Jose Monroy’s letter “Why Use Countermeasures?” [in the era of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast] as well as your articles on ADS-B in recent years, including David Hughes’ “ADS-B Brass Ring” (AW&ST May 28, p. 9; June 18, p. 80), motivated me to appeal to stakeholders to address security issues in ADS-B system development/operation carefully.
A malfunctioning hydrogen propellant valve in the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) RL10 Centaur upper stage engine sent two National Reconnaissance Office ocean surveillance spacecraft into the wrong orbit during launch from Cape Canaveral June 15, and not the Centaur stage itself, the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) has decided. The Air Force had earlier put the blame on the Centaur, which is Lockheed Martin’s responsibility, instead of the PWR engine.
Carriers in the U.S. regional industry hit with unexpectedly high levels of pilot attrition during the first quarter appear to be returning to more normal statistics, but recruiting qualified candidates for projected staffing continues to pose challenges.
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee zeroed the Army’s Fiscal 2008 production funding request of $468.3 billion for the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter built by Bell. The program suffered a stop-work order earlier this year, though Army officials have since approved a get-well plan for the program, which includes a one-year slip for the first unit equipped from late Fiscal 2010. From the cut, $47 million goes to the program’s development account and another $31 million is set aside for continued service of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter.
House defense appropriators are showing skepticism about the C-5 re-engining program at a time when the airframe’s chief competitor, the Boeing C-17, is gaining support from a group of retired Air Force and Army general officers. The lawmakers propose to rescind $76.8 million of Fiscal 2006 and 2007 funding for the C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-Engining Program, overseen by Lockheed Martin and geared to bring reliability up from less than 50% to 75%.
Korea Aerospace Industries will develop an indigenous attack helicopter, probably with help from Eurocopter, under a program that the defense ministry has revived in its new medium-term defense plan, for 2008-12. The ministry will spend 700 billion won ($761 million) on the program in the coming five years and has deleted funding for 36 imported heavy attack helicopters, a long-standing requirement that Boeing would almost certainly have filled with its AH-64D Longbow Apache.
A team led by Germany’s Diehl has contracted to study a networked multi-robot system for the European Defense Agency. The €4.5-million ($6.2-million) three-year project aims to see how several robotic systems could be coordinated for surveillance or some other joint task. Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain are participants.
Sheldon Meth (see photo) has become chief technology officer of the System Planning Corp. , Arlington, Va. He was program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology and Virtual Space Offices.
Alenia Aeronautica is ramping up C-27J production as demand for the tactical airlifter continues to grow among NATO members and export customers. The company expects to produce 18 aircraft by year-end for its four customers—Italy, Greece, Lithuania and Bulgaria. The need for airlift is such that Alenia tried to get the Italian air force to defer some deliveries to allow aircraft to be diverted to other customers. However, Italy said it could not allow further postponements.
The House appropriations lawmakers take a gentle approach in their Fiscal 2008 spending bill to the troubled Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm), built by Lockheed Martin. Having dipped to a reliability of 58%, USAF has refocused the program to fix a series of reliability problems, including a GPS dropout issue that interferes with the missile’s guidance system. Despite the problems, the House members propose only a $34-million reduction to Jassm’s procurement account, leaving $167 million for purchase of units in Fiscal 2008.
The European Commission has approved a joint venture between SES Astra and Eutelsat to jointly provide an S-band mobile TV service. The service, to use a pair of S-band transponders on Eutelsat’s W2A satellite, is to be fully available by 2009, but partial coverage using a ground ancillary terrestrial component network could begin next year (AW&ST Nov. 6, 2006, p. 36).
Boeing and Goodrich have extended a long-term agreement through 2012 for Goodrich to be the exclusive provider of original equipment and after-market landing gear for the 737, 747, 767 and 777. The gear are made at Goodrich facilities in Ohio, Tennessee, Washington, Canada and Poland.
As lifelong space travel and science fiction enthusiast, I am always interested when the two come together. I was struck by the NASA/JPL rendering (AW&ST July 9, p. 27), which is a conceptual cousin of the Wernher von Braun-inspired Mars Ship lander shown in the film Conquest of Space. It, too, featured a lander that later launched a return rocket—in a very similar view. The von Braun influence on NASA has emerged in many unexpected places.
Disturbing developments during the past month overshadow the success of NASA’s STS-117 mission in June, in which astronauts dealt admirably with adversity as they continued building the International Space Station. These developments raise serious questions about NASA’s plans to sustain and use the ISS once construction is complete.
Lockheed Martinworkers from the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans stow space shuttle external tank No. 120 in a special enclosed barge July 24 prior to shipping it to Kennedy Space Center, Fla. A commercial tug was scheduled to deliver the barge and its 154-ft.-long cargo to KSC on July 29 after a 925-mi. voyage. There the tank will be stacked with the shuttle Discovery for the STS-120/10A International Space Station assembly mission in October, which will deliver the second pressurized node where the European and Japanese laboratory modules will be attached.
NASA will begin a major new search for life on other planets this week when it launches the $420-million Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Lockheed Martin Phoenix Mars lander. Planned for a predawn liftoff Aug. 3 on a Delta II, Phoenix is the first mission since the Viking landers 30 years ago to carry hardware specifically devoted to detecting life’s clues beyond Earth (AW&ST June 11, p. 56).
And speaking of the CFM56, BOC Aviation, the former Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise (SALE) that was bought recently by the Bank of China, has selected current-generation CFM56-5Bs to power seven firm orders it has for the Airbus A320 family, and 10 options. The firm order is valued at $95 million over the life of the product.
U.S. refusal to supply Lockheed Martin F-22s for Japan’s current fighter requirement has prompted Tokyo’s defense ministry to propose a stealth technology demonstrator, ensuring it will be more independent of Washington in future programs.
The first Embraer Phenom 100 (No. 99801) completed its first flight July 26 at the manufacturer’s Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, headquarters. Test pilots Antonio Braganca Silva and Eduardo Alves Menini, and flight test engineer Marcelo Toledo Basile said all maneuvers and tests were “performed as planned.” The event occurred two years after Embraer’s launch of the Phenom 100 very light and 300 light jet program.
The chief advocate for Reliable Replacement Warhead program for nuclear weapons says he’s not proposing a new weapon design, just a newer, safer, tamper-proof package of the old ones. In fact, Thomas P. D’Agostino, acting Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the man with responsibility for designing, producing and maintaining safe, secure and reliable nuclear weapons, says he just wants to study the idea.During the Cold War, nuclear weapons were built for maximum yield and minimum weight.
The U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command has awarded Raytheon a $23.2-million contract to provide AN/AQS-20A mine-hunting sonar engineering services and support. The award—an option to a 2005 contract—puts the current value at $139 million. AN/AQS provides critical capabilities in support of mine-clearing ops in both deep ocean and littoral waters by enabling detection, classification and localization of bottom, close-tethered and volume mines. Engineering and support services will be performed out of the company’s IDS Maritime Mission Center in Portsmouth, R.I.
The Australian International Air Services Commission has approved Virgin Blue’s request to operate nonstop flights between Australia and the U.S. starting in late 2008. The company says it will initially attract 12% of the market with the 10 weekly services that it plans. The competitors are Qantas and United, with Singapore Airlines still hoping for approval. The Virgin Blue Group has just unveiled the name of the new long-haul carrie—V Australia—selected by judges from 6,000 entries in a country-wide contest to name the airline.
