British Aerospace and Hunting Engineering will set up a joint company to work on the Local Area Systems (LAS) for the British armed forces' Bowman communications project. Hunting Engineering will bring expertise in installing hardware in military vehicles to the joint company, which is competing to do the LAS work for Archer Communications Systems Ltd., the Bowman prime contractor. Bowman is a $2.4 billion tactical communications system for the British military.
The House on Tuesday passed, by a vote of 392-22, a bill to impose sanctions on persons or businesses transferring items that would contribute to Iran's effort to acquire, develop or produce ballistic missiles. The Senate passed the bill 90-4. The bill sends a signal to Russian firms, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) said during floor consideration of the bill.
The U.S. Navy has exercised a contract option to order a third Boeing 737-700C for its Navy Unique Fleet Essential Airlift Replacement Aircraft (NUFEA-RA) program. The $163 million contract calls for deliveries to start in December 2000. The Navy ordered two 737-700Cs in September. The 737-700C, designated the C-40A, will be used to replace the Navy's aging fleet of C-9 cargo aircraft.
The conduct of American satellite manufacturers in the alleged transfer or enhancement of China's launch capacity came under increased focus in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, and a planned House special committee moved closer to being formed to probe the same issues.
GENCORP AEROJET will design and test a high performance rocket injector in a simulated Martian environment under a $485,000 contract from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The MON-25/Monomethylhydrazine-powered injector, which will be able to operate at temperatures in the -50 degrees centigrade range, is part of JPL's effort to develop a Mars Sample Return mission.
BFGoodrich Aerospace's Commercial Wheel and Brake Div., Troy, Ohio, has been selected by Icelandair for its new fleet of Boeing 757-300 aircraft. Deliveries are slated to start in 2001. The contract contains two firm orders and eight options for the B757-300 aircraft.
France's Lagardere would examine a possible merger with the missile businesses of Aerospatiale and Thomson-CSF if the French government is willing to give Lagardere full control, according to Philippe Camus, chairman and chief executive officer.
Despite congressional interest in a shoot-off between the Shorts Starstreak laser-guided missile and the air-to-air Stinger, a lack of funds may limit the effort to a simulation. Congress has added funds for the side-by-side comparison of the two missiles to determine which would better suit the U.S. Army's AH-4D Apache Longbow. The first phase has been completed and next year, Starstreak and Stinger were expected to go head-to-head in an evaluation.
Continued slow traffic growth in Asia is prompting Boeing Commercial to reduce the production rate of its 747 from the current five a month to 3.5 a month beginning in the second quarter of next year, said Fred Mitchell, executive VP, airplane production. Mitchell also said that 777 production will be slowed from seven a month to five a month in the fourth quarter of next year, then return to seven a month in 2000.
The second production Bell-Boeing V-22 aircraft was formed May 28 with the joining of three fuselage sections at Boeing's facility in suburban Philadelphia, the companies said. They said the fuselage will be shipped to Bell Helicopter's facility in Fort Worth, Tex., for the wing-to-fuselage mating process which marks final assembly.
Patricia (Patti) Grace Smith was named associate FAA administrator for commercial space transportation yesterday, filling a post she has held on an acting basis for the past 16 months. Administrator Jane F. Garvey made the appointment, expressing confidence Smith's "vast experience and leadership will help tremendously as the nations' space-launch community works to meet the growing demands of the 21st century."
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. has delivered the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) spacecraft bus to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, where it will be fitted out with instruments NASA scientists will use to study the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems. Orbital based the FUSE bus on earlier, flight-proven spacecraft like the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) and X-ray Timing Explorer (XTE), and delivered it three weeks earlier than required under the $37 million fixed- price contract awarded in 1995.
TELESAT CANADA has picked Europe's Arianespace consortium to launch its new Anik F1 satellite. The Hughes-built satellite, based on the HS 702 platform and designed to serve telecommunications needs across North America for 15 years, is to be launched in the first quarter of 2000 aboard an Ariane 44L rocket.
DYNCORP has been picked to develop training system technology for U.S. Navy anti-submarine warfare combat systems. The Reston, Va.-based information technology company will also support surface and submarine ASW operating guidelines under the five-year, $4 million subcontract with Sonalysts, Inc., which holds a $20 million contract from the Naval Undersea Warfare Division.
Attorney General Janet Reno turned over material to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday but committee Republicans yesterday questioned the usefulness of the material, which they said stated conclusions on the issue of transferring satellite launch technology to China. Intelligence Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) indicated yesterday that different agencies came to different conclusions, but he tended to give most weight to the assessment of the Pentagon's Defense Technology Security Administration.
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), suggesting that economic sanctions too frequently jeopardize billions of dollars in U.S. export earnings and hundreds of thousands of American jobs, said he would introduce an amendment to the defense authorization bill to end sanctions within two years, unless reauthorized by Congress or the president.
TRW INC. has entered a five-month cooperative agreement with NASA to share the cost of a five-month study of the proposed Constellation X-ray mission. NASA will contribute $110,000 to the study, which will help define the mission architecture of the next-generation X-ray observatory, which will provide a 100-fold improvement in sensitivity over X-ray observatories like the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) now in final checkout at TRW.
Korean Air Lines and Boeing officials yesterday announced that the carrier has placed a $2 billion order for up to 27 next-generation 737s (DAILY, June 5). The order consists of 11 737-800s and 11 737-900s, and five options plus spares. Deliveries are scheduled to take place between August 2000 and July 2005.
Russia's current economic woes can be traced both to greedy "kleptocrats" who have looted stock holding companies so badly that private capital is afraid to invest, and to regular bureaucrats who sap public funds with little to show for it beyond petty corruption, experts in the contemporary Russian economy told a Washington audience Monday.
The U.S. Air Force this month hopes to get its first Approval To Proceed (ATP 1) for the Airborne Laser program, although the service will first have to convince Pentagon leaders that charges made by critics about the system's performance are unwarranted. A June 25 Pentagon meeting will determine if the program can proceed with the expenditure of funding, and preparation for a critical design review next year.
BOEING has established a new subsidiary to handle the company's work in the area of satellite control and space operations. Growing out of the company's efforts to win NASA's Consolidated Space Operations Contract (DAILY, May 28), the new Boeing Space Operations unit will also support U.S. Air Force Global Positioning System ground operations at Falcon AFB, Calif.
BRITISH AEROSPACE Defense Systems Ltd. said it has delivered the third of the Royal Air Force's AR327 Commander radars to be based in the U.K. Known as Type 101 in RAF service, BAe said, the radar provides long-range, three- dimensional surveillance and target detection. It is deployed in the U.K. and overseas.
ERIM INTERNATIONAL INC., Ann Arbor, Mich., will build the Eagle Vision II portable ground station for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to use in tactical contingencies under a contract announced last month. Eagle Vision II is intended to receive unclassified commercial satellite imagery for aircrew mission planning and rehearsal and topographic and intelligence applications.
NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery undocked from Russia's Mir orbital station Monday, bringing to a close three years of precursor missions designed to prepare the two space superpowers to work together on the International Space Station.
SKYBRIDGE LP has decided to increase its planned constellation of 64 broadband low Earth orbit satellites to 80 satellites, citing market studies that indicate there will be some 400 million broadband satellite users worldwide by 2005. The constellation increase will allow SkyBridge, a joint venture headed by Alcatel that includes Loral Space&communications; Toshiba; Mitsubishi Electric; SPAR Aerospace, and Aerospatiale, to serve more than 20 million customers when its system becomes operational in 2001.
