A $65 million tax refund ballooned earnings for GenCorp., Fairlawn, Ohio, to $84.1 million in the second quarter of 1997, up from profits of $14.1 million in the same period a year ago, the company reported. Sales grew 7% to $403.5 million, while operating income increased 27% to $43.4 million.
NASA would be prepared to work with Congress on a firm cap for International Space Station spending and will open its books if it believes it will break the current cost cap, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said yesterday as the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee unveiled plans to set an overall Station spending cap.
HUGHES SPACE AND COMMUNICATION CO., Los Angeles, won a three year, $65 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Center, Los Angeles AFB, to develop and demonstrate a prototype for a digital processor for next generation military communications satellites. The Hughes team includes Raytheon Electronic Systems and Applied Signal Technology Inc. The payload processor is for the Advanced EHF (extremely high frequency) Satellite program, which is scheduled to enter production in 2001.
The possibility that some U.S. Navy F-14s will have to fly longer because the Quadrennial Defense Review is recommending a slower fielding of its replacement, the F/A-18E/F, could result in some extra depot work and electronic warfare enhancement for the aging aircraft.
HARRIS CORP., Melbourne, Fla., won a $17 million contract add-on from the U.S. Air Force to provide telemetry units that will send flight and performance information from air-to-air missiles during test firings. Harris will make 220 Warhead Replacement Tactical Telemetry units for AIM- 120 missiles used in test firings at Tyndall Air Force Base, Panama City, Fla. The add-on is to a contract awarded in 1991 and has an option for 90 more units.
The House Intelligence Committee, in its fiscal year 1998 authorization bill, terminates the Outrider tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV) advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) program and provides funding to the individual services to find other options to satisfy TUAV requirements. The committee directs the Army to purchase an off-the-shelf UAV; provides funding to the Navy to explore vertical takeoff and landing technologies, and provides funds to the Marine Corps to explore its need for a vehicle as well.
OPTELECOM INC., Gaithersburg, Md., received an $827,000 add-on contract from the U.S. Air Force for maintenance of AN/AAQ-7 low-light level television laser subsystems for the AC-130H Gunship. The original four- year, $6.5 million contract was signed in January 1996. The add-on brings the amount awarded so far to $3.1 million.
The U.S. Air Force is looking at the AGM-130 standoff weapon with a smaller warhead as a potential solution to provide a standoff capability to older F-16s. The lighter AGM-130 would replace the bomb's 2,000-pound warhead with a smaller warhead that F-16s could operate with greater ease. The munition could be launched from Block 25 and Block 30 F-16s, giving them their only standoff attack capability, Frank Robbins, the Air Force's director of the precision strike systems program office at Eglin AFB, Fla., said last Friday.
After more than seven months of deliberations, British Aerospace announced yesterday at the Paris Air Show that it is teaming with Lockheed Martin on the Joint Strike Fighter program, rejecting an offer from the competing Boeing Co. team and the option to join both teams. Details of the teaming arrangement, including BAe's specific responsibilities, still have to be worked out, but the two companies said in a joint statement that BAe's share will be "substantial both in size and technical content."
Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), one of the House's leading opponents of building more Northrop Grumman B-2 bombers, has called on colleagues not to support adding money to the fiscal 1998 defense bill for nine more B-2s.
Increasing the production rate of the V-22 Osprey to between 30 and 36 aircraft per year could cut unit costs of the roughly $30 million military tiltrotor by as much as 20%, resulting in total procurement savings of as much as $3 billion, Bell chairman Webb Joiner said here. The V-22 was one of the few new military programs to get a boost from the Pentagon's recent Quadrennial Defense Review. The QDR recommended that Congress consider boosting production.
Successful cooperation between Lockheed Martin and Russia's Khrunichev and Energia companies has resulted in 49 confirmed sales of space launch services and a backlog of $3 billion in international sales. Two years after the three companies unveiled their International Launch Services joint venture at the air show here, they're claiming half of the global market share for medium and heavy launch services, surpassing Europe's Arianespace.
