United Airlines launched a three-year, $133 million PW4000 engine upgrade program with Pratt&Whitney to improve fuel burn and extend the range of its 747-400 and 767-300 jetliners - 47 aircraft in all. The Phase III upgrade option was available as early as 1994, but cost too much, says Andy Studdert, United's senior VP-fleet planning. P&W offered the carrier a steep discount on the upgrades when it was campaigning for United's July 1996 widebody order, and those discounts - along with operational benefits - will pay for the change.
While the use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems continues to remake the Pentagon's acquisition strategy, "the next war will not be won by COTS," according the Electronic Industries Association, leaving a new market for defense electronics companies to tap. Future wars will be fought under an increasing dependence on information superiority, and the U.S. will not achieve that goal using COTS, members of the EIA's Ten-Year Defense&NASA Electronics Forecast said yesterday at a conference in McLean, Va.
Sundstrand Power Systems will design, develop and qualify a new Auxiliary Power Engine Start System (APESS) derived from the APS 1000 auxiliary power unit for Sweden's JAS39 Gripen multirole fighter under a new contract with aircraft prime contractor Saab, Sundstrand reports. Options cover production units to be delivered to the Swedish air force in 2000, and the potential to retrofit existing Swedish air force fighters.
CHINA EASTERN AIRLINES received its first two Boeing MD-90 aircraft yesterday. The carrier has seven more on order as part of China's Trunkline program, which includes 40 MD-90s. Twenty of these are being built at the Douglas Products Div. in Long Beach, Calif., and 20 at Shanghai Aircraft Industrial Corp. They are powered by IAE V2500 engines.
A prototype of Russia's S-32 next-generation fighter has flown for the first time at the Zhukovsky test center near Moscow, according to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass. The S-32, developed by the Sukhoi design bureau, flew Sept. 25, about two weeks after first flight of the U.S. F-22 fighter, Itar-Tass reported yesterday from Moscow.
Park Air Electronics, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, received a contract from Aeronautical Radio Inc. (Arinc) for very high frequency (VHF) digital radios. Contract terms were not disclosed. The radios will be used by Arinc, Annapolis, Md., as part of a next-generation VHF digital ground-to-air radio service.
PENTAGON AVIATION SAFETY statistics for fiscal 1997 show a loss of 55 aircraft, an all-time low, a Pentagon spokesman said. The accident rate was 1.5 crashes per 100,000 flight hours, although the number could change as the Pentagon gets more detailed information on how many flight hours were logged. Seventy people lost their lives in U.S. military aircraft accidents in fiscal '97.
The topline U.S. defense budget looks stable over the next 10 years, but a lack of new programs combined with the transitioning of programs into procurement will shift a portion of the electronics budget away from research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E) to procurement, according the Electronics Industries Association.
Heli-Dyne Systems Inc., Hurst, Tex., has integrated quick-change maritime patrol packages aboard two Antonov An-32 transports for the Mexican Navy, the first aircraft to receive Heli-Dyne's Modular Airborne Patrol and Surveillance System (MAPSS). The consoles can be installed and removed in less than 15 minutes. The Mexican aircraft received an AlliedSignal RDR1500B search radar and Wescam Model 16DS multi-sensor turret. Heli-Dyne also delivered a second multi-mission MD900 Explorer to the Belgian Gendarmerie on Aug. 1.
With the aviation industry "hopefully on the threshold of a long, sustained period of growth," the challenges in terms of electronics "are not so much technology innovation [as] technology implementation," said Rockwell Avionics and Communications Executive Vice President Clayton M. Jones. "We must focus on operational improvements that our customers value," Jones said in the keynote speech at the Avionics '97 Revolution in Flight conference here.
