AMERICAN AIRLINES PILOTS yesterday voted down a contract agreement that was needed to secure the airline as an exclusive buyer of Boeing jetliners for the next 20 years. American placed an order in November for 103 aircraft, as well as purchase rights for another 527, in a deal that was contingent on pilot approval (DAILY, Nov. 22). American had no comment late yesterday on the future of the Boeing deal, but said that it is consulting the National Mediation Board and the Allied Pilots Association about future negotiations.
ELTA ELECTRONICS INDUSTRIES LTD., a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries, won a $115 million contract from Switzerland's Defense Procurement Agency for communication intelligence systems. They will be used by the Swiss Army to modernize its COMINT capabilities.
Matra Marconi will supply a direct-to-home satellite to Intelsat under a $150 million deal the Anglo-French firm termed "a significant breakthrough" in its design-and-build satellite business. The deal follows the launch in November 1996 of its Hotbird 2 direct-to-home platform for Eutelsat. Intelsat plans to use the new satellite for service in an area from India to Indonesia following its launch next year, stationing the high-power K-TV platform at 95 degrees East longitude.
China's satellite remote sensing ground station will soon begin receiving data from Canada's Radarsat and France's Spot, the China Daily newspaper reported. The facility, which celebrated 10 years of operation last month, is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It also can handle data from Landsat-5, Japan's JERS-1 and Europe's ERS-1 and ERS-2 remote sensing platforms. China uses satellite data for environmental and resource surveys. There are more than 600 users of the data across the country.
IRIDIUM delayed by a day its kickoff of the "big-LEO" communications satellite era, pushing back today's planned launch of its first three satellites into low Earth orbit because of a "minor technical anomaly...in the ground system software." Liftoff of the Delta II carrying the three relay platforms is now scheduled for 8:35 a.m. EST tomorrow from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The company plans another Delta launch in March or early April, followed by a seven-satellite shot aboard a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of former Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Maine) as secretary of defense may begin on Jan. 22, a Senate Armed Services Committee spokeswoman said yesterday. "We're looking at possibly Jan. 22" for opening hearings on former SASC member Cohen, the aide said. President Clinton nominated Cohen Dec. 5.
ECC International Corp.'s board of directors has retained the investment banking firm of Oppenheimer&Co. to help it find a buyer for its businesses, the Wayne, Pa., company said. It said Monday that the action fulfills a proposal approved by shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Dec. 3, 1996. ECC International is engaged in the design and production of simulators and related training systems.
The international Bion-11 life sciences research mission landed intact in Kazakhstan early yesterday with the two monkeys it carried alive. Based on the Zenit photoreconnaissance satellite, the recoverable spacecraft touched down near the town of Kustanay at two minutes past midnight EST. Russian officials told reporters the two monkeys, named Lapik and Multik, were active when the hatch was opened.
Inaccuracies in the Defense Intelligence Agency's financial reports have led to the faulty recording of $222.5 million in disbursements, the Pentagon Inspector General's office has found. Information filed for fiscal 1995 was incorrect largely because of a failure to record all DIA disbursements, according to an IG report released late last month by the Pentagon. The IG said the fiscal 1995 backlog in recording disbursements continued into FY '96.
SAM NUNN, retired Georgia Democratic senator, is joining the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a counselor and member of the board of trustees. Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will have an office in the Washington headquarters.
Civilian production now makes up half of the total annual output of Shenyang Aircraft Corp., China's largest manufacturer of jet fighters. The Xinhua news agency, quoting a company official, said Shenyang was expected to turn out $60 million worth of civilian products this year.
South Korea will announce as early as today that it plans to buy Advanced Self-Protection Jammers for its F-16 fighters, sources told The DAILY. Under terms of the deal, Korea is expected to buy an undisclosed number of jammers directly from the Northrop Grumman/ITT team that jointly developed and built the jammer. The system software would be delivered as a foreign military sales item by the U.S. government.
