French space agency CNES has begun working on a program to develop light launch vehicles and other technologies in cooperation with university students, associations and small business. The program, Perseus, has already test-fired a student-designed hybrid engine that could be used for an airborne launcher to orbit nanosatellites or high-altitude, long-endurance UAVs, and has identified 25 other projects. Coordination will be centered at the University of Evry, near CNES facilities and launch operator Arianespace south of Paris.
For airborne receivers, tanker requirements equate to boom/drogue availability and offload capacity. Rather than a single type tanker, a mix of three different-size aircraft—all with the same flight decks, procedures and crews—would better serve U.S. Air Force requirements.
The French army has taken delivery of the first three Tiger attack helicopters to be earmarked for operational duty. The rotorcraft were handed over last week to the 5th Combat Helicopter Regiment in Pau. The machines are the first of 20 Tigers to be supplied to the regiment by 2010. The regiment has invested €40 million ($59 million) in new facilities to support the Tiger fleet, and plans to add a tactical flight simulator at the end of 2009.
Italian space agency ASI and German aerospace center DLR have signed a bilateral agreement to facilitate cooperation between the agencies. ASI President Giovanni Bignami said the inter-agency pact will facilitate collaboration on national, European and other space programs and allow a balanced three-way dialogue with the other major European space power, France, with which the two agencies already have bilateral agreements.
The French air force is urging the government to quickly initiate replacement of its aging tanker fleet, with concerns mounting that a near-term capability gap is inevitable without it. Moreover, the service’s senior leadership warns that stretching out or curtailing Rafale fighter purchases could seriously impair mission capabilities.
Travel may be a hardship for many these days, so to ease the pain a bit, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport has installed 70 rocking chairs in passenger waiting areas. Rockers are not unknown at U.S. airports, but Lambert authorities are taking the special seating to a higher level, an official says. The chairs are built to specification, painted blue and bear the Lambert logo. Rockers were a top choice in informal passenger surveys.
Raytheon also won two contracts worth $241.8 million to overhaul and upgrade 34 Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems for the U.S. Navy and one for the Royal Australian Navy. The company will build 12 land-based Phalanx systems for the U.S. Army, too.
Europe’s leading low-fare carriers, Ryanair and EasyJet, are betting on significant traffic growth, but there are signs that the next 12 months or longer could be turbulent.
The first U.S. Air Force squadron dedicated solely to the mission of “defensive counterspace” is refining its tactics for monitoring satellite communications links in the Middle East, and it’s getting more equipment to expand the number of signals it observes around the globe.
The Middle East is beginning to assume a key role in the business aviation sector analogous in importance, if not yet in scale, to the region’s prominence in the commercial aircraft market. Traditionally, the region’s primary impact has been felt in so-called VVIP wide-body private jets. True to form, Airbus said here last week that the chairman of Kingdom Holding Co.—Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud—had signed up for the first VVIP version of the A380. It will be delivered in 2010, after which a year or two of cabin fitting still looms.
European industry is grappling with niggling problems and last-minute technical challenges as it works to keep to the latest launch schedule for the International Space Station’s Automated Transfer Vehicle. The ATV had at one point been due for launch this month, but the date has been pushed back into early 2008. The first ATV, the Jules Verne, had originally—and overly optimistically—been intended for launch in 2004.
Lockheed Martin is reviving work on fitting its F-16 strike fighter with a probe-and-drogue refueling system. Earlier designs included carrying a special pod for the mission. But now the aircraft maker is looking at a more integrated system. Why? It’s part of the company’s campaign to try and win the Indian Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) fighter competition. Lockheed Martin hopes to build its F-16 backlog to run into 2012. Even without India, the company believes there’s still a market for around another 100 aircraft.
The U.S. Air Force has returned 146 of its 224 F-15Es to flight after a fleetwide grounding—including all USAF F-15s—halted support worldwide for the aircraft this month. USAF’s 666 F-15s were grounded after an F-15C crash; a structural failure is the suspected root.
