Based on firm engine orders, the Big Three enginemakers are more or less neck-and-neck in the Boeing 777 market, but half a decade into the program small order volumes mean a key win or option exercises could quickly tip the balance.
Montreal-based Pratt&Whitney Canada is slowly returning to normal operations in the aftermath of last week's widespread ice storms, which left millions in Canada and upstate New York without heat or power in one of the worst winters to hit the northern reaches of North America in decades.
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) will team with Russia's Kamov to compete for a $3.5 billion contract for 145 attack helicopters for Turkey, an IAI spokesman confirmed yesterday. The pairing will offer the Ka-50 single-seat close support helicopter. The Turkish government set a Jan. 31 deadline to accept bids. Other competitors include Boeing's Apache, Bell Textron's Cobra, Augusta's A-129, Rostvertol's Mi-24 and Mi-28, and Eurocopter's Tiger. IAI is already modernizing Turkey's F-4 fighters and won another contract to upgrade its F-5s.
United Space Alliance, the Lockheed Martin/Boeing joint venture that operates the Space Shuttle fleet for NASA, plans to cut its workforce by 850 in Florida and Texas by mid-February to accommodate a $100 million cut in Shuttle spending. Along with the job cuts - 650 at Kennedy Space Center and 200 in Houston - the planned launch of the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) and perhaps an International Space Station launch as well will "shift to the right," according to USA spokesman Jeff Carr.
The Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office, in an apparent first, will lend its satellite expertise to the Federal Aviation Administration as FAA buys the space segment of the Wide Area Augmentation System.
The U.S. Navy has formalized its agreement with Germany and Italy to upgrade the AGM-88B High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) with a precision guidance kit. The program will add an inertial navigation system and Global Positioning System to the missile (DAILY, Nov. 4, 1996). The development phase is expected to run until 2002; a production phase of about six years would follow.
As the U.S. military services grapple with the best way to use commercial space assets in combat scenarios, industry will be called upon to help formulate fresh doctrinal thinking, Army Space and Missile Defense Command Chief Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson III said yesterday. "We definitely have to include industry, there is no doubt in my mind about that," Anderson said at a luncheon in Washington sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' National Capital Section.
Lucas Aerospace is taking a risk-and-revenue sharing stake in Rolls- Royce's Trent bigfan program, investing some 75 million pounds (US$118 million) over the next four years and supplying complete electronic control systems in exchange for between 3% and 5% of the revenues from Trent engine series sales. Deliveries start in 2000, and Lucas estimates that once the program is mature it will generate some 50 million pounds in revenue for Lucas each year.
EDMUND PINTO, Aviation Week Newsletters publisher, will leave The McGraw- Hill Companies to become a managing director of GKMG Consulting Services Inc., Washington, D.C., effective Feb. 4. Pinto wrote for the Hartford (Conn.) Times and the Associated Press early in his career and later was a senior Senate aide, an assistant administrator of FAA and a senior VP of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He came to McGraw-Hill in 1989 as editor of Airports and became editor of Aviation Daily in 1990 and publisher of the aviation and aerospace newsletters in 1993.
Boeing has teamed with Hughes Space and Communications, Lucent Technologies and Microsoft Corp. to bid for NASA's multi-billion dollar Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC) due to be awarded later this year.
VIRTUAL PROTOTYPES INC., Montreal, said Boeing Co. has signed a volume purchase agreement for VAPS software tools. It said Boeing would use VAPS to prototype avionics graphical displays.
ALLIEDSIGNAL completed its acquisition of the Hardware Group and PacAero unit of Banner Aerospace, the companies announced yesterday. The purchase price was about $345 million in AlliedSignal common stock, subject to adjustment (DAILY, Dec. 9, 1997).
Lockheed Martin has won a $46 million contract from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to participate in the third phase of the Affordable Multi-Missile Manufacturing (AM3) program, joining Raytheon which won a contract for the same effort last year. The Lockheed Martin AM3 consortium includes Lockheed Martin's Vought unit, Dallas, and its Electronics&Missiles division, Orlando. Honeywell is also part of the team.
Pratt&Whitney and Seven Q Seven have signed an agreement to certify the P&W JT8D-200 engine on the Boeing 707 as part of a re-engining program that could involve more than 500 707-320 and KC-135 aircraft worldwide. The 707 is now powered by P&W's JT3D.
U.S. Astronaut David Wolf will conduct a four-hour spacewalk at Russia's Mir orbital station beginning at about 3:45 p.m. EST today, expanding U.S. experience in the Russian spacesuit while sampling the effects of space exposure on materials in the hull of the 13-year-old spacecraft.
Scientists examining calibration data from NASA's Lunar Prospector have found its quality surpasses even their most optimistic expectations, while engineers have found its course corrections so accurate that enough fuel remains for a service life four times longer than the one-year mission originally planned.
Franklin Spinney of the Pentagon's Program Analysis and Evaluation office yesterday called the Navy's potential fixes for the F/A-18E/F wing drop problem "band aids," but said they were preferable to redesigning all or part of the wing, which would temporarily halt production. "We have no idea how big these penalties will be" in terms of decreasing lift and increasing drag, he said in an interview in his Pentagon office. "We don't know. We haven't done enough tests with them."
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to launch the AV-8B remanufacture multi- year procurement program this fiscal year, reflecting congressional interest in beginning as soon as possible. The Marines initially planned to start the program in FY '99. The program would cover 44 aircraft between FY '98 and '01, Naval Air Systems Command said in a Jan. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Life cycle cost of the Wide Area Augmentation System through 2016 is now estimated by the FAA at more than $3 billion, 25% higher than the $2.4 billion cost projected by the agency to Congress last fall. WAAS, intended to replace ground-based aircraft navigation equipment with satellites, began as a $500 million program. The latest estimate was presented last Friday by FAA to the WAAS Joint Resources Council, an FAA-industry group. The agency said at the meeting that it now agrees with many industry officials who insist on a backup.
Allegheny Teledyne Inc., Pittsburgh, is in discussions to acquire the aerospace division of Sheffield Forgemasters Group Ltd. Details of the expected cash transaction were not disclosed. Sheffield's aerospace division consists of three companies in the U.K. - Special Melted Products Ltd., Jessop Saville Ltd., and Commercial Testing Services Ltd. Allegheny Teledyne, a group of technology-based manufacturing companies, concentrates on specialty metals, and has product lines in aerospace, electronic, industrial and consumer products.
While changes to the wing of the F/A-18E/F strike fighter to eliminate a wing drop problem could decrease the fighter's potential range, U.S. Navy officials are confident the plane will still meet its stated operational requirements in this area. The Super Hornet must meet a 410 nautical mile range with an AIM-9 missile on each wingtip. Capt. James B. Godwin III, the F/A-18E/F program director, told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that the aircraft is achieving a range greater than that, so there is margin in that area.
Lower inflation estimates recently handed to the Pentagon by the White House Office of Management and Budget are forcing procurement programs to make do with less than expected, and in the case of the U.S. Army's AH-64D Apache Longbow program the shortfall is $128 million.
A U.K. delegation led by Board of Trade President Margaret Beckett and including representatives of several British companies began a series of visits in the Far East Sunday, according to the U.K. Dept. of Trade and Industry.
