PANAMSAT CORP. has opened a new regional office in Tokyo to handle business in Japan generated by two new satellites it intends to launch this year - PAS-7 for the Indian Ocean and PAS-8 for the Pacific. The company already serves Japan with two other satellites, and holds a Japanese Type One carrier license that lets customers in Japan directly access its spacecraft.
The Middle East is more volatile than it was a year ago and the problem of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has worsened, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday.
HUGHES ELECTRON DYNAMICS DIV., Torrance, Calif., has built a thermal vacuum chamber to test the xenon ion propulsion system (XIPS) that it is installing on Hughes HS 702 satellites to save launch weight. The electric propulsion devices allow satellite designers to cut the propellant load for station-keeping by as much as 90%, saving on launch costs.
ROTARY ROCKET CO., a startup trying to built a single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle that will use the principle of autorotation for a soft landing after reentry, has retained Barclays Capital to handle a private equity placement. The Silicon Valley company hopes to raise $30 million to $35 million to develop and flight test its lightweight composite "Roton" rocket.
Textron Inc. reported earnings of $558 million on sales of $10.5 billion during 1997. During 1996, it earned $253 million, after a $229 million loss from discontinued operations, on sales of $9.3 billion.
NASA safety experts have concluded that the work force reductions underway at United Space Alliance will not compromise the safety of Space Shuttle operations, which USA handles as prime contractor for day-to-day Shuttle operations. "NASA's Safety and Mission Assurance Risk Assessment team concurs with the process USA used to determine reductions in their work force," the space agency said in a statement released yesterday. Overall, USA is eliminating some 850 jobs in Texas and Florida through attrition and layoffs (DAILY, Jan. 16).
STROBE TALBOTT, the No. 2 official at the U.S. State Dept., will sign the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) today setting ground rules for International Space Station operations. Secretary Madeleine Albright was to have signed the documents (DAILY, Jan. 28), but she left Washington last night on a sudden mission to consult allies about the situation in Iraq. Talbott will sign the IGA in his capacity as acting secretary of state while Albright is out of the country.
NASA officials yesterday sent a show cause notice to Orbital Sciences Corp., directing the Dulles, Va.-based company to explain in writing why its contract to build the Clark Earth-observing satellite "should not be terminated for default."
JOHN C. STUELPNAGEL, has been named director and deputy for science and technology of Northrop Grumman's Corp.'s Electronic Sensors and Systems Div., with responsibility for the division's Science and Technology Center in Pittsburgh. He succeeds Clifford K. Jones, who is retiring. Stuelpnagel joined the company in 1964 and has spent his career in the development and system application of advanced technology. His most recent position was director of research and development for ESSD in Baltimore.
PEMCO WORLD AIR SERVICES, Denver, won a contract from Air Jamaica to provide maintenance for six Airbus A310s. The work, which runs from February through November 1998, will be performed at Pemco's Dothan, Ala., facility.
Military aircraft buys will take up $1.9 billion of the Japan Defense Agency's $38.5 billion budget approved for fiscal year 1998, which begins April 1. The amount marks a $107 million decline from FY '97, when the Defense Agency bought 56 aircraft. Request Apprvd Bought Unit Total Aircraft Type for 1998 for 1998 in 1997 cost cost The Ground Self-Defense Force Bell/Fuji AH-1S assault
U.S. AIR FORCE will take delivery Friday at Whiteman AFB, Mo., of its fourth Block 30 B-2 bomber, the Spirit of Missouri. Northrop Grumman only recently completed the approximately two-year upgrade of the bomber that was first delivered in the Block 10 configuration. The new aircraft will be assigned to the 325th Bomb Squadron. The Spirit of Missouri in late 1993 became the first B-2 delivered to the Air Force.
Hughes Space and Communications will build the next two Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) under a $423.1 million NASA contract announced yesterday. The El Segundo, Calif.-based satellite-maker beat out rivals Space Systems/Loral and Lockheed Martin for the lucrative job, which carries options for two more weather satellites costing another $375.9 million. GOES platforms monitor the U.S. from geostationary orbit, tracking hurricanes and other storm systems.
