The U.S. Army has received five BAE Systems-built, target-detection systems for use on Shadow unmanned aircraft. The Aurora Generation-5 hyperspectral remote sensing system weighs as little as 35 lb. and allows wide-area surveillance with high-resolution electro-optics and an airborne processing system to automatically detect and identify threats.
Two F/A-18s, a single-seat E model from VFA-105 and a two-seat F from VFA-11, collided over the Persian Gulf and crashed Jan. 7 while returning from a close-air-support mission in Iraq. The three crewmen, from NAS Oceana and currently stationed on the USS Truman, were recovered safely by helicopters. The crash came a day after a 20-min. confrontation between five small Iranian attack boats and three U.S. warships.
Controllers at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) have lost touch with the Arirang 1 (Kompsat-1) Earth-observation spacecraft, apparently as a result of failure of the satellite to maintain a lock on the Sun for power generation. “Our efforts to restore communication with the Arirang 1 satellite have been unsuccessful,” says a KARI official, according to press reports from Seoul. Launched in 1999, the spacecraft carries a 6.6-meter (22-ft.) resolution camera. Arirang 2 (Kompsat-2), launched in 2006, continues to function with its 1-meter-resolution camera.
Korea Aerospace Industries has delivered to Boeing the first forward fuselage of the F-15SG for the Singapore air force. Delivery of the first F-15SG wing set was scheduled for Jan 10.
Robert Wall (Donauwoerth, Germany), Michael A. Taverna (Donauwoerth, Germany)
EADS is renewing its effort to become less-Airbus dependent, with a goal of deriving 50% of revenue from non-Airbus activities and boosting the services business to 25% from 10% by 2020. The financial targets are part of a new company strategy, Vision 2020, put forward by EADS CEO Louis Gallois. It also calls for reaching a mid-term target of 10% earnings margin before 2015 and a longer-term goal of sourcing 40% of supplies from outside Europe. “The core of Vision 2020 is a better-balanced EADS,” Gallois asserts.
Michael Mecham (San Francisco), Robert Wall (Paris)
Aircraft order intake in 2008 is expected to taper off after Boeing, Airbus and engine makers enjoyed record-setting years. But just how much is an open question. A third year of record orders swelled Boeing’s intake past the 1,400 mark in 2007, including engine makers General Electric Aviation, CFM International and International Aero Engines in the bonanza. Airbus was a similar powerhouse and was neck-and-neck with Boeing, although the European aircraft maker’s final figures won’t appear until this week.
Northrop Grumman says it will lead a team to again compete for the U.S. Army’s Aerial Common Sensor reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence-gathering aircraft. The team includes AAI Corp. (which builds UAVs), General Dynamics C4 Systems and L-3 Communications.
Jan. 22—Midlands Aerospace Alliance’s Reach Information Event: “Complying With Chemical Regulations.” Rolls-Royce Learning & Career Development Center, Derby, England. Also, Jan. 30—“Diversifying Into Defense Markets.” Oaktree Conference Center, Coventry, England. Call +44 (845) 225-0503, fax +44 (845) 225-0504 or see www.midlandaerospace.org.uk Jan. 23—Precision Strike Winter Roundtable and William J. Perry Award Luncheon. Crystal City Marriott, Arlington, Va. Call +1 (703) 247-2590, fax +1 (703) 522-1885 or see www.precisionstrike.org
The State of Florida has given AirTran Airways $3 million in cash, along with additional incentives, to keep the airline’s headquarters in Orlando (AW&ST Jan. 7, p. 16). The carrier met with state and local government officials, says AirTran official David Hirschman, “And they asked us not to shop the deal around, and to wait to hear their proposal before starting a bidding war and making a final decision.” Gov.
William E. Harrison, 3rd, chief of the fuel branch at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s propulsion directorate at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, has spearheaded the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Assured Fuels Initiative to develop domestic fuel sources for U.S. air and ground forces. In 2007, the Air Force certificated a synthetic fuel—produced from coal and natural gas through the Fischer-Tropsch process—that is being used in a 50-50 blend with a petroleum-based fuel in B-52 aircraft.
Britain is one of several nations heading toward the NATO summit in Bucharest with ambitious agendas for reform at the strategic and organizational levels. London wants to see the Apr. 2-4 summit in the Romanian capital used to begin to revisit the fundamental tenets of NATO’s role in the post-Cold War environment, the so-called Strategic Concept, agreed at the Washington Summit in 1999. It is also pushing an agenda for the internal reorganization of some NATO structures to reduce bureaucracy and improve and expedite decision-making.
