The Alliant Integrated Flight Deck developed by Avidyne Corp. and S‑TEC Corp. has been issued an FAA Supplemental Type Certificate for retrofit into the Cessna Conquest II turboprop business aircraft. The system features Avidyne’s Envision avionics and S-TEC’s Intelliflight 2100 digital flight control system. The Alliant package also has been installed in the Hawker Beechcraft King Air 90 and 200 series airplanes.
Unmanned target drones were used to fool Iraq’s air defenses in 1991 and 2003 and Serb defenses in 1999. But so far, target drones used in combat have flown unarmed. That has changed with the test last week of a QF-4—an unmanned F-4 fighter—firing a new, Navy-developed, high-speed, anti-radiation missile that was designed to attack enemy radars and other air defense emitters and communications. Air Force officials with the 82nd Aerial Targets Sqdn. say the capability will increase the survivability of aircrews attacking surface-to-air missiles.
Lockheed Martin is installing the massive solar arrays on the first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite at its Sunnyvale, Calif., facility. Once they are attached, the fully configured satellite will enter acoustic testing at the end of January. AEHF is the Pentagon’s next-generation protected-communications satellite, scheduled to launch this fall. It will provide high bandwidth and crosslinking in space. The AEHF constellation eventually will replace the Milstar series now in orbit.
Dennis Cassette has been named executive adviser for the U.S. Aircraft Corp. , Akron, Ohio. He is retired director of engineering for the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
Plans to offer the next president an alternative to a lunar base draw a failing grade from Michael Griffin, the engineering professor-turned NASA administrator who’s executing President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. That human spaceflight plan, approved by Congress in 2005, remains “the finest policy framework for U.S. civil space activities that I have seen in 40 years,” Griffin states. By contrast, he says, skipping the Moon and going on to an asteroid—a notion to be raised at a Stanford University conference next month (AW&ST Jan. 21, p.
The European Defense Agency is trying to rally support from member states to generate the backing and financial wherewithal needed to turn the projected Franco-German cooperation for a heavy-lift rotorcraft into a concrete program.
Bruce Harris has become CEO of the JM Group Inc. , Vista, Calif. He succeeds co-founder Mike Vos, who will be retiring. Harris was vice president-business development. Terry Udelhofen has been appointed chief financial officer of the JM Group and its subsidiaries, Mary Pulcini vice president-operations and quality assurance of the Airline Support Div. and Amber Sanders director of sales support and analysis at the Airline Support Div. and Pacific Aerospace.
South Africa will begin air-launched firing trials of its A-Darter imaging infrared-guided dogfight missile early in 2009, with the program emerging as a template for further collaborative weapons development. Securing the success of the Denel Dynamics missile is fundamental to the future of the country’s guided-weapons sector. Air-launched tests of the A-Darter, now a jointly funded program between South Africa and Brazil, will be carried out using a Cheetah C aircraft early next year, says a Denel Dynamics executive.
A decision by France to earmark nine helicopters and a logistics unit for a United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping mission to Chad and the Central African Republic appears to have been motivated by an agreement to expand the amount of hardware that can be funded jointly for the European Union undertaking. Although French defense ministry officials denied a direct link, they said a move to broaden the so-called Athena joint funding mechanism is expected to be set soon.
Bronnoysund Airport is using GPS guidance for precision approaches, and Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary Park Air Systems plans to equip 25 more Norwegian airports with the new system during the next three years. Technically speaking this is the first Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS)—as it is called by the International Civil Aviation Organization—certified for operational use anywhere in the world, asserts Park Air.
Armaments agency DGA has contracted with Thales and Sabca of Belgium to perform a partial modernization of 20 Alphajets operated by France’s advanced fighter training school. The upgrade is intended to enable pilots at the facility, which serves the French and Belgian air forces, to transition more easily to front-line fighters like the Rafale and F-16 MLU until Europe can agree on a new advanced trainer.
Anne Healey (see photo) has been named executive director of the Otttawa-based Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International-Canada . She was director of business management at EADS Canada and general manager of the Canadian Defense Industries Assn.
