The Chief of Staff of the Royal Norwegian Air Force said last week that the Eurofighter EF 2000 and the Lockheed Martin F-16C/D are comparable. Gen. Per-Oscar Jacobsen indicated that a final choice between the two contenders, due late next year, was likely to prove difficult, since they were regarded as "pretty well even."
Using commercial practices and other improvements, Lockheed Martin has reduced the manufacturing time for an F-16 fighter to 24 months, down from the previous 36-42 months.
AND DELAYS: The remanufacture problems that have dogged Joint STARS for years have caused late deliveries. "I'm frustrated because we're not getting deliveries on time," Hawley says. The hope is that relaxed remanufacture requirements will get deliveries back on schedule.
APPROPRIATIONS ACTION: The Senate is supposed to act this week on the $250.3 billion fiscal 1999 defense appropriations bill that cleared the Senate last week. Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the full Appropriations Committee and the defense subcommittee, says the bill will be on the Senate floor Wednesday night or Thursday. It will be later in the month before the House acts, according to Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Appropriations national security subcommittee.
2K PROBLEM: With much of the Pentagon focused on the Y2K computer problem, the AF has its own 2K issue. The loss of pilots to commercial airline jobs could drive the shortage to 2,000 in the near future, Hawley says. The AF already has a "serious attrition problem," that will lead to 800 vacancies by the end of the year. The percentage of those who take the stay-aboard bonus in the AF is about 26%, compared to more than 50% needed to retain the force.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science subcommittee that authorizes spending on advanced space transportation research, urged that some of that spending go to create competitors for the VentureStar reusable launch vehicle that NASA hopes will grow out of the X- 33 research testbed.
Heico Corp., Miami, will acquire Teleflex-Lionel-Dupont (TLD), a Paris-based maker of niche aeronautical products and ground support equipment, Heico announced. It will be the largest acquisition in Heico's history. The stock exchange agreement - reached with certain shareholders of TLD and certain shareholders of Compagnie de Gestion Industrielle et Financiere (GIFI), which owns about 42% of TLD's outstanding shares - is subject to U.S. and French regulatory approvals and other closing conditions that must be satisfied by July 31.
A rogue state might be able to secretly acquire a long-range ballistic missile to attack the U.S. before Washington can deploy a National Missile Defense system, but developing a such a missile without being detected is unlikely, according to Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
INDEMNIFICATION: Development hurdles notwithstanding, Rising and Bob Lindberg, program manager on the X-34 testbed being built by Orbital Sciences Corp., both say their birds won't fly until Congress passes legislation protecting them against third-party liability in the event of accident during testing. Unlike earlier X-vehicles, X-33 and X-34 are being built under cooperative agreements between NASA and the companies, and so will not belong to the government.
APACHE FIELDING: The U.S. Army will introduce its first AH-64D Apache Longbow into the combat force on June 12. It will be inducted into the Army inventory at Fort Hood, Tex., site of the service's first AH-64D unit.
Now that last week's Airbus deal with the GE/P&W Engine Alliance has set the stage for competition to power the proposed new A3XX widebody, enginemakers are once again hoping to shift airline thinking away from simple purchase cost toward total life-cycle cost as the basis for the rival engines' head-to-head battle.
Korean Air Lines will place a $2 billion order for 27 Boeing 737-800s and -900s next week in a strategic move reflecting the airline's confidence that Southeast Asia economies will recover by the time deliveries begin, in 26 months. South Korea wants to be the nation of choice as it becomes more difficult for travelers to get to Southeast Asia through Japan because of traffic volume and airport congestion.
British Aerospace's Royal Ordnance Div. has completed the first sled test of a Conventionally-Armed Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) fitted with the Broach warhead. The test, at the U.K. Defense Ministry's Pendline Range in May, was part of a foreign comparative test program to determine the feasibility of using the warhead on the long-range cruise missile. After being accelerated to 1,000 feet per second, the warhead penetrated the concrete target, exiting at a residual speed of several hundred feet per second, BAe said.
NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery docked with Russia's Mir right on time yesterday, marking the last time a Shuttle will dock with the aging orbital station. Charles Precourt, STS-91 mission commander, announced the two spacecraft had mated at 12:58:31 p.m. EDT, exactly as planned. The hatches between the two vehicles later were opened and Shuttle crew members entered the Russian facility.
After building a single prototype of a completely digital Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS-CD), the U.S. Navy expects to make several operational before it fields the Shared Reconnaissance Pod (SHARP) in coming years for the F/A-18F and other aircraft.
The National Research Council of Canada and Orenda Engine parent Orenda Aerospace have just completed an intense three-year project to develop qualification methodologies and test nine novel component repairs for the General Electric F404 fighter engine. Aimed at extending the life of high-cost gas turbine engine components in Canadian military engine fleets, officials hope the work will save some C$4 million per year during the next 12 years.
The Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday unanimously approved the $250.3 billion fiscal 1999 Pentagon money bill that its defense subcommittee marked up on Tuesday. Senate Appropriations Chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who heads the defense subcommittee as well, said the bill could be on the Senate floor next Wednesday evening or Thursday.
The House Appropriations national security subcommittee yesterday cut the Theater High Altitude Area Defense request by $406 million, the largest reduction imposed by any congressional committee this year, but at the same time left the door to reconsidering the cut if the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization can make the case that THAAD can work after all its test failures.
The National Research Council of Canada recently commissioned two new national facilities - a physical vapor deposition (PVD) coater, for exploring novel coating design concepts based on multi-layering for better protection, and a turbine component spin rig to help engineers develop cost-effective life-cycle management technologies for critical rotating turbine components.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has eliminated the $180 million for 40 THAAD User Operational Evaluation System (UOES) missiles while adding back a similar amount for the demonstration and validation (dem/val) portion of the program. The committee also followed action in the Senate authorization and knocked out the entire $323 million for engineering and manufacturing development of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense program.
Enginemaker Rolls-Royce tells investors it expects to spend about 20 million pounds - US$32.8 million at current exchange rates - to fix Year 2000 date logic problems in its computers and computer-operated equipment, but is confident it will make the fixes with the plenty of time to spare. The so-called Millennium Bug stems from early computer programmers' shortcut of using just the last two digits to represent years, so that the year 2000 will appear simply as '00,' potentially disabling any affected computer or software program at the turn of the century.
The commander of the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command said the service should replace its long-range interdiction F-15E and F-117 aircraft on a one-for-one basis, assuming no significant force structure changes are made. "I would anticipate a one-for-one replacement as long as our current force structure requirements stay the same," Gen. Richard Hawley told defense reporters yesterday in Washington. That amounts to about three wings of aircraft since the AF flies two wings of F-15Es and a little less than one F-117 wing.
RAYTHEON SYSTEMS CO., Lexington, Mass., said it has won an initial increment of $800,000 to a $57.3 million U.S. Army contract for the development of the next-generation Firefinder weapon location radar, Firefinder Block II, designated AN/TPQ-47. The contract calls for Raytheon to deliver three engineering development model radar systems.
