THREE STANDOFF LAND ATTACK MISSILES were launched by three U.S. Navy F/A-18 squadrons on Aug. 7 in exercises off the coast of southern California, according to McDonnell Douglas, maker of the SLAM. It said all three weapons scored direct hits on their targets. The exercise, at the Naval Air Warfare Center Sea test Range at Point Mugu, Calif., lasted four hours and involved three shooters and three control aircraft, MDC said. It quoted Capt.
Although Russia's Duma has not yet ratified the START II treaty, the head of U.S. Strategic Command expects it to do so based on "shelf life" of the nuclear weapons in Moscow's arsenal, if nothing else. Gen. Eugene Habiger said during an Aug. 23 breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington that weapons in the Russian nuclear inventory are aging, and that Moscow is facing block obsolescence "pretty much across the board."
VITRO CORP., Rockville, Md., said it received a contract with a potential value of $50 million from Unisys' Federal Systems Div. to support the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) DEIS II program, intended to provide integration services for the Dept. of Defense to develop an integrated and interoperable defense information infrastructure. Unisys is one of six vendors that received contracts for the $3 billion DEIS II program. Vitro is a subsidiary of Tracor Inc.
A forecast expected to be released at the Farnborough Air Show predicts that 25,830 commercial and military aircraft, valued at $625.9 billion, will be built by all nations in the 1996-2005 decade. The forecast, by Teal Group, a defense and aerospace analysis firm based in Fairfax, Va., also predicts the demise of the Douglas unit of McDonnell Douglas Corp. The firm's first annual world aircraft production forecast predicts production during the decade of 5,622 commercial jet transports valued at $343.7 billion - about 55% of the total.
Rolls-Royce reported yesterday that its operating profit for the first six months of 1996 jumped to 96 million pounds sterling from 64 million pounds for the same period last year, "reflecting a significant increase from aerospace activities." Some 19 million pounds of the increase came from Allison Engine Co., which contributed only three months to 1995 results.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S F-16 remains in the running to be the United Arab Emirates next fighter, a company spokeswoman said yesterday. Confirming wire service reports of the day before from Dubai that the UAE has dropped McDonnell Douglas' F-15 from the competition but retained the F-16 and France's Rafale, the spokeswoman said, "We are, of course, pleased the United Arab Emirates has recognized the capability and versatility of the F-16 and are looking forward to working with the UAE for the next phase of the selection process."
NASA may turn to its Russian partners on the International Space Station for help with its microgravity science program while tight money on the U.S. side of the program hampers the effort, according to the acting head of the U.S. space agency's Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications.
NASA'S GALILEO probe is expected to be operating normally when it encounters the moon Ganymede for the second time on its trip through the Jupiter system on Sept. 6. The spacecraft went into a safe mode Saturday, apparently when commands uploaded from the ground exceeded processing allocation time in one of the spacecraft's two redundant onboard computers. Galileo was transmitting data from its first encounter with Ganymede in June at the time, and some data were lost.
Hughes Aircraft Co. has completed function verification tests on the Wide Area Augmentation System a week ahead of the incentive deadline in its contract, FAA said Tuesday. The contract is under protest by Wilcox, which received the award originally. FAA said that once a contract is signed with Comsat for satellite facilities, it can start testing a "mini-WAAS," comprising five ground stations. "We will use it to evaluate components as the WAAS comes on line," an FAA spokesman said.
A unit of the Bank of Tokyo - the world's largest bank - bought Shannon, Ireland-based engine leasing firm Engine Lease Finance Corp., a move ELF chief Jon Sharp hails as the beginning of new expansion for the group, thanks to deeper pots of capital. "We have through the years continually striven to improve and strengthen all aspects of ELF, but particularly its sources of finance and its portfolio," Sharp says. "What we are now seeing is the transfer of ownership to the largest bank in the world, which will facilitate the growth we have planned for."
Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are in the final stages of a project to refine a new model tying together computational codes used to design aircraft engines and inlets, which should allow engineers to predict engine/inlet integration troubles early in the design process. That would save money, because resolving gaps in the data generated by today's design codes usually can't be done until a full-scale system is available for testing.
