The Justice Dept. approved a joint cargo venture between Delta Air Logistics and Air France Cargo, Delta Air Lines announced last week. Delta Air Logistics is Delta Air Lines' cargo division. The joint venture, called Skyteam Cargo, will establish a single point of contact for shipment of air freight from the U.S. to expanded international destinations with a single, comprehensive product line, the company said.
Standard&Poor's has revised its ratings on Raytheon Corp.'s debt from stable to negative. "The company's internal cash generation remains materially subpar for current ratings, and the improvement in operations is weaker than anticipated," Standard&Poor's said last week.
ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES announced it is the successful bidder for the asset purchase of Orbcomm Global LP, the first commercial provider of global low-Earth satellite data communication services. The transaction is subject to the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Delaware. The company said full details of the transaction will be released when it is complete.
DEPUTY SEARCH: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is still working to select Pentagon deputies, devoting at least a couple of hours a day to it, but the process is "time consuming," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley says. Those go to the president, who is the ultimate arbiter, but "I have nothing more to announce except to say that the process gets his personal attention ... every day."
SPOT IMAGE Corp. plans to launch its latest imaging satellite, SPOT 5, early next year. The company says it is in the business of "modern geography" by using satellite imagery and digital technologies to create geographic information. The SPOT 5 will provide image products including large area imagery with pixel/resolutions of 2.5 meters, five meters, 10 meters and 20 meters, daily global coverage at 1 kilometer resolution, and worldwide digital terrain models.
ASSEMBLY STARTS: Fairchild Dornier has begun assembly of the first three 728JET fuselages, joining production work by its partners. The first wing is being assembled by EADS-CASA in Spain, the forward fuselage by SABCA in Belgium and the first tail cone by MAN Technologie in Munich has been sent to Honeywell in the U.S. for compatibility testing with the RE 220 auxiliary power unit.
SPOT IMAGE CORP. has sold statewide digital satellite image maps to four additional states: Texas, Idaho, Ohio and Rhode Island. The statewide image maps are from recent black-and-white, 10-meter-resolution SPOT satellite imagery processed to a high degree of map accuracy and formatted for use in desktop mapping and geographic information systems.
RAPTOR SUPPORT: Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) is vowing to support continued funding for the F-22, which Lockheed Martin assembles in his district. "The Defense Dept.'s decision to seek continued funding, in light of the ongoing department-wide review, is encouraging news for the future of the F-22 program," Barr says. "...
WAAS WATERSHED: The FAA's $2.9 billion Wide Area Augmentation System is in a watershed year, according to Transportation Dept. Inspector General Kenneth Mead. The ground station network, which is designed to improve signals from the Global Positioning System, has proven over the years to be "more difficult to develop and field than FAA anticipated," Mead says in recent written testimony to the House Appropriations Committee's transportation panel.
COAST GUARD: The House Transportation Committee is recommending a $350 million increase in the Coast Guard's fiscal 2002 budget over the previous year so the service can move ahead with the Deepwater project, a modernization program for its fleet of offshore ships and aircraft. "This project is vital to the Coast Guard's future operational effectiveness," says committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska). But Transportation Dept.
Tiltrotor technology is still immature, even though it has been evaluated for years, and attempts to avoid implicating it in last year's crash of an MV-22 Osprey miss the mark, a lawyer representing the families of marines killed in the crash said Friday. At the first public hearing of a panel investigating the Osprey program, James Furman of Byrd, Davis&Eisenberg LLP said that what happened in the April 8, 2000, crash in Arizona that killed 14 marines "is so fundamentally related to the tiltrotor technology that it cannot be ignored."
REPAIR PLAN: Rolls-Royce plans to form a new repair-and-overhaul joint venture with SIFCO Industries. The $7.5 million investment will specialize in advanced technology repair of aero engine blades and vanes for markets in North and South America. Operations will begin from SIFCO's Tampa facilities but ultimately will operate from a purpose-built facility in the area, the two companies say.
The Bush Administration, as part of its effort to win the support of European allies for a system to defend against missiles from rogue nations, has rechristened the program simply "missile defense." Under the Clinton Administration, and during the recent presidential campaign, the U.S. plan to create and deploy an anti-missile system was known as "National Missile Defense." A regional defense plan was called "Theater Missile Defense."
