Airbus Industrie appears to have the edge in marketing a very large aircraft to airlines, now that Boeing Co. is putting on hold plans for stretched versions of its 747. Boeing said Monday that development costs of a 747-500X or -600X have risen above the $7 billion level, and that there hasn't been enough airline interest to proceed. But an Airbus official said that "we have expedited our activity" on the comparable A3XX, "largely at the request of a number of the airlines we have been talking with."
The Japanese government's fiscal 1997 budget plan of $673 billion includes a defense budget of $43 billion, a 2.1% increase over 1996. The three services have been approved to spend $7.3 billion for procurement of new weapons, including 56 aircraft worth $2.54 billion. Japan's Defense Budget Aircraft No. requested No. approved No. bought for 1997 for 1997 in 1996 The Ground Self-Defense Forces
The Congressional Budget Office's inflation projection in the fiscal 1997 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) for 1997-2001, using a different price measure than the Clinton Administration, would produce a net savings of $10.3 billion in Defense Dept. purchases - $24.4 billion less than DOD's estimate, the General Accounting Office has concluded.
Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) selected NEC as the prime contractor for development and assembly of the Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS). Mitsubishi Electric and Toshiba Corp. will also participate in the program. NEC will be responsible for a synthetic aperture radar, while NEC and Mitsubishi Electric will develop optical sensors. Toshiba will make a precision position/attitude decision system.
The State Commission investigating the Mars-96 launch failure has been unable to pinpoint exactly what went wrong, hampered in its two- month study by a lack of telemetry data that might have been available had Russia been able to afford to deploy a tracking ship before the launch. Even though the Commission's report to the top management of the Russian Space Agency took longer than scheduled, it still failed to identify the cause of the mishap, according to the Russian daily newspaper Izvestia.
Loral Space&Communications will continue its acquisition of AT&T Skynet Satellite Services, even though AT&T has abandoned efforts to revive a malfunctioning satellite that handled a large portion of its traffic, the two companies said Friday.
Paul Nisbet of JSA Research predicts that the Pentagon budget will start heading back up in the next few years. "I think there will be increasing pressure to reverse the downward turn as time goes on, even without international incidents," he says. "That we're likely go another 5-10 years without an incident of significant scope is also dreaming. We haven't been very good at avoiding them in the past. Something will happen and defense spending will turn back up. Right now, it's about as low as its going to get before it starts going back up."
Failure of a modified Minuteman II to launch from Kawjalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands Thursday night prevented a planned test of an exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) sensor that was intended to support the national missile defense program, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization reported.
While some say that Northrop Grumman Corp. has been shut out of the defense industry big leagues in the wake of recent mergers, Kent Kresa says he's "quite comfortable with our position in the market." "We are a major player in the markets that we serve," said Kresa, chairman, president and CEO of Northrop Grumman. "We're an $8 billion corporation that has a growth path to $10 billion by the turn of the century," he told the DAILY Friday, a day after Raytheon aced it out in bidding for the defense businesses of GM's Hughes.
Mars Global Surveyor controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory plan three "wiggle tests" this week to refine their theory on why one of the spacecraft's solar arrays stuck before fully deploying after launch Nov. 7 (DAILY, Nov. 8). Engineers believe a damper shaft that broke off shortly after launch jammed a hinge joint, leaving the array stuck 20.5 degrees short of full deployment.
A McDonnell Douglas Delta II rocket exploded on takeoff Friday, taking the first Lockheed Martin Navstar Block IIR Global Positioning System satellite with it. The $40 million next-generation GPS platform was lost when the Delta II exploded about 10 seconds after it lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., at 11:28 a.m. EST, the U.S. Air Force said. It was the first Delta II failure during launch in 11 years, and only the 14th failure in 241 attempts since 1960.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has set Feb. 11 as the date of a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Anthony Lake to be the new director of central intelligence. He's expected to come under fire for being White House national security advisor when the Administration turned its head on the transfer of Iranian arms to Bosnia. As he was making courtesy calls on Capitol Hill last week, Lake was told to be prepared for some stiff grilling on that subject.
