Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company just completed the body-mate of the first U.S. Air Force stretched C-130J airlifter. The C-130J-30's fuselage is 180 inches longer than the standard C-130J, boosting airlift capability. The stretch version will increase the number of troops and cargo which can be airlanded and airdropped on the battlefield, Lockheed Martin said. It can transport a full load of combat troops, non-stop and unrefueled, from the East Coast of the U.S. to Europe.
BIG BOOST: The Defense Dept. needs a budget increase of up to $100 billion to continue what it's doing today, Peters says. "If you tell me I don't have to do all the missions that I'm doing today, then the number changes," Peters adds. Based on its current responsibilities, the AF alone needs an additional $20 billion to $30 billion for procurement and other needs, he estimates.
BFGOODRICH AEROSPACE will provide its Universal Fuel Quantity Tester to support AV-8B Harriers flown by the U.S. Marine Corps. Under the terms of the deal, BFGoodrich Aerospace will supply 30 tester and interface sets in the first quarter of 2001. The company said the award reflects an "evolving process" to "economically ruggedize" commercial-off-the-shelf components for use in military equipment.
A joint venture of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) and France's Thomson-CSF won a $132.7 million contract from France and Germany for airborne Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems. The contract, which falls under the Next Generation Identification Friend or Foe (NGIFF) program, covers joint production of onboard IFF transponders in the STR 2000 version for German Tornados, Tiger helicopters and transport aircraft, and in the TSC 2000 version for French Tiger and Cougar helicopters, as well as transports.
The National Security Agency is extending its Project Groundbreaker schedule for "further refinements." Groundbreaker will literally be a groundbreaking deal for the NSA, as the once super-secret spy agency farms out non-mission critical information technology (IT) needs to a private contractor.
FOREIGN AID: Israel will get $1.98 billion in U.S. military aid under a final fiscal 2001 foreign operations appropriations bill that Congress finished last week. The amount is equal to President Clinton's request and a $60 million increase over fiscal 2000. Egypt will get $1.3 billion in military aid, the same as both the request and the fiscal 2000 level. Clinton is expected to sign the bill. The same amounts are authorized in the Security Assistance Act of 2000, which President Clinton signed earlier this month.
The U.S. Air Force is proposing the creation of a defense space council to coordinate Defense Dept. space activities, Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters told reporters. Peters said during a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington Thursday that an Air Force position paper has received a "fairly favorable reception" from the congressionally chartered Space Commission for contending that the "real problem" in space policy is a lack of coordination among the various organizations that oversee military space activities.
TROUBLED WATERS? House defense staffers are unhappy to find out from non-Navy sources that the LST La Moure County (LST-1194) struck a reef in Chile's Caleta Cifuncho Bay while participating in the Unitas annual joint exercise with Latin American navies on Sept. 12. The Navy subsequently confirmed the damage, which sources said involved the bow ramp and stern gate. But the keel was also fractured, and decommissioning of the ship has been approved.
BFGoodrich Co. hit Wall Street forecasts, boosting third quarter operating profits 3% to $85.2 million, or $0.82 a share, excluding one-time items from $83 million, or $0.74 a share, a year ago. The company posted net income of $79.9 million, or $0.77 a share after special charges compared to a net loss in the year-ago quarter, off a top-line increase of about 8% to $1.4 billion. "Our Aerospace segment again delivered excellent results despite the downturn in commercial transport deliveries," said Chairman and CEO David L. Burner.
Lockheed Martin reported first flight of an F-16 equipped with a "power-by-wire" electric flight control subsystem that it said promises to reduce takeoff weight, increase survivability and trim costs of the company's Joint Strike Fighter.
NOT BROKEN: A new report from the Cato Institute says both presidential candidates want to "fix a military that isn't broken." The report's author, Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at Cato, contends Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush are embroiled "in a bidding war" to "throw the most money at the Pentagon" because they have been fooled by the readiness debate and doomsday warnings of budget deficits. Eland says "gaps in readiness" can be "plugged" without upping the overall budget.
Russian arms-sale officials have halved their price to Turkey for Ka-50-2 Erdogan attack helicopters in an effort to wrest a major sale from Bell Helicopter Textron, which won a contract from the NATO nation in July for its King Cobra.
JSF SKEPTICISM: While the pros and cons of each Joint Strike Fighter candidate, and indeed the program itself, are debated, some Navy pilots are skeptical of the whole approach. The JSF, says an F-14 radar intercept officer, is "kind of a jack-of-all trades, master of none. Sure, it's great that they would have common parts and such, but one plane cannot do all the missions of all the aircraft...There's a reason why we build different planes." And some say a single-engine plane has no place on a carrier. "The last one was the A-7," says an F/A-18 pilot.
