While Pentagon officials won’t take credit for the trend, “It is clearly dangerous to be an Al Qaeda leader even in . . . the tribal areas of Pakistan,” says one senior official. “A number of them seem to have been taken out recently.” Although denying any increase in U.S. operations on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan, he allows that “there’s a continuous effort to go after any and all destabilizing influences.” Moreover, the Pakistan military has stepped up operations in the past two months.
Southwest Airlines reported its first quarterly loss in more than 17 years and says it could cut capacity by as much as 6% in 2009—a dramatic change for the perennially growing carrier. The airline says its $120-million third-quarter loss—which followed 69 straight quarters of profits—is the result of more than $200 million in accounting-required mark-to-market adjustments of the future value of its fuel hedging portfolio, which was driven down by the oil price decline.
Chantal Dorange has become Madrid-based director of corporate communications for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Fakher Daghestani Dubai-based director of corporate communications for the Middle East, both for Boeing . Dorange was communications director for Spain and Central/Eastern Europe. She succeeds Charlie Miller, who is now vice president-international corporate communications. Daghestani was senior regional operations director with public relations agency ASDA’A.
The French government plans to streamline its defense program, with an eye toward meeting current and emerging threats, despite heavy criticism and the potential impact of the global financial crisis on future tax revenues.
The continuing global financial crisis will only sharpen congressional attention on missile defense programs that work, while increasingly ostracizing those that don’t, predicts a key congressional insider. Robert Soofer, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s professional staff on the Republican side, jokingly advises a Heritage Foundation audience: buy stock in the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and sell your shares of the Airborne Laser.
Lockheed Martin was awarded a $39-million, U.S. Navy contract add-on for modifications to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that incorporates operational system changes. Much of the work will be done by Raytheon and BAE Systems, which specialize in advanced avionics, radars and electronic warfare efforts.
A document floating around the Pentagon, awaiting approval, contains the short list of bases under consideration as a home for the new, stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Pared down from 41 contenders, the finalists are: Eglin AFB, Fla.; Eielson AFB, Alaska; Hill AFB, Utah; Moody AFB, Ga.; Mountain Home AFB, Idaho; and Shaw AFB, S.C., according to Air Force officials, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Air Force Magazine. Just as Tyndall AFB, Fla., is the training base for the F-22, Eglin is being eyed as the training base for the F-35.
Aeroflot last week confirmed its interest in acquiring one-half ownership of CSA Czech Airlines, now fully owned by the Czech Republic. The official tender is to be made public in November, with completion of the sale expected in first quarter 2009. Aeroflot is negotiating with a local partner to gain control of ownership, as non-residents of the European Union cannot own more than half of a European airline, according to the Moscow-based carrier.
EADS made a compelling case for its U.S. Air Force tanker offering and won with “extra points” with its KC-45 solution based on a larger aircraft. Boeing addressed the letter of the contract and provided a platform to meet those needs. A new request for proposals will see Boeing offer a 777-based aircraft, but this would ignore and invalidate the original requirements. Splitting the award and having two tankers, each optimized for different missions, makes the most sense but has inherent inefficiencies.
In the next two months, JetBlue Airways and Cape Air plan to enlist a second group of airline-career minded students into the year-old “Gateway” program, which provides structured training and real-time experience that could lead to a JetBlue job interview. The program is a partnership between JetBlue, Cape Air, the University of North Dakota (UND) and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). So far, 41 pilots from UND and ERAU have been accepted into Gateway.
Oil prices are down about 50% since July, and analysts are starting to talk about the U.S. airline industry returning to profitability next year. But demand for air travel is weakening, and the global financial crisis has made it much more difficult to secure financing to buy new jets. These and other divergent indicators are making it difficult to gauge how hard Boeing Co., Airbus and their suppliers will be impacted by the deepening economic downturn.
The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency has awarded Science Applications International Corp. a contract worth up to $254 million to support the National Media Exploitation Center (NMEC). The deal, which SAIC announced Oct. 9, has a six-month base period of performance and four one-year options. “Work will be performed primarily overseas,” according to the contractor. The NMEC provides “strategic document and media exploitation” to the intelligence community, law enforcement and Defense Dept.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Douglas Barrie (London)
Budgetary pressures may force France to consider collaborative routes to sustaining its nuclear weapons capability beyond the present systems now nearing the end of development. Paris is eyeing London as the best candidate. Although the French budget plan will maintain spending on the country’s nuclear weapon modernization program—albeit at a slightly reduced rate—industry officials say that without pooling work with neighboring countries, there will probably not be enough funding to maintain engineering teams once the program is complete.
