PEARSON PLC, a British publisher, has filed for an offering in the U.S. to sell its 9.75% stake in British Sky Broadcasting, according to media reports from Europe. Pearson's stake in the satellite-based broadcasting concern is worth about $860 million.
Elimination of the Czech Aero Vodochody L-59F attack trainer from the Australian Air Force's Lead-In Fighter competition is giving new impetus to government and company efforts to shake up top management of the company and to radically change its relationship with longstanding strategic partner Elbit Computers of Israel. The L-59F was reportedly axed from the competition at the same time the French Dassault AlphaJet was cut to protest France's upcoming nuclear tests in the Pacific (DAILY, Aug. 2, page 165).
When the first Corona imagery was successfully recovered from space on Aug. 18, 1960, Jeffrey Harris was a seven-year-old boy "enjoying the summer" in New York state.
General Dynamics is buying Bath Iron Works for $300 million in cash, and expected yesterday to close the transaction within a month if the deal passes regulatory muster. GD, slimmed down since the mid-1980s into a $3 billion ship- and tank- builder, will be getting a private shipyard with annual sales of nearly $1 billion-1995's estimate is $832 million-relatively healthy margins of about 6%, and firm backlog to carry it through the end of the century.
FENNER MILTON is the new U.S. Army deputy assistant secretary for research and technology, succeeding George Singley III. Milton was the Army's technology director for research, development and acquisition. Singley is the deputy director of defense research and engineering.
On Aug. 18, 1960, 35 years ago today, a gold-plated capsule attached to a parachute descended toward the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and was snatched in mid-air by a U.S. C-119 aircraft. Sealed inside the capsule was a precious cargo: 3,000 feet of film containing the first images ever recovered from space. The images would mark the first payoff for Project Corona, a CIA/Air Force satellite effort begun two years earlier under such secrecy that few members of Congress, let alone the American public, knew of its existence.
BRAZIL'S EMBRAER will roll out its new EMB-145 50-seat regional twin-jet airliner today at its Sao Jose Dos Campos plant. Embraer said yesterday that it has 161 orders, options and letters of intent to buy the plane from 21 airlines in 10 countries.
"Development of a Satellite Reconnaissance and Recovery System" Develop and provide, except as specifically set forth below, all equipment, services, and facilities necessary to complete a program of photo-reconnaissance of the Soviet Union. The photo-reconnaissance system shall have the following design parameters and objectives: a. A satellite-borne system compatible with the WS-117L system but employing the Thor booster. b. The design will be compatible with the overt biomedical program of WS-117L.
SAR programs for second quarter Status of Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) programs for the three- month period ending June 30, 1995, are detailed in the following table, released by the Dept. of Defense (DAILY, Aug. 17, page 249). Dollar figures are in millions. Current Estimate Cost Weapon Base Base Then System Year Year $ Year $ Quantity ARMY
The U.S. Air Force "has fully signed on" to the Multifunctional Information Distribution System, or MIDS, putting a foreseeable end to AF buys of Joint Tactical Information Distribution System terminals, according to Brig. Gen. John Hawley, AF acquisition director for fighter, command and control, and weapons programs.
Japan's umbrella Space Activities Commission (SAC) has confirmed six-month slips in the launch of two research satellites, the Advanced Earth Observation Satellite (ADEOS) and the Communications and Broadcast Engineering Test Satellite (COMETS). They were set for launch on H-II boosters in the winter launch seasons at the Tanegashima launch center, one in 1996 and the other in 1997. But assembly problems on ADEOS and questions about the COMETS kick motor led to the delays to the summer launch seasons in '96 and '97.
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to outfit every big-deck amphibious ship with fixed-wing aircraft-initially six AV-8B Harriers and eventually Joint Advanced Strike Technology aircraft, according to new USMC Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak. Having the short take-off/vertical landing, or STOVL, and strike fighter capability on amphibious vessels "will be critical to us in the future," Krulak told reporters yesterday during a breakfast in Washington.
Sharply recovering operating profits at Hawker Siddeley Canada Inc. helped slow net losses for the first half of 1995, a performance that would have been even better if it weren't for new spending on the Orenda Division's new aviation V-8 engine program.
