Boeing will display its aircraft at Internationale Luftfahrtaustellung (ILA) - the Berlin Air Show - for the first time this year. The presence of the U.S. aircraft manufacturer alongside other U.S. market leaders-GE, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Pratt&Whitney, Northrop Grumman and others-is seen as an example of the rapid expansion of ILA, which will take place at Berlin's Schoenefeld airport.
France wants a resolution by this summer on whether a modified Antonov An-70 transporter will be used as the European candidate in the Future Large Aircraft transporter competition or whether a military division of Airbus would bid a new aircraft, French defense minister Alain Richard said yesterday.
Inmarsat's member governments have agreed to amend the pact governing the organization in what was called a "significant step" to Inmarsat becoming a private company early next year. The Inmarsat Assembly of Parties, meeting this week in London, approved amendments proposed by the Inmarsat Council and the Intersessional Working Group, which was formed to develop the privatization model. Director General Warren Grace said the "path toward a restructured Inmarsat is now clear, the schedule more certain."
The General Accounting Office is calling on the Pentagon to revise AIM-9X procurement and testing plans to ensure the entire system is sufficiently tested before a production decision is made. The Pentagon plans to begin low-rate production of 150 missiles in early 2000, before completion of all 22 development tests (DT) or operational testing (OT).
British Aerospace will acquire a 35% interest in Sweden's Saab AB from Investor Group, the companies said yesterday. BAe called the move, which had been reported in the British press since last weekend (DAILY, April 28), consistent with its stated objective of increasing shareholder value through aerospace industry consolidation. Saab echoed BAe's view of the deal.
The directors of CHC Helicopter Corp., St. John's, Newfoundland, approved plans to create a new subsidiary that will own all of CHC's repair and overhaul businesses, CHC announced last Friday. Shares of Vector Aerospace Corp. will be sold through an initial public offering in Canada. Vector will be 100% publicly owned. Currently, CHC's repair businesses are conducted primarily through Atlantic Turbines Inc., CHC Airmotive Ltd. and the ACRO Aerospace Division of Canada Helicopters Ltd.
A contract for delivery of a number of Sukhoi combat aircraft to China could be signed very soon, according to Mikhail Simonov, General Designer of the Sukhoi Experimental Design Bureau. Simonov said that the all outstanding issues in the contract, which has been in negotiation for some time, have been resolved.
The Council of Chief Designers on the Russian Service Module for the International Space Station have recommended delaying launch of the module until April 1999, a four-month slip that is likely to impact launch dates for the two Station modules scheduled to fly before the Service Module. Interfax news agency reported the proposal was formulated at a session of the Council held Tuesday at Energia Rocket and Space Corp. It will be submitted to Russia's foreign partners in the Station program, who will participate in the final decision.
A European Ariane 44P rocket orbited communications satellites for Egypt and Japan in a Tuesday-evening launch from the space center at Kourou, French Guiana. Nilesat 101, the first satellite launched both for Egypt and the entire African continent, will provide direct broadcast service from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. It was built by Matra Marconi Space under a turnkey deal with Egypt's Nilesat company.
Scientists at the Air Force Research Laboratory Propulsion Directorate here have conducted some 500 flight tests of a laser-powered vehicle that someday could orbit small satellites for a few hundred dollars each.
Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force is operationally testing its UP-3C electronic warfare training support aircraft in preparation to field the system in a year. The first of three UP-3Cs is being flown by the flight test 51st Air Unit, after undergoing contractor-sponsored flight tests last November. The UP-3C is a derivative of Lockheed Martin's P-3C. Kawasaki Heavy Industries has been working on the modifications since 1994 under a $113 million program.
The U.S. Air Force yesterday revealed it will buy its Joint Air-to- Surface Standoff Missile from Lockheed Martin at an average unit price of about $275,000, some 40% below the $400,000 target cost the AF set. Lockheed Martin bid the first five lots at about $275,000 per missile, firm-fixed price, Darleen Druyun, the AF's principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and management, said in an interview yesterday. The projected price for Lot 6 is about $302,000 largely because of inflation.
TOP MALAYSIAN OFFICERS took advantage of Lockheed Martin's C-130J road show and flew the newest version of the Hercules during its stop-over in Malaysia. Maj. Gen. Dato Suleiman Mahmud, deputy chief for the Malaysian air force, and Maj. Gen. Dato Abdul Malek Sahar, the chief of staff for operations, flew the C-130J in Kuala Lumpur. The flight "shows there is a lot of interest here" in the aircraft, John Parrish, Lockheed Martin's air mobility marketing director, said in a company statement.
Although the U.S. Air Force's Agent Defeat program recently attracted high-level attention because it is intended to neutralize weapons of mass destruction, the AF doesn't have funding beyond fiscal 1999 to continue the program. Out-year funding would be needed to get the effort into its program definition and risk reduction phase, Maj. Bryan Hudson of the Air Force's armaments product office said at the annual armaments industry round table.
Hughes engineers are nearing the end of an experimental attempt to rescue a stranded communications satellite by swinging it around the moon and into a usable Earth orbit, the company announced yesterday.
Army officials and congressional proponents of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which was on display on Capitol Hill yesterday, said they are confident next month's test of the THAAD missile will be a success.
House-Senate negotiators on the fiscal 1998 supplemental yesterday completed action on the defense portion of the request, agreeing to provide $1.7 billion for defense without any offsetting cuts, congressional sources said.
Three Japanese manufacturers - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), Toshiba Corp. and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) - have agreed to work as Boeing subcontractors on development of the Centrifuge module for the International Space Station.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday unanimously passed its fiscal year 1999 intelligence authorization bill. While funding levels and details of the bill are classified, the committee said the bill modernizes signals intelligence programs; revitalizes clandestine human intelligence programs; strengthens all-source analysis, and enhances covert action capabilities.
Thermomechanical stresses on airframe leading edges cruising at Mach 2.4 may be too much for an economically viable passenger aircraft to handle, so the materials community at Boeing wants management and NASA to throttle back to Mach 2 for the prospective High Speed Civil Transport, says a top Boeing titanium expert.
LAUNCH OF TWO IRIDIUM SATELLITES aboard a Long March 2C/5D has been postponed until Friday because of unfavorable weather conditions at the launch site, Iridium said yesterday. The rocket is now scheduled to lift off at 5:22 a.m. EDT from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China. The Long March mission is one of two remaining scheduled launches that will complete the Iridium constellation (DAILY, April 29).
Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), chairman of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, has dropped his support of the proposed sale to China of a commercialized version of the Air Force's C-17 airlifter - the MD-17 - at least for now. Saxton raised the issue of a potential MD-17 sale to China during a JEC hearing Tuesday on Chinese access to dual-use and military technology.
The Pentagon tomorrow will announce the contractor it has selected to oversee development, integration and possibly eventual deployment of an elaborate system of interceptors, radars, sensors and other highly sophisticated components designed to defend the U.S. against a ballistic missile attack. It is far from a typical Defense Dept. contract in that the lines are blurred on exactly what kind of system would be deployed, or even if a system will ever be deployed at all. The Pentagon doesn't even know how much the NMD system will cost in the end.
