Having finally killed the Lockheed Martin Joint Common Missile (JCM), which was to replace the Pentagon’s Hellfire, Maverick and TOW missile families, the Army has begun discussing with industry a new competition for that capability. The Army has released a draft request for proposals for the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile.
Snecma’s Solid Propellant Div. and SNPE-MBDA joint venture Roxel have been selected to develop and produce the boost and transition propulsion system for MBDA’s Naval Scalp cruise missile. Development of the system, which is to equip frigate and submarine-launched weapons for the French navy, is expected to take four years.
Legal tension is increasing in Europe between leading low-fare carriers, led by Ryanair, and the European Commission and national governments over their respective business practices at airports. In its latest move, Ryanair says it will challenge the EC in the European courts for Brussels’ failure to act on state-aid complaints the low-fare carrier filed last year. Ryanair alleges that Air France, Lufthansa, Alitalia and Olympic Airways have benefited unjustly from financial support schemes.
It was good to see you continuing to provide the “S” of AW&ST in the two articles on the Dawn mission (AW&ST July 2, p. 56). However, I must take issue with the statement that the asteroid Vesta was formed 4.5 billion years ago, as that is a theory based on one selected measurement, among a number of indicators of the age of the Solar System.
This year’s Top-Performing Companies (TPC) ranking of “Most Improved” large companies demonstrates that attention to operational excellence and taking advantage of scale economies pays off. Rolls-Royce, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Honeywell and Lockheed Martin have employed these strategies to move up toward the top of the Most Improved category. Additionally, somewhat smaller but more acquisitive companies such as Precision Castparts and Goodrich have been highly rewarded by the marketplace as well, as this graphic prepared by Deloitte Consulting illustrates (see chart).
BMI says it will grow its fleet under a $750-million expansion plan. The goal is to develop new long- and medium-range routes from London, through the acquisition of five Airbus A330s and five A321s. The wide-body purchase will bring BMI’s fleet of A330s to eight, with the next delivery to take place in the spring. The A321s will go to British Mediterranean Airways, which BMI hopes to fully integrate by Oct. 28. The new routes and frequencies for British Mediterranean are to be announced soon.
A typical U.S. soldier going on a four-day dismounted mission carries as much as 40 lb. of batteries and rechargers. Defense Dept. officials say they’ll pay $1 million to anyone who can slash that “wearable power” number to about 2 lb. per day. That means cutting the load by about 80% to “four kilograms, four days.” Entries, due by Nov. 30, are expected to include anything from solar power generators to devices that capture power created by boots striking the ground.
While it may be a romantic notion to compare the Dawn spacecraft’s ion engine to the warp propulsion of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, the similarity ends at the blue glow. In the fictional world of the NCC-1701-D pictured (AW&ST July 2, p. 57), the glow emanates from sets of coils in the long nacelles, energized by a furious matter-antimatter plasma. Ions don’t push the ship in the least.
Space shuttles will be able to remain docked at the International Space Station for days longer at a time if new power-transfer hardware set for testing on the upcoming ISS-assembly mission checks out. With the shuttle fleet scheduled to retire in a little more than three years, managers hope the extra time will give shuttle astronauts a better chance to complete all of their remaining station-assembly tasks.
For the third time this month NASA has delayed launch of the Dawn asteroid orbiter, now scheduled for early September. NASA managers, including Administrator Michael Griffin, decided on the further delay to September after additional evaluation of a July 15 launch target. July 15 was initially chosen after the agency decided weather and tracking system capabilities would not support a July 9 attempt.
Britain is developing advanced propulsion and stealth technologies to allow it to choose between very low observable and high-speed cruise missile concepts for future long-range strike needs. The Defense Ministry hopes to begin making key procurement choices on its Future Long-Range Cruise Missile (FLRCM) around 2015. At that point, the ministry would like to be able to proceed with the “Initial Gate” stage of its procurement process.
Due to a printing error, the first unclassified images of a secret Lacrosse imaging radar reconnaissance spacecraft appeared incorrectly in last week’s issue (AW&ST July 9, p. 28). The images of the 15-ton National Reconnaissance Office Lacrosse 2 spacecraft show the satellite flying at about 400 mi. altitude. They show the Lacrosse, with a body the size of a school bus, with changing Sun angles illuminating its 25-ft.-dia. steerable synthetic aperture radar antenna. The antenna provides 2-3-ft.
China’s Changhe Aircraft Industries Corp. will build airframes for Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.’s S-76C++ commercial helicopter. Changhe will deliver the airframes to Aero Vodochody in the Czech Republic. In addition, Sikorsky officials say they expect to eventually produce Schweizer helicopters in China as “fly-away” products for the domestic market.
