Based on results through the end of May, Honeywell warned it will fall short of expected second quarter earnings results, precipitating a significant sell-off of Honeywell shares. The company now targets second-quarter earnings per share in the $0.73 to $0.77 range, below Wall Street's consensus of $0.78 a share. Shares plummeted $8.44, or %17.40, to close at $40.06. Volume for the day, even despite a trading halt earlier, was over twenty million shares. Average daily volume is typically around 2.3 million shares.
Boeing Delta Launch Services won the first three firm space launch contracts under the new NASA Launch Services (NLS) contracts, with Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services also picked to launch heavy NASA payloads under the 10-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity arrangement.
EATON AEROSPACE, Irvine, Calif., won a contract to provide the hydraulic power generation system and utility actuation and control valve subsystem for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) team of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems. Eaton is responsible for the design, development and integration of the hydraulic power system. Key components include hydraulic pumps and motor pumps, reservoirs, manifolds, accumulators, control valves, quick disconnect couplings, and hydromechanical and electromechanical actuators.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded an $8,959,053,061 modification to convert a previously awarded advance acquisition contract N00019-99-C-1226 to a definitized firm-fixed-price incentive fee multi-year contract that will cover the procurement of 222 F/A-18E/F aircraft over a 5-year period. Work will be performed in St. Louis, Mo.
Less than a week after booking its first paying passenger, MirCorp officials yesterday outlined plans for keeping the aging Russian space station Mir in commercial operation indefinitely with new modules and business lines.
CRASH of an F-14A Tomcat Sunday at an air show at NAS Willow Grove, Pa., killed two aviators. The Navy identified them as Lt. William Joseph Dey, 30, of Hightstown, N.J., the pilot, and Lt. David Erick Bergstrom, 31, of Annandale, Va., the radar intercept officer. Both men had more than 1,000 hours in the F-14; Dey was an instructor pilot. The Northrop Grumman jet was participating in the second-to-last performance when it banked steeply then plunged into a wooded area about 100 yards from the air base here about 4:43 p.m., authorities said.
Raytheon Co., Goleta, Calif., is being awarded a $33,914,660 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract to provide for the following in support of the AN/ALE-50(V) countermeasures system: 97 mass model test units for the Navy; 289 1x2 launcher/controllers, 203 magazines, and 33 Fault Isolation System Testers applicable to the F-16 aircraft; 50 1x4 Dual Compatible Launchers, and 146 magazines applicable to the B-1 aircraft; and associated test equipment and warranties. Expected contract completion date is July 30, 2002.
The Senate yesterday approved an additional $92 million for Navy procurement of remanufactured AV-8B aircraft and agreed to pay for the increase by cutting funding for three other aircraft programs. The changes, approved as a group of amendments to the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill, would cut $33.4 million from the Navy's UC-35 procurement, $17.7 million from the procurement of automatic flight control systems for the EA-6B, and $40.9 million from engineering changes for Navy FA-18s.
NASA and Boeing engineers are pleased with a test to destruction of the first full-scale, stitched carbon-fiber wing structure. The 42-foot structure, designed to be representative of a 220-passenger, blended wing-body transport, failed at 97% of design ultimate load (145% of design limit load) with a 2.5g up-bending load condition. The tip of the wing was deflected 42 inches at failure in the final test on June 1 at NASA's Langley Research Center, Va.
TRW Inc., Tactical Systems Division, Systems&Information Technology Group, Carson, Calif., is being awarded $7,300,000 as part of a $37,899,000 firm-fixed-price/time and materials multi-year contract for Battlefield Combat Identification Systems (BCIS). The BCIS has demonstrated an effective, affordable technological solution to reduce fratricide and is an integral part of the Army's digitization effort for combat identification. Work will be performed in Redondo Beach, Calif., and is expected to be completed by Dec. 1, 2002.
Raytheon Systems Co., Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $107,550,298 modification to previously awarded contract N00024-98-C-5364 for management and engineering services to complete three additional flight test rounds and testing as port of the Aegis Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile /Standard Missile-3 Interceptor programs. The work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to be completed by December 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James L. Jones flew Saturday in the first MV-22 to carry passengers since the April 8 crash of the Bell/Boeing tilt-rotor aircraft in Arizona that killed 19 Marines. The flight departed China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, Calif., at 11 am local time and flew for about 20 minutes toward Lake Isabella at a maximum speed of about 220 knots, according to Capt. Aisha Bakkar-Poe, a Marine Corps spokesperson, who flew aboard a chase MV-22.
