Valley Projects Get $7 Million to Support Defense Conversion : Technology: Clinton program recognizes Rockwell, Calstart. President will visit aerospace firm today.
The Clinton Administration announced Friday that Rockwell International in Canoga Park and Burbank-based Calstart will receive a total of about $7 million in federal defense conversion funds under its much-touted national program.
The money, part of a $2.5-billion program to adapt defense technology to commercial use, is the first to go to San Fernando Valley-area firms.
President Clinton, who is scheduled to visit Rockwell today, has called the awards an important part of his plan to build a post-Cold War economy and generate jobs for displaced aerospace workers.
The Valley, among the regions hit hardest by defense cuts, has a particularly large stake in the ability of defense contractors to convert--a process that has produced as much skepticism as success so far.
The reaction to Friday’s announcement was mixed. A spokesman for one of the recipients expressed excitement and another voiced disappointment that more funding has not been forthcoming; a Democratic congressman hailed the grants as enormously important for the region, while an aerospace-industry analyst dismissed them as having little impact.
Overall, $155 million was distributed nationwide Friday and $260 million had been dispensed previously under the Technology Reinvestment Project.
Calstart, a consortium of public and private interests that seeks to develop an advanced transportation industry in Southern California, will receive about $3.4 million over two years to help develop a turbine-powered engine that can burn various types of non-polluting fuels and be used in hybrid cars powered by a combination of electricity and other clean fuels such as natural gas.
“This technology will permit vehicles to utilize fossil fuels during acceleration and operate directly from batteries during cruising mode,” the Defense Department said in announcing the award.
In addition, the department said, “the consortium will demonstrate the technology on the Army’s M1-A1 tank and a commercial mass transit vehicle.” The turbine engine is to be developed by Allied Signal Aerospace Systems.
Calstart received another $1 million as part of a grant to a consortium headed by UCLA.
The funds are to establish a master’s degree program for advanced transportation engineers at the university.
But Calstart, a relatively early entry in the conversion field, and its various members had applied for a total of $42.4 million for 21 projects. These range from development of alkaline fuel cells to advanced vehicle charging stations.
“It’s not even close to what we are requesting,” Calstart Executive Director Michael Gage said of Friday’s award. “If that’s it, we are pretty disappointed.”
He said he has not given up hope of winning additional funds. About $50 million in fiscal year 1993 money remains to be disbursed and another $474 million has been appropriated for this fiscal year. The awards must be matched by a combination of state and private funds.
Rockwell’s Rocketdyne Division, meanwhile, will receive about $2.6 million over 21 months to design and develop a portable environmental monitor capable of identifying low levels of hazardous materials from remote distances.
“The proposed system will permit rapid response teams to determine the seriousness of toxic spills, sense chemical warfare agents on the battlefield and assess auto emissions for compliance with the Clean Air Act,” the Defense Department said.
“It is a wonderful technology and we are really excited to be one of the selected few,” said Maribeth Hunt, Rockwell’s Ecoscan program manager.
“Rockwell believed in this enough that we were going to proceed even without the federal funding,” she said. But the award will allow the company to reduce the product’s development schedule from 3 1/2 to two years.
Rockwell has 12 people on the project, but when it enters production that number will increase to 200. The company has not decided where the system will be built.
“The ultimate market is mainly commercial,” Hunt said. This could include remote monitoring of vehicles, fire department hazardous material teams or factory emissions monitoring.
Among Rockwell’s partners in the project are Arco, San Diego Gas & Electric, the state Environmental Protection Agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, NASA, Michigan State University and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Rockwell received one of three grants awarded in the 24th District of Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills). The other two, for a total of about $11.2 million over two years, went to Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu.
“These projects are enormously important to our area, which has lost so many jobs as a result of the effects of cuts in the defense budget and the closure of military bases,” said Beilenson, who will join Clinton today. “The need to create new jobs is our highest priority.”
But Michael Beltramo, a Los Angeles-based aerospace industry consultant, said the amount of government defense conversion money available is virtually meaningless for companies as large as Rockwell and Hughes, which are accustomed to billion-dollar weapons contracts.
“This is a political program, not an economic program,” he said.
Beltramo also criticized the Administration for handing out conversion money to defense contractors that have not learned how to sell products in the commercial marketplace.
“If it’s something that’s going to fly, it ought to meet the test of the marketplace, not depend on bureaucrats with grant money,” he said.
Ironically, the federal conversion awards come at a time when Rocketdyne is feeling the heat from NASA because of quality problems with the space shuttle engines the company builds. This year the engines have caused two last-second aborted launches as well as at least two more delays involving the Columbia and Endeavour space shuttles.
Times staff writers Patrice Apodaca and Hugo Martin in Los Angeles and Ralph Vartabedian in Washington contributed to this story.
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