Industry executives rank globalization as their highest priority, but most of them perceive their current global capabilities to be below average when compared to their competitors, according to the recent "Visions in Manufacturing Study" by Deloitte Consulting.
Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center are developing an autonomous robot the size of a softball that astronauts in space can use to monitor environmental conditions and provide hands-off communications links with the ground.
U.K. ejection seat maker Martin-Baker Aircraft will build its first U.S. plant in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Ridge announced Friday. The plant, which will assemble and support both ejection seats and helicopter seats for the U.S. market, will be built either in Cambria county, Delaware county or elsewhere in the Philadelphia region. The plant will be operational by mid- to late-2000. The U.S. Navy, which has standardized Martin-Baker seats for all its fighters and trainers, is Martin-Baker's biggest customer.
NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are setting up three different teams to review what when wrong when the Mars Climate Orbiter plowed into the atmosphere of the Red Planet at too steep an angle and was destroyed.
NRO PROTEST: Lockheed Martin has filed a formal protest with the General Accounting Office in connection with its stunning loss to Boeing in the competition to build the next generation of U.S. spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, but don't expect that to change anything in the long run. None of the principals would comment on the protest, which was filed last week after Lockheed Martin received its post-award briefings on why Boeing won.
FAA plans to extend and broaden its contract with Raytheon Co. on the Wide Area Augmentation System, including helping it decide on requirements for up to 12 geostationary satellites, the agency said Friday.
NASA has shuffled crew assignments on the International Space Station, replacing Astronaut Ken Bowersox as commander of the third crew to visit the orbiting laboratory with Frank L. Culbertson, the astronaut who headed the Shuttle/Mir phase of the Station program and has been heading up Station operations from a desk in Houston since assembly started.
Boeing has opened an office in Colorado Springs, where ultimately about 200 of its employees will work with the Joint National Test Facility and the U.S. Space Command on Battle Management, Command, Control and Communications (BMC3) for the National Missile Defense program.
U.S. and Russian defense leaders have signed an agreement to share missile early warning information during the Year 2000 calendar rollover. The agreement, signed last week in Moscow by Secretary of Defense William Cohen and his Russian Counterpart Marshal Igor, established the Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability at Peterson AFB, Colo. The missile warning information will be provided by the U.S. and sets the stage for the Joint Shared Early Warning Center in Moscow, which will use continuous monitoring data from both nations.
B/E Aerospace Inc., Wellington, Fla., earned $13.7 million on sales of $191.9 million in its 1999 second quarter, the company reported. In the same period a year ago, B/E lost $35.5 million on sales of $156.3 million.
British Aerospace's suspension of further Hawk Mk 209 single-seat light combat aircraft deliveries to Indonesia in early September could extend beyond the current four-month European Union arms embargo.
NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter disappeared early yesterday when it should have entered an aerobraking orbit around the Red Planet, and controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory feared a navigation error had sent the spacecraft so deep into the atmosphere it was destroyed instead of merely slowed.
Launch processing delays caused by the need to inspect and repair frayed wiring in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet will cost United Space Alliance about $2.5 million in fees, even though the wiring damage that triggered the inspections may have happened before USA was formed to manage day-to-day Shuttle operations.
Rolls-Royce has begun talks with state-owned domestic carrier Indian Airlines to set up an India-based joint venture to perform engine overhaul services. The joint company would market to companies in southern Asia, IA officials said last week. The engine maker is represented in the talks by its new subsidiary Rolls-Royce Energy Systems India Private Ltd. Rolls-Royce currently has a 10-year agreement with IA for spare parts and technical support for its 20-aircraft fleet of Airbus A320s.
Rolls-Royce's Indianapolis-based engine operation is enjoying better turn times and lower costs after asking management software specialist SAP for an alternative to the dozens of available off-the-rack offerings to manage the breadth of its entire engine building and support business.
European members of NATO knew they lacked the assets to project their forces before the air war against Yugoslavia, but Operation Allied Force, while demonstrating it publicly, also confirmed that they have the political and practical will to fix the problem, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said yesterday. "NATO knows the contributions of all its member nations," he told reporters at a breakfast in Washington. "We keep books on it. The limitations were known, but in Kosovo they were publicly displayed."
Jet Support Services, Inc., developed a new hourly cost maintenance program, Tip-to-Tail Guaranteed Hourly Cost Maintenance, for Raytheon King Air C90 and B200 aircraft. The Tip-to-Tail program, developed from JSSI's FalconFirst and ServiceCare Programs, covers both new and in-service aircraft. It guarantees the cost of all scheduled and unscheduled work on the airframe, engines, avionics, APU and passenger equipment for an hourly fee.
Marconi Astronics, Santa Monica, Calif., has delivered the second pre-production Modular Integrated Avionics Group/Identification Friend or Foe (MIAG/IFF) to the Navy, a 20-pound avionics package which replaces multiple subsystems used on the Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
BRITISH AIRWAYS yesterday received its first V2500-powered Airbus A319. Airbus Industrie in a ceremony at England's Birmingham International Airport presented the aircraft to the airline. It is one of 39 A319s and 20 A320s plus 57 confirmed options that BA has ordered to date. Birmingham-based TRW Aeronautical Systems (Lucas Aerospace) said it has supplied more than $1.7 billion worth of equipment to the A320 family since its entry into service in 1988.
House and Senate appropriations conferees were moving slowly yesterday toward finalizing a deal on FY 2000 funding for the U.S. Air Force's F-22 fighter program, with hopes of resolving the issue today. The conferees on Wednesday night considered a compromise proposal to restore $1.2 billion of the $1.8 billion the House proposed cutting from the F-22 and put in another $227 million in advanced procurement (DAILY, Sept. 23). This arrangement would allow for continued development and test and gearing up for procurement.
The first of a parade of Continental 737-300s - part of a $1 billion engine maintenance deal struck with the carrier - have gone through GE Engine Services' Strother facility near Arkansas City, Kan., GE reports. The deal calls for GE to maintain Continental's 260-plus CFM56-3-powered 737-300 fleet under its Maintenance Cost Per Hour (MCPH) program.
Better political and public understanding of global instability, deferred modernization that now requires major investment in both operations and maintenance (O&M) and upgrades, and the budget surplus will all combine to help drive U.S. defense budget increases over the next 10 years, the Government Electronic and Information Technology Association said.
A Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS launched the EchoStar V television satellite early yesterday, marking the return to flight of the Pratt&Whitney RL-10 upper stage engine after manufacturing flaws in the engine were blamed for the failure of a Delta III rocket last spring.
Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems and Aerostructures (ISA) Sector, Dallas, received a life-of-program contract from Aermacchi to design and make nacelle acoustic panels for the General Electric CF34-8D and CF34-8E engines, Northrop Grumman reported. The contract carries a potential value of $42 million.
