Russia's emasculated defense forces received no combat aircraft deliveries in 1995, and with virtually no new military equipment orders originating at home, the 2,000 industrial and 920 research organizations that comprise the Russian national arms complex are looking for markets elsewhere. Russia hopes to boost arms exports to $10 billion a year by 2000, having increased by some $1 billion to $2.7 billion in 1995.
Members of a task force advising NASA on the first phase of the International Space Station program are concerned lessons learned from joint operations of the U.S. Space Shuttle and Russia's Mir aren't being applied to the later phases of the Station program. NASA officials acknowledge efforts to apply Shuttle/Mir lessons to Station are "sort of on hold," and say funding disputes within the U.S. space agency have hampered planning for a lessons-learned mechanism.
McDonnell Douglas Corp. and the striking International Association of Machinists union have reached a tentative contract agreement that would end the 94-day strike by the union, House Minority Leader Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) announced late Friday. Terms were not immediately announced. The agreement is subject to ratification by the 6,700 IAM workers based in St. Louis. A major issue in the strike was job security.
Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole's key national security advisers are largely former Reagan and Bush officials. They include former United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former White House national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for international security policy Richard N. Perle and former Undersecretary of Defense for policy Paul Wolfowitz. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Dole campaign adviser, says Dole on occasion consults a much larger group.
The U.S. Air Force, aiming to meet the high operational demand on E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, wants to reduce the amount of time the planes spend in regular depot maintenance. Ed Fagan, who oversees E-3 logistics issues here for the Air Force's Oklahoma Air Logistics Center, told The DAILY last week that "what I'd like to do is put the aircraft through programmed depot maintenance [PDM] in much less time" than it now takes.
The General Accounting Office yesterday dismissed a pre-contract protest of a U.S. Air Force program to put interim GPS systems on some of its transport aircraft. Lowrence Electronics Inc. of Tulsa, Okla., filed the protest late last month, arguing that the request for proposal wasn't fair, and that the Air Force was biased toward one product (DAILY, Aug. 26). The GAO dismissed Lowrence's protest on the grounds that it wasn't a valid participant in the source selection process.
Legal formalities for the planned acquisition of Rockwell Aerospace and Defense by the Boeing Defense and Space group are expected to be completed in December, a top Boeing official said here. Boeing Defense President Jerry King said that the Rockwell assets will be operated as a new subsidiary called Boeing North American, and its 21,000 employees would increase overall group personnel strength to well over 50,000.
The German Ministry of Defense has decided to postpone procurement of French Matra Apache anti-runway weapons, and instead give priority to a previously undefined domestic weapon called Taurus, according to DASA Taurus Program Manager Manfred Kuesters. The decision was made months ago but effectively stymied by German policy until just days ago, Kuesters said here.
After years of stonewalling about the existence of a fifth-generation fighter equivalent to the Lockheed Martin F-22, MIG MAPO is confirming for the first time its "development and experimental production" of the MiG 1.42. Until now, this designation was used only by the Western press, remaining secret in Russia, where the aircraft has been referred to only as "a multi-function interceptor" (MFI).
The U.S. Air Force's F-22 advanced technology fighter is a couple of weeks ahead of schedule to fly next May, according to Micky Blackwell, president and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. "It's going excellently, and is three to four percent below our cost budget," he said in an interview here. "That's remarkable for a project like this. Today, we are still within one million dollars of where we said we would be in 1990." Flyaway price is pegged at $71 million.
Iraq's rapid removal of aircraft to other bases before establishment of the new no-fly zone was an impressive demonstration of readiness, Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday.
U.S. intelligence agencies will have to change the way they operate in the future to tackle both offensive and defensive information warfare, according to Marine Corps Gen. John Sheehan, commander-in-chief of Atlantic Command. "We have to fundamentally restructure how we do business," Sheehan told the National Computer Security Association yesterday in Arlington, Va. Information warfare requires shorter decision cycles and flatter organizations, he said, which "creates a requirement for an entirely different intelligence apparatus."
Evaluators from the General Accounting Office have found that the government realized only about half of the savings originally claimed by Martin Marietta for its 1993 acquisition of GE Aerospace, although overhead charges to the government were reduced by the acquisition and subsequent restructuring.
