U.S. AIR FORCE ARMSTRONG LABORATORY, Brooks AFB, Tex., is seeking a business partner to exploit the commercial potential of an expert authoring tool for computer-based training. The Advanced Instructional Design Advisor allows the rapid design, development and testing of multimedia and interactive CBT, and especially computer-mediated simulation. A related program provides guidance for novice instructional courseware designers.
CATHAY PACIFIC, LIKE MOST ASIAN CARRIERS, has always emphasized a wide-body fleet. Its smallest aircraft is the A340-200 with 233 seats, which it uses on long-range, thin routes. But now officials in the airline planning office are beginning to study the A321 to develop regional routes. The A320 has made a favorable impression on management because the aircraft are the mainstay of Cathay's sister carrier, Dragonair.
Meir Bartov (see photo) has been named vice president-marketing of Elisra Electronic Systems, Bene Baraq, Israel. He was head of the Falcon airborne early warning system project at Elta Electronics Industries.
UAL Corp.'s employee owners must be ecstatic; the company's stock price is behaving as though it's on automatic pilot, with only one direction to go: up.
LORAL COMMAND AND CONTROL SYSTEMS will integrate three planning, intelligence and command-and-control systems into a new Theater Battle Management Core System under a recent $35-million contract. With options over six years, the award could be worth $143 million. Monitored by the U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Center's Command and Control Directorate, the program is intended to automate C2I systems used in support of joint and combined air operations. The Colorado Springs-based Loral unit expects to release the first major block of TBMCS software within two years.
NATO commanders are completing extensive new air operations plans for the Bosnian theater to coordinate the 3,000-4,000 military heavy logistics flights, hundreds of military helicopter operations and fighter close air support for 60,000 allied troops about to flow into the region for peacekeeping operations.
With the launch of a new corporate identity, China Airlines expects to add 44 new aircraft to its fleet during the next seven years. The orders would bring the fleet to 67 aircraft, assuming the sale of 14 aircraft, according to Vice President Sandy K.Y. Liu. Airframe makers have been expecting an order for about 15 150-seaters for some months, which Liu said was ``imminent.'' The airline now owns 737s and leases A320s. Following those orders, the airline will seek a new 250-seater and follow with a 300-350-seat aircraft for regional routes.
Hollis L. Harris, the chairman and chief executive officer of Air Canada, is considering retiring in 1997 to help launch a startup airline in the U.S. that would be interested in buying 35 Air Canada DC-9s destined for the auction block.
Robert J. Witham (see photos) has been named chairman/president/general manager of Alliant Defense Electronics Systems Inc., Hopkins, Minn. He was vice president-Washington operations. Joel L. Houlton has been appointed vice president-engineering for Alliant Techsystems' Defense Systems Group. He was technology director of the company's target defeat mechanism core competency.
McDonnell Douglas' first F/A-18E Super Hornet made an abbreviated first flight from St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Nov. 29. The aircraft was flown to a maximum altitude of 10,000 ft. and speed of 250 kt. by project pilot Fred Madenwald. An environmental control system caution light cut the planned 70-min. flight short to 26 min. Mechanics are troubleshooting the aircraft, which should return to flight early this week.
Bombardier's new Challenger 604 business jet will give corporate operators 4,000 naut. mi. of range, more efficient engines and an all new glass cockpit designed to simplify access to key inflight data. The main objective in the upgrade of the Challenger was to improve the aircraft's transatlantic capability without compromising its performance on domestic trips. Doug Adkins, Canadair's chief test pilot, said he believes the 604 achieves this goal.
ANOTHER FOCUS OF ARPA ACTIVITY WILL BE to provide field commanders with more comprehensive and timely ``battlefield situation awareness.'' Unmanned aerial vehicles can provide the needed imagery, according to Lynn, but timely analysis is a bottleneck that ARPA seeks to solve. One element will evaluate semiautomated image processing techniques, which promise increased productivity for human analysts in an Advanced Concepts Technology Demonstration.
Japan's air force is investigating why a Raytheon/Mitsubishi AIM-9L Sidewinder missile mounted on an F-15J fired during a routine training mission despite the fact that the safe-and-arm device was in the ``off'' position. The missile destroyed another F-15J but the pilot ejected safely. It was the eighth loss of an F-15J in Japan since the aircraft was introduced in 1982.
Diane Albano (see photo) has been named vice president of the Americas Industrial Expertise Center Accounts Business Unit of the Digital Equipment Corp., Maynard, Mass. She was center director.
The launch of AsiaSat-2, with nominal performance throughout, has returned the Long March program to commercial service and successfully demonstrated the first use of a new, Chinese-made perigee kick motor. The 7:30:05 p.m. (local time) liftoff Nov. 28 from this southern Sichuan Province spaceport was the first for China Great Wall Industry's LM-2E since the Apstar-2 explosion last January. Now that the vehicle is back in service, China Great Wall expects to launch a similar payload called EchoStar-1 for EchoStar Communications Corp. on Dec. 28.
Galileo project engineers and scientists will be on edge Dec. 7 waiting for signs of success or failure of the most critical, and dangerous, part of the spacecraft's mission to Jupiter.
TWO ULTRAVIOLET SPECTROMETERS ON THE GALILEO space probe were powered up recently in preparation for detection of UV emissions from the torus around Io, one of Jupiter's moons. UV data should help determine the composition of charged particles in the donut-shaped ring, which is bound by Jupiter's magnetic field. One UV instrument was designed and built at the University of Colorado/Boulder; the other, an extreme UV spectrometer, was developed by University of Arizona researchers. Both are among 10 instruments on the spacecraft slated to start orbiting Jupiter Dec. 7.
Astronomers have captured dramatic new images they believe prove the existence of brown dwarfs, a mysterious class of objects that are believed to fill a missing link between the stars and planets.
Herman Gillis has been appointed Greensboro, N.C.-based chief pilot/director of training of Eastwind Airlines. Teddi Groff has been named director customer service and Anne T. McKeown regional sales manager.
Robert Bell is special assistant to President Bill Clinton for national security affairs and senior director for defense policy and arms control at the White House National Security Council. He recently spoke at the George C. Marshall Institute in Washington on missile defense and strategic deterrence. Excerpts follow:
In the wake of recent Pentagon acquisition reforms, Rockwell Collins is wrestling with a novel problem--how to add commercial components to radios designed to military specifications for carrier-based aircraft. But so far, the U.S. Navy program manager for ARC-210 radios is optimistic; he believes the effort will double the reliability of the radio over the next five years while saving the government $65 million.
A SINO-BRITISH AGREEMENT has taken the word ``provisional'' out of the title of the government agency in charge of Hong Kong's new airport at Chek Lap Kok. Now known as the Airport Authority, the agency in charge of the $9-billion airport will be headed by Wong Po-yan, a businessman who served as chairman of a consultative committee that has kept the Chinese apprised of the status of the project. The airport is to open in April, 1998.
BOEING INTENDS TO OFFER A SWEDISH CABIN DEHUMIDIFIER to control cabin moisture for production and retrofit on all its current production models. Boeing recently signed a letter of intent to license CTT Systems' Zonal Dryer. The dryer is expected to reduce humidity that leads to corrosion and can trap as much as 4,000 lb. of water in aircraft insulation, according to CTT. A dryer system for large aircraft weighs about 50 lb. (AW&ST Sept. 18, p. 15).
