India's largest private domestic carrier, Jet Airways, has added its second international destination, Katmandu, less than two months after its first offering, to Colombo. In June, the airline plans to offer services to Dhaka from Kolkata (Calcutta). It has selected California-based Top Image Systems' Unified Content Platform to establish automated ticketing operations at its Coupon Processing Center in India.
David A. Fulghum (China Lake and El Segundo, Calif.)
At the leading edge of the network-centric constellation is an array of new-generation sensors that jump-start the whole system by providing a more detailed view of the battlefield and seeking out key targets.
Lockheed Martin has opened a new facility at Troy, Ala., that will allow the company expand production to 40 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles per month by mid-2005. The U.S. Air Force is expected to buy 4,900 Jassms over the life of the program. The 2,000-lb. weapon is to be carried by all three heavy bombers as well as the F-16 and F/A-18E/F.
China is in the latter stages of developing a new long-range, antiship cruise missile to be fitted as one of the primary weapons on board the latest variant of its Type 052 class of destroyer.
VOICE RECOGNITION SYSTEMS now in use for ATC simulation and training could lead to operational applications. Early voice recognition systems lacked a number of capabilities, including a sufficiently large vocabulary, understanding rapid speech delivery, speaker "independence," and the ability to understand context and respond--telling why a command is incorrect or cannot be executed. Adacel overcame those problems with ATC tower simulators it has delivered to the U.S.
The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) is urging the FAA to mandate establishment of Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) programs for all U.S. airlines. The programs, also known outside of the U.S. as flight data analysis and flight data monitoring, involve the collection and analysis of data recorded during flight to improve air travel safety.
Muses-C has successfully completed an Earth swingby to begin the final leg of its voyage for a rendezvous with the asteroid Itokawa (1998 SF36) in June 2005. The 1,100-lb. Japanese spacecraft was designed and built by NEC-Toshiba Space Corp. and uses four ion electric engines for propulsion. It dipped to within 3,700 km. (2,300 mi.) above the eastern Pacific Ocean during the gravity-assist maneuver that set it up for the final 13-month, 300-million-km.
Richard Bergmann has become president/CEO of San Diego-based Avexus Inc. He succeeds Andrew Dumke, who will remain chairman. Bergmann has been CEO of SymphonyRPM, Palo Alto, Calif., and was president of Manugistics.
The joint European Space Agency-British National Space Center report into the failure of the Beagle 2 Mars lander makes the following recommendations: 1. Future lander missions should be under the responsibility of an agency with appropriate capability and resources to manage it. 2. The ESA executive should formally assess mission-critical science payload proposals, advising the Space Science Policy Committee whether to accept.
I was disheartened to read the letter by Michael Swindell (AW&ST May 3, p. 8). Even the casual reader would know the F/A-22 originally was planned for an earlier in-service date.
A new, even larger unmanned combat aircraft and a version of the B-1 that goes twice the speed of sound are among the industry responses to the U.S. Air Force's request for information (RFI) about a near-term, long-range strike capability. The service has expressed interest in concepts for an interim capability, possibly a regional bomber, that could start development in 2008. The project would need an initial operational capability by 2015 and full operational capability by 2020.
Boeing confirmed that Japan's Toray Industries Inc. will provide its trade-marked Torayca prepreg composites for the primary structure of the 7E7 from its Tacoma, Wash., facility (AW&ST May 17, p. 40). It also said that Kidde Technologies of Wilson, N.C., will provide the 7E7's fire protection systems for its engines, auxiliary power system and cargo compartments.
Garmin International's G1000 integrated avionics system has been installed in the experimental HondaJet for flight tests, a prototype compact jet from Honda Motor Co. Ltd. The jet is equipped with fuel-efficient Honda-developed HF118 turbofan engines.The installation features two 10-in. navigation displays and a 10-in. multifunction display. The displays use extended graphics array technology to provide high resolution with 1,024 X 768 pixels. The glass cockpit presents engine and flight instrumentation plus navigation, communication, weather, terrain and traffic data.
Sometime in the next few weeks, powerful X-ray beams fired through the heart of a high-explosive detonation will provide valuable information about how plutonium acts during a nuclear implosion.
The first of the British Defense Ministry's five Sentinel Mk1 Airborne Stand-Off Radar (Astor) aircraft underwent its maiden flight on May 26 from what is now the L-3 Communications facility in Greenville, Tex. The modified Bombardier Global Express is fitted with an active synthetic aperture radar for ground surveillance. Raytheon Systems Ltd. is operating the Astor program. The remaining four aircraft will be modified in the U.K. at Raytheon's Broughton site in Wales.
NASA has released pieces of the space shuttle Columbia to The Aerospace Corp. in the first application of a new policy of using material from the lost orbiter for research. The El Segundo, Calif., laboratory will get eight pieces of graphite/epoxy honeycomb skins from various locations in and on the orbiter to study reentry effects on composite materials.
Meanwhile, machinists and aerospace workers at Boeing's St. Louis-based defense unit reached agreement last week in a three-year pact that includes no health benefits in retirement for workers hired as of 2005, a 3% wage increase in the first and third years and a $3,000 signing bonus. Workers will receive $2,000 next year. A SPEEA official called the St. Louis offer better than the one engineers in Wichita got.
First in the marketplace with the regional jet more than a decade ago, Canada's Bombardier is mulling over the concept of a new commercial aircraft, a super size, super efficient version of its current regional jet products, between 100-135- seats. In this capacity range, it would compete directly with the Boeing 717 and Airbus A318. The Bombardier plan is rooted in the classroom basic, Air Transportation 101. Travelers want high-frequency service at reasonable costs especially between large cities.
The loss of the Beagle 2 Mars lander was the result of inadequate testing, insufficient funding, intense schedule pressure, a program management that blurred responsibilities, and perhaps even wishful thinking.
The crew of the space station has been told by NASA mission managers to use Russian Orlan space suits, instead of U.S. suits, during a mid-June extravehicular activity (EVA) to replace electronics on a critical station gyro. The shift will force the crew to make a round trip of about 160 ft. outside the orbital outpost to travel between the Russian Pirs airlock module and the S-zero truss, where the electronics box changeout will be made. Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and astronaut Mike Fincke had planned to use U.S.
Former AMR Corp. CEO Robert Crandall and Donald Burr, founder of now-defunct low-fare airline PeopleExpress, have formed The Burr/Crandall Air Taxi Co. to provide private, on-demand, point-to-point air transportation. The company has ordered 75 Adam Aircraft A700 AdamJet twin-engine airplanes. Burr said the composite, twin-boom A700 "is the best aircraft for our mission."
New security requirements established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are prime causes of growing delays in processing security clearances for Defense Dept. contractors, the General Accounting Office finds. More people are being vetted, a higher percentage of applicants need the most restrictive top-secret clearances, workload is greater than expected, and the investigative workforce is too small, the GAO says.
The Sniper XR targeting pod has completed cold-weather suitability tests at Syracuse, N.Y. The Lockheed Martin sensor system was installed in an F-16 in freezing weather by two crewmen wearing clothing for both cold weather and biological-chemical protection. The pilot was able to use the system within 10 min. of installation. The system features third-generation forward-looking infrared sensors and dual-mode lasers.