TOO FEW F-22s: Building only 100 or 130 F-22s, instead of the 339 the Air Force wants to buy, would create a "massive problem" for the service, Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters says. With the lower figures, "you cannot use the aircraft in any sensible way and keep people in that weapon system because you work the people to death and you don't have enough assets to renew that force structure," he says.
A false alarm forced the pilot of one of Japan's newly delivered Mitsubishi F-2 fighters to make an emergency landing at Komatsu airport, program officials confirm. The two-seat F-2's on-board fire indicator lit in the cockpit during a test flight over the Sea of Japan, so the pilot put the plane down at Komatsu, about 145 miles northwest of Tokyo. It turned out, however, that there was no fire. The incident took place on Tuesday, but officials didn't disclose the mishap until today.
DREAMTIME: Tomorrow's launch of the Expedition One crew to the International Space Station will mark not the just the beginning of full time occupancy of ISS but also of commercial activity there. Painted on the side of the Soyuz rocket that will carry the first crew to orbit, alongside the familiar logos of NASA and the Russian Aerospace Agency, will be the logo of Dreamtime, the Silicon Valley startup that won the NASA contract to generate multi-media content on ISS.
The U.S. Air Force's Air Intelligence Agency will now come under Air Combat Command, in a move that top brass says underscores the new role of information operations as a warfighting weapon in and of itself. Now an Air Force field operating agency, the AIA, headquartered at Kelly AFB, Tex., will become an ACC primary subordinate unit on Feb. 1, 2001, and the agency's two wings - the 67th Information Operations Wing at Kelly and the 70th Intelligence Wing, Fort Meade, Md. - will realign under Barksdale AFB, La.-based 8th Air Force.
CAE INC., Toronto, won new contracts worth about $33 million to provide three Full Flight Simulators (FFS) to two U.S. companies. Flight Safety Boeing Training International ordered two convertible FFS for pilot training on two aircraft, an Airbus 330/340 and a Boeing 737-757/767. Delta Air Lines ordered an FFS for Boeing 767-300ER training.
EADS-Sogerma, a unit of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), and Northrop Grumman Corp. have agreed to form a joint venture focused on the repair, maintenance and overhaul (MRO) of large commercial aircraft.
Hamilton Sundstrand will supply the auxiliary power unit for the U.S. Air Force's C-5 Galaxy Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program (RERP) under a contract from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. valued at more than $110 million over the life of the program. The APS3400 APU, a derivative of a unit now in service on commercial aircraft, will provide the power required to start the upgraded C-5s new General Electric CF6-80C2 engines, Lockheed Martin said. It will also provide additional airflow for air-conditioning on the ground.
NASA is rebounding from failed Mars exploration missions by taking a page from its moon exploration in the 1960s - careful reconnaissance, planning and execution - to ultimately bring a sample of Martian rock, maybe as heavy as four pounds, back to Earth. Orbiter, lander and rover missions in the next 10 years will lead to a series of sample-return missions ideally starting as early as 2011. NASA says it will spend the next 18 months determining initial costs and technology needs.
Triumph Group Inc. reported a boost in net income of 12% to $9.2 million, or $0.74 a share, in the second quarter of fiscal 2001. In the same quarter last year, earnings stood at $8.2 million, or $0.66 a share. Net sales for the period ended Sept. 30, 2000 amounted to $131.6 million, up 19% over the comparable period a year ago. Operating income, on a consolidated basis, reached $19.5 million or 14.8% in the second quarter, up from $15.2 million or 13.8% a year ago.
ABOARD THE USS HARRY S. TRUMAN - The USS Harry S. Truman wraps up its final exercise this week in preparation for its first six-month deployment, scheduled to begin late next month to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In the shadow of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen and with an unsettled Middle East, the commander of the Truman battle group has no doubt of the gravity of the deployment that lies ahead.
Lockheed Martin Corp. turned in higher than expected third quarter earnings, at $0.28 a share before recurring items, despite a 37% slip in operating earnings that was caused by lower shipments of F-16 fighters than the prior year. Wall Street's consensus for the quarter was $0.24 a share.
AirNewco and MyAircraft.com, two of the largest aerospace and aviation business-to-business (B2B) exchanges, are tying the knot, rolling up into one mega e-market even before they get their individual exchanges off the ground. AirNewco, whose founders include Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Iberia Airlines, SAirGroup, United Air Lines and United Parcel Service, was conceived last April in the hopes of using the e-world to streamline the aviation industry's supply chain.
