Telecommunications mogul Craig McCaw has decided not to pursue an investment in Iridium LLC, and will focus instead on companies such as ICO Global Communications and Teledesic LLC, his company, Eagle River Investments LLC, said Friday. "With the powerful influence of the Internet on global communications, we've made a strategic decision to focus our resources and attention on the satellite-based data services that ICO and Teledesic can provide," said Dennis Webbing, president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Eagle River.
OLD AIRCRAFT, NEW PARTS: U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael E. Ryan says spare parts for older aircraft present a unique set of challenges. "One of the places we are having some problems is with the vendor base for our geriatric airplanes," he says. For example, "legacy systems" with attitude indicators no longer in production require finding contractors who will make limited numbers of replacements. "It makes a huge difference to us, but [most companies are] looking for volume and can't be bothered with something like this antiquated piece," he says.
Several countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., are sending helicopters to help in flood relief operations in Mozambique. The U.S. is sending up to six Sikorsky MH-53 special operations helicopters, and the U.K. is sending four Royal Air Force Pumas. Both countries will airlift the helicopters. The U.S. will use C-5 transports and the U.K. will use a chartered Russian Antonov An-124.
DEIDRE A. LEE, currently administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, will replace Eleanor Spector as the director of defense procurement, the Pentagon said yesterday. Lee's new responsibilities will encompass all matters related to procurement policy for the Dept. of Defense. She will also serve as the principal advisor to DOD acquisition chief Jacques S. Gansler. Lee will begin her new duties at the Pentagon later this month. Spector retired in February.
GENERAL DYNAMICS Electric Boat won two U.S. Navy contracts, worth up to $55 million, for submarine engineering and life-cycle support. The largest contract, for about $38.3 million, is for the Trident submarine program, including design, engineering, materials and logistics support. The contract also calls for the retrofitting of older Tridents to carry D-5 missiles. Under the other contract, EB will do planning evaluations to support the Selected Restricted Availibilities (SRA) scheduled for the USS Dallas and the USS Pittsburgh.
The U.S. Navy sent to Congress a $5.7 billion list of fiscal year 2001 unfunded requirements, many of which are for accelerated aircraft and missile production. The amount is in addition to the $91.7 billion the Navy and Marine Corps requested last month for FY '01. The service says a top need is $1.2 billion for LHD-8 ship procurement in fiscal year 2001. However, the majority of the Navy's wish list is comprised of aircraft- and missile-related programs.
Russia will keep its commitments to supply hardware for the International Space Station, but it should strive to keep the domestic Mir orbital station in orbit as well, Acting President Vladimir Putin said yesterday during a campaign swing to the cosmonaut training center at Star City, near Moscow. "Russia will fulfill all its commitments in this project," Putin said of the International Station, according to Russian news accounts of his visit to Star City.
TWA BEGAN SERVICE yesterday with the first of 15 Boeing 717s it is scheduled to receive this year. The first revenue flight was between St. Louis and Dallas/Fort Worth. The airline has 50 firm orders and options for another 50 of the aircraft. TWA will replace its DC-9 fleet with the new aircraft, configured for 111 passengers including 16 in first class. Last year, TWA took delivery of more than one new airplane every 10 days. Between 1996 and 1999, the airline replaced more than 40% of its fleet.
Sabreliner Corp.'s Premier Turbines unit has completed work on the first three of an order for 50 RM-6599 rocket engines for supersonic target drones, returning work to Neosho, Mo., that had been conducted by the Harley-Davidson Motor Co.
NASA has set a basic price of $20.8 million a year for a commercial rack on the International Space Station, including fixed amounts of power, crew time and data transmission, and has opened the bidding for an initial demonstration of commercial activities on the Station.
Officials of the Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) won't accept an impasse in contract talks with Boeing and say they will file an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board on the company's attempts to call an impasse. An impasse would allow Boeing to impose a contract and end the strike that began Feb. 9. Boeing spokesman Peter Conte said, "it is now my understanding we can impose an impasse unilaterally."
The Defense Dept. is forgiving $103 million of the $108 million owed by local redevelopment authorities for the acquisition of Kelly AFB, Tex., reducing the debt to only $5 million, the Pentagon announced yesterday. Kelly, one of the bases included in the last base realignment and closure (BRAC) process, was turned over to local authorities who set up a "very successful and imaginative" redevelopment operation to transfer Kelly AFB to non-federal government operations, Pentagon Spokesman Ken Bacon said.
