Wood Dale, Ill.-based AAR won the exclusive right to provide Pratt&Whitney JT8D engine parts to GE Engine Services' new Brazilian overhaul shop, GE Celma, under a new five-year deal with GE. AAR signed a memorandum of understanding with GE to provide a customized inventory management program to include supply and repair of parts and components, similar to the agreement governing AAR's relationship with GE's Wales overhaul facility. The two companies expect to sign a definitive agreement in about a month.
Financially feeble French enginemaker SNECMA is on the mend, thanks to the rebound in worldwide jetliner orders, and expects this year to post its first profit since 1992. SNECMA still wound up 1996 with red ink, losing FFr280 million, or about $49.2 million, on total sales of about FFr18.7 billion, in 1996 financial results turned in this week.
Antonio Rodota, director of the Space Div. of Italy's Finmeccanica, has been named to a four-year term as director-general of the European Space Agency. Meeting in Paris last week, the ESA Council named Rodota to succeed Jean-Marie Luton, who announced late last year that he would not seek a third term (DAILY, Dec. 23, 1996).
Lockheed Martin did not submit a bid for the acquisition of Aero Vodochody as reported in The DAILY on March 21. The company informed the Czech airplane maker that it would not submit a bid by the deadline, but negotiations continue about a possible acquisition by Lockheed Martin.
AlliedSignal re-appointed Premier Turbines-San Diego as an authorized component repair center this month. Premier Turbines overhauls, repairs and restores engines and their components and accessories for most business jets, business helicopters, commuter aircraft and many military aircraft.
Subsidiaries of Rolls-Royce and Singapore Airlines' aftermarket arm launched a new joint component services company in Singapore this week called International Engine Component Overhaul (IECO). Set up in Loyang Industrial Park, IECO will focus at first on refurbishing high-technology nozzle guide vanes and compressor stators, serving airlines in the Asia-Pacific region flying aircraft powered by Rolls-Royce Trent and RB211 Series turbofans.
A Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle participating in the U.S. Army's Advanced Warfighting Experiment (AWE) at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif., had to abort its flight following an anomaly, but the system still has received much praise for its on-going participation at the wargame.
An improved variant of the U.S./German Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) intercepted a target for the first time yesterday using only the newly designed infrared-sensor portion of the dual-mode radio frequency/IR seeker. The Block 1 RAM features a seeker that allows targets to be engaged by infrared or radio frequency. Block 0 RAMs require both seekers to track and engage a target. Block 1 also expands RAM's role for a pure ship-defense missile to be able to attack helicopters or surface targets (DAILY, Jan. 29).
CHC Maintenance Trust Fund is readying an offering of securities aimed at raising the money it needs to buy Newfoundland, Canada-based CHC Helicopters' fixed-wing engine repair and overhaul businesses. CHC Helicopters is spinning off both the fixed-wing engine unit and its helicopter repair and overhaul business, with a subsidiary of the Fund, CHC Maintenance Inc., buying the units.
An AlliedSignal team with members from Airbus, Boeing and customer airlines expects in May to wrap up its studies of problems identified with 331-200/250 auxiliary power units. The problems, which cropped up in -200 series APUs on Boeing's 757 and 767 aircraft and -250 series APUs on Airbus A300-600s and A310s, involve both the operation of the APU and the aircraft pneumatic system.
The Defense Dept. is buying too many of its weapons in low-rate production, often in excess of what is needed to perform operational testing and establish the production base, the General Accounting Office has concluded. GAO said that if these weapons were produced at their originally planned rates and resulting cost estimates, then the quantities produced at the end of fiscal 1996 would have cost nearly $10 billion less than they did.
Northrop Grumman projects that its military aircraft business segment will see a drop in revenues over the next four years, primarily due to the end of B-2 production, but Chairman, President and CEO Kent Kresa says his company's position in key areas of the defense market gives him "a great sense of confidence in our future." Kresa told the Aviation Week Group's Aerospace Finance '97 conference in Arlington, Va., Wednesday that he was probably the only speaker there who couldn't announce a major merger or acquisition in the past year.
Last year's strong airline order rebound caught CFM International and its partner companies - General Electric and France's SNECMA - by surprise, and while it's good news, CFM Chairman Gerard Laviec hopes to temper expectations for 1997.
