EADS Defense & Security has received an €11.5-million three-year contract to modernize four Spanish Navy AV-8B Harriers. The award, intended to bring the aircraft to a standard approaching the Harrier II Plus, will feature new Pegasus 408A engines, avionics and structural and component upgrades. Avionics will include night-vision-compatible controls, displays and lighting, and wide-field-of-view head-up display.
BAE Systems and Thales are working on an armed derivative of BAE’s Herti unmanned aerial vehicle, dubbed Fury. Trials are underway to fit the UAV with the Thales Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) now in development. Captive-carry trials of the LMM store have been conducted as has a static live-fire test. BAE and Thales have yet to conduct a guided airborne launch of a live weapon. These trials will be used to show safe separation and that the vehicle’s systems are capable of guiding the weapon to target.
In an effort to address global pilot shortage, CAE has acquired the Sabena Flight Academy. The independently run school, which trained Sabena pilots for decades, now specializes in ab-initio and type-rating training for airlines. The academy uses about 40 aircraft, including the Eclipse 500, at Mesa, Ariz., and operates a six-simulator center at Brussels. The move is expected to expand CAE’s Global Academy effort by providing capacity to train more than 1,400 pilots a year.
The RAF used the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper to fire a weapon during combat operations in Afghanistan for the first time at the beginning of this month. The Reaper can carry the GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb and AGM-114P Hellfire laser-guided missile. The U.K. ordered three MQ-9s to meet an urgent operational requirement, with one already destroyed.
What’s going on with the U.S. Air Force? Its leaders are summarily dismissed. Its new front-line fighter is stunted. Its war-fighting support is criticized. Its nuclear weapons stewardship is questioned. And these are just some of the issues at the forefront following the recent forced resignations of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff.
Robert D. Cabana, director of the NASA John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was among five individuals inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame at Kennedy Space Center recently. Cabana piloted space shuttle Discovery on missions STS-41 in 1990 and STS-53 in 1992 and commanded Columbia’s STS-65 mission in 1994 and Endeavour in 1998 for the first International Space Station assembly mission.
A Chinese Long March booster has successfully lifted a Thales Alenia Space-built telecom satellite into orbit. The spacecraft, Chinasat 9, employs a bus that is free of U.S. components, allowing it to skirt U.S. International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The U.S. Congress is attempting to pass legislation that could bar suppliers of such ITAR-free technology from selling defense hardware to the Pentagon (AW&ST June 9, p. 36).
Steve Sparks (see photos) has been appointed director of NetJets programs for FlightSafety International of New York and Michael Halsey director of manufacturing for its FlightSafety Simulation sector, Broken Arrow, Okla. Sparks was a relationship manager at FlightSafety’s Hawker Beechcraft Learning Center and later a senior product manager. Halsey was director of operations for the Interiors and Structures Div. of the Nordam Group, Tulsa, Okla.
The University of Arizona plans to use the Phoenix Space Operations Control Center in Tucson as the centerpiece for future bids to NASA and other agencies to handle space missions and exercises once Phoenix is completed. The facility is certified to International Traffic in Arms Regulations standards, and the staff now has the experience to use its powerful computer and display capabilities for both simulation and space-control operations.
Ian F. Reid has become CEO of Hong King-based SkyWorks Capital Asia Ltd. , a joint venture of Swire Pacific Ltd. and Air China Development Corp. He was senior vice president of RBS Aviation Capital, also in Hong Kong, and had been managing director-Asia for JP Morgan’s transportation and logistics group.
Italy hopes to take a big step this year in modernizing the tactical reconnaissance capabilities of its air force. The service has been trying to replace its reconnaissance systems for almost a decade, but tight budgets delayed the effort. However, the need remains, and recent operations have underscored the urgency for high-resolution reconnaissance.
Robert Gulcher’s letter “Defense Situation Analyzed” (AW&ST May 26, p. 13) details disturbing statistics concerning aerospace programs over budget and behind schedule, and suggests several causes. From the vantage point of three decades as an aerospace engineer, here are my thoughts on two more phenomena that may be contributors to this malaise: the devaluation or trivialization of specialized engineering expertise and the concurrent rise to a position of preeminence of system engineering.
