Analysts in the Pacific Air Forces are making a virtue out of planning for future defense budget cuts. Their tools are a series of war games—generated by the theater’s intelligence community—called Pacific Vision. “It’s pretty obvious that we are not going to be able to buy everything we want to buy,” says Gen. Howie Chandler, Pacaf commander who has been named the next Air Force vice chief of staff. “So the question becomes, “How do you give the combatant commander the best you can with the available resources?”
The House’s approval of $560 million to continue development of an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) sets the stage for a showdown with the Senate, which voted to kill the program, and the Obama administration, which is threatening to veto any bill that keeps it alive. Funding for the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine was included in the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill that passed the House on July 30 by a 400-30 vote.
A fresh wave of structures, systems and weapons upgrades is being rolled into the Northrop Grumman B-2 as part of efforts to keep the stealth bomber in the front line to 2050 and beyond.
The Experimental Aircraft Assn.’s $3.8-million investment in improvements for the 2009 AirVenture fly-in event at Oshkosh-Wittman Regional Airport appears to have paid off. At midweek, attendance was up 8-10% compared with the same point during AirVenture 2008, according to Chief Financial Officer Brian Wierzbinski.
The Airbus A380, along with the Boeing 777 and 787, is a key part of Korean Air’s plans for renewal and expansion of its passenger fleet. The airline remains firmly committed to its 10 A380 orders, despite the industry downturn that is causing other Asia-Pacific carriers to defer or cancel their own orders for the superjumbo.
The market for the Australian-U.S. Nulka naval decoy may be expanding by a factor of two, thanks to a prospective easing of restrictions on exports of the hovering rocket. As the system is fitted to ever-larger ships, previously thought impossible to defend with decoys, there are signs that it will even go on board the largest of all, U.S. aircraft carriers, giving them one more defense layer to add to the several that already surround them.
India’s civil aviation personnel charged with developing one of the industry’s major growth markets will be able to enhance their skills under a memorandum of understanding signed July 28 by the civil aviation ministry and the International Air Transport Assn. Under the one-year term of the MOU, Indian ministry officials will be able to develop leadership skills and build networking opportunities at global learning centers of the IATA Training Development Institute.
The British Defense Ministry last week confirmed it had dispatched another RAF Tornado GR4 strike aircraft to Afghanistan to replace one destroyed July 20. The aircraft was lost when the crew had to abort a takeoff, but were unable to halt the aircraft before it departed the runway. Both crewmembers ejected safely. The previous day, another GR4 sustained minor damage as a result of a brake fire on landing. The Tornado GR4 replaced the Harrier GR9 in Kandahar at the beginning of this month.
Pentagon officials say the reduced buy of C-27Js to 38 from 78 will demand more crews for operations. Air National Guard Director Lt. Gen. Harry Wyatt says at least 16 of the 38 tactical airlifters will be deployed abroad at any time. This means the crew ratio must increase to support a higher operations tempo. Under the arrangement to buy 78 aircraft, planners anticipated two crews per C-27J were needed. With 38, the manpower requirement per aircraft doubles. With more frequent flights, Wyatt says he expects maintenance manpower requirements to go up as well.
Aug. 9-13—American Astronautical Society/American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) Astrodynamics Specialist Conference. Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel. Call +1 (703) 866-0020 or see www.space-flight.org Aug. 10-13—AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2009. Washington Convention Center. Call +1 (703) 845-9671 or see www.symposium.auvsi.org
I agree with Chris Schultz that the head of NASA needs to be a politician (AW&ST June 15, p. 16). For NASA to be effective, management at lower levels must be technically astute. Politics pervades down to NASA middle management, so center directors and below should be technical managers. Let headquarters handle the politics.
Goodrich Corp.’s landing gear final assembly facility, a satellite plant to Boeing’s wide-body factories in Everett, Wash., has delivered the first main and nosewheel gear for the 747-8 Freighter to the aircraft manufacturer’s nearby 40-22 assembly bay. The gear is displayed before shipment in the exact order it would appear on the airplane: wing, body, nose, body and wing. Now they reside under the nose of RC501, the first flight-test 747-8, which is in final body join. Gear are installed before RC501 moves into a slant position for final outfitting.
