Stephen Barnes has become director of marketing in Asia and head of the Singapore office of Guggenheim Aviation Partners . He was treasurer of Singapore Airlines.
Dalton Allen has become director of strategic business pursuits within the Washington-based government programs and sales unit of Gulfstream Aerospace . He was the unit’s manager of business development. Marc Havis has been named director of tax. He was vice president-tax for the Polymer Group and tax director for Sunoco Products.
Chinese aircraft conglomerates Avic 1 and 2 have been merged back together as a prelude to further reorganization, including a dedicated helicopter subsidiary. The combined group, foreshadowed earlier this year, is called Avic or China Aviation Industry Corp., as it was before it was split into Avic 1 and 2 in 1999. It covers almost the whole industry. But both the monolithic character of the industry and the name Avic may fade into the background, since the next step will be to allocate many of its operations among six subsidiaries, probably along product lines.
Israel’s Rafael and Bluebird Aero Systems researchers have flown its SkyLite B, mini-UAV to 36,000 ft. during a demonstration of capabilities while working with a tactical reconnaissance team operating in mountainous areas. The man-portable UAV provides independent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and carries advanced processing capabilities including automatic motion detection.
Alexis Livanos, who is corporate vice president/president of the Northrop Grumman Corp. ’s Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Space Technology Sector, has received the International von Karman Wings Award from the California Institute of Technology . The award was presented by the Aerospace Historical Society , in recognition of Livanos’s achievements in space science and technology. He has more than 30 years’ experience in research and applications in microelectronics, solid-state physics, electro-optics and signal processing.
China Eastern Airlines will be allowed to resume flights on two of the routes that it lost after protest action by pilots earlier this year, Chinese media report. The carrier lost rights to a range of services in the southern province of Yunnan as punishment after pilots turned 21 flights back to originating airports in March as part of a contract dispute (AW&ST Apr. 14, p. 21). The airline will again be allowed to fly between the provincial capital, Kunming, and two tourist towns, Xishuangbanna and Dali.
The ongoing global financial turmoil is forcing Finmeccanica to adjust its plans to acquire DRS Technologies, taking on more debt than anticipated and effectively freezing the prospects for another major transaction soon.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Bettina H. Chavanne (Washington)
The Pentagon is quietly backing away from overly rapid development of new signals- and communications-intelligence, cyberwarfare, electronic attack and electronic warfare systems. The U.S. pushed the Soviet Union to bankruptcy with space, stealth and advanced precision weapons 20 years ago. Now the Pentagon doesn’t want to go broke developing separate responses for every foe that wields an Internet-ordered, off-the-shelf, throw-away electronic or cyber-attack weapon.
Japan Airlines’ premium economy seat—which uses a shell design reminiscent of the carrier’s international first-class seat and features electrical connections and a large tray table to accommodate laptop computers—has received a good-design award from the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization. First introduced on a Tokyo-London flight on Dec. 1, 2007, the seat has a sliding seat-back design and 9-in. television screens.
Proposed changes in new European telecom regulations go partway to meeting concerns of European satellite operators with respect to licensing and spectrum access, but the companies say the rules remain seriously flawed.
Eleven days after SpaceDev founder Jim Benson died of a brain tumor, the microsatellite and space products company agreed to be acquired by Sierra Nevada Corp. for $38 million. The privately owned company plans to combine SpaceDev with its MicroSat systems subsidiary to form a space technologies unit to build satellite, propulsion and space vehicle systems, along with subsystems and components. SpaceDev’s products have flown on 250 spacecraft since Benson founded the San Diego-area company in 1997.
NASA may not be able to provide much help to Europe for its ExoMars mission. Technicians at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are replacing a complex series of tubes in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) descent stage because of unqualified welds, exacerbating what is already at least a $300-million cost overrun.
Industry officials are somewhat skeptical about reports that the French government is again ready to privatize solid propulsion and explosives specialist SNPE. Such a step is reported to be in the 2009-14 defense budget plan due to be presented to parliament in early November (AW&ST Oct. 20, p. 35).