Dubai-based Emirates Investment & Development (Emivest) is to purchase 80% of San Antonio-based business jet manufacturer Sino Swearingen Aircraft Co. (SSAC) from its Taiwanese owners for an undisclosed sum. SSAC has delivered only two SJ30 light jets since certification at the end of 2005, and a takeover deal announced last year by U.K.-based distributor Action Aviation and private U.S. investors fell through.
The U.S. Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) is conducting weapons stores separation tests for the U.S. Navy’s F/A-18E/F multirole fighter. The tests, conducted in AEDC’s 16-ft. transonic wind tunnel, are focusing on the AIM-120C advanced medium-range, air-to-air missile (Amraam) and 11 other stores, says Frank Taverna, Naval Air Systems Command lead for the multirole fighter.
The British Defense Ministry’s muddled handling of a Chinook procurement is coming under fire, at the same time as the U.K. and Boeing are close to finalizing a cockpit standardization program across the country’s entire Chinook heavy-lift helicopter fleet. The National Audit Office (NAO), Parliament’s financial watchdog, is critical of the ministry’s “protracted” effort to rectify problems with the Chinook Mk. 3, which has meant that the aircraft will be introduced 11 years later than anticipated.
Peter Liese, a member of the European Parliament and the chief architect of emissions trading legislation that would cost the airline industry billions, doesn’t much care who wins the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Flight tests of Boeing’s X-48B blended-wing body (BWB) technology demonstrator are under way with leading-edge slats retracted. Block 2 testing began in April at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, Calif. The 21-ft.-wingspan, remotely piloted X-48B, dubbed “Skyray,” flew 11 times during Block 1 tests with bolt-on leading-edge slats extended to improve low-speed performance. “Retracting” the slats raises stall speed, but will allow the aircraft to achieve its 118-kt. maximum cruise speed.
Engineers working on the first spacecraft in NASA’s next generation of human spaceflight vehicles are just wrapping up their preliminary designs, but agency and industry planners already are considering how to operate them. NASA’s Constellation program wants to hold down life-cycle costs on its next-generation launchers, crew exploration vehicles and other advanced human spacecraft under development so it will have enough money to continue pushing human exploration out of low Earth orbit to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
The U.S. Transportation Dept.’s proposal for flight caps and slot auctions at the three major New York area airports—and the secondary market that might result—constitutes a double-edged sword for airlines. Yes, airlines could make money by selling slot pairs, but they would only be allowed to sell a slot once.
It is the time for Boeing to strike again. Technology has been the key factor for Boeing’s successes with the 707, 747, 777 and 787. Being a technology leader is the only way for the Seattle-based aircraft manufacturer to counter Airbus’s subsidies. Boeing badly hurts its European competitor with the very efficient and comfortable 777, and took back a big chunk of the market from the A330 with the yet-to-fly all-composite and all-electric 787.
Two U.S. Homeland Security Dept. agencies’ officials are meeting in Miami next month to determine the department’s unmanned aerial system needs as it moves to expand their use to encompass maritime surveillance.
Hamilton Sundstrand, developer of the 787’s electrical power systems, has delivered the software that will allow Boeing to put power on the aircraft—a critical step toward a first flight in the fourth quarter. The final “power-on” build for the power systems software was delivered on May 28, says Geoff Hunt, Sundstrand’s vice president for the 787 program. The first build of the “safety of flight” software needed for flight testing was delivered on the same day, Hamilton Sundstrand says.
Emirates Airlines is successfully harvesting a U.S. pilot population facing grim hiring prospects in the last several months, according to Lou Smith, president of FLTops.com, a career service for professional pilots. In April, the rapidly expanding Dubai-based carrier first conducted recruitment information sessions in the U.S. The airline visited major hubs on the East Coast, including Atlanta. In May, Emirates returned for a second recruitment tour that included Houston and Chicago. Now, Emirates is said to be planning a third round later this month.
Douglas Barrie (London), Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Amy Butler (Washington)
A congressional move to shut down the use of Chinese launch services by overseas satellite manufacturers threatens to heighten latent tensions between the U.S. and Europe.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has awarded Smiths Detection follow-on contracts worth $25.2 million to deploy Smiths’ Advanced Threat Identification X-Ray systems at additional U.S. airports. TSA, which plans to deploy the system across the U.S., awarded initial contracts of $21 million in October 2007 and has completed checkpoint installations at Albuquerque, N.M., and Denver.