Stork Group subsidiary Fokker Elmo signed a contract with Aviation Industries of China subsidiaries China Precision Engineering Institute and China National Airborne Equipment Corp. to manufacture wire harnesses for aircraft for the "benefit of both the Chinese and western aviation industries."
Avatar Alliance, an aircraft and engine parts broker and distributor, set up a new technical services operation to offer product support engineering to customers getting components from Avatar, taking on some of the services now provided by original equipment makers, or OEMs, albeit indirectly.
Engineers at NASA's Stennis Space Center fired a Space Shuttle Main Engine that had been dropped into a canal in a test of Boeing's engine-recovery scheme for the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) competition. The Boeing-Rockwell-NASA team conducting the test on Tuesday reported the engine performed as planned after it was twice dropped from a crane into a Stennis waterway, protected by a prototype "propulsion module" of the sort Boeing would use to recover the expensive engines from its EELV.
Pressure tests have verified that the U.S. Laboratory Module for the International Space Station and the modified U.S. Node 1 meet specifications, but more tests are planned to see if the node can handle the dynamic loads it will encounter as spacecraft dock with the Station in orbit.
The U.S. Air Force is soliciting industry for an infrared countermeasure system to be used on the C-17 airlifter. The Aeronautical Systems Center's Electronic Combat Development System Office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, said in an Aug. 28 Commerce Business Daily notice that it wants "information from defense contractors on their ability to provide an advanced infrared expendable solution for the C-17."
Over the next year, the U.S. Navy wants to see proposals for innovative propulsion concepts applicable to everything from aircraft to missiles, and the service recently published a wish-list of areas of interest in a broad agency announcement, or BAA. The Science and Technology office in Naval Air Systems Command's Propulsion and Power Engineering Dept. wants proposals for advanced technologies "that will significantly increase the mission performance, operational capabilities and affordability" of the Navy's air vehicles, the Navy says.
FAA Administrator David Hinson has approved plan for the U.S. to shift to the satellite-based Global Positioning System for aircraft navigation that will phase out most ground-based systems by 2010. "If everything goes as outlined in the plan, an augmented GPS will replace today's ground-based systems that use technologies dating back to the 1950s," the agency said.
Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Senate Armed Services Committee member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) each won their state primaries on Tuesday.
The U.S. Army is considering using two of the Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical Medium Range unmanned aerial vehicles for standoff detection of chemical weapons on the battlefield and to gather intelligence on potential chemical warfare manufacturing sites. The MR-UAV program was canceled in November 1993 for convenience of the government, but was partially reinstated when Teledyne Ryan was cleared to use previously purchased parts too build six air vehicles.
The U.S. Navy this fall plans to begin development and operational testing of the Sensor System Improvement Program for the EP-3 aircraft, and hopes to have the new capability available fleet-wide by 1999, said Cdr. Bob Boyd of Naval Air Systems Command's EP-3 program office.
Things to watch for at next week's Farnborough air show: Pratt&Whitney and General Electric will unveil their strategy for bringing off the all-new high-bypass engine for Boeing's stretched 747 jumbo jet, including a timetable, key staffers and an engine flowpath...A launch order for the new jumbo, meanwhile, is widely expected.
Changes driving up the near-term cost of International Space Station development are aimed at improving communications, power and logistics for early Station crews, at a cost of "hundreds of millions" of dollars, top Station officials said yesterday.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS said yesterday it filed a shelf registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $1 billion in debt securities. The move will enable it to issue up to $1.2 billion in debt securities, including the unissued portion of an earlier shelf registration, when the new statement becomes effective. McDonnell Douglas said it intends to use the net proceeds from the future sale of debt securities for general purposes, including repayment of existing debt.
Pratt&Whitney and nacelle and aerostructures-specialist Rohr are reviving the former Valsan Boeing 727-200 Advanced re-engining program, and the two companies expect to announce their first solid order this week.
