Following failed attempts to produce indigenous unmanned aircraft, Russia will launch an assembly line for Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI’s) Searcher Mk. II long-endurance reconnaissance UAV. The effort is being pursued under a joint venture between IAI and Russia’s State Technology Corp. Rostekhnologii and should lead to the production of several dozen Searchers for the Russian army. While the Searcher is based solely on Israeli technology, the deal will go ahead only after receiving U.S. approval.
Europe’s air transport industry will have lost well over $1 billion in the wake of the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, but the battle over how to deal with the losses has only just begun.
A U.S. Navy biofuel-powered flight from NAS Patuxent River, Md., on April 22 (aka Earth Day) used an unmodified Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet. The fighter was powered by a sustainable biofuel 50/50 blend of camelina and JP-5 aviation fuel. This flight bolsters the Navy’s strategy of halving its reliance on fossil fuels within the next decade. Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security unit’s biofuel testing includes demonstration flights of five commercial aircraft, four engine types and laboratory work with several fuel processors and engine manufacturers.
Delta TechOps and Global Avia Logistics, logistics provider for Russian carrier Nordwind Airlines, have signed a long-term strategic contract to provide maintenance support for Pratt & Whitney 2000-Series engines and GTCP 331-200 auxiliary power units in the carrier’s Boeing 757 fleet. Nordwind was founded in May 2008 as an international charter carrier licensed to transport passengers and cargo.
Having gleaned no practical direction from President Barack Obama’s April 15 speech on NASA’s future, I’ll throw out the following notional plan: •The primary goal is to open up the Moon to regular manned visits, both for scientific and commercial purposes. This is technically feasible with NASA conducting pioneering R&D as needed, and industry not far behind.
The Obama administration will pursue a three-phase overhaul of the export controls regime. The new approach will establish a single licensing agency, export control list, enforcement coordination agency and information technology system, Defense Secretary Robert Gates promised last week in speech to a Business Executives for National Security (BENS). “Tinkering around the edges of the current system will not do,” he says. Gates hopes aloud that necessary legislation can be passed by year-end.
The damage inflicted on Europe’s aviation sector by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano will be immense, with the final cost days and perhaps weeks from being tallied. But even before the dust settles—figuratively as well as literally—stakeholders in Europe’s aviation community need to step back and make another assessment: How well did they manage through this crisis? Our sense is that both regulators and airlines fell well short of optimum. In some cases, their actions were downright irresponsible.
Most F-35 cost growth stems from choices made at the program outset in 1995. The senior leaders were highly capable but boxed in by tremendous pressures, and had confidence that they could handle the problems of which they had been warned.
The U.K.’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has launched an investigation into allegations of price fixing between Virgin Atlantic Airways and Cathay Pacific Airways on the London to Hong Kong route. “The case concerns a number of alleged contacts between employees of the two airlines over a number of years, which it is alleged had the object of coordinating the parties’ respective pricing strategies regarding passenger fares through the exchange of commercially sensitive information on pricing and other commercial matters,” the OFT says in announcing the review.
Brazil’s GOL Airlines has become the launch customer for GE Aviation’s OnPoint Fuel & Carbon Services agreement, which relies on proprietary software and fuel consulting services to help carriers identify and track operational improvements that could reduce fuel spending by 5%. For operational evaluations, GOL and GE will quantify GOL’s current fuel and carbon reduction programs through data collection, and then create a customized response. Reductions in fuel consumption and carbon emissions are directly linked.
In a “flat world” where maintenance work flows across borders as easily as passengers and freight, airline overhaul shops are awaiting the outcome of a legislative fight in the U.S. Congress over safety inspections of foreign maintenance, repair and overhaul stations that could pose a threat to thousands of U.S. jobs and millions of dollars in revenue.
The flight test program required for certification of the Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport’s Cobham 905 hose-and-drogue refueling system has been completed by Airbus Military. The conclusion of the tests clears the way for Spain’s national institute for aerospace technology (INTA) to certify the aircraft—for daylight refueling operations—during the summer, according to Airbus.
While I agree with the truism that weapons system acquisitions can certainly undergo much needed improvements, I do take issue with Michael Gallagher’s contention that it is wasteful to field “. . . generations of systems that have never been used in anger or their anticipated roles” (AW&ST March 29/April 5, p. 8). I would much rather possess weapons with overwhelming capabilities and force for “deterrence” than engage in conflicts arising from external perceptions of our internal weaknesses.
