The U.S. Air Force’s Space Battlelab is one of seven such establishments to fall victim to the service’s tight budget crunch. The Space Battlelab at Schriever AFB, Colo., formally closed its doors earlier this month. Its mission of developing technologies for use in the field will shift to the Space Innovation and Development Center (SDIC), also located there. Critics of the battlelab shutdown, ordered by the USAF chief of staff, Gen. T.
Without the so-called bridge supplemental—a spending measure meant to pay for immediate war costs until a Fiscal 2008 supplemental spending bill can be ironed out—USMC will fall short of funds Mar. 15, Castellaw says. His projection is based on recent spending trends and the cost to continue operations in Iraq. Castellaw says the impending shortfall is a “serious issue,” as the service must pay to reset its hardware and continue operations abroad. With drastic cuts internal to the service, the Marine budget could last for an extra 14 days, he estimates.
The U.S. Homeland Security Dept. plans to acquire as many as 50 light enforcement helicopters for Customs and Border Protection. The acquisition will be under a firm, fixed-price contract with a base for one year and four one-year options, according to a pre-solicitation notice. The solicitation is expected to be released this month.
The Defense Dept. is warning of dire times ahead, despite a record $476.4 billion in appropriations so far this Fiscal Year. In fact, the hot-button issue of funding national defense could sour the holidays for more than just Washington politicians and Pentagon denizens.
Qatar Airways received a water cannon salute in Doha when its first Boeing 777-300ER touched down Nov. 29 on the delivery flight from Seattle. The airline will be adding 32 777s to its fleet. It has confirmed orders for 14 777-300ERs, six 777-200LRs and seven 777-200Fs, with deliveries from now until mid-2010. It has options for another five 777s.
The Defense Dept. has given the nod to a plan to trim two test aircraft from the $24-billion Joint Strike Fighter program. The move will allow for replenishing the program’s depleted management reserve account by hundreds of millions of dollars, says Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin F-35 vice president, though he declined to cite a specific figure. That account had eroded due to development complications; one government official said it was short as much as $600 million.
Robert Wall (Haifa and Tel Aviv), David A. Fulghum (Haifa and Tel Aviv)
Israel is eyeing two space projects that will allow it to place satellites into orbit quickly during a crisis. The dual-path approach could see Israel field a new satellite launcher and a new spacecraft design. Underlying technology efforts for both initiatives are already underway.
The U.S. Justice Dept. has joined a lawsuit against Lockheed Martin, saying the company was remiss in not knowing a supplier—in a $20-million fraud scheme—inflated the prices of tools sold for building the F-16 and F-22. A U.S. attorney says Lockheed Martin, as a government contractor, is expected to ensure that claims for payment are accurate.
Goodrich completed the sale of its airframe heavy maintenance business, Goodrich Aviation Technical Services, to a subsidiary of Macquarie Group Ltd., an Australian financial services institution.
Embraer and Montreal-based CAE have formalized a joint venture, Embraer CAE Training Services, that will provide initial and recurrent training for pilots and maintenance technicians of Phenom 100 very light and Phenom 300 light jets. The initial training program is scheduled to begin at CAE SimuFlight in Dallas in third-quarter 2008 and at the CAE’s Burgess Hill (U.K.) center in first-quarter 2009.
Thai AirAsia, a franchisee of Malaysia-based AirAsia, is looking for more foreign destinations as it runs out of suitable domestic city pairs, local media report. Suggesting limits to even the explosive growth of low-cost carriers in Southeast Asia, the airline says some provinces have been unable to support A320 or 737 services.
PPG Aerospace has been a primary windshield provider for Boeing since 1994, but it has long viewed passenger windows as a commodity not worth its time. And then along came the 787.
AdaCore—a leading supplier of tools used by aerospace and defense contractors to develop programs in the Ada software language—says Ada is not going away even though Java and C++ are often used nowadays as the Pentagon embraces commercial software. Even so, the Defense Dept. has specified Ada on many weapon systems, and its aerospace and defense suppliers have written hundreds of millions of lines of code in that language during the past 25 years, says AdaCore President/CEO Robert Dewar. And this software has to be supported for decades to come, he notes.
Boeing is advising 747-8 customers that maximum take-off weight (MTOW) will rise to 975,000 lb. as a result of additional structural bolstering required for the redesigned wing, but says overall performance will not be affected because of the improved performance of the super-critical airfoil.
Cirrus Design’s four-seat, single-engine SR22 G3 overflies terrain south of Duluth, Minn. It is one of four versions of the SR22; the others are the SR22-G3 Turbo, SR22 GTS Turbo and the fully loaded SR22 GTS (Generation Three Super), which Aviation Week & Space Technology pilot Frances Fiorino flew for the pilot report that begins on p. 60. Cirrus Design photo by Justin Dillon.
While the U.K. is tantalizingly close to a mold-breaking defense technology agreement with Washington, the rest of Europe faces fundamental questions of industrial strategy if key defense-aerospace sectors are to continue to flourish.
Volga-Dnepr has received its first Boeing 747-400ERF freighter, to be operated on lease from GE Commercial Aviation Services. Plans call for AirBridgeCargo to operate two more 747-400ERFs. The second -400ERF is to arrive in February, the third a few months later.
Cirrus Design co-founder Alan Klapmeier (right) instructs Senior Safety & Training Editor Frances Fiorino as he hand-flies an SR22 through intricate maneuvers on the flight line at Cirrus headquarters at Duluth, Minn. Fiorino flew the four-seat SR22-GTS (Generation Three Super) technologically advanced aircraft to test how well an average general aviation pilot, accustomed to analog dials, could adapt to flying with an all-glass cockpit (see p. 60).
Business travelers want more self-service options, according to the results of International Air Transport Assn.’s 2007 Corporate Air Travel Survey, which was conducted online and completed by 10,281 passengers. Specifically, 54% of respondents indicated “yes” to additional features. The top five options they planned to use: online booking, online reservation changes, online check-in, e-mail notification service and at-home printout of boarding passes.
Chinese-operated air services to North Korea will resume early next year when Air China begins flying between Pyongyang and Beijing, joining Air Koryo on the route. China Southern flew the service until North Korea conducted a nuclear test last year.
NASA expects to sign a funded Space Act Agreement with the winner of the latest round of Commercial Orbital Services Transportation (COTS) bidding by February 2008. Proposals were due Nov. 21 from companies hoping to pick up the roughly $175 million that went unspent when Rocketplane Kistler failed to meet its fiscal milestones (AW&ST Oct. 22, p. 25).
Northrop Grumman Corp. has built a large-scale, indoor antenna testing facility at its Linthicum, Md., plant and plans to evaluate the performance of the S-band phased-array antenna it’s developing for the Cobra Judy Replacement (CJR) program. Many other large, phased-array radar antennas will also be tested at the new $13.7-million facility, according to Northrop Grumman. The original Cobra Judy is an integrated surveillance system mounted on a U.S. Navy ship for use in monitoring weapons-treaty compliance.
Ralph E. (Ed) Eberhart has been appointed to the board of directors of Rockwell Collins , Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He is president of the Armed Forces Benefit Assn., and chairman of 5Star Bank, 5Star Life Insurance Co., AFBA 5Star Investment Management Co. and AFBA 5Star Fund Inc.
