The U.S.' ability to conduct homeland security missions with helicopters is expected to improve as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol units are consolidated for greater efficiency and the Coast Guard equips aircraft for the new endeavors. Not all of the missions are new, but much of the thinking about how to do them is. For example, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), led by Commissioner Robert C. Bonner, is conducting a 90-day review to determine how best to combine the two aviation units in the bureau into one.
I read "Exhausting Changes" with amusement, relative to the seemingly new technology that Pratt & Whitney is attempting for a new unmanned aircraft (AW&ST Dec. 13, 2004, p. 35). This sort of exhaust system has been flying since the first flight of the B-2 with ground runs before that. As engineering manager at GE Aircraft Engines for the F118 engine and the exhaust system for the B-2, from its inception to first flight--more than seven years--we had to do all the things Pratt & Whitney is attempting now.
The Pentagon won't send the $75- billion Fiscal 2005 war supplemental request to Congress until later this month. Details are still being hashed out internally. The Navy, for instance, wants to use some of the money to buy new equipment such as helicopters, worn out by operations in Iraq and other places. The Army and Marine Corps are expected to receive the bulk of the money.
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The FAA anticipates its final rule on Part 60--a new set of regulations that will for the first time codify flight simulation requirements--will be published by late fall.
NASA-funded astronomers have proposed another option for the troubled Hubble Space Telescope program beyond a risky robotic servicing mission or letting the spacecraft fall into the Pacific. Dubbed Hubble Origins Probe (HOP), the plan calls for flying the two instruments that would be installed on the existing telescope in a servicing mission, plus a Japanese Very Wide Field Imager, on a modern spacecraft with a 2.4-meter lightweight mirror, the same diameter as Hubble's.
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. has test-flown an Indian-built upgrade of the Eurocopter Alouette 3, the Chetan, equipped with a Snecma/Turbomeca TM 333 2M2 turboshaft. A longer-range, higher-payload variant of the Chetak, powered by Turbomeca Artouste 3Bs, the Chetan will be aimed primarily at high-altitude search-and-rescue missions in the Himalayas. The TM 333 2M2 powers the Cheetal, a version of the Indian-built Lama known as the Cheetah.
The previous Ukrainian government is being accused by a senior lawmaker of having supplied Raduga Kh-55 cruise missiles (AS-15 Kents) to Iran and China, according to The Associated Press. The report claims six missiles each were supplied to China and Iran between 1999 and 2001.
Re-engining old aircraft, a practice U.S. Air Force planners prefer to avoid in favor of buying next-generation designs, is coming back into vogue as the Bush administration slashes defense budgets to shrink the ballooning national debt.
The Air Force Research Laboratory has exercised an option in a Raytheon contract to continue work on an X-band thin radar aperture. The technology is being used to develop a next-generation radar antenna for the Joint Unmanned Air Combat System. As currently envisioned, the antenna is built in sheets that are attached to the skin of the aircraft to match its shape. The uneven surface is compensated for by computer algorithms.
The British Defense Ministry has successfully carried out flight trails of a repackaged variant of the Raptor reconnaissance pod on the General Atomics Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), while the ministry has also gained its first experience of a combat engagement using a Predator.
INavSat, one of the two teams vying for the concession to deploy and run the Galileo satellite navigation system, has added the regional governments of Auvergne in France and Barcelona in Spain to its bid team. INavSat said it also has spoken to regional and municipal officials in Wallonie (Belgium), the East Midlands (U.K.), Bavaria (Germany) and Warsaw (Poland) as well as Midi-Pyrenees in France and the Piedmont and Turin in Italy in an attempt to expand the team.
President Bush unveils a Fiscal 2006 budget this week that continues support for his plan to explore the inner Solar System with humans, but fiscal realities are already squeezing NASA's detailed exploration plans.
The Italian and Japanese air forces will receive a lighter, stronger and potentially much more reliable version of the refueling boom on its tankers than those now flown on the U.S. Air Force's KC-135s.
Lorrie Secrest (see photo) has become vice president-communications for the Raytheon Co.'s Integrated Defense Systems, Tewksbury, Mass. She was senior vice president-communications for the U.S. Export-Import Bank in Washington.
Lockheed Martin F/A-22 officials are making hay from the results of the stealth fighter's initial operational test and evaluation, which declared it "operationally effective and potentially suitable" and noted the aircraft's effectiveness against simulated air defenses and F-16s was "overwhelming." While the Air Force wouldn't release numbers, those close to the program said exchange ratios were near 80:1 and even when conventional aircraft were carrying new electronically scanned radars and helmet- mounted sights, "It didn't make much difference," says an experienced figh
You can now register ONLINE for Aviation Week Events. Go to www.AviationNow.com/conferences or call Lydia Janow at +1 (212) 904-3225/+1 (800) 240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada Only) Feb. 16-17--World Aerospace Symposium/Toulouse. Pierre Baudis Toulouse Congress Center, Toulouse, France. Apr. 19-20--MRO Military Conference. Also, Apr. 20-21--MRO USA Conference & Exhibition. Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, Dallas. May 24-25--Homeland Security Summit & Exposition. Washington.
Is now a good time to invest in U.S. airline stocks? Don't laugh--with many carriers' stocks down 25% or more in January, some Wall Street analysts think investors have gone too far in their sell-off.
An item in the Jan. 31 Industry Outlook on Japan's participation in the Boeing 787 (formerly 7E7) program was misstated. Japanese industry is expected to invest $2-3 billion in design and development of components for the new aircraft, not make a direct payment to Boeing.
The Pentagon's Fiscal 2006 budget plan, to be unveiled this week, provides for 138 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, 23 more than the current fiscal year. It starts bringing the average fleet age down in stages to 15.9 years, by about 2011, from 18 years now. The service goal is 11 years. The total aircraft inventory continues to drop through 2008, when it bottoms out at 2,629.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John M. Urias, who has been program executive officer for air, space and missile defense at Huntsville, Ala., has been named deputy for non-construction/head of the contracting agency for the multinational force in Iraq.
The joint NASA/industry team laying out the new U.S. plan for the future robotic and eventual human exploration of Mars will meet this week to formulate an initial outline of a new Mars-exploration road map. A key tenet of the plan will be to form a course that can be closely aligned with a similar effort underway for renewed robotic and human exploration of the Moon. The lunar team will meet again in late March.
John Olcott (see photo) has become president of the Trenton-based New Jersey Aviation Assn. He succeeds Tom Carver, who has been named state labor commissioner. Olcott has been president of General Aero Co., Morristown, N.J., and is a past president of the National Business Aviation Assn. Hugh McElroy was reelected chairman of the NJAA board of directors. He is vice president of Dallas Airmotive Inc.
All Nippon Airways expects to order additional 777-300ERs and is looking at a "new large" aircraft type over the next three years. Four 777-300ERs are to be added to the six ANA already has ordered. Boeing has delivered the first of those and is due to send another to Japan in May. The new order will be split between two direct buys and two representing conversions of existing orders for 767-300ERs. That order is due to run until 2008, when ANA will be the first to receive Boeing's 787 (formerly the 7E7).
