ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS named Gilbert Decker and Michael T. Smith to its board of directors. Decker is a consultant and served as assistant secretary of the Army for research, development and acquisition from 1994 to 1997. Smith is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Hughes Electronics Corp.
U.S. AIR FORCE F-16s had their lowest mishap rate ever in 1997, with 2.7 losses per 100,000 flight hours, F-16 prime contractor Lockheed Martin said yesterday. The record low rate cuts the average loss rate since the program's inception to 4.2 losses per 100,000 flight hours.
Congress returns for a new session today, a scant 74 days after it adjourned, but in that short period the leadership of defense and aerospace panels has begun to shift, as have the issues. Since the last session ended on Nov. 13, there have been these announced changes in the major players: -- Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who will be 96 in December, announced that at the end of this year he will step down as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This would elevate Sen. John W. Warner (R- Va.) to the chairmanship.
Representatives of all of the International Space Station partners are set to sign the agreements that will govern operation of the orbiting facility well into the next century, concluding multilateral negotiations restarted after the U.S. invited Russia to join the project in 1993.
Boeing Co. posted its highest one-year sales ever in 1997, but charges related to the commercial airplane production program led the company's first full-year loss in 50 years. "The financial performance over the past six months was not good, but the production recovery plan is on track and we are seeing results," Phil Condit, chairman and chief executive officer, said yesterday during a telephone press conference. "We think 1998 will be a year of dramatically improved performance."
Lockheed Martin signed a $50 million contract to develop the Gulf of Suez Vessel Traffic Information Management System (VTIMS), the company announced yesterday. The contact was sponsored by Egypt's Minister of Transport and Communications, Rear Admiral Hani Hosni, and signed by Yassin Mohamed Ali, president, Ports and Lighthouse Authority, and Daniel Spoor, vice president, traffic management, for Lockheed Martin Ocean, Radar&Sensor Systems. The contract finalized an agreement signed in November.
Although the Administration is slated to make a decision in the year 2000 on whether to deploy a national missile defense (NMD) by 2003, some long-lead procurement may be needed a few months before the final decision is made. "You can't just wait and deploy," Bill Loomis, president and chief executive office of United Missile Defense Company, told The DAILY in an interview yesterday. "In order to be able to get [an NMD system] out in 2003 there are some long-lead kind of things that have to be looked at and decided even before the decision in 2000."
The U.S. Army is looking to develop an improved gun turret and ammunition to decrease the weapons load on the AH-64D Apache Longbow in favor of adding a removable internal fuel tank that would increase the attack helicopter's range. The Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM), Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) is launching a program known as the Multi-role Aviation Weapon System to develop the improved 30mm round and a precision electric turret.
The U.S. Air Force this week demonstrated the Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle in a Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) role to show that UAVs can be used to providing targeting data to aircraft flying lethal SEAD missions. "The emphasis was on the concept of using UAVs in the SEAD role," Col. Joe Grasso, the Air Force's UAV Battlelab commander, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the test range near Cannon AFB, N.M. Two demonstrations were conducted Jan. 20-21.
With its planned absorption by Lockheed Martin scheduled to close in the first quarter of 1998, Northrop Grumman Corp. set records with its 1997 sales and income, and operating profit topped $1 billion for the first time in the company's history, Northrop Grumman announced yesterday. Earnings jumped 54% to $407 million, compared to 1996 earnings of $264 million. Earnings in 1996 were affected by a pretax charge of $90 million related to plant closures and a pretax gain of $28 million from the sales of shares of ETEC Systems Inc.
A Defense Dept. panel assessing the F/A-18E/F wing drop problem is validating Navy statements that necessary fixes have been identified, but it notes that the Navy may not have given itself enough time to optimize the aircraft's configuration. "The flight test points flown so far with some of these most promising fixes have exhibited acceptable characteristics with essentially no wing drop," the panel says in a draft of its report. The panel also backed the Navy's assertion that the cost impact of the changes will be "relatively minor."
GKN Westland Helicopters won a $33 million contract from the Royal Danish Air Force (RDAF) to modernize eight Lynx MK 80/90 to Super Lynx 100 standard by building eight new airframes. The previously upgraded Rolls-Royce Gem 42 turboshaft engines, hydraulic systems, flying controls, avionics and electrical systems of the existing Lynxes will be transferred to the new frames. Upgrades and modifications to the main rotor blades, tail rotor and fuel systems will complete the conversion to Super Lynx standards.
