ESCO Electronics Corp. posted second quarter earnings of $3.5 million or $0.28 per diluted share, up 64% from the $2.1 million or $0.17 reported for the same period a year ago. Sales were up 17%, to $70.1 million from $60 million in the second quarter of 1999. "We are extremely pleased with our second quarter performance," said Dennis J. Moore, chairman and CEO of the St. Louis-based company.
Lockheed Martin said yesterday it has signed a ten-year agreement with Airways New Zealand to modernize New Zealand's airspace management and to establish a technology center to support the nation's air traffic management program. Airways New Zealand is credited with being one of the first fully commercialized air navigation services organizations.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., Long Beach, Calif., was awarded on May 2, 2000, a $20,318,920 modification fixed-price-incentive contract to provide for incorporation of Global Air Traffic Management system installation into the production effort for fifty (C-17 aircraft (aircraft P71 through P120). Expected contract completion date is November 2004. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-96-C-2059-P00089).
AXCELIS TECHNOLOGIES, Beverly, Mass., filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. Goldman, Sachs&Co. and Morgan Stanley will co-manage the offering slated for late June, after which Eaton will hold title to 80% of Axcelis' shares. The move is part of Eaton's efforts to reorganize and expand the semiconductor business to better serve such customers as aerospace and defense companies.
French enginemaker SNECMA will acquire the Labinal aerospace/automotive group - parent company of helicopter and turboprop engine specialist Turbomeca - for about $1.1 billion in a surprise consolidation initiative set to nearly complete the French aerospace industry's restructuring. The French government is backing state-owned SNECMA's external growth move. The European Commission's competition directorate is expected in July to approve the merger, which will be implemented in the second half, according to a SNECMA official.
ICBM THREATS: Between now and 2015, according to Robert Walpole, the CIA's national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, the most likely ICBM threats to the U.S. will be from Russia, China and North Korea. A probable threat, he says, will come from Iran, and a possible threat will come from Iraq.
EARLY WARNING: A Titan IVB rocket is set to launch a Defense Support Program (DSP) early warning satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today. Liftoff from Launch Complex 40 is slated for a four-hour window that opens at 9:33 a.m. EDT, with an Inertial Upper State boosting the satellite toward its geostationary orbit. The DSP platform is the 20th of the TRW-built spacecraft to be launched. It carries 1,200 pounds of infrared sensors supplied by Aerojet that work with other DSP platforms to pinpoint rocket launches on the earth's surface.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Armed Services research and development subcommittee, doesn't think much of the idea of a six-month slip in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee has sent the proposal to the full SASC for disposition in the 2001 defense budget markup, now underway. "I don't support that," Weldon told The DAILY.
Defense companies on both sides of the Atlantic should have equal opportunities to fill military requirements of NATO countries, according to Vance Coffman, Lockheed Martin's chairman and chief executive officer. "I envision a future transatlantic marketplace that is integrated, open and competitive, and supported by a transatlantic industrial base that is innovative and robust," Coffman said Thursday at a conference in Washington.
Saab Ericsson Space, based in Goteborg Sweden, signed an agreement with Matra Marconi Space to develop and manufacture computers for an additional 20 Ariane 5 launches. Saab Ericsson Space has been the prime manufacturer of Ariane's onboard computers since the program launched in 1979. Each Ariane 5 rocket carries two Saab Ericsson Space onboard computers, which track and guide the vehicle during the ascent before satellite separation. The deliveries, according to the company, will run through 2003.
NASA officials at the month-long World Radio Conference convening today in Istanbul will keep a close eye on the space-to-space Global Positioning System (GPS) links that will play an important role in navigating Space Shuttles and the International Space Station, as well as on the frequencies used in passive Earth monitoring from satellites.
BUDGET AUTHORITY CEILING: The House Appropriations Committee has set a ceiling of $288.4 billion in budget authority for the defense subcommittee when it marks up the fiscal 2001 defense appropriations bill later this month. The Senate Appropriations Committee set a ceiling of $287.4 billion, about $1 billion less. The difference will be resolved when the House and Senate defense appropriations bills are sent to conference later this year.
