THE SENATE BUDGET Committee has put off its markup of the fiscal 1999 Federal budget resolution until next Tuesday. The Committee had originally planned to start the markup this week. With the House Republican leadership preferring to wait for an improved economic forecast to boost chances for a deep tax cut, the House Budget Committee has not scheduled any markups.
Adm. Jay L. Johnson, Chief of Naval Operations, yesterday testified that the F/A-18E/F wing-drop problem "is days away from officially being solved" and "as a practical matter it has been solved." Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has testified that he will not allow the release of $2.39 billion in fiscal 1998 funds for the Lot II buy of 20 aircraft later this month until he is satisfied that the problem has been solved (DAILY, Feb. 6).
The new U.S. Air Force concept of keeping conventionally armed bombers on alert similar to the nuclear alert bombers of the Cold War would allow it to strike targets within 24 hours, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Richard Hawley said.
Sabena Belgian airlines signed its contract yesterday for 34 new Airbus Industrie A320 narrowobodies powered by CFM International CFM56-5B/P turbofans, a deal estimated to be worth about US$420 million. Even though Sabena's expertise and background is with Pratt&Whitney, a partner in the International Aero Engines consortium which had offered the V2500 in the A320 engine competition, Sabena partner and major shareholder Swissair - a major CFM operator - had been pressuring the Belgian carrier to go with CFM (DAILY, Feb. 26).
The National Transportation Safety Board is urging beefed-up inspections, the creation of new inspection techniques, thorough checks of alloy suppliers' records and a full-scale critical design review on GE CF6 turbofans following an uncontained HP compressor failure on a Canadian Airlines International flight out of Beijing last fall.
Unionized pilots are vowing to fight airline industry attempts to stretch Extended Twin Operations (ETOPS) out to four hours from today's three-hour limit, citing safety concerns. Following a quarterly meeting in Arlington, Texas, last week, the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations also chided FAA for its "slow pace" in issuing a final rule on hours of service for pilots, and called for required traffic alert and collision avoidance systems (TCAS) on cargo aircraft.
The chiefs of the four services yesterday outlined for the House National Security Committee more than $4 billion in unfunded requirements for fiscal 1999, but HNSC Chairman Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) said the chances of Congress providing the additional funding were remote. "Defense is not on the radar screen in the eyes of the American people as a priority," Spence told the service chiefs at the conclusion of more than three hours of testimony.
The National Reconnaissance Office has devised an integrated signals intelligence (SIGINT) architecture to improve SIGINT performance and cut costs, NRO Director Keith R. Hall told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. The SIGINT architecture "will improve SIGINT performance and avoid costs by consolidating systems, utilizing medium-lift launch vehicles wherever possible and use new satellite and data processing technologies," Hall said in prepared testimony presented at a hearing Wednesday.
NASA's X-38 prototype of an International Space Station Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) passed its first flight test yesterday when it was dropped from NASA's B-52 research plane and used a parafoil for a guided landing at Dryden Flight Research Center, Calif. The lifting body vehicle, an atmospheric test version of the spacecraft that Station crews would use as an emergency "lifeboat" to return to Earth, took eight minutes to descend from its release altitude of 23,000 feet, NASA reported. The parafoil deployed as planned and steered the craft to Earth.
Damage to an F-22 engine isn't expected to delay the fighter's flight test program, Lt. Gen. George K. Muellner, the U.S. Air Force's top acquisition officer, said yesterday. The AF has suspended all engineering and manufacturing testing on the Pratt&Whitney F119 engines after a knife-edged seal in the engine broke (DAILY, March 11). Program officials "certainly don't expect any impact" on the flight test program, Muellner told reporters before testifying before the Senate Armed Services acquisition and technology subcommittee.
The U.S. government told Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman last Friday that one of three paths it was considering taking on the companies' proposed merger was an outright rejection of the $11.6 billion deal, senior government officials said yesterday.
Lucas Aerospace won a spot on Brazilian airframer Embraer's new EMB- 314 ALX program supplying the electric power system. The ALX is the latest version of the popular Embraer Tucano single-engine piston trainer, and while so far there's no firm contract, Brazil's air force says it plans to buy 99 ALXs, and exports are likely. Lucas' system, designed at the company's Aurora, Ohio, facilities, consists of a 400 amp starter-generator and generator control unit, which can be used to start the engine and supply primary DC electric power.
Kuwait Airways purchased three Gulfstream V aircraft for the government of Kuwait, Gulfstream Aerospace announced Tuesday. The order is valued at about $115 million, with deliveries scheduled by the end of 1999. The aircraft will provide worldwide airlift capabilities for senior government officials and also ultra-long range medical evacuation capabilities.
FAA EXPERTS yesterday were studying an incident Tuesday in which Air Force One disappeared from the New York Center radar scope for more than 30 seconds. President Clinton was aboard, but the agency said the incident did not endanger the presidential 747 or other aircraft in the vicinity. Working controllers tied the incident to a new radar site in Gibbsboro, N.J., which has caused problems in the past.
Astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have discovered roughly 100 previously unknown asteroids by searching two years worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope by eye. Over three years the researchers have examined more than 28,000 Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) images, looking for the "wide, looping streaks of light" that asteroids leave as they pass through the camera's field of view when it is focused on higher priority targets.
Boeing signed a five-year contract in Washington yesterday with Russia's Verkhnaya Salda Metallurgical Production Association (VSMPO) for milled titanium products for all Boeing commercial aircraft. The contract, signed in connection with the regular technical cooperation meeting between Vice President Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, is valued at a minimum of $175 million, and could reach $200 million depending on the product mix.
MARS PATHFINDER failed to respond to a last attempt at contract by Jet Propulsion Laboratory controllers Tuesday, bringing to an end a robotic landing mission that produced the first images from the Red Planet's surface in 20 years. The Pathfinder lander and its Sojourner rover have been silent since Oct. 7, the feared victims of Mars' nighttime cold. On Monday controller spent four hours alternately commanding the lander to turn on its transmitter and then listening with a 34-meter Deep Space Network for a response that never came.
Technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., are preparing to submit the first U.S.-built element of the International Space Station to a two-week leak test as pre-flight testing for the unit reaches the halfway point.
An asteroid discovered in December is "virtually certain" to pass close to Earth in October 2028 and while a collision is unlikely, it is "not entirely out of the question," the International Astronomical Union reported yesterday.
BOEING FORMALLY DELIVERED the company's first two 767 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to the government of Japan yesterday, the company announced. The second of the four 767s will be delivered in early 1999. "The 767 platform gives us a system that will meet our defense requirements far into the next century," Col. Kunio Orita, Japan Air Self Defense Force AWACS program manager, said in a prepared statement.
Beginning this fall for a six-month period, 120 vehicles in southern Minnesota will be equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment in a project designed to help 911 and emergency response officials react faster and more efficiently to vehicle crashes, Calspan announced Tuesday.
House Appropriations national security subcommittee chairman Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.) said yesterday his panel will approve the Administration's $3.8 billion defense and disaster relief supplemental request without offsets as President Clinton wanted, but he cautioned that the outcome in the full Appropriations Committee remained uncertain.
Boeing has "hit some bumps in the road recently," but is well positioned for the future, a senior executive told investors at the Piper Jaffray 12th Annual Pacific Northwest Investor Conference in Seattle on Tuesday. The company looks strong due to "our strong customer and market bases, broad product range, new product development, process improvements and talented people," Ron Woodard, president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, said in a prepared statement.
A $5 million satellite launched last month that was designed and built primarily by undergraduate students at the University of Colorado-Boulder is functioning normally and returning data, according to project scientists at the school's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
