Boeing announced last week that the Royal Australian Air Force Wedgetail 737 Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft flying over Washington State in March were demonstrating simultaneous command and control of three ScanEagle unmanned aircraft systems. Airborne operators, via the UAS battle-management software, issued NATO-standard sensor and air-vehicle commands by means of a UHF satellite communication link and ground-station relay. The ScanEagles were launched from the Boardman Test Facility in eastern Oregon, about 120 mi. from the airborne Wedgetails.
Lockheed Martin was scheduled to roll out the first Terminal High Altitude Area Defense weapon system launcher and fire control system at the company’s Thaad launcher integration complex in Camden, N.J., on Apr. 13.
Unusual booking patterns are making it more difficult for airlines to gauge actual demand, further complicating efforts to deal with the huge fall in premium traffic and overall declines in passenger numbers and yields. “What people are not doing is booking 30-60-90 days out. They are deciding this week that they are going to go and make the booking and go,” says Airbus Chief Operating Officer for Customers John Leahy.
Rolls-Royce is completing the preliminary design review of the Trent XWB engine and has finalized the largest set of international partners ever put together to share risk and revenues for one of its commercial programs.
Asia’s largest carrier, Japan Airlines (JAL), is seeing the worldwide recession in passenger and air freight reflected in its books for the fiscal year ended Mar. 31. The carrier’s report for February’s activity shows a nearly six-point drop in international load factors to 66% from the previous period’s 71.8%. Passenger counts were off 16% to 896,118, revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) were down 17.4% to 3.9 million and capacity was off 10% to 5.9 million.
Charles Ingham suggests the shotgun method for bird clearing (AW&ST Mar. 16, p. 10). Here’s another: Back at Grumman on Long Island, N.Y., in 1979, a loudspeaker truck would patrol the runway perimeter, playing bird distress calls. I guess it worked as no accidents apparently occurred.
Japanese Space Agency JAXA has completed a 10-sec. captive firing test of the first stage for the H-IIB launcher that will be used to lift the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) to the International Space Station. An enhanced version of JAXA’s H-IIA, the newer B launcher uses two Mitsubishi LE-7A liquid hydrogen/oxygen first-stage motors instead of the A’s single motor. The test required thickening the stage’s propellant tank, which Mitsubishi accomplished using friction-stir welding. The B launcher’s liftoff capacity will be 16.5 metric tons, up from 12 metric tons on the A.
Airbus is in talks with an airline to provide at least one high-capacity A380 to transport people to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Airbus won’t identify the buyer, but says the configuration would be modeled on the 840-seat version that Air Austral plans to buy for use for the La Reunion-Paris route. Airbus hopes to close that deal for two A380s by year-end.
A report by the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense calls for adding space-based technology to the layered land-, air- and sea-based defense network, though President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he opposes deploying weapons in space. The group, sponsored by think tanks including the George C. Marshall Institute and the Heritage Foundation, warns in its report that the U.S. could wind up like China’s Ming dynasty, which held a preeminent position in ocean navigation and exploration 600 years ago.
Application-specific integrated circuits are going the way of the Studebaker at NASA, at least when it comes to common spaceborne applications. Under its Communication, Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable Testbed (Connect) effort, the U.S. space agency is funding development of software-defined radios (SDRs) that can be reconfigured for different purposes quickly and relatively cheaply. Headed by a team at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the Connect studies aim to test reconfigurable SDRs on the International Space Station beginning in 2011.
The recent program terminations outlined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates aren’t the end of the story. There will be more with the revised budget release in May. One is the Navy’s decision to end the Boeing-led Harpoon Block III antiship missile. Poor performance by Rockwell Collins in developing the data link, which is designed to provide targeting data in flight, prompted the termination, according to government and industry officials.
The gradiometer on board the European Space Agency’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is online and gathering data as the spacecraft gears up to begin science operations this summer. The gradiometer is specifically designed to map Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy during the spacecraft’s 30-month mission, according to ESA. The instrument consists of three pairs of identical accelerometers, each mounted to point in orthogonal directions to allow the simultaneous measurement of spatial variations in the gravity field.
Regarding Adrian Schofield’s article “Common Cause” (AW&ST Mar. 23. p. 26), in mid-2008, the price for gasoline in the U.S. exceeded $4 per gallon, a price so effective at inhibiting consumption that it caused a steep decline in gasoline tax revenue intended for highway improvements. The U.S. Transportation Dept. had to cover the shortfall with $8 billion from the general fund.
