Russian buyers of Adam Aircraft plan to have the A700 very light jet certified in 2009 and hope to launch mass production a year later. After Colorado-based Adam Aircraft went into bankruptcy, Russia’s Industrial Investors and Kaskol Group bought equal shares of the company for a combined $10 million through their holding of Delaware-based AAI Acquisition, which was set up for the purchase. The deal has now cleared review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, paving the way for investors to spell out their long-term plans.
Airbus has picked Safran’s Sagem Defense & Security Div. to supply the flight data acquisition and security system for the A350XWB wide-body twinjet. The system will rely on technologies developed for the A380 transport and A400M airlifter.
Maarten Uijt de Haag, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University , has won its Institute of Navigation’s annual Thomas L. Thurlow Award for contributions to aviation safety and navigation. Sanjeev Gunawardena, an avionics research engineer who recently obtained his doctorate from Ohio University, received the William E. Jackson Award from the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA).
Bill Bredt has been appointed executive vice president/chief operating officer of Air Canada , effective Aug. 11. He returns to Air Canada after being senior vice president/COO of Jazz Air. Bredt succeeds Rob Reid, who has retired.
Rolls-Royce released interim results last week reflecting the continuing success of its business strategy and solid growth in the commercial aerospace market for the first half of the year. Senior company executives recognize the commercial aerospace sector will not avoid the effects of a general economic downturn and high oil prices, but maintain any impact on the company will be mitigated. The overall order book grew by 17% to £53.5 billion ($105.9 billion), while pre-tax profit was also up to £389 million from £377 million.
NASA has demonstrated the ability to sense a wing’s shape in flight and determine the stresses on its structure in real time, offering the possibility of improving aircraft efficiency and safety by actively controlling wing shape and redistributing loads. The agency is wrapping up flight tests of the Fiber-Optic Wing Shape Sensor on its Ikhana unmanned aircraft, a modified General Atomics Predator B operated by NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, Calif.
The Star Alliance sees harmonization of Africa’s irregular air connections as the formula for improving its presence on the continent. South African Airways is Star’s premier carrier in Africa, and Egyptair is its newest, so the airline group will have entry points at both ends of the continent. The two carriers expect to coordinate their schedules to feed flights into West and Central Africa.
Aug. 4-7—Fatigue Concepts Course: “Fatigue, Fracture Mechanics and Damage Tolerance. of Aging and Modern Aircraft Structures” Holiday Inn, Melbourne, Fla. And Aug. 11-14-Huntsville Sparkman Center. Redstone Arsenal, Al. Call + 1 (916) 933-5000 or see www.fatcon.com/sched.html Aug. 14-17—Australasian Society of Aerospace Medicine’s 2008 Frontiers of Aerospace Medicine Conference. Crowne Plaza, Darwin, Australia. Call +61 (3) 9899-1686 or see www.asam.org.au
No one ever said that designing software to automate the command-and-control centers providing air defense for NATO nations in Europe would be easy. But Thales Raytheon Systems has been developing an enormous amount of computer code over the past nine years to do the job. In fact, the total is 13 million lines of code, more than 10 times what was written to run the Peace Shield air defense system for Saudi Arabia.
Sustaining growth of the worldwide sport aviation movement during the next 10 years depends largely on reducing the cost of flying, developing alternate fuels and defeating user fees, according to Experimental Aircraft Assn. officials.
Profitability for EasyJet is falling, with the airline now only projecting a profit of £110-120 million in the fiscal year ending in September. The airline had projected a profit growth of 20% over last year (£201 million). The airline is suffering from a £185-million increase in fuel costs, only half of which could be regained through additional revenues. The carrier also is limiting capacity growth to 4-6% for the winter season, and signals it may curtail that further if market pressures require such action.
A San Francisco company, a specialist in anti-counterfeiting on the Internet and in more than a half-dozen industries, is working with several aerospace manufacturers to develop an application to protect the security of aircraft parts. Benjamin Jun, Cryptology Research Inc.’s vice president for technology, says the company is looking into embedding a security core in a part’s existing microchip. Verification would come through a device attached to an aircraft computer system or at a maintenance shop.
In response to Col. (ret.) Michael Gallagher, just because a 100-hr. fixed-wing military pilot can safely and consistently hit a low-key position at 1 mi. and 300 ft., which by the way he is either flying solo or with other crewmember(s), doesn’t mean a highly skilled airline crew can’t do it. We all can, plus other feats. But the 100-plus passengers deserve a better ride. It’s not cattle or packages that we are carrying. The courteous service and smooth ride, approaches and landings are the only free perks that are expected. At times, even they are hard to get.
