The U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Center (ESC) awarded contracts to teams led by Hughes, Raytheon and TRW for work on the Command and Control Product Lines (CCPL) program. Each of the contracts is valued at $500 million. One of the teams will ultimately be picked for the production phase.
FAA certified Pratt&Whitney's 90,000-lbst. PW4090 turbofan on the new Boeing 777-200 Increased Gross Weight (IGW) aircraft, and ground testing has already begun on the next growth step in the family - the 98,000-lbst. PW4098, built around the increased capacity core of the PW4090.
Luton-based Monarch Airlines' new order for two Airbus A330-200 widebodies and two A321-200 single-aisle twins gives Rolls-Royce another $110 million in new business. Each A330, slated for delivery in 1999, is powered by two 72,000-lbst. Trent 700 turbofans, while Rolls has a 30% stake in the International Aero Engines consortium supplying V2533 turbofans for the A321s worth $30 million.
GE Engine Services notched $2.6 billion in new orders in 1996 - a record-setting 44% jump over 1995's results - dwarfing sales by rivals in the engine maintenance and support business and spurring speculation about how the rest of the market may try to maneuver to catch up.
Officials of Lockheed Martin and Pratt&Whitney will brief U.S. Air Force officials today on specific steps they plan to take to avoid a potential $15 billion cost growth in the production phase of the F-22 fighter program. The industry officials will present their plan to come up with the required efficiencies, a senior AF official told reporters yesterday during a background at the Pentagon.
GE Engine Services won an unusual seven-year deal worth some $200 million to maintain GE CF6-80C2 turbofans powering American Airlines' Airbus A300 jetliners. American technicians will disassemble, reassemble and test the engines, while GE will manage the repair and replacement of internal parts.
Pratt&Whitney signed a three-year, "multi-million dollar" contract with Enigma Information Retrieval Systems to develop and deliver electronically based engine repair manuals. P&W hopes to replace all of its massive paper-based manuals - some of which contain up to 20,000 pages - with manuals distributed on CD-ROM disks or through a corporate Intranet. P&W has already published its PW4000 manual on CD-ROM.
The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is getting ready to award contracts for the third and final phase of the Affordable Multi-Missile Manufacturing Program (AM3), a demonstration effort aimed at reducing the cost of existing and future U.S. missiles and smart munitions.
GENCORP AEROJET won a $43.8 million product improvement contract from the U.S. Army for the Sense and Destroy Armor (SADARM) program. Gencorp said Wednesday that the contract includes options worth $2.9 million. The work includes increasing SADARM's search area, possibly by as much as three times. Aerojet will also develop a combined effects warhead to allow the submunition to defeate a wider variety of targets.
The U.K. government awarded a 70,000 pound ($114,800) grant to a British company formed to break into the U.S. aerospace market. The U.K.'s Dept. of Trade and Industry (DTI) said the company, United Avionics Ltd., is made up of five established British avionics firms. It has the backing of GEC-Marconi, which is giving it marketing advice and allowing it to be based at its facility in Atlanta, Ga.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Electronics&Missiles, Orlando, Fla., received a $26.2 million contract from the U.S. Army to support the AH-64 Target Acquisition and Designation System/Pilot Night Vision System (TADS/PNVS). The contract covers system support this year, but options for 1998 and 1999 could increase its value to $78.7 million, Lockheed Martin reported. Work will be carried out in Germany, Korea and several U.S. locations.
Bernard L. Koff, widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern jet engine technology, retired this month from his post as executive VP of engineering and technology at Pratt&Whitney in West Palm Beach, Fla., after a 47-year career in the gas turbine industry. Koff joined P&W in 1980 as senior engineering VP and was appointed to the executive VP slot in 1990.
The U.S. departments of Defense and Transportation have agreed to allow commercial users to access parts of the military Global Positioning System frequency, but failed to agree on how a second, dedicated civilian GPS signal would be constituted. DOD and DOT will guarantee civil access to parts of L-2, the military GPS signal, and this will give civil users access to two frequencies, the Pentagon said yesterday. The announcement had been expected (DAILY, Feb. 27).
The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E/F flew for the first time Feb. 21 with weapons attached. The single seat E-1 flight test aircraft flew a 2.5 hour mission from NAS Patuxent River, Md., carrying Mk-84 bombs, two AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to- air missiles, High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, and three 480-gallon fuel tanks, MDC reported. Launch weight was 62,400 pounds, the heaviest Super Hornet load at takeoff so far, according to MDC.
McDonnell Douglas, which signed an industrial cooperation agreement with Hungary in December (DAILY, Dec. 10, 1996), opened an office in Budapest, the company announced yesterday. The new office, headed by Charles M. Gyenes, is located in the International Trade Center.
The U.S. Air Force took another step toward activating its newest turbine engine test cell at the Arnold Engineering Development Center, conducting Cell T-11's first on-air period last month. The test, performed on Jan. 16 but only now being reported, is the first of nine simulator tests slated for T-11, and activation testing should be complete in April. Once the simulator tests are done, an F112 cruise missile engine will be installed and tested to verify the performance of the new installation with a real engine.
Russian subcontractors on the International Space Station's Service Module won't be paid with Russian Space Agency funds until mid-March, but work at the subcontractor level is already underway again using U.S. funds and private financing, and the critical component is on track for a December 1998 launch.
A Cleveland, Ohio-based university/industry/government consortium will work to develop a new way to measure gas turbine engine blade vibration under a $1.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force's Wright Laboratory.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Federal Systems, Owego, N.Y., won a $130 million contract to deploy 11 Tray Management Systems (TMS) for the U.S. Postal Service, the company announced yesterday. This is the second production buy of the computer-controlled material handling systems, a business that Lockheed Martin says has a sales potential of $1 billion through 2000.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is considering ordering replacement of the fan guards on 414 GE Aircraft Engines CF700 turbofans powering Falcon 20 and Sabreliner NA265 aircraft, saying in a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that the job could cost more than $21 million. A report of uncontained fan blades on a CF700 powering a Falcon 20 business jet prompted the proposal. During takeoff, the Falcon encountered a flock of birds, and the engine lost enough fan blades to unload the aft fan and allow the core rotor to overspeed the fan disk.
The Hungarian government has chosen Matra Defense of France to supply shoulder-launched air defense missiles in a deal potentially worth $100 million. Matra was chosen over Bofors of Sweden, Bombardier of Canada, Daimler- Benz of Germany, and Hughes Electronics of the U.S. Hungary, one of the leading candidates for NATO membership among the former Eastern Bloc countries, launched a competition for the missiles a year ago.
Croatia Airlines chose the CFM International CFM56-5B/P medium turbofan to power six firm Airbus Industrie A319s, CFM partner GE Aircraft Engines reports. Deliveries begin early in 1998, and options for another six aircraft - which can be any of the aircraft in the A320 family - would make the engine deal worth $150 million. The 23,500-lbst. -5B/P was certified in mid-1996 and is now the standard production configuration for the -5B series. The -5B/P core also underlies the new CFM56-7 turbofan powering Boeing's next-generation 737 twin.
The U.S. Army National Guard quietly signed a long-awaited memorandum of agreement covering re-engining of some 131 UH-1 Huey helicopters with LHTEC T800 turboshafts, but officials still need to find the money to pay for it. Three years of wrangling between the active Army, the Guard and pro- and anti-Huey upgrade forces on Capitol Hill led to the deal, signed early last month by National Guard Director Maj. Gen. William A. Navas.
