TAKING REINS: Giorgio Zappa, newly appointed chairman of Italian aerospace company Vitrociset, is targeting a revenue increase despite Europe’s financial downturn. Zappa, 67, boasts a long history in Alenia Aeronautica and Finmeccanica, where he departed as COO in May 2011. In his new position he has operating powers, including responsibilities for audit, strategies and business development. Current CEO Antonio Bontempi, another Finmeccanica veteran, will remain in charge of company operations.
The Republicans’ 2012 platform, approved during the party’s presidential nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., this week, lashes out at President Obama on many fronts, including the U.S. Air Force’s aircraft reductions.
TEL AVIV — Israeli intelligence planners are trying to predict how and when Syria’s government will fall, and who will be there to protect or loot the country’s military equipment, particularly Syria’s stock of chemical weapons, ballistic missiles and long-range, anti-aircraft missiles. “What will happen to Bashar [Assad, Syria’s president] is very interesting to us, but it is also a great mystery,” says Col. Erez Viezel, a conceptual planner for Israeli Defense Intelligence (IDI). “We want to know how much control he has over the things that threaten us.”
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) has come up with a new twist on proven borescope engine-inspection technology. While previous engine-inspection borescopes used by the Navy detected engine debris with a rigid probe and generated low-quality, black-and-white pictures, Naviar’s Common Video Borescope Set, or CVBS has a 2-meter long, flexible, insertion tube that captures photos and video images on a 3.7-in. color screen. Technicians will use a joystick to maneuver the device’s insertion tube, giving them a 360-deg. view of hard-to-see places.
MOSCOW —The Russian air force is nearing the end of its testing program for the new Sukhoi Su-35S multirole fighter. Preliminary approval for deliveries to regular units is expected in October, according to the air force.
With the upcoming widening of the Panama Canal catching the attention of the U.S. Navy brass—particularly Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations—the annual regional exercise featuring the U.S. and its Latin American partners is taking on greater importance. This year’s Panamax-12 exercise, which wrapped up earlier this month, attracted even more attention with the debut of the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System (Centrixs) command-and-control suite, a first for the Southern Command (Southcom) area of responsibility (AOR).
TEL AVIV — Following its withdrawals from South Lebanon, Gaza and some of the West Bank, Israel must stretch its intelligence-gathering to leverage new technological capabilities that partly offset the loss of traditional human intelligence (humint). All of Israel’s top-tier defense companies are involved in this national effort, including Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Elbit Systems and Rafael, as well as smaller companies specializing in sensor development, data fusion, information access and retrieval.
Eighty percent of likely voters in swing states believe that politicians in Washington should find a way to block potential across-the-board budget cuts that could take place in January, according to a Harris Interactive poll commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). But 66% percent of those voters were only somewhat or not at all aware of the measure known as sequestration—the self-imposed congressional penalty for failing to reach an agreement to reduce the deficit that set the $1 trillion in federal budget cuts in motion.
LOS ANGELES — NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has returned images to Earth of Martian geological features that are completely “unexpected,” according to mission scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
TALKING NEXTGEN: The FAA has awarded Harris Corp. a 15-year, $291 million contract to provide a secure voice communications network for U.S. air traffic control facilities as part of the NextGen air transportation system. Company officials expect that the program will proceed despite budget uncertainty on Capitol Hill. The system will replace the FAA’s 40-year old system of voice switches with one based on Internet Protocols that will support communications between air traffic controllers on the ground as well as from pilots in the aircraft to controllers on the ground.
BERLIN — A Michigan lab is exploring an idea for generating energy from low-frequency ambient sound using tiny ceramic piezoelectric generators — a concept of interest to military planners looking for ever-smaller, cheaper and more durable power sources for sensors. Researchers at the University of Michigan Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems plan to publish a scheme for a low-frequency-powered ceramic piezoelectric generator in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.
As the U.S. Navy targets greater ballistic missile defense (BMD) roles for its ships, radars and other assets, some in the submarine community are trying to generate interest in using undersea platforms for those missions.
Opponents of a controversial plan for the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, in Nantucket Sound near Massachusetts, say they will appeal the FAA’s determination that the 130-turbine project does not pose a threat to air navigation. The FAA determined the proposed Cape Wind project would not interfere with three radar sites used for air traffic control within the Nantucket Sound area because the turbines will be beyond 2.4 nm from the radars.
MOSCOW — Sukhoi’s T-50 fifth-generation fighter prototype has undergone its first inflight refueling approach trials. According to Sukhoi, during a single flight earlier this month, the second flight prototype, T-50-2, accompanied by an Su-25UB aircraft, made nine contacts with an Ilyushin Il-78 flying tanker piloted by the Russian air force’s regular crew.
Unmanned surface vessels are proving to be quite capable hunters and destroyers of mines in recent tests and large-scale U.S. Navy exercises like Trident Warrior. Undersea mine protection has become a major mission concern for the Navy, especially as it operates in congested and dangerous waterways in the Middle East.
