Commercial air cargo will continue to grow at levels surpassing passenger traffic, McDonnell Douglas said in its latest cargo forecast. It said that with global economic growth projected at 3.5% a year, worldwide air cargo, including scheduled and non-scheduled traffic, will expand by 7.3% a year through 2013 compared to 5.7% for passenger traffic. Recent trade accords such as NAFTA and GATT should further stimulate future trade, it said.
MAGNAVOX ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS CO. has chosen Borland International Inc.'s Interbase 4 server for the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS), according to Borland, which is based in Scotts Valley, Calif. It quoted John Williams, director of AFATDS program at Magnavox, as saying that his company chose Borland's system because it meets the decision- making requirements of battlefield commanders. Borland is based in Scotts Valley, Calif.
ALLIED RESEARCH CORP., Vienna, Va., said its Barnes&Reinecke unit will upgrade self-propelled howitzers of the Spanish Army. A $5.1 million U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract for the effort brings to $7.3 million the amount the company has received this year to upgrade Spanish Army artillery. The upgrade will permit the howitzers, to be designated M1095A5E Espana, to have an effective firing range of more than 30 kilometers, and will give them protection against nuclear, biological and chemical contaminants.
An over-spinning sounding rocket is being blamed for disruption of a test of a device planned by Japan to penetrate the surface of the moon during a 1997 mission, but the overall program won't be seriously affected, according to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). The penetrator will be fired into the surface of the moon during the Lunar-A surveyor mission in the summer of 1997. It is designed to penetrate to a depth of about a meter, and then to measure vibrations of the lunar surface.
McDonnell Douglas on Friday completed the first flight of a pre- production AH-64D Longbow Apache, and moved closer to the beginning of a decade-long remanufacture of the U.S. Army's Apache fleet to the Longbow standard. The flight was conducted at MDC Helicopter System's in Mesa, Ariz., and lasted about 25 minutes. The prototype was remanufactured using the same components, processes and tooling that will be involved in the fleet overhaul slated to begin in mid-1996, MDC said.
It's fairly certain that the controversy over the National Reconnaissance Office's hoard of at least $1 billion in unspent appropriations will result in stronger financial oversight of the spy satellite agency. "I was responsible years ago for fighting very hard to get an inspector general out there at CIA; I think it's one of the best things I ever did," Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) of the Senate Intelligence Committee tells The DAILY. "Obviously we need to either expand that [IG] staff or make some other authority for reviewing some of the accounts out there."
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP.'S Magellan Systems subsidiary has received one of the marine industry's top innovation awards for its newly introduced GPS 3000, a hand-held satellite-based navigation product designed for marine applications. Orbital says that at $250, GPS 3000 "brings satellite navigation within the reach of every boater and sailor." Magellan was chosen for its award by a panel of judges from Boating Writers International.
Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), was quick to jump on Italy's difficulties in paying its share of the International Space Station program, declaring in a Sept. 27 House speech aimed at killing the project that "the Italians have dropped out of this program." Not so, House Science Committee Chairman Rep.
Russia has managed to launch an Earth-observing satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, despite a dispute with the local electric utility over unpaid bills that left an adjacent ICBM test site without electric power last month. Liftoff of a Soyuz-U booster carrying a Resurs F satellite last Tuesday came after the Arkhangelsk regional power grid cut the juice at the ICBM facility for 15 minutes (DAILY, Sept. 18, page 412B). The Resurs F was undergoing checkout at the time, and cosmodrome officials managed to persuade the utility not to disrupt the activity.
The Defense Dept.'s policy that software be written in Ada "will have to change," at least according to one official. "It's not supported in the commercial marketplace," and the time between new processors coming out and Ada compilers following suit is too long-"at least six months and possibly getting longer," says Navy Capt. Kathleen Paige, technical director for the Aegis program. "I don't think its a policy that can stand for many more years," she says at the COTS conference.
Congressional appropriators agreed to fund the Tier II Plus high altitude endurance UAV and provide $15 million for a Tier II Plus/Boost Phase Intercept program, says John Entzminger, HAE UAV program manager for the Advanced Research Projects Agency. He tells The DAILY that he still has to evaluate what that funding means. It could allow him to take one of the losing contractors further in the development phase. Teledyne Ryan beat out Loral, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Sciences and Raytheon.
