Piaggio Aero will deliver the first of six converted P.180 multirole aircraft to the Italian air force in late July. The aircraft are needed to maintain air traffic control/navigation and radar RF measurement functions previously handled by the G-222RM, which has been withdrawn from service, and the MB-339, which has been assigned to other duties. Air force planners are also studying the use of P.180s for aerophotogrammetry missions, which are currently c onducted by three Piaggio P.166DL-3s acquired in 1985.
Even as its limited number of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers continue to realize their capabilities, the U.S. Air Force allows select allies to use the aircraft. A long-standing exchange program under which USAF personnel trade places with those from the Royal Air Force was extended to the B-2 in 2004.
As mechanized forces bog down in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan, low-tech solutions to problems become more attractive. One of these is the use of small, simple aircraft to replace jets for the close air support (CAS), armed reconnaissance and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions that dominate air operations.
U.S.-China relations are on the rocks over Taiwan, Google and other issues, but human-spaceflight officials in Beijing are still eager to open a dialogue with NASA over possible cooperation. Worried that there has been no official follow-up from the U.S. side after Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao agreed to a Beijing visit by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, the Chinese ambassador to Israel approached Bolden at a reception there earlier this month to see what was up. “I said, ‘Are you sure that the invitation still stands,’” Bolden says.
In the article “Pushing the Limits,” USAF Col. (ret.) Paul Comtois says, “Most (airline) pilots have never pulled more than 2g. . . . When they find themselves in an airplane upset at 4-4.5g, they have no point of reference” (AW&ST Nov. 30, 2009, p. 55).
France has completed the fourth test firing of the new M51 nuclear missile, intended to replace the aging M45 on its submarines. The firing, on Jan. 27 from the submarine Le Terrible, was the second undersea test for the missile, which is due to enter service this year . The missile, fired from the Bay of Audierne in Brittany, was tracked throughout its trajectory by sensors in Quimper, the missile test range in Biscarosse in southwestern France, and the Monge tracking vessel. As in previous firings, it carried a dummy warhead .
In his letter “Patently Incorrect,” Steve Richardson challenges retired Lockheed Martin Skunk Works President Sherm Mullin’s use of the F-35 propulsion system as an example of how innovation really occurs (AW&ST Jan.18, p. 8; Nov. 9, 2009, p. 10). The aircraft patented by Alexander Lippisch (No. 2,918,232), which Richardson argues used the same propulsion concept as the F-35, was actually a kind of helicopter in which fan thrust was to have been vectored either down for hover or aft for cruise.
NASA is getting an early start on its “game-changing” shift to commercial transportation for its astronauts with $50 million in stimulus-package spending that will support two commercial crew launch vehicles and some key technologies to keep them alive on the way to orbit and once they get there. Winning contractors in the agency’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program will use the stimulus money to advance the vehicles and other hardware NASA hopes will be available as early as 2016 to ferry crew to the International Space Station.
Singapore’s Stratech Systems and Israel’s Aeronautics Defense Systems have formed a joint venture to pursue the Asian market for unmanned systems. Stratech will provide manufacturing facilities and support, with Aeronautics Defense System providing the vehicles. One of the projects that could be marketed through the joint venture is the unmanned DA-42 that Aeronautics Defense Systems is developing in cooperation with Austria’s Diamond Aircraft.
A labor union body—the Transportation Trades Dept. (TTD)—kicks off a letter-writing campaign to senators, asking them to keep a controversial provision in the House-passed FAA reauthorization bill (H.R.915) to “bring an end to non-certified stations performing critical maintenance work on aircraft, mandate that foreign repair stations be inspected at least twice a year by FAA inspectors and require workers at these facilities to be held to the same drug and alcohol testing standards as workers at U.S.
GE Aviation has begun producing blade dampers and seals for CF6 and CF34 engines at its 250,000-sq.-ft. Singapore service center. The production is the first of new high- and low-pressure engine parts and uses a 50,000-sq.-ft. expansion completed late last year. The expansion also will accommodate introduction of GE’s GEnx engine for the Boeing 787 and 747-8.
Lockheed Martin and Kaman have demonstrated the cargo resupply mission using an unmanned version of the K-Max helicopter, with the U.S. Marine Corps hoping to deploy the capability to Afghanistan. Boeing is scheduled to demonstrate its A160T Hummingbird unmanned helicopter this week .
The Pentagon’s Fiscal 2011 funding request continues—with far less drama than last year’s bloodletting—to rebalance defenses from high-end conventional systems to those suitable for fighting today’s wars abroad. The request signals a hard reality for industry regarding contract performance but contains a soft edge in the form of much-needed industrial base relief not seen in the first Obama administration budget last spring.
