While U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Moscow on Aug. 13 conducting talks on U.S. missile defense plans, Russian Duma member Alexei Arbatov was in Washington criticizing the Bush administration's refusal to work within the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. The main problem in the current Russian-American talks on missile defense is the U.S. refusal to negotiate on the treaty, Arbatov said during a panel discussion sponsored by the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
HEICO Corp. of Miami and Hollywood, Fla., announced it has acquired Inertial Airline Services Inc., of Cleveland, which makes and overhauls the Inertial Navigation Systems used by commercial and military aircraft. HEICO acquired the company for $20 million in cash and $5 million in HEICO Class A common stock from previous owner Flight Options International, Inc. If IAS meets specified earnings targets for two years after the acquisition, HEICO will pay an additional $6 million in cash to Flight Options International.
The strategy adopted by some European aerospace defense companies in recent years of buying shares of former state-owned aerospace companies to obtain lucrative defense contracts may not pay off in the long run, according to two industry analysts. Richard Aboulafia, senior aircraft analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., said the strategy, while "tempting," guarantees little. "It never works out as you planned," Aboulafia said Aug. 13.
NASA'S Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite has given astronomers their best glimpse yet of a cobweb of helium left over from the Big Bang, the space agency reported. The helium is not found in stars or galaxies but is spread through space. NASA's findings are contained in the new issue of the journal Science.
B/E Aerospace Inc., of Wellington, Fla., announced Aug. 13 it will buy aerospace parts distributor M&M Aerospace Hardware, of Miami, for $177 million. B/E Aerospace manufactures cabin interior products for commercial and business jets, and said the purchase of M&M Aerospace Hardware would boost its move into the replacement parts business. M&M is one of the top five distributors of aerospace fasteners worldwide, according to B/E Aerospace.
The U.S. government has approved the sale of Boeing's Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) to South Korea, the company announced Aug. 13. Boeing produces the missile for the U.S. Navy. SLAM-ER has a range of more than 150 nautical miles and uses the Global Positioning System and an infrared seeker for precise attacks against targets on land or sea. South Korea is also considering buying Boeing's F-15K, an improved version of the F-15E Strike Eagle flown by the U.S. Air Force, as part of its F-X fighter competition.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S Joint Air-to-surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) Warhead Team will be honored by the NATO Insensitive Munitions Information Centre (NIMIC) at a symposium in Bordeaux, France, in October, the company announced. The award recognizes JASSM's increased safety and reduced vulnerability in combat and peacetime operations, according to the company - the munition will only detonate to destroy a target.
Spare parts shortages for the Navy's EA-6B Prowler and F-14 Tomcat have hurt the Navy's readiness to perform missions, have driven up costs for maintenance activities on the aircraft and have "contributed to problems retaining military personnel," says a new report by the General Accounting Office.
Lockheed Martin Air Traffic Management has opened an office in Moscow and has proposed deploying new technology to provide air traffic control for major segments of Russian airspace that aren't currently controlled by radar, the company announced Aug. 13. "We look forward to establishing technology partnerships with Russia and neighboring countries to improve the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] region's aviation infrastructure," LMATM President Don Antonucci said in a company statement.
Smiths Aerospace will install its Generic Health and Usage Monitoring System (GenHUMS) on United Kingdom Royal Navy Sea King helicopters, the company announced Aug. 13. The GenHUMS system includes an integrated cockpit voice and flight data recorder and a health and usage monitoring system, installed on each aircraft as a "single box" system. It continuously checks the performance of safety-critical components, giving advance warning of potential equipment failures and collecting data for routine maintenance.
August 10, 2001 Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $19,319,295 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for initial spare parts for the Israeli Air Force in support of their F-16 aircraft. At this time $10,208,164 of the funds have been obligated. This work is expected to be complete July 2003. Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (F42620-99-C-0027 PM0061).
Adding a proposed commercial module to the International Space Station, along with an extra Soyuz escape craft, would allow NASA and its international partners to boost the station's crew size from three to six as early as 2004, the head of Russia's space agency said Aug. 9. Russian contractor Khrunichev and its U.S. partner, the Boeing Co., have proposed building FGB-2, a commercial module based on a backup piece of station hardware that never flew to orbit.
The U.S. Air Force's top priority aircraft program, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air dominance fighter, will face tough scrutiny Aug. 14 as the Defense Acquisition Board decides whether the aircraft will go into low-rate initial production. Although championed vigorously by the Air Force, the F-22 has been criticized in recent congressional hearings because of its rising cost, test program delays, and other problems.
The U.S. Justice Department has asked Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. to postpone closing their bids to acquire shares of Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. until early September to give regulators more time to review the proposals. Both companies have offered to purchase all outstanding shares of Newport News common stock in an effort to acquire the company. General Dynamics has offered to buy the stock for $67.50 per share in cash. Northrop Grumman has offered a mix of stock and cash (DAILY, May 10).
EUROFIGHTER GMBH will provide an Industrial Exchange and Repair Service (IERS) for Eurofighter Typhoon spares and equipment under a contract worth about DM 1.5 billion ($675 million). Eurofighter will manage equipment exchange spares as an international common spares pool, which it said could reduce the support costs for Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom as they introduce the Euurofighter Typhoon to service. The IERS will be provided at the four initial main operating bases of the partner air forces and will cover 199 key items of equipment.
MARKET POTENTIAL: The Chinese market may one day provide U.S. manufacturers of commercial aerospace products the second largest source of revenue behind the U.S. market, says John Douglass, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association. Douglass says opening the doors to trade with China would offer an enormous potential market for the U.S. aerospace industry. "Over the next 20 years, our manufacturers forecast that China, including Hong Kong and Macau, will need jetliners worth about $144 billion," Douglass says.
GAS GLOW: Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered that the Milky Way's X-ray glow comes from diffuse plasma gas which has temperatures of tens of millions of degrees Celsius. The findings, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, leave a big question unanswered: Why is the gas still there? According to NASA, gas that hot would ordinarily escape the confines of the Milky Way. Ken Ebisawa, leader of the team that reported its findings in Science, suggests the hot plasma may be confined to the Milky Way by magnetic fields.
WORK IN PROGRESS: The new electronics package for the Minuteman III is so far proving to be less accurate than the system it's designed to replace, according to media reports. Responding to allegations that the new guidance and propulsion system has demonstrated poor accuracy in repeated tests, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley describes the testing as a "work in progress.
QF-4 NUMBERS: The U.S. Air Force plans to field a replacement for the QF-4 drone by FY 2010 (DAILY, July 27), but if the effort is delayed, the service has the option of extending its contract with BAE Systems. The company has converted, or is under contract to convert, 153 of 321 old F-4 Phantoms to the unmanned drone configuration, leaving 168 to go. These will take the Air Force through about fiscal year 2007, as far as deliveries are concerned.
NEW CREW: Space Shuttle Discovery's mission to the International Space Station Alpha, which began when the shuttle lifted off at 5:10 p.m. EDT Aug. 10, will include bringing a new station crew and supplies to the station. Astronauts will also conduct spacewalks to install equipment.
