An independent risk assessment of GPS-based sole-means navigation should be conducted, the Air Transport Association and Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association jointly told the FAA. They also recommended continuing the Wide Area Augmentation System to provide sole-means navigation by 2001 in light of the risk assessment.
Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics sector has declared 1998 the "Year of Lean," working to make its products more affordable by waging a war on costs, according to Micky Blackwell, president and chief operating officer of the sector.
The Progress Plant in Arseniev has received the first advance payment from China for production of Moskit supersonic anti-ship missiles for the Chinese Navy, but only after the Russian military was mollified with the promise of a hypersonic missile to replace the missiles known in the West as SS-N-22.
GKN of the U.K. and Finmeccanica of Italy entered into negotiations to establish an "alliance of equals" of their helicopter divisions in early 1999, the companies announced yesterday. The plan would combine the design, manufacturing and marketing of GKN Westland Helicopters and Agusta, which together hold a joint order book worth more than $8.5 billion.
Although the U.S. Defense and Justice Departments are moving to block Lockheed Martin's acquisition of Northrop Grumman, Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques Gansler says DOD would still welcome some mergers, particularly among lower-tier suppliers.
Revenues from the commercial satellite industry totaled $51.2 billion worldwide in 1997, a 14% jump from the previous year, according to a survey conducted by Futron Corp. for the Satellite Industry Association. SIA and Futron polled hundreds of satellite-related businesses around the world, asking for 1996 and 1997 results in each major market segment. The results were released Wednesday at a press conference in New York.
LITTON'S PRC SUBSIDIARY, Woodland Hills, Calif., won a $150 million contract from the Training and Simulation Div. of the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Warfare Center, Orlando, Fla., for the General Aviation Instruction Systems Development program. The company said the contract calls for training course maintenance, instructional systems development and modification enhancement of training devices. Litton said the five-year effort should produce more than $50 million in revenues.
Northrop Grumman Corp. reported a net loss of $12 million for the first quarter of 1998 due to a previously announced pre-tax charge of $180 million related to the proposed merger with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman said yesterday. The company said the charge would cover vesting of restricted stock that became issuable after shareholders approved the merger in February (DAILY, March 26). In the first quarter of 1997, the company earned $84 million.
The Belgian electronics and visual technologies firm BARCO N.V. is forming a strategic partnership with Belgium's aviation industry to participate in future production of the A3XX superjumbo jet under development by Airbus Industrie.
The U.S. Air Force plans to buy 2,329 Hard Target Smart Fuzes in the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) and production phases. The HTSF is a burst point optimization fuze that can trigger a warhead at a specific point as it passes through a building. It is in development with the Air Force Research Lab's Munitions Div. at Eglin AFB, Fla.
Eight of the 17 members of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee are running for reelection this year, but no more than two of them - Sens. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) and Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) - seem potentially vulnerable. Meanwhile, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a consistent critic of the U.S. Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet program, is ahead even by his opponent's polls, but Feingold staffers expect the race to tighten before election day on Nov. 3.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said he was "outraged" that Iran apparently got four nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan, and said he will "make it a major case" when Congress returns next week. The Jerusalem Post on April 9 reported that classified documents say Iran received the warheads in the early 1990s and that Russian experts maintained them. "If what the Israeli press is saying is true, it's outrageous and I'm going to make it a major case next week on the Hill," Weldon said in a telephone interview with The DAILY.
An agreement by five French defense companies to merge their electronics and satellite businesses may be seen as a major move toward industry consolidation within the country, but big steps still need to be taken, American analysts said yesterday. Aerospatiale, Alcatel Alsthom, Dassault Industries, Thomson S.A. and Thomson-CSF agreed to form a defense and electronics group to help clear the way for future European alliances and partnerships, the companies said Tuesday.
