The official 41-page transcript from the cockpit voice recorder in the Polish air force Tu-154M that crashed April 10 killing the country’s president and 95 others on approach to Smolensk, Russia, indicate that the pilot notified the air force chief, Gen. Andrzej Blasik, who was in the cockpit during the final part of the flight, that he would attempt to land but would likely have to divert to Minsk or Vitebsk because of adverse weather conditions.
Amid restructuring and soaring cost projections, the Joint Strike Fighter is ticking off milestones that were expected months ago, but the gathering test pace must be maintained if the program is to stay on its new track and avoid further delays and cost growth. In two key milestones, the first Lockheed Martin F-35 mission-system test aircraft, BF-4, has returned to flight after modification, and the 737-based Cooperative Avionics Test Bed (CATBird) has begun flying with the latest Block 1 software for the mission system.
Lockheed Martin Corp. is moving to “reshape” its portfolio of businesses as it braces for leaner U.S. defense spending, stronger conflict-of-interest regulations and a move by the federal government to take back thousands of jobs that had been outsourced to contractors. The 136,000-employee defense giant says it will divest most of its Enterprise Integration Group (EIG) and Pacific Architects and Engineers, two businesses that account for about 3% of annual sales. Jefferies & Co. analyst Howard A. Rubel estimates the two units will net about $900 million.
Delays on major aerospace and defense programs are putting enormous financial strain on Germany’s top-tier suppliers at a time when they are having to ramp up to prepare for new big-ticket projects, most notably the Airbus A350 twin-widebody.
Flight testing of micro air vehicles (MAV) in a controlled urban environment is underway in the U.S. Air Force Laboratory’s new indoor flight facility at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. The Air Force is interested in unmanned aircraft with wing spans of less than 2 ft. that can descend below rooftop level and operate in cluttered urban canyons. This requires flight testing in urban terrain, in a controlled environment, says Dr. Gregory Parker, MAV team lead.
Douglas Barrie (Madrid and Seville, Spain), Andy Nativi (Madrid and Seville, Spain)
While industry and partner-nation efforts to nail down a revised contract for the Airbus Military A400M trundle on, flight trials of the prototypes are gathering pace. Airbus Military Chief Executive Domingo Urena-Raso suggests the “target” is now to conclude the final contract “before the end of the summer.”
German politics are being shaken by mounting casualties in operations in Afghanistan, while military planners are trying to balance current equipment demands with development of long-term capabilities.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 is hardly out of the woods with the Pentagon’s recent recertification of the program, as lawmakers prepare to square off over whether restrictions should be imposed for Fiscal 2011.
The U.S. Air Force has once again slipped the award date for the 250-lb. Small Diameter Bomb II, this time to August. Service officials offer little detail on why. They say it was necessary to gain approval for entry into development from Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter. Raytheon and a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team are vying to develop the small, precision-guided weapon, which must be able to attack targets that are on the move through weather.
In 1997, more than 80 years of aerospace production seemed certain to end here, where airplanes have been built since 1913, but the fate of PFW Aerospace shows there is a future for smaller companies outside of large corporations such as EADS or its primary subsidiary, Airbus.
Orbital Sciences Corp. has been tapped to build Azerbaijan’s first satellite, demonstrating again the niche value of its small Star-2 geostationary satellite bus. Dubbed Azerspace/Africasat-1A, the spacecraft will carry 36 active transponders in the Ka- and C-bands to provide telecommunications to Azerbaijan, Central Asia, Europe and Africa. Dulles, Va.-based Orbital will provide the spacecraft and ground systems for a satellite control center in Baku, the Azeri capital. The spacecraft will be positioned at 46 deg. E. Long.
NASA may be wrapped up in red tape, but the European Space Agency is ready to consider expanding the International Space Station partnership. “I am really willing to support the extension of the partnership of the ISS to China and South Korea,” ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain tells China Daily during the Global Lunar Conference in Beijing.
Initial data from the partially successful May 26 X-51A Waverider hypersonic demonstrator flight reveals the scramjet engine was still running normally when the vehicle began experiencing control difficulties prior to termination. Hailed as an overall success for achieving several key hypersonic test milestones, the flight was halted early when telemetry was lost at around 200 sec. into the test. “From what we saw, the engine was not the cause of the failure,” says Charles Brink, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory program manager.
