Michael Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Hughes Electronics Corp., has been elected chairman of the board of governors of the Aerospace Industries Association. Before becoming chairman and CEO of Hughes, Smith was vice chairman of Hughes Electronics and chairman of Hughes Aircraft Co.
A Boeing Delta II rocket launched the Skynet 4D communications satellite for the U.K. Ministry of Defense Friday night in the first use of the pad at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., modified to handle the U.S. company's new Delta III launch vehicle.
OPENINGS: The death of Rep. Sonny Bono (R-Calif.) last week in a skiing accident means there will be at least three vacancies next year on the House National Security Committee. Ranking HNSC Democrat Ronald Dellums (Calif.) has already announced his plan to leave next month, and Rep. Paul McHale (D-Pa.) has said he would not run for re-election this year. Meanwhile, there are two potential openings on the House Appropriations national security subcommittee for next year. Rep. W.G.
AEROSPIKE TEST: NASA is moving cautiously on plans to test a subscale linear aerospike engine for Lockheed Martin on its SR-71 research aircraft, and won't try a hot-fire test soon. In mid-December the SR-71, in a Mach 1.6, 50,000-foot flight, demonstrated it can meet all planned test points carrying the test engine, which was built to help X-33 engineers understand how the aerospike plume will interact with their subscale reusable launch vehicle.
RED DRAPEAU: Six French Mirage 2000Ds are slated to participate in this year's Red Flag exercise at Nellis AFB, Nev., between Jan. 12 and Feb. 6. The Mirages would fly with U.S. F-15s and F-16s, British Tornados, and F- 16s from Singapore.
RAVEN RETIREMENT: The U.S. Air Force this summer will retire its last EF- 111 standoff jammers. The 429th Electronic Combat Squadron at Cannon AFB, N.M., has already reduced its inventory from 24 planes to 18, and all will be retired by July 1. The AF is looking to keep one Raven at Cannon for display, but will send the remainder of the fleet to Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. After July, Navy and Marine Corps EA-6Bs will be the Defense Dept.'s only aircraft for tactical, non-lethal suppression of enemy air defenses.
LOW THREAT: As the U.S. Army continues to assess the idea of equipping its attack helicopters with an air-to-air missile, there is little geopolitical pressure to move ahead in the near term. "The threat evaluation for our air-to-air threat is low," according to one service official.
KIOWA WARRIOR CRUNCH: The Pentagon's failure to request funding for the OH- 58D Kiowa Warrior in FY '98, and Congress' decision to add only $15 million to the program rather than the $175 million the Army was seeking, leaves the scout helicopter fleet in a crunch. The lack of money cut short Army plans to buy its last 15 OH-58Ds. That means if one of the helicopters is lost, it isn't replaced, says one Army officer. He also notes that the OH- 58D safety enhancement program is "still underfunded by a pretty good chunk."
URBAN COMBAT: The U.S. Marine Corps is getting ready for its first Urban Warrior exercise. It will run from Jan. 18 through Jan. 23 at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and examine new tactics for combat in an urban environment.
SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY INC. (STI), won a $4.2 million contract from Motorola Satellite Communications to supply satellite control software for the Iridium constellation. STI is a subsidiary of Exigent International Inc., Melbourne, Fla.
AAR CORP., Wood Dale, Ill., acquired the assets of AVSCO Aviation Service Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barfield Inc. The transaction closed Dec. 31. AVSCO, a new parts distributor, reported about $80 million in sales in the past year. It will be merged with AAR Cooper Aviation.
FERROFLUIDICS CORP., Nashua, N.H., won a $300,000 contract from an international maker of aerospace system for a ferrofluid-based seal used in the development of a targeting system on multiple aircraft platforms. The development program is expected to lead to a multi-million dollar production contract, Ferrofluidic said.
Boeing Commercial Airplane Group said it has reached agreement with customers on the design of the 767-400ER, which means that engineers can begin releasing design information to factories and suppliers. "This initiates fabrication of parts, tools and assemblies for the new derivative airplanes," the company said. The first airplane is scheduled to be delivered in mid-2000 to Delta Airlines.
BTG Inc., Fairfax, Va., won two contracts from the U.S. Dept. of Defense, one for Battlefield Awareness and Data Dissemination for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and one for a fusion architecture project for the Air Force. Terms of the contracts were not disclosed.
AIRLINE ACCIDENTS: The number of fatal airline accidents worldwide involving aircraft built in the West was down in 1997 compared to 1996, but hull and liability losses of $1.4 billion were still worse than most earlier years, according to Airclaims, which provides service to aviation insurers. The total of 1,056 passenger fatalities was 80 less than the average during the 1980s.
ARINC said it has sent and received high frequency data link (HFDL) messages using its Globalink ground network. HFDL will be operational next month and will provide airlines, corporate and military aircraft with "cost-effective, long-range data communication," ARINC said. Most commercial aircraft now have VHF data link, but Globalink/HF will "provide a cost-effective means to extend data link coverage into remote and oceanic regions around the world," ARINC said.
The Pentagon's Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office plans to invest about $11.7 billion between this fiscal year and FY 2003 - over $5 billion more than projected for the same period last year, according to DARO's newly released annual report. The new plan also reverses a trend in which spending on unmanned aerial vehicles was approaching what DARO spends on manned reconnaissance systems.
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS WEST, Salt Lake City, a division of L-3 Communications, won a $25.5 million follow-on award from the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command to provide data link systems and related support services for the Common High Bandwidth Data Link (CHBDL) program. The initial contact was awarded in September 1991. The current contract includes a remaining option, which could raise the total value of the contract to $124.2 million.
Mir cosmonauts found the source of a pesky airlock leak in a three- hour spacewalk Thursday night, pinpointing a broken latch rather than suspected gasket damage as the cause of the problem.
This week should see some word on the fates of two sister satellites that are both in trouble, EarthWatch's EarlyBird 1 and NASA's Clark, both built by Orbital Sciences Corp. Orbital was due to respond late Friday to a cure notice showing how it will conquer cost growth and schedule slippage in the Clark Earth probe, while an EarthWatch spokesman said Friday the company would probably have some word today on the fate of EarlyBird 1, which fell silent a few days after launch on a Russian booster last month (DAILY, Dec. 24; Jan. 6).
Raytheon signed an agreement to sell its Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) operations to TriQuint Semiconductor Inc., Hillsboro, Ore., for about $39 million.
BANNER AEROSPACE INC., Washington, D.C., sold its BAI Inc. subsidiary, a specialty brokerage company in San Francisco, to a consortium headed by two former employees.
EDO CORP., New York, won two subcontracts worth $2.6 million to supply underwater sonar hydrophone modules and communications systems for U.S. Navy attack submarines. For Northrop Grumman, EDO will develop and produce large area underwater acoustic hydrophone modules for the new version of the Navy's wide aperture array sonar systems. For Raytheon, EDO will supply a modified version of its Model 5400 underwater communications transceivers.
