South Africa’s new defense minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, has signaled she wants to make changes at Denel, bringing the arms maker closer under government control due to some unhappiness over how the business has performed. In her first address to parliament, she signaled changes at Armscor, the country’s official arms procurement agency. Industry officials suggest that at this point there are no immediate changes looming, and that Denel’s strategic industrial relationships with Saab, Rheinmetall and Carl Zeiss are not at risk.
USAF Brig. Gen. Earl D. Matthews has been named director of command, control, communications and computer systems at U.S. Transportation Command Headquarters, Scott AFB, Ill. He was deputy director of studies and analyses, assessments and lessons learned at USAF Headquarters at the Pentagon. Brig. Gen. Michelle D. Johnson has been appointed director of strategy, policy, programs and logistics at U.S. Transportation Command Headquarters. She was deputy director of global effects for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. Brig. Gen. Gregory A.
Keith Morrison has been named director of business development for integrated microwave assemblies for the Trak Microwave Corp. , Tampa, Fla. He was business development manager for Avnet Inc.
As a member of the 1980s U.S. Defense Dept. team that worked with the Japanese Defense Agency (JDA) during the selection and development of the FSX (a.k.a. F-2) fighter, I had a rush of deja vu while reading “Joining the Club” about the current F-X fighter acquisition (AW&ST June 1, p. 25). The mistakes of the FSX/F-2 program were inexcusable and admittedly, the USAF refusal to sell the F-22 to Japan is inexplicable.
A contretemps between Europe and the U.S. over inspecting airline maintenance shops has American business aviation interests worried. The European Commission and the U.S. signed a Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement in June 2008. However, the Europeans have delayed implementation because members of the U.S. Congress, apparently at the urging of unions concerned that they’ll lose work, want the FAA to inspect European shops servicing American aircraft at least twice annually, in direct contradiction to the bilateral agreement.
Continued U.S. participation in the International Space Station seems to be in the Obama administration’s plans, but confirmation testimony from NASA Administrator-nominee Charles Bolden leaves much of the rest of the agency’s current program very much up in the air.
U.S. Air Force officials say a new Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Flight Plan is intended to “try to level” the field of contractors competing for funding for ISR contracts through a new approach to requirements and resourcing decisions. An interactive and “transparent” database will be used to catalogue contractors’ projects, including internally funded R&D, Brig. Gen. Jamieson says. One goal is to use direct input from combatant commanders to prioritize government funding for research and procurement projects.
It is increasingly a race against time for several of central Europe’s mid-sized carriers as they try to restructure before falling victim to the sharp economic downturn that has hit their region particularly severely. From Poland to Austria, airlines are leaving no stone unturned, but most in the region are suffering double-digit drops in passenger numbers compared with 2008 levels. And effecting a turnaround isn’t easy.
USAF Brig. Gen. Timothy A. Byers has been named deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support at USAF Headquarters at the Pentagon. He was the office’s director at Headquarters Air Combat Command, Langley AFB, Va. Byers has been succeeded by Brig. Gen. Dave C. Howe, who was director of logistics, installations and mission support at Headquarters U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein AB, Germany. Howe, in turn, has been followed by Brig. Gen. Mark A.
Former astronaut and research pilot C. Gordon Fullerton and planetary scientist John R. Casani have won the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Lifetime Achievement. Fullerton was cited for fulfilling three careers in aeronautics and spaceflight with the U.S. Air Force and NASA. He was a bomber and research test pilot during a 30-year USAF career, spending much of that period as an astronaut in NASA’s Apollo, Skylab and space shuttle programs.
A Rockot booster with a Breeze-KM upper stage has orbited three Russian military satellites. The SS-19 derivative, operated by EADS-Khrunichev venture Eurockot, was launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia carrying Kosmos 2451, 2452 and 2453, said to be for communications use. It was the second Rockot launch this year, following the European Space Agency’s gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) in March.
The Coast Guard, which has 11 mandated missions—from drug interdiction to search and rescue—may have set the performance bar too high, according to a congressional report. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Coast Guard, the smallest of the armed services and an agency of the Homeland Security Dept., reported falling substantially short of its performance target on defense readiness. While performance rose slightly—to 56% in Fiscal 2008 from 51% in Fiscal 2007—the Coast Guard’s goal was to meet designated combat readiness levels 100% of the time.
The Experimental Aircraft Assn. annual Airventure fly-in, set for July 27-Aug. 2 in Oshkosh, Wis., is expected to draw more than 500,000 attendees, or about the same as in 2008. Highlights this year will include the Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo spacecraft carrier, an Airbus A380 and Erickson Sky Crane, along with the PiperJet and a variety of military aircraft including the C5M re-engined Galaxy, a C-17 Globemaster III and, for the first time, a UAV—a Predator B operated by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service.
The first of 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets for the Royal Australian Air Force was unveiled July 8 during a ceremony at Boeing’s St. Louis facility and is scheduled for delivery this month. Air Marshal Mark Binskin, chief of the RAAF, says the Super Hornets will reach initial operational capability late next year. He notes that the introduction of the Super Hornets will provide a technology bridge to the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter, which Australia will purchase.
Northrop Grumman also has begun delivering retrofitted BQM-34 Firebee aerial targets upgraded with avionics and software from its smaller BQM-74E family. Both UAVs have gained notice in the last two decades for their ability to mimic fighters and bombers to lure enemy air defenses into activating so that they can be located and destroyed.
Raytheon received a $1.176-million DHS contract for the second phase of a Stand-Off Warning Against Radiological Materials (Swarm) development program. The objective is to develop modeling for the optimum number and types of sensors to be used for detection and the architecture to link them in a distributed network. The company is teaming with Los Alamos National Laboratory, Physical Sciences, ORTEC, MIT and Boston University.
On July 9, the NTSB determined the probable cause of the Sept. 3, 2007, crash that killed Steve Fossett near Mammoth Lakes, Calif.: inadvertent encounter with downdrafts that exceeded the climb capability of his Bellanca 8KCAB-180 (N240R). Mountainous terrain and high-density altitude were listed among the contributing factors.
Laszlo Tamas has been appointed sales and marketing manager for the U.K. and Ireland for Ryanair . He held similar positions at Lufthansa and Wizz Air.
Even if near-term priorities remain the surface-to-air arena, Israeli guided-weapons manufacturer Rafael continues to pursue technologies for the next-generation of air-launched systems. Israel remains broadly on track to deploy the Rafael Iron Dome anti-rocket system by mid-2010, with testing nearly complete. Numerous firings have been carried out, and these have proved “mostly successful,” says a company executive. The program is running slightly later than originally anticipated.
Arlene McKeeman Brown of Boeing in Seattle is among the five members of the Covina, Calif.-based Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering to be named Sampe fellows for 2009. The others are: Takashi Ishikawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tokyo; Tia Benson Tolle, Nonmetallic Materials Div. at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; Ignaas Verpoest, Katholieke Universiteit Herverlee, Belgium; and Yichu Yin, Shanghai European-Asia Synthetic Materials Co.
EADS officials hope a new multibillion-dollar turnkey award to build a Saudi border surveillance system will boost efforts to develop a potent homeland security business while lessening the European company’s dependence on Airbus commercial aircraft activity.
