“The Defense Dept. is already pleased with the engine it has. The engine it has works. The Pentagon does not want—and does not plan to use—the alternate version.” This statement from President Barack Obama is echoed by the current and former secretaries of Defense, senior leadership of the military services and a bipartisan majority in the Senate. The alternate engine for the F-35 is unnecessary and, if funded further, will waste scarce resources needed for more critical warfighting capabilities.
In response to cost overruns and delays in major weapon programs, The Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 became law to mandate competition through the entire life of major defense programs—including funding competing sources. The sheer magnitude of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program creates the perfect opportunity for acquisition reform—a multirole fighter aircraft replacing numerous models, with potential production for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marines and international customers to reach 5,000-6,000 aircraft in the next 30 years.
The U.S.-China High Technology Working Group—established to facilitate high-technology exports to civilian end-users in China but under U.S. export controls—will host a public meeting in Washington on Sept. 29. The topics include civil aviation-aerospace and information technology, according to the U.S. Commerce Dept., which is encouraging related companies to send representatives.
Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two mothership shows off its agility and twin-boom fuselage configuration while banking at this year’s EAA AirVenture Convention at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wis. As well as providing the launch platform for Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo, the Scaled Composites-built aircraft will be used to support science experiments, and to train suborbital passengers for high and low g conditions. Virgin is on track to begin space tourism flights in 2011, opening a market that other space entrepreneurs are eagerly pursuing despite economic headwinds.
London needs to revisit its relations with Washington and Paris as a key element of any revision of its defense industrial strategy, say industry leaders.
A crew of six NASA astronauts and a Swedish space veteran from the European Space Agency (ESA) was well into the STS-128 mission to the International Space Station late last week after dodging Florida’s fickle summertime weather for an 11:59 p.m. EDT liftoff on Aug. 28. The space shuttle Discovery docked at the ISS over the Atlantic Ocean two days later, beginning an eight-day visit to continue setting up the orbital laboratory with the scientific gear necessary to keep its six-member crew busy as assembly ends and full-time research begins (AW&ST Aug. 24/31, p.
Skynet Asia Airways extended a component services agreement with SR Technics to include its fleet of eight aircraft. The five-year deal covers component maintenance, repair, overhaul and associated logistics. SR Technics will hold a consignment stock for Skynet at the airline’s Tokyo operating base.
When the emerging private human spaceflight industry finally takes to the skies and beyond, there will be a network of spaceports to serve its vehicles and—in the U.S., at least—regulations to make their risky sorties as safe as possible.
New communications satellites for the Japanese and Australian markets are moving to their operational positions following a successful dual launch Aug. 21 on an Ariane 5 ECA vehicle from Kourou, French Guiana. The JCSAT-12 and Optus D3 satellites lifted off at 6:09 p.m. EDT and achieved their geostationary transfer orbits in good working order after the 32nd successful Ariane 5 launch in a row, according to Arianespace. Built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems for Japan’s SKY Perfect JSAT Corp., the 4,000-kg.
The NTSB on Sept. 1 issued 19 recommendations to enhance the safety of Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) operations. Ten were directed to the FAA, asking that the agency address several issues, including improved pilot training, development of low-altitude airspace infrastructure and pilot use of night-vision goggles. Five similar recommendations were issued to 40 government-operated or public HEMS operators. Two recommendations to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the Health and Human Services Dept.
In the Feb. 15, 1917, edition of Aviation and Aeronautical Engineering—the forerunner of Aviation Week & Space Technology—editors published a photograph of about two dozen tuxedoed and mess-dressed executives and military officers sitting around a table arranged in the shape of an airplane. They had gathered at the famed Delmonico’s restaurant in New York to laud Orville Wright, the guest of honor.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is preparing to release a request for proposals this month to kick off new competitions worth up to $2 billion for ballistic missile targets for the flight-test program. The solicitation will be sweeping and include targets required through 2019 as well as spares, says Patty Gargulinski, MDA targets project manager. A new Integrated Master Test Plan, which outlines the profile for the entire ballistic missile defense system, calls for 166 test events and 88 flight tests over the next 10 years.