ELBIT SYSTEMS LTD. of Israel said it has formed a joint venture with S.C. Aerostar S.A. Bacau of Romania to make and support advanced electronic equipment. The joint venture, A.E. Electronics S.A., will be located in Romania and have an initial capitalization of about $5 million. Elbit will hold the majority stake in the company. Elbit has worked with Aerostar since 1993, when Elbit won a contract to upgrade Romanian MiG-21s.
Senate Armed Services air-land subcommittee chairman Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said yesterday the committee's review of the National Defense Panel's recommendations for a transforming strategy could lead to cancellations of some programs and acceleration of others, but he stopped short of naming targets.
The U.S. Army is still grappling with revised inflation estimates in fiscal 1999 that have resulted in a $128 million funding shortfall in the AH-64D Apache helicopter program through the future years defense plan. The lower inflation estimates passed from the White House Office of Management and Budget to the Pentagon mean modernization programs are forced to relinquish some of the money they were counting on being able to spend (DAILY, Jan. 14).
The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Air Force are expected in coming weeks to approve continued development and production of the Advanced Unitary Penetrator, a variant of the 2,000-pound BLU-109 bomb warhead. "We're real happy with the test results we have" for the AUP and the Hard Target Smart Fuze that would be used on the warhead, said Frank Robbins, the Air Force's precision strike program director. The AUP in sled tests has shown that it can go through 11 feet of reinforced concrete.
Payment by the U.S. of more than $11 billion for international peacekeeping efforts between 1992 and 1997 has hurt military readiness, House National Security Committee member Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), said yesterday. Releasing a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on U.S. peacekeeping costs, Bartlett said today's United Nations missions "contribute little or nothing to our national security." The report says the U.S. paid more than 54% of U.N. peacekeeping costs in 1995 alone.
EGYPTAIR signed a firm order for two A340-600s and took options on two more, Airbus said yesterday. The carrier, a launch customer for the aircraft, operates three A340s and also flies other Airbus aircraft.
While Boeing Co. last week took a $1.4 billion fourth quarter charge on the commercial jetliner products of the former McDonnell Douglas Corp., a Boeing executive said no such charge was needed from the acquisition of the space and defense businesses of MDC and Rockwell International because the fit was so good. "It's just been a real great thing," said John A. McLuckey, leader of Boeing's 27,000-person Space Systems unit.
The U.S. Navy this fiscal year is beginning the requirements definition process for the Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) that is supposed to become the replacement for its P-3s, EP-3s, E-6s, and C-130s. Funds to begin the study have only recently been released, Cdr. Brendan Gray, the Navy's P-3 requirements officer said told industry representatives here yesterday at a meeting in this town near NAS Patuxent River, Md. "We know we need a new aircraft," he said during the first briefing on the project.
Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.) said yesterday that he wanted to hear from the U.S. Navy before accepting a General Accounting Office recommendation that production of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet be halted until the Navy fixes the plane's wing-drop problem and several others. Asked by The DAILY in an interview on Capitol Hill whether production of the Super Hornet should be halted as GAO recommended, Young replied: "I would like to hear what the Navy has to say about it first."
The U.S. Army is considering increasing its buy of Common Ground Stations even though one of the main sensors that feeds information to CGS, the Joint STARS, is being bought in fewer numbers. The Army's CGS procurement objective is 95 systems, but it is working on a requirement "that will raise that number to approximately 117 systems," Col. Alfred H. Elliott, the Army's chief of Intelligence and Electronic Warfare, said in an interview.
Russia's government has authorized six more industrial companies to market their defense-related products abroad, nearly doubling the number of companies which are allowed to sell military technology and hardware without mediation from the Rosvooruzhenie state monopoly. The new list, compiled by the Coordinating Interdepartmental Council on Military-technical Cooperation with Foreign States and approved by the Government, includes: -- Open Stock Company "Murom Machine-building plant" (Murom, Vladimir region);
