Advanced technology transforms the battlefield, makes our defense industries more productive, and ultimately protects life and infrastructure. The call to action to introduce next-generation weapon systems has never been louder, as armed forces throughout the Free World seek better communications, lighter armor, faster platforms, and more effective surveillance, detection and intelligence-gathering capabilities.
Delta Air Lines is reallocating flight schedules at major hubs, reducing capacity by 26% at its second-largest hub at Cincinnati, and accelerating the retirement of Boeing 767-200s. The cutback at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport will affect fall and winter flight schedules for mainline Delta and regional affiliates Comair and Atlantic Southeast Airlines. Nine market destinations, primarily in the southern U.S., will lose nonstop service from the hub, and as many as 1,000 employees will lose their jobs.
Efforts to boost the technological base of the European unmanned aerial vehicle industry continued this summer with the announcement of two research projects by the European Defense Agency (EDA). EDA, which was set up in July 2004 and has taken the Occar European procurement organization under its wing, is investing 1.5 million euros ($1.86 million) to develop sense-and-avoid technologies and digital line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight data links for UAVs. Research contracts should be announced by next year.
It was an unusual way of resolving a conflict that neither side wanted to admit existed. But in August, the U.S. and Israel released a terse statement saying the two countries signed an agreement "designed to remedy problems of the past" related to defense technology.
The European Union's aviation safety committee is trying to revitalize a push for the EU to establish common criteria to identify unsafe airlines. After a series of crashes drove France, Belgium and Switzerland to publish their aviation blacklists, the committee basically endorsed an earlier European Commission effort to regulate the matter on a EU-wide level. The Interna- tional Federation of Air Line Pilots' Assns. notes that standards for operations exist, but without an international commitment to enforce them.
Timing is emerging as the key element in the British government's deliberations about providing investment cash for the Airbus A350 to industry. Senior ministers are trying to ensure that high-value civil aircraft wing design and manufacture remains in the U.K., without antagonizing Washington any more than necessary, according to industry officials and lobbyists in London.
The reorganization plan United Airlines hopes will take it out of Chapter 11 early in 2006 envisions increasing profits, lots of cash--and oil that costs $50 per barrel through the rest of the decade.
Robert Sumwalt (see photo), a retired US Airways captain, has won the 2004 Air Safety Award from the Washington-based Air Line Pilots Assn. The award recognizes contributions to safety through volunteer service in ALPA's air safety structure. Sumwalt most recently was chairman of ALPA's Human Factors and Training Group. His previous ALPA work, spanning 18 years, includes helping to found ALPA's Critical Incident Response Program and its Training Council, and accomplishments in runway incursions, cockpit procedures, wind shear, and safety research and monitoring.
US Airways, nearing the Sept. 12 anniversary of its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy-protection filing, won U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval of previously announced plans to raise about $100 million in cash through the sale of Embraer regional jets and slots to Republic Airways. Aircraft deals, including the Republic sale and planned sale-and-leaseback transactions involving 19 Airbus aircraft, would generate about $300 million for US Airways' planned merger with America West Airlines.
When Israeli soldiers removed settlers from the Gaza Strip in August, they relied on a technology more typically associated with business than the military. Soldiers used personal digital assistants, or PDAs, to pass information in a tricky and politically charged operation.
American forces in Iraq--primarily soldiers and Marines--are vulnerable to attack almost anywhere they patrol or work, and few areas are immune from explosive devices. Trucks and Humvees, especially, are high-value targets. "If you're in a vehicle, you're on the front lines," says Brian Shelton, application-development specialist for homeland security and government programs at GE Advanced Materials in Pittsfield, Mass.
NASA has awarded astronaut wings to three 1960s-era test pilots: Bill Dana and the late John McKay and Joseph Walker. The pilots previously had not been recognized for going beyond the atmosphere and into space flying the X-15 experimental aircraft at altitudes of 50 mi. or higher. Dana's first space flight took him 58.13 mi. above the Mojave Desert on Nov. 1, 1966. He tried to collect micrometeorite samples, while learning about issues of sky brightness. Walker's third X-15 foray into space claimed the unofficial world altitude record of 354,200 ft. (67.08 mi.) on Aug.
Ginger Carney (see photo) has been named director of export compliance for the Washington-based Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium. She has been on loan to the consortium from BAE Systems, where she has been senior manager of international trade compliance.
