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.
Explaining one of the main reasons behind the Pentagon's decision to appeal the Court of Federal Claims ruling on the A-12 aircraft case, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said the Pentagon's argument on the issue was never seriously examined. "The case we make and the case we tried to make but weren't allowed to make is that the manufacturers failed to comply with the terms and agreements in the contract," Hamre said at a breakfast meting with reporters in Washington. "They were supposed to deliver an airplane that could fly."
Boeing Co. will sell its single-engine commercial helicopter business to Bell Helicopter Textron, the companies announced yesterday. Boeing said two weeks ago that it would sell its commercial helicopter business, and observers speculated that Textron would be the buyer (DAILY, Feb. 13). Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but the companies said it includes all variants of the MD 500 Series and MD 600N single-engine helicopters, plus the technology that eliminates the tail rotor.
Despite Asian economic and currency troubles, Daimler-Benz Aerospace remains "highly interested" in the region and believes it has good long- term potential. DASA, Germany's largest aerospace company, actually is intensifying its efforts in the region, both in expanding existing business relationships as well as fostering new ones, according to the company.
Saudi Arabia favors the Lockheed Martin F-16C/D to replace its fleet of Northrop F-5E/Fs, Lockheed Martin F-16 program Vice President Robert T. Elrod told Aviation Week Asian Aerospace '98 Show News. A Royal Saudi Air Force order for up to 90 new Fighting Falcons meeting USAF Block 50 standards is expected, although the contract time- scale has still to be finalized.
NASA is considering the development of two free-flying spacecraft that would accompany the International Space Station on orbit as a way to increase its scientific "take" in the long run, but some members of Congress are unhappy that NASA needs to pull more money from science in the short run to get the Station off the ground.
Asia's economic problems are hurting the regional airliner market there, according to Jim Robinson, president of Fairchild Dornier, the parent of Fairchild Aerospace. "We've spent a lot of time talking to potential Asian customers, but I would have to say that it is difficult to get them to focus right now," he said.
LITTON INDUSTRIES said its LTN-101 navigation system, with the LTN-2001 GPS receiver, has been selected by China Southern Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Silk Air of Singapore and Zheiang Airlines for their A319, A320 and A321 jets.
Sabena Belgian Airlines ended three months of speculation with announcement here yesterday of a choice of engine for its 34 new Airbus aircraft: the CFM56. The order, worth up to 15 billion Belgian francs ($420 million), took few industry observers by surprise since the CFM International engine is used by Swissair, Sabena's partner and major shareholder. Swissair has applied increasing pressure on Sabena to harmonize the two fleets, despite misgivings by unions representing Sabena's technical maintenance and repair staff.
Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) will begin development of an unmanned and non-powered experimental vehicle for aerodynamic tests for a future SST. The program will costs about $21.1 million. The 11 meter-long, 1,800-kilogram aluminum vehicle will be placed at altitudes between 13,000 and 18,000 meters by a launch vehicle and will then glide back to its home base. The NAL plans four tests in 2001-2002, and while no launch vehicle or site has been determined, the likely scenario will be to use J-1 launch vehicles at the Woomera, Australia, range.
Singapore Technologies may introduce an unmanned aerial vehicle as it strives to demonstrate capabilities of its newly restructured core businesses. ST Aerospace makes up about half the revenues, profits and manpower of a five-part Singapore Technologies Engineering Group that resulted from merging Aero, Automotive, Marine, Electronics and New Businesses last December into $2 billion-capitalized, publicly traded company that earned profits of $60.2 million during the first half of 1997.
Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is taking another look at whether military aircraft should be equipped with Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS), Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre told reporters yesterday. Following a report on the CBS news show "60 Minutes," in which the Air Force was criticized for not incorporating TCAS into its fleet, Defense Secretary William Cohen on Monday told Ralston to give the matter another look, Hamre said at a breakfast meeting in Washington.
Boeing will double production of the Next-Generation 737 this spring, while recovery from production problems on this aircraft continues to outpace the schedule the company announced last fall, Boeing executives said yesterday. Production of Next-Generation 737s will go from seven to 14 per month this spring (with Aircraft No. 53), and to 21 in the fall. Boeing is also refurbishing the 28 Next-Generation 737s built during the certification process.
The Pentagon over the past two weeks has suffered its most widespread and sophisticated cyber attack to date, giving it a "wakeup call" to put better security fences in place, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said yesterday. "It was in many ways a wakeup call and we've been turning out some dramatically accelerated Department plans to get on top of this problem, which is a very serious problem," Hamre said at a breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson said yesterday that a porous wing fairing is "probably the leading candidate" for eliminating the F/A-18E/F's wing-drop problem. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen warned earlier this month that he would not approve release of $2.39 billion in fiscal 1998 procurement funding for the Lot II buy of 20 Super Hornets until he is satisfied that problem - uncommanded bank angles because of asymmetric lift - is fixed (DAILY, Feb. 6).
The Bell Boeing industry team building the MV-22 Osprey projects $330 million savings if it is allowed to build almost 150 of the aircraft under a multi-year procurement arrangement early next century. The multi-year would begin with the first lot of full-rate production in fiscal 2001 and run through FY '05, Gregory McAdams, the team's requirements chief, said here yesterday. The total cost to buy the 143 planes in annual procurement lots would be around $7 billion.
NASA yesterday terminated the troubled Clark mission "for the convenience of the government," shutting down the once-trailblazing small satellite project Orbital Sciences Corp. inherited when it bought CTA. Orbital had struggled to pull the spacecraft together, but was unable to convince NASA that it could keep the project within the 15% cost growth cap that normally triggers a termination under NASA's policy of holding contractors accountable for costs. With the "convenience of the government" approach NASA took, Orbital avoided a default termination.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright yesterday admitted that the U.S. is "concerned about the slow pace of action" by the Russian Duma on ratification of the START II arms reduction treaty. Albright's comment came during her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on NATO expansion. She mentioned both areas where the U.S. and Russia were cooperating and areas of disagreement, which included START II ratification.
Boeing's Phantom Works will develop a solar-thermal orbital transfer vehicle for the Air Force under a $48 million, four-year contract from the AF Research Laboratory at Kirtland AFB, N.M., the company said yesterday. Boeing will design, develop and integrate a Solar Orbit Transfer Vehicle (SOTV) space experiment that could lead to an operational SOTV. Such a vehicle would lower the cost of placing payloads in high orbits by reducing takeoff weight on the ground.
The U.S. and U.K. governments have signed an agreement to share information on the British Aerospace-developed Broach warhead if the U.S. decides to buy the system for one or more of its standoff missiles. The agreement will provide the U.S. access to modelling and mission planning information for Broach that was funded by the British Ministry of Defense. The U.S. will get data from those models as it evaluates the warhead. Once the U.S. decides to buy Broach it would get the source code to run the models itself.
Israel Aircraft Industries' Malat Unmanned Aerial Vehicles division is showing the new Searcher Mk. II UAV for the first time in Singapore, with an operational aircraft on display.
