The following chart, prepared by The DAILY from data in congressional committee reports and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, compares action by Congress on major fiscal 1997 Pentagon programs in the defense authorization and appropriations bills. Final conferences have not yet been held (budget authority dollars in millions). FY '97 defense authorization, appropriations bills compared House Senate
The relationship between the Federal Aviation Administration and its parent Dept. of Transportation "clearly is not working the way it was intended," a former top FAA official said yesterday.
The Senate's fiscal year 1997 intelligence authorization bill is slowly but surely making its way to the Senate floor as lawmakers massage the legislation before final passage, but it could come to the Senate floor before the August recess which begins at the end of the week. Last Thursday, it cleared the Governmental Affairs Committee. It has jurisdiction over creation of government commissions, and members were concerned about a provision for a non-proliferation commission included in the bill.
Procedures that led to airline use of an engine that failed and killed two people in Pensacola, Fla., on July 6 should be reviewed, the National Transportation Safety Board said. The engine, a JT8D-200, flew apart as a Delta Airlines MD-88 was taking off. The takeoff was aborted, but debris penetrated the passenger cabin.
House and Senate conferees abandoned veto-bait language objected to by President Clinton on multilateralization of the ABM Treaty and theater missile defense demarcation as they wrapped up a conference agreement Monday night on the fiscal 1997 defense authorization, congressional sources said yesterday. Managers of the compromise bill were in an uphill battle to get Congress to approve the conference report before the start of the month- long August recess on Saturday.
THE MARKET for unmanned aerial vehicles will continue to expand, reaching $393 million by 2002, according to a new report. The report, by the research firm Frost&Sullivan, said the UAV market would grow about 10% during the next six years. This, however, would be less than in the recent past. Between fiscal 1994 and '95, it grew from $232.8 million to $357 million, or almost 35%, according to the report. Frost&Sullivan expects the military to continue to dominate the market.
Hughes Aircraft Co. suffered another setback at the hands of the courts late Monday when an appeals court refused to halt Joint Air-to- Surface Standoff Missile development while Hughes waits for a ruling on its appeal of the lower court decision that allowed JASSM work to resume, despite Hughes' formal bid protest. The Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, Va., denied Hughes' motion to stop JASSM development work by contractors Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas and to expedite the hearing of arguments on the appeal, a court clerk said.
The probable cause of an engine explosion on a ValuJet DC-9 last year was the failure of engine repair contractor Turk Hava Yollari to detect a crack in a high-pressure compressor disk, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded yesterday. In the June 8, 1995, incident, shrapnel from the right engine penetrated the aircraft's skin as the plane departed Atlanta for Miami, injuring two flight attendants and five passengers and sparking a cabin fire that destroyed the fuselage.
Conceding that the differences were too great to resolve in the next few days, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, said yesterday that the defense appropriations conferees won't meet this week, and will put off the House- Senate conference on a fiscal 1997 appropriations compromise bill until September.
Shares of McDonnell Douglas and Raytheon rose yesterday on speculation, fuelled by a Wall Street Journal story, that the two are in the early stages of merger talks - talks which most banking and financial industry sources told The DAILY yesterday don't amount to much more than tire-kicking and diplomacy.
U.S. AIR FORCE'S F-111 AIRCRAFT were officially retired on July 27, 34 years after General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Tex. - now Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems - received a contract develop the swing-wing fighter/bomber, Lockheed Martin said Monday. A total of 562 F-111s were built, including electronic warfare EF-111s and F-111Cs and Gs flown by the Royal Australian Air Force. The EF-111 is slated to retire at the end of fiscal 1998, while Australia plans to continue operating its F-111s until 2015. During the retirement ceremony, Maj. Gen. Lee A.
CUBIC DEFENSE SYSTEMS has named M.K. (Marty) Winkler as its new president, the company said yesterday. Winkler, 53, comes to the San Diego-based unit of Cubic Corp. after serving as vice president and general manager for Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical, San Diego. He replaces J. Dave Cours, who retired earlier this year.
The Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche helicopter will remain grounded until at least mid-August, when the Army hopes to conclude a detailed stress analysis of the transmission on the propulsion system testbed. The helicopter hasn't been in the air since its first flight on Jan. 4. A recent failure of the testbed's transmission while running at 110% power was caused when it went into resonance and a gear within the main transmission failed, Brig. Gen. James R. Snider, the Army Comanche program manager said Friday in an interview.
The Pentagon wants to increase the up-front involvement of industry in its Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations to help give it insight into technology areas dominated by the commercial world. John M. Bachkosky, deputy under secretary of defense for advanced technology, said he has been meeting with industry officials to establish their involvement in the ACTD process. "We can get [the companies] involved earlier in the game," he told reporters during a Pentagon briefing yesterday.
July 23, 1996 Bell Helicopter Textron, Incorporated Bell Helicopter Textron, Incorporated, is being awarded a $20,974,137 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-95-C-0240 for three AH- 1W helicopters for the U.S. Marine Corps. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and is expected to be completed by August 1998. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity.
The Air National Guard's 192nd Fighter Wing has completed a 45-day tour over Bosnia, marking the first operational deployment of F-16 fighters with the Lockheed Martin-built tactical reconnaissance pods. Col. William Jones, wing commander of the Richmond, Va.-based 192nd, told The DAILY that the unit completed 124 sorties totalling 302 hours for an average mission duration of 2.43 hours in its first "real world" deployment. Five F-16C Block 30s and 20 pilots were deployed to Aviano AB in Italy.
The U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command plans to add a towed decoy counterm easure to its AC-130 and MC-130 aircraft early next century to further strengthen their radio frequency countermeasures capability.
RADA ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIES LTD. said its Chinese subsidiary, China Aircraft Component Services (CACS) has signed a maintenance services contract with Air China. CACS will provide avionics component maintenance using Rada equipment called CATS. Rada sees continuing rapid growth in the avionics sector in China during the next decade, and said that CACS, as an early entrant into the avionics maintenance market, is poised to capitalize.
