With policy-level officials in the Office of Management and Budget and Defense Department notably absent, members of the House National Security Committee were forced Wednesday to make their case against President Clinton's line-item vetoes of programs and projects in the defense and military construction appropriations bills with service budget officers who played no direct role in the veto process.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S SKUNK WORKS is working under a $120 million contract from the U.S. AIr Force to support the F-117A Nighthawks. The effort is expected to be completed next September.
US Airways, which declined to say Tuesday whether it had arrangements with Airbus Industrie to receive more than 21 of the 400 narrowbody aircraft it ordered and optioned from the European manufacturer, has placed firm orders for engines to power 120 of them, CFM International said yesterday. The airline selected CFM56-5B/P engines to power up to 400 A319/A320/A322 aircraft in what CFMI called "one of the largest engine orders ever placed."
Russia's Tupolev design bureau yesterday celebrated its 75th anniversary. Founded in Moscow in 1922 by Sergei Tupolev, the bureau has designed and developed over 300 air and spacecraft and is now concentrating on four projects, according to Director-General Igor Shevchuk - the Tu-204, Tu-334, Tu-324 and Tu-330. In addition, he told the Itar-Tass news agency, Tupolev wants to build fuselage parts for Airbus Industrie.
President Boris Yeltsin has signed an edict retaining possession of a majority of the voting shares in Energia Rocket and Space Corp. by the Russian government. The edict cites the "importance of Energia Joint-Stock Company to the security of the country" and declares 38% of the total stock in Energia, representing 51% of voting shares, as a federal property for three more years.
Germany's Daimler-Benz Aerospace has received the first Airborne Warning and Control System radar upgrade kit from Boeing Co., and will begin installing the kits on NATO AWACS planes in mid-November. Boeing said yesterday that it and subcontractors Northrop Grumman, OGMA of Portugal and ATA of Greece will build 18 Radar System Improvement (RSIP) kits for NATO, four for the U.S. Air Force and eight for the U.K. U.S. Air Force personnel at Tinker AFB, Okla., will begin receiving the kits in December and install them on the U.S. fleet.
NASA has picked low-cost missions to collect samples of the charged particles that make up solar wind and to fly by three near-Earth comets for its Discovery program. Each mission will be developed and run within the $280 million cost cap set under the Discovery program. The program has already landed the Mars Pathfinder on the surface of the Red Planet and sent the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) probe to orbit the asteroid Eros early in 1999.
Europe has developed a recovery plan in the wake of the loss of the Mars-96 probe that, like the U.S. approach, envisions launching both an orbiter and a lander in 2003. In June 1997 the European Space Agency decided to begin the study phase of a so-called "Mars Express" to ensure recovery of some of the science lost with the Mars 1996 failure.
Northrop Grumman earnings climbed 26% to $98 million in its third quarter as Aircraft segment results offset a charge in the Electronics segment related to the E-8 Joint STARS, the company said yesterday. Sales climbed 6% to $2.3 billion. In the same period a year ago, Northrop Grumman earned $78 million on sales of $2.2 billion.
An Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL rocket orbited the Air Force's latest Space Test Experiment Platform (STEP-4) yesterday, but the TRW-built satellite remained silent after separating from the rocket's third stage. Controllers tried several different procedures to contact the satellite after its 9:18 a.m. EDT launch yesterday, but to no avail, according to a spokesperson for the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Contractor and Air Force personnel were meeting late yesterday in an effort to fix the problem.
A T-38 TALON aircraft crashed yesterday at Edwards AFB, Calif., killing both crewmembers. The crash followed a mid-air collision with an F-16, which made an emergency landing on Rogers Dry Lakebed. The crash occurred around 10 a.m. local time. The U.S. Air Force said the two planes were on a photographic support mission of a B-1 bomber's conventional weapons drop test of BDU-33 training bombs.
GEN. EUGENE HABIGER, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, began a week-long visit to Russia yesterday. He is scheduled to meet in Moscow with leaders of the Russian Defense Ministry, visit command centers at Vladimir and Balabanovo, and travel to SS-24 and SS-25 ICBM sites.
Boeing Co., citing problems related to higher than expected production levels of commercial aircraft, said yesterday that it will have to absorb a pre-tax charge for the third quarter of about $1.6 billion, resulting in a third quarter loss. The quarterly results will be announced Friday. Phil Condit, chairman and chief executive officer, said the problems will affect commercial segment earnings through 1998.
Daimler-Benz Aerospace, Eurockot, Intospace and Instrumentation Technology Associates, Inc., have established a joint venture to provide a Russian-made orbital capsule for microgravity experiments at a modest price. The venture, called "COMCAP" for Commercial Capsule Provider, plans to use an upscaled version of the Express capsule, flown in 1995, coupled with the Breeze stage from the Russian Rokot launch vehicle. The venture announced its plans at the International Astronautical Conference here.
PRESIDENT CLINTON has nominated Daryl L. Jones to be secretary of the Air Force. Jones, 42, would replace Sheila Widnall, who is leaving to return to MIT. Jones is a Florida state senator and a graduate of the Air Force Academy.
Leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee's panel on national security are not opposed to NATO enlargement, but are not convinced the Pentagon has an accurate grasp of the cost. "Of course NATO should be enlarged - that's not the question," Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) told Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton and Commander-in-Chief U.S. European Command Gen. Wesley K. Clark in a hearing yesterday.
NASA has pushed the planned Nov. 23 launch of the Lunar Prospector spacecraft back until early January to allow more time to check out the untried larger version of the Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle (LMLV-2). Launch of the spacecraft, also built by Lockheed Martin, is now scheduled for 8:32 p.m. EST Jan. 5, with a backup launch window 24 hours later. The Prospector was built under NASA's Discovery program to spend a year mapping the moon's surface composition and magnetic field.
The cost of the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft could increase and its schedule could slip as the Pentagon tries to stabilize the program, the General Accounting Office said. Though Congress has supported the V-22 and added funding to the program, "the system has not yet achieved program stability in terms of cost or aircraft design," GAO said in "Navy Aviation: V-22 Capability to Meet Requirements Are Yet to be Determined (GAO/NSIAD-93-13)."
Delta Air Lines said it has signed "definitive aircraft purchase agreements" making Boeing Co. its sole supplier over 20 years, placing 106 firm orders "subject to certain exemptions." The carrier said the sole-supplier clause is "not enforceable until the European Union permits Boeing to enforce the provision."
House-Senate conferees appeared yesterday to have worked out an acceptable compromise on the depot issue - the last major controversy in the fiscal 1998 defense authorization - and were close to agreeing on a compromise $267 billion defense bill, congressional sources said yesterday.
ISRAEL is likely to buy $30 million worth of Multiple Launch Rocket Systems to add to its existing MLRS inventory, the Pentagon said late Monday. The contract would cover the sale of 301 MLRS rocket pods and support equipment.
Kaman Aerospace Corp. yesterday rolled out the first of 10 SH-2G(E) Super Seasprite helicopters for Egypt in a program that company officials hope will double in size. Egypt is currently on contract under a foreign military sale through the U.S. Navy that is worth more than $150 million to Kaman.
Congressional defense authorization conferees are on the verge of reaching agreement on the contentious military depot issue, a development that could clear the way for a conference agreement by the end of the week, congressional sources agreed yesterday. They said the conferees were waiting to hear from the White House on whether President Clinton would accept the conferees' latest formulation. Conferees, primarily from the House, have insisted that maintenance work not be shifted from government depots.
