Powered exoskeletons that enable ground crews to load and unload transports, or arm combat aircraft with missiles and bombs, unaided by bulky ground equipment, could be one of the first of a new breed of systems that augment human performance.
George Wilson has been named vice president-corporate safety and security for World Airways . Wilson is a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and a retired Delta Air Lines captain. He served as vice president-flight operations for World Airways and continued as director-operations until June 2008.
Lesley A. Kalan (see photo) has been appointed vice president-legislative affairs for Northrop Grumman Corp. Kalan was vice president with the Cohen Group from 2006 to 2010 and worked for five years as a senior analyst for the Defense Department. Kalan also served as a Committee Fellow and as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Systems engineering is critical to program success in aerospace and defense, but problems will continue until significant improvements are made, says an industry survey conducted for Aviation Week by IBM. Results were presented at the Aviation Week Aerospace & Defense Programs Conference Nov. 1-3 in Phoenix. The conclusion: “Program problems will continue without proactive action,” says John Farrant, manager of IBM’s aerospace and defense product life-cycle management solutions.
Unmanned aircraft that stay aloft for a year or more, never returning for refueling or repair, could take aviation into a new arena of omnipresent operations.
I worked in the aerospace industry from 1956 to 2002. During that time my roles centered on logical thinking in order to innovate in a world that needed a lot of innovation, so I am discouraged that Aviation Week appears to have embraced the dubious “anthropologic global warming” premise. The “green” frenzy will ultimately cost airlines and the public billions of dollars. It seems ludicrous to believe that global weather results are predictable decades in advance when it is obvious that weather results are currently unpredictable week to week.
A newly space-qualified Swedish technology could lead to “preloaded satellites” ready for rapid launch or orbiting in a “sleep mode” for quick awakening. A unit of Swedish Space Corp. (SSC) has space-qualified a high-performance “green” propellant on the main Prisma satellite, demonstrating the technology’s promise for cost and time savings in preparing satellites for launch, and in keeping them ready once they are fueled.
Space leaders in Europe fear the competitiveness of European companies is threatened by new U.S. public funding mechanisms for space services and calls for opening up European Union space programs to international suppliers.
Getting ahead in a changing game requires the aerospace and defense industry to tackle its biggest challenge—the affordability of its products and services. “The U.S. has consistently used superior technology to combat challenges. Now we have to bring technology to bear to meet the affordability challenge,” says Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer.
The characterization of the business jet market structure in the “The Haves and Have Nots” (AW&ST Oct. 18, p. 52), is generally accurate. Large cabin, intercontinental aircraft are outperforming in sales versus other business jet categories.
Sophisticated modeling and simulation are becoming key to developing products, but the small companies that comprise much of industry cannot easily access or afford the requisite high-performance computing. To tackle the problem for U.S. companies, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) plans to develop a network of high-performance computing centers to give small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) access to powerful modeling and simulation tools for product development.
Opening a little-used window in the atmosphere is enabling new sensor capabilities that are finding application in surveillance, target identification, weapon guidance, aircraft navigation and a range of other uses. Short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensors exploit the third and last atmospheric window through which photons can travel without being largely absorbed. But unlike medium- and long-wave infrared imagers, SWIR sensors see reflected, not thermal energy.
Israel’s defense planners face headaches generated by their neighbors’ increasingly large stockpile of well-calibrated missiles and rockets. The new weapons also offer unexpected trajectories, and refined reentry vehicles expand the areas in eastern Iran where launch sites can be hidden.
News from the cyberfront has been universally bleak for several years, but now there is hope for progress “in the next several months,” as the Defense Department rolls out its plans for organizing the cybersphere, says Robert Butler, deputy assistant defense secretary for cyberpolicy. “We have a strategy moving forward and a series of operating concepts under consideration that will come together inside a planning and programming discussion,” Butler says.
The U.K. is continuing to rely on Hermes 450 unmanned aircraft operations in Afghanistan on a fee-for-service basis. Manufacturer Elbit Systems says UAS Tactical Systems—a joint venture with Thales U.K. for the unmanned aircraft operational work—has secured a $70-million deal to continue the operation for another 18 months. A further contract will depend on U.K. redeployment plans in Afghanistan. The government currently says it plans to depart by 2015.
Despite its current economic woes, Cessna Aircraft is spending on R&D and used the recent NBAA Convention to showcase its upgraded Citation Ten (above), the first of what CEO Jack Pelton promises will be a steady parade of new or improved models.
LAN Airlines plans to enter the highly competitive Colombian market through the purchases of the country’s second-largest operator, Aires, and domestic startup AerOasis. The Aires deal will cost LAN $32.5 million for a 99% stake in the company, while financial details of the AerOasis acquisition are not being disclosed. Aires will give LAN an automatic 22% share of Colombia’s domestic market, along with 27 local and three international destinations.
Once a driver of innovation, the aerospace and defense industry finds itself responding to global economic and social changes that are transforming both the market conditions and the business environment in which it operates.
Boeing last week initiated its third supplier shipment hold of the year to allow Alenia Aeronautica to complete horizontal stabilizer work in Italy. A company official says it involves “a slight re-phasing of some 787 shipment dates.” That action is described as “unique partner to partner” but is expected to last about two weeks. “It’s a smaller adjustment than the prior re-sequencings,” the official says. Last June, Boeing revealed that it was experiencing workmanship issues on its final assembly line in Everett, Wash., on horizontal stabilizers shipped from Alenia.
The French government is close to awarding a contract for integration of the MBDA Meteor ramjet-powered air-to-air missile on the Dassault Rafale strike fighter. France would be the second country to pay to integrate the weapon onto its combat aircraft, following Sweden, which recently decided to do so on the Saab JAS 39 Gripen. Rafale and Gripen are vying with others to secure export deals to bolster their order books. Eurofighter officials also are trying to convince their core customer countries to award integration contracts between the Typhoon and Meteor.
Pratt & Whitney is poised to complete final service-release tests of the F135 Joint Strike Fighter Stovl (short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing) propulsion system, while the competing General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 team says plans for first flight remain on track despite last month’s fan incident.
Tokyo aims to become a more attractive gateway for international travelers with the reopening of Haneda Airport to international services. The airport last week officially inaugurated its new international terminal with an initial annual capacity of 7 million passengers. To facilitate up to 30,000 more aircraft movements in the first year, the new D runway also became operational on Oct. 21, albeit several months later than planned.
NASA will pay United Launch Alliance $187 million to launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) orbiter to the red planet in November 2013. Under the new contract, ULA will use an Atlas V 401 to send the atmospheric probe to Mars, including payload processing, ground support at the launch site, and tracking, data and telemetry services.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden took two press secretaries with him to China last week (see p. 34), but he ducked the press while he was there with a little help from his hosts. Bolden got the visit to China’s human spaceflight launch center at Jiuquan that was denied his predecessor, Michael Griffin, and he toured some of the space facilities around Beijing. Bolden met with Chinese space officials, but apparently proposed no cooperative initiatives. He left it to his deputy—Lori Garver—to talk about the trip.
