Two of South Africa's most classified defense facilities--the Air Force's Test Flight and Development Center and the privatized Overberg Test Range--occupy a stretch of ocean front here in a restricted nature preserve at the southernmost tip of Africa.
RC OF CORPUS CHRISTI is developing tantalum nitride thin film (TaNFilm) resistors using silicon-based technology, which the company thinks will yield smaller-size surface mount resistors at lower cost. Thin film resistors offer more precise resistance values than the thick film devices used for high-volume applications, but have been more expensive. IRC plans to use a silicon-based photolithographic process to achieve resistor packages having a .025-in. lead center and the same stability and reliability that IRC has achieved with TaNFilm on ceramic.
Some Wall Street aerospace analysts believe Lockheed Martin Corp. shares could appreciate up to 30% during the next 12-18 months, depending on how efficiently the company implements the consolidation plan that will be largely completed within two years (see p. 23).
South African industry officials believe securing an Asian or Pacific Rim sale is vital to keeping the top priority Rooivalk attack helicopter alive following its loss of a U.K. competition this spring. But despite not making the sale, officials believe their development of a new supersonic antitank missile for the helicopter will help sell the Rooivalk, which is crucial to South Africa's aerospace industry.
Alenia is scheduled to complete by the end of next year a restructuring effort that includes additional job cuts and the elimination of excess production capacity. The company, now integrated in the state-controlled Finmeccanica aerospace-armament group, is suffering from excess capacity tied to Italy's decreasing defense expenditure and weak civil markets.
Henrik Schroder (see photos) has been appointed president/chief executive officer of Saab Aircraft of America, Sterling, Va. Michael Magnusson has been named executive vice president-marketing and sales and Mark Pugliese, executive vice president/general counsel.
NASA SCIENTISTS at Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif., are evaluating devices to noninvasively measure astronaut intercranial pressures during space flight. The technology could help determine whether increased intercranial pressure contributes to the motion sickness, headaches and nasal congestion some astronauts experience in space, according to Alan R. Hargens, in charge of the testing for Ames' Life Sciences Div.
China's Civil Aviation Flying College here in Sichuan Province, racing to keep up with the country's demand for commercial pilots, has received the first of two 737-300 simulators donated by Boeing this year. The full-flight simulator from CAE Electronics, valued at $18 million with software and visual systems, will be the first of seven installed in China for Boeing aircraft this year.
LOOK FOR INCREASED U.S./CANADA SERVICE. Canadian Airlines, and its code-sharing partner American Airlines, have recently scheduled 12 daily nonstop flights between Toronto and New York's LaGuardia Airport, and by the end of this month, Canadian plans to offer 64 flights daily out of Toronto to 16 U.S. cities, for a total of 208 weekly departures to American cities. Things were different before the code-share agreement. Canadian offered 20 weekly departures from Toronto to the U.S.
HONG KONG AND AUSTRALIA decided to think it over before imposing mutual sanctions against Cathay Pacific and Qantas (AW&ST June 26, p. 28). Neither government gave in on the assertion that the other was in the wrong in an air war that started because Qantas has been exercising fifth-freedom rights to pick up passengers in Hong Kong for beyond flights to Singapore and Bangkok that Cathay asserts exceed industry norms. Negotiators gave themselves six months to find a solution.
A LOW-COST, HIGH-SPEED digital camera system has been developed that can capture high-speed action sequences previously too fast for conventional solid-state video cameras. The $10,000 MD4256C and its charge-coupled device sensor can shoot up to 1,000 full frames a second for research, test and analysis projects, according to manufacturer EG&G Reticon, Sunnyvale, Calif. Digital output can be viewed on any personal computer, although the camera's 66-megabyte continuous data stream can require an input buffer.
TRANS WORLD AIRLINES directors were scheduled to meet late last week and authorize the company to file a prepackaged capital restructuring plan with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis. As of June 29, an overwhelming majority of TWA's creditors and shareholders had voted in favor of the filing, versus an out-of-court restructuring. According to documents filed with the Securites and Exchange Commission, TWA officials expect the reorganization to enable the airline to achieve an operating profit of $65.7 million in 1995 and net income of $95.4 million next year.