Astrium’s Spanish unit has delivered the flight model high-gain antenna (HGA) for NASA’s Mars Space Laboratory (MSL), scheduled for launch in 2011. The unit, to be carried on the MSL’s Curiosity rover, was produced under a bilateral agreement between NASA and Spain’s Center for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI). Spain’s first hardware ever to touch down on Mars, the HGA permits transmission of science and rover health data and Earth commands directly, without passing through an orbiter or intermediate links.
Cyber-attacks from the U.S. will be launched under a different set of rules during war than when digital weapons are in play in peacetime, says Army Gen. Keith Alexander in his first speech as chief of U.S. Cyber Command. He confirms the need for streamlined decisions to make cyber-weapons relevant to fast-moving military operations. The tricky part of his answer is that neither version of the rules of engagement has been sufficiently codified. “If you can’t attribute an attack [against the U.S.], how do you do that?” Alexander asks.
The article “Survival Instinct” (AW&ST May 10, p. 48) states that an NTSB study “indicated that most travelers ignore passenger-safety information, and one reason they do so may be the belief that accidents are not survivable.” Perhaps, but it seems more likely that the information is ignored because passengers are inured to it.
Orbital Sciences Corp. has finalized a contract to supply a telecom satellite to the International Relations and Accounting Center (IRAC) of Azerbaijan’s ministry of communications and information technologies. Under an agreement signed on May 25, capacity on the 5 kw. 36-transponder Ku-/C-band unit will be shared with Measat of Malaysia, which owns the 46 deg. E. Long. slot at which the spacecraft will be deployed. Measat will use the unit, to be known as Azerspace/Africasat-1A, to augment capacity for the fast-growing African market.
GKN Aerospace, a long-time user of Vistagy’s FiberSim composite engineering software, says it is turning to the Waltham, Mass., company for process consulting help to fulfill a winglet contract for Bombardier’s CSeries. FiberSim, which GKN also applied on contracts for the Airbus A380 leading edge, A400M wings and wing spars and Boeing 767 winglets, allows users to migrate from a ply-based to a structure-based design approach. A structures view makes it easier to incorporate design changes.
NASA is canvassing industry for ideas on advanced “green” airliners that could enter service by 2025, with the goal of building a subscale, unmanned flight demonstrator that could fly in 2015. The goals include reducing fuel consumption and nitrogen-oxide emissions by 50% and airport noise by 80% relative to today’s large twin-aisle airliners. NASA plans to award contracts totaling $36.6 million to up to four teams for 16-month studies to define preferred concepts beginning in Fiscal 2011.
June 13—Royal Air Force’s Cosford (U.K.) Air Show. See www.cosfordairshow.co.uk June 14-15—Technology Training Corp.’s Defense Export Controls Conference. Hilton Crystal City, Arlington, Va. +1 (310) 563-1223, fax +1 (310) 563-1220 or see www.ttcus.com
A contracting team headed by Boeing has been awarded a five-year, $1.7-billion contract from the FAA for the Next-Generation Air Transportation System. The contract, which has a five-year option, covers two major areas: air traffic management modeling and simulation and integration of ground and airborne technologies and operations. Aircraft to be covered include all those used by airlines, the military and general aviation, besides helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Chinese government has deregulated pricing of domestic business- and first-class air tickets, abolishing a rule that they must be set at 1.3 and 1.5 times the price of economy fares, respectively. The change opens the way for China Southern to widely introduce lie-flat seats that it has tried in an Airbus A330. The carrier could not obtain permission to charge the price it wanted for that service level, three times the economy fare, a company executive says.
Aiming to help the aviation industry gather more data on flying aircraft through volcanic ash clouds, Icelandair’s Technical Services unit installed equipment in a Cessna 421 Golden Eagle, enabling it to measure ash cloud density, says Jens Bjarnsson, Icelandair’s senior vice president of technical services. “We put the required cables in, so when there’s another volcano, we just have to put the external probes on, and the aircraft can take off and start measuring,” he says.
