Larry E. Williams, President/CEO (Ballistic Recovery Systems, South St. Paul, Minn.)
You recently published discussion on the crash of a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle due to mechanical difficulties (AW&ST May 1, p. 35). Because a UAV lacks an onboard flight crew, this has mistakenly led many in the aerospace industry to believe losses will occur, and are acceptable and even perhaps unavoidable.
Kim Gillis has been named acting deputy CEO of Australia's Defense Material Organization. He has been program manager of amphibious vessels. Gillis succeeds Norm Gray, who has become CEO of Thales Australia.
A USAF B-1B was damaged heavily during a forced landing at its forward operating base in Oman. The aircraft, with its crew of four still on board, slid 7,500 ft. before coming to a rest, still on the runway. The bomber had been forced to land with its landing gear retracted. Everyone escaped uninjur- ed. The B-1 was deployed from Dyess AFB, Tex.
British Midland Chairman Michael Bishop has bought out minority interests in the BBW Partnership, increasing his stake in the airline to 50% plus one share. Lufthansa has a 30% minus one share, with SAS the remainder.
"What If Delta Goes Down" took me back about 30 years. By 1978, I had spent $23,000 to earn a bachelor's degree from a well-known flight school. I eventually received my ATP, CFI-you-name-it, accumulated 5,000 hr. and added an aerospace engineering degree. I slowly realized I was all dressed up with no place to go. Deregulation and B-scale salaries made me turn my back on an airline career. It was my most important financial decision. I am now financially secure as a portfolio manager, while my many friends who are flying heavy metal have no retirement to look forward to.
On Mar. 8, I was privileged to address, by telephone, the annual awards banquet of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Here is an excerpt: "I have recently moved over to the slow lane, making the transition from being an active participant in space research to being a fascinated bystander. As an irresponsible bystander and in the lighthearted spirit of this occasion, I decided to offer an iconoclastic suggestion.
Mike Edwards has become Learjet program manager for Stevens Aviation, Greenville, S.C. He was director of maintenance at Alan Ritchey Inc. and had been a Learjet supervisor with Bombardier in Tucson, Ariz.
Raytheon has completed a system design review under a $752-million contract to design and build an early warning radar for Taiwan. The radar will track long- and short-range ballistic and cruise missiles as well as other threats.
Constellation Services International--a startup based in Alexandria, Va., that plans to begin offering open-standard supply-chain management to low Earth orbit in 2008--has signed an agreement with Space Adventures to deliver extra cargo to the space travel agent's customers who reach the International Space Station. The "LEO Express" approach will be offered as a way for space tourists to pre-deliver experiments, multimedia gear and other supplies to the ISS before their arrival in the "taxi seat" of Russian Soyuz vehicles.
EADS Astrium CEO Antoine Bouvier is predicting Astrium will land five telecom satellite awards by midyear as the company emerges from several years of slow satcom sales. Sources in India say one of these is likely to be a new order for a small satellite line being marketed in partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization's Antrix arm, set up in mid-2005. The first order under this alliance, for Eutelsat W2M, was placed in February (AW&ST Feb. 6, p. 32).
Taking on Southwest, AirTran Airways launched nonstop round-trip service between Indianapolis and Los Angeles International Airport May 9 and announced Indianapolis-San Francisco flights will begin June 7. Southwest Airlines serves both markets, the latter at Oakland. AirTran will operate one daily round trip in each pair, adding a second to LAX June 20. The carrier's other destinations from Indianapolis are Atlanta and five points in Florida.
A new Eurocontrol study suggests that higher than expected business aviation growth, and development patterns different from those for the airline industry, may require a reassessment of air traffic management and regulatory plans for the bizav sector. According to the study, released at the European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition here May 3, European bizav traffic could experience 5% annual growth over the next decade, corresponding to an extra 1,800 business jets flights a day--in large part due to expected heavy demand for very light jets.
