Hughes Aircraft to Lay Off 90 at Newport Beach Plant : Defense: Company cites lower demand for jet fighter radar chips. Cuts due over next three months.

Hughes Aircraft Co. said it will lay off about 90 workers at its microelectronics plant in Newport Beach over the next three months.

Hughes Aircraft, a unit of GM-Hughes Electronics Corp., the big Los Angeles-based defense and electronics firm, said the layoffs were the result of lower demand for certain “hybrid” chips that are used mainly in radar for jet fighters.

“It’s basically a declining product line,” Hughes spokesman Richard Dore said. However, Dore said, some of the work will be transferred to a Hughes plant in Tijuana.

Layoff notices will be issued this week, Dore said, giving workers at least eight weeks before they are dismissed. Hughes’ microelectronics division in Newport Beach currently employs about 800 workers. In the same facility are an additional 200 Hughes employees who work in the company’s processor division.

Hughes Aircraft last year announced the shutdown of its big electronics plant in Fullerton. That plant, which employed 6,800 last fall, is expected to be closed by the end of this year, with as many as 1,000 workers laid off and most of the rest transferred to other Hughes facilities.

Dore said that the phaseout of the Fullerton plant is proceeding as scheduled, but he did not have a count of the people who have been laid off or transferred to date.