Karl Krapek, president of Pratt&Whitney, has taken over management of P&W's Large Commercial Engine business, and the unit's president, Robert Wolfe, will leave the company within months to pursue "new endeavors," Krapek said in a message to employees. Krapek shuffled management of the unit, and its eight top executives have been reporting directly to him since May 5. They are:
The move to upgrade NATO and U.S. Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft with an open-system architecture will begin this year, but a retrofit program is still several years away, a USAF official said yesterday. "The NATO AWACS program is going to award a contract at the end of this year to begin development work" for the open system architecture, Brig. Gen. Dave Nagy told The DAILY yesterday. The AF has already set aside money for a similar effort on its AWACS, he said during an interview in his Pentagon office.
U.S. Defense Dept. contract payment practices are so faulty that in one six-month period at one Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) unit, $305 million of $392 million in payments to defense contractors, or about 78%, were overpayments, the General Accounting Office says in a new report.
SOUTH AFRICAN EXPRESS, Johannesburg, placed a firm order for six 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet aircraft from Bombardier Regional Aircraft Div., Bombardier announced yesterday. The value of the contract is about $130 million, with deliveries set to begin in August and be completed by May 1998. SAX began operations on April 24, 1994 with the first of 12 Dash 8 Series 300 aircraft.
Delays in development of the F-2 fighter have prompted Japan's Air Self-Defense Force to form the eighth unit of McDonnell Douglas/Mitsubishi F-15Js. The 306th Air Squadron, in the 6th Air Wing, will be stationed at Komatsu Air Base in central Japan. The air force also replaced aging Mitsubishi F-1s in the 8th Air Squadron of the 3rd Air Wing at Misawa Air Base with McDonnell Douglas F- 4EJs.
Litton Data Systems, Agoura Hills, Calif., is being awarded a $5,749,958 firm-fixed-price contract for the procurement of four interrogator sets (UPX-24(V)), twelve remote control indicators, and associated data for AEGIS Class Destroyers (DDG). Work will be performed in Moorpark, Calif., and is expected to be completed by August 1999. Contract funds would not have expired by the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity (N00019-96-C-0181).
The European Commission will unveil its "statement of objections" to the proposed merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas "around the end of May," a spokesman for European Union Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert said yesterday in Brussels. This timetable represents about two weeks' slippage in letting the U.S. companies know whether and how their proposal faces problems. Last month in Washington, Van Miert said the commission would advise them by mid-May (DAILY, April 21).
LITTON INDUSTRIES, Woodland Hills, Calif. won a $3 million contract for its new Viking Continuous Wave (CW) upgrade for its AN/APR-39A(VE)/(V)3 threat warning system from the Royal Norwegian Air Force for use on BA-412 helicopters. Litton's Applied Technology Division (ATD), San Jose, Calif., will provide 25 systems along with support, training and software.
The U.S. Air Force wants to take a look at innovative approaches to re-engine its large aircraft as it studies whether to upgrade its fleet of planes equipped with Pratt&Whitney TF33s. Air Force acquisition chief Arthur Money told The DAILY earlier this year that the re-engining issue has been expanded from B-52H bombers to E-3 AWACS, E-8 Joint STARS, KC-135 tankers, RC-135 electronic surveillance planes, C-18 transports and other C-135 variants (DAILY, March 14).
Hughes Training, Inc., Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport, Texas, is being awarded a $204,600,000 indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract to provide for basic, exploratory, and advanced development warfighter training research in support of the Armstrong Laboratory, Warfighter Training Research Division, Mesa, Arizona. This effort will include research into all aspects of weapon system simulation and warfighter training devices and methods. The work will be performed at Armstrong Laboratory, Mesa, Ariz. Contract is expected to be completed May 2003.
Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems, Eagan, Minn., is being awarded a $5,002,523 cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for Combat Systems Software Support. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of the entire contract to $25,862,496. Work will be performed in Norfolk, Va. (75%), and Virginia Beach, Va. (25%), and is expected to be completed by the end of May 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
China launched a domestic telecommunications satellite on a Long March 3A booster Sunday, scoring a successful flight as its launch industry struggles to recover from a string of disastrous failures. Liftoff of the Chinese rocket with its Dongfanghong-3 satellite payload came at 12:17 p.m. EDT Sunday from the launch center at Xichang in Sichuan province, according to press reports from Beijing. The satellite reached its initial orbit and was being tracked by Chinese controllers.
More than 1,000 commercial communication satellites valued at $9.4 billion will be launched in the next decade, according to Teal Group of Fairfax, Va. "U.S. companies will dominate the LEO/MEO [low Earth orbit, /medium Earth orbit] commercial communications satellite market, accounting for 85% of the total number of satellites and 64% of the total value," Teal's Marco Caceres said in a prepared statement.
ATLANTIC RESEARCH CORP. James R. Sides president, has been named chairman and CEO of the company and elected a vice president of Sequa Corporation, ARC's parent company.
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION Daniel S. Goldin, administrator, received the Engineering Management Award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Management from the University of Southern California on April 11.
WYLE LABORATORIES Dan Reeder has joined the company as manager of marketing services. Robert A. Rieth has joined the company as chief executive officer.
The Senate and House Budget Committees are expected to start marking up a congressional budget resolution on Wednesday, although a number of issues are unsettled, including the national security budget ceilings, congressional sources said Friday.
RADA ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIES LTD. Major General Herzle Bodinger has joined the company as president of its U.S. subsidiary Rada Electronics Industries Inc.
Lockheed Martin's Norman Augustine says that while merging aerospace companies is an idea whose time has come, European companies will find what their American counterparts have already discovered - that the hardest part is after the merger. He says at the AIAA's Global Air&Space '97 conference in Arlington, Va., that the press pays little attention to rationalization and sizing down, but that it's tougher than getting the deals completed in the first place.
McKenna likes the idea of the long-term contract, such as Boeing's deals with American and Delta. Sundstrand has 10-year contracts with Airbus as well as Boeing, and is doing the same with its top 200 suppliers, he tells McGraw-Hill Aviation Week Group reporters in Washington. "It reduces competition, but the company knows it will be in business with you, so they invest in equipment and training." Sundstrand had 5,000 suppliers in 1990. This is down to 1,500, with the top 200 accounting for 80% of the business, McKenna says.
At least two firms involved in the growing commercial remote sensing industry are looking into the possibility of making satellite imagery archives available to non-traditional users, including consumers who might want an overhead shot of the family farm to hang on the wall, executives of the first told the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics last week.
As the Army moves more into digitizing the battlefield, it has started talking more with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) about hyperspectral technology, says Army Space and Strategic Defense Command Chief Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson. "We are working very closely and have opened up some doors with NRO," he says. "We have had several meetings with them already and we will continue to do that." He also expects some level of NRO participation in the new space and missile defense battlelab being established by the Army.
