Joseph D'Amato (see photos) has been promoted to vice president-engineering from chief engineer of Arkwin Industries Inc., Westbury, N.Y. He has been succeeded by Eric Pratt, who was promoted from design engineering manager. Brian Grunthal has been promoted to controller from assistant controller.
The International Air Transport Assn. has brightened its economic forecast, raising 2007 profit projections by $1 billion, and now its leader is challenging world governments to bring the "cautious optimism" emerging in industry to reality.
The first operational CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft has been delivered to the U.S. Air Force 58th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland AFB, N.M. It is the first of four CV-22s scheduled for delivery to the 58th this year. The unit provides advanced training to Air Force special ops aircrews. Procurement plans are to deliver 50 CV-22s by 2017.
Canadian satcom startup Ciel has ordered an initial all-K u-band spacecraft from Alcatel Alenia Space. The 38-transponder satellite, designated Ciel-2, will weigh around 6 metric tons and have a power output of 11-12 kw., making it one of the largest telecom satellites ordered to date. It will be launched in late 2008 to 129 deg. W.
Larry Knauer (see photo) has been appointed director of small launch vehicles integration at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Michoud Operations in New Orleans. He was president of Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion.
Air navigation service providers in Africa, reviewing options in a Nairobi meeting, agreed that the inflight broadcast procedure for air traffic control is badly outmoded and new communications and surveillance technologies should be implemented. Pilots use the procedure by VHF radio or long-range HF voice communications to obtain air traffic control clearances or report their aircraft position.
Lockheed Martin has completed the first kill vehicle pathfinder seeker for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Multiple Kill Vehicle System. It is testing the pathfinder seeker in its hardware-in-the-loop facility, creating a vibration environment similar to the one the kill vehicle will experience during its mission. Pathfinder seeker and associated kill vehicle electronics have been demonstrating full functionality under sophisticated optical and electrical testing.
By June, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will begin using unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, to help patrol the Separation Zone between Israel and the West Bank, says a military officer leading part of the project.
A couple of wide-eyed entrepreneurs with no formal training have developed armor designed to prevent facial injuries caused by explosives. The Predator Facial Armor System Technology, or FAST, weighs 1.3 lb. and is designed for vehicle-mounted personnel. The duo who developed the armor, operating under the company name MTek Weapon Systems, is working on a version that will be less than 1 lb. Benjamin Mahan, a Marine Corps reservist who served in Iraq in 2003, says he got the idea after observing the lack of facial protection for troops.
The Italian government will raise space spending by nearly 10% over the next three years, continuing an upward trend that contrasts with tendencies elsewhere in Europe. The government last week approved total expenditures of close to 2.5 billion euros ($3 billion) for 2006-08, an increase of 8% over the previous three-year plan. The hike was in line with projections by Sergio Vetrella, head of national space agency ASI, which will implement the plan, and on top of unspent funding from past authorizations (AW&ST Jan. 16, p. 420).
Jim O'Connell (see photo) has been named general manager of CAE's North East Training Center near Morristown (N.J.) Airport. He was senior manager of training for CAE SimuFlite in Dallas.
The 10 advanced concept and joint capability technology demonstrations selected for a Fiscal 2006 start focus strongly on changing mountains of data into useable molehills of information. The choices also reflect still-unresolved problems from World War II. Event Management Framework will try to figure out how to share information, recognize change, make associations with related events and quickly develop action plans.
The European Commission has issued an initial blacklist intended to keep unsafe airlines from third-party countries outside the European Union. The list bans 92 passenger and cargo carriers outright, and sets operational restrictions for three others. The EC also adopted rules for removing airlines from the list.
U.K. startup Bance Air is planning to launch daily scheduled point-to-point service from London Heathrow Airport to three Indian destinations not yet served by other carriers from LHR, starting late this year. Privately owned Bance Air obtained its operating license four months ago, has leased two Boeing 777s and is awaiting delivery of its third, according to Managing Director Dave Bance. He added the carrier plans to add a fourth aircraft, pending route approvals by India, which are expected in April. The new, liberal India-U.K.
Two years into the B-2 development program, Northrop managers decided that an altered U.S. Air Force requirement to operate at high speeds and low altitudes would force a redesign of the bomber's wing to handle high gust-induced loading. The original dual-"V" trailing-edge planform was tailored for high-altitude flight, and would not handle the high gust loads of low-level turbulence (see graphic, p. 57).
There are reasons why defense spending is so hard to predict. Air Force officials are documenting how a slightly flawed technical order and a small piece of cloth caused $6.7 million in damage to the engine of a brand-new F-22. The 27th Fighter Sqdn. from Langley AFB, Va., was on the F-22's first operational deployment, evaluating use of the JDAM weapon at Hill AFB, Utah. After the engines of one of the aircraft were started for a night mission, a crew chief realized that a nose landing gear pin was still in place.
Kazakhstan-government-owned Air Astana took delivery of its first leased Airbus A320 under a fleet modernization program. Four additional leased A320s, all with IAE V2500 engines, are to join the fleet this year. They will be operated on routes including Moscow, Dubai, Beijing, New Delhi and Istanbul. The carrier plans to have a 30-aircraft fleet by 2014. In addition to the newly arrived A320, the Air Astana fleet consists of three Boeing 757-200, three 737-700/800 and five Fokker-50 aircraft.
The air force will be able to field its first regiment of Sukhoi Su-34 strike aircraft in 2010, state reports quoting Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov. According to Ivanov, the air force will have received 24 of the strike-variant of the Su-27 Flanker-derivative by then. The number suggests the regiment will have two squadrons.
Norway is providing Lockheed Martin with an eight-week stay of execution before it decides whether to abandon participation in the Joint Strike Fighter program. Originally due to deliver its verdict Apr. 1, State Secretary for Defense Espen Barth Eide told Aviation Week & Space Technology that the decision is being put back to June 1 to allow time for Lockheed Martin to flesh out any proposals, and for Norway to evaluate them (AW&ST Feb. 27, p. 26).
The team of Lockheed Martin/EADS CASA rolled out the first production HCN-235A medium-range surveillance maritime patrol aircraft from its facility in Seville, Spain. It is the first new aircraft developed for the U.S. Coast Guard's integrated Deepwater system program. The Deepwater plan calls for production and system integration of 36 aircraft through 2017. The first will be delivered to the guard's aviation training center in Mobile, Ala., in spring 2007.
As I read your "Spaceplane Shelved" article, I remember the time I brought a copy of your magazine to my combat search and rescue squadron's ready room. My commander referenced the magazine as "Aviation Leak" and was not impressed that it was in the room. As an American, I am not pleased to read about U.S. secret programs that are secret for a reason. The fact that a fellow military pilot would be involved in supplying this information does not impress me and in fact disgusts me.
Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft that landed twice on the asteroid Itokawa found it to be a "rubble pile" of 4.5-billon-year-old planetary debris that loosely coalesced only about 10 million years ago, rather than a much older intact body like previous asteroids visited. This means researchers discovered--180 million mi. from Earth--a new baby of the solar system. It's just one of many findings from the $100-million mission that will affect theories on the formation of planets and small bodies around the Sun and other stars.
The U.S. Air Force plans to launch a 5-ton, football-field-size demonstrator radar into low Earth orbit in 2010. The active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar is expected to serve as the forerunner to a new family of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms in space. The program is run by the Air Force Research Laboratory's space vehicles directorate at Kirtland AFB, N.M. The plan is eventually to have 300-yd.-long AESA arrays flying at an altitude of 5,700 mi. that can provide tracking of surface targets around the clock in all weather.