In response to the call for a “top-to-bottom review of flight safety focusing on issues usually ranked as unimportant, negligible, secondary or otherwise not deserving of attention” I don’t know what the French term would be but here in the U.S. we say: “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
Thales say it has completed phase four of Mexico’s nationwide air traffic management modernization program. The fourth phase included upgrades to control centers at Hermosillo, Puerto Vallarta, San Jose and Tijuana airports, which are now equipped with Thales’s Eurocat ATM system.
Your article about the work of Franck Lefevre (AW&ST Aug. 24/31, p. 18) discusses the unexpectedly short lifetime of the Mars methane detected by ground-based telescopes (notably, by Michael Mumma of NASA Goddard). NASA Langley’s 1976 Viking mission to Mars detected controversial evidence from its biology experiment consistent with life there, but the scientists concluded that the positive signal from the Viking Lander instrumentation could have been caused by an unknown strong oxidant in the Martian soil.
L-3 Communications’ Link Simulation & Training has completed the first phase of its F/A‑18C/D Roadmap Procurement Program for the U.S. Navy and has begun work on the second phase of the five-year initiative. The company has delivered six Tactical Operational Flight Trainers (TOFT) and has upgraded another 16 existing Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18 simulators to the new TOFT configuration. Phase two calls for delivery of one additional training system each to MCAS Iwakuni, Japan, and MCAS Miramar, Calif., as well as to the Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth.
Cabin crew fatigue issues, including work rules that incentivize pilots to fly when they are less than 100%, are surfacing again, this time at cargo carrier Amerijet.
Work on solid-fuel rockets propelled by a mixture of powdered aluminum and water ice may lead to in-situ production on the Moon and Mars, following a successful flight test using the environmentally friendly propellant. Engineers from NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research used the ice-based aluminum propellant—dubbed Alice—to send a 9-ft.-long rocket to an altitude of 1,300 ft. in a test at Purdue University’s Scholer Farm in Indiana last month.
Final assembly of the first S-70i international version of the S-70 Black Hawk twin-engine helicopter has begun at PZL Mielec, a subsidiary of Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. in Poland. The aircraft is scheduled to be completed in 2010. Plans call for deliveries to be made directly from Poland to international customers, according to Bob Kokorda, Sikorsky vice president for corporate strategy and synergy. The S-70i will be capable of lifting up to 10 tons but sell at a price comparable with helicopters in the 6-8-ton lift class.
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It would seem to me that the “virtual gag order” by the Marine Corps Deputy Commandant concerning cost overruns of the CH-53K cited in “Mums the Word” (AW&ST Aug. 17, p. 25), would have been better handled by a continuation of a full and open disclosure of the issues and problem(s). Identification of causes and management insistence on accountability on both the government and contractor side would go a long way toward correcting or at least mitigating the leadership failures that were articulated in a recent Viewpoint column (AW&ST Aug. 24/31, p. 74).
A recent letter to this column “Recipe for Disaster?” (AW&ST July 20, p. 8) is the most cogent listing of how the 787 “Dreamliner” has become Boeing’s and the airline industry’s nightmare. If the engineers wanted to hear a cautionary tale about rushing into building things out of composites, all they had to do was talk to their dentist.
The first-flight A400M has completed final assembly and is to undergo ground tests before engine and auxiliary power units are installed. First flight, originally planned for this year, is now expected to be pushed back. EADS Chief Executive Officer Louis Gallois has indicated the milestone may slip into early 2010. The first-flight aircraft (MSN1) will now be put through fuel and pressurization tests, as well as navigation and communications checks, which are set to run two weeks.
Scaled Composites is using a fixed-base engineering development simulator to perfect the cockpit designs of White Knight Two (WK2) and SpaceShipTwo (SS2), as well as to train pilots for emergencies and other “off-nominal” procedures.
Three late-August failures serve as a reminder that more hurdles—technological and otherwise—remain to be cleared before Asia’s rising space powers can parlay their outsized political ambitions into global leadership in the space arena.
