U.S. Navy Capt. Scott Stearney, commander of Carrier Air Group Seven, which just returned from duty in the Middle East, says his recent deployment was the first in which nonkinetic effects were emphasized during operations. Kinetic and nonkinetic effects—such as electronic warfare—were “equally important” during recent ops, he said during the association’s symposium. On the kinetic side, use of the GBU-38, a 500-lb. GPS-guided bomb, was widespread but pilots are increasingly turning to strafing to kill targets in Iraq, he says.
EDO Communications and Countermeasures has won a $209.9-million contract increase for the production and support of 3,000 vehicle-mounted systems to counter improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Safran surveillance board has named Jean-Paul Herteman head of the company’s Safran Defense and Security Div., to succeed Jean-Paul Bechat as chairman/CEO when he turns 65 on Sept. 2. Bechat, who had been asked to step down at that date following a crisis in the defense business late last year, had hoped that the company’s strong performance would permit him to stay on until next year. Herteman will continue as division head.
Ken Bristol (AW&ST June 18, p. 12) notes that the Boeing 787 offers considerable gains in efficiencies compared to the current airliner fleet. I agree, but the 787’s 20% gain in efficiency over the aircraft it is replacing does not offset the 5-6% annual growth in the fleet, so the global aviation industry has to reduce emissions just as other industries. And flying very long stages is not helping.
The Italian government must decide in the next few days a new course of action for Alitalia after it found no takers for its treasury’s 49.9% stake in the ailing flag carrier.
Afallen dollar has pushed India into a corner on its Russian military contracts. A recent Russian insistence that India must pay more for defense equipment—how much is not known—to offset the effects of a weaker dollar has unnerved the Indian defense ministry, which already faces demands for an additional $10 billion in procurement.
L-3’s Link Simulation and Training division is integrating the Advanced Helmet-Mounted Display system into the U.S. Army Flight School’s Reconfigurable Collective Training Devices. To date, L-3 has delivered 11 RCTDs that can be configured to represent the UH-60A/L, CH-47D, OH-58D and AH-64A/D. In other news, L-3 will build six Tactical Operational Flight Trainers for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The units will be installed beginning in 2008.
U.S. military space controllers are very slowly beginning to maneuver two secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) ocean surveillance spacecraft to higher orbits after the satellites were deployed substantially lower than planned following launch June 15 on board an Atlas V. At least three orbit-raising maneuvers have been carried out between the two spacecraft, and more are planned. However, the spacecraft are still averaging approximately 89 km. (55 mi.) below their intended orbit of about 1,006 X 1,206 km.
Although Israeli officials say privately that something must be done by year’s end to delay Iran’s work on nuclear weapons, nothing currently appears to be underway in the U.S. or Israel to prepare an attack on development facilities, Pentagon officials report. Now, new satellite images reveal that Iran is excavating for a second underground facility in a mountain near the existing Natanz nuclear installation, and U.S. officials say it, too, may be associated with weapon development.
The popularity of amateur-built airplanes and rotorcraft continues to grow in the U.S. as an alternative to the high cost of a new aircraft. According to the Experimental Aircraft Assn., the number of airworthiness certificates issued by the FAA for homebuilts now exceeds 29,000, with about 1,000 new aircraft joining the general aviation fleet each year.
As the European Commission prepares to review a new round of perceived irregularities in airport state aid policies, Ryanair, targeted in several of the cases under review, is continuing to pressure secondary airports for more aid (AW&ST July 16, p. 49). Last week, it was reported that the Irish low-cost carrier is demanding a 15-30% increase in assistance from small French facilities to aid in developing marginally profitable routes.
The facts do not support that man can create global warming. In basic physics and chemistry courses, we are taught that if gases or liquids are mixed we must know the mass of each constituent to predict a viable outcome.
D’Agostino, whose agency is responsible for designing, producing and maintaining safe, secure and reliable nuclear weapons, denies emphatically that the U.S. is developing nuclear penetrating devices to go after deeply buried sites, or that it is likely to do so in the foreseeable future. “I have no requirement for an underground nuclear penetrator,” he says. “I don’t expect a requirement for an earth penetrator, even given what I understand is going on [in Iran].” But D’Agostino doesn’t dismiss the idea that some kind of deep penetrator is on the way.