Lockheed Martin Electronics and Missiles has been in talks to put an Infrared Search and Track (IRST) system it is developing on the Swedish JAS-39 Gripen in an attempt to challenge a system Saab Dynamics has already proposed for the fighter. Dave Shrum, Lockheed Martin's airborne IRST program manager, told The DAILY Tuesday that Sweden was only one of several international customers that have received briefings on the IRST. Pitches have also been made to Norway, Japan, Australia, Korea and Taiwan.
The Capitol Hill struggle to close a fiscal 1998 federal budget outlay gap of between $7 billion and $9.3 billion - some $5.6 billion of it in national security - will make it more difficult to enact the service wish lists at any level, Pentagon officials and congressional sources say. The apparent shortfall doesn't mean that some programs on the plus-up wish lists won't find their way into the defense authorization and appropriations bills, congressional sources noted.
Navy and Marine Corps leaders want the majority of any congressional increases to the fiscal year 1998 defense budget to go into big-ticket programs like the F/A-18E/F and V-22 tiltrotor. Despite warnings from Defense Secretary William Cohen against sending "wish lists" for program budget plus ups to Capitol Hill, some lawmakers gave the service chiefs no choice. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) asked each of the chiefs to outline where they would spend an additional $1 billion, $2 billion and $3 billion.
The McDonnell Douglas Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response exceeded test objectives in its first development test, clearing the way for the U.S. Navy to begin low-rate initial production. The test firing March 18 at Naval Air Station, Point Mugu, Calif., was the first guided flight for SLAM-ER. The missile flew seven waypoints before burnout, according to information provided by the U.S. Navy. The missile was fired from an F/A-18 at around 5,000 feet and reached a maximum altitude of almost 15,000 feet.
A top Pentagon procurement official warned yesterday that while progress has been made in acquisition reform, more is needed, and "companies who don't participate are probably doomed." David A. Drabkin, assistant deputy under secretary of defense (acquisition process&policies), said after four years of acquisition reform four reasons remain for more changes. Two of them - a hard-to-define threat and falling budgets - have long driven the reform process.
The Air Force intends to modify the hardware and software necessary to enable the Minuteman weapon system to accept the Peacekeeper Mk 21/W87 warhead, Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall has informed the congressional defense committees. The House National Security Committee's fiscal year 1997 defense authorization report required the Air Force secretary to submit a report on the service's plan to deploy the Mk 21 reentry vehicle on the Minuteman and the status of funding for this effort.
Low-cost variants of existing missiles and less-expensive missiles modified for new missions could be ways to hold down the price of the Navy's proposed Arsenal Ship, say senior Navy officials defending the concept against criticisms that the new warship would cost too much. "We want to put it in the water and see if it makes sense," Vice Adm. Donald L. Pilling, deputy chief of naval operations for resources, warfare requirements and assessments, said Tuesday at a seminar during the annual Navy League Symposium in Washington.
Lockheed Martin jumped into the consolidation pool early, and is now beginning to reap the benefits, while Raytheon started playing catch-up in the past few months in hopes of following Lockheed Martin's example, top officials of the two companies said yesterday. "It was a benefit to go early in consolidation," Lockheed Martin Chairman and CEO Norman R. Augustine told the audience at the Aviation Week Group's Aerospace Finance '97 conference in Arlington, Va. "We got lower prices, a choice of partners and now we're near the end."
The U.S. Army has approached Hughes Missile Systems to see if it can help fix problems Lockheed Martin has encountered on its Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program. "The Army is at Hughes as we speak," Jerry K. Lockard, Hughes program director for surface navy air defense systems, told The DAILY yesterday. "They have representatives out at Tucson right now to see what we might have that is usable [and] to see what our capabilities are."
The fly-off between two competing concepts for the U.S. Navy's airborne mine-detection system won't take place until November because funds haven't been released.
Russia will begin delivery of cryogenic upper stages to India this year under a 1991 deal between Glavkosmos and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Glavkosmos announced the beginning of deliveries during the visit of Indian Prime Minister Deve Goda to Moscow. The Russian upper stages will be used with the Indian GSLV rocket.
