New agreements on certification have brightened the future of Indonesia's IPTN N-250 turboprop, which is participating in the Asian Aerospace '98 show in Singapore. The U.S. FAA refused to accept the first N-250 prototype as a certification vehicle because of inconsistent documentation, so IPTN switched priorities to obtaining European JAA qualification first. The JAA has now completed an audit of IPTN's Bandung plant and agreed to a flight test program which will see the aircraft certified in Europe and the U.S. before the end of next year.
Lucas Aerospace is seeing success with a new gas turbine fuel control system which keeps fuel flow response high throughout the engine's operating envelope while keeping temperature increases down. The company, a unit of automotive and aerospace conglomerate Lucas Varity, demonstrated reduced fuel temperature rise - down by as much as 60% - with good engine response using its system, which combines a new fuel control with a Vickers split discharge vane pump.
The General Accounting Office sustained a Sprint Communications Co. protest of a decision by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to modify its contract with MCI Telecommunications Corp. for bandwidth management and switching services for the Defense Information System Network (DISN). Sprint argued that the requirement for the modification exceeded the scope of the original contract, and that DISA was required to hold a competition for the transmission services.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, obviously annoyed by the National Defense Panel's recommendation for a lighter version of the Army's M1 tank, told a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing yesterday that there is no such tank today. Testifying on the Army's $64.3 billion fiscal 1999 budget request, Reimer told the national security subcommittee that if somebody could come up with a 20-ton tank that could do everything that the 60-ton M1A2 can do, he would say, "sign me up right away."
Pratt&Whitney is in its best financial health in years, and company president Karl J. Krapek intends to take maximum advantage of P&W's new fighting trim and - for the time being - dominant position in commercial installed base. "Today P&W has the financial capability to become a full product line supplier like we haven't always been in the past," Krapek tells AP affiliate Show News here. "We have the financial flexibility now to go on to the attack, to go for placement on any airplane."
Delays related to the Light Helicopter Turbine Engine Co. CTP800-4T coupled turboprop system have reportedly held up first flight of the big Ayres Loadmaster until early next year. Managers had hoped to fly the aircraft in October. The -4T system uses two CTP800s - civil versions of the T800 turboshaft originally developed for the U.S. Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter - to drive a single prop.
Airbus Industrie will be in a position to launch both the 100-seat AE31X and the 555-seat A3XX at the end of the year after working out the "business case" for the former and technical questions involving the latter, according to Airbus Managing Director Jean Pierson.
Orbital Sciences Corp. orbited an experimental low Earth orbit Ka-band satellite for Teledesic and a NASA-sponsored student satellite early yesterday on the 20th Pegasus rocket to launch since it was introduced in 1990. Dropped at about 2:05 a.m. EST from Orbital's L-1011 carrier aircraft, operating out of Vandenberg AFB, Calif., the Pegasus placed Teledesic's T1 satellite and the Student Nitric Oxide Explorer (SNOE) in 97.7-degree orbits at an altitude of about 565 kilometers.
Rolls-Royce, Singapore Airlines Engineering Co. and Hong Kong Aero Engine Services Ltd. agreed to launch a joint venture by 1999 to overhaul and maintain Rolls-Royce Trent engines in the Asia/Pacific region at a facility near Singapore's Changi Airport. HAESL, itself a joint venture between Rolls-Royce and Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co., will own 20% of the new venture. Rolls will own 30% and SIAEC 50%. Full-scale operations are slated for 2000, and capacity should eventually reach 200 engines per year.
Boeing is working with several Asian customers to defer airliner deliveries to the region, but believes the monetary crisis there will be short-lived, according to Boeing Commercial vice president Larry Dickenson. Boeing insists that no Asian orders for its jets have been canceled to date, although airlines in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines have been hard-hit.
STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS, Trenton, N.J. - formerly the Government Technology Div. of Base Ten Systems - won its first production contract from Boeing Co. for its F/A-18 Interference Blanker Unit (IBU). The company said the unit provides the blanking interface between onboard transmitters and receivers. It said the first 32 IBUs will be installed in various F/A- 18C/D aircraft as well as the first 12 F/A-18E/Fs.
