AIR MOBILITY COMMAND is expected to declare its first C-17 squadron operational this month, possibly within the week. That done, operations of the unit will expand. Among the year's showcase events, AMC is planning to fly a C-17 to India from where it will retrace a World War 2 ``over the Hump,'' trans-Himalayas flight to China. The C-17 will continue across the Pacific to complete the new transport's first circumnavigation of the globe. The 17th Airlift Sqdn. at Charleston AFB, S.C., has 13 aircraft and 48 aircrews ready for regularized operations.
LEICA, INC., WILL PROVIDE THE FIRST differential Global Positioning System beacon system to China. Correction signals transmitted from a Leica MX 9112 12-channel reference station at Qinhuangdao will provide positioning accuracies of 5 meters throughout the Bohai Sea and parts of the northern Yellow Sea, according to the company. The installation is operating now on an experimental basis. Leica also has recently been awarded similar contracts from Belgium and Poland.
Airbus Finance Company, formed by the European consortium's four member manufacturers, progressively will become Airbus Industrie's commercial transport sales financing arm. Late last month, the newly established AFC, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, established a seven-year, $1.5-billion revolving credit facility involving 49 banks in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. The line of credit, good for seven years, was set up with the help of AFC financial advisor J.P. Morgan.
SEVEN FORMER U.S. defense secretaries have signed a letter urging President Bill Clinton to consider buying more B-2 bombers ``while the option still exists.'' Melvin Laird, James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Harold Brown, Caspar Weinberger, Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney argue that 20 of the stealth bombers are not enough to meet future U.S. requirements.
THE FAA has commissioned the second of 47 Terminal Doppler Weather Radars planned for installation at key airports in the eastern U.S. The radar, capable of detecting wind shear and microbursts, will serve the Memphis (Tenn.) International Airport. The antenna is located 12.8 mi. south of the airport to provide adequate coverage for all runways, according to the agency. Raytheon is prime contractor to the FAA for 47 TDWRs. The first radar began operating at Houston Intercontinental Airport last July.
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS WILL PROVIDE 17 forward-looking infrared (Flir) sets for the U.S. Navy's HH-60H helicopters, under a $14.8-million contract, for an improved night anti-surface warfare capability. The equipment will be common with the AAS-44, which the company is building for integration into the LAMPS MK-3 SH-60B helicopters. The second-generation Flir uses a focal plane array detector and has a laser range finder/designator.
Burle Industries, Inc., Lancaster, Pa., has named Willard H. Hackman (see photos) vice president-tube products. He was general manager of Burle Ireland, where he has been succeeded by John C. Brittain, previously president of the Electronics Components Group.
Willis Player, a former senior vice president of Pan American World Airways and a pioneer in airline public relations, died Jan. 1 at age 79 in Germantown, N.Y. During a 35-year career that spanned the heyday of American aviation before deregulation in 1978, Player was a close adviser to Juan T. Trippe, founder and longtime chief executive of Pan Am, and C.R. Smith, who led American Airlines to dominance as a domestic carrier.
C. Michael Armstrong, chairman/chief executive officer of Hughes Aircraft Co. of Los Angeles, has been named chairman of the U.S. President's Export Council.
COMPUTER SCIENCES CORP. will provide computer hardware and information technology services for Hughes Aircraft Co., under an 8-year, $1.5-billion contract. Previous outsourcing contracts in aerospace and defense at CSC include a 10-year, $3-billion contract with General Dynamics in 1991 and a 10-year, $1.6-billion contract with British Aerospace. Computer Sciences Corp. will support Hughes in mainframe computers, engineering computing, telecommunications, applications development and maintenance.
RISING FROM THE ASHES OF NOVEMBER'S DEMOCRATIC DEFEAT, Rep. James Oberstar (D.-Minn.) will return to the 104th Congress as the ranking Democratic member of the House Aviation subcommittee--a key component of the renamed Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Oberstar, who chaired the subcommittee from 1988 through 1994, has been a champion of improving aviation safety, revamping the FAA and upgrading regional airline training standards to those of the major air carriers.
THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES of Health is interested in licensing a novel ``top-down'' image-recognition and classification technology it developed for medical use. The system could improve robotic and machine vision used in aerospace and defense applications. Top-down recognition functions similarly to human vision by looking at large features of an image first, according to John Fahner-Vihtelic, NIH technology transfer specialist.
Imagine a $200 inertial measurement unit that measures only 1.2 cm. X 1.5 cm. (0.47 in. X 0.59 in.), and you are seeing Kaigham Gabriel's vision for military systems in just five years. Gabriel, a program manager at the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency, predicts that by 2000, some military systems will be equipped with tiny components that combine information processing with sensing and actuating functions to ``fundamentally change the way humans and machines interact with the physical world.''
Paris-Orly airport is expected to become a testing ground for France's partly deregulated domestic route system as well as a key destination for several European carriers. The French government reluctantly has authorized three French independent carriers to serve two major domestic routes, Paris-Marseille and Paris-Toulouse, eliminating Air Inter's historical monopoly. Air Inter currently operates 13-14 round-tripflights per day and carries about 2 million passengers per year on each of the two routes.
Thomson-TRT Defense is manufacturing four prototypes of the passive infrared search and track (IRST) target detection system for the French Rafale fighter. The IRST, set for first flight in 1996, will detect, identify and locate targets in the frontal sector.
This automated resin impregnation machine can assure accurate and repeatable results that are critical in the manufacture of reinforced composite structures. It was developed for producing ice protection equipment for aircraft but has applications for production of fiber-based insulating materials in many industries. The machine can handle impregnation of glass, Kevlar and ceramic fabrics with formulated resin systems. Resin is distributed evenly through the fabric, thoroughly wetting individual fibers and providing a balanced ``tack'' on both sides of the cloth.
A new Boeing 737-300 transport undergoes preparations at Boeing Field for delivery to Air Austral. The CFM-powered 136-seat transport is the second 737 for the airline, which operates from Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar. The -300 will fly from St. Denis, Reunion, to African destinations including Johannesburg, Nairobi, Mauritius and Antananarivo, Madagascar. The carrier now operates a 737-500 on regional routes.
U.S. REP. Floyd D. Spence (R.-S.C.), chairman of the renamed House National Security Committee, has cut the number of subcommittees from six to five with the elimination of the Oversight and Investigations panel. The remaining subcommittees will be headed by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R.-Calif.), Procurement; Rep. Herb Bateman (R.-Va.), Readiness; Rep. Curt Weldon (R.-Pa.), Research and Development; Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R.-Calif.), Personnel, and Rep. Joel Hefley (R.-Colo.), Installations.
The Metrum RS-48 and RS-600 cassette handling systems are designed for high-volume data storage when used in conjunction with B-VLDS digital data recorders. The -48 uses two recorders and 48 ST-160 cassettes to offer a total storage capacity of 658 gigabytes. The -600, used in conjunction with six recorders and 600 cassettes can store 8.2 terabytes or 8,200 gigabytes. Both handling systems use advanced robotics assemblies similar to those used by high-performance broadcast television systems for program rotation. The systems provide a worst case access time of 8 sec.
Russia is stepping up its efforts to promote an international space-based missile detection system that would provide early trajectory data and intercept cues to national anti-missile defense networks. The latest proposal was made by a top-ranking manager at one of Russia's key government-run space hardware institutes during a December meeting of military and civilian officials in Colorado Springs, Colo.
JAPAN'S AIR FORCE has selected the Gulfstream 4 for its U-X, VIP transport and training support aircraft to replace Beech 65s. The selection was mired in a political scandal concerning a Japanese politician and U.S. lobbyist, but a Defense Agency committee concluded that the air force's preference for the Gulfstream was untainted. Competitors included the Dassault Falcon 900B and Canadair Challenger 601.
A U.S. District Court judge here has cleared the way for Virgin Atlantic Airways to pursue its case against British Airways for antitrust relief in the U.S., although some industry observers doubt the plaintiff will be successful. Virgin Atlantic Chairman Richard Branson is vowing to pursue ``maximum damages,'' as both sides begin preparations for what is expected to be a long and bitterly contested trial.