The Pentagon has funded future U.S. Air Force work with the Midcourse Space Experiment as part of a new 1998 Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. The project, known as the Space-based Space Surveillance Operations effort, was one of five new ACTD programs named yesterday that adds to a list of 9 ACTDs the Pentagon unveiled earlier this fiscal year. The program gets a share of the $81.1 million Congress approved for new and continuing ACTDs in FY '98.
The FAA wants to develop partnerships with commercial and government entities to develop the Local Area Augmentation System, and has set a briefing March 2 on its plans with details to be published Feb. 16 on the Internet. The agency said it will "contribute partial financial resources" to the project, but only for Stage Two of LAAS development. "This contribution shall be made as milestone payments for satisfactory development of LAAS," it said.
A government-to-government agreement linking the U.S. to the British- French-German TRIMILSATCOM program is still being worked and may be finalized in the next year, according to a Pentagon official. "I believe, based on informal and formal conversations, that the three partners would like to have an agreement [with the U.S.] sometime in the next 12 months," Gil Klinger, the Pentagon's acting under secretary for space, said in an interview yesterday. He noted, however, that "we aren't the ones setting the timelines here."
The Navy and Marine Corps are expected to finalize a set of requirements in the near future for a Vertical Take-off and Landing unmanned aerial vehicle that would replace requirements that date back to 1992. The Operational Requirements Document (ORD) is slated to be finalized in the next month or two, Lt. Col. Mark King said last week. King works VTOL UAV issues for the Navy's expeditionary warfare directorate. He noted that in addition to the Navy and Marine Corps, the Army and Air Force have shown interest in the program.
President Boris Yeltsin has assigned the civilian Russian Space Agency responsibility for all strategic missile development in Russia and the military use of rocket and space technology, with the Ministry of Defense recast in the role of customer to the RSA.
Airbus Industrie's board yesterday named Noel Forgeard, currently president of Lagardere and chief executive of Matra Hautes Technologies, to succeed Jean Pierson as managing director effective April 1. Dietrich Russell, a member of the Daimler-Benz Aerospace board of management, will take over from Volker von Tien as chief operating officer. Manfred Bischoff, currently chairman of the management board of Daimler-Benz Aerospace, was named chairman of the Airbus supervisory board, succeeding the retiring Edzard Reuter.
Raytheon has scheduled a conference for employees in California and Massachusetts today at 1 p.m. EST that is expected to produce layoff announcements. Sources have suggested that the announcement will involve layoffs at some of the Hughes defense operations in California recently acquired by Raytheon. Raytheon completed the Hughes merger and formed Raytheon Systems Co. last month (DAILY, Dec. 19, 1997).
The Eurofighter has passed four more milestones in its development program, the U.K. Ministry of Defense announced Wednesday. The aircraft recently few at Mach II for the first time; completed a series of mid-air refueling tests with a Royal Air Force VC10 tanker; fired missiles, and flew with an external tank. "The latest progress in this major defense project is very encouraging and I am delighted that Eurofighter is well on its way to active service," Defense Secretary George Robertson said in a prepared statement.
Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG (Dasa) said this week that total revenues rose 20% from 1996 sales of DM 12.7 billion ($7 billion) to DM 15.2 billion ($8.3 billion) for 1997. Sales for the Airbus business rose 40% in 1997 to DM 4.9 billion ($2.7 billion), and the unit set a record for incoming orders with 460, up from 320 in 1996.
The European Commission has adopted a policy it said will ensure a "full European role" in developing a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). European Transport Commission Neil Kinnock said Wednesday the market is "developing so fast that we need to develop now a strategy for the future" or be "locked out of a market estimated to be worth $50 billion by 2005."
The next test of Patriot PAC-3 missile has been pushed back from next month until the spring because flight preparations have taken longer than anticipated, the Army reported. The PAC-3 delay is not related to problems with software or missile hardware, Pam Rogers, Army Aviation and Missile Command spokeswoman, told The DAILY yesterday. Program engineers are conducting routine flight preparation checks on software and other parts of the missile, and that is taking longer than originally expected, she said.
