Profits in the first fiscal quarter rose 25% at Rockwell International, propelled by strong showings in the Semiconductor and Avionics segments, the company reported. Rockwell earned $193 million on $3.1 billion in sales in its first FY '96 quarter, compared with $155 million on $2.5 billion in the like quarter a year ago.
Assistant Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said yesterday that the slimmed down House-Senate conference on a second fiscal 1996 defense authorization compromise bill probably will deal with just three issues in an effort to have the bill ready for congressional approval either next week or the week of Feb. 20.
Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) said yesterday that none of the $31 million planned to be paid to Lockheed Martin executives as a result of the March 1995 merger should be paid from Pentagon funds. Saunders, author of an amendment to the fiscal 1996 defense appropriations bill banning use of DOD funds to pay employee bonuses in connection with a merger, rejected Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) findings that some of the disputed funds should be reimbursable. The payout must still be approved by DOD Inspector General Eleanor Hill (DAILY, Jan. 17).
Lockheed Martin Astronautics has picked an advanced rocket engine under joint development by Pratt&Whitney and Russia's NPO Energomash to power its planned new Atlas IIAR commercial space launch vehicle and perhaps the family of rockets the Lockheed Martin unit will propose in the Pentagon's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) competition.
SCIENTISTS will present the first data retrieved from the atmospheric probe that plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere Dec. 7 on Monday, a month late because of the federal government shutdown. The data reportedly includes evidence of lightning and perhaps water in the planet's clouds (DAILY, Dec. 19, 1995).
The Air Force's Wright Laboratory is planning a research effort to attack heat dissipation in the avionics of future aircraft, and in today's Commerce Business Daily outlines a 52-month project to develop advanced thermal management concepts. The problem is that the greater workload of high-performance aircraft increases the density of avionics functions, and therefore heat dissipation requirements (DAILY, Oct. 27, 1995). In the latest announcement, the Wright Lab's Aerospace Power Division identifies three problem areas:
Rockwell is getting out of the commercial and newspaper printing business, putting its $700 million Graphics Systems division on the auction block. It's a solid franchise with good products, and it "has critical mass to operate successfully on its own," said Rockwell chief Donald R. Beall in a prepared statement this week. But analysts say that as the company's electronics business soared in recent years, the Graphics unit became increasingly irrelevant.
NASA has sent two more astronauts to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City near Moscow to train for missions on Russia's Mir space station, rounding out the planned complement of U.S. crew members for the aging Russian orbital laboratory. C. Michael Foale and James S. Voss will serve as primary and backup U.S. crew member, respectively, for the Mir 24/25 mission. One of them will ride to Mir on STS-84 late this year and return on STS-86 about four months later, NASA reported.
Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have selected GDE Systems to develop and build avionics test equipment for the FS-X, now designated the F-2 in Japan.
BRUNEI WILL BUY four additional Black Hawk helicopters - internationally designated the S-70A - that will be delivered between 1997 and 1998, Sikorsky announced. Under the contract Sikorsky will provide complete logistics support for the aircraft.
Crew members on the Space Shuttle Endeavour cleared an ice blockage in a bit of cooling system plumbing yesterday, eliminating the need for their planned nine-day mission to end one day early.
EDO Corp. has begun the first phase of a multi-year effort to upgrade all the Navy's MK-105 magnetic minesweeping systems and expects to complete the project by the end of 1997, the company announced. What this involves, explained Ira Kaplan, vice president for defense and space systems at the College Point, N.Y.-based company, is upgrading the original hardwired electronics in the power pack and control equipment with software-driven, digital electronics using microprocessors.
The U.S. Air Force is considering launching a 60-month research effort on high temperature materials to establish a technology base for the development of usable and cost effective processing methods. The Air Force's Wright Laboratory Materials directorate, metals aerospace applications, said in a Jan. 12 Commerce Business Daily notice it is looking for qualifications in the areas of advanced metalics, advanced composites and ceramic composites.
Aviation support and parts specialist UNC Inc. is buying Garrett Aviation Services for $150 million, creating what UNC claimed yesterday would be the world's largest independent aviation aftermarket services company and giving UNC a third of the annual worldwide business jet aftermarket.
Demonstrating the Advanced Research Projects Agency's two high- altitude endurance unmanned aerial vehicles is top on the list of what ARPA's new program director for the two systems wants to accomplish.
The Defense Acquisition Board has favorably received a McDonnell Douglas proposal on multi-year procurement of the C-17 airlifter that could lead to Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski signing an acquisition decision memorandum on the program as early as this week, according to Air Force sources. The DAB met last week to review what AF officials said was a contractor proposed multi-year option. "We had a DAB on a multi-year option and got good support for that," a senior AF official said. The Pentagon is now "trying to put that in effect," he added.
Lockheed Martin Corp. executives should collect only $25.5 million of some $31 million charged to the company's cost-plus contracts under an agreement worked out between the then-newly merged company and the Pentagon last year, the Defense Contract Audit Agency concluded. Payments can't go through until DOD Inspector General Eleanor Hill reviews and approves DCAA's findings, and a Pentagon spokesperson said yesterday that Hill's office is reviewing two DCAA audits completed last month.
GENTEX CORP., Carbondale, Pa., received a $10.3 million contract for 13,100 Aircrew Integreated Helmet Systems (AIHS). U.S. Army Aviation and Troop Command awarded the contract on Dec. 22.
Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Maine) yesterday announced he would not run for re-election this year, making him the third senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to announce his departure. Ranking Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn (Ga.) and Sen. Jim Exon (D-Neb.) previously announced plans to retire. Four other members of SASC face potentially tough re-election races this year, thus creating the potential for as much as a third of the 21-member committee to turn over by next January.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS CORP., St. Louis, will install 370 AYC-1076 kits on F/A- 18 aircraft under a $10.1 million contract awarded Dec. 18 by U.S. Naval Air Systems Command.
J. Wayne Littles is leaving NASA headquarters, where he has overseen the ongoing Space Shuttle program restructuring as associate administrator for space flight since November 1994, to become director of Marshall Space Flight Center, Ala., the U.S. space agency announced yesterday. Wilbur Trafton, director of the International Space Station program, will become the acting associate administrator for space flight until a replacement for Littles is selected.
The Pentagon's Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office is about to issue a request for proposals for prototypes of its Joint Airborne SIGINT Architecture (JASA) worth about $58 million, according to a Jan. 12 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Northrop Grumman announced yesterday it has received $1.1 million for the U.S. Air Force to support flight testings of the F-15E's ALQ-135 low- band electronic countermeasure system. F-15Es are equipped with the ALQ-135 Band 3, but the Air Force hasn't bought the Band 1.5 that would round out the system. Air Force officials are still deliberating whether to buy Band 1.5 or whether to consider operations without the low-band protection an acceptable risk (DAILY, Oct. 16, 1995).
House Republican leaders have placed NASA high on their list of agencies to fund with a "targeted" appropriation if White House talks tentatively scheduled today fail to produce a plan to balance the federal budget. Spokesmen for Reps. Tom DeLay (D-Tex.), the House majority whip, and Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, said yesterday NASA is likely to receive fiscal 1996 funding if the budget impasse continues.
Officials of the Khrunichev State Space Science and Production Center told reporters in Moscow yesterday that they have completed repairs to the FGB "space tug" scheduled to become the first-launched element of the International Space Station next year. In Houston, a spokesperson for Station prime contractor Boeing said "internal secondary components" still must be added to complete the repair, but he confirmed that the pressure shell of the spacecraft had been fixed. Boeing engineers at Khrunichev reported repair was "going very well."