SIGNAL TECHNOLOGY CORP., Danvers, Mass., said Lockheed Martin has released funding for low-rate initial production (LRIP-1) of the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missile power supplies after successful tests at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The company's Keltec Div., Fort Walton Beach, Fla., will be responsible for the production.
United Auto Workers rank and file at two Boeing facilities were slated to vote Sunday on a proposed four-year contract offer. UAW and Boeing negotiators reached a tentative agreement on a pact Thursday, but withheld details pending ratification. The contract would affect 5,300 UAW aerospace workers at Local 148 (Long Beach, Calif.) and Local 1482 (Melbourne, Ark.). McDonnell Douglas previously owned both sites. Long Beach makes the B717 airliner and the C-17 military transport.
SATELLITE CONTROL: Satellite flight controllers may one day be able to work from their beds using laptop computers, following tests by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that demonstrated an orbiting satellite will respond to standard Internet protocols sent from the ground.
'INAPPROPRIATE AND EXPENSIVE': A report to NATO parliamentarians by the Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS) claims the U.S. will be less safe if a National Missile Defense (NMD) system is deployed. NMD, says the report, presented Thursday in Portoroz, Slovenia, would throw a wrench into proliferation control, harm U.S. ties with Russia and China, and split the NATO alliance. Jack Mendelsohn, one of the authors, warns NATO that the U.S. would be a "difficult partner" in years to come if NMD is deployed.
EXPORTS AND R&D: Now that the "elegant simplicity" of the Cold War is gone, says William Reinsch, head of the Commerce Dept.'s Bureau of Export Administration, the U.S. government should promote the new national security agenda by controlling and coordinating exports to achieve the proper level of R&D investment. Only in this way, he says, will U.S. high-tech commercial firms that rely on exports to fuel R&D, and that serve the aerospace and defense markets, remain alive and well.
ROLLS-ROYCE said it signed an agreement to provide engines with a potential value of $380 million to power as many as 20 Boeing 757 aircraft for American Trans Air. A maintenance agreement worth $290 million over 15 years was also signed.
Spacehab Inc. reported a third-quarter loss of $635,000 or $0.06 a share on revenues of $25.1 million -- down across the board on a comparative basis year-over-year -- but the company expects to be in the black by the fourth quarter. "The third quarter reflects steady progress toward dealing with the stretched out International Space Station (ISS) assembly schedule as well as Space Shuttle delays," said Spacehab Chairman and CEO Shelley A.
After evaluating the merits of an upgraded, fly-by-wire A300-600 and an A330 derivative, Airbus Industrie chose a shortened-fuselage A330 to replace the A300/A310 twinjets. Although the proposed program's schedule has not been finalized, first delivery of the semi-new aircraft, temporarily dubbed A330-100, is tentatively planned for the fourth quarter of 2003, says Airbus Marketing VP Colin Stuart.
The U.S. Army is "part and parcel" of a more defined Dept. of Defense high energy laser program, and is stressing work on solid state lasers that could be used on future battlefields, said Lt. Gen. John Costello, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Dolores Etter, deputy under secretary of defense for science and technology, is overseeing the newly refined high laser effort for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Army is closely involved, Costello said.
Rockwell Collins has DOD production approval for the first Global Positioning System (GPS) Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM), a security device required by the government on all future variants of military GPS receivers, the company reported Friday.
Northrop Grumman Corp. is shifting some of its Electronic Sensors and Systems Sector (ES3) resources, and adding others, to a new Baltimore-based unit designed to support all of ES3's defense and commercial businesses. The new unit, called the Logistics Systems and Materials division, plans to take advantage of supply chain management opportunities.
NASA has picked nine aeronautical concepts for awards of about $300,000 each for Phase I research under its Revolutionary Concepts (REVCON) program, which seeks to push work on "high-risk, revolutionary-breakthrough technologies in atmospheric flight."
