Freddy Hagens has been appointed director of engineering for Aeronautical Engineers Inc. of Miami. He was an interiors project manager for Boeing in Seattle.
The Pentagon's cancellation of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter represents a financial burden on several other programs, including the V-22 tiltrotor, which is partially built at the same Ridley Park, Pa., facility where aerospace giant Boeing worked on Comanche. With Comanche no longer sharing overhead expenses at the site, V-22 costs are likely to increase. Boeing officials hope to keep these increases to less than $1 million per aircraft, and in the long run mitigate them altogether, says John Lockhart, who heads Boeing's naval business.
Stanley W. Kandebo (New York), Barry Rosenberg (Thousand Oaks, Calif.)
Pratt & Whitney's failure to secure a place on Boeing's 7E7 transport raises serious doubts about the company's future capability to independently develop and manufacture large commercial gas turbine engines. A survey of its civil product line shows: *The 37,000-43,000-lb.-thrust PW2000 is used on the Boeing 757, which will end production later this year. The engine also powers the Ilyushin Il-96, which has yet to garner significant orders.
Russia-based design bureau TcSKB Progress is set to test-launch a Soyuz 2-1A booster, the first in a planned family of modified Soyuz boosters, in mid-October. The Soyuz 2-1A will feature a digital flight control system and a 4-meter-high nose fairing, allowing an increase in payload weight and size compared with the existing Soyuz FG. The Soyuz 2 line is slated for use at the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
The Pentagon is set to bolster its surveillance capability in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming weeks while at the same time drafting a major overhaul of its internal intelligence apparatus. A lone Global Hawk unmanned aircraft is one of the collection systems being prepared to return to the Middle East. It would operate from the United Arab Emirates, where it was based during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems will support development of the Surface-Launched Amraam (Slamraam) ground-to-air weapon system. Under a contract to the U.S. Army, Boeing will be responsible for design and development of the integrated fire control station at the company's facility in Huntsville, Ala. Slamraam would feature up to six AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles installed in a High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle. The existing contract is worth $18.9 million and runs from March 2004 to August 2007.
Japan's government-owned Policy Investment Bank has extended a new batch of emergency loans to All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines to cover losses stemming from the Iraq war and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) health crisis last year. ANA got 35 billion yen ($332 million) and JAL 20 billion yen in the latest round of support. They have received 130 billion yen and 244 billion yen, respectively. Meanwhile, ANA said the end of SARS and a boost in business travel between Japan and the U.S.
6 Correspondence 8 Who's Where 10-11 Market Focus 13 Industry Outlook 15 Airline Outlook 16-18 World News Roundup 21 In Orbit 23 Washington Outlook 59 Inside Business Aviation 71 Classified 72 Contact Us 73 Aerospace Calendar
At the recent Aviation Week Toulouse Symposium, Thomas Pickering, Boeing's senior vice president for international relations, stated, "Globalization is ongoing and here to stay. Boeing must transform itself; the [proposed] 7E7 will change the industry forever" (see p. 24).
Fielded and planned upgrades to the U.S. Army's helicopter fleet could open the door to new tactics that would make the service's aviation elements in South Korea much more effective in combat.
A rare sighting by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has given scientists a new measure of the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. That could come in handy at the end of the year when ESA sends a lander from the Cassini Saturn probe toward a parachute landing on Titan's surface. On Jan. 5, 2003, Titan made a transit of the Crab Nebula that left a tiny X-ray shadow in front of the nebula.
A team led by M7 Aerospace of San Antonio will provide logistics support for the fleet of C-20 Gulfstream III jets operated by the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Under terms of the $400-million contract, M7 will be responsible for overall management of the program and oversee engine overhauls performed by team partner Dallas Airmotive. L-3 Communications Integrated Systems in Greenville, Tex., will perform inspections, maintenance and modifications, and provide support to five field sites in the U.S. and overseas.
CESSNA AIRCRAFT CO. RECENTLY DELIVERED the 5,000th piston-powered airplane built since production of single-engine models resumed at the Independence, Kan., facility in 1997. The Skylane was delivered to Alliance Equipment Leasing.
The EA-6B Prowler's ICAP III airborne electronic attack system has been approved for final testing by VX-9 at China Lake, Calif. Completion of the five-month-long operational evaluation in September is the final hurdle before a full-production decision. The Navy is slated to receive the first upgraded aircraft in early 2005. The system has already demonstrated the ability to focus its jamming power and to counter modern, frequency-hopping radars, as well as to locate radar emitters with enough precision to attack them.
In the early stages of transforming its air traffic operation into a performance-based organization, the FAA is trying to identify and reduce costs, which are outrunning aviation trust fund revenue.
The combined U.S. and South Korean militaries already field a vast array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment on the peninsula, but military leaders still clamor for more collection systems and better support from intelligence agencies. Technical intelligence is of particular importance here because of the opacity of the Kim Jung-Il regime. The U.S. Army's daily reconnaissance flights would provide the first clues if the North Korean military were to go on the offensive.
General Electric and Rolls-Royce have won the big checkbook game to provide powerplants for Boeing's 7E7, leaving Pratt & Whitney without a major program on which to pin its hopes for a successor to the PW4000.
Much has been done to enhance airline security in the last 30 months, but a major resource of trusted and skilled passengers remains untapped. Many police and military personnel fly every day and could be available to flight crews in a potential terrorist emergency. Volunteers--including active, reserve and retired personnel--could become part of a police-military passenger database. Federally sponsored orientation would be appropriate, but administration could be done at the state level, perhaps by the National Guard in weekend half-day sessions.
Composite liquid hydrogen tank technology being tested as NASA winds down its Next-Generation Launch Technology (NGLT) program appears to have overcome the flaw that brought the old X-33 program to a halt, and may find applications in future government and commercial space launch vehicles.
Another major milestone on the road to fielding a Space-Based Radar (SBR) was met recently with the completion of a Ground Moving-Target Indicator Analysis of Alternatives study. The analysis looked at various air and space assets that might meet surface search-and-track, radar imagery and terrain information needs of both the military and intelligence communities. Five integrated air, space and ground alternatives were analyzed through about a dozen scenarios.
A SURVEY CONDUCTED BY UBS Investment Research covering February-March 2004 indicates the market for business jets continues to improve although the "pace of improvement did slow" from a previous survey completed after the fourth quarter of 2003. Research for the latest survey included 900 business jet professionals including brokers, dealers, manufacturers, financiers and appraisers. Of the 117 respondents, 78% expect business conditions to improve this year while 20% predict conditions will remain about the same for the next 12 months.
Officials of France's Ministry of Culture say wreckage of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning piloted by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French aviator who wrote the well-known children's story The Little Prince, has been recovered off Marseille. The ministry's underwater archeological research department reported that the wreckage had been found by a local diver, Luc Vanrell, in the same area where a bracelet thought to have belonged to Saint-Exupery was discovered in 1998.
Hawaiian Airlines, more than one year in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and the subject of two substantial reorganization plans, will attract a third plan during the next two months if the carrier's trustee can secure financial commitments.
Douglas Barrie and Robert Wall (Nas Patuxent River, Md.)
European and U.S. guided-weapons makers are trading blows in their respective backyards as Canada and Denmark move toward choosing dogfight missiles. Canada is on the brink of signing up with European missile-manufacturer MBDA for its Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missile (Asraam), with Denmark favoring Raytheon's AIM-9X. The pending Canadian decision will come as a welcome fillip to MBDA, which has secured only one export order so far, from Australia.