A Progress resupply capsule docked with Russia's Mir orbital station yesterday, a day late because of problems undocking its predecessor to clear a docking port. Mission Control Center-Moscow directed the Progress M-36 capsule to an automatic docking at Mir at 1:07 p.m. EDT, about six minutes earlier than planned. Aboard were a new main computer to back up the one delivered by the Space Shuttle Atlantis and about two tons of other supplies for the three-man Mir crew.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's cabinet yesterday approved the start of production investment funding for 180 Eurofighter aircraft needed by the German Luftwaffe. A vote on ratification of the decision, which involves about $13 billion, is due by the lower house of the Bundestag late next month. Earlier this week, Parliamentary Defense Committee Chairman Kurt Rossmanith said he expected a comfortable majority in favor of Eurofighter funding at that time.
Fairchild Corp. said it will focus on the aerospace industry and spin off certain non-core assets. After the spinoff, expected to be completed next year, the company will consist of Fairchild Fasteners Div. and its 64%-owned subsidiary, Banner Aerospace Inc. The aerospace units constitute about 92% of Fairchild's revenue in fiscal 1997.
Reliance on satellites for navigation, communications or surveillance "has the potential for vastly increased delay or total shutdown of the ATC system," former FAA Administrator Langhorne Bond told the Air Traffic Control Association's annual meeting last week in Washington. Bond questioned the value of the satellite-based Wide Area Augmentation System, predicting it will be abandoned because no one will need it, and accused government officials of refusing to address the vulnerability of the Global Positioning System.
MIDWAY AIRLINES ordered 10 Canadair Regional Jets and placed options on 20 more with Bombardier. The firm order was valued at $207 million. Deliveries are scheduled between November 1997 and December 1998.
Controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have reestablished contact with NASA's Mars Pathfinder lander after a 10-day hiatus and hope to begin solar-only operations in about a week so scientists can continue explorations that have already turned up new evidence that suggests Mars was once very much like Earth, with liquid water running on the surface.
President Clinton yesterday signed the $247.7 billion fiscal 1998 defense appropriations conference report into law, but withheld specific details of the programs to which he will apply his line item veto authority. Clinton has until the close of business next Tuesday to notify Congress of line item vetoes, senior House Appropriations staffers said.
Bristol Aerospace Ltd. won a $98.9 million work package from Boeing Canada Technology Ltd., Winnipeg, to make composite panels for the wings and tail section of the 737. "This program provides the strong base from which we can grow our commercial airframe structures business," said Jim Butyniec, vice president and general manager of Bristol. Bristol is an operating business unit within the Magellan Aerospace group of companies.
Harsco Corp. and FMC Corp. completed the sale of United Defense L.P. to the Carlyle Group of Washington, D.C., for $850 million. FMC had been the managing general partner and 60% owner of United Defense with Harsco owning the other 40%. United Defense reported 1996 sales of $1 billion (DAILY Aug. 27). Harsco said it expects to receive pre-tax cash proceeds of about $340 million from the sale, while FMC expects after-tax proceeds of about $375 million.
A new model of the AGM-130 standoff missile that is capable of destroying buried targets is considered operationally ready by the U.S. Air Force. Air Combat Command told weapon developers at an Eglin AFB, Fla., conference last week that they consider the weapon available for use following a test that demonstrated the "horizontal attack" mode.
The Pentagon is considering canceling existing Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations it feels aren't holding up to their initial promise so it can create cash flow in the ACTD account to fund future programs. "Obviously we can cancel some projects," Joseph J. Eash, the deputy under secretary of defense for advanced technologies said yesterday. It's "a question of alternative use of funds," he told industry during a meeting of the Precision Strike Association and the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems in Laurel, Md.
BOEING CO. subsidiary McDonnell Douglas received contracts totalling $837 million from the Pentagon Monday in support of U.S. and foreign military sales of F/A-18 aircraft. Boeing got $467 million for 18 of the 64 F/A-18Cs Finland is buying, and received another $210 million for the eight F/A- 18C/Ds Thailand is buying. The Pentagon said the U.S. Navy also is buying six more F/A-18Ds for $159 million. Work on the Finland contract is to be completed by January 2000, and work on the Thai and U.S. F/A-18s should conclude in September 1999.
Defense industries across Europe must be rationalized to meet the challenges raised by the worldwide fall in military spending and the formation of new U.S. industrial giants, U.K. Defense Secretary George Robertson said Monday.
