Thiokol Corp. will buy an additional 11% of Howmet International Inc. common stock from The Carlyle Group. The companies said the transaction will shift ownership of the majority of Howmet, with Thiokol increasing its stake to 60%, while Carlyle will hold 40%.
Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre sent two lists to Congress last week to help him decide how to proceed on some prime candidates for President Clinton's line item veto. Following is a list of items added to the fiscal 1998 defense appropriations conference report that were in neither the House nor the Senate bill. On the following page is a list of items that were not requested by the Pentagon but that were in one or both bills and survived the conference. All the figures are in millions of dollars. O&M, Army
GERMAN 'INSPECTOR': Also set for a Mir tryout is Germany's "X-Mir inspector" robotic free flyer delivered last week by a Russian Progress resupply capsule (DAILY, Oct. 9). For two days in December the little robot built by Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG (DASA) will fly around Mir, giving controllers at Mission Control Center-Moscow and in Bremen, Germany, video views and data.
LOTS OF PRESSURE: Even though the Administration says budget authority for the Defense Dept. will increase over the next few years, the chairman of the National Defense Panel, Philip Odeen, foresees a money crunch early next century when outlay goals for defense that are included in the balanced budget agreement have to be met. Getting the $236 billion or so in outlays will mean "a lot of pressure on a lot of things," he says.
WATERSHED MOMENT: A merger of British Aerospace and GEC might get the ball rolling on consolidation of the European defense industry, according to Tom Corcoran, president and CEO of Lockheed Martin's electronics sector. Such a move, which some say has received tacit approval from U.K. Defense Secretary George Robertson (DAILY, Oct. 8), could be a watershed event for European consolidation like Martin Marietta's acquisition of GE Aerospace was for the U.S.
NOT GIVING UP: NASA is going to stick to its plans to keep astronauts working on Mir right up until launch of the first International Station element next June. On Friday the U.S. agency, as expected, formally named Astronaut Andrew Thomas to fill the final U.S. billet on Mir, replacing Astronaut David Wolf in January and remaining on board until next May.
FIRST THE IG ... : The Pentagon has more clearly defined which types of programs can become Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations. The action is intended to appease the Pentagon Inspector General's office, which has been reviewing the ACTD program. Joseph J. Eash, the deputy under secretary of defense for advanced technologies, says the IG was concerned about the lack of auditable ACTD selection criteria. The new action, Eash says, has put the concerns to rest.
MERCURY COMPUTER SYSTEMS, Chelmsford, Mass., won an $8 million order from Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems for six computers for an airborne surveillance radar system under development for a foreign government, which it didn't identify. The order is part of a $200 million contract won by Lockheed Martin last year. The contract anticipates four flight systems deployed on Raytheon Hawker Aircraft, as well as a ground system and an engineering system that will remain at Tactical Defense Systems, Goodyear Ariz., for future development work.
Orbcomm Global L.P., the "little-LEO" satellite-messaging joint venture started by Orbital Sciences Corp., plans to launch 10 more satellites in the next six months to provide a 12-satellite constellation that will support initial commercial operations by the third quarter of 1998.
ORBITING TESTBEDS: NASA has overcome a lot of political opposition to keep its astronauts on Russia's Mir orbital station, arguing that the lessons learned just keeping Mir habitable will prove invaluable when the International Space Station is no longer shiny and new. But the U.S. space agency isn't alone in taking advantage of Mir. The European Space Agency tested docking sensors for its planned Automated Transfer Vehicle when the Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir last month (DAILY, Sept.
Lockheed Martin won a $6.5 million Air Vehicle Prognostics&Health Manager (PHM) demonstration contract in support of the company's Joint Strike Fighter. The company said Friday it will demonstrate a proof-of-concept prototype of the PHM subsystem for its JSF appproach. The subsystems will be used for storage, distribution and extended processing of on-board information about the aircraft's health, safety, diagnostics and prognostics.
POTENTIAL PROBLEM: Although the FAA professes not to be alarmed by the prospect of the Russian company Aviaconversia selling a GPS jammer (DAILY, Sept. 23), the company has acknowledged getting expressions of interest from Libya and Iraq. A poster from Aviaconversia shows a map of a Gulf nation and the number of jammers that would be required to cover an international boundary.
Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, obviously out to avoid the faulty information that marked line-item veto projects in the military construction appropriations bill, has taken the unusual step of appealing to the clerks and ranking Democratic staffers of the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees to provide him with information on some of the prime veto candidates, it was learned Friday.
A recommendation by rivals Honeywell Inc. and Rockwell International Corp. to establish a committee to develop requirements for an element of the FAA's Free Flight plan has been accepted by the Washington-based RTCA Inc., which evaluates aeronautical communication and navigation standards.
Fuel tank inerting for 747, MD-11 and 737 airliners is "technically feasible," according to Litton Life Support (LLS), a division of Litton Systems. Departing from an approach widely held in industry - that explosions in depleted fuel tanks can be prevented by getting rid of ignition sources - the company said that inerting is the better approach.
DEPOT DEADLOCK: Congressional sources involved in the fiscal 1998 defense authorization negotiations say the conferees are still stalled on the military depot issue, and that there has been no movement in the past week. With both the House and Senate out this week for the Columbus Day holiday period, the conferees have only about a month left in the session to break the deadlock and get an authorization bill enacted this year.
UAV MARKETS: The unmanned aerial vehicle market should remain flat for about five years, according to EIA. UAV programs have failed to meet the great expectations placed in them, so supporters in Congress and the Dept. of Defense have been moving cautiously. Once success is seen, the market should grow.
GETTING CLOSE: The Clinton Administration is continuing discussions with congressional leaders on appropriations bills "to protect important priorities" in science, technology and international affairs, among other areas, President Clinton says in his statement on signing the fiscal 1998 defense appropriations bill into law. He says "we have made progress in good faith discussions" with the leadership of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.
... NOW THE GAO: Having overcome the IG issue, Eash now says he faces another outside review of the ACTD program. He says he recently met with officials of the General Accounting Office, which has begun its own review.
HAMILTON STANDARD's MICROTECNICA unit, Turin, Italy, delivered the first water pump package (WPP) and related set of ground support equipment (GSE) to Alenia Aerospazio, prime contractor for the Mini-Pressurized Logistics Module (MPLM) for the International Space Station. The first WPP will be used in a system-level test expected to be carried out in the next few months. Microtecnica will deliver five WPPs and three sets of GSE in all.
China opened a four-day aviation exhibition yesterday in Beijing that includes 260 exhibitors from 24 countries and regions and is expected to attract over 100,000 visitors. The Xinhua news agency reported that participants include Airbus and Boeing, and other industry leaders from China, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia.
FAA plans to award four to six contracts worth about $160 million for the avionics to equip some 2,000 aircraft in the Flight 2000 demonstration planned for Hawaii and Alaska, according to the agency's project director. David B. Tuttle said at a conference here that FAA will also be seeking a systems integrator to oversee such facets of the effort as testing, work agreements with operators, coordination with avionics installation shops, and collection and analysis of data.
U.S. and foreign aviation groups outlined a cooperative 2 1/2-year fuel system inspection program Wednesday involving 2,000 jetliners flown by 68 airlines in an attempt to eliminate disasters like the TWA 800 crash.
The final version of the fiscal 1998 Dept. of Transportation funding bill provides $152.83 million for the FAA to continue development of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), but the appropriations committees are directing FAA and DOT to withhold some of the spending until they submit reports on the program to Congress. The House recommended $114 million for the program. The bill also includes language prohibiting implementation of the Flight 2000 demonstration program during fiscal 1998.