Eric Bachelet has been appointed president/CEO of Cincinnati-based CFM International, a joint company of Snecma and GE. He succeeds Pierre Fabre, who will be executive vice president of Turbomeca, a subsidiary of Snecma.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is helping Indonesia's accident investigators find clues to the Sept. 5 crash of a Boeing 737-200 that killed an estimated 149 people. Indonesia's Mandala Airlines (PK-RIM) Flight 91 departed Medan-Polonia Airport's single 3,000-ft. runway, bound for Jakarta with 117 people on board. Shortly after takeoff, the aircraft crashed into a crowded residential area near the airport (see photo). Early unconfirmed reports say 102 people on board the aircraft and 47 on the ground were killed.
U.S. Air Force work that could lead to the use of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons for "space dominance" would add to the already-serious threat to spacecraft in Earth orbit from space debris, warns the Center for Defense Information (CDI), a Washington-based think tank. The CDI, finding it "worrisome" that the U.S. is considering the use of ASATs, has released statistics highlighting the danger from debris. Only about 7% of the 13,400 items tracked in space are active satellites; the rest are considered debris.
PRESSURE IS BUILDING TO INCREASE the bandwidth available for aeronautical links, according to Neil A. Mackay, senior vice president and general manager of EMS Satcom, a Canadian company that provides broadband Inmarsat connections for aircraft. The demand for bandwidth is likely to be insatiable for "those who can afford it"--i.e., corporate and military users of these services. However, airline users are not expected to have an unlimited appetite for data link. Mackay believes the air transport market for high-bandwidth connections will take 4-5 years to develop.
Launch of the next space shuttle mission will likely be delayed beyond its current March 2006 target into at least May or June in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but NASA's near-term focus is on the welfare of its workforce on the Gulf Coast. The storm destroyed or heavily damaged the homes of more than 1,000 shuttle contractor and NASA employees at the external tank facilities near New Orleans and at main engine test facilities at Bay St. Louis, Miss.
Controllers at the European Space Agency Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, have reconfigured the ESA-NASA Cluster space weather satellite constellation, launched five years ago, so that it can study the Earth's magnetosphere in three dimensions for the first time. The two-month operation, which was completed on July 14, involved expanding the separation between three of the spacecraft to 10,000 km.--twice the previous maximum distance--and repositioning the fourth so that it is just 1,000 km. from the third satellite.
Technology used for the 787 midsize, long-range twinjet is "novel" but not "new" and so far hasn't raised any surprises from U.S. or European regulators. Still, it doesn't hurt to plan ahead. The company is working through issue papers simultaneously with the FAA and expects to have a certification plan ready for clearance by early next year, says Jeffrey L. Hawk, who heads the 787 certification effort.
The article on the V-22, "Spreading Its Wings" (AW&ST July 18, p. 24), was disturbing. There is still one serious safety problem that is never discussed by the program managers regarding the V-22's ability to make safe all-engines inoperative emergency landings as required for airworthiness certification.
Singapore and India have expanded their air services agreement to add 6,000 seats a week connecting Singapore with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Qantas-owned Jet Star Asia recently started operating three times weekly service to Kolkata. "Demand for this sector is set to grow even further as trade, investments, tourism and other economic cooperation between our two countries increases," said Choi Shing Kwok, permanent secretary for Singapore's Transport Ministry. Both sides have agreed to meet again in six months to review the agreement further.
A small civil heliport at the New Orleans Superdome became the busiest one in the world last week. Often a dozen military aircraft were being handled at once, taking off and landing only minutes apart in a desperate bid to help evacuate thousands of refugees from Hurricane Katrina before already bleak conditions and lawlessness deteriorated even further. Officials expressed concern that gang members housed at the Superdome might rush the helicopters in a bid to get out of the city, so they surrounded the area with armed guards.
Dr. Jon L. Jordan's opinion on the Age 60 issue was a political, not factual statement. The FAA has no data on airline pilot abilities after Age 60. The FAA's claim that it is a safety issue is put to rest by the fact that pilots over Age 60 fly in U.S. airspace daily, with FAA approval. I was one of those pilots. After 32 years at a major U.S. airline, I flew Boeing 747s until Age 63 for a Japanese carrier out of the same airports as before. The only difference was the registration number of the airplane and that I flew right seat only (U.S. requirement).