European defense officials think the global financial crisis, combined with France’s return to NATO’s unified command, which was officially concluded on Apr. 3, could act as a catalyst for more European defense cooperation. The most likely progress is expected to involve France and the U.K., which both face military hardware commitments they probably can’t meet on their own (see p. 29). Thales Chairman/CEO Denis Ranque says the two countries are already in danger of losing several key areas of expertise, notably combat aircraft electronics and underwater systems.
The FAA has authorized large-cabin Gulfstream jets equipped with the PlaneView avionics system to use Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) for oceanic and remote area waypoint reporting. Gulfstream says it is the first manufacturer of purpose-built business jets to receive the approval. ADS-C automatically sends position information at predetermined intervals, allowing air traffic control to track it. The system also automatically reports deviations from its cleared altitude and routing, and provides air traffic control with weather data.
In a case dating to 1995, Northrop Grumman has agreed to a $325-million payment to settle a lawsuit brought by a whistleblower over defective transistors used on satellites built for the National Reconnaissance Office, according to the U.S. Justice Dept. The transistors were made by TRW, which Northrop Grumman acquired in 2002, and used on satellites it built and some manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The government joined with the whistleblower, Robert Ferro, an Aerospace Corp.
Panasonic Avionics has signed up five major broadcasters to provide live news for its inflight TV network. The 3-5-year agreements involve Al Jazeera, BBC World News, Bloomberg, Euronews and the France 24 news channel. Inflight TV, like onboard broadband connectivity and cell phone services, is part of Panasonic’s Ku-band eXConnect inflight entertainment equipment product portfolio.
Capt. (ret.) John A. Crocker has history reversed on birds at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) and the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge (AW&ST Mar. 30, p. 8). Heinz Refuge is in Tinicum Marsh, the largest remaining inland tidal marsh in Pennsylvania, and near the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. The adjacent “airstrip” that is now PHL was first placed on Hog Island in 1936—yes, on an island around these rivers, creeks and a marsh. Think that might attract waterfowl? Only Interstate 95 separates the airport from Heinz.
A new U.S. plan for future overhead imaging capabilities calls for multiple high-end satellites being bought by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) as well as additional agreements with commercial imaging services providers in the U.S., according to government officials. The NRO intends to sign a contract within months for the purchase of more than one classified electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) imaging satellite that will extend the life of the government’s overhead collection architecture, according to senior intelligence officials.
Vindication for former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) came six months late and an election short. Once one of the most influential members of the Senate, sitting on the Commerce, Homeland Security and Appropriations committees, Stevens was convicted of seven felony corruption charges last year, just weeks before he sought reelection for an eighth term. Last week, a federal judge dismissed the ethics conviction—at the request of the Justice Dept. The judge also appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the lawyers that prosecuted Stevens, 85.
Launch of Europe’s Herschel-Planck dual telescope mission has been rescheduled for May 6. The launch, most recently slated for Apr. 16, was postponed because of the need to conduct additional satellite flightworthiness checks.
The chief designer of China’s manned space program, Zhou Jiaping, says more tests of the spacesuit used in his nation’s first spacewalk are upcoming, along with upgrades planned to meet long-term requirements for lunar exploration. Speaking at the National Space Symposium, Zhou also adds that China plans to continue using the Russian-made Orlan suit as a backup. Describing the Chinese-developed suit used in the Sept. 27, 2008, extravehicular activity, Zhou says it is pressurized to about 5.8 psi. and provides life support for 6 hr.
Irregular warfare may be the new buzz word for Pentagon planning, but Defense Secretary Gates will have none of it in his own house. He says he will not tolerate what he calls “guerilla warfare”—armed services officials independently arguing for their parochial interests on Capitol Hill. The worst offender recently was the Air Force, which publicly argued last year for more F-22 Raptors than the number endorsed by the president. Apparently, Gates surprised even himself in managing to keep a lid on his program hit list until he announced the decisions last week.
EP-X—the Navy’s replacement for the aging EP-3E Aries II signals and communications surveillance aircraft—is being designed to carry a large-aperture AESA radar that will allow it to move into the world of network-centric warfare and the increasingly esoteric field of information operations.