The U.S. Air Force's F-22 fighter will feature the largest closed die titanium forgings ever made, according to prime contractor Lockheed Martin. It said the forgings take the shape of four bulkheads in the aircraft's mid-fuselage. They are produced by Wyman-Gordon for Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems. The largest is over 18 feet long and 8,000 square inches in plan view area, according to Lockheed Martin. It said producing the bulkheads in single instead of multiple pieces saves time and money and reduces weight.
Although stealth aircraft are meant to evade radar, they may have an advantage over conventional aircraft even when they are detected. U.S. Air Force requirements chief Maj. Gen. Gregory Martin says "what you'll find is that it's not necessarily broad area compromise but niche compromise." And because of that more limited vulnerability, "we can focus EW [electronic warfare] a little better when it comes to LO aircraft."
The Pentagon might be in charge of its acquisition programs but that doesn't mean it has total control over them. Ask Paul Kaminski, the Pentagon acquisition chief, who'll tell you that "it's damn hard to cancel a program we want to cancel."
Airbus Industrie said Fokker Aviation of The Netherlands (Stork) and Belairbus of Belgium will participate in the study phase of the A3XX airliner project and may become risk-sharing partners in the program, aimed at building a very large aircraft, or VLC. Engineers from the two companies will be integrated into the A3XX design team in the first step in closer cooperation with the aircraft industries of the two countries.
Membership of the House Intelligence Committee remains undecided, but aides hope to see some action this week. The ethics investigation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich is holding everything up. It has had at least one effect on the Intelligence Committee - Rep. James Hansen (R-Utah), a member, will give up his seat to chair the Ethics Committee. Hansen reluctantly accepted the job, aides say. He intends to remain chairman of the National Parks, Forests and Lands subcommittee on resources.
Technicians at Kennedy Space Center had a few bad moments Friday as they were rolling the Space Shuttle Discovery out to the launch pad for its planned Feb. 11 launch on the second Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. About an hour and a half into the rollout they heard a loud bang, and discovered a Y-shaped crack in the Mobile Launch Platform carrying the Shuttle. The rollout was stopped until engineers determined that the crack was confined to the steel plate on the surface of the mobile platform, and did not compromise its structural integrity.
Douglas C. Roach, the former House National Security R&D subcommittee staffer who authored the fiscal 1997 House defense authorization report language against developing an ASTOVL variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, says ASTOVL is "a nice to have thing" but should be dropped as a Marine Corps requirement, "especially if you don't have the money." The ASTOVL prohibition was dropped in House-Senate conference, but Roach says ASTOVL requires "a huge investment" and isn't an important capability.
The mid-life upgrade program for the F-117 Nighthawk will keep it flying for at least the next decade. Martin, who wouldn't disclose what specific mods will be made, said "we believe that we have designed the program that will make the F-117 a capable and continuing to be low observable weapons system through the 2010, 2015 timeframe." The mission won't change, he adds.
DOI TAKEO, a consultant for Kawasaki Heavy Industries, died on Dec. 24 at age 92. He designed more than 20 types of aircraft for Kawasaki, including the Army Type 95 fighter, the Type 2 fighter, the Type 3 fighter and Type 99 bomber. He also participated in the development of the YS-11 transport.
The F-22 fighter is getting software that will add capabilities that weren't expected to be on the baseline aircraft. Lt. Gen. George Muellner, U.S. Air Force acquisition chief, says that because of progress on the AIM-9X air-to-air missile program and the associated Joint Helmet Mounted Cuing effort, these two capabilities will be added in a Block 4 software release. It will also include a classified program which is "avionics related."
The Pentagon has set up an office to define operational requirements for missile defense. U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen B. Plummer will head the new Joint Theater Air Missile Defense Organization (JTAMDO), and Rear Adm. Herbert C. Kaler will be his deputy, the Pentagon announced on Thursday. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which will act as integrator for systems under JTAMDO's purview, is also directed by a USAF general, Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles.
