NO SURPRISES: Don't expect many surprises this week when aerospace and defense companies announce their first quarter earnings for the year, says Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Chris Mecray. "Defense results will be in line with guidance this quarter with little or no surprises," he says in a first-quarter preview report. "We expect solid growth over last year, as earlier defense spending increases from the final Clinton budgets begin to take effect.
The U.S. military has begun examining whether its fleet of Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint and Navy EP-3 Aries signals intelligence aircraft should be bigger than currently planned, according to a defense official.
The Defense Department's major defense acquisition programs logged a net cost increase of about $133 billion, or 18 percent, for the last reporting period, according to the Pentagon. The quarterly Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) submitted to the Congress earlier this month provide estimates on the cost, schedule, and technical status of the Pentagon's major acquisition programs. For the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2001, about one third of the total cost increases, or about $42 billion, were for increases in the quantity of procurement programs.
HELLFIRE FIX: The Army is on the road to eliminating a minor glitch in its Hellfire missiles, according to Army Lt. Gen. John Riggs, director of the Objective Force Task Force. Some Hellfire motors were blowing back debris when the missiles were fired by Apache helicopters, but the Army has found a fix and made necessary adjustments in production, Riggs says. The service is now looking at how many Hellfires in its inventory need to be retrofitted. "The problem is under control," Riggs insists. "I don't think it was ever catastrophic to begin with.
B-52 BIRTHDAY: Boeing's B-52 Stratofortress turns 50 on April 15. The YB-52 prototype made its first flight on April 15, 1952, and the continually updated production aircraft has served in numerous military operations, including Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The B-52 is expected to remain in the fleet for another four decades.
NASA still can't properly document what it is spending to build the International Space Station (ISS), the General Accounting Office said in new correspondence to House and Senate lawmakers. Under the NASA authorization act of 2000, the agency is to account for station spending to ensure it stays within congressional caps of $25 billion for station development and $17 billion for shuttle flights to the station.
AWARD: Gilbert Gaudette, Pratt & Whitney Canada Corp.'s vice president-service centers, received the Overhaul & Maintenance Award sponsored by Aviation Week's Overhaul & Maintenance magazine. The award honors managers or executives who have helped improve the efficiency, profitability, reliability and/or safety of maintenance, repair and overhaul. The award was presented at an April 9 dinner at the Corona Ranch in Phoenix.
AEGIS CONTRACT: Lockheed Martin will build three Aegis Weapon Systems for the U.S. Navy under a $173 million contract, the company announced April 12. The order, for systems to be installed on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, is the first installment of a 17-ship, four-year contract that could be worth up to $1.1 billion. The Aegis system can attack multiple incoming aircraft, missiles, submarines, torpedoes and ships while implementing defenses to protect the fleet.
The Dutch parliament appears likely to endorse a cabinet recommendation to join the U.S. Defense Department's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, removing the last major hurdle to that country's participation, a spokeswoman for the program office said April 12.
B-52 BIRTHDAY: Boeing's B-52 Stratofortress turns 50 on April 15. The YB-52 prototype made its first flight on April 15, 1952, and the continually updated production aircraft has served in numerous military operations, including Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The B-52 is expected to remain in the fleet for another four decades.
The U.S. military has begun examining whether its fleet of Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint and Navy EP-3 Aries signals intelligence aircraft should be bigger than currently planned, according to a defense official.
Analytical Graphics Inc., the maker of software systems for missile defense, 3-D battlespace visualization and situational awareness, announced record earnings for fiscal year 2001 last week. Fourth quarter revenue totaled nearly $6.4 million, a 14 percent increase over the same quarter last year, company officials said. For the year, the company generated about $21.2 million in revenue, a 14 increase over revenue recorded for FY 2000.
INTANGIBLE TECHNOLOGY: Although the members of the Wassenaar Arrangement have agreed to control the export of "intangible technologies," such as emails, faxes, telephone calls and other means of transmitting technical information, the longstanding issue of controls on foreign nationals is not yet being addressed, a senior defense official tells The DAILY. Wassenaar, which includes the majority of the major arms exporting states, sets common rules for regulating the export of defense goods and services.
LONDON - Thales is pushing an inclusive approach, which would involve the entire United Kingdom shipbuilding industry, in its bid for the Royal Navy's CVF program to build two new 50,000-ton aircraft carriers. A rival team competing for the program is led by BAE Systems.
MORE UAVs: The Army will need a family of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and can't afford to just rely on the Shadow 200 Tactical UAV, according to Eddie Bair, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors at U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM). "We're going to have families of UAVs," Bair says. "It's not just going to be a single UAV, i.e., the brigade commander's UAV, i.e., Shadow 200. We're going to have to have a longer-legged UAV.
Lockheed Martin's LinkSensors system is preparing for its first major live demonstration to potential customers this summer at company facilities in Syracuse, N.Y. LinkSensors is a sensor networking system that will not only fuse data, but selectively allow intelligent, automated control of individual sensor nodes, to cooperatively provide better information about targets of interest (DAILY, Oct. 16, 2001).
INTANGIBLE TECHNOLOGY: Although the members of the Wassenaar Arrangement have agreed to control the export of "intangible technologies," such as emails, faxes, telephone calls and other means of transmitting technical information, the longstanding issue of controls on foreign nationals is not yet being addressed, a senior defense official tells The DAILY. Wassenaar, which includes the majority of the major arms exporting states, sets common rules for regulating the export of defense goods and services.
April 16 - 17 -- Precision Strike Association presents 2002 Annual Programs Review, Defense Acquisition University, Fort Belvoir, VA. The April 16 session is unclassified, April 17 is classified secret (rel NATO). Participants attending the April 17 session must complete and submit a security form by April 5. For more information contact Leslie Mueller at (301) 475-6513 or email [email protected], or Kimberly Sumner at (703) 247-2572 or email [email protected].
In his first major address on the future of NASA, Administrator Sean O'Keefe generally avoided programmatic specifics while laying out a vision for a "science-driven" agency with education as part of its core mission. "Our future decisions will be science-driven, not destination-driven," O'Keefe said in a speech at Syracuse University in New York April 12. "We will go where the science dictates that we go - not because it's close, or because it's popular."
JSF SPLIT: Aerospace analysts have not reached a consensus about how the winner-take-all contract to develop the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will affect the U.S. defense industrial base, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service.
HELLFIRE FIX: The Army is on the road to eliminating a minor glitch in its Hellfire missiles, according to Army Lt. Gen. John Riggs, director of the Objective Force Task Force. Some Hellfire motors were blowing back debris when the missiles were fired by Apache helicopters, but the Army has found a fix and made necessary adjustments in production, Riggs says. The service is now looking at how many Hellfires in its inventory need to be retrofitted. "The problem is under control," Riggs insists. "I don't think it was ever catastrophic to begin with.
FALLING SHORT: Although European NATO forces have made great strides in improving their defense capabilities, as agreed to in the April 1999 Defense Capabilities Initiative, they continue to fall short due to inadequate defense funding, according to the commander of U.S. NATO forces. "Some of the nations that have a lot of national wealth haven't put as much of that into improving their capabilities as they should," says Gen. Montgomery Meigs.
AWARD: Gilbert Gaudette, Pratt&Whitney Canada Corp.'s vice president-service centers, received the Overhaul&Maintenance Award sponsored by Aviation Week's Overhaul&Maintenance magazine. The award honors managers or executives who have helped improve the efficiency, profitability, reliability and/or safety of maintenance, repair and overhaul. The award was presented at an April 9 dinner at the Corona Ranch in Phoenix.
