Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
The U.S. Navy's Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral (LASH) airship will travel to San Diego in late August or early September to perform a series of homeland security demonstrations using its suite of hyperspectral sensors. The LASH team hopes to demonstrate their system for officials from the Coast Guard, the Customs Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security, "and whoever else is interested," according to Stephen Huett, LASH program manager at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR).
Three new technology transition programs are helping new technologies bypass the so-called "valley of death" to become part of procurement programs, according to Tim Harp, assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for innovation and technology integration at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). "My job up there is to try to facilitate tech transition," Harp said at the Naval-Industry R&D Partnership conference in Washington Aug. 6. "We have several programs that we use to do that."
Work has stopped at a large NASA-owned wind tunnel the U.S. Army traditionally has relied on for its full-scale rotorcraft testing, and NASA is preparing to close the facility next year. Based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the 40 by 80 by 120-foot National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) is the largest wind tunnel in the world. The facility mostly has been dormant this year, as NASA and the Army have attempted to work out the details of their future partnership on rotorcraft R&D (DAILY, March 11).
