The U.S. Navy today plans to announce that Bell, Canadair and SAIC will be the three participants in its Vertical Take-off and Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle demonstration to begin next year, sources told The DAILY. Bell Helicopter Textron bid its Eagle Eye tiltrotor, Canadair bid the CL-327 Guardian UAV and SAIC bid a helicopter-type UAV system known as Sash.
MALAYSIA AIRLINES has become the first Asian customer for a Boeing Business Jet (BBJ). The order is one of 29 total announced orders for the BBJ. Price for a green BBJ is $33.8 million; equipped at delivery it is $40 million. Rollout of the first BBJ is planned for mid-1998.
The U.S. Air Force accident investigation into the Sept. 19 crash of a B-1B that killed all four crew members occurred because the pilot put the plane in an "unfamiliar and ultimately an unrecoverable flight regime." The plane was flown in an "authorized and often practiced defensive maneuver" the Air Force said yesterday when it released the findings of the crash investigation. The B-1B flew from Ellsworth AFB, S.D., on a training mission to practice low level defensive countermeasures and simulated bombings.
A U.S. Army computer system to provide automated critical battlefield assistance to maneuver commanders has continued to experience development problems, even though the service has spent more than $765 million of its $1 billion estimated total cost, according to the General Accounting Office. GAO, in a report titled "Battlefield Automation: Software Problems Hinder Development of the Army's Maneuver Control System" (NSIAD-98-15), says the MCS has continued to experience development problems since its 1993 reorganization.
A Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS launched a Hughes direct-broadcasting satellite Monday evening, placing the advanced spacecraft in a transfer orbit that will position it to begin serving homes in Latin America and the Caribbean by February.
TRW Inc. of Cleveland has withdrawn and refiled its premerger notification under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act with respect to its acquisition of BDM International Inc., TRW announced yesterday. The action was due to a request the Dept. of Defense issued so representatives could review the effect of the acquisition on a BDM contract with DOD to provide systems oversight for programs involving TRW. The contract is worth about $25 million a year in revenue.
Britain, France and Germany yesterday called on their aerospace and defense electronics industries to restructure to compete more effectively in the world market, and to come up with a plan to do so by next March 31. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl welcomed the fact that several European companies, including Aerospatiale, British Aerospace and DASA, have already initiated talks to achieve integration based on a balanced partnership.
Two of the U.S. Air Force's emerging concepts, space and information operations, require more work - at least that is one of the early lessons from the Global Engagement '97 exercise held last month at the AF Wargaming Institute at Maxwell AFB, Ala. Col. Parks Schaefer, the Air Staff's lead for the wargame, said in an interview at the Pentagon that a draft of the after-action report is still in the works, but that a few themes could be discerned.
WINGSPAN, the first 24-hour global cable TV channel devoted exclusively to air and space news and features, plans to begin broadcasting on April 2, 1998. President and Chief Executive Philip Osborne formally announced Wingspan, the Air and Space Channel, last week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Wingspan will be carried in the Washington area and has a deal with Loral's Orion satellite division for worldwide distribution.
Officials at the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST) have suspended Orbital Science Corp.'s license to launch eight "Little LEO" messaging satellites on a Pegasus booster from Wallops Flight Facility, Va., Saturday because the Pegasus fourth stage does not contain provisions to vent leftover hydrazine fuel as required.
Several senior military leaders at a symposium here on space and missile defense said they see directed energy as the weapon technology of the future. Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson, commander of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, and Gen. Howell M. Estes, head of U.S. Space Command, both touted the importance of keeping anti-satellite technology projects in the works to avert possible future threats (DAILY, Dec. 4).
A fiscal 1998 State Dept. authorization compromise that would call for cooperation between the U.S. and Russia on ballistic missile defense- related projects, including early warning of ballistic missile launches and the sharing of information detected by either side, faces an uncertain future because of an unrelated dispute.
Investigators probing the crash of a Russian Air Force An-124 heavy cargo aircraft in Irkutsk city on Dec. 6 are focusing on four possible causes of the disaster, which killed at least 83 in the plane and in the residential buildings it struck.
Two House Democrats, poles apart on domestic issues, joined to praise U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen for telling European allies that unless there is a greater European role in Bosnia, it would be difficult to persuade Congress to continue funding a U.S. presence there. Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Gary A. Condit (D-Calif.) said in a Dec. 4 letter to Cohen that they were writing "to express our pleasure" to learn of "your support for European burden sharing, as it relates to the issue of troops in Bosnia and other respects."
BOEING won one of three $6.5 million Initial Design Activity contracts from the Australian Defense Force (ADF) for Project Wedgetail, an airborne early warning and control system. Boeing's offer combines the 737-700 with the Northrop Grumman Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radar. A production contract is expected to be awarded in 1999.
Asian airlines have begun to defer and delay delivery of possibly dozens of aircraft, and airframers should expect more of the same as carriers react to worsening market conditions in several Pacific Rim nations, according to Edward Pieniazek, director of consultancy and information services for Airclaims Ltd., which provides services to aviation insurers. In a presentation yesterday at the Institute for International Research's Aircraft Finance Conference here, Pieniazek cautioned manufacturers not to believe Asia's problems are small.
Rep. Joseph M. McDade (Pa.), former ranking Republican on the House Appropriations national security subcommittee, announced that he will not run for re-election next year. McDade, 66, would have become chairman of the subcommittee when the Republicans won a majority in the House in the 1994 elections, but was forced to step aside because of a federal indictment charging that he accepted nearly $100,000 in illegal gratuities from lobbyists and defense contractors.
The South Korean ministry of defense expects to delay some of its procurement decisions as a result of the country's $60 billion financial crisis. Defense Minister Kim Dong-Jin said during a press conference at the Pentagon yesterday that "because of the forthcoming tight budget, I do feel there will be some restrictions on the purchase of foreign weapons." He noted, however, that the issue was not brought up in talks yesterday with U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen.
The French aircraft carrier Foch will be fitted with Textron Systems' ground-based Mobile Microwave Landing System of Textron Systems early next year to demonstrate the system's capability aboard ship.
Boeing Co. has completed the first of several Joint Strike Fighter full mission simulations to demonstrate its operational concept of the aircraft. The simulations were conducted at Boeing's Development Center near Seattle, with the operational environment being provided by the government. Boeing said it was a "significant step" towards demonstrating the on-board/off-board data fusion, single seat cockpit and pilot vehicle interface, and warfighting capability of its design.
Poor weather yesterday at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., prompted the U.S. Army to slip a Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missile test until next week, service officials reported. The test, which won't include an intercept, is geared to verify launch and flight functions. The missile, built by Lockheed Martin Vought Systems, was fired successfully for the first time in September (DAILY, Sept. 30). It is slated to enter low rate initial production in February. The full rate production decision is planned for June of 1999.
Don Fuqua, who led the Aerospace Industries Association through the industry's post - Cold War downsizing and restructuring, intends to retire next year, AIA said yesterday. Fuqua became president of AIA in 1987 when he left Congress, where he represented Florida's Second District for 12 terms and became chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. He plans to return to Florida, AIA said. A search committee of AIA Board of Governors members will seek a successor.
THIOKOL CORP.'s PROPULSION GROUP, Birmingham City, Utah, will provide Castor IVB solid rocket motors to the Instituto Nacional de Technica Aerospacial (INTA) of Spain. The motors will be used as the first stage of the three-stage Capricornio launch vehicle. The first vehicle is scheduled to launch a university of Madrid communications satellite in 2000.