Raytheon's E-Systems has received a $5.3 million award from Lockheed Martin to supply control actuation systems for the Hellfire II missile. The contract is the latest production increment release from Lockheed Martin under a sole source, long term agreement with E-Systems involving advanced Hellfire II and Longbow missile control systems, E-Systems said yesterday. The work is being performed by E-Systems' Montek Div., which is based in Salt Lake City.
GEORGE K. WEBSTER, 53, has been confirmed as president and chief executive officer of Miltope Corp., the company said yesterday. Miltope, based in Hope Hull, Ala., said Webster was elected to these positions in an acting capacity in April by the board of directors.
Essex Corp., Columbia, Md., is participating in the design of an Integrated Optical Processor (IOP) for airborne surveillance and command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) processing under a $180,000 subcontract from Computing Devices International, a division of Ceridian Corp.
Litton's Applied Technology Div. has won two U.S. Air Force contracts for continued production of AN/ALR-56M airborne threat warning systems. The first award is $15.8 million for 87 systems and the second is $6.7 million for more than 24 additional systems, the company said yesterday. Work on the units will be performed at the Litton division's facility in Grants Pass, Ore.
NASA managers slipped the planned launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia on a 16-day microgravity science mission until Oct. 5 at the earliest after a hydrogen leak forced them to scrub a launch attempt yesterday.
Comsat World Systems announced that MCI International has expanded a contract for transoceanic satellite capacity to meet growing demand to and from countries such as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. The contract is an expansion of a seven year contract Comsat and MCI reached in 1994 and follows MCI's first-time telecommunications agreements with the three communist nations. The announcement follows a $100 million lease agreement Comsat signed earlier this year with News Corp.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. yesterday received a $46.5 million U.S. Navy contract for 10 wing center sections and the associated costs of the wings for the EA-6B aircraft. The work will be carried out in Bethpage, N.Y., and St. Augustine, Fla. The contract was awarded by Naval Air Systems Command.
THE TITAN CORP., San Diego, has received a $10 million, long-term contract from Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN) to provide a satellite-based telecommunications network in Indonesia.
Tight budgets and the needs of atmospheric science are driving a push in the U.S. to develop advanced remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) that can fly well into the stratosphere and stay there for days.
The U.S. Navy can increase the stealthiness of the F/A-18E/F strike fighter but has to decide whether it's necessary to do so, according to a McDonnell Douglas official. "There is growth in the E/F airplane to continue this [signature reduction] if, indeed, the threat demands that we go lower in signature," said Mike Sears, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace's vice president and general manager for the Hornet program.
Tax credits for research and development are generally effective, but they have little bearing on most firms' R&D strategies, according to a report released yesterday by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment. The Research and Experimentation (R&E) Tax Credit stimulates an additional dollar of R&D for every dollar of lost tax revenue, but it plays a small factor in the overall R&D picture of the U.S., said the report, "The Effectiveness of Research and Experimentation Tax Credits."
The House yesterday approved a multi-year bill authorizing the $13.1 billion needed to complete and operate the International Space Station through final assembly in June 2002. The seven-year measure, designed to provide funding stability to help keep the Space Station project on schedule, was approved by a unanimous voice vote. It caps Station spending at $2.121 billion per year.
Secretary of Defense William Perry yesterday reaffirmed his disagreement with congressional appropriators to add $493 million in funding to the fiscal 1996 defense budget for additional B-2 bombers, but he said other differences were largely about timing on individual programs. "I was upset about the basic version of the defense appropriations bill that had originally come out," Perry told the Regional Commerce and Growth Association in St. Louis. But "they made substantial changes and basically accommodated most of the concerns I had," he said.
The privately-held Argentine carrier LAPA yesterday took delivery of its first Boeing 757, the first plane of the type to go into commercial service in Argentina. The airline, based in Buenos Aires, plans to use the 757 on short- haul, high frequency domestic service during the week and for inclusive tour operations to the Caribbean on weekends.