Two years after P&W small engine specialist Pratt&Whitney Canada opened its Customer Support Center in Singapore, fully 95% of the needs of customers in Asia-Pacific can be handled locally, says P&WC Chairman and CEO David Caplan.
NASA is studying whether it will be possible to mount a Russian NK-39 rocket engine left over from the Soviet moon program of the 1960s on the second X-34 reusable launch vehicle prototype it has ordered from Orbital Sciences Corp. as a way to increase performance during the X-34 flight test program.
Fokker Services is getting ready to launch work on a re-engined version of the F28, powered by the Rolls-Royce Tay 620. About 150 F28s worldwide could get the new engines - 100 F28 Mk. 4000s and another 50 low- time Mk. 1000s - but executives here say the company needs 25 orders from two customers to go ahead with the project. An aircraft could fly by mid- 1999 and be ready for service in the second quarter of 2000.
GE Engine Services and Taiwan's Eva Airways intend to form an Eva- controlled joint venture, Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corp., to overhaul engines and maintain aircraft for Eva and other Asia/Pacific airlines. The companies signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday in Taipei and expect to close the deal in June. The joint venture will be located at Eva maintenance facilities in Taiwan.
U.K. Defense Procurement Minister Lord Gilbert said the Netherlands should join in the restructuring of the European defense industry. "The procurement policies of the U.K. are very close to those of the Netherlands," Gilbert said. "Both governments believe in competition and we have similar attitudes toward the ownership of defense industries," he told the first Anglo-Dutch Defense Industries Symposium at the Hague.
Jacques Gansler, the new Defense Dept. under secretary for acquisition and technology, has promised to investigate whether the Navy Upper Tier missile defense system is being constrained by a lack of funding.
The Pentagon will send a fiscal year 1998 emergency supplemental request to Capitol Hill by next Friday, requesting that it be approved by April 1, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee yesterday. The supplemental is expected to contain about $600 million to cover the costs of Bosnia operations and at least another $600 million for the buildup of U.S. forces in the confrontation with Iraq (DAILY, Feb. 25).
Lockheed Martin's planned acquisition of Northrop Grumman was approved by stockholders of both companies yesterday. The deal, which has not yet been approved by the U.S. government, should be completed by the end of the first quarter, Lockheed Martin said. It would bring the number of major U.S. aerospace companies to three - Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Lockheed Martin said preliminary results of a vote by stockholders in a special meeting in Orlando, Fla., showed that more than 98% of the shares cast were in favor of the deal.
United Airlines was named sole-source overhauler for AlliedSignal 331- 500 auxiliary power units on Boeing 777 widebody twins under a teaming agreement disclosed here. Work will be done at United's big maintenance center at San Francisco International Airport, while AlliedSignal will continue to support the APU at sites in Singapore and Germany.
The U.S. Air Force is underfunded by about $5 billion, with the overall Pentagon budget between $2 billion and $20 billion below where it needs to be to complete, Gen. Richard Hawley, commander of the AF's Air Combat Command, said yesterday. "We do, in fact need more billions to make the Air Force whole again," Hawley said on the first day of the Air Force Association's annual Air Warfare Symposium here. "I simply ask, give us the resources to do the work" the service must do, he added.
Pratt and Whitney expects to have the first customer for its PW8000 geared turbofan signed up within a year and the engine certificated in 36 months, although the company's internal target is 30 months, President Karl Krapek says. Krapek also dropped broad hints during an address here that the engine's first application is likely to be some version of Airbus Industrie's A320 single-aisle twin, noting that a geared turbofan could turn the A320 into a transcontinental airplane.
Australia has certificated the British Aerospace Jetstream 41 turboprop to operate from narrow runways and gravel strips. Trials were completed at Leinster and Leonora in Western Australia, while BAe's Engineering Group in Scotland designed a gravel protection kit and completed flight manual changes.