C-S Aviation Services and Romaero yesterday signed an agreement at the Farnborough Air Show to form a joint venture company to provide scheduled airframe maintenance for airlines in Europe. The company, C-S Romaero, is based in Bucharest, Romania, and will perform heavy maintenance checks on Airbus, Boeing and Douglas narrow-body aircraft. Construction of a widebody hangar and an avionics repair station is scheduled to begin next year.
The Pentagon yesterday notified Congress of $1.6 billion worth of impending foreign military sales, including $303 million worth of surveillance equipment for Saudi Arabia.
By shuttling aircrews to aircraft carriers on station, the U.S. Navy could save as much as $1.3 billion a year and maintain a baseline presence with eight carriers, a Congressional Budget Office paper concludes. Alternatively, CBO said, the Navy could substantially increase presence by retaining the present 12 carriers and shuttling crews and airwings to them.
The House yesterday passed one of the last national security pieces of the "Contract With America" when it approved, by a vote of 299-109, legislation restricting the president's ability to put U.S. forces under United Nations command and control. The bill faces a veto by President Clinton. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told The DAILY that the "Defend America Act," a scaled-down version of the missile defense portion of the Contract, would be taken up by the Senate Monday or Tuesday.
Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), head of the House defense appropriations conferees, said yesterday that Defense Secretary William J. Perry indicated a willingness to accept a fiscal 1997 defense appropriations conference report providing a substantial increase over President Clinton's $234.6 billion request. The House approved a $245.2 billion defense bill, $10.6 billion over the request, and the Senate a $244.7 bill, a $10.1 billion increase.
The Senate has again thwarted an attempt by Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) to kill the fiscal year 1997 funding for the International Space Station. During debate late Wednesday on the FY '97 VA, HUD and Independent Agencies appropriations bill, senators voted 60-37 to table Bumpers' amendment terminating the orbiting laboratory project. When an amendment is tabled it becomes a dead issue.
SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS rolled back to the launch pad yesterday after spending a day in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center to avoid the threat posed by Hurricane Fran. But delays in preparations resulting from the rollback and from holding Atlantis ready to roll back earlier have consumed a four-day buffer built into the schedule. As a result, managers have set a new launch date of Sept. 16.
General Electric Engine Services President Bill Vareschi said the company will expand its burgeoning support services to cover not only engine repair and overhaul, but airframe maintenance - if it can find a suitable partner. The service business is expected to grow from the current level of $2 billion a year to $3 billion annually well before the end of the century, Vareschi said in an interview here. And GE Aircraft Engines President Gene Murphy has been emphasizing the planned expansion of the company's service activities.
Kaiser Marquardt, one of the 11 wholly owned companies and two partnerships within the Kaiser Aerospace and Electronics group, is here promoting a variety of new technology it has under development, including advanced head-up displays and Mach 8 scramjets.
Improved reliability and maintainability of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft is the top requirement for users, who also want better training procedures. Lt. Col. Terry Maher, requirements chief for the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command's 552nd Air Control Wing here, said one of the main issues facing the AWACS fleet is aging technology. Many systems, he said, have mean time between failure (MTBF) rates that would be improved with newer technology.
Fairchild Dornier will decide by the end of September whether to produce a fan-powered, 30-passenger version of the Do 328 regional airliner. Dornier Luftfahrt president Jim Robinson told McGraw-Hill Aviation Week Group editors here that technical and marketing studies are near completion on the new aircraft, which at about $10 million a copy will be slightly more than the 328. "The whole benefit is that we get there first" with a 30-passenger jet, he said.
PHILIPPINE AIRLINES ordered seven 747-400s valued at $1.18 billion, Boeing said yesterday. The aircraft, powered by General Electric engines, will be delivered beginning in mid-1998. The transaction adds to the $6.3 billion in orders Boeing announced earlier at the Farnborough Air Show (DAILY, Sept. 4). Boeing also said yesterday that the Air Force of Chile ordered a 737-500, and that it will be delivered in September 1997. It will be configured for VIP use.