The Pentagon is taking too narrow a focus in crafting its space architecture and should instead look more broadly at an imagery architecture encompassing all collection assets including aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and commercial space systems, a staffer from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said Tuesday.
A Russian Proton booster successfully lifted seven more Iridium telecommunications satellites toward their low Earth orbit yesterday, raising the growing constellation to 12 satellites of a planned 66, and starting a second orbital plane for the planned worldwide network.
The House National Security Committee would prohibit any U.S. funding for Russian reduction of its strategic forces to START II levels until President Clinton certifies that the Russians have agreed to share in the cost of eliminating these weapons. The committee directive was written into its fiscal 1998 national defense authorization report, which was released yesterday.
Several large unmanned aerial vehicles are to be seen on the Le Bourget grounds and exhibits this year, calling notice to a new wave of UAV market penetration stimulated by the U.S. Air Force combat experience in Bosnia. Unlike earlier RPVs, these superbirds are not just aerial photographers. They could eventually replace piloted aircraft on long, routine sorties for such missions as ECM, communications relay, long-range standoff, recce and other tasks where highly trained pilots become mere drivers.
It's official - the Farnborough International Air Show will move to a July calendar in 2000 from its traditional September slot. The new date allows Farnborough to be held before most European holidays, and responds to complaints that the eight or nine months between the event and the following Paris Air Show was too short.
The U.S. Air Force's 126 C-5s are scheduled to get an All-Weather Flight Control System (AWFCS) and Global Air Traffic Management (GATM) systems in late fiscal 2001, according to an AF official. The AF earlier this month asked for industry input on the program which it hopes to have on contract by late next fiscal year, Lt. Col. Rick Fennell, the AF's C-5 development system manager, said in a telephone interview. Those responses will help the AF come up with a firm cost assessment, he said.
The House over the next few weeks intends to take up a bill passed by the House Foreign Relations Committee that provides $3.31 billion for fiscal year 1998 and $3.27 for FY '99 in grant and loan foreign military financing (FMF) programs under the Arms Export Control Act. The FMF portion of the bill was separated from the FY '98 State Dept. authorization bill passed by the House last week (DAILY, June 13). The recommendation for FMF spending in FY '98 is $7.25 million below the Administra-tion's request.
Daimler-Benz Aerospace, South Korea's Hyundai and Denel of South Africa could decide as early as next year to launch full-scale development of a supersonic, stealthy light fighter and advanced trainer, the AT-2000. Within a few weeks the companies plan to launch a 12-month project definition stage, according to Aloysius Rauen, president of DASA's military aircraft division. By mid-1998, the design will be refined and wind-tunnel tests will have been carried out to reduce risk, and the partners will be ready to go ahead.
Dow-United Technologies Composite Products is claiming the first manufacture of satellite structures made via an assembly line. The Wallingford, Conn.-based joint venture between United Technologies and Dow Chemical last month delivered the 69th satellite structure out of 80 ordered by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space for the Motorola Iridium constellation of low Earth orbit communications platforms for worldwide cellular telephone support.
Dassault's Rafale is still very much in a competition to supply the United Arab Emirates with up to 80 long-range strike aircraft in a deal potentially worth $6 billion, despite French press reports to the contrary, according to Dassault chairman Serge Dassault. Dassault continues to market Rafale strongly, although export orders have not been forthcoming. Serge Dassault is not surprised: "How can you expect anyone to buy it until it is in service in its own country?" he asked.
China's new FC-1 fighter was designed to combine beyond- visual-range radar and missile capability and good maneuverability at low speeds with high subsonic speeds-plus low cost, Chengdu Aircraft Research Institute's vice-chief designer Qiu Pu Da said in an interview here. Several prototypes are being built and the first will fly before 2000, Qiu said. A full-scale cockpit mockup is on display at the air show here (DAILY, June 17).
