Matra BAe Dynamics (MBD) is studying sea- and ground-launched derivatives of the Storm Shadow/Scalp-EG conventionally armed stand-off weapon which is set to begin full-scale airborne flight tests later this year, with guided firings to start in 2000.
General Dynamics Corp. plans to bolster its growing defense electronics business with the purchase of most of GTE Corp.'s Government Systems organization. GD has agreed to pay $1.05 billion in cash for the Communications Systems Division in Taunton, Mass.; Worldwide Telecommunications Services in Needham Heights, Mass., and Electronic Systems Division in Mountain View, Calif. They compete in markets for command, control, communications and intelligence; electronic defense, and communication switching systems.
Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems will design and produce 6 X 6-in. color multifunction displays for the Boeing C-17 transport under a $12-million engineering, manufacturing and development contract. The ``smart'' display is a high-resolution, active-matrix liquid crystal unit that replaces color cathode ray tube versions.
Rotary Rocket Co. has decided to switch to a different main engine for its Roton launcher, using technology from NASA's Fastrac program and shelving the company's own unusual spinning engine design. Dwindling funds and the engine switch, which would move internal work to outside contractors, resulted in the layoff of about one-third of the employees on June 25, reducing approximate head count to 40 from 60, said Geoffrey V. Hughes, Rotary's director of business development.
Litton's Guidance and Control Div. has selected Western Data Systems software for its multimillion-dollar enterprise resource planning project. Litton uses WDS' CompassCONTRACT software with Oracle financial software and product data management software from Matrix One Inc. of Chelmsford, Mass. Litton was particularly interested in having the system do ``soft pegging'' where parts ordering can be done in large batches for multiple projects, instead of being ``hard pegged'' to a particular project.
Dassault Aviation's Falcon 900C received French certification June 15. The three-engine business jet features an upgraded cockpit and increased range of up to 4,000 naut. mi. FAA certification is scheduled for this summer, with customer deliveries beginning late this year.
The U.S. Marine Corps has grounded 84 AV-8Bs with Rolls-Royce F402-RR-408A engines following two recent crashes. One AV-8B crashed on June 4 near Kadena air base, Japan, the other on June 14 while flying out of a Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz. Both pilots ejected safely.
Business aircraft manufacturers, in the midst of one of their best years ever, used last week's Paris air show to announce new aircraft sales, detail new startup programs and explain performance and technology gains for existing aircraft.
Confirming an earlier Aviation Week&Space Technology report, the U.S. Air Force has provided more detail on the Lockheed Martin Centaur upper-stage software error that resulted in the loss of an $800-million USAF Milstar spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral on a Titan IVB Apr. 30 (AW&ST May 10, p. 28). Air Force officials said the error was located in the Centaur's attitude control system software. This caused the Centaur's inertial navigation unit to incorrectly perceive the stage had a zero roll rate, creating attitude errors.
Boeing is offering airlines a Procedural Event Analysis Tool to more effectively manage safety risks associated with flightcrew procedural non-compliance.
Hamilton Sundstrand President Ron McKenna envisions substantial consolidation among the current field of eight major aerospace component producers in the near future. He expects at least two or three of the smaller ones to initiate possible merger talks with Hamilton Sundstrand as a direct result of United Technology Corp.'s recent acquisition of Sundstrand.
The French and German governments were expected to award the production contract for the first batch of Tiger combat helicopters to Eurocopter late last week. Signature of the contract, for 80 helicopters each, has been stalled for more than a year over costs.
It would be difficult to find a major international air show during the past 20 years that displayed as much optimism along so many industry segments as did last week's Paris show. While some areas such as regional, commercial and business aircraft were more often the beneficiaries of announced new orders, there was news in the commercial space area as well.
Gulfstream Aerospace next month plans to begin proof-of-concept flights on an enhanced-vision system using a Gulfstream V business jet. Certification is scheduled for 2000. Price of the EVS, which produces an infrared-derived image on the aircraft's Honeywell head-up display, is expected to be under $500,000. Kollsman builds the EVS sensor. Ultimately, the system is planned to allow approach decision heights as low as 15 meters (50 ft.) above the runway.
Raytheon Systems' win in the U.K.'s Airborne 800-million-pound ($1.3-billion) Stand-Off Radar program has catapulted the company's system into the running to meet NATO's requirement for an airborne ground surveillance system for the alliance.
IntelliSense Corp., located in Wilmington, Mass., has developed a highly sensitive optical processing element with performance that exceeds that of microfabricated gyros and approaches the accuracy of fiber-optic gyros. Projected cost is $250 each, according to Fariborz Maseeh, president. The Resonant Optical Processing Element (Rope) measures external motion using a waveguide integrated in glass. Combined with a diode laser and other optoelectronic components, the minigyro can be epoxied to a silicon substrate to create a chip.
AlliedSignal Aerospace is studying the construction of a network of 250 remote broadcast stations and towers across the U.S. in cooperation with one or more partners. As envisioned, the stations would upload a variety of data ``at Internet speed'' to general aviation and business aircraft equipped with VHF data radios and color multifunction displays (AW&ST June 14, p. 150).
Smiths Industries' Leland Electrosystems subsidiary will supply Samsung Aerospace Industries with the main generator system for the KTX-2 advanced trainer/lead-in fighter program. Under the $2-million contract, Leland will supply seven prototype systems based on its variable speed constant frequency generator for the full scale design and development phase which will be followed by production deliveries starting in 2003.
Airbus Industrie's and Boeing's long-term global market forecasts share some common ground, but differ sharply on the airline industry's need for 500-seat-plus transports. In addition, the Europeans do not expect a noticeable downturn in the short-term.
Jeppesen has added a ``NavFee'' enhancement to its JetPlan computerized flight planning system that allows airlines to control costs associated with international overflights by assessing the effect of navigation fees. The program helps users compare multiple routes to determine the lowest-cost flight paths, while also recording fee data for each flight. The module was developed as charges for airspace use have become a significant cost for international operators. In some cases, overflight fees exceed the cost of fuel, according to Jeppesen.
A recently certified high-performance version of Diamond Aircraft Industries' popular Katana DA20 two-place aircraft could sharply increase the Canadian company's already noteworthy share of the general aviation training market. Diamond has built more than 1,000 airframes, and about 400 of them are flown by 120 operators in North America. The others are mostly in Europe, where the original DV20 model was designed and built by Diamond Aircraft Industries GmbH. of Austria.
Plans to consolidate South Korea's troubled aerospace industry will come to a head in August, when the aviation and defense businesses of three leading industrial conglomerates merge to create a single aerospace entity.
A French investigation team, supported by Russian experts, will attempt to determine the exact cause of a spectacular accident that marred the opening of the Paris air show. The crash, involving a Sukhoi Su-30MK training/attack aircraft as it was performing a flying display at 3:28 p.m. local time on June 12, completely destroyed the airplane but spared the two pilots, who managed to eject safely. The Su-30 crashed after performing three descending high-angle-of-attack rolls.
Nancy Berg has been appointed general manager of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Dearborn, Mich. She was director of the SME Expositions Div. Gary Mikola has become acting director of show managements and Patrick Cantini acting director of show development and event services.
