Space Systems/Loral has begun building Telstar 11N for Loral Skynet for connectivity to the North American fixed satellite services market. Built on a 1300-series platform, Telstar 11N will have 39 K u-band transponders serving North and Central America, Europe, Africa and the maritime Atlantic region. It's to be launched to 37.5 deg. W. Long. and complement Telstar 12. Launch is set for 2008.
India's hunt for a successor to its aging MiG-21 fleet just got messier. The original call was for 126 Multi-Combat Role Aircraft (MCRA), but the Indian air force says it may increase the order to 200. That's the good news for contenders from Europe, Russia and the U.S. The bad news is the air force may buy from 2-3 suppliers, adding more complexity to maintenance, support and operational activities. The air force already flies 26 different types.
Sasidhar Eranki and John Scannell have become vice presidents of Moog Inc., East Aurora, N.Y. Eranki has been director of engineering, while Scannell has been program director for the company's role in the Boeing 787.
Landsat 5 has resumed operations following a two-month shutdown after engineers from the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA devised a way for its balky solar array drive mechanism to keep enough power flowing to the spacecraft payload for normal operations. Controllers shut down the 23-year-old spacecraft last November when the problem first appeared.
British officials won't discuss several of Astor's current and future capabilities, particularly those involved with information warfare and electronic attack. However, given that the laws of physics apply equally in Britain, such non-kinetic effects as intelligence gathering, jamming and production of electronically destructive pulses will be an intrinsic part of the Astor's radar technology, once the proper software and processor modifications are made.
Laura Mandala has become vice president-partnership research and Gary Oster vice president-development of the Washington-based Travel Industry Assn. of America. Both are former executives with the Marriott Corp.
Jeffrey L. Snyder has been appointed general manager of spare parts and service for MD Helicopters Inc., Mesa, Ariz. He was vice president-sales and marketing for Kelly Aerospace.
Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects is making perhaps the first realistic tests of a hybrid airship--a concept that dates back many decades but that is just now being tried at a significant scale. The Skunk Works had secretly built the craft and hoped for a quiet first flight at its Palmdale, Calif., facility, but a few passers-by noticed the strange object in the sky.
Maj. Gen. Ted F. Bowlds has assumed command of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He was deputy for acquisition at the Aeronautical Systems Center of Air Force Materiel Command.
Washington is working with Brussels on ways to make it easier to exchange politically important but secret intelligence. Bureaucratic hurdles to giving European policy makers insight into U.S. intelligence information have traditionally been high. Washington policy makers were happy with the results last year when they provided threat information on China to their European counterparts as the EU mulled lifting its embargo on arms sales to Beijing. But the process was cumbersome, says one Defense Dept. official.
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Bernard L. Schwartz is retiring as chairman/CEO of Loral Space and Communications after 34 years (see p. 12). Michael B. Targoff, vice president of Loral's board, was named CEO. Mark H. Rachesky, cofounder of a fund that invests in distressed companies, will be non-executive chairman.
Yields up, revenue up, bottom line in the red. Maybe better than last year, maybe worse, but in the red. JetBlue Airways, Frontier Airlines and United Airlines added their 2005 financial reports to an industry-wide case of the blahs. Except for Southwest Airlines, which is soundly profitable even as it continues to increase capacity at double-digit annual rates, U.S. airlines seem to be treading water in the sink-or-swim post-2000 environment.
Increasing air traffic and looming federal budget deficits mean less money and more demand to upgrade the nation's rickety air traffic control systems, says Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who suggests issuing bonds to raise the tens-of-billions of dollars needed for next-generation technology. The FAA, or a federal entity created for the purpose of capital financing, could issue bonds the way the Tennessee Valley Authority does, Stevens tells the American Bar Assn.'s forum on air and space law.
NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin says the human loss in development of the early U.S. air transport system can be compared with the risk and tragedies in the U.S. manned space program. Griffin was commenting here about three tragic events in space exploration: The initial three-man Apollo I Earth orbit test crew demise during a countdown test on Launch Complex 34 Jan. 27, 1967, the loss of Challenger and her seven-member crew during launch on Jan. 28, 1986, and the deaths of seven Columbia astronauts during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003.
USN Rear Adm. (lower half) Michael C. Bachmann has been appointed commander and Rear Adm. (lower half) (selectee) Timothy V. Flynn vice commander of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego. Bachmann has been vice commander of the Naval Air Systems Command in Washington, while Flynn has been special assistant to the commander.
Several countries have agreed to work with French armaments agency DGA on common specifications for a next-generation surveillance satellite ground segment. DGA wouldn't name the countries, but they are likely to be among those that have signed, or have expressed an interest in signing, an agreement to share capacity on existing systems so they can support Europe's growing out-of-theater crisis management and humanitarian mission commitments. These include Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Austria and Sweden, which is studying a surveillance system of its own.
The Stiletto craft, covered in "The Shape of the Future" (Nov./Dec., p. 14), was built by Knight & Carver Yacht Center, National City, Calif. While the Pentagon spent a total of $12.5 million on the project, M Ship Co., of San Diego, which designed Stiletto, received $6 million for the vessel. The remaining $6.5 million was spent on outfitting the ship.
DALLAS FORT WORTH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT EXPECTS TO SEE 15-20% improvement in the use of runways and airspace, made possible by new area navigation (RNAV) procedures. RNAV departure and arrival procedures will also allow the airport to design ground tracks, turns, climb rates and other features to minimize noise impact on local communities, according to Jim Crites, executive vice president of operations for the airport. "It's not a home run, but it's a triple," he says of RNAV's benefits.
Precision Castparts Corp. posted net income of $91 million for the fiscal quarter ended Jan. 1, an increase of 47% from the year-ago period (AW&ST Jan. 23, p. 16).
It's long been the dream of military planners to replace hand-written orders with a digital system that could securely send information back and forth on the battlefield. While ambitious plans for a "Battlefield Internet" have proven more difficult than first envisioned, the British Ministry of Defense last December approved a new strategy to put this goal back on track.
John Adamovich, Jr., has become senior vice president/chief financial officer of Aeroflex Inc., Plainview, N.Y. He was executive vice president/CFO of Rainbow Media Enterprises.
While everyone speculates on where the Asian Aerospace exhibition brand will settle in 2008 once it leaves Singapore, the organizers of the exhibit two years from now in Singapore are acting quickly to try to cut off competi-tion. Changi International Airshow (CAS), which is to replace Asian Aero-space in Singapore, will be moved to a 24-hectare (260-acre) site called Changi East that is to become operational in August 2007. The current show is at the Changi Exhibition Center.
