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BOEING AND THE FAA HAVE COMPLETED three test demonstration flights over the Gulf of Mexico using GPS navigation and satellite communication for automatic dependent surveillance to track aircraft outside the range of radar and terrestrial-based radios. The demonstrations were part of the Global Communications, Navigation and Surveillance System program, which the FAA awarded to Boeing in July 2002. Two-way controller-pilot digital voice and data communications were employed. The test also used a secure network that linked multiple U.S.
NEW STEP European Union defense and foreign ministers have approved an expert panel to help prepare for a new European arms procurement agency. The Brussels-based agency would also be responsible for defense and security research and development activities as well as the monitoring and reduction of capability gaps. A formal decision on creating the new body, which would build on the Occar weapons program management agency's experience, is due before mid-2004, within the context of Europe's new constitution (AW&ST Oct. 20, p. 81).
FIRST FOR RITA French procurement agency DGA has awarded Thales a 38-million-euro ($45-million) award for the first phase of the Rita 2000 support program. The project covers new software for future high-data-rate radios and hardware/software life-cycle support/upgrades and will ultimately be worth 100 million euros, with all options utilized.
Alison Joly has been appointed public relations director and Celeste de Petris Thomasson legal director of Paris-based Messier-Dowty. Joly succeeds François Roudier, who is special projects director at the SIAE subsidiary of French aerospace industry association Gifas. Thomasson was head of Messier Services' legal department. She succeeds Gerard Joucla, who is legal director of Snecma Moteurs.
The Pentagon is set to award major missile defense contracts this week. The first would be for development of a kinetic-energy boost-phase interceptor weapon, with a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team competing against Raytheon/Northrop Grumman. Later, the Missile Defense Agency is expected to pick from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to provide umbrella management of target and countermeasures activities.
Scaled Composites flew the SpaceShipOne rocket glider for the first time to its emergency aft center-of-gravity (CG) limit on Nov. 19, validating changes made to the tail section to handle this condition (AW&ST Nov. 24, p. 16). The emergency aft CG limit could be reached when the hybrid rocket engine misfires and the nitrous oxide propellant in a tank forward of the CG is dumped for landing, leaving the solid fuel in the rear of the craft.
I am a private pilot and aircraft owner who flies primarily for recreational purposes. I and most of my peers don't care what organization operates the control towers.
NATO says a new chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) protection unit will formally reach initial operational capability on Dec. 1. Formation of the 13-nation unit, to be based in the Czech Republic and headed by a Czech commander, is considered another milestone in the effort to meet NATO's Prague capability commitment, after the creation of its expeditionary Response Force on Oct. 15 (AW&ST Oct. 20, p. 56).
Anthony L. Velocci, Jr. (New York), David A. Fulghum and Robert Wall (Washington)
Boeing Co. almost certainly will recover from its latest ethical scandal that cost Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears and another executive their jobs. Less clear is how well the corporation will be able to contain the damage to its business and reputation as repercussions snowball--up to and including the survival of Chairman and CEO Phil Condit.
The training and simulation industry is facing increased pressure from both commercial and military customers who are demanding not only more realism, but more value for their training dollars. To meet that challenge, simulation designers and training providers are developing and introducing advanced visual and motion-based systems aimed at taking cockpit imagery and pilot interaction to the next level.
NUTS AND BOLTS Regional airline American Eagle plans to build a maintenance facility at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport. About 60 mechanics would inspect, service and maintain the carrier's fleet of Bombardier CRJ700s. The new facility is scheduled to be ready for occupancy in January.
OVER THE LIMIT NASA's Ames Research Center and SGI have expanded the capabilities of large-scaled shared-memory computers to produce the 512-processor SGI Altix single-system image (SSI) supercomputer. The SSI Altix is based on the Linux operating system. "Shared-memory systems have the communications characteristics necessary to scale applications to hundreds of processors," explained Bob Ciotti, an Ames research scientist. The SSI Altix is being applied to atmospheric and ocean modeling and aerospace vehicles.
SAFE AND SECURE The Aviation Security Advisory Committee voted last week to send a working group report on general aviation security to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The report, developed by general aviation groups including the National Business Aviation Assn., Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., the Experimental Aircraft Assn. and the National Assn. of State Aviation Officials (NASAO), outlines best practices for airport and aircraft security and specialty operations such as agricultural application.
GEN. MERRILL A. (TONY) MCPEAK Del Rio could be the movie set of a West Texas border town. It's windy, and the weather tends toward seasonal extremes. A large U.S. Air Force Base 6 mi. east of town is named after 1st Lt. Jack T. Laughlin, a B-17 pilot and Del Rio native killed over Java within a few weeks of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
PRIVATIZATION MOVES The Italian government took the first step toward privatizing Alitalia, submitting to the Italian parliament a draft of a decree that would allow the treasury to reduce its 62.3% stake to below 50%. The move, pending approval from the house and senate transportation committees, would become effective in December. The treasury would be allowed to have full decision-making capability on how and when the shares are sold. It's expected that the treasury will commit all or a majority of its share to a joint holding company set up by Air France and KLM.
Increasingly concerned that a key European Commission decision will go against it, low-cost carrier Ryanair has made a surprise last-ditch plea for support from the British government's Transport Dept. The EC's eagerly anticipated ruling on whether subsidies at publicly owned Charleroi Brussels South Airport represent state aid will now not be released until next month, though it had been expected in November.
SAFETY PANEL RESTART NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe names a new Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) to replace the one that quit in September. He drew on industry, the military and his old employer, Syracuse University. Members include Steve Wallace, the FAA accident investigation chief who served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), and two members of the separate group set up under ex-astronauts Tom Stafford and Dick Covey to oversee how well NASA meets the CAIB recommendations.
I read with interest of the fund-raising effort underway to secure $5 million to restore, and then house, the most complete of the three surviving Saturn V Moon rockets (AW&ST Nov. 3, p. 17). The money will be better invested as a down payment toward reworking of the Saturn engineering drawings.
Stores on board the International Space Station can sustain a two-member crew until April 2004, leaving flexibility for Russia to delay a Progress resupply mission this month that was originally pushed up from January 2004 out of fear the station's water tanks would run dry.
BACK TO THE FUTURE NASA's Orbital Space Plane (OSP) would be a lightweight throwaway ballistic capsule that can find its own way home, at least if the astronaut corps has its way. Mike Coats, a former shuttle commander who is Lockheed Martin's vice president for advanced space transportation, says the astros want a simple, safe vehicle as soon as possible to serve as a lifeboat for the International Space Station, and later as a two-way crew transport. LockMart has a "lifting capsule" concept for OSP (AW&ST Nov. 17, p. 27), but may opt for something simpler.
Japan is examining ways to ease its extremely strict weapons export regulations, perhaps by the end of 2003, initially to allow the potential to provide ballistic missile defense-related technology to the U.S., within the context of ongoing joint research and development. This could then be widened to further areas, and other allied nations.
Larry D. Thompson has been named to the board of directors of Delta Air Lines. He was deputy U.S. attorney general and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and will teach at the University of Georgia School of Law beginning in January.
