The National Reconnaissance Office is beginning a launch surge to orbit three secret missions worth nearly $2 billion over the next month. Two involve NRO spacecraft flying on Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS vehicles, indicating the launch of new, or relatively new, NRO spacecraft designs. The third flight involves a much heavier but more traditional reconnaissance payload on a Titan IVB.
Rejecting Air New Zealand's offer to buy Virgin Blue, Sir Richard Branson last week said he will instead invest ``millions more'' in fleet and new route expansion for his Down Under low-fare carrier. The sale ``would have meant A$250 million [$130 million] net profit on our investment,'' Branson said, but it also meant ``selling out'' the Australian public and the Virgin Blue staff. The decision is aligned with the carrier's position of keeping low fares and competition alive and well in the region.
Inevitably, Lockheed Martin's claim that its X-35 Joint Strike Fighter contender is the first aircraft to conduct a short takeoff, go supersonic, hover and land vertically, all in a single flight, is under fire. A group of Marines, led by former test pilot Art Nalls, say that members of VMA-231 accomplished the feat in October 1983 while patrolling off Lebanon. The AV-8A--smaller and faster than today's AV-8B--would take off from the USS Tarawa, climb to 40,000 ft. and dive. On the way down, the Harriers were clocked at up to Mach 1.09.
The European Space Agency has rolled back proposed funding increases for new space telecommunications and Earth observation projects in anticipation of expected resistance from some countries, especially Germany. ESA will propose 1.5 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for the Artes telecom program at the agency's Ministerial Council in November, more than the 1 billion euros requested in 1999 but less than the 2.1 billion euros initially planned (AW&ST June 25, p. 51). Spending will include 500 million euros for a new large satellite project.
DGAC French civil aviation authority and the British Civil Aviation Authority have jointly ratified modifications needed to permit Concorde operators to once more take to the skies. Last week, after months of detailed scrutiny, Michelin Air X radial tires, Kevlar fuel tank liners and additional protection to electric and hydraulic systems located near the aircraft's main landing gear evolved into a Franco-British Mandatory Airworthiness Directive. It lists modifications that must be applied by Air France and British Airways to their Concorde fleets.
President Bush's nearly $200-billion, 10-year defense buildup is running athwart the fiscal and political tensions sired by the teetering economy. With the nation just barely skirting a recession, tax receipts are down and the federal surplus is shrinking dramatically. Many in Congress would prefer to jettison some portion of Bush's $330-billion defense request for the new fiscal year, 2002, which starts Oct. 1, rather than court the political risks of tapping into Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
India's efforts to partially privatize its state-owned airlines have been given a bitter dose of reality by Singapore Airlines' decision to withdraw as a partner with one of India's largest family conglomerates that wanted to buy into Air India. The Sept. 1 withdrawal has prompted its erstwhile Indian partner, the Tata Group, to seek another high-profile candidate to bring the kind of airline management expertise that Singapore Airlines (SIA) would have offered.
The Sukhoi Su-80 two-engine utility turboprop made its maiden flight at Zhukovsky airfield near Moscow (AW&ST Aug. 27, p. 25). The 26-min. flight on Sept. 4 was performed by Sukhoi tests pilots Igor Votintcev and Yury Vashuk. The manufacturer is planning to test and certify the aircraft, powered by General Electric CT7-9B, by 2004.
The European Commission's competition directorate is considering whether to launch an in-depth investigation of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900's funding. The British government plans to provide up to 250 million pounds ($360 million) in loans to help develop the 68,000-lb.-thrust turbofan, a derivative of Trent versions in production. According to ``a rival engine manufacturer,'' this manner of funding constitutes illegal state aid and distorts competition. The Trent 900's rival, the Engine Alliance GP7200, was jointly developed by General Electric and Pratt&Whitney.
Nav Canada, the Canadian air traffic control service, will use Orthogon's O4D trajectory prediction program in its new Sequencing and Scheduling System intended to improve flow at the airports of Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. The program takes into account aircraft type, weight and performance, airline operating procedures and preferences, and weather as well as flight plan information and ATC constraints (AW&ST Apr. 9, p. 21).
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt has become director of community and education relations at Boeing headquarters. She was executive director of the Brain Research Foundation, an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
A proposal to make Memphis International Airport a ``system leader''--a guinea-pig facility that demonstrates the integration of all major air traffic control advances--is the FedEx ``challenge'' to the FAA and the aviation industry that the FAA likes the least. The agency is untroubled when FedEx calls for strengthening the systems approach in the Operational Evolution Plan (OEP), injecting technology advances into the plan and speeding up the 10-year schedule. But the Memphis idea draws resistance.
