Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
President Bush's May 15 speech calling for 6,000 National Guard troops to be sent to the southern border of the U.S. to back up the Border Patrol is likely to help speed the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the national airspace, according to a Pentagon UAV official. Most likely to benefit from the announcement are small UAVs such as AeroVironment's Raven, which has been used extensively by Guard troops deployed to Iraq, according to Dyke Weatherington, head of the Pentagon's Unmanned Aircraft System Task Force.
Raytheon has begun flight-testing its APG-63 V(3) active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, which the company is producing for Air National Guard F-15C fighter jets. The flights began on May 5 using a Raytheon-owned test bed aircraft. There have been four flights so far. The company will continue flight-testing through the end of the month, pause to analyze data, and then resume flights in June.
The U.S. Air Force is rethinking the future of its space surveillance network as it tries to balance the need to replace aging ground sensors against the costs of the recently restructured Space-Based Surveillance System program. "If you look at all the [ground] systems that we are maintaining today, and then add SBSS to this constellation of capability . . . we can't afford it all," says Col. Gary Henry, system group director for space situational awareness at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center.
