The merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas "will pose problems for the European civil aviation industry" and some sectors of military aviation, particularly helicopters, according to Airbus Industrie Managing Director Jean Pierson. Last December, claiming the merger would not alter competition, Airbus was indifferent to the European Commission's plan to launch an inquiry. Pierson now says Airbus will cooperate fully with investigations by the EC and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Lockheed Martin Fairchild Systems, Syosset, N.Y., is being awarded a $6,401,443 firm-fixed-price contract for nine various items of Interim Support Material including gyro assemblies necessary to support deployment of the F/A-18 Advanced Tactical Reconnaissance System (ATARS). Work will be performed in Syosset, N.Y., and is expected to be completed by February 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured.
Texas Instruments, Inc., Defense Systems and Electronics, Lewisville, Texas, is being awarded a $65,865,286 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-91-C-0196 to exercise an option for the Low Rate Initial Production of 111 JSOW/AGM-154 all-up-rounds for the U.S. Navy (100) and the U.S. Air Force (11). This modification provides for training, testing, and surveillance hardware and support equipment. Work will be performed in Lewisville, Texas, and is expected to be completed by January 1999.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency yesterday picked Boeing Co., Texas Instruments and Toyon Research Corp. of Goleta, Calif., for concept development studies in the Low Cost Cruise Missile Defense program. Boeing won $182,485, TI got $1.1 million, and Toyon received $848,501 for 12-month study contracts on different parts of the program, the Pentagon reported yesterday.
A LOCKHEED MARTIN Atlas IIAS booster launched JCSAT-4 from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., on Sunday after a one-day weather delay. The Hughes HS 601 satellite will provide voice, data and television service among Japan and Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. It is operated by Japan Satellite Systems Inc. of Tokyo, which has also signed a deal with the International Launch Services consortium that includes Lockheed Martin Astronautics for the launch of JCSAT-6 in mid-1998.
The Clinton Administration has added $19.2 billion in national security budget authority for fiscal years 1998-2002 compared to what it was planning a year ago, but "virtually all of this funding increase" is not directly related to combat forces and weapons, a House Budget Committee analysis of the Administration's budget request has concluded.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $51,325,000 firm-fixed-price, delivery order for three advance tactical airborne reconnaissance systems, one advance tactical airborne reconnaissance subsystem, two radar upgrade/reconnaissance conversion kits, 12 radar upgrade/reconnaissance modification kits, production verification flight test support, integrated logistics support, training and technical publications for the F/A-18 aircraft. Work will be performed in St. Louis, Mo., and is expected to be completed by November 1998.
More than 25,000 aircraft, valued at $655.5 billion, are expected to be built throughout the world in the next 10 years, with the U.S. producing about 60% of the total by dollar value, according to Teal Group's second world aircraft production forecast. The totals vary only slightly from Teal Group's first world aircraft forecast, released at the Farnborough International 96 Air Show (DAILY, Aug. 30, 1996). The new forecast sees commercial jet transports, valued at $367.2 billion, making up 56% of the forecast.
The Defense Dept. won't allow the Federal Aviation Administration to use the military L-2 signal to make certain corrections in the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) required for safe aircraft landings, sources said. As the Feb. 21 deadline for a decision on a second signal for the Block IIF Global Positioning System satellites approaches, they said the Pentagon turned FAA down because it wants to use L-2 to implement techniques to meet national security requirements of the GPS signal.
Lockheed Martin Electronics&Missiles, Orlando, Fla., is being awarded a $26,602,501 firm fixed price with time and materials and cost reimbursable (contract line-items) contract for Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor (TADS/PNVS) depot repair program's contract for CY97 and option years 1998 and 1999, to include concurrent spares. Work will be performed in Orlando, Fla., and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
With the air cargo conversion market on the verge of growing from niche to major money maker, Lucas Aerospace is moving to strengthen its position there. "We've seen it as an opportunity for quite some time," Rich Pogue, vice president and general manager, Lucas Aerospace Cargo Systems, told The DAILY in a telephone interview from Jamestown, N.D. He said Lucas Aerospace, a business of LucasVarity plc, is interested because "we have some products to offer that the competition doesn't have. This isn't something we just thought to do now."
Tracor Flight Systems Inc., Austin, Tex., won a contract for aerial targets for Australia, its first international sale. Tracor said yesterday that the nine-year, $35 million contract is from Australia's defense department. Tracor will supply subscale aircraft, tow targets, ground control stations and associated support equipment for Project Kalkara. The target system is based on Tracor's MQM-107E drone, produced for the U.S. Army and Air Force, and used for weapons development, testing and training.
