HUGHES SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY Communications and Customer Relations P.O. Box 92919 (S10/S323) Los Angeles, CA 90009 (310) 364-6363

HUGHES RECEIVES DARPA AWARD TO RESEARCH INDUSTRIAL DIAMONDS

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 30, 1997 -- Hughes Space and Communications Company, (HSC) of Los Angeles, has been awarded a $2.6 million contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate the use of commercial grade diamonds in high power transistor packages. Under this contract, a new class of diamond-enhanced packages will be developed for use with high power gallium-arsenide radio frequency devices for satellite communications and radar systems.

HSC is the prime contractor for the two-year project, and has awarded Crystalline Materials Corporation (CMC) of San Ramon, Calif., a privately held producer of cost effective, high quality diamond substrates, a $1 million subcontract to support the effort.

For HSC, the use of man-made chemical vapor deposited (CVD) diamonds will enable them to increase satellite performance.

"We are enthusiastic about this grant, because it could fundamentally change the services we are able to provide our customers," said Donald L. Cromer, president of HSC. "By incorporating man-made diamonds into our hardware, we can operate our transponders at higher powers, or at the same power with a several-fold increase in lifetime. This will enable us to provide increased coverage or will reduce the abundance and cost of redundant systems. For airborne radar applications, CVD diamonds will decrease manufacturing costs by enabling the use of low-cost, low-thermal conductivity motherboards. Hughes Sensors and Communications Systems will support HSC in this area of the contract."

For CMC, the award enables them to apply their diamond manufacturing technology to communications-related markets in the electronics industry.

"We are extremely pleased to participate in this DARPA initiative," said Kaley Parkinson, chief executive officer of CMC. "This achievement underscores the importance of diamond as a significant mainstream material in high-performance electronic systems, and CMC as an industry leader in diamond applications and production."

HSC is a unit of Hughes Electronics Corporation and is the world's largest manufacturer of commercial communications satellites. The earnings of Hughes Electronics are used to calculate the earnings per share attributable to GMH (NYSE symbol) common stock.