Aerospace: No End in Sight

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> Douglas Aircraft, once the blue chip of the planemakers, has in recent years flown in Boeing's jet wash. But by bringing out its short-range DC-9 nearly two years ahead of Boeing's competing 737, Douglas last year managed a major comeback. Last month it rolled out an elongated, 200-passenger version of its DC-8 in a bid for the interim market before the C-5A is ready. By winning the $1.5 billion contract last year to build the Air Force's first manned orbiting laboratory, on which it had gambled $60 million of its own, Douglas jumped into a commanding lead in a big new space program.

> General Dynamics, revitalized after the largest loss ever suffered by a U.S. corporation ($135 million in 1961), last year won a $1.7 billion production contract for its controversial F-111 (born TFX) adjustable-wing Air Force-Navy fighter. The company also garnered development awards to convert it into a spy plane and a bomber to replace the Strategic Air Command's B-52. Though its Convair division in San Diego still limps, G.D. has a near-record backlog of nuclear-submarine orders, is busy producing antiaircraft and ship-to-air missiles.

> McDonnell Aircraft, which bypassed missiles to concentrate on space (Mercury and Gemini capsules), has stepped up production of its dazzling F-4 Phantom fighters for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines, and the British. It is also developing an infantry antitank rocket and rebuilding an original Gemini capsule for reuse with a new heat shield in the manned-orbiting-laboratory program.

Behind these prime contractors, scores of specialists ranging from Aerojet-General (rocket fuel) to United Aircraft (jet engines) are pursuing prosperity with a diversity of projects. Nine allied countries fly Northrop Corp.'s hot twin-jet F-5 fighter, and the company is developing deep ocean bases for the Navy, building three broadcasting stations in Ethiopia, and teaching budgetary accounting to the Nicaraguan government. Comsat has just placed a $35 million order for 24 satellites with Cleveland-based TRW Inc. Martin Marietta last month won the first production contract, for $12,085,430, for the Walleye glide bomb, a missile that is hauled high by a plane, then unleashed to swoop on an enemy with television guidance.

The whole industry hustles for the $16.3 billion a year of Government aerospace business. Lockheed not only keeps a 22-man Washington team circulating among the Pentagon, NASA, the FAA and Capitol Hill, but deals with 300 separate offices and agencies of Government through 17 sales offices across the U.S. Representatives at every NASA installation and most major military bases teletype weekly reports to Burbank on what hardware these key customers are likely to want next. To sell abroad, Lockheed has created a "foreign service corps" that includes many influential Europeans. The company hired the Duke of Edinburgh's equerry, for instance, to help sell the C-130 Herky Bird to the British, landed orders for 48 planes. Since 1962, Lockheed has taken in nearly $500 million in foreign sales, now earns 25% of its profits abroad.