The Pentagaon will wait until at least spring 2008—a rare yearlong pause—to certify that its newest cruise missile is ready to move forward following myriad technical problems and a 42% failure rate this year.
The U.K. House of Commons Defense Committee says the reluctance of other NATO countries to commit more ground troops to Afghanistan, particularly in the south, is undermining the credibility of the NATO effort there, and wants the Defense Ministry to show it can persuade neighboring nations to take up the slack. The committee also found that NATO nations have met its call for more helicopters, but the provision of sufficiently trained air and ground crews remains a problem.
As aerospace and airline companies work on “green” initiatives, executives may want to read the latest National Petroleum Council (NPC) study detailing the tight supply and growing demand for energy expected worldwide through 2030. The study group consulted 1,000 specialists and analyzed 100 energy forecasts. A subgroup examined the fuel needs of air, land and sea transportation and outlines the requirements in a paper that is yet to be released. Included in the paper is a table estimating how much fuel can be saved in air transport using identified technologies.
Leading U.S. aerospace industry and Air Force researchers and developers are stepping up calls for the creation of a dedicated reusable “X” vehicle to demonstrate sustained hypersonic flight performance, which they say is pivotal to the development of real-world, deployable systems.
BAE Systems will restart production of radiation-hardened field-programmable gate arrays for use in space after a manufacturing hiatus since 2006. The Pentagon decided in 2001 to upgrade facilities for these parts at the company’s manufacturing plant in Manassas, Va. The semiconductors will be used on a host of military satellite systems as well as some commercial systems. They will be hardened against a dose of 300K rads (Si). The FPGAs will be produced under a licensing agreement with Actel Corp., a legacy producer of the semiconductors.
I find all of this hysteria to “do something” about “global warming” to be alarming (AW&ST June 25, p. 66). The primary goal of the environmental movement is socialism on an international scale, not environmental protection. There is too much data out there that does not support the hypothesis that we are suffering from human-induced global warming such as: •Most of the recently recorded temperature increases occurred before most of the rise in CO2 levels.
In his letter, former US Airways Master Executive Council member John A. Crocker blames the recent seniority arbitration award on the majority of pilots that voted to take wage and benefit reductions to save our airline. The award that was handed to US Airways is the result of a confusing policy by the Air Line Pilots Assn. that required 18 days of hearings before an 80-plus-year-old lawyer. This arbitrator ignored policies that said no pilot’s career is enhanced at the expense of another’s. Now it is up to ALPA to throw out the award.
Canadian carrier WestJet plans to log a $31.9-million non-cash write-down for the quarter ending June 30 as a result of “discontinuing” contract negotiations with Travelport subsidiary aiRES to power its reservation system. WestJet initially struck a deal with aiRES in 2005, but froze implementation earlier this year, and started talks to amend the contract. The two sides had hoped to reach a deal by the end of May. WestJet earlier this year reached an agreement with current reservation system supplier Navitaire to extend that contract to December 2008.
The Pentagon’s nominee to be the first chief of Africa Command, Gen. William E. Ward, if confirmed, will have his headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. He is currently deputy commander of U.S. European Command. Africa Command will initially be a sub-unified command subordinate to European Command that is operational by October. It is then to become a separate unified command by the end of Fiscal 2008.
Virgin America has targeted 1 million seat sales for travel through next February as it opens twice-daily services from San Francisco International Airport to John F. Kennedy International in New York on Aug. 8. Twice-daily flights from SFO to Washington Dulles International Airport are to begin Sept. 26, and flights are expected to build from then on to include Las Vegas and nine other cities within a year. The startup will be flying Airbus A320s.
Healthy competition from low-cost carriers is impacting first- and business-class traffic in Europe, which was down 10.5% in May over May 2006, following an 8% decline in April, according to the International Air Transport Assn.’s Premium Traffic Monitor. Europe accounts for 28% of all international premium traffic. Without the European decline, the world’s premium traffic would have risen 4.1% in May; it grew 3.9% in April. However, when adding in Europe, premium traffic overall fell by 0.7%, the first decline in almost 2.5 years.
Your article on conformal radar arrays being prototyped (AW&ST June 25, p. 51) only scratches the surface of what such array technology might do, driven by the advances created for consumer goods such as cell phones and wireless computer networks.
