Britain’s new Astor R1 ground surveillance radar aircraft banks over the Mojave Desert in the Southwest U.S. earlier this year. Jim Haseltine, shooting for HIGH-G Productions, was flying in a T-38 chase plane. The aircraft carries a Raytheon-built, active electronically scanned array radar for observation of small ground targets from 45,000 ft. Five of the aircraft will be flown by No. 5 (Army Cooperation) Squadron based at RAF Waddington (see p. 56).
Technological advances are shifting the pilot’s role to one of flight manager—and at the same time are underlining the need to maintain basic stick-and-rudder skills.
The Serbian government is considering putting more money into flag carrier JAT to keep the company solvent until it can once again put the airline up for sale. A recent tender process yielded no buyers, which the government has blamed on poor economic conditions and high fuel prices. But JAT’s high debt level and need to modernize an aging fleet may see Belgrade put more money in the business in the short term, according to local reports. Government officials have indicated that once market conditions permit, they will put the airline up for sale once more.
Qatar has placed its first order for C-130s, ordering four stretched “J” models from Lockheed Martin for deliveries beginning in 2011. The contract is valued at $393.6 million. As a new customer, Qatar’s contract includes training of aircrew and technicians; spares; ground support and test equipment; and cargo-related equipment, such as forklifts, pallets and loading vehicles. Qatar is Lockheed Martin’s seventh foreign customer for the C-130J.
Britain and Raytheon have spent a lot of money developing the new Astor airborne ground surveillance system, but they think export of this advanced radar system—with variants based on the customer’s pocketbook—may slash away at the initial investment and development costs they’ve had to bear. “Astor offers a proven integration of complex mission systems that is a marketable commodity,” says British Army Maj. Simon Hanford, Astor chief of staff. “The U.K. covered the research and development cost of Astor so it has an interest in exports.”
Two Dassault Rafale fighters have arrived in Switzerland to complete their stint in the country’s flight evaluation for a partial F-5 replacement. The Saab Gripen has completed its trials, and two Eurofighter Typhoons are due in Switzerland on Nov. 6. The two-seat Rafales will undergo around 30 flights and then operate alongside F-5s and F/A-18s for another 50. The Swiss government hopes to name a winner in July.
The U.S. Air Force has grounded 127 of its 356 A-10 Warthog aircraft from flight status, pending inspection and repair of wing cracks. The issue is facing A-10s with thin-skin wings, the first models to roll off the production line, according to USAF officials. The service had noticed a spike in instances of fatigue-related wing cracks in A-10s around the world, prompting the grounding order. Aircraft supporting U.S. Central Command are being inspected as quickly as possible.
USAF Brig. Gen. (ret.) Frank Bruno has been named director of military sales for the Nordam Group , Tulsa, Okla. He was head of depot maintenance, supply management and sustainment transformation for Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
FlightSafety International is expanding aviation training for Bombardier Learjet, Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft, increasing its five facilities in Wichita, Kan., by a total of at least 200,000 ft. and adding 250 staffers to the more than 450 it employs there. Grants and tax credits from state and local agencies are expected to underwrite the work. For Cessna, FlightSafety will expand pilot training and replace an existing maintenance training center.
The Air Transport Assn. and FAA have named a team of industry and government officials as winners of the 2008 FAA-ATA Non-Destructive Testing “Better Way” Award. It recognizes a team who has worked to advance inspection or testing of aircraft structure, components or systems. The winning team comprises Jeffrey Kollgaard, John Linn, David Messner and Jeffrey Thompson from Boeing; John Bohler, David Piotrowski and Richard Watkins from Delta Air Lines; Russell Jones from the FAA; Andre Lamarre from Olympus Inc.; and Dorsey Perkins from Southwest Airlines.
Orbital Sciences Corp. plans a major expansion of its launch vehicle research and development, engineering, production and test facilities in Chandler, Ariz. The first phase of the plan will comprise an 82,000-sq.-ft. building housing 330 employees. Ultimately, the expansion will add 232,000 sq. ft. of space in three buildings, doubling the size of the facility.
Weak demand for business and first-class travel in their European and U.S. markets has led members of the Assn. of Asia Pacific Airlines to predict 2009 will be rough on profits. “The next 12-18 months will be extremely difficult times for airlines and some won’t survive the current crisis,” says AAPA Director General Andrew Herdman. While fuel prices have abated in recent months, they still are 15% above last year’s levels. Fuel costs coupled with weakened demand are making AAPA members “extremely cautious about prospects for the airline industry in 2009.”