George Guerra (see photo) has been appointed Northrop Grumman Corp. vice president for High-Altitude Long-Endurance Systems, based in San Diego. He has been airframe integrated product team design and manufacturing lead for the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle.
Planetary scientists are poring over the latest take from NASA’s Messenger (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft, which earlier this month opened up another 30% of Mercury’s surface unseen by Mariner 10 in 1974-75 to close-up imaging. During its second flyby en route to becoming the first spacecraft to orbit the planet, Messenger captured the first close look at this stretch of terrain that shows a crater about 30 mi. across (upper right), and crisscrossing scarps that may hold clues to the planet’s evolution.
Oct. 27-31—Society of Flight Test Engineers’ Short Course: “Hypersonic Aerodynamics for Flight Testers.” The Aero Institute. Palmdale, Calif. Call +1 (661) 949-2095, fax +1 (661) 949-2096 or see www.sfte.org Oct. 28-30—The Aerospace Corp.’s National Space Infosec Symposium, El Segundo, Calif. Also, Dec. 2-3—Microelectronics Reliability and Qualification Workshop, Manhattan Beach (Calif.) Marriott. Call +1 (310) 336-6805 or see http://www.aero.org/conferences/
Italian defense expenditure could fall by as much as 4% in 2009 as the result of a Finance Dept. program to rein in government spending over a three-year period. The cuts will affect defense programs across the board.
A Spanish court appears to be taking steps to launch an official criminal investigation into the Aug. 20 crash of a Spanair MD-82 at Madrid-Barajas Airport that killed 154 people. A maintenance chief and two technicians are being questioned on suspicion of manslaughter on 154 counts. According to Flight Safety Foundation President and CEO William C. Voss, as of Oct. 16, the judge did not appear to have made any formal accusation of manslaughter against the trio.
Prof. Reda (Ray) Mankbadi has been named director of the aeronautics and propulsion research programs at the Center of Excellence of the College of Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University , Daytona Beach, Fla. The center will be devoted to advanced research in aeronautics and propulsion systems.
Jeanine Montgomery has become vice president-accounting/corporate controller for GeoEye Inc. , Dulles, Va. She was assistant controller at USA Mobility.
The Canadian military has received its first Israel Aerospace Industries-built Heron unmanned aerial vehicle. IAI and MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., teaming as prime contractor, were awarded a contract in August for delivery of an IAI Heron UAV through MDA to Canadian forces deployed in Afghanistan under the “Noctua” project. The contract —a two-year lease with an option for a third year—is valued at C$95 million (U.S. $80 million). IAI built the aircraft while management, training and maintenance for the Canadian military will be conducted by MDA.
The head of the FAA office that regulates the commercial spaceflight industry expects a rapid rise in the number of paying space passengers in the near future. “It’s quite likely that in the next 3-5 years we’ll see a number of companies flying hundreds of launches carrying thousands of people to space every year,” says George Nield, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation.
French national space agency CNES is looking for sponsors to develop a microsat imaging concept that could provide Internet users with high-resolution, low-cost, frequently refreshed imagery of the entire Earth. The concept, unveiled here last week, would use a powerful network of ground receiving and data processing stations and a constellation of inexpensive satellites to provide weekly or even daily updates of every corner of the planet in 1-meter (3.3-ft.) color resolution—better than GeoEye-1, launched in September (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 36).
The second phase of a European Space Agency-led project to study technologies for a hypersonic transport capable of flying from Europe to Australia in 2-4 hr. began Oct 16. The four-year, €10-million Lapcat II (long-term advanced propulsion concepts and technologies) project will include further analysis of hydrogen-fueled Mach 5 and Mach 8 concepts evolved in the first phase, which ended last April.
Qantas has ambitious plans for a ground-based GPS-based landing system slated to be certified by the FAA in 2009, following a 15-year development effort.