The U.S. Air Force is offering more than $5 million to industry to fund several initiatives for selective availability, anti-spoofing Global Positioning System receiver modules. The 18-month contracts are intended to reduce the risk of efforts in this area and allow speedier fielding of the more robust GPS receivers. No single award will be worth more than $2 million, the AF's Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles AFB, Calif., said in an April 15 Commerce Business Daily notice.
B/E Aerospace Inc., Wellington, Fla., completed the acquisition of Puritan-Bennett Aero Systems (PBASCO) and also reached an agreement in principle to acquire Aircraft Modular Products (AMP). B/E said Monday that it acquired PBASCO, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nellcor Puritan Bennett Inc., for $69.7 million in cash. PBASCO, headquartered in Lenexa, Kan., makes commercial aircraft oxygen delivery systems and passenger service unit components and systems and supplies air valves, overhead lights and switches.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin has submitted for ratification by the State Duma the Protocol to the START-2 treaty and a package of documents related to interpretation of the ABM Treaty that was signed in New York last fall. The START-2 Protocol extends the final deadline for implementation of agreed cuts in strategic arsenals by five years, from Jan. 1, 2003, to Dec. 31, 2007. That should make the treaty more acceptable for Russia, which does not have enough funds to dismantle all of the missiles required within the original time frame.
Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques Gansler said yesterday that a plan to delay the low-rate production decision on the U.S. Air Force's F-22 fighter by a year is aimed at getting higher confidence in the program. The U.S. Air Force this year will buy two F-22s as Production Representative Test Vehicles (PRTVs) rather than as the first low rate initial production aircraft as had been planned, Gansler told reporters yesterday at the Pentagon. The LRIP decision will slip a year, to November 1999.
New Skies Satellites S.V., the commercial Intelsat spinoff company approved last month by the international satellite consortium's Assembly of Parties, should be ready for business July 1 if its organization schedule is met.
BOEING delivered the 39th C-17 airlifter to the U.S. Air Force yesterday in a ceremony at its Long Beach, Calif., plant. Boeing said the plane was flown to its new base, Charleston AFB, S.C., by Maj. Gen. Silas Johnson, vice commander of the 21st Air Force, McGuire AFB, N.J.
The delivery of 12 Russian Su-30 fighters to the Indian Air Force will be pushed back from September of this year to mid-1999, Itar-Tass reported yesterday. The hold-up is because of contract delays between Sukhoi and subcontractors that will supply some of the onboard equipment and avionics. The $2 billion contract for 40 Su-30s was signed in November 1996, with all planes scheduled to be delivered by 2002.
Effective May 1, Russia's Long Range Aviation will be demoted to the "Air Army of Strategic Destination," and the airborne leg of the Russian strategic triad will shrink from its current five divisions to just two. Those remaining two divisions of the new Air Army will be based at Engels, in the Saratov region, and Ukrainka, Amur region.
Russia's Sukhoi bureau is designing a 1,000-passenger airliner that "will be our response to Airbus Industrie's A-3XX plane," a top company official said. Gennady Yanpolsky, Sukhoi's deputy chief designer for civil aircraft, told the Itar-Tass news agency in Moscow that the KR-860 would carry 860 to 1,000 passengers. The freighter version would carry about 200 tonnes of cargo. Range would be 14,000 kilometers.
United Airlines Chairman Gerald Greenwald yesterday announced orders for 23 new widebody aircraft from Boeing as part of a plan to grow the fleet by 68 aircraft, from 571 at the end of 1997 to 639 at the end of 2001. This, Greenwald said, will add up to a capacity growth of about 3% a year. United last month announced orders for 30 Airbus narrowbodies (DAILY, March 5). The latest order consists of one 747-400, 16 777-200s and six 767-300s. They are to be delivered 1999 through 2002. United's widebodies are powered by PW4000 series engines.
Lockheed Martin Vought Systems has won a U.S. Army contract for work on the Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank (LOSAT) weapon that could total $214 million. The Army said the money will cover the 72-month advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) to further develop the concept. LOSAT combines a hypervelocity missile on a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (Humvee) to give light forces an anti-tank capability early in a battle.
