The Pentagon hopes the transition of USAF to an expeditionary force, and related measures, will help slow service attrition. Due to the healthy economy and overseas deployments of up to 200 days a year, USAF is facing some of the lowest retention rates in history with only 69% of second-term enlisted personnel opting to reup. The Expeditionary Aerospace Force structure plans to cap deployments at 90 days every 15 months and is adding 5,000 base support positions to cover functions that become undermanned when units deploy.
The breakdown of the latest round of negotiations on a open skies agreement between the U.K. and U.S. has put a further damper on the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines. U.S. negotiators said there were productive discussions on technical issues during the talks here last week, but they cut the negotiations short after concluding that no progress was being made on any of the outstanding core issues.
Transportation Safety Board of Canada investigators this week will deploy two specially equipped barges to raise wreckage of Swissair Flight 111 from the ocean floor southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The board's investigator in charge, Vic Gerden, said the recovery of wiring and other debris from that MD-11's cockpit area is crucial to determining what caused the aircraft to crash on Sept. 2, killing all 229 on board.
John Damoulakis (see photo) has become director of space programs in the microwave, space and mission electronics sector of Lockheed Martin Sanders, Nashua, N.H. He succeeds Frank Mauro, who is now at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, Palmdale, Calif. Damoulakis was director of technical operations for the advanced technology sector.
Three years after the corporate titans of the international satellite communications industry rushed to file plans for billions of dollars in revolutionary new Ka-band satcom systems, few of the spacecraft are actually being built because companies are hampered instead in defining Ka services and how to spread satcom costs and risks during tight economic times.
As it presses ahead with indigenous aircraft development in the face of U.S. sanctions, India's Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) has sent the core of the nation's Kaveri turbofan engine to Russia's CIAM facility near Moscow for high-altitude testing. Called the Kabini, the core consists of the high-pressure (HP) compressor, HP turbine and combustor. After the tests, the Center for Airborne Systems in Bangalore will oversee integration of the Kaveri in preparation for flight testing on a Tupolev Tu-124.
Richard A. Milburn, vice president-plans and policy for Northrop Grumman International, has been named managing director/vice president of Astor U.K. operations, based in London.
Air Vice Marshal Peter Norris has been named deputy chief of defense procurement (operations) in the U.K. Ministry of Defense, succeeding Lt. Gen. Sir Robert Hayman-Joyce, who is retiring. Air Vice Marshal Tony Nicholson, who has been director of operational requirements (air), will succeed Norris as director-general of Air Systems 1.
In an advertiser-sponsored market supplement, an error was made in converting European currency units (ECUs) to U.S. dollars. The conversion of 1997 European industry revenues of 55.3 billion ECUs should have read $60.8 billion (AW&ST Oct. 5, p. S3).
If Europe successfully embraces a single currency, the 11 core nations will command 18.6% of the world's trade, compared to the U.S.' 16.1%, John Weston, CEO of British Aerospace, said in Washington last week. This parity will create a real alternative to the dollar as a global trade and reserve currency and likely trigger the flow of $100-300 billion in reserves from dollars to Euros. In the private sector, transfers could reach $350-700 billion, thereby creating a strong Euro and a weak dollar and possibly changing the economic relationship between Europe and the U.S.
In an extraordinary about-face, Malaysia's national flag carrier says it will begin flying from its old home, the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang, to nearly all of its domestic destinations as of Oct. 25.
Frost&Sullivan, an international marketing consulting company, has completed a study of electronic warfare equipment markets worldwide that anticipates revenues will grow from $4.7 billion in 1995 to $6.9 billion in 2005. Military planners are relying on fewer aircraft platforms, so these vital assets must be protected from increasingly sophisticated weapons. Electronic warfare equipment is also becoming more readily available to developing countries. And competition in the market is intensifying.
The Rumsfeld Commission's warning of a U.S. missile defense gap mistakenly assumes rogue states are exempt from the exacting engineering demands for producing deliverable nuclear weapons, arms controllers claim. Although the commission suggested that pariah states such as North Korea and Iran could move expeditiously to the deployment of simplified intercontinental ballistic missiles, ``for these countries with limited technical and management expertise, such high technical risk programs present a most unlikely scenario,'' contends Spurgeon M.
Expeditionary Force Experiment 1999, the follow-on to this year's inaugural effort to find better ways to fight with a small but well-armed and well-connected force, will feature two key changes. First, space-based communications and sensors will be a primary new focus, and the desires of the commands that control satellite operations will dictate a shift from the limited offshore test ranges near Eglin AFB, Fla., to the much larger complex of land-locked ranges that surround Nellis AFB, Nev.
Australian carrier Flight West Airline's first services to Papua New Guinea on Oct. 12 signalled a liberalizing of air services as a solution for the island nation's chronic airline problems. To encourage more flights, Civil Aviation Minister Kala Swokin said Papua New Guinea will expand fifth freedom rights for foreign carriers to fly local passengers on international routes abandoned by the national carrier, Air Niugini. State-owned Air Niugini has been torn by internal problems and continual losses. Its aging fleet has suffered reliability problems.
Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems has won a Single Process Initiative award from the Defense Dept. for using e-mail to streamline data management. LMTAS developed an electronic contractor's reporting form as a substitute for paper forms and reported an 80% reduction in cycle time. . . . Pratt&Whitney Canada has selected two Cimlinc Inc. Shop Excellerator tools to improve assembly operations.
A 14-year-old ICAO proposal for restricting the use of weapons against civil aircraft to only the most extreme cases of airspace violations took full effect Oct. 1 with its ratification by Cuba and Guinea.
Australia's Liberal Party won the nation's parliamentary elections on Oct. 3, assuring a continuation of an extensive reequipment and upgrade program for the nation's defense forces and more liberalized rules for foreign airlines to operate on domestic routes.
A fire-fighting Grumman S-2 crashed on Oct. 5 in mountainous terrain south of the Banning Pass in Southern California while fighting a fire there in the early afternoon. The aircraft was owned by the California Forestry and Fire Dept., and contract pilot Gary Nagel was killed in the crash.
Deborah Meehan has been promoted to president/chief operating officer from senior vice president of Simat, Helliesen and Eichner Inc., Cambridge, Mass.
Aresurrected Philippine Airlines resumed operations last week amid speculation that Northwest Airlines and Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific want a stake in it. Some Asian airline analysts dismiss their interest as purely a courtesy. They point the difficulty PAL has had in attracting foreign carriers to a simple marketing alliance as an indication of how unattractive it is as an investment opportunity.
A European airline is negotiating with U.K.-based Remote Diagnostic Technologies to become the first carrier to equip its aircraft with a new-technology tool designed to help save lives in the event of medical emergencies during flight. The device can be used easily by flight attendants to collect key medical data that is transmitted using a built-in modem to doctors on the ground through the satellite telephone system. A voice link also is provided. A 10-kg.
The Boeing 717 has cleared two major milestones with the start of flight testing and initial assembly of production aircraft, but the company is still trying to land the first big order for the 100-seat transport since the program was launched in 1995.
The Asian economic crisis dented Boeing's third-quarter delivery totals. The company now has 36 aircraft that customers couldn't pay for in desert storage. All told, Boeing delivered 123 transports in the July-September quarter, about 10% lower than the previous three months. That total was boosted, however, by a rush of deliveries as Boeing cleared parts shortages and production delays. It also completed modifications to several early-production next-generation 737s to meet European certification concerns.