While CH-53 helicopters were unloading Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment in the Now Zad valley in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province during the early morning of Dec. 4, history was being made a short distance away.
ICO Global Communications has announced a rights offering intended to raise around $30 million in new capital. Three ICO shareholders—Eagle River Partners, Highland Capital Management and Harbinger Capital Partners—agreed to acquire any Class A common stock not purchased by other stockholders, up to a predetermined limit. Harbinger has holdings in other mobile satellite service (MSS) providers, including Inmarsat, TerreStar and SkyTerra.
Critical human-factors safety issues laid bare during the NTSB’s probe of a regional airline crash near Buffalo, N.Y., are mobilizing the aviation community to overhaul the way pilots qualify and train for a seat on the flight deck. At the final hearing last week on Continental Connection/Colgan Air Flight 3407, the NTSB said pilot error—specifically, the captain’s improper response to stickshaker activation—was the probable cause of the Feb. 12, 2009, accident that killed 50 people.
Feb. 16-18—Air Africa 2010. Gallagher Convention Center, Midrand, South Africa. Call +27 (11) 788-9562, fax +27 (11) 442-8546 or see www.airafricaexpo.com/ Feb. 17-18—Grey Owl Aviation’s Human Factors Maintenance Workshop (Phase I). Also, Feb. 19—Recurrent Human Factors Maintenance Workshop (Phase II). And, Feb. 20—Safety Management Systems Workshop. All at George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston. Call +1 (204) 848-7353, fax +1 (204) 848-4605 or see www.greyowl.com
Afghanistan is sprouting a series of boom towns with new airfields, prefabricated quarters, rapidly expanding transportation routes, the latest all-terrain vehicles and an equivalent of a detective agency looking for highway bandits, scam artists, counterfeiters and other agents of fraud. The Pentagon’s top logistician says improvements include: •Building more forward operating bases (FOBs).
The Air Transport Assn. wants money from a proposed “infrastructure bank” to be used to help airlines equip their fleets to be ready for the NextGen air-traffic control modernization plan. The Obama administration’s Fiscal 2011 budget includes a proposal for a $4-billion National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, and ATA stresses that aviation projects would be eligible for this money. “An appropriate share of these dollars should be spent on the critical element of NextGen equipage,” says ATA President James May.
EADS expects the Asia-Pacific region to account for 30% of its global revenues by 2015, up from the current 25%. Revenue shares are expected to remain stable among EADS’s defense and civil product groups, with Airbus accounting for about 70% of the total, says Corporate Vice President Christian Duhain. The conglomerate outsourced €400 million ($556 million) in work to regional suppliers in 2008 . “We believe this number will grow very fast,” he says.
President Barack Obama’s $708-billion Fiscal 2011 Defense Dept. budget request has good news for the world’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp. The budget is $100 billion more than the placeholder document and is expected to grow by 3% per year through 2015.
Rolls-Royce bought the remaining 49% shares in Europea Microfusioni Aerospaziali (EMA) from Finmeccanica, making it the 100% shareholder in EMA. The Italian company was established in 1990 and manufactures precision advanced micro-castings for aero engines, including those on Airbus A380s and that will power Boeing 787s.
A Belgian-led technology satellite will provide vital data on space weather while validating critical hardware for upcoming European science missions. Proba-2, launched on Nov. 2, 2009, along with the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity earth science spacecraft, is the second in the European Space Agency’s Project for Onboard Autonomy (Proba) initiative. Proba is intended to provide inexpensive, short-lead-time opportunities to demonstrate novel technologies in orbit while piggybacking science experiments that might otherwise not find their way into space.
On Feb. 19, India is set to commission another four of a MiG-29K maritime jet order for 16. Six of the fighters have already arrived at the Goa naval air base. On top of this order, India and Russia are set to sign a $1.2-billion contract for an additional 29 MiG-29Ks. The fighters will operate from both the oft-delayed 44,570-ton aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, now set to be inducted in 2013, and from a 40,000-ton indigenous carrier that is expected to be ready in 2012-15.
Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. has begun flying the fourth Superjet 100 prototype. The aircraft, in final standard configuration, will be used to evaluate onboard equipment and avionics, and support type certification. Three existing prototypes have accumulated more than 1,300 flight hours in over 500 flights. The Superjet 100 could receive its airworthiness certificate in July, but Sukhoi sources insist the date will depend on production and certification of the Superjet 100’s SaM146 engine.