The Pentagon’s Fiscal 2008 omnibus reprogramming request also includes $16 million for a technology demonstration to identify commercially available solutions for a “potential short term need” for an Overhead Non-imaging Infrared capability. The goal is to find a solution that provides infrared data similar to that provided by the aging Defense Support Program satellite constellation.
Germany has orbited the fifth and final satellite in its SARLupe X-band satellite constellation, providing the German armed forces and Europe with their first full space-based radar-imaging capability. Like the four preceding units, the new spacecraft was orbited from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia atop a Cosmos 3M launcher. The first contact with the German Aerospace Center control facility in Oberpfaffenhofen was established at 5:43 Central European Time on July 22, 1 hr., 3 min.
Washington’s digital revolution in military affairs still has fans in Japan. Masahiro Matsumura, professor of international politics at St. Andrew’s University in Osaka, says Japan’s defense transformation—which already includes AWACS aircraft, Aegis ships and C4ISR facilities like the new Air Defense Command headquarters at Yokota Air Base—is the core on which Japan is basing its military future. Despite the Iraq quagmire, which slowed down U.S. transformation, he says, Japan is preparing technology for guaranteed access to U.S. networks.
Boeing and Alliant Techsystems have joined the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works team bidding to build Darpa’s Blackswift hypersonic technology demonstrator. Under Darpa’s Falcon program, the Skunk Works has completed conceptual design of an unmanned, reusable, turbojet/scramjet-powered vehicle, the HTV-3X, which forms the basis for the Blackswift. The demonstrator is planned to fly in 2012, taking off and landing under turbojet power and accelerating to beyond Mach 6 on ramjet/scramjet power.
Germany will be the first export customer for Boeing’s laser sensor-equipped Joint Direct Attack Munition. Delivery of the guidance kits for 500-lb. bombs is to start next year. The weapon will be used on German Tornados.
The days of 3D air traffic management without thinking about the fourth dimension (time) are numbered. Richard Deakin, senior vice president of the Thales Air Systems Div., said at the Farnborough air show that the use of 4D trajectory (4DT) management from gate to gate is an up-and-coming concept key to both the U.S. NextGen air traffic control modernization program and the Single European Sky ATM Research Program (Sesar). The Thales unit has installed 260 of its Eurocat-X automated ATC systems in en route and terminal air traffic control centers in 55 nations.
A team comprising Spanish electronics company Indra, and Russia’s Samara-based Ekran joint stock company hope to begin flight trials this year of a laser-based infrared countermeasures system for fixed-wing aircraft. Flight trials are expected to take place using a EADS CASA CN-235 and Ilyushin IL-76. Ground tests are underway in preparation for flight trials. Those would last around eight months, says an Ekran representative. A launch customer is still being sought. The multi-band laser system is cued by ultraviolet missile warners.
USAF Capt. Shannon Lippert, an F-15E pilot from the 4th Fighter Wing and a member of the 336th Fighter Sqdn. at Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., is the first woman to receive the American Fighter Aces Assn. ’s Francis S. Gabreski Award. She competed against pilots of all aircraft types Air Force-wide to be named the most outstanding performer of the year during a basic course in a formal training unit.
Lufthansa’s outstanding financial performance among Europe’s legacy carriers is seriously threatened by upcoming strikes and demands for big pay increases from pilots, ground staff and cabin crew.
As it zeroes in on the final design of its Ares I crew launch vehicle, NASA continues to make changes to the propulsion systems as it strives to balance cost and performance while meeting the deadline for initial operational capability by early Fiscal 2015. Cost and weight issues with composites have forced the agency back to a metal nozzle for the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) J-2X rocket engine that will power both the upper stage of the Ares I crew launch vehicle and the Earth departure stage of the heavy-lift Ares V.
A decision by General Electric Aviation and Safran to jointly develop and market a new engine nacelle could signal a broader move by the two companies to collaborate in areas in which they lack the economies of scale to be competitive in the global marketplace. The two companies agreed at the Farnborough air show to form a joint venture to develop and market a nacelle for new single-aisle transports and other applications. The venture will bring together Safran’s Aircelle unit and GE Aviation’s Middle River Aircraft Systems (MRAS) affiliate.
The British Defense Ministry is being criticized by the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee for what it sees as efforts to try to obfuscate the real costs of defense procurement in its “Major Projects Report 2007.” Committe Chairman Edward Leigh says: “The Ministry of Defense is trying to persuade Parliament that the forecast costs of major defense equipment projects are under control—by moving expenditure from those projects to other defense budgets.” The committee noted that in 2006 and 2007, more than £1 billion ($1.98 billion) was “reallocated.” It argues “such tran