U.S. GOVERNMENT stands to receive $16.8 million from Lockheed Martin and Teledyne Industries as a result of fraud settlements. Lockheed Martin will pay $5.3 million to settle charges that it asked the Defense Dept. to pay it too much for work on a low-flying supersonic missile target. The settlement was the result of a whistle-blower's charges that were initially brought against Martin Marietta in 1991. Lockheed and Martin have since merged. The U.S. Navy is now evaluating a Russian sea-skimming missile as a target under a foreign comparative test program.
Failure to consider operations in McDonnell Douglas rapid-prototyping guidelines and an approach that "empowered" ground personnel without putting anyone in charge led to the loss last year of NASA's DC-XA "Clipper Graham" flying testbed, an agency investigation board found.
NASA believes it can attach an "interim control module" to the International Space Station in time to cut the delay in Station assembly caused by Russia's failure to deliver its Service Module on time, according to the U.S. agency's chief Station engineer.
Chinese and European aviation officials will visit each others' facilities through June 1998 in a series of exchanges to help strengthen co-operation in aeronautics. The moves are intended in part to compete against a combined Boeing- McDonnell Douglas, and may also help improve the European industry's position in the China market.
A Pentagon review of the F-22 fighter program has been rescheduled to the end of the month. Top acquisition officials planned to meet Monday to review a revised U.S. Air Force plan for the F-22 that resulted from cost growth in the engineering and manufacturing development phase. The review will also address proposed steps to counter a projected cost increase in the production phase. Pentagon officials, including acquisition chief Paul Kaminski, are now scheduled to meet Jan. 29.
The U.S. Air Force will drop below the force structure level set in the Bottom Up Review if the soon-to-be released fiscal 1998 budget is approved, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman said yesterday. Two years ago, legislators told the services not to drop below their BUR force structure levels, but Fogleman told reporters yesterday in Washington that "in fact, in the budget we're going to submit this year the AF is programmed to go below that number."
THE WHITE HOUSE wants to submit its entire fiscal 1998 budget proposal to Congress a week late. Budget submission is scheduled for the first Monday in February, Feb. 3, but the White House has told Congress it would like to submit the budget Feb. 10 - after the Feb. 5 State of the Union address.
RAYTHEON Engineers&Constructors won a contract from the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center to operate and maintain the Atlantic Undersea Test&Evaluation Centers (AUTEC) in West Palm Beach, Fla., and on Andros Island in the Bahamas, the company announced. The contract runs through 2005 and has a potential value of $240 million. Raytheon beat a Johnson Controls/CSC team, ITT, and Lockheed Martin.
Boeing Co. sold 559 aircraft in 1996 for $42.8 billion giving it a 64% market share, compared to Airbus sales of 301 aircraft for $21.6 billion and a 32.3% market share, Ron Woodard, Boeing Commercial Air Group president, said yesterday in Seattle. Airbus reported the day before that it got announced orders and commitments for 498 aircraft in '96, valued at $34.4 billion and representing 42% of total aircraft ordered with more than 100 seats (DAILY, Jan. 7).
The U.S. Air Force may buy a couple of hundred short take-off and vertical landing Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, rather than only conventional take-off and landing variants, AF Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman told reporters yesterday. "I think it's important for a couple of reasons that we look at this capability," he said during a breakfast meeting in Washington.
Press speculation that parties in the German parliament have reached an agreement over funding for the Eurofighter is being seen as a positive sign in the U.K., one of only two countries that have committed money for the next phase of the program. The Bundestag has not yet returned from Christmas break, but German press reports say there will be funding for the Eurofighter program in the budget. Industry observers don't expect action until late next month.
Rep. Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.) has regained the seat he lost two years ago on the House Appropriations national security subcommittee, a Visclosky aide said yesterday. Congressional sources said Visclosky was put back on the subcommittee as part of a deal to expand the panel by two seats, one Democratic and one Republican. Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-Calif.) got the Republican opening.
