ALLIEDSIGNAL Electronics&Avionics said it was selected to provide avionics to carriers ACES, TACA and United. ACES ordered enhanced ground proximity warning systems (EGPWS), solid state flight data recorders, cockpit voice recorders and aircraft communications addressing and report systems. TACA will receive EGPWSs for four new A320s. United placed an $8 million order for solid state cockpit voice recorders for its entire fleet.
Support from the international partners working with the U.S. on the Medium Extended Area Defense (MEADS) program has grown despite the potential for funding drops on the U.S. side, according to Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Germany and Italy have an increased interest in the requirement for MEADS, but the budget pressure is on, Anderson told reporters earlier this week at the Association of the U.S. Army convention in Washington.
The Middle East will receive about 30% of the world's arms deliveries in the next five years, providing a regional market willing to spend around $40 billion annually, according the Electronic Industries Association. The real opportunities lie in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, which together account for 90% of the region's military spending, according to the EIA's Ten-Year Forecast Committee, which presented its findings last week in McLean, Va. It said that:
NASA and the SpaceVest venture capital firm have agreed to share information and expertise as the U.S. space agency continues to look for ways to finance activities in low Earth orbit with private funds so it can use public monies to pay for planetary exploration. To the same end, NASA has hired Boston consultants Hawthorne, Krauss and Associates for six months to provide financial advice as Administrator Daniel S. Goldin considers ways to encourage LEO commercialization.
BMW ROLLS-ROYCE said the BR715 engine, which will power the Boeing MD-95 100-seater twinjet, has completed its 150-hour endurance testing. International certification is scheduled for September 1998. First flight is scheduled for second quarter 1998, with entry into service in mid-1999.
LORAL SPACE&COMMUNICATIONS will acquire Orion Network Systems for 28 million shares of Loral common stock worth roughly $490 million. The deal gives Loral the Orion 1 satellite, which has provided service to Europe, transatlantic and U.S. markets since January 1995, plus two more satellites under construction and orbital slots that include some in Ka-band. As of June 30, Orion had cash on hand of about $480 million, against debt of about $723 million that was expected to remain outstanding after the transaction closes in the first quarter of 1998.
Boeing's McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems should team with the U.S. Army's Corpus Christi, Tex., depot for support of the Apache helicopter, Gen. John Wilson, the commander of the Army Material Command said. Boeing submitted an unsolicited proposal for "Prime Vendor Support" of the Apache in which it would do all the work, but Wilson said a joining of forces would be better.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. has won an $11 million contract from NASA for the Upper Stage Flight Experiment, which will support both NASA programs and the Air Force's Military Space Plane technology program. Under the contract Orbital will develop and qualify a new liquid-fueled upper stage rocket engine, and then integrate it with a new third stage under a separate Air Force contract. That stage will top a new launch vehicle that uses existing Minuteman missiles for the first and second stages, and may also be used in the Military Space Plane and X-34 programs.
Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet yesterday revealed that the U.S. has budgeted $26.6 billion for intelligence programs in fiscal 1997, marking the first time since the end of World War II that the U.S. has made its intelligence budget public. Tenet made the announcement rather than continuing to fight a lawsuit by the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists to declassify the figure.
Russia's armed forces conducted a large-scale nuclear wargame early this month that culminated in launches of strategic missiles by all services of the country's nuclear triad. Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper reported last week that the "Strategic Command and Staff Training" wargame apparently simulated a nuclear exchange with an adversary possessing submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
TUNISAIR ordered seven A320s and three A319s, making it the first A319 customer in both Africa and the Arab world, Airbus Industrie said. The carrier, which has been an Airbus customer since 1980, operates eight A320s and one A300. The first A319 is to be delivered next summer.
BELL HELICOPTER TEXTRON received a $77 million contract from the U.S. Navy for the foreign military sale of nine AH-1W Cobra helicopters for Taiwan. Work on the contract is expected to be completed by February 2000.
