CHINA VOTE: Speaker Dennis Hastert has scheduled the House's vote on the issue of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for China the week of May 22. Commerce Secretary William M. Daley, in Beijing last week to co-chair the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, said it was a step forward in moving the bill through Congress. Without PNTR, he said, the U.S. will lose out to Europe, Asia and Latin American. China has threatened to turn the screws on U.S. imports, restricting market access, if PNTR is voted down.
A powerful House Appropriations Committee subcommittee chairman has warned the impending delivery of an advanced Israeli airborne radar system to China could "seriously erode" relations between the U.S. and Israel. Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.), chair of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, said last week he might withhold as much as $250 million in military aid to Israel -- roughly the proceeds from the sale -- until Congress can investigate the sale.
MOUAWAD NATIONAL CO. of Saudi Arabia, headquarters for a jewelry manufacturing and retail outlet, has ordered an Airbus Corporate Jetliner for delivery in August.
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Lawrence J. Delaney, replying to congressional concerns about the program meeting its end-of-year deadline for flight testing, said the service plans to fly an advanced avionics suite aboard an F-22 by the end of this calendar year. "The plan is to test the software this year," Delaney told The DAILY, "to meet LRIP [low rate initial production] DAB [Defense Acquisition Board] criteria."
Kaman Aerospace Corp. will build fuselages for MD Helicopter Inc.'s line of single-engine helicopters under a multi-year agreement with a potential value of $100 million, Kaman said yesterday. The deal complements Kaman's current production programs and allows MDHI to meet commitments.
Lockheed Martin said it has begun airborne testing of its Joint Strike Fighter multisensor avionics suite. As part of the JSF concept demonstration, airborne testing is required to reduce risk by exhibiting real-world effects on sensor performance. The Lockheed Martin team began the tests in February and plans about 50 flights and 150 flight hours this spring and summer in the Northrop Grumman Cooperative Avionics Test Bed (CATB), a modified BAC 1-11 aircraft.
Lockheed Martin faces a fine and the possible suspension of export license privileges for satellites and related technology, according to charges filed by the State Dept. But, a Lockheed Martin spokesman said, "The issue of export license suspension has never come up in discussion, so at this point we believe it is not a likelihood. There is no chance this will be a criminal case -- this is nothing at all like the cases against Loral and Hughes."
Yet another watchdog agency has cited a lack of expertise as the cause of the integrity problems being experienced by the FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System. The General Accounting Office, in a draft report, blamed a "shortage of in-house technical expertise" and cited FAA statements that the "contractor lacked sufficient expertise" to deal with integrity issues. The Dept. of Transportation's Inspector General told Congress earlier that FAA recognized that "neither FAA nor Raytheon has the necessary expertise to resolve" WAAS failures.
Chile plans to create an aerospace agency, Gen. Maximo Venegas, executive director of the country's Center for Aeronautics and Space Studies (CEADE), announced at last week's Ninth International Air and Space Fair (FIDAE) in Santiago.
The U.S. should revamp its export control system to safeguard competitiveness of the aerospace industry rather than continue to pursue outdated ideals, according to Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO John W. Douglass. Douglass blames export licensing problems for the lower-than expected trade surplus recorded by the industry in 1999, saying the satellite sector was particularly affected by "restrictive" State Dept.
Controllers at Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center have started testing an advanced computer tool called Traffic Management Advisor (TMA), which helps en route controllers and traffic managers make more efficient decisions in handling arriving aircraft, the FAA said. TMA, which looks at aircraft while they are still several hundred miles from selected airports, helps controllers develop plans to handle arriving traffic according to spacing requirements for each airport.
The independent report that blamed NASA's failures at Mars last year on inadequate funding has triggered a round of requests from agency center directors and program managers for more money to avoid the same problems, Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told a congressional panel yesterday.
