As South Korea strives to build an industry that can independently make complete aircraft, it is achieving the most progress in helicopters. And it is the South Korean army, not the air force, that is offering the most support.
Rebecca R. Rhoads (see photo) has been appointed president of the Raytheon Co.'s Global Business Services. She will remain the Waltham, Mass.-based company's chief information officer.
An unprecedented competition announced by the Indian government to energize local private industry in aerospace manufacturing stands on a razor's edge, with the country's defense ministry contemplating opening participation to India's monopolistic state-owned defense companies as well.
What is becoming increasingly clear as the U.S. military continues its rebalance to the Asia-Pacific is that it is not only a mostly naval Pacific pivot, but primarily a shift of naval aviation. The Navy and Marine Corps are deploying their most technologically advanced aircraft to the region to participate in large-scale exercises or assist in major humanitarian efforts.
Five NASA researchers have been named to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers as nominated by the agency's Science Mission Directorate, Office of the Chief Engineer and Office of the Chief Technologist. The researchers and the subjects of their award-winning projects are: Joshua S. Alwood of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., research into the temporal changes in skeletal tissue density, cancellous orientation and vasculature during recovery from musculoskeletal disuse; Douglas C.
Robert J. Perna (see photo) has been appointed senior vice president/general counsel/secretary of Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He will succeed Gary Chadick, who has resigned. Perna has been vice president/general counsel/secretary of AM Castle & Co. Jeff Standerski has been named senior vice president of the Information Management Services segment. He was vice president/general manager of its Business and Regional Systems and held the same positions in the Air Transport Systems unit.
The fiscal 2014 omnibus appropriations bill considered last week in Congress seeks to provide the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with $1.89 billion for continued development of satellite systems, $207 million more than in the last fiscal year.
USAF Maj. Gen. (ret.) Charles W. Lyon (see photo) has been named lead executive for Northrop Grumman Corp. business in Hampton, Va. He succeeds Timothy A. Peppe, who is retiring. Lyon's final USAF assignment was director of operations at Air Combat Command Headquarters in Hampton.
If Embraer really wants to outsell the C-130 Hercules with its new KC-390 cargo aircraft, as discussed in “Cargo Shift” (AW&ST Dec. 30, 2013/Jan. 6, 2014, p. 62), it should have chosen two of the turboprop engines that power Airbus's new A400M instead of opting for turbofans. Those turboprops with their inherent 30% better fuel efficiency would have more than enough thrust with 11,000 shp each, and supply more than double the power of any other Western turboprop.
Bill Swanson (left), Raytheon's CEO and chairman, is scheduled to hand over the chief executive's office to current Chief Operating Officer Tom Kennedy on March 31. Swanson will remain chairman at least while the Waltham, Mass.-based defense prime contractor transitions to Kennedy's leadership.
Philippe Merlo has become director of air traffic management at Brussels-based Eurocontrol. He was deputy director of air navigation services for the French Directorate General for Civil Aviation.
Bombardier has pushed its service-entry target for the CSeries airliner back by at least 12 months, saying it will take longer than planned to complete certification flight testing. The announcement, which was expected, targets a service-entry date for the initial 110-seat CS100 variant for the second half of 2015, with the 135-seat CS300 following about six months later. Malmo Aviation in Sweden will be the first airline to take delivery of the CSeries, Bombardier says. The airline has five CS100s and five CS300s on firm order.
Steve Forte, chief operating officer of Virgin America, delivered the annual Charles W. Durham Distinguished Guest Lecture on the future of flying in America at the University of Nebraska-Omaha Aviation Institute. He also received the William F. Shea Distinguished Contribution to Aviation Award, which is named for the institute's first director.
European Space Agency controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, placed the $1.3 billion Gaia spacecraft into its operational orbit with a brief thruster burn at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point on Jan. 14, setting up the mission to produce a 3-D star map of the galaxy with unprecedented precision. The final maneuver followed an almost 2-hr. firing a week earlier to set up the orbit around the imaginary point 1.5 million km (937 million mi.)from Earth on the side opposite the Sun. Launched from Kourou, French Guiana, on Dec.
Congress in its omnibus appropriations bill is looking to provide the U.S. Coast Guard with $10.2 billion for fiscal 2014, $464 million above the Obama administration's request for the year ending Sept. 30. The move ensures “the Guard has the ships, planes and helicopters it needs to save lives, interdict drugs and protect the environment,” according to aides for Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.).
The Rand study showing the rapid escalation of costs in joint procurement programs falls firmly into the “Will they ever learn?” category (AW&ST Dec. 30, 2013/Jan. 6, 2014, p. 18). In 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara defended the notorious TFX (F-111) program by asserting that “commonality” would save $1 billion over a decade. Instead, he laid an egg with the F-111B—wasting $400 billion, not counting the costs thereby imposed on the U.S. Air Force version.
A LAN Airlines 787 flies over the West Coast of the U.S. on its delivery flight from Boeing to the carrier's Santiago, Chile, base. LAN Airlines photo. The Latam Group, which combines LAN and TAM, and Avianca, which merged with the Taca Group, embody South America's trend toward consolidation and are the subject of a special report. Elsewhere in this issue are reports on Darpa's plan to transform national security space programs (page 24) and South Korea's bid to develop an indigenous fighter (page 29).
The history of space exploration generally has been a march toward greater ambition, risk, complexity and cost. The first launch vehicles were guided missiles carrying the simplest of satellites, and the objective—orbit—was simple and straightforward. Earlier this month, circumstance presented a unique opportunity to observe how the international space-exploration endeavor has evolved over more than 50 years.
A new controversy has surfaced over the transatlantic skies, and it is not about Europe wanting to change ownership and control rules of U.S. airlines or British Airways-parent International Airlines Group plotting a takeover bid for American Airlines. The hullabaloo is about the plans of Oslo-based low-cost carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle to operate transatlantic services via a separate company to be known as Norwegian Air International (NAI) using an Irish air operator's certificate (AOC) and several Boeing 787s leased and registered in Ireland.