U.S. and NATO commanders in Afghanistan are looking for new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tools to help secure territory in the troubled Helmand province as the political situation reaches a critical phase following the recent coalition offensive against the Taliban.
Aerostructures specialist Spirit AeroSystems has recorded a $103-million loss provision to cover development and production cost overruns on its risk-sharing contract to supply the wing for Gulfstream’s G250 super mid-size business jet, which is expected to fly this year. The overrun is blamed on “insufficient program-management discipline in a constrained resource environment.”
George W. Hamlin closes his commentary by calling for the need for the airline industry to be “viable.” Just what does “viable” mean? His recommendation to achieve “viability” is to follow the cliche route of cutting capacity, merging airlines, layoffs, cutting expenses, etc., that we have all heard ad nauseum since the 1978 deregulation experiment.
An investment by the Virgin Group has lifted confidence in the future of Australian affiliate Virgin Blue, one of three airlines in a market that has repeatedly shown it will support only two. Virgin Blue is raising A$231 million ($191 million) in additional capital with an issue of new stock. The carrier, Australia’s second largest, says the issue is a prudent move amid the global economic downturn and will put it in a position to go shopping for cheap aircraft.
Long-haul, low-cost carrier AirAsia X plans to set up a hub somewhere in the Middle East, seeking the benefits of networked services but breaking the rule that budget airlines should fly only from point to point. New destinations could include Spain, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Morocco. “This will open up completely new markets, and we won’t always have to have the planes based in Kuala Lumpur, which limits us to an 8-hr. radius [of AirAsia X’s A330s],” says CEO Azran Osman-Rani.
Satrec Initiative of South Korea is preparing to bring a second orbiting satellite into service as it ratchets up its challenge to market leader Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.
An ultra-fuel-efficient transport with strut-braced, high aspect-ratio, wing airframe and integrated distributed multi-engine propulsion is among configurations being studied by Aurora Flight Sciences as it develops technology demonstration plans for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) with the target of reducing air mobility fleet fuel usage 90% by 2030-35.
The TerreStar-1 hybrid mobile telecom satellite has successfully completed its first end-to-end phone calls, certifying compliance with U.S. Federal Communications Commission and Industry Canada licensing milestones and marking a step forward toward introduction of revenue service later this year. TerreStar-1, launched on July 1, is the second of a new family of hybrid spacecraft that are expected to help boost growth of the mobile satellite service industry (AW&ST July 6, p. 23).
European Union emissions allowance (EUA) prices posted modest gains in July, largely on the back of speculative activity, traders say. December 2009 EUAs closed at €13.20 ($18.48) per metric ton of CO2 equivalent on July 1, having traded in a range of €12.45 to 13.50 for most of June. But prices began to make gains in the first few days of July and rallied as high as €14.62 by July 13.
The VXX program autopsy is just beginning, but already it seems like a red herring is in play. The only culprits are the unnamed Navy ogres who kept piling on vaguely referenced, high-impact requirements. “Repair the procurement process!” proclaim the “experts,” but what process was responsible for the F-117? SR-71? Apollo 11? Can a great process succeed without good people? Perhaps. Even the best process will crater if not applied by people who know the requirements.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Amy Butler (Washington)
An early look at the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) reveals major force and capability alterations that are being described as “high-g changes in direction, and high-g causes pain,” says a senior U.S. Air Force official. Moreover, the pared-down, reshaped, multifunctional forces under consideration are expected to cost $50-60 billion over five years above the planning target of no real growth in defense spending through Fiscal 2015.
I was surprised George W. Hamlin didn’t include the loss of airline revenue resulting from the government restrictions on what can be carried as freight on passenger aircraft. The successes of FedEx and UPS since 9/11 show the strength of that revenue stream. That also is a major reason why regional jets have replaced larger aircraft as there is no longer a need for large cargo capacity. As a 31-year employee of a legacy carrier, it is hard to watch the demise of airlines that started by carrying the mail.
Richard Branson is moving full steam ahead on his daring space tourism project, adding investors to the Virgin Galactic venture that will run the project, and planning to take the company to the market if additional cash is needed. At Oshkosh last week (see p. 36), Branson demonstrated the WhiteKnightTwo twin-hull composite aircraft, also known as VMS Eve, that will carry the company’s suborbital SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude.