Investors in MirCorp said they will back a second commercial mission in September to set up an Internet content source on Russia's aging Mir station, after two cosmonauts safely reinhabited the station yesterday. Cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kalery flew the final few meters to a safe docking with Mir manually after ground controllers noticed the automatic system was bringing their Soyuz capsule in off target. The capsule docked with Mir at 2:21 a.m. EDT.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) urged President Clinton, in a letter released yesterday, to use a slowdown in the National Missile Defense program as an opportunity to reassess the Administration's NMD deployment plan and to support a two-site plan in negotiations with Russia. Conrad said at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill that the two-site plan would provide "shoot-look-shoot" capability against a threat from Iraq or Iran, as well as protection against a North Korean attack.
L3 COMMUNICATIONS tapped United Industrial Corp. to supply eleven computer control kits and simulated ammunition sets for Howitzer crew training. L-3 became the prime contractor for the U.S. Army's Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command for Fire Support Combined Arms Tactical Trainers (FSCATTs) when it bought Raytheon's training services business. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in March 2001 and continue through September 2001. United Industrial has supplied equipment for 35 Howitzer Crew Trainers under three previous FSCATT contracts.
EMBRAER said that Solitair Corp. of Greenwich, Conn., converted 20 ERJ 145 options to firm orders and signed a new contract increasing its total order to 90 aircraft. Some of the aircraft will be operated by Chautauqua Airlines or other affiliates of Wexford Management. Chautauqua President Bryan Bedford said, "our objective is to move forward quickly to introduce regional jet service in a number of markets."
While CPI Aerostructures has lined up financial backers for one acquisition, the Edgewood, N.Y., precision subassembly manufacturer decided to walk away from another deal announced last December. Fleet Capital Corp. and Finova Mezzanine Capital Inc. have agreed to finance CPI's purchase of a private precision machining company located on Long Island, provided further due diligence doesn't raise any red flags. CPI, which didn't identify the company, said it hopes to complete the merger by the end of May and then relocate employees.
The U.S. Army's Comanche helicopter program got a thumbs-up from the Dept. of Defense Acquisition Board to move into the $3.1 billion engineering and manufacturing development phase. The Milestone II approval Tuesday comes on the heels of the Army's announcement that it plans to buy 1,213 Comanches as part of its Aviation Modernization Plan (DAILY, April 4). The Army, which sees the Boeing Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche as the "quarterback of the battlefield," will use it to replace aging AH-1 Cobras, UH-1 Hueys and OH-58As and Cs.
Some of the 57 Hawk Mk 51 advanced turbofan trainers operated by the Finnish air force since 1977 are to receive new wings under terms of a 17.1 million pound ($27 million) BAE Systems order announced yesterday. The deal covers 18 new Mk 51A wing-sets, similar to those on seven upgraded Hawks of that mark which followed the original 50 Finnish Mk 51s, deliveries of which began in 1991.
EDO Corp. inked new contracts that will be worth about $19 million in aggregate through 2002. Over the past few weeks, the New York City-based company has secured about $16 million in aircraft armament equipment business. The contracts include production funding for the F-22 AMRAAM Vertical Eject Launcher; a bomb release units (BRU) for an unidentified foreign customer; BRU-46/A equipment for the F-16 and $5.5 million in BRU-57 Smart Bomb Racks from the exercise of an existing option.
New York investment house Merrill Lynch thinks Boeing-watchers shouldn't worry too much about the threat - if there is one - from rival Airbus Industrie and its would-be A3XX super jumbo jetliner. Merrill Lynch VP Byron Callan says that "if the A3XX is launched this year, or next, we hardly believe that it will be the ruin of Boeing."
The 40-day strike by Boeing's engineers and technical workers caused the company to slip behind on its delivery schedule, but officials still expect to meet their goal of 490 aircraft in 2000. Boeing was slated to deliver 125 aircraft in the first quarter. It delivered 74, plus one 747 for the U.S. Air Force. Operations were off company-wide -- commercial, military and space.
Key House leaders told Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) yesterday that "prompt Senate action is both warranted and essential" on the House-passed $13.2 billion fiscal 2000 supplemental. They added in a letter to Lott, the text of which was released yesterday, that Defense Secretary William Cohen has informed them that "timely passage of this supplemental is essential" to avoid actions that could damage force readiness, capabilities and troop morale.
