THE 27-PASSENGER ANTONOV AN-38 light transport aircraft is appearing at Paris for the first time, powered by AlliedSignal's TPE331-14 engines. The Paris flight is part of the Russian certification and flight test program. The An-38 has completed about 90 flights and 112 hours of the 250 necessary for certification, and the Paris flight is part of the Russian certification and flight test program. The aircraft is scheduled to be certified by the Russian Interstate Registry by December, and subsequently by the U.S. FAA.
"Keep [the enemy] from blocking it and keep them from using it is [what] you think about when you're applying a force. You have to recognize that there is a bit of a cat and mouse here that as we make changes, the opposing force makes changes to match, which causes us to make changes."
A House Appropriations subcommittee has approved and sent to the full committee a $3.7642 billion Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program that would permit first funding for Eastern European nations under the Administration's $60 million Partners for Peace (PFP) program, which is aimed at facilitating military cooperation with NATO. In approving $3.220 billion of a requested $3.262 billion in FMF grants late last Thursday, the foreign operations subcommittee backed the customary $1.8 billion for Israel and $1.3 billion for Egypt.
Sikorsky Aircraft will start full-scale development of five S-92 Helibus prototypes with first flight scheduled for 1998, company officials said yesterday. As expected, the company announced at the Paris Air Show its plans to begin assembly of the medium-lift helicopter at its Stratford, Conn., facilities (DAILY, June 5, page 355).
The House today begins consideration of the $267.3 billion fiscal 1996 defense authorization, with senior Republican aides describing as "close" the outlook for an amendment to strike out the National Security Committee's $553 million addition of long-lead funding for more B-2 bombers. At the same time, they noted that the politics of attack submarine programs have helped avert a bruising floor battle over the third Seawolf sub and the projected new attack sub.
Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the B-2 bomber's most important supporter in the Senate, says what happens in the House on the National Security Committee's $553 million B-2 add-on won't necessarily determine whether he seeks funding for additional B-2s in the Senate Armed Services Committee markup in two weeks. "The main factor will be the Senate committee mood and the mood of the Senate," Nunn tells The DAILY, "and I'll have to assess that as we go along."
When U.S. Air Force acting acquisition chief Darleen Druyun talks about acquisition reform, she likes to use the Global Positioning System program office as an example of streamlining. The current System Program Office, or SPO, including system engineering and federally funded research and development center support, contains about 500 people. Seven or eight contractors are working on the ground system. The government is the system integrator.
NASA is forming plans to use the Orbital Sciences/Rockwell X-34 reusable launch vehicle as a Mach 12 testbed for technology experiments that could lead to hypersonic flight in the coming century. Once the X-34 enters regular commercial operations late this decade, the agency wants to use the two-stage-to-orbit X-34 to test hypersonic technology as well as to launch spacecraft, according to top agency managers.
Acquisition reform, ballistic missile defense and the B-2 bomber will be principal issues under consideration when the House takes up the $267.3 billion fiscal 1996 defense authorization tomorrow. Under the rule written by the House Rules Committee to govern the time for floor consideration of the bill, these three areas will come in for major attention. The House starts work on the bill tomorrow, and is expected to complete action by Thursday evening.
Unless Congress approves the U.S. Air Force's entire request for its command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) infrastructure, the number of installations slated for upgrade in the future year defense plan (FYDP) may slip by as much as 25%, a top AF C4I official said Thursday in Washington. The service's FY '96 request for the C4I infrastructure upgrade is about $500 million, up from $350 million in FY '95, according to Lt. Gen. Carl G. O'Berry, the Air Force's C4 deputy chief of staff.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. said Wednesday that Ball Corp. has chosen its Taurus booster to launch the U.S. Navy's GEOSAT Follow-On (GFO) satellite. The launch, Taurus' second and its first commercial mission, is scheduled for the fall of 1996 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Taurus will use Thiokol's Castor 120 solid rocket motor as the vehicle's first stage and will incorporate a larger, Orbital-developed payload fairing to allow a 120% increase in payload volume, the company said.
