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.
The Air Force plans to make the case for restoring recent Pentagon cuts to the F/A-22 Raptor program during the upcoming quadrennial defense review (QDR) this summer, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper. Shortly before Christmas, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signed a program budget decision (PBD) instructing the Air Force to stop buying the Lockheed Martin fighter at the end of fiscal year 2008, stopping Raptor procurement at 181 jets instead of the 277 the service had planned (DAILY, Jan. 4).
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's X-50A Dragonfly unmanned aerial vehicle will resume flight-testing this spring or summer, according to DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker. Built by Boeing, the first Dragonfly prototype was ruined in a March 2004 crash during a flight-test at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. (DAILY, March 31, 2004). The resumed flights will use a pre-existing ground spare that has been made flightworthy.
The Deep Impact team has made some last-minute adjustments to its planned Jan. 12 launch after discovering that the mission's Delta II rocket was somewhat overweight after being integrated with the spacecraft. Deep Impact is scheduled to launch from pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral during an "instantaneous" launch window occurring at 1:47:08 a.m. Eastern time. The weight issue was discovered during a late trajectory run-through, according to Omar Baez, launch director at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
