Boeing believes the commercial aircraft industry will supply 15,462 new airplanes worth $1.04 trillion to the world's airlines between now and the year 2014, a market $60 billion richer and 1,408 aircraft larger than the one Boeing detailed a year ago in its annual Current Market Outlook.
Defense Secretary William Perry will propose that NATO use Tier II Predator drones for intelligence operations in Bosnia, but whether the General Atomics unmanned aerial vehicle is deployed will depend on the desires of the rapid-reaction forces.
TRW Space&Electronics is hoping to wrap up first-round financing for its $2 billion Odyssey mobile satellite system by early fall, according to Deputy Program Manager Roger Rusch. TRW and Montreal-based Teleglobe Inc. formed a partnership last year to provide 15% of the equity for the 12-satellite constellation, one of three licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January to provide hand-held mobile voice communications around the globe (DAILY, Feb. 1, page 157).
Shares in U.K. shipbuilder VSEL rocketed late last week as investors began betting that Lord Weinstock's GEC is nearly ready to re-enter the bidding war for the company. Friday trading pushed VSEL 18 pence to 1,825, and traders agreed that no investor will sell so long as another GEC bid remains possible.
Hughes Aircraft Co. hopes its LEAP interceptor can move into the next phase of the U.S. Navy's Upper Tier missile defense program even though it has yet to intercept a target. Except for an interception, two flights of the Lightweight Exoatmospheric Projectile last March demonstrated all test objectives, Jeffrey McKeel, Standard Missile Business development manager for Hughes' Missile Systems Co., said yesterday in Washington. "We are technically convinced that we can intercept these types of targets [theater ballistic missiles]."
The U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center at Eglin AFB, Fla., plans to hold an industry day in August on the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), planned to replace the canceled Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile (TSSAM), an Eglin official said Friday. Air Force and Navy officials want to buy a precision-strike standoff weapon system that would cost about $500,000 a unit and initially be compatible with the F-16, B-52 and F/A-18.
Russia wrote off a $1.5 billion debt owed it by the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan as part of its lease deal for the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Kazakh territory, according to a news report here. If true, the report by Russian NTV (Independent Television) could mean that cash for infrastructure improvements at the aging launch facility will be in short supply just as it begins to play an important role in supporting the International Space Station program.
The Joint Advanced Strike Technology program office is preparing another set of avionics contracts to determine the feasibility of applying some new technology concepts to the program using integrated demonstrations, according to a JAST program official.
A continuing effort by Japan's armed forces to downsize is said to include cutting the number of fighter aircraft, but doesn't challenge the planned number of new FS-X fighters. Each of the three service branches-Ground Self Defense Forces, Maritime Self Defense Forces, and Air Self Defense Forces-was tasked in February 1994 to look at the potential for reduction, and are about to report to the National Security Conference.
Less than two years after dropping the "Defense" from its name, the Advanced Research Projects Agency may be getting it back again. The House National Security Committee, believing that ARPA's focus has become diluted, wants to put the "D" back. The committee "believes that the unique culture once extant is threatened in a very fundamental and deleterious way," the panel said in draft language of its fiscal 1996 budget report.
The October demonstration of the Hunter Joint Tactical unmanned aerial vehicle may not be the only key to the future of the program, Paul Kaminksi, the Defense Dept.'s top acquisition official, tells reporters. The critical system demonstration was scheduled for the UAV because it has so far failed to convince all three intended user communities-Army, Navy and Marine Corps-that it can fulfill the joint tactical requirement (DAILY, May 1, page 166).
A new Ku-band satellite communications link was flight tested on the Tier II Predator unmanned aerial vehicle on May 26, only a few weeks after a successful demonstration of a UHF link, according to Capt. Allen Rutherford, the program manager. The two capabilities are required because the UHF bandwidth, with its kilobits-per-second transfer rate, can only provide still photography; Ku- band, at 1.5 megabits per second, provides moving video footage in real time.
Acting U.S. Air Force acquisition chief Darleen Druyun will receive implementation guidance this week for her eight "Lightning Bolt" acquisition reform initiatives, which she announced just last week (DAILY, June 1, page 337). "We're moving out smartly," Druyun told The DAILY Thursday. "And you've got to be consistent and follow through, follow through, follow through."
Even though the JAST variants will have a high degree of avionics commonality, that doesn't mean the systems and their locations on the planes will be identical, Pinney notes. "Commonality may be at the component level," he says. For instance, the different aircraft may have different radar requirements. In that case, commonality could be achieved by using common components, Pinney explains, such as power supplies, electronics and transmit/receiver modules.
A retired Air Force colonel with extensive space experience sets up shop this week as head of the interagency office charged with developing a common next-generation weather satellite for military and civilian use. James T. Mannen, who headed the Titan get-well plan after two costly failures in the mid-1980s and who worked in classified satellite programs throughout his career, will direct the Integrated Program Office responsible for procuring the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).
Engineers at the BMW/Rolls-Royce small engine venture have just started testing components for a staged combustor that could cut nitrogen oxide emissions by as much as 40%. BMW/Rolls says a 90-degree sector model of the combustor is being tested, along with a 2:1 scale model being evaluated in a water tunnel at the joint venture's new Dahlewitz R&D center. If it pans out, it could enter service as soon as 1998.
Five of the U.S. Air Force's final six Defense Support Program (DSP) early warning satellites are undergoing various stages of assembly and testing in a high bay facility here as TRW begins a phaseout that will conclude with the shutdown of this long-running assembly line around the end of the decade. TRW's Space&Electronic's Group began building the satellites for the U.S. military in 1967 under the strictest of secrecy, and during the defense boom of the 1980s was able to produce a DSP spacecraft in less than a year.
The Joint Advanced Strike Technology program office's mandate to achieve high degrees of commonality among the JAST aircraft variants has met high levels of success in the avionics area, Lt. Col. Charles Pinney, the office's avionics integrated product team chief says. "So far, all the contractors have identified commonalities in very high percentages, approaching 90% and above," he tells The DAILY.