As Airbus moves the A350 from the drawing board into production, the aircraft maker is confronting a stark reality: It has little to no schedule margin left and much hard work to do. The A350-900, the lead version in the aircraft family, is running 3-6 months behind schedule, enough to force Airbus to push back start of final assembly and first flight. However, for now it is sticking to the plan to deliver the first A350 in mid-2013.
Manila-based Cebu Pacific, its eye on expansion across Asia, last week placed a firm order for seven Airbus A320s, which increased its A320-family backlog to 22. This marks the second time the Philippine carrier increased its initial 10-aircraft order; in June 2009, Cebu added five more to its buy. According to Airbus, the aircraft will be delivered between the last quarter of this year and 2014 and operated on the low-cost carrier’s domestic and regional route networks comprising 33 cities in the Philippines and 14 across Asia.
Embraer last week initiated the first metal cut for the Legacy 450/500 programs at its headquarters in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil. The manufactured part, milled from a plate of aluminum alloy by a five-axis, high-speed machine, belongs to the Legacy 500 prototype and is part of the forward fuselage, on which the radome, radar and glide slope antenna are attached.
A few months ago I was listening to a television commentator go on and on about the need to cancel the F-22. The strongest argument she gave was that it far exceeded the capabilities of any threat out there, so to produce it was an unnecessarily high-cost overkill. And now I read in a letter that we should cancel the F-35 because, among other things, “there’s no current or emerging threat.” I thought the idea was to be better than anything out there. Combat is a terrible time to be playing catch-up.
U.S. Navy officials are kicking off an analysis of alternatives for a future anti-surface warfare weapon. USAF plans to contribute to the study, and Air Combat Command officials are hoping there is a place for the Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm). There have been plans to add a data link to Jassm for inflight updates to attack ship targets but the Navy has been cool on the missile, which has spiked in cost.
Intelsat has started operation of a new C-/Ku-band spacecraft to provide video, cellular backhaul and Internet trunking services over Africa. The satellite, formerly called Protostar-1 but now renamed Intelsat 25, was acquired last year from troubled Asian satcom startup Protostar, which is now in bankruptcy protection, and repositioned at 328.5 deg. E.
Boeing plans to complete a second X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle for the U.S. Air Force, but its launch, scheduled for 2011, will not occur until the first of the reusable spaceplane demonstrators returns from a mission that could last as long as 270 days. “We may be ready to launch the second one before that, but we won’t until the first bird is back on the ground in case we need to make changes to the vehicle [based on the first flight],” says Gary Payton, Air Force deputy undersecretary for space programs.
The U.S. Air Force is planning to field a composite case for its 500-lb. Mk. 82 bomb with the goal of reducing its blast fragmentation effects and shifting to an overpressure kill mechanism. The casing will be modeled after that used for the 250-lb. Small-Diameter Bomb Focused Lethality Munition variant, says Col. Mike Fantini, division chief for combat force application requirements. The weapon could take a year to field, and USAF officials want it delivered as quickly as possible. Navy officials in 2007 fielded the 500-lb.
Big Safari—the U.S. Air Force’s rapid acquisition office for specialized, limited production ISR packages—was the moving force behind the MC-12W aircraft now being flown by the 4th Expedition Reconnaissance Sqdn. stationed at Bagram AB, Afghanistan (see p. 48). The primary contractors are airframer Hawker Beechcraft and L-3 Communications, which integrated the payload that includes full-motion video and signals intelligence sensors.
AAI Corp. has begun deliveries of the new extended wing kit for its Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (TUAS). The enhancement takes the UAV’s wingspan to 20 from 14 ft. This modification increases the size of the aircraft’s fuel cell, and takes its endurance to nearly 9 hr. from 6 hr. The redesigned wing also includes hard points for external stores, an important modification for in-theater mission flexibility.
Series production models of Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle will carry more cargo to the International Space Station—taking less time to do it, and with higher safety margins—than the prototype vessel. Jules Verne, the pre-production model, was launched in March 2008 and stayed attached to the ISS for six months. ATV-2, the first series unit, will be shipped to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, in May and be ready for launch by the end of November, for a scheduled docking with the station on Dec. 17 (AW&ST Apr. 19, p. 34).
U.S. Air Force officials are eyeing the formation of a Cyber Safari office designed to manage the procurement of cyberwarfare technologies. The office would be modeled after the Big Safari office at Aeronautical Systems Center, which is well-known for procuring the Predator/Reaper family of UAVs. The office would be designed to quickly field technologies to keep up with the rapid pace of growing threats in the cyber domain, says Brig. Gen. James Haywood, requirements director for Air Force Space Command (see p. 53).
