U.S. law enforcement officials say three alleged terrorists were plotting to blow up a number of U.S. passenger transports simultaneously over the Pacific before a fire in their bomb-making site caused their plan to unravel. Wali Khan Amin Shah, a suspect in the case, last week was arraigned in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York after being captured in Malaysia.
The Aug. 15 loss of the Lockheed Launch Vehicle was caused by failure of the first-stage thrust-vectoring system and of the Litton inertial measurement unit, according to a contractor team investigation board. Although the thrust-vectoring system failed first, either problem would have destroyed the launch of the CTA Inc. ``GEMstar-1'' small communications satellite, according to Howard D. Trudeau, vice president of engineering at Lockheed Martin Missiles&Space's Missile Systems Div.
CONGRESS FINALLY filed a conference report for the Fiscal 1996 U.S. Defense Authorization bill, but it is dotted with at least a half-dozen issues that are expected to trigger a veto by President Clinton. The stumbling blocks involve national missile defense, the B-2 bomber, contingency operations, environmental cleanup, preparations for renewed nuclear weapons production and testing, and an antisatellite program. The biggest single Democratic complaint against the conference bill involves ballistic missile defense.
Boeing's Machinists last week overwhelmingly voted to accept a new, four-year contract offer, ending a 69-day walkout. Workers started returning to work on Dec. 14. A last-minute phone dialogue between Boeing Chairman Frank Shrontz and George Kourpias, head of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, apparently paved the way for the final agreement.
Hughes Aircraft has assembled a British industry team to bid for the U.K.'s Conventionally Armed Stand Off Missile (CASOM) program, offering an air-launched derivative of the Tomahawk called the AirHawk. At a little more than 183 in. long, AirHawk is nearly 17 in. shorter than Tomahawk. Fit checks have been carried out on Tornado and Harrier aircraft.
Douglas (Wrong Way) Corrigan died on Dec. 9 in Orange, Calif. He was 88. Corrigan flew his Curtiss Robin from Floyd Bennett Field in New York to Baldonnel, Ireland, on July 17, 1938, defying the U.S. Commerce Dept.'s rejection of his request to make a transatlantic crossing (AVIATION, August, 1938, p. 55). He claimed that he had intended to fly to California, and his ``immortal explanation'' was that his compass was pointing in the wrong direction, AVIATION said. Corrigan was a Douglas Aircraft test pilot in World War 2.
Airfields at both Sarajevo and Tuzla this week are building toward their initial maximum daily total of about 25 heavy air transport arrivals as 60,000 NATO troops begin moving quickly into Bosnia following the signing of the Dayton peace accords in Paris Dec. 14. But poor winter weather is already starting to slow the air operations, according to officers at NATO Southern Command headquarters in Naples, Italy.
The FAA's sweeping ``Commuter Rule'' contains major changes in certification of airlines flying 10-19-seat aircraft, extends the mandatory pilot retirement of age 60 to small carriers and establishes more stringent training requirements in an effort to create a single level of safety.
The Clinton Administration is grappling with requests for an exemption that would allow at least one U.S. Defense Dept. payload to be orbited on an Israeli Shavit booster launching from American soil.
The reentry Dec. 10 of an Apollo-era Russian lunar module test vehicle resulted in unprecedented real-time cooperation between the U. S. Space Command and the Russian Air Force to track the falling debris hazard. The falling Russian lunar module, designated Cosmos 398, was observed entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean by a U. S. Air Force/TRW Defense Support Program (DSP) missile warning satellite in geosynchronous orbit.
Senior defense officials here expect the Royal Malaysian Air Force to order an additional 18 MiG-29s during the new five-year procurement cycle that begins in 1996. No decision has been announced, but officials expressed satisfaction at the introduction of the country's initial 18 MiG-29s. The last of that order arrived in August.
U.S. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL'S space station committee has qualms about NASA's approach to testing the orbital base's hardware before launch and its contingency plans for problems that might arise during assembly. The panel has told the agency that end-to-end verification of each launch package is not clearly defined. And it said there is little flexibility in the early stages of assembly, set to begin late in 1997, so planners should consider building spare components and finding alternatives to Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
The Galileo probe transmitted 58.5 min. of data from the atmosphere of Jupiter, about 20 min. beyond the primary science requirement to reach below water clouds, and 0.5-2 min. beyond the nominal mission. The exercise appears to be a ``complete success,'' NASA Ames project officials said (AW&ST Dec. 11, p. 32).
THE X-34 DISPUTE between NASA and industry partners Orbital Sciences and Rockwell International drags on. A meeting between the contractors and NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin last week failed to resolve differences over whether the reusable winged booster should use a Russian RD-120 engine, as NASA wants, or a Rocketdyne RS-27 (AW&ST Nov. 6, p. 30). Goldin has scheduled another meeting for this week.
Claims are resurfacing that the new U.S. Air Force/Navy primary training aircraft fails to accommodate a large enough percentage of smaller women pilot candidates.
An advanced simulation system that uses satellite imagery to allow real-time ``flyovers'' of Bosnia was crucial in bringing about the recent Dayton peace agreement. Developed at the behest of the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), the system combined sophisticated off-the-shelf software with U.S. reconnaissance satellite data to provide a three-dimensional, moving model of Bosnia's terrain. The virtual reality software allowed U.S. and NATO pilots to simulate bombing runs on Bosnian Serb targets before their actual missions.