Your 2007 Person of the Year Award was like giving an Academy Award to a body double. The Chinese space program looks good in the shower, but it is 35 years behind real space programs and is composed of copied and stolen technology. If a huge nation such as China wants to accomplish something, it can, especially if it is willing to spend money on space that should be going to improve the living conditions for its people.
The most talked-about vehicle at last week’s Detroit Auto Show was a car unveiled halfway around the world. India’s Tata Motors Ltd. may very well upend the automobile industry with its new Nano, which will sell for the rock-bottom price of $2,500. In general aviation, Cessna Aircraft Co. is moving down a similar path with the Model 162 SkyCatcher, which will be built in China and sell for $109,500. And now comes word that the Eclipse 500, the $1.6-million personal jet equivalent of the Nano and SkyCatcher, soon may be rolling off an assembly line in Russia.
The NATO medium, extended air defense system (Meads) management agency awarded a $66-million contract to adopt the Lockheed Martin PAC-3’s segment enhancement missile as the new baseline interceptor for the tri-nation program. The benefits are to include an increased range, engagement and area defense envelope, and lethality which is added by more responsive control surfaces and a more powerful rocket motor. Meads is to replace the Patriot in the U.S., supplement Patriots in Germany and replace the Nike Hercules in Italy.
Canada’s Competition Bureau commissioner, Sheridan Scott, endorsed allowing foreign carriers to operate point-to-point services in Canada, in a report filed last week with the government’s Competition Policy Review Panel. She advised the panel to recommend improvements to international competitiveness, and increase the allowable level of foreign ownership of voting shares to 49.9% from 25. Scott angered the Air Transport Assn. of Canada by saying reciprocity is important in bilateral trade negotiations but expendable as it applies to the airline industry.
A British Airways Boeing 777-200ER, en route from Beijing to London, made an emergency landing at London Heathrow Airport at about around 12:40 p.m. local time on Jan. 17. Flight 38 landed short of the runway, and skidded across grass before coming to rest near Runway 27L. The undercarriage was torn off, and the aircraft and engines sustained major damage. Flight data and cockpit voice recorders have been recovered. All 136 passengers were evacuated, three with minor injuries, as well as three flight and 13 cabin crewmembers.
U.S. Special Operations Command has selected BAE Systems to provide an interim all-quadrant gun for the CV-22 Osprey. The gun, based on BAE’s Remote Guardian System, will be rapidly mounted under the belly of the tiltrotor aircraft, and will be remotely operated.
A compromise deal between the European Parliament and Council will harmonize air transport security arrangements throughout the European Union. It also spells out rules for the use of sky marshals, who can’t be armed unless special security situations apply. The new policy, which is embraced by airline and airport lobby groups, also means that transfer passengers from outside the EU may not have to pass through security a second time, if the standards at their departure point are deemed adequate.
Safran was able to surpass its 5% sales growth target for last year, booking a 5.9% increase in sales over 2006. But more important to its future, the aerospace company says it has fully hedged its 2008 dollar exposure. Safran had been criticized for not hedging aggressively enough. Sales growth was largely driven by aerospace propulsion, where orders in the CFM International joint venture with General Electric reached a record 2,704 CFM56s. Helicopter engine orders hit 1,065. Sales for the entire division were up 16.7% to €5.9 billion ($8.7 billion).
The first Tranche 2 Eurofighter Typhoon had its initial flight last week, from EADS Military Air Systems in Manching, Germany. The aircraft will be used for type acceptance trials for the first standard of the Tranche 2 aircraft, the so-called Block 8 configuration. Meanwhile a British Royal Air Force two-seat Typhoon suffered an unspecified “system failure” while at 40,000 ft. on Jan. 14. An emergency descent to 10,000 ft. was executed, during which the aircraft inadvertently went supersonic. The aircraft landed safely at RAF Coningsby.
As planning begins to remove U.S. forces from a key air base in Ecuador, the Pentagon is examining new arrangements with countries farther north, in Central America.
The U.S. Transportation Dept.’s proposal aimed at easing congestion by allowing airports greater flexibility in assessing landing fees is pitting some airlines against airports and opening an old wound over what the International Air Transport Assn. (IATA) calls an ineffective and inefficient tool: congestion pricing.
AW&ST: For several years, there was a feeling that your Defense Electronics business didn’t have critical mass. But so far not much has happened to change that. Why is that?