The Piasecki-developed X-49A has made its first flight at the company’s facility in Essington, Pa. The hybrid helicopter is a SH-60F modified with wings and a second-generation version of the company’s Ring-Tail ducted fan to replace the conventional helicopter tail rotor. The vectored-thrust, ducted propeller (VTDP) offers anti-torque and yaw control. But more importantly for future development, it provides forward thrust and thrust vectoring.
All Nippon Airways is a firm member of Boeing’s 7-series buyer’s club. It is building its fleet around the 737, 777 and 787 airframes and has been a long-time flier of 747s. Its staff even jokes that it has a “triple seven-ination” strategy for its revenues, coining a phrase from “Triple Seven” as the popular name for Boeing’s big twin-aisle transport. The carrier had revenues of ¥700 billion ($5.6 billion) last year for domestic services, ¥230 billion for international flights and ¥100 billion for cargo.
With the typical innumerate thinking of the “green” mentality, the airline industry, with 2% responsibility for CO2 emissions, finds itself under attack. An impossible achievement would be to reduce that share to 1%. Why not tackle the electricity industry? Combined-cycle or nuclear plants could reduce the total of CO2 emissions by 10% or more without any technology advance and reduce oil dependency. The same amount of fuss correctly applied might produce more than 20 times the effect.
Centralized funding and buying of services are emerging as key recommendations as to how British police forces acquire and operate unmanned aerial vehicles. Ollie Dismore, the U.K. government’s Home Office aviation adviser, says “centralized funding is the key” to better managing how police forces purchase UAV capabilities. The Home Office is the government department responsible for overseeing the police.
Esterline Corp.'s CMC Electronics unit is tearing a page out of its civil avionics playbook to offer what it calls the TacView portable mission display. The militarized unit is modeled on the company’s popular civil PilotView Class 2 electronic flight bag designed for use on business jets and airliners (AW&ST June 18, p. 158). About 400 aircraft are now equipped with PilotView. The 5 X 7-in. TacView LCD designed for military use is a high-contrast display.
The long-term future of several key Ilyushin aircraft projects is coming into focus, even though it may mean the production facility in Uzbekistan will have to give up some of its independence. For several months, there has been some question how Ilyushin will be able to support mass production of the Il-76 freighter program and the Il-114 regional turboprop. While Ukraine is trying to maintain its independence in aircraft production, Uzbekistan is betting its best option is to cozy up to Moscow.
Parliamentary approval of funding package for two follow-on Sicral satellites will help ensure a secure military satellite communications capability for Italy and NATO at least through 2025. The Italian parliament defense committees last week approved €90 million ($123 million) needed to cover launch, commissioning and upgrade of the ground segment for Sicral-1B, which is to complement an initial Sicral spacecraft orbited in 2001. A €103-million full-scale development contract was awarded to Thales Alenia Space in January (AW&ST Jan. 22, p. 20).
The International Air Transport Assn. wants to bolster its environmental lobbying clout by building a team dedicated to addressing “green” issues. IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani presented a vision of a zero-emissions industry. As a next step, IATA plans to hire a director for aviation environment, who will be supported by a staff in charge of addressing economics, technology, best practices and communications.
Private equity giant Carlyle Group has agreed to pay $2.7 billion in cash to acquire Sequa Corp., a publicly traded New York company whose Chromalloy Gas Turbine unit provides aftermarket services to airlines. But as in most A&D transfers these days, Sequa didn’t come cheap. Carlyle will ante up $175 a share for the company, a 54% premium over the stock’s pre-deal closing price and more than double the $80 the stock was trading at just a year earlier. The purchase is subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.
NASA is losing two of its top managers, but announcement of their impending departures on the same day last week was purely coincidence, agency officials say. Associate Administrator Rex Geveden is leaving the agency’s No. 3 slot to take a lucrative industry job, while Scott Horowitz, associate administrator for exploration systems, is bailing on the high-pressure headquarters scene that has kept him away from his pre-school children more than he would like.
Many insights can be drawn from Aviation Week’s Top-Performing Companies (TPC) rankings, but let me jump straight to a conclusion: As far as continental Europe is concerned, the time has come to shake things up and let a new generation of aerospace & defense (A&D) players emerge. For this to happen, Europe badly needs fresh ideas and money, and this can only come from private equity. What has already happened in the U.S. in that respect should encourage those who want Europe to regain competitiveness and should reassure those who fear private equity greed.
Aeronautical Radio of Thailand Ltd., the air navigation service provider there, has begun operations with the Bay of Bengal Cooperative Air Traffic Flow Management System (Bobcat). As of the beginning of the month, aircraft heading from South and Southeast Asia airports to Europe are tracked by this new software program. About 50-60 westbound flights a day operated by 30 airlines log their slot requests with Bobcat, which allocates slots for entry into Afghanistan airspace at specific times and flight levels.