The FAA's Navigation and Landing Systems Product Team said it is changing its focus "from one centered on hardware to one centered on service." Manuel Vega, product lead, said "technical uncertainty is slowing down implementation of satellite navigation systems and the aging ground-based navigation and approach light infrastructure is becoming harder to support and maintain." The "shift in orientation" to service is a "major change for us," Vega said. "
Russian cosmonauts sealed up the Mir orbital station again and returned to Earth late Thursday, leaving the 14-year-old spacecraft in better shape than they found it but with no definite follow-on missions in sight.
LunaCorp, which is moving ahead on plans to send a commercial rover to the moon now that Radio Shack has signed up as a corporate sponsor (DAILY, June 16), will need some help getting its broadband signal back when the rover roves to the moon's dark side. David Gump, the LunaCorp president, says the company needs only a small, simple satellite to handle the data relay, and remains "open" in its choice of potential partners who might build it for them.
NASA's unhappiness with Boeing over cost and schedule slippage on the planned U.S. Propulsion Module for the International Space Station may breathe new life into an old idea at Lockheed Martin. Back when NASA was redesigning the old Space Station Freedom into something that might actually get built, Lockheed Martin proposed using the spacecraft bus from a classified reconnaissance satellite it had built as a control and reboost module for the downsized Station.
Russia still plans to fly a second Proton with modified upper stage engines, as promised, before the Service Module is launched (DAILY, June 7). That rocket will carry a Russian military satellite, and despite Russian news accounts to the contrary, the Russian Aerospace Agency tells NASA the military payload will be ready to go on time. That would set up a July 12 launch of the Service Module, now named Zvezda. Meanwhile, two other launches with unmodified Proton's are scheduled from the Baikonur Cosmodrome -- one Russian and one commercial -- before Service Module goes.
While Lockheed Martin doesn't think sharing a contract with Joint Strike Fighter competitor Boeing presents a problem, it would like to know soon whether the Pentagon still plans to award a winner-take-all contract.
As a result, instead of surfing the e-commerce wave, many suppliers are watching from the shore. Some have signed up to try one or more of the independent business-to-business (B2B) exchanges, such as AVOLO.com, PartsBase.com or TradeAir.com, mainly because they're real, and because it's an educational experience. TradeAir.com CEO Bill Morales claims suppliers fear being forced into e-commerce programs that are prohibitively expensive without guarantees they will have the right technology investment or system at the end of the day.
The Defense Dept.'s 2001 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) calls for spending a total of $1.45 trillion on defense in the fiscal 2001-2005 period, up 1.1% from the same period in the 2000 FYDP, the General Accounting Office says in a new report. The 2001 FYDP would spend $10.3 billion on Army aircraft procurement, down 1.8% from the 2000 FYDP, and $6.5 billion on Army missile procurement, down 3.2%, the report says. Navy aircraft procurement spending would fall 1.3% in the 2001 FYDP to $41 billion.
Boeing is looking for a buyer to take over its St. Louis-based aircraft parts fabrication business, holding out a "long-term supplier relationship" as a possible deal sweetener.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) wants a "comprehensive fraud audit" of the Defense Dept. and has introduced a bill to require one. Since the House, by a wide margin, has passed a bill requiring an audit of the Education Dept. in response to fraud allegations, lawmakers shouldn't have a problem with a similar review of the Pentagon, which has been the subject of even more reports of alleged fraud, Frank says in a "Dear Colleague" letter.
Boeing's use of design and assembly processes now that would be used later in the Joint Strike Fighter program has allowed it to achieve significant cost savings, according to President and CEO Harry Stonecipher. "There are about 80% fewer defects in the X-32 than in the equivalent build of the YF-22," Stonecipher said in a recent speech to a technology conference sponsored by Air Force Material Command, "and overall the X-32 is costing 75% less than our YF-22 and F-22 experience."
