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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 2330.PDF
PARIS 2001 Show report Unusually for Paris air show week, the big aerospace news emerged elsewhere. Le Bourget played second fid dle to events unfolding at the corporate headquarters of companies like General Electric, Swissair and Sabena. GE's acknowledgement that its take-over of Honeywell had failed to meet the demands of the European Commission started much debate. Naturally enough there was no shortage of views other than that Washington and Brussels need to review their respective views on competition policy and agree a common posi tion ahead of the raft of new aerospace merger plans soon to land on the desks of the bureaucrats. As Lockheed Martin's Vance Coffman said during the show, you can't stop the pace of consolidation. To stress the point, speculation was rife that Smiths Group may acquire Rockwell Collins. If the reports are true, it is likely to happen before Collins is separated from the rest of Rockwell at the end of June. The company's chosen struc ture for the spin-off would land any suitor with a hefty tax bill were it to attempt a take-over any time during the first years of the new Collins existence. Other sectors in which some of this year's exhibitors are unlikely to grace Le Bourget in 2003 include helicopter and engine makers. Honeywell's future as an independent company is problematic - United Technologies is widely touted as likely to return to the table with a bid. Ironically, UTC may pick up the company for a lot less than it was originally intending to pay. Consolidation provided Airbus and Boeing with com mon ground for their usual airshow spat. This time it took the ill-judged comments by Boeing's Harry Stonecipher in a French newspaper about his rival's alleged part in blocking GE's take-over ambitions to set the ball rolling. Airbus and GE quickly put the record straight. That was about as good as it got for Boeing as it relied on its sonic cruiser high-speed airliner development to generate interest, particularly as it had virtually no orders to announce compared with the Airbus total -175. Overall, the order tally across the industry was down by around 50% compared with $42 billion total at Farnborough 2000. The hiatus in regional jet orders will probably only be resolved when new products take to the air. On the military front, the show again failed to deliver because the A400M airlifter and Meteor air-to-air missile programmes were unable to launch formally. ANDREW CHUTER/DEEDEE DOKE/ANDREW DOYLE VLADIMIR KARNOZOV/MAX KINGSLEY-JONES PAUL LEWIS/STEWART PENNEY SIMON WARBURTON/GRAHAM WARWICK SURVEILLANCE USA pushes Europe to merge on radar Northrop Grumman and EADS strengthen transatlantic ties Northrop Grumman is pushing to merge the USA's proposed NATAR solution for NATO's air-to-ground surveillance (AGS) requirement with the rival SOSTAR system. The company is also offering a Europeanised Global Hawk unmanned air vehicle as a high- altitude long-endurance (HALE) component, as it seeks to further broaden its recently agreed transat lantic tie-up with EADS. The two firms have agreed to collaborate on a common AGS sys tem for the North Atlantic alliance, one of five deals struck since estab lishing a working relationship last year. The agreement is for Northrop Grumman and EADS jointly to define and develop an AGS architecture, but it does not yet include the sensor. Northrop Grumman along with partner Raytheon is pushing a NATAR version of the Multi- Platform-Radar Technology Inser tion Programme (MP-RTIP) sensor under development to modernise and expand the US Air Force's Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS). EADS has com bined with Fiar, Fokker Space, Indra and Thales to push the rival SOSTAR radar. "Our view is that to have a suc cessful NATO AGS, there must be a European solution. We would like to merge NATAR and SOSTAR and carry forward the strength of both programmes. We think this is really the long-term solution," says Ralph Crosby, Northrop Grumman Integ rated System Sector president. Northrop Grumman has been proposing a 4.9-5.5m (16-18ft) elec tronically scanned array based on MP-RTIP mounted on an Airbus A321. In concert with EADS, the search for a suitable platform has been widened to include the smaller A318, Fairchild Dornier 928JET or the Fokker 70/100, which has been selected as the trials platform for the SOSTAR-X active-array radar. The company is also promoting a "Euro Hawk" version of the Global Hawk as a NATO or nation ally operated unmanned adjunct to AGS. The USAF has adopted a simi lar multi-platform approach and plans to supplement JSTARS with an MP-RTIP equipped version of the Global Hawk. Northrop Grumman signed an agreement last year with EADS to co-operate on a HALE unmanned air vehicle. Germany has already signalled interest and Northrop Grumman plans to conduct a local Global Hawk demonstration late this year, equipped with an EADS electronic and signals intelligence package. The companies have also agreed jointly to pursue airborne elec tronic equipment opportunities including self-protection jamming. Global Hawk noses into European market 14 26 JUNE - 2 JULY 2001 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.fliqhtinternational.com
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