are creating a joint venture with their space businesses, one that they say will be the world's third largest space company, a DASA spokesman confirmed yesterday. DASA and Lagardere signed a memorandum of understanding in May 1997 to combine the space activities of the two companies. Matra Marconi is a joint venture of Lagardere and Britain's General Electric Co. plc.
European aerospace industry sales grew 17% to $59.7 billion in 1997, according to the European Association of Aerospace Industries (AECMA). Of that total, the aircraft and systems sector accounted for 53%, the equipment sector 29% and the engine sector 18%.
The recently concluded 1,000-hour flight test of a C-141 transport equipped with electric aileron actuators demonstrated that power-by-wire could replace hydraulic actuation, Mike Morgan, program manager at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Aero Propulsion and Power Directorate, said.
Pratt&Whitney is adopting software of SAP, a German company, to run nearly every aspect of its business operations. "Pratt&Whitney's goals are to constantly improve customer satisfaction by being the lowest-cost, most efficient and responsive engine builder in the world," Louis Chenevert, P&W executive vice president, said in a statement. "SAP will help us take advantage of the best in information technology to accomplish those goals."
NORTHROP GRUMMAN and its teammate Intracom of Greece have proposed the E-2C Hawkeye 2000 for the Hellenic Air Force airborne early warning system competition.
