Bradley M. Berkson has been appointed director for program analysis and evaluation in the U.S. Defense Dept. and acting deputy undersecretary of Defense for logistics and materiel readiness. He succeeds Ken Krieg, who is now undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics. Berkson was director of studies and analysis for the department's senior executive council.
Controllers at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, have deployed the second 20-meter antenna boom on the Mars Express orbiter, using the same solar-heating technique they employed to lock the first boom into place after it initially faltered. The third boom on the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding, measuring 7 meters long, was to have been deployed June 17, completing instrument activation on the ESA orbiter with a capability to look for aquifers beneath the planet's surface.
The last of two Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk maritime unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, built for a U.S. Navy demonstration program, has made its first flight. It took off from the company's Palmdale, Calif., production facility and after a 4-hr. flight landed at nearby Edwards AFB. Later this year, both aircraft will be flown to their main operating base at NAS Patuxent River, Md. Ground stations will link the UAVs directly to the Navy's entire information network, which can be tapped into by any ship. Meanwhile, the U.S.
Germany's KEPD-350 Taurus cruise missile will undergo a further series of trials at South Africa's Overberg test range later this year before entering service in 2006. The missile is in series production for the German air force. EADS' LFK missile unit is looking at further variants, including one with a high-power microwave payload.
Two of the largest maintenance, repair and overhaul organizations, Lufthansa Technik and Air France Industries, have joined forces to provide support for Airbus A380 components. The Spairliners venture will be headquartered in Hamburg, with an operations center in Paris. Spairliners will provide overhaul, repair, management of the spare parts pool and associated logistics. In particular, Spairliners is targeting airlines that have small fleets of A380s and can't afford to set up independent facilities.
NASA continues to enjoy strong funding support in the House of Representatives, thanks largely to Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Known as "the hammer" for his take-no-prisoners political style, DeLay blocked a Democratic attempt to divert $200 million from President Bush's Moon/Mars exploration program to Clinton-era police-grant programs. House members rejected the amendment 230-196, leaving intact the Appropriations Committee level of $16.5 billion for NASA in Fiscal 2006, including $3.1 billion for space exploration (AW&ST May 30, p. 23).
Airbus and Boeing may squabble over subsidies, composite usage and market strategy, but they agree about one thing: Demand has improved so much that delivery rates may need to be ramped up across their product lines.
The 2005 Paris air show hosted large delegations from an array of countries. Airbus, Boeing, Embraer and other aircraft manufacturers added their order books, while unmanned aircraft were a key theme for the military sector (p. 22). The most visible star of the show was the Airbus A380, which flew every day. The mega-transport was the dominant presence at the show, although commitments for other aircraft types, from Boeing's 737 to Airbus' A350, were far more prevalent. AW&ST photo by Mike Vines.
Pakistan is in line to receive one of the most modern versions of the F-16s, after years of being subject to an arms-sales ban that kept Washington from delivering fighters that Islamabad had bought. U.S. officials are cautious in discussing the exact arms package they plan to deliver to Pakistan, although the deal could be for about 55 new aircraft. The sale is largely a reward for Islamabad's support of U.S. military operations in the region.
Top-ranking British aerospace executives are pressing the U.K. government to go after a bilateral deal with Washington that could provide a path for exchange of classified information at the industrial level. The outcome has fundamental implications for U.S.-U.K. defense industrial relations.
European industry will this week submit a key weapons package proposal on the Eurofighter Typhoon aimed at breaking a 12-month logjam. National armament directors from the four partners--Britain, Italy, Germany and Spain--will receive the proposal, which was hammered out earlier this month between procurement officials and Eurofighter.
A combination of new instruments on the Keck telescope in Hawaii and a lot of dynamic modeling has turned up a new extrasolar planet that some astronomers have dubbed a "super Earth" for its density and relatively small size. Orbiting the star Gliese 876, a common M dwarf about 15 light-years away from Earth in the direction of Aquarius, the planet is estimated to be about seven and a half times as massive as Earth, with a radius about twice as long. That makes it the smallest extrasolar planet found yet.
