USN Rear Adms. (lower half) Steven R. Eastburg, Janice M. Hamby and William E. Shannon, 3rd, have been nominated for promotion to rear admiral. Eastburg is program executive officer (PEO) for air anti-submarine warfare, assault and special mission programs at NAS Patuxent River, Md., while Hamby is director for command and control systems at North American Aerospace Defense Command/director of architectures and integration for U.S. Northern Command, Peterson AFB, Colo. Shannon is PEO for strike weapons and unmanned aviation at NAS Patuxent River.
The U.S. Congress has been notified of the potential sale of seven Boeing CH-47F heavy-lift helicopters to Australia for an estimated $560 million. The Australian Army operates five CH-47Ds purchased in the 1990s.
Testing of the U.S. Navy’s P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft will be based at Seattle for several months longer than planned, to make more use of Boeing’s flight test expertise, says the Navy. The decision to conduct more work on the West Coast before delivery to NAS Patuxent River, Md., was announced shortly after T-1, the first P-8A, made a successful 3-hr. 31-min. maiden flight on Apr. 25 from Boeing’s 737 assembly site at nearby Renton.
Robert F. Thompson Former shuttle program manager (Houston, Tex.), O. Glenn Smith Former shuttle systems engineering manager Johnson Space Center (Houston, Tex.)
The recent safety report by the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) missed the mark. The panel was set up to review the most important safety issues facing NASA. Instead, ASAP issued recommendations that went beyond safety and into program policy regarding the retirement of the shuttle, buying rides from the Russians, and the schedule and budget of the Constellation program.
John Seifert has been appointed vice president-finance for the Philadelphia-based Taurus Aerospace Group . Henry David has become vice president/general manager of Taurus subsidiary Brek Manufacturing of Los Angeles. Phil Bathurst and Philip Fields have been named vice president-operations and vice president-new business development, respectively, for Taurus subsidiary Aviation Technical Services Inc., Everett, Wash.
Britain’s unmanned combat air vehicle road map is being thrown into question as tensions mount between BAE Systems and the Defense Ministry over the pace and funding of UCAV development.
Europe’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS)—which is intended to measure concentrations of moisture in soil and salt in the oceans—has been scheduled for a Sept. 9 launch on a Russian Rockot booster. The mission—the second in the European Space Agency’s Earth Explorer series—had been expected to lift off in July (AW&ST Feb. 9, p. 57), but the slot was apparently needed for an unidentified Russian government launch.
Meanwhile, industry sources say the White House is backing Gates’s proposal to proceed with a competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS North America to select the next-generation refueling tanker for the Air Force. Both companies, and some powerful lawmakers including Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, have expressed willingness to negotiate a split buy, but so far the executive branch has balked. Three key senators aren’t persuaded yet, either.
From high-speed helicopters to dial-up autonomy, Sikorsky’s spending on research and development is at its highest level in years as the company readies upgrades for its current products and paves the way for future platforms.
European Union emissions Allowances (EUAs) under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme recovered in April following the release of partial verified 2008 CO2 emissions data for the 27-member state bloc by the European Commission. A modicum of confidence seemed to emerge in the market following the the EC’s release of the data on Apr. 1. Although not complete, the figures gave the market the first broad indicator of where the EU ETS stands at the end of the first year of its Phase II period, which runs from 2008-12.
Efforts in Congress to block Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s plan to end production of the F-22 stealth fighter and the C-17 cargolifter appear to have stalled, in part, because of White House intervention, according to an industry insider. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has been collecting signatures on a letter to Gates encouraging him to reconsider ending the F-22 and C-17 lines. But few senators are signing up so far. The White House called several lawmakers, including Sen.
Pentagon leadership is encouraging the U.S. Air Force to embark on a next-generation unmanned aircraft system (UAS) sooner rather than later, despite the Defense Dept.’s push to maximize production of Predators and Reapers for support of wars abroad.
The FAA plans to have the first voluntary safety reporting program for air traffic controllers up and running by year-end and it is accelerating training of 17,000 controllers who face culture shock in adapting to the new system.
Europe’s Herschel-Planck dual telescope mission has been set for May 14 on board an Ariane 5 ECA launch vehicle. It has been subject to repeated delays since mid-April, most recently because of a launcher component issue.
All 15 nations participating in the Alliance Ground Surveillance program expect to sign a memorandum of understanding to launch the effort by the end of May, the Conference of National Armament Directors announced on Apr. 30. Signatures will clear the way for the long-awaited award of a contract for the program, which is built around Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Block 40 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft.
A flight crew’s faulty data entry resulted in an Emirates Airbus A340-500 overrunning on takeoff by almost 300 meters (1,000 ft.) at Melbourne on Mar. 20, preliminary results from an Australian investigation show. A wrong weight figure, 100 metric tons less than the true weight of 362.9 metric tons, resulted in the engines generating less thrust than needed for the 3,660-meter runway, says the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Sixty-five seconds after brake release and 964 meters before the end of the runway, the aircraft was traveling too slowly (at 147 kt.
French space agency CNES is refining a concept for a new multifunction bus that could serve a wide variety of low-Earth-orbit missions. The bus, suitable for spacecraft in the 500-800-kg. class, would replace the Proteus platform, developed in the late 1990s. Thales Alenia Space, which supplies Proteus, has built six of the spacecraft. Five—the Jason 1 and 2 altimetry missions, the Calipso A-Train spacecraft and the Corot planet-finding mission—are in orbit. One, SMOS (see above), is to be orbited in September.
Citing “relentless” decreases in air transport demand, Japan Airlines (JAL) predicts deepening losses for its 2008 fiscal year, ended Mar. 31, while All Nippon Airways (ANA) is using asset sales to stem its red ink. The JAL Group cites the “volatility of the economy” in the last quarter as reason to revise downward its forecast issued Feb. 6, when revenues of ¥1.98 trillion ($20.5 billion) were predicted. It now expects ¥1.95 trillion, compared to ¥2.23 trillion for its fiscal 2007.
France has placed a €220-million ($293-million) order for five more EC725 helicopters to ensure transport, search and rescue, and medevac capacity for Afghanistan and other overseas theaters. The order is part of a €2.4-billion stimulus package to underpin activity in the aerospace and defense industry. The EC725s, to be delivered from late 2010 to 2012, will complement 14 Caracals in service, three of which are in Afghanistan.
Lockheed Martin is to begin building MC-130J combat tankers for USAF Special Operations Command (SOC) after receiving a $15.8-million contract for configuration changes to six production-standard KC-130Js. MC changes, including a refueling receptacle, will be incorporated into KC-130J tanker/transports. The first MC-130J will be delivered in 2010 to begin replacing MC-130Es.
Boeing expects to receive the last major fuselage subassemblies for the first 747-8 in early May, clearing the way for final body join of the stretched freighter version at the end of June.
Steps already undertaken by the U.S. military and the world’s spacecraft operators probably will be sufficient to manage the growing problem of space debris. But that could change if there are more debris-producing events like the January 2007 Chinese antisatellite weapon test that shattered a defunct weather satellite and left a cloud of debris in orbit.
The Apr. 20 issue (pp. 8, 18 and 70) really underlines the “Collision Course” (AW&ST Apr. 6, p. 23) of competing strategies aimed at “controlling” global weather by attempting to regulate various gases and particulates.
