Shull to Head Hughes Group in Fullerton

C. Blaine Shull has been promoted to president of Hughes Aircraft’s ground systems group in Fullerton, the company’s largest business unit with sales of more than $1 billion. Shull, who was senior vice president for product operations, will succeed Clare G. Carlson, who will retire after a transitional period.

Shull, an electrical engineer, was assigned last year to help clear up quality control and manufacturing problems at Hughes’ missile systems group in Tucson, which was stung by military criticism that it was shipping defective products.

Also moving to the ground systems group as vice president is Arne Lavik, group vice president of Hughes’ industrial electronics group in Torrance. Lavik, a native of Norway, joined Hughes in 1959 from the technical staff at Bell Laboratories.

Carlson is retiring from Hughes after 39 years. He has headed the ground systems group since 1969, overseeing a rapid expansion that more than doubled the size of the operation. Also retiring from the ground systems group is Nicholas Yaru, senior vice president and a corporate officer, according to a Hughes spokesman.

Carlson and Yaru will be the third and fourth top-level Hughes executives to retire from the company since it was announced last year that Hughes would be acquired by General Motors. Meade Livesay retired as group president of the radar systems group. George E. Todd retired as senior vice president for international operations.

Wolfgang Demisch, aerospace analyst at First Boston Corp., recently termed the top-level departures a “big disappointment,” saying that much of the large premium that GM paid in its $5.1-billion acquisition of Hughes went to buying the services of such top executives.