Iran has flight tested an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in the Persian Gulf, China's Xinhua news agency reported from Tehran. The aircraft, called "Stealth," was tested Tuesday during war games being conducted by the Iranian navy, according to the report, which quoted Irna, the Iranian news agency.
CASSINI SATURN PROBE was declared healthy yesterday after a spectacular pre-dawn launch from Cape Canaveral that sent it on a seven-year journey to Saturn. Liftoff, delayed Monday by weather and technical glitches, came right on time yesterday at 4:43 a.m. EDT, when an Air Force Titan IVB/Centaur lifted the 12,593-pound spacecraft through scattered clouds onto a trajectory for its first gravity assist at Venus. Richard J. Spehalski, Cassini program manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, proclaimed the launch "right on the money."
Lockheed Martin Corp. has taken its Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile design to Edwards AFB, Calif., for a series of captive flight tests to mature the design before the U.S. Air Force decides next year whether to buy this JASSM concept or one being offered by Boeing Co. Measurements to be taken during the effort include vibration, and acoustic and temperature profiles at various airspeeds and altitudes, Lockheed Martin said. Some of the testing will be done at supersonic speeds and in combat representative maneuvers.
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev visited the Zarya scientific- industrial association at Voronezh, and officials there saw a link with Defense Ministry plans to reconstruct the country's defense industry, Itar- Tass reported. The Russian news agency said the officials took the visit to mean that their organization would be one of the enterprises to survive a scheme to drastically scale back the industry.
SWALES AEROSPACE has delivered the instrument structure for NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) spacecraft. The upper composite structure will be fitted with a spectrograph at the University of Colorado, while the lower structure, including mirror assemblies and all electrical thermal support hardware, was delivered to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where the instrument telescope will be fitted. Swales is also building the EO-1 New Millennium spacecraft for NASA at its facility in Beltsville, Md.
The U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin Vought Systems are preparing for a key test to demonstrate the ability of the ATACMS weapon to deploy the BAT submunition. The test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., calls for an ATACMS - Army Tactical Missile System - to dispense its full contingent of 13 submunitions. It would be the first in-flight separation test of the Brilliant Anti-Tank submunition from an ATACMS, officials said this week at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual convention in Washington.
The lack of reaction in Congress to President Clinton's veto of 13 programs in the fiscal 1998 defense appropriations act this week probably indicates that he and Administration officials have learned how to make effective use of the line item veto without provoking a congressional drive to undo vetoes or even repeal the Line Item Veto Act itself. Clinton said his use of the line item veto to delete $144 million in programs in the $247.7 billion Pentagon money bill was "responsible and quite restrained."
Sen. Bob Kerrey (Neb.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, commended Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for his decision to announce that the aggregate intelligence budget for fiscal year 1997 is $26.6 billion (see story beginning on page 79).
SPECTRUM ASTRO will build next-generation Global Positioning System flight receivers for NASA's JASON-1 follow-on to the TOPEX-Poseidon spacecraft. Under the agreement with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL engineers will transfer the TurboRogue GPS Space Receiver technology to the Gilbert, Ariz.-based company, which will build and qualify the advanced receiver. JASON-1 is intended to measure variations in mean sea level worldwide to a resolution of 1mm.
Germany's Traffic 2000 GmbH and Hughes Aircraft Co. have teamed to pursue commercial applications of the Hughes Integrated Surveillance and Reconnaissance System (HISAR), an airborne radar. Under the agreement, the two companies will pursue HISAR-based traffic and environmental monitoring, geodata band and telecommunications relays in the European marketplace. Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.
HUGHES ELECTRONICS CORP. has activated its xenon ion propulsion system aboard the PAS-5 communications satellite, marking the first use of the new electric propulsion system on an operational spacecraft. The system ejects xenon ions at a speed of 62,900 mph for satellite stationkeeping, cutting the amount of propellant needed for a 12- to 15-year service life by as much as 90%. Using xenon, a dense gas, as the propellant thus gives the satellite customer a choice of saving weight and costs on launch or extending satellite life on orbit.