For younger generations who have witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's hard to imagine the fear caused by the USSR's orbiting of the tiny Sputnik satellite on October 4, 1957. Newsweek ran a nine page cover story in which fears were raised of a satellite-based missile attack on the United States. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, then chief of development of the U.S. Army's guided- missile center, said that a missile fired from a satellite would have almost "line of sight" accuracy.
Johns Hopkins University has awarded Orbital Sciences Corp. a $37 million contract to develop the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) spacecraft, a NASA-funded Explorer program managed by the university's Applied Physics Laboratory. The three-year mission, set for launch in 1998, will make long-term high-resolution observations in the far ultraviolet end of the spectrum to study the evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems.
Flight testing of a new Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system for the F/A-18 Hornet has begun at the Naval Air Warfare Center-China Lake, Calif., McDonnell Douglas said. The Hazeltine AN/APX-111, which replaces the Hornet's existing APX- 100, will enable the F/A-18C/D to interrogate other airborne platforms. The system, called the Combined Interrogator Transponder (CIT), will retain all the capabilities of the APX-100 and give Hornet crews an added measure of safety, McDonnell Douglas said.
The U.S. Army awarded Belfast's Shorts Missile Systems a $3.2 million contract covering trials of the air-to-air Starstreak missile on the McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, Shorts reported yesterday. Shorts said the deal, together with Britain's recent decision to buy Apache for its own attack helo requirement, "could pave the way for joint missile procurement and interoperability of common U.S./U.K. equipment."
Sanders, Nashua, N.H., will supply Mission Planning Subsystems for F- 16 aircraft of the Taiwan Air Force. The company, a unit of Lockheed Martin, said yesterday it has received a $14.2 million Foreign Military Sales contract for 10 of the systems and one FMS-Common Mapping Production Subsystem (FMS-CMPS). All are derivative components of the U.S. Air Force Mission Support System (AFMSS), being produced by Sanders for the USAF's Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass.
MOSCOW - The Russian government is expected to order the merger this month of the Central Specialized Design Bureau (TsSKB) and the Progress Plant, both of Samara, into a new State Rocket and Space Center responsible for designing and building a new Russian space launch vehicle. TsSKB, established in 1959, is the developer of space launch vehicles beginning with the R-7 (SS-6), the first Soviet ICBM. The Progress plant handles serial production of these launchers.
Northrop Grumman yesterday signed an agreement to help Taiwan produce components for E-2T military aircraft. The deal evolved from offset provisions contained in the former Grumman Corp.'s 1993 sale of four E-2Ts to Taiwan for $542 million, a Northrop Grumman official said yesterday.
Lockheed Martin Missiles&Space formed an investigation panel and vowed to try again yesterday after U.S. Air Force range safety officers destroyed the company's first Lockheed Launch Vehicle (LLV-1) when it began oscillating on its debut launch attempt at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
The cost of the Pentagon's major acquisition programs has fallen $75.2 billion from $727.2 billion in December to $652.0 billion in June, according to Selected Acquisition Reports submitted yesterday to Congress. The drop was due almost exclusively to the elimination of 17 programs, including Patriot pre-planned product improvement and C-130H, from the SAR's reporting process. While 83 programs were included in the December 1994 submission, 10 fewer made up the June 30 report.
Responding to concerns of military ineffectiveness, NATO leaders have decided that an air strike must be carried out "to a point where it has an effect," rather than be stopped just minutes after the attack begins, Robert Hunter, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said yesterday. "We have decided that we don't want to be in the business of being called upon and turned off in five minutes," Hunter told reporters at a Washington breakfast briefing.
Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit is working under an initial $26 million contract on a cooperative U.S.-U.K. logistics upgrade program for the AN/SSQ-108 Outboard system, which provides countermeasures detection and analysis for U.S. and Royal Navy destroyers. The upgrade will allow system components to handle current and future threats with a sustainable logistical design, Sanders said.
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY said its Ulysses spacecraft, the first probe ever to fly over the poles of the Sun, climbed to its maximum latitude of 80.2 degrees over the Sun's northern pole on July 31. Ulysses is carrying nine scientific instruments provided by research institutes in Europe and the U.S.
