DAIMLER-BENZ Aerospace ( DASA) and Rockwell have formed a joint venture to develop and market satellite-based navigation and landing systems. Rockwell and DASA will each hold 50% of the venture, which is to be located in Ulm, Germany (Flight International, 25-31 January).
The venture brings together Rockwell's Collins Commercial Avionics division and the Ulm-based Sensor Systems division of DASA's Defence and Civil Systems Group.
Product development and manufacturing will remain with the parent companies.
Collins and DASA are already working together on precision-landing systems based on the global-positioning system (GPS). DASA is developing a local-area differential-GPS ground station which uses Collins' new GPS receiver (Flight International, 11-17 January, P41).
The DASA ground station and Collins' avionics will be flight-tested by Boeing in a GPS landing-system evaluation planned for later this year using NASA's Boeing 757. The programme will evaluate Category III automatic landings using differential-GPS.
Collins says that co-operation with DASA will extend to include the pursuit of common interests in CIS avionics markets, while the joint venture will "...allow us to take advantage of opportunities for our avionics products in the growing European market".
Source: Flight International
