Hughes Resumes Delivery of Phoenix Missile to Navy

Hughes Aircraft Co. said Thursday that it has delivered a Phoenix missile to the Navy, the first since the service stopped accepting the missile last July because of dissatisfaction with Hughes’ quality control.

The missile shipment, which occured last week, is significant because it was the Navy’s disassembly and inspection of a Phoenix missile last spring that initiated a series of critical reviews of quality control at Hughes’ Tucson missile factory.

The review ultimately led the military to suspend acceptance and payments on all Hughes products made at the Tucson plant.

With resumption of the Phoenix shipments, deliveries of all three of Hughes major missile production programs have been resumed.

Although the quantities shipped so far are very small and the company is behind in its original delivery schedules, the shipments are critical because they show that the services are satisfied with Hughes’ progress in improving its quality control.

But the services are still withholding progress payments from Hughes, and that has seriously affected the firm’s financial performance in the past year as well as continuing far longer than originally expected.

Hughes is receiving 96% of regular progress payments on the Phoenix missile, the Air Force said Thursday. In addition, it is receiving 60% of regular progress payments for the Maverick missile, 50% of the payments on the TOW missile and 77% of the payments for the angle-rate bombing set, the Air Force said.

Hughes has not resumed shipments of the angle-rate bombing set, a computerized bomb-release system, to the Marines but expects to do so “in the near future,” a Hughes spokesman said.

The Phoenix missile is an air-to-air defense missile with a range of more than 100 miles for the Navy’s F-14 jet.