Two years out of office and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is still a figure of controversy. Revered for his vision for national security space management, Rumsfeld is losing some of his disciples. A. Thomas Young, chairman of the Allard Commission, a panel of space experts, says management in national security space is and has been woefully lacking. “It boggles my mind,” Young says on the subject of Rumsfeld’s leadership in this area. “You could not give a grade other than F.
Dassault has launched development of a Phase II upgrade for the EASy integrated flightdeck on its Falcon business jets. The update will include Honeywell’s synthetic vision system on both pilots’ primary displays. New options will include ADS-B Out, controller-pilot data link communications, GPS precision approach, runway awareness software and paperless charts. EASy Phase II will be certificated on the Falcon 900DX/EX in late 2009, and the Falcon 2000DC/LX and Falcon 7X in mid-2010.
Cisco Systems is extending its demonstration of the IP Routing in Space (Iris) experiment by 12 months, according to Rick Sanford, chief operating officer for the program at the company. U.S. Strategic Command sponsored the Joint Capability Technology Demonstration of the payload, which is to be launched on the Intelsat-14 spacecraft. Iris is to provide C- and Ku-band communications from geosynchronous orbit.
Rolls-Royce is aiming to certify its RB2011 open-rotor engine by 2017-18 for a 2020 entry into service, and the company is increasingly confident it has a solution to the noise problem that has previously blighted development efforts with this propulsion concept.
Dave Krogman has been appointed general manager of the Grand Junction, Colo., facility of West Star Aviation Inc. and Keith Rash sales manager for Texas. Krogman was the facility’s director of hangar operations and succeeds Rick Brainard, who is now vice president-sales. Rash has held sales positions with Wing Aviation and BizJet.
Scientists are puzzling over a massive planet-sized object discovered by Europe’s Corot orbital observatory that is unlike any heavenly body seen before. The object, dubbed Corot-exo-3b, is about the size of Jupiter but with 20 times Jupiter’s mass, and takes only four days and six hours to orbit its parent star. Magali Deleuil of the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, which made the find, says researchers “were taken by surprise” by such a massive object orbiting so close to its parent star and are still debating its nature.
Winglet Technology expects to certificate its elliptical winglets for the Citation X in June 2009, and is preparing to work with Cessna on winglets for another, unidentified, Citation. Flight tests on the Mach 0.92 Citation X have shown a 4-5% reduction in fuel consumption, 150 naut. mi. increase in range, 15-kt. higher speed above 41,000 ft., 40 min. faster time to 43,000 ft. and the ability to climb direct to 45,000 ft., at maximum weight. Hot-and-high takeoff performance is also improved, the company says.
Britain’s military is assembling a “collaborative warfare” force for its operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the theater that roughly parallels the U.S.’s latest technology effort in Iraq. That classified collaboration is being given more credit by the Pentagon for curbing bloodshed over the last two years than the much ballyhooed troop surge.
European Space Agency engineers are wrapping up analysis of the debris-impact pattern from the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle, which performed a controlled destructive reentry Sept. 29 after a successful six-month logistics mission to the International Space Station. Following a final deorbit burn that slowed its velocity by 70 meters per sec., the ATV entered the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 120 km. (75 mi.). The 13,400-lb. vehicle broke up 75 km. above the Pacific, with remaining fragments falling into the ocean about 12 min. later.
As Europe revises the ground rules for the entire carbon dioxide cap-and-trade system, airlines could face much stiffer regulations than initially expected. Earlier this year, European governmental institutions worked out a compromise on how to include aviation in the Emission Trading Scheme. But now there’s concern among both industry and European Commission representatives that lawmakers will use a review of the broader ETS—cutting across all industries—to implement more draconian terms for airlines.
The U.S. Air Force last week stopped work on Boeing’s $1.1 billion KC-135 Programmed Depot Maintenance contract after the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of a suit filed by losing bidder, Alabama Aircraft Industries (AAI, formerly Pemco Aeroplex). The dispute has been through multiple reviews at the Government Accountability Office, and the court is now suggesting the Air Force conduct a new competition for the work after problems in the process have come to light. In the meantime, both contractors stand to gain.
Mitsubishi Aircraft is close to deciding whether to allocate work on its MRJ regional jet to fellow Japanese manufacturers Fuji and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, but is warning that the decision will be strictly commercial, not based on any sense of patriotic duty. President Nobuo Toda expects to book more orders for the Mitsubishi Regional Jet before the end of this year. The company, majority owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has been set up to build the 70-90-seat jetliner.