A group of investors led by Andre Delaye, chairman of the Dutch venture capital company Begemann, is close to completing a rescue plan for Fokker, the bankrupt aircraft manufacturer. Delaye has been holding talks with Singaporean investors and Stork, the Dutch industrial group that purchased Fokker's profitable spares and maintenance activities last year. Fokker, which is currently finishing production of the last aircraft on its order book, collapsed in March 1996, when parent Daimler-Benz Aerospace refused to bail it out.
Logicon Syscon, Falls Church, Va., is being awarded an $11,085,973 cost- plus-fixed-fee contract to provide combat system engineering for digital computer-based shipboard combat systems. This contract includes four options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of the contract to $57,233,604. Work will be performed in Arlington, Va., and is expected to be completed by February 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured with 173 proposals solicited and five offers received.
Metric Systems Corp., Fort Walton Beach, Fla., is being awarded a $5,399,733 modification to previously awarded contract N000163-92-C-0231 to exercise an option to procure 85 Common Rack and Launcher Test Sets, 531 Adapter Sets, 83 Accessory Cases, and 59 Group Adaptor Sets for the H-60, P-3, S-3, AH-1, AV-8, F-18, H-1, and F-14 aircraft. Work will be performed in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and is expected to be completed by February 1999. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year.
Raytheon Company, Goleta, Calif., is being awarded a $41,790,792 fixed price incentive firm contract to provide for the AN/ALE-50(V) Production Program - 975 Air Force Towed Decoy Rounds for the F-16 aircraft, 92 Navy Towed Decoy Rounds for the F/A-18, 119F-16 1x2 Launcher/Controllers and Isolation Racks, 83 F-16 magazines, data and weapon system warranty. Contract is expected to be completed January 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There was one firm solicited and one proposal received.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), in releasing a Congressional Budget Office study on affordability of the Pentagon's tactical aircraft modernization plan (DAILY, Feb. 14), declines to say which of the three big programs he prefers - Joint Strike Fighter, F-22 fighter or F/A-18E/F Super Hornet - but does say he likes "the idea of a multi-service aircraft." The Administration, he says, should tell Congress how it intends to pay the projected $350 billion-plus cost of all three.
Even as the U.S. Air Force moves to increase the use of Air Expeditionary Forces, it's trying to overcome problems associated with strategic lift requirements of each of the deployments. In the AEFs, "we need to be smaller, we need to be lighter," Lt. Gen. John Jumper, Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, told reporters at the Pentagon last week. Future AEFs, he said, will require "a much smaller footprint on the ground."
RICHARD A. RUSSELL has been named president of Longbow Limited Liability Co. (LLC), the Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman joint venture making the Longbow weapon system. LLC, of Orlando, Fla., said Friday that Russell will also head Longbow International, the international sales joint venture. Russell succeeds George D. Minto, who will direct business development activities for Electronics&Missiles' missile systems products.
The increasing number of commercial space launches from U.S. government facilities is threatening the government's ability to recapitalize its launch infrastructure, according to a top Defense Dept. space official.
The U.S. Army still is looking at using the Hunter unmanned aerial vehicles that were mothballed when the program was terminated. After a series of problems, the Pentagon told the Army it could only use one and a half of the seven systems it bought. But the problems appear to have been solved, and Army acquisition chief Gilbert Decker says "we ought to field a few more of these" because it would help the service train operators in the use of UAVs.
Some senior GOP members of the House National Security Committee are angry the Pentagon has transitioned procurement funding for its top theater missile defense (TMD) programs out of the BMDO budget and into the individual service budgets, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), chair of the HNSC research and development subcommittee, said Thursday. The concern is that the services are not committed to the TMD efforts and will try to shift it to their other procurement programs through reprogramming initiatives, Weldon told The DAILY in a telephone interview.
NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, long a target for cutbacks by House Republicans who belittle global warming as "liberal claptrap" (DAILY, Feb. 14), may be in for some more stormy weather. Rep. Dave Weldon (R- Fla.), newly named vice chairman of the House Science subcommittee that oversees NASA, says the climate research project might better be funded under another agency. "If you look at NASA's mission, it's more out in space," Weldon tells reporters.
Hughes Training Inc., Arlington, Tex., beat ECC International in a competition for a $22 million Boeing Defense and Space Group contract to build a suite of seven maintenance training devices for the F-22 fighter. They will support initial skills training for new aircraft maintenance students.