The U.S. Air Force by next summer hopes to field a target pod on its B-1B bombers, one of the few weapons delivery platforms not yet fitted with such a system. Integration efforts are already underway, says Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of Central Command air forces. The Air Force likes the idea of the long-endurance aircraft being on-station, ready to deliver up to 48,000 lb. of precision ordnance, he says.
Airbus has been selected to supply an A350XWB VVIP aircraft and Airbus Corporate Jet for C Jet Ltd. of Hong Kong. The A350 VVIP order, which is preliminary, was the first for the wide-body twin.
A Qantas order for 99 Airbus and Boeing narrow-body airliners signals that the Australian carrier’s expansion will rely heavily on profitable budget unit Jetstar and its Asian franchisees. The scale looks huge, since the venerable 87-year-old airline is ordering aircraft as if it has the growth plans of a baby-faced startup. “They now have more planes on order than they are flying,” JP Morgan analyst Matt Crowe says.
The U.K. is revising its policy of limiting passengers to taking one piece of hand luggage onto aircraft. The intent is to progressively remove the restriction as airport operators show they can meet carry-on screening requirements while dealing with more than one bag per passenger.
The British Royal Air Force (RAF) has begun live laser-guided weapon drop trials from the Eurofighter Typhoon using the Raytheon Enhanced Paveway II laser-guided bomb and Rafael Litening III laser-designator pod. The RAF is looking to begin a deployment with the Typhoon to support combat operations no later than mid-2008.
Tackling congestion and meeting security demands are the main drivers behind information technology investments by airports to handle continued passenger growth, according to a new SITA survey of top trends. Over the next two years, airports plan to make significant changes in passenger self-service and shared-use systems to meet the demands of phenomenal growth in passenger traffic and stricter security regulations, according to the survey.
Japan’s Selene probe has sent back these images of an “Earthset” from above the lunar south pole as part of the first batch of High Definition Television (HDTV) clips from the Moon. The images were collected Nov. 7, and transmitted to the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Usuda Deep Space Center for processing by Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) under a collaboration intended to raise public interest in space exploration (AW&ST July 30, p. 46).
The British Royal Air Force is expecting clearance to begin operating armed General Atomics Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles as early as next month. The Reaper is being operated by both the U.S. and the U.K. in Afghanistan. Wing Cdr. Andy Jeffrey, the officer commanding 39 Squadron, the RAF’s first for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), says the “release to service for weapons” is anticipated in “the middle of next month.”
The Nov. 13 vote by the European Parliament to include aviation in the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) drew immediate return fire from the International Air Transport Assn. and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization. Members of Parliament moved aviation a step closer to being included in the ETS and adopted some amendments to the original proposal from the European Commission regarding a variety of details.
Lt. Gen. Henry (Trey) Obering, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), says the time is right for the agency to begin taking over technical matters related to cruise missile defense. The Pentagon earlier declined to add to the MDA’s responsibilities because it was focused on improving ballistic missile defenses (BMD) after a string of failures. Now, however, Obering says maturity of the BMD system is sound, and he’s ready to apply some of the fire control and other processes used by the BMD to the problem of countering cruise missile proliferation.
Fiona Rodford has been named group human resources director and Tom Kelly group director of corporate and public affairs for BAA . Rodford held the same position at Alliance and Leicester, while Kelly was the British prime minister’s official spokesman.
An Ariane 5 ECA orbited the U.K.’s second Skynet 5 military communication satellite and Brazil’s Star One C1 communications satellite Nov. 14, marking the fifth mission this year for the European launcher. Liftoff from Kourou, French Guiana, came at 5:06 p.m. EST following five days of technical delays. Launch of the latest Skynet 5 satellite is a significant step toward bolstering the U.K.’s milsatcom capacity, with British forces deployed on combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