BALL AEROSPACE and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., has been given a contract extension by NASA to extend mission operations for the Quick Scatterometer (QuickSCAT) satellite through Sept. 30, 2002. Mission operations are managed under a subcontract agreement with the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Automated operations allow the satellite to be monitored by software systems for all daily passes except its two commanding passes.
HELPING DEORBIT: Analytical Graphics Inc., of Philadelphia, has been invited to send representatives to Moscow later this month to assist the Russian Aerospace Agency as it deorbits the aging Mir space station. AGI's Flight Services team will work with TsNIIMash, a leading institute associated with the Russian Aerospace Agency, to provide 3-D graphics to track Mir's descent. AGI provides analysis and visualization software to the aerospace industry.
EUROCKOT LAUNCH SERVICES of Germany and its parent company, Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, announced they will build and launch two Intersputnik-M1 and M2 communications satellites for the Intersputnik company. The satellites are to be launched in 2003 and will be based on the newly developed Khrunichev Yacht Spacecraft Bus. The launches will be conducted from the Rockot facilities at Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
BALL AEROSPACE and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., and Spectrum Astro Inc. of Gilbert, Ariz., have been selected by NASA to perform spacecraft design studies for the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP). Under terms of the $3 million delivery orders, Ball Aerospace and Spectrum Astro will develop a preliminary spacecraft design culminating in a design review by the end of 2001. Selection of a spacecraft bus for the NPP mission is expected in 2002. NPP is a joint mission with contributions from NASA and NOAA.
U.K. Chancellor Gordon Brown released budget details Thursday that confirmed the previously announced total of 23.6 billion pounds (about $35 billion) for military appropriations in the coming year.
NOT PROFOUND: China's announced plans for a defense buildup won't have an overriding impact on U.S. defense spending by itself, says Pentagon spokesman Quigley. Quigley said defense planners will take that into account, but will examine it on a regional basis. "So is it something that we pay attention to? You bet," Quigley says. "Is it all by itself going to have a profound impact on U.S. defense policy and defense spending? I don't think so. I think that's too strong a description."
SPACE IMAGING will be the master distributor for Earth imaging products generated by Eastman Kodak Co.'s Commercial and Government Systems unit. The database includes CITIPIX aerial imagery, which consists of 95 major metropolitan areas in North America, including about 7,000 cities and towns and 600 counties in the U.S. and Canada. Space Imaging will sell the orthorectified, 24-bit color imagery in six-inch, one-foot, two-foot and one-meter spacial resolutions.
BOEING plans to deliver the world's first digitally transmitted and projected feature film premiere when it debuts Dimension Films' "Spy Kids" at Disney's new California Adventure theme park on March 18. Boeing Satellite Systems is hosting the event - a benefit for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Children's Diabetes Center at UCLA - and will use its Boeing digital cinema system to deliver the movie to the park's Hyperion Theater.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. extended its offer for the common and preferred stock of Litton Industries Inc. from March 8 to March 15. The company will extend the offer in increments of five business days or less until the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) and European Union waiting periods have expired, and expects to extend it again on March 16. NNG Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp., has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its Litton offer.
LEAVING HASC: Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.) is leaving the House Armed Services and Transportation Committees for a coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The Thales Avionics Integrated Electronic Standby Instrument (IESI) was formally selected as basic equipment for the Embraer ERJ 170/190 aircraft series in January, the Montreal-based company announced last week. Production deliveries are slated to begin in 2002. The IESI, introduced by Thales Avionics in 1997, combines the functions of aircraft attitude, airspeed and altitude instruments into a single electronic instrument with an active matrix liquid crystal display.
COMSAT Mobile Communications (CMC), a business unit of Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, has signed an agreement with Silversea Cruises, Limited to extend CMC satellite communications over the entire Silversea fleet, including the new Silver Whisper. The agreement calls for CMC to continue to provide global voice and data communications for Silversea's fleet of all-suite cruise ships. The system uses Comsat's C-Band satellite communications to provide voice, email and a full range of Internet services.