A Senate panel's recommendation to slash more than $1 billion from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is being pitched by lawmakers as a prudent measure to reduce risk in the program, but Capitol Hill insiders contend it's another move to gain leverage for additional defense budget reductions.
The British Defense Ministry is looking to a private contractor to provide national search-and-rescue helicopter services from 2012. At present the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency provide SAR helicopters. A unified provision, funded through the government's private finance initiative, would replace these. Military personnel would still fly as part of the SAR service beyond 2012, though with helicopters and support from the private sector.
A preproduction Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will undergo modifications during the next 90 days aimed at preparing the jet for first flight this autumn.
Cutthroat pricing and low margins are dramatically slowing the expansion of Indian aviation, which grew 25% in 2005. Capacity is increasing--19 aircraft were put into service by startup carriers from last October through March--but the country's notoriously inefficient airport infrastructure isn't being improved. Rising oil costs are adding a double burden because of high fuel taxes.
Europe appears headed for further streamlining of its guided missiles, land systems and naval systems sectors, with Germany at the forefront, and Berlin and Paris jockeying behind the scenes. The German government--which has adopted a hands-on policy toward its defense industry since the takeover of KDW, now part of ThyssenKrupp, by a U.S. private equity firm in late 2003--favors a German solution to prevent its midsize contractors from falling into the hands of U.S. giants like General Dynamics. This view is shared by France.
Two compelling videos compiled with imagery and other data from the descent to Titan by the European Space Agency Huygens lander give the viewer a sense of what it would have been like to ride on the spacecraft as it descended to the surface of Saturn's moon. The spacecraft sweeps over flat terrain and river valleys carved by liquid methane nearly a billion miles from Earth (see photo). The videos were made from about 3,500 images returned from Huygens during its 147-min. descent.
The Armed Services committees of both the House and Senate want to make one thing perfectly clear to the Pentagon: They're buying fighter jets, not pieces, parts or promises.
Two bombers participating in the recent Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2006 at Nellis AFB, Nev., demonstrated the value of sharing real-time radar and targeting pod imagery over an Internet-protocol data link. The Integrated Battlespace Collaborative Communications software tool was used to compress B-1 radar data and video imagery acquired by a B-52's Litening AT targeting pod, enhancing data-link efficiency by reducing bandwidth demands.
Alenia Aeronautica has signed a memorandum of agreement with the Czech Republic's Aero Vodochody, for the latter to be a major supplier for C-27J tactical transport aircraft production. The final contract is to be signed by the end of May and covers up to 350 center wing boxes, for an estimated value of more than $200 millions. The Czech air force is evaluating the C-27J to fulfill its requirement for a transport aircraft to support troops involved in peace-keeping missions.
Regarding the Viewpoint entitled "Are Personal Electronics a Threat to Aircraft?" (AW&ST Apr. 10, p. 58), the results of the excellent work done by Bill Strauss and his team only strengthen the findings from similar tests conducted by the National Tele- communications and Information Administration, in conjunction with the FAA, in the past four years. These tests included broadband and narrow-band emissions that caused interference to GPS, radars and other navaids.
France, Germany and the Netherlands will cooperate more closely on wind tunnel facilities management. The Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) and German Aerospace Center (DLR) already were working together, and now their French counterpart (Onera) has joined to create the Aero Testing Alliance, which will be based in Noordoostpolder, The Netherlands, where NLR has a site. The three, along with the U.K., already cooperate on the European Transonic Wind Tunnel.
FlightSafety International will use two full-flight, electric-motion simulators for the initial phase of pilot training in the Cessna Citation Mustang jet, plus two avionics training devices for the Garmin G1000 package. One simulator will be delivered to FSI's Cessna Learning Center in Wichita, Kan., in the second quarter of 2007. The second device will be installed at FSI's London Farnborough Training Center, according to the company. A critical part of the overall training program will focus on a proficiency index that will be used to evaluate each pilot.