Hughes Electronics Corp. has traded the 400,000 subscribers to its DirecTV direct-broadcast service in Japan for an equity stake in SkyPerfecTV Japan, terminating its Japanese operations, the U.S. company announced yesterday. The deal will leave Hughes with a 6.8% interest in Japan Digital Broadcasting Services Inc., which operates the 1.7-million-subscriber SkyPerfecTV. DirecTV Japan shareholders will wind up with a total 10.2% interest in Japan Digital Broadcasting, which plans an initial public offering April 1.
Hawaiian Airlines will purchase 13 new 717-200 airliners and has rights to purchase another seven, formalizing a letter of intent signed last September, Boeing said yesterday. The order is valued at about $430 million. The new aircraft will replace the carrier's 15 DC-9-50 aircraft used on inter-island routes. All the new aircraft will be delivered next year, beginning in February.
TRW Inc. has finished integrating the six science instruments that make up the business end of NASA's Aqua Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite, clearing the way for environmental testing to begin this spring. TRW is under contract to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to built Aqua, the second EOS platform, and the Chemistry EOS platform. Aqua is scheduled for launch late this year.
U.S. industry groups are urging the government to immediately file a compliant with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) about the European Union's hushkit rule, which goes into effect May 4. The groups say they reviewed a possible alternative to the rule now being studied by the U.S. and the European Union, but "fundamentally, we see no evidence in these materials of any meaningful movement in the EU's position."
The U.S. Air Force's beefed-up pilot bonus program seems to be working -- more than 3,700 officers have signed a fiscal 2000 contract out of about 5,700 who have reached the decision-making point, officials say. "We're not ready to declare victory yet," says Lt. Gen. Donald Peterson, USAF deputy chief of staff for personnel. But personnel managers think if acceptance rates and retention patterns hold up, the service should be able to cut its pilot shortfall to manageable levels within five years.
BAE Systems' Hawk Synthetic Training Facility (HST) is the first development venture between an industry giant and the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense under the MOD's Smart Procurement Initiative. "The success of this project demonstrates the value of industry and the MOD working in partnership, on of the main principles of Smart Procurement," said Baroness Symons, Minister of State for Defense procurement. "It is part of our radical system of defense procurement to achieve faster, cheaper, better results."
Although the Air Transport Association strongly backs the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), several of its members -- including some of the biggest carriers -- see no value in the multi-billion dollar FAA system.
CPU TECH of Pleasanton, Calif., has won a contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., to develop a practical method for adapting commercial processor designs so they can be used in radiation environments. Working with Motorola's "ColdFire" processor, the company is developing a high-assurance rad-hardened version to be known as "RadFire." A functional equivalent of the Motorola unit, the rad-hard version will be foundry process independent to guarantee life-cycle support.
Boeing officials said yesterday that talks with the striking Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) are at an impasse, and that they were waiting to see if the union agrees. If so, Boeing could impose its own terms, a move SPEEA officials said would be a scare tactic. More than 17,000 SPEEA workers walked out on Feb. 9.
ARIANESPACE expects to post sales of about 6.4 billion French francs - about $947 million - for 1999. Jean-Marie Luton, the European launch service provider's chair and CEO, terms the results "obviously a little less than what we had expected, but...still in line with our results in previous years." At the beginning of 2000 the consortium had a backlog of 41 satellites to launch, worth about $3.2 billion.
The Pentagon is encountering problems in developing systems that are highly reliant on software, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Jacques Gansler told lawmakers yesterday. "The acquisition, development and sustainment of software-intensive systems has had significant problems, with almost all large efforts undergoing major cost and schedule overruns," Gansler told the House Armed Services Committee's panel on research and development.
ASIASTAR AND INSAT 3B satellites are scheduled for a March 21 launch on an Ariane 5, a slight delay forced by the need for "several additional checks" on the AsiaStar platform, a direct radio broadcast platform built by Alcatel Space for the WorldSpace system. Insat 3B was designed and built by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Liftoff from the Guiana Space Center near Kourou is scheduled for 5:57 p.m. EST on March 21.
