The Malaysian government wants the country's aerospace industry to become a significant exporter after 2000, according to a new plan. The Second Industrial Master Plan, released recently, envisages the light aircraft segment leading development of the industry.
Wins in competitions for the U.S. Air Force's Space-Based Infrared Sensor System (SBIRS) and Airborne Laser (ABL) programs have spurred Lockheed Martin Missiles&Space to increase its recruiting efforts, the company said. "A phenomenally successful year" has created more than 1,000 openings, and Lockheed Martin expects to hire 3,000 people for its Sunnyvale, Calif., facility during the next three years.
The U.S. Navy yesterday picked a team led by Avondale Shipyards to design and build the LPD-17, the next class of amphibious ships. The award is a boon for Avondale teammate Hughes Aircraft, which will be responsible for systems integration. The Avondale Alliance team beat a team of Litton Ingalls, Lockheed Martin, Newport News Shipbuilding and NASSCO, the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, winning a $641 million contract that could ultimately be worth $1.5 billion.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense has initiated a 35 million pound Future Offensive Air System study, aimed at defining candidates to replace the country's 142 Tornado GR.4/4A strike-reconnaissance aircraft by 2015.
U.S. and Russian astronauts predict training the crews for future missions to Mars will be much more demanding than for low Earth orbit and even lunar flights, with heavy use of computer-aided learning, virtual reality and compact information storage necessary to prepare men and women for the complex operations.
Although Boeing and McDonnell Douglas executives say their $13 billion deal doesn't necessarily spell the end of Douglas Aircraft Co. as an independent producer, some industry analysts are saying otherwise. Analysts, however, generally approve of the deal. Phil Condit, president and CEO of Boeing, said "to the degree the airlines want products from the two major product lines" at Seattle and Long Beach, "we will supply" them.
BFGOODRICH AEROSPACE, Farnborough, England, through its Aircraft Wheel&Brake Div., purchased a license from Micromet Technology Inc., Mineral Springs, N.C., to develop and market patented high performance Rhondite materials for aerospace applications. Rhondite is a new class of steel.
FOKKER SERVICES and FOKKER AEROSTRUCTURES, two of the four healthy companies in Fokker Aviation, landed separate contracts with U.S. companies. Fokker Services signed a five-year contract with American Airlines to provide technical and logistical support and services for the airline's fleet of 75 Fokker 100 aircraft. The contract includes engineering and operational assistance and names Fokker as a single-source supply for selected parts.
Brazil's Embraer plans to complete the detailed design of remote sensing and early warning variants of its EMB-145 commercial jetliner early next year, company officials said yesterday in Washington. "We are finalizing the design" and hope to complete the process in January or February, Luis Carlos Affonso, Embraer director of engineering, told The DAILY. Among the issues to be settled, he said, is who will supply the off-the-shelf, synthetic aperture radar for the remote sensing aircraft, designated EMB-145RS.
U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F strike fighters resumed flight testing Sunday, about a month after testing was halted by a compressor stall in a General Electric F414 turbofan engine of one of the planes. Testing could have resumed Friday, but was delayed until Sunday because of bad weather, the Navy said. The only two-seat F/A-18E/F delivered so far to NAS Patuxent River, Md., Aircraft F-1, logged the 1.5 hour flight, the service said yesterday. It flew with new engine components.
The new Boeing Co. will be a major player on every U.S. Defense Dept. fighter aircraft currently in development, but company officials don't see that worrying the Pentagon. If Boeing's $13 billion buy of McDonnell Douglas is approved by the Federal Trade Commission and stockholders, Boeing's portfolio would include the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, major subcontractor work on the Air Force's F-22 and competition for the Joint Strike Fighter program, in addition to the existing F-15 and F/A-18C/D production lines.
December 9, 1996 Hughes Aircraft Company Hughes Aircraft Company, Electro-Optical and Data Systems Group, El Segundo, Calif., is being awarded an $8,229,771 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-94-C-0054 for AN/AAQ-16B Forward Looking Infrared components for the CH-53E helicopter. Work will be performed in El Segundo, Calif., and is expected to be completed by June 1999. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity.
The $13 billion proposed merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas will force Airbus Industrie to "get more aggressive" and speed up the process of restructuring the partnership to form an integrated company, said Jon Kutler of Quarterdeck Investment Partners. Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, remains the largest U.S. defense contractor, but would be happy to share the upper echelon with a new Boeing.
A $13 billion deal announced by Boeing and McDonnell Douglas Sunday in which MDC would become part of Boeing would form a giant aerospace company that with 1997 revenues of $48 billion, a backlog of $100 billion, and 200,000 workers in 27 states.
CUBIC CORP., San Diego, doubled its income for fiscal year 1996, earning $11 million on sales of $407 million. In 1995, the company earned $5.4 million on $370 million in sales.
Russian Space Forces have orbited the Cosmos 2335 satellite to refill the operational ocean reconnaissance constellation used by the Russian Navy. The classified satellite was launched on a two-stage Tsiklon-2 launcher Dec. 11 from Site 90 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was successfully inserted into a regular, nearly circular orbit with an altitude of about 420 kilometers and an inclination of 65 degrees.
AIRBUS INDUSTRIE announced the first flight of its 200-passenger A321-200, an upgraded version of the 185-seat A321-100, from the Daimler-Benz Aerospace Airbus facilities, Hamburg-Finkenwerder. The plane, which flew for four and a half hours, was powered by V2533-A5 engines from International Aero Engines. The A321-200 has a range of 2,700 nautical miles, about 350 nautical miles more than the base model. An additional fuel tank and other modifications raised the maximum takeoff weight to 196,200 pounds.
Space Systems: Boeing: Commercial space systems, global positioning satellites, launch vehicle propulsion, sea launch, space launch processing, Space Shuttle programs. McDonnell Douglas programs: Delta II launch vehicle, Delta III launch vehicle, Titan IV payload fairing. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas programs: Delta launch vehicle and propulsion, EELV, Space Station prime and module construction. Defense Systems:
