While the Defense Dept. has finally reached its goal of $60 billion in procurement, a Senate Budget Committee analysis calls the increase "not just overdue" but "inadequate." The analysis, released last week, seemed to endorse the $90 billion for procurement that the Congressional Budget Office estimated a year ago was needed to address DOD's procurement needs. Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the fiscal 1998 budget, initially sought the $60 billion goal.
Parliament heard a damning indictment Thursday of the implementation of New Labor's much-vaunted Strategic Defense Review (SDR), launched in 1998 to reorganize Britain's armed forces on a more cost-effectiveness basis.
BOEING F/A-18E/F has been named winner of the Collier Trophy, awarded annually by the National Aeronautic Association for top aeronautical achievement. Boeing, the Super Hornet industry team and the U.S. Navy were recognized for "designing, manufacturing, testing and introducing into service the F/A-18E/F multi-mission strike fighter aircraft, the most capable and survivable carrier-based combat aircraft." Formal presentation of the trophy will take place May 3 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Va.
The Boeing engineers' strike has prompted the FAA to temporarily revoke the ability of the company's three master engineers to issue certificates of eligibility for new aircraft. The action shifts the process back to the FAA.
Russia's critical Zvezda Service Module for the International Space Station will be launched on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome sometime between July 8 and July 14, making an extra U.S. Space Shuttle mission to tend the two Station modules already in orbit more likely.
An article in The DAILY of Feb. 11 mischaracterized a statement of Antonio Elias, senior vice president of Orbital Sciences Corp., on the company's fixed price contract with NASA to build the X-34 reusable launch vehicle testbed. Elias stressed that OSC was following NASA-approved tradeoffs on cost, schedule and mission success, not cost, safety and mission success.
CLEARING THE DECKS? Meanwhile, DRS Technologies is sniffing around the Lockheed Martin offer. DRS Technologies President, Chairman and CEO Mark Newman tells investors there are "pieces" of the businesses up for sale that "make a lot of sense for our company." DRS Technologies has spent the first nine months of its fiscal 2000 cost-cutting and generally "getting its house in order." With the process well underway, the company might consider another acquisition. DRS, Newman said, "is getting as close to the Lockheed Martin offer as it possibly can."
TradeAir.com said that a $200,000 parts transaction on its Internet exchange by BFGoodrich Aerospace marked the "first time commercial aircraft parts were specified, sources and negotiated via a neutral Internet marketplace." TradeAir.com allows buyers and sellers in the $50 billion commercial aviation parts industry to conduct secure business on the Internet with either the open market or a user-selectable group of approved trading partners, said William Morales, chief executive.
DRS Technologies won two contracts worth a total of $8 million when the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) exercised options to purchase additional Standard Advanced Dewar Assemblies Type II (SADA II) and cooler assemblies.
Top executives of CFM International said here this week they believe the company, a joint venture between General Electric and France's Snecma, is ready to meet more stringent Stage 4 noise and emission rules on turbofan engines.
The U.S. has the ability to fight two major theater wars (MTW), Edward L. Warner, III, assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction, said yesterday. Warner told a group of defense writers in Washington that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have repeatedly voiced their particular timetable and the level of casualties that might result from a two-MTW situation, but, he said, they did not mean the U.S. would not win the second war.
Japan lost a $105 million x-ray astronomy satellite it built in cooperation with NASA yesterday when an M-5 three-stage solid-fuel rocket failed to place it in the proper orbit. In addition to a Japanese x-ray telescope, x-ray camera and hard x-ray detector, the Astro-E satellite carried a $40 million x-ray spectrometer supplied by NASA, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. space agency.
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin sent a sharp warning to his agency's contractors on safety yesterday, telling top executives they must not let cost considerations override safety as they build flight hardware under the new cooperative agreement procurements.
Iridium LLC petitioned the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to allow an investment group headed by telecommunications mogul Craig McCaw to provide interim financing of $74.6 million.
Medium range ballistic missile engines that North Korea reportedly sold to Iran "are critical" to ballistic missile technology programs of both countries, according to National Intelligence Council Director Robert D. Walpole. The Washington Times first reported North Korea's sale of 12 missile engines to Iran.
GENERAL AVIATION MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION President Ed Bolen reported that the industry posted record billings and a double-digit increase in shipments in 1999, partly due to the number of new aircraft offered. Bolen said the industry has "never before enjoyed five straight years of growth in both industry billings and shipments." Billings were a record $7.9 billion, up from $5.9 billion in 1998. Shipments increased to 2,525 from 2,220.
Litton Industries said it has signed an agreement to sell its WSI Corp., or Weather Services International, unit to Norfolk, Va.-based Landmark Graphics. Litton plans to "immediately re-deploy" about $120 million from the sale to pay off corporate debt. "The sale of WSI Corp. is consistent with Litton's strategy to grow shareholder value by focusing management and financial resources on our core areas," said Michael R. Brown chairman, president and CEO of Litton.
U.S. NAVY picked Northrop Grumman as the winner of a $93.7 million contract for engineering and manufacturing development of the Vertical Takeoff Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV). "We are delighted to be a member of the Navy's VTUAV team," said Ralph D. Crosby Jr., corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems and Aerostructures (ISA) sector. The aircraft is to operate from any air capable ship, providing real-time and near real-time intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance information.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) warned yesterday against making any drastic changes in plans for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. Warner, addressing the secretaries of the U.S. military services, compared the JSF to the Air Force's F-22 fighter program, which ran into trouble last year in Congress. "It is not a chapter in procurement we will forget," Warner said. "I see the first signal of a similar struggle with the Joint Strike Fighter...I fear for its survival."
U.S. weapons and hardware recovered by theYugoslav military during Operation Allied Force have been put on public display in Belgrade by theYugoslav Aeronautical Museum. The most notable piece could be a nearly complete General Atomics RQ-1A Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, which was assembled from the wreckage of two Predators lost over Kosovo. There are also parts of a Luftwaffe-operated Canadair CL-289 reconnaissance drone, one of several shot down during the campaign.
The strike against Boeing is affecting the company in several ways, the Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) union said yesterday. It said the strike, which began Wednesday, has: -- Impeded Boeing's ability to repair a Qantas airliner on the ground in Bangkok and paint a Singapore Airlines plane in a hangar at Everett, Wash.. -- Forced the shutdown of a Tacoma, Wash., fabrication plant.
Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space flight Center have finished curing the cylinder for a composite liquid oxygen tank they are building for the X-34 testbed, and will begin manufacturing the end domes for the weight-saving tank soon.
AEROSPACE CORP. engineers have established contact with two tiny "picosats" after more than a week of scrambling to communicate with its carrier-satellite. The half-pound spacecraft -- the smallest ever launched, according to Aerospace Corp. -- are tethered with a cable that includes thin gold strands for better tracking. They were released Sunday by the Orbiting Picosat Automated Launcher (OPAL) built by students at Stanford University and launched on the first Orbital/Suborbital Space Launch Vehicle, a converted Minuteman II ICBM (DAILY, Jan. 31).
