One of the pickups in support for new production of the B-2 bomber in last week's House vote was Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (D-Ohio). When he was on the other side of the issue, he once said: "Why build them? Tell the Soviets we have 500. They can't see them. They can't hear them. How are they going to know?"
Nisbet says he doesn't expect Textron's Bell Helicopter to see any real benefits from its contract with Romania for 96 AH-1RO attack helicopters (DAILY, May 22) until 1999, because tooling and production lines must still be put in place.
REPUBLIC OF CHINA NAVY signed a contract with Sikorsky Aircraft for 11 S- 70CM-2 Thunderhawk helicopters. Sikorsky said the helicopters will be built in Stratford, Conn., and that the contract includes support, logistics and training. The ROCN has received 10 Thunderhawks under an initial contract.
The U.S. Air Force will re-examine its need for the two-seat variant of the F-22 fighter. It canceled the B-model because of fiscal constraints when it put together its fiscal 1998 program objective memorandum. But now the service plans to re-address the issue in the "F-22X" study that will examine feasibility of using the Raptor to replace F-117s and F-15Es around 2015.
McDonnell Douglas registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell 3.5 million shares of common stock as part of its planned $13.9 billion merger with Boeing. The principal reason for the offering is to facilitate the treatment of the merger as a pooling of interests, the filing said. The offer, through J.P. Morgan, depends on McDonnell Douglas shareholders approving the merger and Boeing shareholders approving the share issuance. The votes take place at separate meetings on July 25.
The Senate Armed Services Committee suggestion that carrier- based stealthy aircraft should be the first priority of the Joint Strike Fighter program "tends to make sense," says Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). Weldon, chairman of the House National Security research and development subcommittee, also likes the idea of pushing a replacement for the Harrier early in the JSF program. The SASC says that since cancellations and restructurings have led to a near-term shortage of strike jets on carriers, the problem needs attention.
Although a cut in the Joint STARS program recommended by the Quadrennial Defense Review means the planes will have to swing from one theater to another in the event of two major, nearly simultaneous wars, that doesn't mean it's stretched any thinner than other systems, according to Vice Adm. Dennis C. Blair, director of the Joint Staff. He acknowledges the U.S. is "taking some additional risk" with the cut, but notes that similar chances are being taken with overhead command and control systems, airlift and F-117s.
The General Accounting Office said in a draft report that the Pentagon should delay further production of the Alliant Techsystems Outrider unmanned aerial vehicle, but Defense Dept. officials said low-rate initial production is needed to properly test the system. The GAO said non-developmental UAV systems should be operationally tested in realistic environments before low rate production begins. It cited the example of the now-canceled Hunter acquisition program, in which DOD bought seven systems, or 56 air vehicles, only to recognize problems later.
The U.S. Army is trying to find the money to fund a study to examine replacing UH-1 Huey helicopters that are in the active force but that don't have a combat mission, a service official says. Their duties are largely administrative, such as flying personnel around test ranges.
The Joint Chiefs are reducing the number of exercises planned for 1998 by 15% below earlier levels, Ralston says. A further cut of 10% is being looked at. The cuts are being made largely because exercises are stretching deployment lengths to the limits. Therefore, Ralston says, the services are also being asked to reduce their exercise schedule as well.
Paul Nisbet of JSA Research, Providence, R.I., tells investors that he expects Textron to continue to evaluate parts of two segments - Industrial and Systems&Components - for possible sale to meet financial goals. Within the latter, the Marine and Land business, with $100 million in sales, could go.
, principal subcontractor to McDonnell Douglas on the F/A- 18E/F program, said assembly of the first production version of the strike fighter began Friday at its El Segundo, Calif., facility. It estimates the program could eventually sustain about 3,000 jobs for the company through 2015. It said the combined F/A-18 programs account for about 2,400 jobs at the company now, and has plans to add about 100 positions by the end of the year. The first production shipset is scheduled to be delivered to McDonnell Douglas in June 1998.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are slated to decide next month whether to send the third RC-7B Airborne Reconnaissance Low- Multifunction (ARL-M) aircraft to Korea to join two others already there. It's slated to be ready for deployment in September. The Army supports the idea.
House National Security Committee member Sonny Bono (R-Calif.) says he won't seek the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer (D- Calif.) in the '98 election. He says he can raise the money for a Senate race, but thinks it would take away too much family time.
AUSTRALIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE signed a $600 million contract with Kaman Aerospace International for 11 SH-2G(A) Super Seasprite helicopters for the Royal Australian Navy. Kaman also signed a Seasprite contract with New Zealand (DAILY, June 26). In both contests, the Seasprite was chosen over the GKN Westland Super Lynx.
The Defense Dept.'s "modelling and simulation capability is inadequate," says Gen. Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I don't think you will find anyone who will argue with that," he tells a National Defense University symposium.
BMW ROLLS-ROYCE AND TUPOLEV signed an agreement at the Paris air show to power the Tu-334-120 regional aircraft with BR710-48 engines. Two of the 15,000-pound thrust powerplants will be delivered to the Russian manufacturer early next year for mechanical, electrical and hydraulic interfacing. Flight tests are set for later in the year, and certification is planned for September 1999.
With many defense competitions decided in the past year, 1998 will focus on several big fighter contests. Information gathered by Merrill Lynch aerospace analyst Byron Callan shows that Lockheed Martin's F-16 and McDonnell Douglas' F-15 will square off in most of the competitions. The two are finalists in Israel, the Czech Republic and Poland.
FIRST BOEING 737-800 is scheduled to roll out of the company's Renton, Wash., facility today. The first of three flight test airplanes will become part of the fleet for German carrier Hapag-Lloyd, Boeing said. The -800 is the longest 737 ever built at 129 feet, 6 inches.
The two cosmonauts on Russia's Mir orbital station will don spacesuits and try to reconnect power lines from the depressurized Spektr module to save the failing station while their American colleague waits in the Soyuz capsule in case an evacuation becomes necessary.
Replacing a larger number of UH-1Ns flown by the Army National Guard won't occur for almost a decade. The Army doesn't plan to finalize a requirement document for the replacement helo until 2005. The potential replacement is likely to be a non-developmental system.
Russia is struggling mightily to keep its Mir orbital station in orbit, but NASA wants to know what happens when, inevitably, it comes down. Frank Culbertson, head of the U.S. Shuttle/Mir effort, says Russian space officials have never explained exactly how they plan to deorbit the massive spacecraft, with its seven pressurized modules, and not because NASA hasn't asked.
NASA'S NEAR EARTH Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft performed "flawlessly" as it whizzed past the asteroid 253 Mathilde Friday morning, according to a spokesman for Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory, which built the probe. Based on the amount of data in NEAR's memory, controllers believed it had collected the planned 534 images, which were being played back to Earth at the rate of about 10 an hour. The first showed the asteroid clearly, with two large craters visible on its flank.
Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), who two years ago found excess forward funding for the National Reconnaissance Office as a source of additional money for the B-2 bomber, says he has now discovered $12 billion-$13 billion in outyear modernization funds not allocated to a specific program that can be used to buy more B-2s.
Proposals by the mobile satellite service community to allow sharing of a frequency band will preclude use of the Global Navigation Satellite System as a sole means of aerial navigation, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. ICAO said in a position paper that the aviation community has "serious concerns over the introduction of services that conflict with the use of satellite navigation services, particularly for high integrity aeronautical operations."