Robert Paul has been named director for Boeing Shared Services Group at the company's new headquarters in Chicago, while Kristi Savacool will be vice president/general manager of the Boeing Shared Services Group-Puget Sound region in Seattle. Paul has been director of operations at the Boeing Center for Leadership and Learning in St. Louis. Savacool has been vice president-commercial airplanes information systems/chief information officer of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (BCAG).
The first version of the long-awaited analysis of alternatives for a replacement for the EA-6B Prowler electronic jamming aircraft has been briefed to a senior Pentagon review group. So far, ``it's a huge menu of options and it is left up to each of the services to choose from it,'' said an official familiar with the document. Some of the findings are that it would be cheaper to reopen the EA-6B production line than for the Navy to build an F/A-18 jammer, a G model nicknamed the Growler.
Honeywell, teamed with the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command in Huntsville, Ala., plans to develop a miniature, G-hardened inertial measurement unit and guidance navigation unit, both of which will take advantage of micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS), inertial gyros and accelerometers. One of the program's objectives is to devise and produce prototype IMU products that will survive greater than 20,000gs of shock in a 2-cu.-in.-or-less volume with an accuracy of 0.5 deg. per hr.
The debate about ballistic missile defense and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty boils down to this: conservatives put too much faith in deterrence (the threat of punishment) and liberals take too much comfort from arms control (restraint through verification). Yet, neither deterrence nor arms control, by itself, prevents war. Conservatives insist that weakness invites aggression, and that strength deters it. But strength can just as easily stimulate aggression, as the everlasting competition among sovereign states attests.
Open Channel Software (www.openchannelsoftware.com) is trolling to find software from universities or research labs that can be commercialized for the business market. The for-profit company is an arm of the nonprofit Open Channel Foundation, which serves as a repository and development community for open-source software, where the source code is publicly available. The foundation now hosts about 150 open-source programs.
Transport Canada last week levied its largest fine ever against Air Transat for maintenance infractions on the Airbus A330-200 involved in the Aug. 24 engines-out emergency landing in the Azores, and limited the other twins, A310s and Boeing 757s, in the charter carrier's fleet to 90-min. ETOPS authority.
Japan's army is now thinking of purchasing about 60 Boeing AH-64D Apaches with Longbow millimeter wave radar equipment to replace aging Bell AH-1S attack helicopters (AW&ST Sept. 3, p. 76). The unit cost of the aircraft is expected to be about 6 billion yen ($50 million). The army's original plan was to buy 80-90 helicopters to replace the 92 AH-1Ss that Fuji Heavy Industries built under license from 1977-98, but lack of funding forced a curtailment of the order. To date, the only official buy is of the first 10 as part of the 2001-05 defense plan.
Japan Aircraft Development Corp. and the country's three biggest aerospace companies, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki and Fuji, are expected to sign an agreement with Boeing under which two advanced technologies that they have developed--computational fluid dynamics and light-weight composite materials--are to be transferred to Boeing for use on the Sonic Cruiser high-speed transport. Both have been researched and developed by the three Japanese firms as part of their supersonic transport studies under grants from the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry.
Independent maintenance, repair and overhaul companies may not survive the current downturn in the global airline business unless they can reinvent themselves to find new opportunities in the increasingly competitive MRO market, industry observers predicted.
George M. Skurla, who led final checkout of NASA/Grumman lunar modules for the initial Apollo missions and became president of the Grumman Corp., died Sept. 2 at Melbourne, Fla., hospital of complications from a respiratory infection. He was 80.
Japan Air System has ordered three Airbus A300-600Rs to supplement the 19 already in its fleet. JAS also flies 17 A300B2/B4s. The 290-seat aircraft are to be delivered in August, September and November 2002. Also signing on the dotted line was Japan Air Commuter, a JAS subsidiary, for six Bombardier Dash 8-400 turboprops to replace Nihon YS-11s. The 75-seat turboprops are to be delivered before 2006. JAS' total order is valued at $458 million.
James K. Miller, a member of the technical staff of the Navigation and Mission Design Section of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has received the Mechanics and Control of Flight Award from the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Other recent AIAA award winners are: Von Braun Award for Excellence in Space Program Management, Han Hwangbo, vice president of Korea Telecom; Energy Systems Award, Subramanyam R.
