Rockwell Continues Efforts to Beef Up Defense Division
Officials at Rockwell International Corp. still won’t comment on reports that they want to sell their $3.5-billion-a-year aerospace and defense business. But they’re pushing ahead on plans to fatten up a division that no longer seems to mesh with Chairman Donald R. Beall’s master plan for the Seal Beach-based conglomerate.
In a recent telephone interview, Rockwell Aerospace and Defense unit President John McLuckey said the company’s recent victory over Lockheed Martin and Hughes Aircraft to win the Air Force’s global positioning satellite (GPS) contract is just the start of a big push that would make his operation a lot more attractive to a potential buyer.
The ink has barely dried on the deal--worth up to $1.3 billion if Rockwell gets all the extensions and add-ons--but McLuckey and company are off in pursuit of a Defense Department contract for a demonstration program to show that Rockwell can build a huge Space Missile and Tracking System for the government.
“While the first step is a program that is worth only $100 million to $200 million,” McLuckey said, “it would establish us as a credible competitor with [rival] TRW for the full program, worth $3 billion to $4 billion.”
The GPS program, he said, “really strengthens our satellite business from a military standpoint, and we have also been talking to commercial customers about building a satellite bus . . . so it strengthens our credentials for the commercial business as well.” A satellite bus is an empty vehicle divided into spaces--or “seats”--that are sold to commercial customers who need to put telecommunications transmitters or other devices into orbit but don’t need an entire satellite to themselves.
For the GPS contract and most others that McLuckey’s unit is chasing, the major work--design, development, fabrication and testing--would be done at Rockwell’s much-shrunken satellite facility in Seal Beach.
The contracts probably won’t create many new jobs, but hundreds of Rockwell people who were transferred from Seal Beach to the company’s plant in Downey when the satellite business dried up several years ago “probably would be transferred back,” McLuckey said.
“We are confident that we have reached the bottom of the defense slump and that we will turn around now and show growth in those businesses,” he said. “This all adds up and makes us strong, whether we are a part of Rockwell or whether something else will occur.”
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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations, manufacturing and economic issues for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com