“We could not be more happy” with the new Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellite placed into orbit over the Pacific region a year ago, says Col. Jim Wolf, Air Force Space Command’s lead for military satellite communications. The Boeing satellite will provide new Ka-band communications to users as well as adding capacity to existing X-band communications. This will allow some Defense Dept. users to shift from using commercial Ku-band into the WGS system, which can take advantage of more encryption, he says.
James B. Tapp (see photo) has been named Washington-based vice president-corporate business development for the Northrop Grumman Corp. He was vice president-strategy and integration in the Corporate Government Relations Div.
Meanwhile, deep reforms in France’s arms export system—initiated in 2006 by Fromion—appear to be paying off. In a report to parliament released last week, the defense ministry said it had signed off on nearly €4 billion worth of export contracts as of Sept. 30 and is on track to meet its goal of €6 billion for the year, slightly above figures in 2006-07 and almost double the level in 2004, when exports reached rock bottom.
Washington insiders aren’t waiting for the elections to start making massive changes to the next defense budget. Defense Dept. officials and lawmakers recently revealed setbacks for two helicopter and two satellite programs. The Army’s Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter was not recertified, and resolution of the Air Force’s combat, search and rescue helicopter acquisition program has been pushed back to around May 2009.
Homeland Security was a driving issue in the last presidential election, but it’s been largely overlooked by Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama on the 2008 campaign trail. And that’s got some think tank experts worried. While candidate surrogates have addressed industry conferences, neither campaign has made terrorism an issue.
The Air National Guard is helping the Pentagon fill in its UAV support and ground crew shortages with a one-stop Predator training at March Air Reserve Base, Calif. The 163rd Maintenance Group has grown by 500% to accelerate training of active and ANG units. Wing officials plan to open a flying training unit soon and begin flying Predators from the Southern California Logistics Airport about 40 mi. from March, and to add MQ-9 Reapers to the training force.
David Schumacher has become director of government relations for Boeing in Washington State, Oregon, Montana, Hawaii and Alaska. He was staff director for the Washington State Senate Ways and Means Committee.
India is moving into a more active role in the international community of spacefaring nations as its Chandrayaan-1 probe heads toward lunar orbit following a flawless launch Oct. 22. With the start of its first mission beyond low Earth orbit, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is moving ahead on its joint Chandrayaan-2 robotic lunar lander mission with Russia, and is laying plans for a new $122-million launch complex and astronaut-training facility, pending the expected government approval for a two-seat manned Earth orbiter.
Sagem Defense & Security selected Thales’s Minie D night-vision goggles for its Felin future-soldier system. Thales notes that its Minie D, which will be critical for night targeting in particular, offers a 20% improvement in optical performance and a 30% reduction in weight compared with similar equipment. Developed by Thales subsidiary Angenieux, the goggles feature an integral LED screen that superimposes external info, including the weapon sight and mapping data, onto the night image.
The first U.S. Air Force Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs) spacecraft bound for geosynchronous (GEO) orbit wrapped up its acoustic and vibration testing Oct. 17 at Lockheed Martin’s Sunnyvale, Calif., manufacturing plant in preparation for a Fiscal 2010 launch. The Sbirs GEO deployable light shade is to the left of the solar array and in a stowed position in the photo at left, taken before the tests. It will protect the missile early warning spacecraft’s infrared staring and scanning sensors, made by Northrop Grumman, from overexposure to sunlight once in orbit.
SpaceX has just orbited a payload (AW&ST Oct. 6, p. 41), and there is a good chance it will meet its goal to lower the launch cost to $1,000 per pound to low Earth orbit, 10% of the present cost. It is time to reoptimize design to exploit this.
KVH Industries and ViaSat are teaming to provide global Ku-band mobile satellite broadband coverage for aeronautical, maritime and land use—in effect reinventing a concept that Boeing tried to implement earlier in the decade.
