Lockheed Martin has offered Brazil a tailored version of the F-16 instead of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter originally specified in the request for information issued in July. The F-16BR is one of six contenders for the 36-aircraft F-X2 program.
The F-16C Block 40—loaded with two AIM-120s, two AIM-9s air-to-air missiles, two precision-guided GBU-31 joint direct attack munitions, two fuel tanks, an ALQ-184 jamming and towed decoy pod and a Lantirn navigation and targeting pod—is deployed with the 36th Fighter Sqdn.,“The Fiends,” at Osan AB, South Korea. Along with modernized A-10Cs, it will be the mainstay of U.S. defensive air power as the U.S. upgrades its strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for the peninsula.
Antitrust authorities, union, and potential industrial partners will now get to weigh in on the “new” Alitalia, after banks and politicians have spent weeks crafting a plan to allow the airline to survive despite massive structural and financial problems.
All the networking, command-and-control streamlining and high-speed intelligence analyses planned for South Korea come together in the cockpit of sensor- and bomb-laden aircraft. In South Korea, there are advanced aircraft ready to take advantage of these many digitally based enhancements. But planning for future threats also requires significant upgrades to both Korean and U.S. warplanes.
SAP, whose signature enterprise resource planning software has expanded over the years to include suites for managing supply chains and product life-cycles, says managers are increasingly uncertain about handling regulatory issues. SAP Director Paul Pessutti, who spoke recently at Aviation Week’s Risk Management Seminar, says managing compliance is the company’s largest growth area. He says security concerns since the 9/11 terrorist attacks include ensuring that hostile elements do not gain access to sensitive materials or ship dangerous goods into the U.S.
Sigma Space has delivered the main elements of the Cloud Physics lidar (light detection and ranging) instrument to be flown on NASA’s two Global Hawk UAVs beginning in March 2009. Built for Goddard Space Flight Center, the lidar is similar to that flown on the agency’s ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft and will provide information on cloud and aerosol properties used in atmospheric research and hurricane surveillance.
Nick Oster has been promoted to manager of material/supply chain from purchasing manager for Circor Aerospace-Aerodyne Controls at its Ronkonkoma, N.Y., facility. Jacqueline Osborne has become market analyst and communications specialist at Circor headquarters, Corona, Calif. She was a marketing manager for SunCal Companies.
As the nation closed in on the Labor Day weekend, Boeing Commercial Airplanes made a best and final offer to machinists—after two earlier offers were rejected—that includes an 11% wage increase over three years and bonus payments if the deal is closed on Sept. 3, the previously agreed deadline.
European Union emission allowance (EUA) prices under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme staged a recovery in August, driven by technical factors and higher gas prices. The increase in August followed a sharp selloff during July, prompted by a significant drop in the price of crude oil. But while crude prices continued to fall—dropping from $127 per barrel in late July to around $117 by Aug. 27—EUAs bucked the trend, gaining around €3.60 ($5.29) per metric ton since the start of the month.
Despite the surge in fuel prices, Boeing will not make any key decisions on the next-generation airliner until at least 2010 or 2011 because the progress of technology and the level of production efficiency will not support an earlier move.
A National Research Council panel is faulting NASA for not systematically taking astronaut health and human factors into account in the early stages of its Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP). “The committee did not find a high degree of awareness of the interdependencies between the ETDP technology projects and associated human health risks and human factor design considerations,” the panel states in its report. The ETDP is developing enabling technologies to allow NASA to return astronauts to the moon and eventually send them to Mars.
Kathryn Mikells has been named senior vice president/chief financial officer of United Airlines parent UAL Corp. She will succeed Jake Brace, who is scheduled to retire Nov. 1. Mikells has been vice president-investor relations.
Low-cost, low-fare transatlantic carrier Zoom Airlines abruptly ceased operations Aug. 28, citing the economic downturn, jet fuel price increases that added $50 million in annual expenses, and its inability to obtain additional financing. Zoom Airlines comprises Canada-based Zoom Airlines Inc. and U.K.-based Zoom Airlines Ltd., and both began insolvency proceedings.
NASA has released the first image from its latest space observatory, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast), and given it a new name. Now to be known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, after Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the telescope will explore high-energy astrophysical phenomena and hopefully provide insights into the origins of cosmic rays and the nature of dark matter.
Insolvency proceedings involving Grob Aerospace have effectively stalled progress on the SPn utility jet and raised uncertainty about what schedule may be achievable even if financing can be raised to keep the company afloat.
The U.S. Air Force’s new top management is coming to some of the same conclusions that got their predecessors fired. For example, on increasing the number of unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft in two combat theaters—plus the wide expanses of the Western Pacific and East Asia—Gen. Norton Schwartz says Air Force unmanned aircraft units are already on a war footing. Pushing more of them into combat by stripping the training establishment is counter productive, the chief of staff says. He cites 50 unmanned combat orbits as the current limit.
Marion Broughton (see photos) has been appointed managing director of Thales UK Simulation . She was vice president-customer services for the Thales Aerospace Div. with responsibility for military customer services in France and the U.K. Pascal Clere has been named managing director of Thales France Simulation. He was operations director of the Thales Security Solutions and Services Div. And, Michel Masselin has become director of training solutions. He was head of European defense services.
The Israeli shekel’s strong performance against the U.S. dollar hurt the financial performance of Israel Aerospace Industries for the first six months of 2008. Net income of $59 million was up only 3% from the same period last year, despite healthy sales activity that reached a record $1.9 billion during the period, driving IAI’s backlog to $7.8 billion—8% higher than in June 2007. By contrast, the company says activity in the civil market, which accounts for 40% of total operations, increased 15%.
Industry sources say the Al Yah Satellite Communications Co. (YahSat) of Abu Dhabi have decided to modify the payload on one of two telecom satellites ordered from EADS Astrium and Thales Alenia Space to meet growing demand for high-speed Internet access in the Middle East and Africa. According to the sources, a large portion of the Ku-band payload on YahSat 1b, planned for launch in the first half of 2011, will be switched to Ka-band, using a multiple spot beam architecture. The two satellites already feature Ka-band payloads for secure military/government applications.
The problem of thrust oscillation on the Orion/Ares I, “The Fix Is In” (AW&ST Aug. 18/25, p. 42), is not too different from the oscillation problem on the Gemini/Titan system. In that case, the longitudinal vibration was so bad the astronauts could not see the instruments during the first 30 sec. of launch.
For airlines and the traveling public, it has long been obvious that the current arrangement governing London area airports is unsustainable and indefensible. Lack of capacity, poor infrastructure, and closed doors to competition have been the order of the day for far too long.
Structuring intelligence-gathering and surveillance is like epidemiology. It’s guided by the identification of elusive signatures from mutating threats and the introduction of increasingly sophisticated technologies to excise them. The dangers to South Korea are similar and offer an occasional surprise. “Tactical ballistic missiles [TBMs] are a threat and always will be,” says an experienced intel official. But, “while ballistic missiles are important, they’re not at the top of the list.”