The British Royal Air Force will merge its two command headquarters, with the loss of 1,000 military and civil positions. The air force's Personnel & Training Command is to be co-located with Strike Command at High Wycombe in the south of England.
The Galileo Masters Competition, intended to gather new ideas for the commercial use of the Galileo satellite navigation system, closes on June 30. Run by Galileo Industries--a Munich-based consortium of builders created to participate in Galileo development--the competition will pick seven finalists in July-August. The winner will be selected at Sophia-Antipolis, France, near Nice, in September. Contact Catherine Gentil of Cote d'Azur [email protected].
Voyager 1 is now outside the region of direct solar influence and flying in a turbulent, higher-density region of "space" where the solar wind mixes with interstellar gas, creating a new environment for the spacecraft. The boundary Voyager crossed is the terminal shock wave of the solar wind plasma emanated by the Sun and, like an aerodynamic shock wave, it is remarkably thin. Voyager spent 27 years getting there, and only about a day crossing it.
The U.S. Air Force is reexamining the way airpower has been applied to the war against insurgents in Iraq, in particular the battle against hidden bombs and suicide bombers. Planners are abandoning the narrow search for single technology solutions to finding and disabling improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and have begun searching for a broader approach that will target enemy planners, organizers, suppliers and bomb makers in their homes and workshops, well before attacks can be put into play.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are teaming to pursue what could amount to billions of dollars of work in new and upgraded intelligence ground stations for U.S. forces after years of bitter rivalry between their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sectors. The companies announced they would join forces to pursue work on the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) Block 20 program, a follow-on to the existing DCGS Block 10.2.
The final U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin Titan IVB carrying a National Reconnaissance Office imaging payload is scheduled for a night liftoff July 10 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The USAF's 30th Space Wing and its 2nd Space Launch Sqdn. are managing the vehicle processing along with Lockheed Martin and other key contractors such as Aerojet, Honeywell and ATK Thiokol.
Italy has agreed to become a partner in the French-led Helios 2 optical surveillance satellite program, alongside Belgium and Spain. Italy also agreed to provide data from its CosmoSkyMed radar satellite network to France in exchange for Helios 2 data.
The space shuttle Discovery, equipped with a replacement external tank and solid rocket boosters, inches toward Pad 39B here on its Mobile Launcher Platform, carried atop an Apollo-era crawler. The June 15 rollout to the pad, after the tank switch, sets the shuttle program up for a return to flight July 13-31, pending final critical meetings. They include a Debris Verification Review on June 24, the final assessment by the Stafford-Covey Return-to-Flight Task Group on June 27 and the Flight Readiness Review June 29-30.
The Star Alliance is giving "every indication that the [US Airways-America West] merged carrier would be welcomed," Dennis Tierney told US Airways employees in a June 13 staff newsletter. Tierney, US Airways director of alliances, was referring to comments made by 16 Star airline executives who met in Nagoya earlier this month. Membership would be beneficial for the merged entity, giving it global growth opportunities, similar to those US Airways has enjoyed since joining the alliance in May 2004.
Former Boeing Co. President Malcolm Stamper, who was a leader in development of the 747, died on June 14 from prostate cancer. He was 80. An electrical engineering graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Stamper began his career at General Motors but came to Boeing in 1962 and variously led its electronics and turbine divisions. After heading the 747 development program, Stamper became vice president and general manager of Boeing Commercial Airplane Co.
I hope the mock transoceanic hijacking exercise (Operation Atlas) went well and lessons were learned (AW&ST May 30, p. 19). Surely the authorities will note that the event was upstaged by a real one (later found to be a false alarm): A U.S.-bound Virgin Atlantic Airways aircraft transmitted a hijack squawk on June 3. The response: The aircraft was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was intercepted by Canadian CF-18s and escorted to the airport. The aircraft was secured by appropriately trained and equipped emergency responders.
Lockheed Martin is planning a three-phase evolution of its Atlas V/Centaur space-launch system aimed at gradually increasing performance to ultimately exceed that of the Saturn V booster, a cornerstone of NASA's Apollo program.