Russian Space Forces have launched a classified Cosmos satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, slipping a day for technical reasons after deciding not to use the launch to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Cosmodrome on June 2. The launch occurred on June 8, after technical problems delayed it from a rescheduled launch the day before. Although the space forces did not give the nature of the problems, it was the first time in Russian practice for admission of delay of a military launch.
Moscow is moving ahead with plans to shift key national security and commercial space launches from rented facilities at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to its home-turf Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Col. Gen. Vladimir Ivanov, head of the Russian Space Forces, paid a quiet visit to Plesetsk last month with the heads of a few of Russia's largest space companies in tow to check on construction of a new Zenit launch pad now due to go into operation in 1997.
TRW SPACE&ELECTRONICS expects to ship its millionth gallium arsenide chip this year, thanks to booming demand of commercial customers. Originally developed for use in spacecraft systems, the chips are now being used by customers like AT&T, which is putting them in a new cordless telephone that has a two- to three-mile radius.
British Aerospace-built Eurofighter prototype DA.2 arrived at the Paris Air Show late Friday afternoon and was slated to go back to Warton today-without participating in the flying program. Despite a stepped-up effort (DAILY, June 2, page 348), the plane didn't accumulate enough flight hours before the show to fly there.
Researchers will use unique pilot techniques and a modified engine control system to loft an 11,000-lb. aerospike test engine to high altitudes and supersonic speeds on the back of an SR-71 aircraft, an engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center told a conference here.
DIRECTV, Hughes' direct-to-home venture that serves the continental U.S., has signed a joint agreement that will provide for distribution of its sports programming to commercial establishments. The agreement with Liberty Satellite Sports, a distributor of satellite sports programming, will enable restaurants and bars to receive and air DirecTV programming via the service's 18-inch satellite dishes.
McDonnell Douglas' spectacular rise to become Wall Street's darling doesn't mean that the stock has reached its peak, says Merrill Lynch's Byron Callan. While it "may be tempting for investors [now] to ignore the stock...24 months from now, it is not inconceivable that MD sells at over $100 per share," Callan tells clients in a recent update. In recent days, the stock has sold at $72 a share.
Northrop Grumman is applying technology it developed for the B-2 bomber to Rockwell's entry in NASA's Reusable Launch Vehicle competition. The company's B-2 Div. in Pico Rivera, Calif., is supporting the Rockwell team developing a vertical launch/vertical landing X-33 prototype, along with its Military Aircraft Div. in Hawthorne and its Advanced Technology and Development Center in Pico Rivera.
The looming Capitol Hill battle over NASA's long- term budget prospects, coupled with calls for a privatized Space Shuttle and yet another attempt to terminate funding for the International Space Station, have raised eyebrows in Moscow as the U.S. and Russian space programs become more closely intertwined. "For quite a long time it was good style for American business partners to doubt Russia's reliability," a commentator on Russia's ORT national television network said last month.
PANAMSAT has selected National Transcommunications Ltd. to provide digital video compression encoders for its Galavision direct-to-home broadcast satellite service in Latin America. Galavision is scheduled to begin service in early 1996 and will compete with Hughes' DirecTV Latin America venture. National Transcommunications is scheduled to deliver the first compression encoder in July for systems testing at PanAmSat's Global Operations Center in Atlanta.
To underscore his assertion that today's aircraft and engine designers are too preoccupied with satisfying swarms of auditors to get their programs airborne quickly, Pratt&Whitney's one-time SR-71 engine chief, Bill Brown, tells an engineering conference audience that his first SR-71 J58 turbojet "ran less than a year" after the project was conceived. "First flight was about three years," he says. "Now look at [Pratt's] F119 for the F-22. First flight took seven years and today they're still shuffling paper."
