If past practice is any guide, President-Elect George W. Bush may give Congress a broad outline of his fiscal 2002 budget recommendations in February and follow up with more detailed proposals in March or April, according to the Congressional Research Service.
NASA will ask "the best minds in the country" to help it find a way to send a robotic probe to Pluto for less than $500 million, in a last-chance bid to examine the remote planet before its atmosphere refreezes as it makes its 248-year elliptical circuit around the sun.
TELEDYNE TECHNOLOGIES INC. has sold its aerospace castings unit, Teledyne Cast Parts, to CP Acquisition Corp. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Robert Mehrabian, the Teledyne Technologies Chairman, President and CEO, said the company is focusing on commercial communications and its niche growth markets and will "seek to exit" lines which don't fit that strategy.
Spacehab Inc. yesterday won a $30.9 million contract option to support a microgravity research mission aboard a Space Shuttle in the spring of 2002. Under the option to its basic contract with NASA to supply pressurized modules for the Shuttle cargo bay, Spacehab will outfit and deliver its Research Double Module for the STS-112 mission. The double research module is scheduled to make its first flight late in 2001 on STS-107.
Boeing's X-32A Joint Strike Fighter was refueled in the air for the first time Dec. 19, the company reported yesterday. U.S. Navy Cdr. Phillip "Rowdy" Yates, the government's lead pilot for the Boeing JSF program, flew the X-32A as it took on fuel from a KC-10 tanker near Edwards AFB, Calif. Flying at 20,000 feet and 235 knots, the X-32A maneuvered into the refueling drogue and maintained its position below the tanker, Boeing said. Yates said the flight validated the handling qualities required for the Navy air refueling task.
The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) and Russia are bolstering aerospace cooperative efforts, inking a new agreement which broadens current alliances and paves the way for new joint ventures. "The Russian industry has a great tradition and is an important partner if we are to master the challenges of the future," said EADS Co-CEOs Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, commenting on the new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed with Russia.
BOEING CO. reported delivery to the U.S. Air Force of the final three of 18 F-15C aircraft it refitted with Raytheon's APG-63(v)2 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar. The work, carried out under a $250 million contract by Boeing Phantom Works, also included upgrading the aircraft's environmental control systems, provided by Honeywell Aerospace, and installing an identification friend or foe system, provided by BAE Systems.
Data from the Crash Survivable Memory Unit (CSMU) aboard the MV-22 that crashed Dec. 11, killing all four on board, as been extracted and turned over to the investigating mishap board, the U.S. Marine Corps said. According to a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon, the CSMU removed from the crash site near Jacksonville, N.C., was first sent to its manufacturer, Smiths Industries, Grand Rapids, Mich., for data extraction - standard procedure following such accidents.
While a new Pentagon report reaffirms America's commitment to Taiwan, it cautions that the United States faces critical knowledge gaps in evaluating the security situation in the Strait.
Engineered Support Systems Inc. won an $11.1 million aircraft avionics testing subsystems order from the U.S. Navy for the Consolidated Automated Support Systems (CASS). The company said it expects the final production option to be exercised next November. Deliveries are slated to run through late 2002.
NASA's Office of Earth Sciences has picked Aerojet for a $206.6 million contract to build a key instrument for the interim weather satellite that will serve as a "bridge" between today's systems and the planned civil-military National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (NPOESS).
Due to an editing error, an article published in the Nov. 22 issue of The DAILY was published again in the issue of Dec. 20. The article was titled, "EarthWatch loses another satellite in a Russian launch failure."
Retiring Australian defense chief John Moore officially sealed the A$3 billion (US$1.65 billion) Project Wedgetail deal with Boeing to buy up to seven Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft, calling the long-awaited contract a "significant move" to put the country's Defense Capability Plan (DCP) into motion. "The AEW&C system will form the cornerstone of Australia's air and maritime surveillance, and early warning and detection capability, well into this century," Moore said in a prepared statement.
The U.S. Air Force signed a $29 million contract option with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. to supply additional C-130J training systems at Little Rock AFB, Ark., and for training site activation at Keesler AFB, Miss. The option is part of a contract let earlier this year by the Air Force's Training System Program Office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and calls for delivery of a C-130J avionics system management trainer to Little Rock in November 2003, and a C-130J weapon system trainer to the base in February 2004.
The U.S. Air Force believes it may have found an answer to its continuing airlift shortage through a unique venture with Boeing that would produce a commercially owned and operated C-17 guaranteed to be available any time the U.S. military required its use. The proposed aircraft, called the BC-17X, would be the result of a novel blend of a public and private acquisition strategy that backers are hoping will meet the nation's military airlift requirements and provide opportunities for shipping commercial outsize and oversize cargo.
ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS won contracts totaling $11.5 million from the U.S. Army to produce environmentally friendly propellant for the Modular Artillery Charge System (MACS).
The latest suspension of the MV-22 tiltrotor Osprey following a Dec. 11 accident that killed all four crewmen on board is not the only aviation cloud hanging over the U.S. Marine Corps. The service is still struggling with fixes to its AV-8B Harriers, grounded a second time this year on Sept. 6, and its M/CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, grounded this past August after a fatal Navy crash.
LOCKHEED MARTIN bought back about $1.9 billion of its outstanding debt issues, completing a debt tender offer announced last month. The company said it will take a one-time charge of $95 million in the fourth quarter, related to the transaction. The debt retirement should cut annual interest expense by about $150 million, the company said.
Boeing Co. said it has completed major upgrades of the U.K. and French AWACS aircraft fleets. Coming in ahead of schedule and within the budget of the $274 million program to upgrade the Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, Boeing upgraded the seven U.K. AWACS planes and the four French planes.
In the face of competition, including the Airbus 380 launched yesterday, and uncertainty over issues such as the fate of the Joint Strike Fighter program, Boeing is sticking with the three-part strategy it used successfully this year. In 2001 and beyond, Boeing again will "run healthy core businesses, leverage our strength into new products and services, and open new frontiers," Chairman and CEO Philip M. Condit said Monday in an interview with editors of The DAILY and other Aviation Week publications.
Cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko will use manual controls to redock a Progress supply vehicle at Space Station Alpha, after an automatic rendezvous and approach that will allow engineers in Moscow to gauge how well a software patch has fixed the problem that prevented the capsule from docking automatically when it first arrived at the Station last month.
DYNAMICS RESEARCH CORPORATION of Andover, Mass., won a $3.6 million task order, covering the first year under a five-year deal, to provide services to the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. DRC will continue to handle work for the Airborne Sensors and Data Links Division, Reconnaissance Program Office.
Rolls-Royce announced orders for the AE 3007 engine worth $315 million. South African Airlink placed a $235 million order for up to 70 of the engines to power its Embraer RJ-135 regional jets, while British Regional Air Lines has awarded Rolls-Royce an $80 million repair and overhaul contract to maintain its fleet of AE 3007-powered Embraer RJ-145s. The AE 3007 powers the Embraer RJ-135, RJ-140 and RJ-145 regional aircraft for which 1,200 orders have been placed by customers in 18 countries, Rolls-Royce said.
The pilot of a C-130E that crashed last year in Kuwait killing three airmen and injuring seven others won't face court-martial charges of dereliction of duty and negligent homicide, as 314th Airlift Wing commander Brig. Gen. Paul Fletcher has decided to drop the court-martial in favor of administrative Article 15 proceedings.
Weekend U.K. press reports that one of the Royal Navy's three V/STOL aircraft carriers was being retired from service, together with its GKN Westland Sea King ASW helicopter squadron, were denied on Monday by the Ministry of Defense.
