Word: navahos
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...budget ax that hangs over every U.S. planemaker fell with swift and painful force. In the first big cutback of the current economy drive, the Air Force last week issued a curt announcement that North American Aviation's rocket-and-ram-jet Navaho intercontinental guided missile was being washed out of the U.S. defense program. Down the drain went a project that has taken eleven years and between $500 million and $700 million to bring the Navaho within a few weeks of full-scale test flight. With it went the promise of another $1 billion in contracts for North...
...Force, the decision was a simple matter of economy. Though the Navaho showed promise (about 2,300 m.p.h. speed, high altitude and 5,000-mile range), it was designed to carry bulky atomic weapons, and it is still years from production. Now with more compact warheads and with better missiles such as the Atlas and Titan ICBMs, which travel at 16,000 m.p.h. coming along more rapidly than expected, the Navaho would probably be obsolete before it ever got into operational use. Instead, the Air Force decided to produce Northrop's pilotless Snark bomber, a much slower (650 m.p.h...
...result, North American said it might have to lay off 15% of its work force at the Missile Development, Rocketdyne and Autonetics divisions in the Los Angeles area-10,000 employees in all. While the Navaho cut will not affect North American's balance sheet greatly in its current fiscal year (ending Sept. 30), it will mean a 15% or more reduction in the company's $1 billion annual sales in future years unless the company finds a replacement soon...
...fill the gap left by the Navaho, North American pins its hopes on a trio of new planes on the drawing boards. In competition with Boeing, North American designers are at work on the WS-110 chemical-fuel bomber planned as a supersonic successor to the B-52 heavy bomber. It has also won the design competition for a new long-range interceptor and is working on a jet utility trainer that may also find a civilian market as a high-speed executive transport. Said a top North American executive: "We were disappointed, naturally, but we don't have...
...shoot cocktail parties can tell from the demeanor of his hosts how the shoot has gone. Smiles among the Convair group might mean a promising static-test day for the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, frowns among the North American missile monkeys might show a bad day for the Navaho intercontinental air-breather...