Boeing, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, working with Commerce One, a California-based e-business solutions provider, are set to launch a revolutionary e-marketplace designed to serve everyone in the industry, according to sources close to the deal. An official announcement is expected early this week.
PACIFIC AEROSPACE&ELECTRONICS said it has signed a contract to manufacture liquid crystal displays (LCDs) for Raytheon's Global Positioning System (GPS) satelllite marine navigational aid. "We believe this order is evidence of the growing momentum in our Display Division," said Werner Hafelfinger, COO of Pacific Aerospace&Electronics.
PASADENA PUCKER: NASA headquarters is hunkered down for Tuesday's release of the Tom Young report on management of the Mars exploration program, by all accounts a devastating document. But the pucker factor may even be higher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where managers are all too aware that as a contractor-operated facility they are not guaranteed space-agency business.
NASA has decided to put safety ahead of science and terminate the mission of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) with a controlled reentry over a remote stretch of the Pacific on June 3.
A strong industrial base is essential for military superiority in the future, according to a senior advisor to Vice President Al Gore. In light of industry consolidation in the U.S. and Europe, said Leon S. Fuerth, Gore's national security advisor, national leaders are studying how many companies are active in the defense field and what must be done to sustain them. "All I can tell you is that we recognize that we've got an issue and we're going to have to deal with it," he said.
FAILURE REVIEW: Boeing has finally been cleared to investigate the March 12 failure of a Zenit rocket launched from a modified oil rig by its Sea Launch joint venture with companies in Ukraine, Russia and Norway. Engineers from Ukraine's KB Yuzhnoye, which built the big rocket, have already listed the failure's probable cause as a software error on the ground that didn't configure the rocket's second stage propulsion system properly before launch. But Boeing, lead partner in the venture, needed a Technical Assistance Agreement from the U.S. State Dept.
TECHNOLOGY AND COALITION PARTNERS: To make maximum use of commercial and industrial technology and insure interoperability with coalition partners, "We must think of our allies right up front," before platforms are developed, says Vitalij Garber, director of interoperability in the office of Under Secretary of Defense for acquisition and technology.
FLIGHT DELAY: Pegasus launch of NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) will come in January 2001, at the earliest, instead of this summer as planned, after some rough handling at JPL last week damaged the $75 million spacecraft. Vibration tests at the troubled Caltech-operated facility subjected the 850-pound spacecraft to a 20-g load for about 200 milliseconds, enough to crack two of the four solar arrays attached, damage the spacecraft structure and raise questions about the instruments and other systems inside.
TWO-WAR STRATEGY: With a new Quadrennial Defense Review coming out next year, the strategy of being able to fight two major theater wars at the same time is being discussed by U.S. military leaders. Leon Fuerth, Vice President Al Gore's national security advisor, says Gore thinks "a two-major military contingency strategy serves us very well...." The implications of continuing the strategy are significant, he says, because it drives the whole force posture and modernization issue.
MOVING TARGET: The Congressional Budget Office says that even though the Clinton Administration has reached the $60 billion annual Pentagon procurement goal set in the mid-'90's by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili, it's still short. In 2001 dollars, CBO says in its "Budget Options for National Defense" document released earlier this month, the amount is actually $65 billion.
IT'S THE WEAPONS: Top U.S. Air Force officials say it was really the weapons that made the difference in recent air campaigns, not the types of aircraft. Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Lester Lyles predicts that the AF will have three major "launch platforms for weapons" in the future: B-2, Joint Strike Fighter and F-22. "Weapons modernization will play a pivotal requirement role for the U.S. Air Force, as well as the other services, for the future," he says at the Air Armament Summit in Sandestin, Fla.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has picked four industry teams to begin work on mission concepts for the agency's Terrestrial Planet Finder, an ambitious effort to put a swarm of big telescopes in deep space to look for extra-solar planets capable of sustaining life as it exists on Earth.
Thomson-CSF Avionics is the official name of the combined customer support businesses of Auxilec Inc. of Edison, N.J., and Thomson-CSF Sextant Inc. of Miami. The newly named Thomson-CSF Avionics falls under the umbrella of the Business Group Avionics Systems (BGAV) unit of French defense giant Thomson-CSF. BGAV has 7,455 employees and sales of $1.081 billion. The two companies began to integrate operations late last year, and should complete the process by the end of the second quarter of this year.
Japan's Ministry of Transport has picked Space Systems/Loral to build MTSAT-1R, an advanced platform for air traffic control and weather observation that will replace the one lost when the final H-2 rocket failed on launch last November. The U.S. company, which built the original satellite, was seen as the most likely candidate to build a replacement. Toshihiro Nikai, Japan's transport minister, said after the launch failure it was "essential" for aviation safety to replace the lost satellite as quickly as possible (DAILY, Nov. 16, 1999).
Lockheed Martin has been chosen to build a US$15 million environmentally controlled hangar in Australia for cold proof load testing of the Royal Australian Air Force's F-111C/G aircraft.
The U.S. Army believes Patriot missiles deployed in South Korea and the Middle East have exhibited failures in routine checks because they were kept in high states of readiness for extended periods of time. Army officials yesterday confirmed that "hundreds" of Patriot PAC-2 missiles with technical failures were removed and replaced in both areas over the past 10 days, as first reported in the March 23 Wall Street Journal.
The White House has not clearly articulated the effect on national security of exporting high performance computers, or said how potential enemies might benefit from them, a General Accounting Official told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. "Without a clear statement of these interests, it is unclear how the executive branch determines what are the militarily critical applications that may affect U.S. national security," said Harold J. Johnson, GAO associate director of international relations and trade issues.
Closer industrial links -- and eventual mergers -- among U.S. and European defense companies would improve interoperability in future military missions, the Senate Armed Services Committee was told by Rudy de Leon, nominee for the post of U.S. deputy secretary of defense. De Leon, currently the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said conflicts in the Balkans have demonstrated that the long-standing U.S. quest for interoperability with its allies continues.
The U.S. Marine Corps has asked Congress to add two MV-22 Opsreys to the 16 it has already requested for fiscal year 2001. The service "desperately" needs more of the tilt-rotor aircraft to replace aging helicopters, a Marine spokesman said. The Marine Corps commandant himself, Gen. James L. Jones, has told the House Armed Services Committee that two additional Ospreys are needed, and that obsolete equipment must be replaced, "the sooner the better."
Airbus Industrie has not yet decided where to locate the final assembly facilities for its proposed A3XX superjumbo. Contrary to reports last week that suggested Aerospatiale Matra's facilities here would house the final assembly, an Airbus spokesman said the site "has yet to be determined." Toulouse and DaimlerChrysler's Hamburg plant are the two likely candidates, he told The DAILY.
Boeing, fresh from resolving the 40-day strike by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), says it will meet its projected financial expectations for 2000. The company estimates full year revenues at $50 billion, operating margins and around 7% and free cash flow at around $1.5 billion.
New Zealand's plan to lease 28 U.S. F-16 jets originally sold to Pakistan has fallen through. The official cancellation letter to the U.S. Air Force from New Zealand's Ministry of Defense is "in the mail," a USAF spokesman said. Cancellation was a key election campaign promise of newly appointed Prime Minister Helen Clark (DAILY Jan. 20). The sale to Pakistan was revoked several years ago because of congressional concerns about Islamabad's nuclear status. The jets remain parked at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz.
L-3 Communications is positioning to secure a piece of the satellite imaging market by joining forces with Core Software Technology to offer high-speed delivery of satellite imaging.
