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.
Beginning Nov. 1, a “new” Icelandair will emerge, offering passengers a revised fare structure, a third cabin class, as well as refurbished aircraft interiors. The 80-year-old Reykjavik-based carrier’s fare structure will allow a choice of six pricing categories, including the new “economy plus” class aimed at the business traveler. Icelandair has installed ergonomically designed seats with inflight entertainment on its Boeing 757s. In addition, online check-in will be available at an updated web site.
A year-long research project to test aircraft braking action, underway at Grand Forks International Airport with University of North Dakota supervision, will move in coming months to Boeing-owned St. Marie airfield, formerly Glasgow AFB, Mont. Researchers will use Lidar and video cameras to record braking action of ground vehicles and test certified friction measuring equipment and decelerometers from the FAA-approved list. With the data obtained, the same research plan will vet Piper, Cessna and Cirrus models along with larger Bombardier aircraft.
The Pentagon will not certify to Congress that the U.S. Army’s $942-million Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter development program is suitable to move forward, effectively terminating the troubled Bell effort. Pentagon acquisition czar John Young cites cost growth in an Oct. 16 statement announcing his decision. Per-unit cost had been estimated at $8.56 million and has risen to $14.48 million. Delivery has also slipped to 2013 from 2009. This program already went through one near termination, but was thought to have been on the right track earlier this year.
A team led by Liebherr and Thales has launched a demonstration project aimed at showing how innovative aircraft equipment and systems can reduce pollution by minimizing onboard energy consumption and optimizing aircraft mission and trajectory profiles. The €300-million ($405-million) project, conceived as an Integrated Technology Demonstration (ITD) within the European Union’s Clean Sky initiative, was formally started on Sept. 30 at a kickoff meeting in the Allgau region of southern Germany.
Thales and Sagem are moving to beef up their growing security operations. Thales has completed the acquisition of nCipher, a U.K. company specializing in encryption productions. The purchase, for £50.7 million ($88.7 million), will further reinforce Thales’s position in the information and communications system security business, building on such acquisitions as the security arm of Alcatel-Lucent. nCipher is active in application security, payment authentication/identity systems, network security and secure telephony.
In the last six years, the pace of change in aviation has been incredible. Fuel efficiency increased 19%, marketing and sales unit costs were slashed 25% and non-fuel unit costs reduced 18%. In a short 48 months, we made 100% e-ticketing a reality—saving $3 billion a year. Since 2005, the International Air Transport Assn. (IATA) fuel campaign saved 41 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions and billions of dollars in fuel costs by shortening routes, improving operations and spreading best practices in fuel management.
Development on the next phase of the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm) program, which until only recently was in jeopardy, is continuing with a recent flight test of an extended-range (ER) version.
Chris de Hoog (see photo) has become avionics product program manager for TrueNorth Avionics Inc. of Ottawa. Pat Gordon and Jay Faria have become regional sales managers, Gordon for the central U.S. and Faria for the Southeast U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean.
Andy Seaton (see photo) has been promoted to director of product support from manager of Midwest product support at the Universal Avionics System Corp. , Tucson, Ariz.
Boeing is continuing to examine wing pod-related buffet and boundary layer separation concerns on its KC-767A tanker aircraft for the Italian air force, with further revisions of the refueling pod and pylon configuration also explored. Buffet issues first emerged on the aircraft’s wing airborne refueling pod (WARP) design during the flight-test program in mid-2005, resulting in the redesign of the pod pylon. Further buffet flight testing was carried out in mid-2007.
Iraq’s future airborne strike capability is flying out of a civilian airport in Fort Worth. Two Cessna Grand Caravan 208Bs, each armed with a pair of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, were photographed from Meacham Airport earlier this month. The field has no official military presence, but it is the home of an important ATK Integrated Systems major modification facility and the armed Caravan is one of its projects.