The time has come to accelerate development of the U.S. Navy's upper tier theater missile defense system, and the House of Representatives is on the right track by calling for $170 million more than the Defense Dept.'s $30-million request for Fiscal 1996.
AIR MACAU, THE PORTUGUESE ENCLAVE'S first airline, is to begin flight operations in November with four Airbus A320/321s leased from the International Lease Financing Corp. The airline is 51% owned by a local subsidiary of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and was started last September with $50 million in startup capital. Air Macau will be the flag carrier from the enclave's new international airport, which is due to open in November. The A321s, the first sold in China, are scheduled for delivery in November and December, with the A320s due in January and April.
Judy Bishop, formerly Chicago regional manager of passenger sales, has been named vice president-North America sales for United Airlines. Dan Walsh, formerly of the Los Angeles region, was promoted to vice president-East in New York. Roger Gibson has been named vice president-Mountain, based in Denver; Mark Liberman, vice president-West, based in Los Angeles; and Glenn Wright, vice president-Midwest, based in Chicago. United also has appointed Maria Sastre vice president-Latin America Div., based in Miami.
South African Air Force planners believe that, despite the immense social problems besetting the new black majority government, there is a legitimate need to maintain a small number of fighter and attack aircraft to sustain core combat competencies. They are what the chief of the air force staff, Maj. Gen. Willem H. Hechter, calls the ``sharp edge of the force.''
SWEDEN'S BOFORS IS CONDUCTING EARLY TESTS of submunitions with infrared seekers that could be dispensed from aircraft or from artillery shells. Two of the ``Bonus'' submunitions fit in a 155-mm. projectile. After dispersal the ``intelligent'' anti-armour submunition spins slowly until the seeker acquires a target. At that time a propellant will fire and accelerate the device toward the target. Intertechnique of France makes the seeker for the submunitions, which will be produced by Bofors and Giat of France.
SOME PENTAGON AND ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY OFFICIALS now claim there were warning signals for nearly three hours before U.S. pilot Scott O'Grady was shot down recently over Bosnia. That is a far longer warning time than the 12-13 minutes claimed by Vice Admiral John M. McConnell, director of the super-secret National Security Agency. According to the Pentagon and industry officials, a U-2R aircraft picked up SA-6 missile radar transmissions on and off for 2 hr. 48 min. before the shootdown.
The South African military fought a guerrilla war in Angola and Namibia at varying degrees of intensity for 23 years, a war of attrition that ended at the negotiating table, not in combat. Senior military officials are trying to intertwine the lessons of this seemingly endless conflict with the massive drawdown and restructuring of the South African Defense Force that followed. The war was settled by negotiations in 1989 and the final withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola in 1991.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS has selected Pratt&Whitney engines and Alliant Techsystems solid rocket motors for the Delta 3 commercial space launch vehicle it is developing. Pratt&Whitney will develop a higher-thrust version of the RL10 engine for the Delta 3's upper stage. The RL10B-2 is designed to produce 24,000-lb. thrust., a 6% increase over previous RL10s and a 15-sec. improvement in specific impulse.
John F. Carlson, recently retired chairman/chief executive officer of Cray Research Inc., has been appointed to the board of directors of Camax of Minneapolis.
THE THREAT BY THE UNABOMBER to blow up a passenger aircraft leaving Los Angeles International Airport is likely to raise new questions about the FAA's timeliness in deploying explosive detection systems. The threat resulted in X-ray screening and slow hand searches that caused many flight delays. Automated explosive detection systems have been in development since the Pan Am 103 bombing in the late 1980s, but as yet none have been mandated for use by the FAA.
METRUM EXPECTS TO HAVE A NEW tape recorder for digital instrumentation data available by the end of the year. The ``Metrum 64'' is a variable speed digital device that records on 1/2-in VHS cassette tape at a rate of 64 megabytes/sec. with a burst capability of 160 megabytes/sec. Despite the move toward solid state recording, Metrum said its recorder is selling for about $64,000, and will fill a niche in the 32-64 megabytes/sec. area for flight test, telecommunications and imaging applications. Capacity of one cassette is 27.5 gigabytes.
