Last week's delivery of a Superjet 100 to its first Western customer—Interjet—was to be celebrated as the international breakthrough for the Russian-build regional aircraft. But now Finmeccanica, Sukhoi's partner in the Superjet International joint venture, is threatening to pull out.

President Barack Obama's Brandenburg Gate call to eliminate up to a third of the U.S. nuclear arsenal has few ardent champions. And the remaining discontent may matter, since the cuts aren't likely to materialize while Obama is still in office. Republicans denounce the plan to reduce beyond the New Start treaty's limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, and promise to set up procedural roadblocks in the Senate.

It has come as welcome news for Japan's major airlines that their customers do not seem to be worried about flying on Boeing 787s since the aircraft's return to service. Concerns have also eased regarding the effect of the 787's battery problems on their delivery schedules.

Demand for new narrowbodies unbroken, Boeing accelerates schedule

In late April, the FAA trumped the National Transportation Safety Board by approving a redesign and return-to-flight plan for the Boeing 787's troubled lithium-ion batteries. It came the same week NTSB held an investigative hearing in which participants made it clear that the root cause for the smoking batteries had not been found. The usually loquacious NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman played it cool at the time, but public comments she provided in the FAA's airworthiness directive (AD) docket for the 787 fix earlier this month reveal she might yet have the last word.

The aircraft that made the news at last week's 50th Paris air show are largely enabled by advances in propulsion technology that allow their manufacturers to offer big reductions in fuel burn over the previous generation of airliners. The savings of 15% or more are driving the orders. Whether it is the Airbus A320NEO with the CFM International Leap-1A or Pratt & Whitney PW1100G, Boeing 737MAX with the Leap-1B, Bombardier CSeries with the PW1500G, Embraer E-Jet E2 with the PW1700/1900G or Mitsubishi MRJ90 with the PW12000G, the engines are critical.

Bell Helicopter is attempting to reinvent the JetRanger and reenter a market it left behind five years ago. Juggling development of the Bell 525 super-medium and V-280 Valor, the company's tiltrotor candidate for the U.S. Army's Future Vertical Lift requirement, Bell has added the Short Light Single (SLS), revealed at the Paris air show here, in a bid to regain market share lost to types such as the Robinson R66 and Eurocopter EC120 that have leaped into the gap created when JetRanger production ended 2.5 years ago.

A “discussion draft” of a two-year NASA reauthorization bill is running into bipartisan opposition in its originating House space subcommittee, illustrating how lawmakers' divergent opinions about NASA spending are inhibiting progress. Democrats are complaining about cuts in Earth Science funding. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), the panel's vice chairman, promises to vote against the bill unless more money is provided for the Space Launch System program in his district.