The air traffic delay situation at New York John F. Kennedy International Airport is the result of misguided business planning by one domestic airline: JetBlue Airways.
Southwest will be making Denver a more important player in its route network on May 10, when it adds many flights to the city as part of a larger route reorganization. At Denver, the airline will go to 79 daily flights from 56, including new services to St. Louis, Los Angeles and San Jose, Calif. Meanwhile, embattled Frontier Airlines, based in Denver, has revised upward its expected losses for 2007 because of weak demand and winter storms.
A few minutes after reading the letter “Lights Out, Brains in Neutral” (AW&ST Oct. 1, 2007, p. 10), I went online and discovered the following National Transportation Safety Board e-mail:
China plans the launch of 14 unmanned space missions in 2008, in addition to its third manned Shenzhou flight. The 15 total launches are to orbit 17 spacecraft. The new unmanned spacecraft will reap dividends from years of Chinese remote-sensing and military satellite development. The 2008 manifest also marks a revitalization of China’s commercial launch program. Three large communications spacecraft are planned for launch: ChinaSat 9, APStar 6B and a Venezuelan spacecraft.
UPS will soon begin using advanced automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) procedures at Louisville, Ky., now that the FAA has approved its application for the first satellite-guided merging and spacing operations the U.S.
Scientists will get their first close look at the planet Mercury in almost 33 years on Jan. 14 as NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (Messenger) probe flies within 124 mi. of previously uncharted terrain.
Sea Launch will try again Jan. 15 to orbit the Thuraya-3 telecom spacecraft, after strong currents at the equatorial launch site in the Pacific forced the two-vessel launch fleet to return to port in Long Beach, Calif., in November 2007. The Odyssey launch platform and the Sea Launch Commander mother ship are en route to the launch site at 154 deg. W. Long. The Boeing-built satellite’s liftoff is set for a 44-min. window that opens 6:46 a.m. EST.
Lisa Porter, NASA associate administrator for aeronautical research, is leaving her post to lead the newly established Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Iarpa). Fashioned after the model of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which has been in the forefront of many of the major military innovations in the U.S. in the past 50 years, Iarpa’s goal is to pursue groundbreaking advances to improve intelligence collection and analysis.
The U.K. is beginning to explore the extent of a further series of upgrades to its Tornado GR4 strike aircraft to try to sustain the bombers until at least 2025. Under the banner of the recently awarded Tornado Capability Upgrade Strategy (Pilot) Program (CUSP) contract BAE Systems will look at an array of options for the aircraft to maintain its combat utility until its planned out-of-service date.
A winning design for the U.S. Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance unmanned aerial system will be selected in March, a slight slip from plans to choose a contractor next month. Navy officials say they want time for extra “due diligence” in picking a winner among the candidates.
The Netherlands is going ahead with a program to upgrade 24 of its 29 Boeing AH-64D Apache attack helicopters with enhanced aircraft self-protection equipment by 2014. Procurement and installation of the upgraded equipment is to begin in 2010, according to the defense ministry in The Hague. Of three options considered, the one thought to be favored by the military is to expand the interim self-protection system developed by Danish company Terma in partnership with the Netherlands Apache community and the National Aerospace Lab in 2003-04 for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Surprisingly, while newer commercial aircraft models are quieter, newer military aircraft models are often much louder. As a result, many folks who bought homes outside of the noise zones of military airfields now find themselves effectively within those zones, and the noise is substantially greater than previously. U.S. Navy consultants say the F/A-18E/F, F-22 and F-35 exhibit “non-linear noise propagation,” which means the actual noise is much greater than the predicted noise. The difference can be as much as 20 dB.
Astronauts conducting the final planned servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope expect to leave behind a spacecraft that is 90 times more capable than the one launched in 1990. But the improvements left by spacewalkers working out of the shuttle Atlantis are likely to be obsolete by the time another mission to the telescope could be mounted, even if one were planned.
Alexey Komarov (Moscow), Michael A. Taverna (Paris)
Russia is talking to India about collaborating on a new manned spaceship that is seen as the fulcrum of a rejuvenated Russian space program. The talks—revealed late last month by Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos—are underway as Russia is poised to name a prime contractor for the Crew Space Transportation System (CSTS), which is intended to replace the aging Soyuz. The winner should be announced in the first quarter.
