Eaton Corp. will acquire all the outstanding shares of Aeroquip-Vickers for $58 per share, making the deal worth about $1.7 billion, the companies reported yesterday. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the deal, which is expected to be completed in April. Aeroquip-Vickers' stock jumped $20.75 to $56, while Eaton dropped $2.81 to close at $66.81.
Just days after announcing a new budget plan for national missile defense (NMD) and the Administration's bolstered commitment to the program, Defense Secretary William Cohen yesterday confirmed some NMD funding is being eyed for cuts to pay for implementation of the Wye Agreement. Cohen declined to provide specifics on the issue, saying only that it was being considered. He made the comments at a Pentagon briefing on the fiscal year 2000 defense budget.
DECRANE AIRCRAFT HOLDINGS, which manufactures avionics for the commercial and corporate aircraft market, has acquired PATS, which builds and installs auxiliary fuel tanks on commercial and corporate jets and which has a new seven-year contract valued at $180 million to build fuel tanks for the Boeing Business Jet.
January 25, 1999 Lockheed Martin Corp., Marietta, Ga., is being awarded a $11,822,343 face value increase to a cost-plus award-fee contract to provide for long lead items in support of engineering and manufacturing development of the F-22 aircraft. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 27, 2003. Solicitation issue date was Dec. 18, 1998. Aeronautical Systems Center Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-91-C-0006-P00390).
DOD program acquisition costs by weapon system Combined procurement and RDT&E costs of major programs in the U.S. Defense Dept.'s fiscal year 2000 budget request are listed in the following table, released by Pentagon. Dollar figures are in millions. AIRCRAFT FY 1998 FY 1999 FY 2000 Army AH-64D Longbow Apache 505.6 630.7 773.5 RAH-66 Comanche Helicopter 262.6 364.8 427.1
January 29, 1999 Boeing Co., St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $74,728,816 cost-plus-award-fee contract to provide for engineering and manufacturing development of kits to integrate the Fiber Optic Towed Decoy (FOTD) onto the F-15C/E aircraft. Expected contract completion date is April 15, 2003. Solicitation issue date was June 2, 1997. Negotiation completion date was Jan. 13, 1999. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-99-C-2009).
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has been named chairman of the Senate Armed Services airland forces subcommittee and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) is the ranking Democrat. Santorum in post-election deliberations did not exercise his seniority to claim the chairmanship, enabling Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) to claim it, but Santorum, who is up for re-election in 2000 and could face a tough re-election contest, later reversed himself to improve his fund-raising prospects, committee sources said. Santorum was elected to the Senate in 1994 with 49% of the vote.
January 29, 1999 ECC International Corp., Orlando, Fla., is being awarded a $5,247,090 modification to previously awarded contract N61339-98-C-0052 to exercise a total of eight options for the development of additional engagement systems trainers for the United States Army. Work will be performed in Orlando, Fla., and is expected to be completed by November 2000. Contract funds in the amount of $67,900 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Div., Orlando, Fla., is the contracting activity.
BELL BOEING Tiltrotor Team said the four V-22 Ospreys in the U.S. government's engineering and manufacturing development program have just passed the 1,000 flight hour mark. Each of the planes has logged more than 200 flight hours. V-22s have flown more than 2,200 hours, including full-scale development testing. The No. 10 V-22 continues flight tests aboard the USS Saipan.
NASA has killed its High Speed Research aeronautics program to gain $600 million for the International Space Station over the next five years as part of $2 billion in extra money to backstop the faltering Russian Space Agency on the Station project. The agency's $13.578 billion fiscal 2000 budget request, including the out years, will couple about $800 million in new funds released by the Clinton Administration for Russian "contingencies" and $1.2 billion garnered from within NASA to pay for U.S. hardware to meet what had been Russian responsibilities.
Boeing Co. shipped the aft fuselage for the fourth F-22 fighter from Seattle to the Marietta, Ga., plant of its team partner Lockheed Martin. The section will be mated with the mid- and forward-fuselage sections at Marietta. The aft fuselage was flown aboard a C-17 airlifter. The fourth F-22 will be the first to fly with its advanced avionics installed. Boeing is responsible for integrating the avionics.
Kaman Corp. reported net earnings of $30 million for 1998, down from net earnings of $70.5 million the previous year that included a gain of $53.5 million on the sale of Kaman Sciences Corp. Chairman Charles Kaman said, "Our aerospace segment had a particularly strong performance." Net earnings for the fourth quarter were $7.8 million compared with $61.1 million, boosted by the sale of Kaman Sciences.
Honeywell Sensors and Guidance Products announced its intent to acquire rights to Boeing's Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) inertial technology, saying the technology "will rapidly become the standard bearer for many future guidance and navigation applications both in the commercial and military markets."
The U.S. Air Force's $79.1 billion fiscal year 2000 budget request represents a 7.3% growth since FY '99, allowing the service to increase some platform buys, bolster spare parts and accelerate a number of modifications and engine upgrades. The Air Force budget is the first real increase the service has had in more than nine years, a senior Air Force budget official said. The request keeps its major modernization programs, the C-17, F-22, and Joint Strike Fighter, and increases buys in a few other programs and modification efforts.
BOEING AND BRITISH AEROSPACE on Friday said they submitted a joint proposal to the U.K. Ministry of Defense in response to an invitation to tender for the U.K. Short Term Strategic Airlift requirement. The response includes four C-17 airlifters. A decision is expected early next year.
U.S. Navy aircraft procurement will actually decline slightly from fiscal 1999 plans in the service's FY 2000 budget request, although over the future years defense plan (FYDP) the service will use part of its $35 billion total in extra spending authority under the Clinton Administration's defense boost to buy 75 aircraft not planned in FY '99.
Structural testing of a new composite horizontal stabilizer torque box weighing 20% less than its aluminum counterpart has been completed at Northrop Grumman in Dallas, where the tail is produced, Boeing said. It achieved more than 200% of the design limit load last month. The first production composite tail has been delivered to Boeing's Long Beach plant and will be installed on production aircraft No. 51 next year after tests at Edwards AFB, Calif. The tests are to begin late this month.
Wednesday's on-pad abort of a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle carrying the U.S. Air Force's ARGOS satellite has been traced to the failure of one of the two vernier engines to ignite during the self-initiating sequence for the main engine, Boeing reported. The automatic sequence shut down the main engine and the two verniers when the failed vernier ignition was detected. Shutdown came at "approximately T-minus-0," Boeing said.
MAX R. STANLEY, who flew a series of flying wings as a test pilot for Northrop Corp. in the 1940s, including the XB-35 bomber, died Saturday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. He was 89. Stanley, who retired from Northrop in 1972, was a founding member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.
Boeing said it is using electronic commerce to deliver a rapidly growing share of technical information airlines need to maintain their fleets, with operators of a large majority of more than 10,000 Boeing transports using the Internet or dedicated network facilities to access support services and by the end of 1998. The company said its PART Page is the industry's "first web site for ordering and tracking spare parts shipments." Last year the site handled 1.6 million transactions, "more than double the volume of the previous year," Boeing said.
