Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), the prime contractor for the Arrow missile defense system, and the Boeing Co. are completing a contract that will allow Boeing to begin producing Arrow missile components in the U.S., industry sources said Feb. 7.
SPACE LAUNCHES: The market for commercial space launches has plummeted in recent years, in part because of the decline in demand from the battered telecommunications industry, and Boeing chairman and CEO Phil Condit does not expect it ever to return to the level of its heyday. "We think that the launch rate is going to be relatively low, but relatively stable," he said in an interview with Aviation Week Group editors.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science Committee's space and aeronautics subcommittee, plans to reintroduce legislation that would offer tax incentives to promote greater commercial investment in space, according to a spokesman for the congressman.
India's meteorological series of satellites, Metsat, will be renamed Kalpana in memory of shuttle Columbia astronaut Kalpana Chawla, according to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Metsat-1, the first of the series, will now be known as Kalpana-1. It was launched Sept. 12, 2002.
Integral Systems' three-month-old crash marketing effort to sell direct broadcast satellite terminals for the military's use in a looming war in the Middle East has stirred interest in the Pentagon, but has not yielded bids. Time is beginning to run short for the deal, a company executive said Feb. 6. Integral Systems is billing its Skylight satellite terminal as a cheaper and more effective replacement for the military's deployed weather forecast technology, company Vice President Don Mack said.
INTERNATIONAL JSF: The General Accounting Office (GAO) is completing a draft report on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's international program, a GAO source says. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) commissioned the report in the summer of 2001, but the GAO auditing team waited several months, until the eight international partners officially joined the program, to begin.
ARMY BUDGET: Army Secretary Thomas White and Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, are scheduled to appear before the House Armed Services Committee Feb. 12 to provide their first congressional testimony on the Army's fiscal 2004 budget request. The request includes about $1.1 billion to continue research and development for the recently restructured RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program.
V-22 ASSESSMENT: The V-22 program at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., hosts a visit this week by Aldridge, who is looking for an update on the aircraft's critical recent flight tests. "My trip ... should get me a little bit more education on how they are progressing," he says. "I haven't heard of any real problems yet." Aldridge plans to review the program's flight test plan and get an update on the plane's reliability, among other measurements.
ZERO-SUM GAIN: The loss of the space shuttle Columbia could have a positive impact on U.S. space programs if plans are implemented to develop new orbiters or multiple pathways to space, according to senior aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan of Merrill Lynch. Ensuring access to space through multiple paths "may result in greater attention to providing funding for two strong suppliers of expendable launch vehicles and renewed development of other reusable concepts," Callan says.
TANKER LEASE: A decision on the potential $17 billion lease of 100 Boeing 767 tankers for the Air Force could be reached this week, says E.C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Perhaps mindful of several previous false starts for the lease deal last year, Aldridge says his prediction may be more of a preference. "We would like to [reach a decision], but whether or not we can depends on a lot of external" factors, he says. A go-ahead decision likely will trigger another series of deliberations over funding.
Goodrich Corp. on Feb. 7 reported a profit for the fourth quarter, but results for the newly acquired Aeronautical Systems business were worse than expected. Fourth-quarter net income rose from a loss of $54.4 million a year ago to nearly $12 million. Revenue for the quarter climbed 12 percent, from $1.05 billion to $1.18 billion, partly due to the inclusion of results generated by the former TRW Aeronautical Systems business.
NASA confirmed Feb. 7 it is analyzing photographs of the Space Shuttle Columbia, taken by an Air Force laboratory just before the orbiter's destruction on Feb. 1, which could provide clues as to the cause of the disaster. According to Aerospace Daily affiliate Aviation Week & Space Technology, photographs taken by the Air Force with ground-based cameras in the Southwest show significant damage on the left inboard leading edge wing section. The photos were taken about a minute before the shuttle was destroyed.
BANGALORE, India - The deep-penetration Jaguar aircraft is set to become a mainstay of the Indian air force after the government agreed with the recommendations of an air force report that calls for upgrading existing aircraft and buying more. The state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) has begun upgrading 18 two-seat Jaguars, in addition to the upgrades of 17 single-seat aircraft that already are underway, HAL Chairman Nalini Rangan Mohanty said in a Feb. 7 interview at the Aero India 2003 expo here.
DSP HELP: Infrared images of the Space Shuttle Columbia's breakup taken by an Air Force Defense Support Program satellite, and shown on television that same day, imply that at least one of the geosynchronous orbit DSPs is keeping an eye on North and South America. During the Cold War, the satellites monitored the Eurasian landmass and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for missile launches aimed at the U.S. The terrorist attacks of Sept.
Feb. 9 - 11 -- Helicopter Association International's Heli-Expo 2003, Dallas Convention Center. For more information call (703) 683-4646 or go to www.heliexpo.com. Feb. 10 - 13 -- Fatigue Concepts' course on fatigue, fracture mechanics and damage tolerance. Rose College, Oklahoma City. Call (916) 933-5000 or go to www.fatigueconcepts. com. Feb. 11 - 12 -- NAVWAR Conference, "NAVWAR After 9/11." Aerospace Corp., Los Angeles, Calif. SECRET clearance required, U.S. only. For more information call (888) OLD-CROW or visit www.crows.org.
Northrop Grumman is being awarded a $185 million contract to prepare its Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to participate in a maritime demonstration in 2006 that will be a crucial step in the Navy's effort to develop a high-altitude maritime surveillance UAV.
DEFENSE CONFIRMATIONS: The Senate Feb. 4 confirmed former Rep. Paul McHale (D-Pa.) to be assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and industry executive Christopher Ryan Henry to be deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
After being rolled out in a ceremony earlier this year, Lockheed Martin's Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle (UGCV) prototype is gearing up for three months of testing at Sandia National Laboratories' Robotic Vehicle Range in New Mexico.
Despite the U.S. military's growing need for bandwidth, the likelihood that it will turn increasingly to the commercial satellite industry to fulfill that need remains remote, according to some industry analysts. The military always will depend on the commercial sector for some of its communications needs, such as casual communication, analysts say, but budget issues and the military's unique needs may make longer-term relationships difficult.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously Feb. 5 to approve a U.S.-Russian treaty that would slash each country's nuclear arsenal. Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said he hopes to have the full Senate ratify the treaty within the new few weeks. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), or Moscow Treaty, calls for the U.S. and Russia to cut their arsenals of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads each, or about two-thirds below current levels, by 2012.
Taking the next step in the streamlining of defense export controls, the Eurofighter consortium is set to sign the first Major Program Authorization (MPA) approved by the U.S. State Department, industry and government sources said. The MPA would clear the way for U.S.-based supplier Hamilton Sundstrand to export electronics components to the Eurofighter program under a single license.
