March 4, 2002

COVER STORY

Orbiting Gravity Mappers Might Spot Oil Fields

WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

TRW Bides Time Following Northrop Bid

WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

USAF Eyes Tanker Contest Between Boeing, EADS/Airbus

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COVER STORY

Orbiting Gravity Mappers Might Spot Oil Fields

New technologies for measuring changes in Earth's density could enable remote sensing of the interior

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

TRW Bides Time Following Northrop Bid

NEW YORK With TRW Inc. in play and financial markets anticipating competing offers for the company, the aerospace/defense industry last week appeared poised for a bidding war. Leading the charge will be Northrop Grumman Corp., which recently made an unsolicited offer of $47 in Northrop common stock for every one of TRW’s.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

USAF Eyes Tanker Contest Between Boeing, EADS/Airbus

ORLANDO, FLA. If the U.S. Air Force is going to buy a "smart" tanker aircraft, it's up to Boeing and EADS to make an offer-this week—that the Pentagon can’t resist, senior service planners say. The service can’t afford to buy the aircraft outright, but a lease-to-buy option for the first 100 aircraft (replacing a leaseand-return plan for Boeing 767s initially proposed by Congress) is expected to pass Pentagon and congressional muster eventually.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

Intel, Anti-Stealth Part Of Tanker Spinoff

ORLANDO, FLA. Within the U.S. Air Force, the debate about whether to first build a new tanker or a new intelligence-gathering aircraft appears to have been resolved. The service plans to start both as parallel programs in late 2003. This may be because the intelligencegathering aircraft will give the U.S. its long-desired capability to locate and target stealthy cruise missiles.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

Skynet 5 Win Boosts NA Aspirations

LONDON European satellite manufacturer Astrium bolstered its chances of providing NATO's next-generation military satellite communications needs last week when it secured a 2-2.5-billionpound program ($2.8-3.5 billion) for Skynet from the British Defense Ministry.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

U.K. Forging Airborne Intel/Recce Platform

LONDON The British Defense Ministry is on the brink of launching a program that could prove to be a key asset in forging a coherent strategy for current and future reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering crewed air platforms and unmanned air vehicles.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

‘New Eyes’ Probe Mars Terrain

LOS ANGELES The Odyssey spacecraft has begun its planned 30-month primary science mission, and two types of NASA instruments in use for the first time at Mars are already providing some interesting observations. Jeffrey J. Plaut, Odyssey deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument suite has detected hydrogen on the surface of the red planet’s southern hemisphere.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

Putin Airs Military Space Concerns

CAPE CANAVERAL Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov are calling for more aggressive Russian military space program development to prevent the former USSR from going “blind and deaf” in military intelligence, in the face of geopolitical changes along its borders and growing international military operations by the U.S.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

Stinger Eyed for UAV Role

ORLANDO, FLA, The Pentagon wants an air-to-air missile for its unmanned aircraft. With the fielding of the wide-body Mukisensor Command and Control Aircraft (MC2A), equipped with multiband radars, the U.S. Air Force would have by around 2010 an airborne system capable of detecting and targeting helicopters, UAVs and stealthy cruise missiles.

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WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS

Germany to Ratify Galileo System

Munich Europe’s proposed Galileo satellite navigation and positioning system took a giant step toward final funding approval with a firm decision by the German cabinet to support the program. Late last week, German Transport Minister Kurt Bodewig said he would okay the earmarking of 155 million euros ($136 million) for development and validation.
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