Susan Warner Dooley has been appointed assistant director of business management for the Miami-Dade Aviation Dept. She was a project management consultant for the John F. Brown Co. of Cincinnati for which she oversaw projects at Miami International Airport.
Frank Valvo is way off the mark stating that the F/A-22 came about as a replacement for the F-117 (AW&ST Aug. 18, p. 6). Since the beginning of the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition, USAF has billed that aircraft as probably the last air superiority fighter. As far as an "A" configuration is concerned, unhabitated combat air vehicles will replace the F-117 for suppression of enemy air defenses and other equally dangerous missions.
FUMBLE The Bush administration's airtight information control system apparently is impervious even to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, an administration insider. O'Keefe was embarrassed last week when House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) told him the committee continued to be denied access to internal space shuttle budget information. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board also was denied access to the information, which involves the give and take between NASA and the Office of Management and Budget on shuttle funding.
BLUNDERBUSS, BUT Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, tells us she hasn't reached any conclusions about whether she favors legislation that would require the Defense Dept. to purchase weapons components exclusively from U.S. manufacturers. The House version of the Fiscal 2004 Defense Authorization Act included such Buy America restrictions, which are vigorously opposed by prime contractors. While the restrictions are tantamount to a "blunderbuss approach" to trying to protect U.S.
NASA has already drawn a go-slow warning from key members of Congress as it prepares its plans to get the three surviving space shuttles flying again, reflecting both safety concerns and fears the U.S. space agency doesn't have a clear vision of what it wants to do in space over the long haul.
RAMIFICATIONS Could India suffer fallout by its refusal to send troops to Iraq? An analyst says stringent riders could be attached to defense purchases from the U.S. At risk could be the sale of PC-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft, which India hopes to buy from Lockheed Martin. Indian defense officials have been asked to reveal "even the minutest" details of how they plan to use the equipment delivered by Washington, perhaps as a way to soothe Pakistan's foreign policy contingent.
. . . AND HELO SATNAV Meanwhile, the results of an Egnos demonstration in connection with Europe's All-Weather Helicopter (AWH) project show the benefits that Europe's wide-area augmentation system could bring to the rotorcraft community. The demonstration, run in March, involved the use of an experimental Egnos receiver on a Eurocopter Dauphin helicopter. Egnos was found to provide a precision of 2 meters (6.5 ft.) in the horizontal plane and 3 meters (9.8 ft.) vertical.
A constellation of Boeing unmanned aircraft shows some of the concepts being developed to aid network-centric operations. They illustrate part of the rich international potential for both civil and military uses (see p. 40). Around-the-clock operations free of crew-rest considerations and constant refueling demands are expected to result from the widespread use of unmanned, long-endurance designs. Clockwise from the top are the High Altitude Airship; the USAF strike version of the X-45; the U.S.
Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar plan to equip their head-of-state aircraft with Northrop Grumman's AN/AAQ-24 Nemesis directed infrared countermeasures system. With concerns growing about the use of IR-guided missiles against airliners, Saudi Arabia is considering buying four systems. The other three countries are all considering the purchase of one system, at a total cost of up to $61 million. Qatar would install it on a new Airbus A340-500, Jordan also on a new A340, and Bahrain on a Boeing 747-400.
RETURN TO FLIGHT Even though they are holding Mar. 11, 2004, as a return-to-flight date for the space shuttle, O'Keefe and other top NASA officials are careful to stress that it is a notional "no-earlier-than" waypoint and not a hard deadline. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board flagged an overambitious deadline for completing the U.S. portion of the International Space Station as contributing to the Feb. 1 disaster, and agency leaders don't want to repeat that mistake.
SARS SUBSIDY Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has directed Japan's Policy Investment Bank to make $1.6 billion available to Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways to cover losses they incurred because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) health crisis that swept across much of Asia in the spring. The allocation to each carrier has not been revealed. JAL and ANA are expected to report losses for fiscal 2003 of about $1.4 billion and $360 million, respectively.
The challenges of detecting, seeing and avoiding other aircraft must be overcome before the FAA will permit remotely operated aircraft to fly within the National Airspace System (NAS).
USN Rear Adm. (ret.) John E. (Ed) Boyington, Jr. (see photo), has been named vice president-Navy programs and site executive for L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, Waco, Tex. He was chief of naval air training and commander of the Navy Region South.
Ed Wodarski has rejoined Xelus Inc., Rochester, N.Y., as chief strategist. He was executive consultant at Optiant Inc. and had been general manager of the aviation and transportation markets for Xelus.
LAUNCH DEALS International Launch Services will use Proton rockets with Breeze M upper stages to loft new communications satellites for Malaysia and Spain. Hispasat, the Spanish satellite operator, picked ILS to orbit its Amazonas satellite next year to serve the Americas, Europe and Northern Africa in the K u and C bands. The Astrium Eurostar 3000 spacecraft will weigh about 4,600 kg. at liftoff. Malaysia's Measat-3 satellite, a Boeing 601, is slated for launch in 2005 to a slot at 91.5 deg. E.
ROBOCOPILOT Fuji Heavy Industries has completed flight tests of what is billed as a lightweight, low-cost, small autopilot for light aircraft that operate at slow speeds. Called Fabot (Fuji Aerial roBot), the system was tried on a company-owned two-seat HK36-TTC-115 motor glider. Company reports say the system achieved autopilot operations from takeoff to landing and might work as a silent co-pilot for single-pilot flights.
The British Defense Ministry is assembling a short list of credible contenders for a key next-generation air-to-surface weapons program by the end of this year, as it completes its ongoing balance-of-investment study into the $800-million project. Ministry officials involved in the program, known as Selective Precision Effect at Range (Spear), are believed to have recently visited the U.S. for briefings on several Pentagon weapons developments, which could fulfill part of the emerging requirement.
VISION SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL WILL DEVELOP and produce the advanced helmet-mounted display system for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter under an $84.6-million contract from Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth. VSI is a joint venture of Rockwell Collins' Kaiser Aerospace and Electronics teamed with EFW, the Texas subsidiary of Israeli company Elbit. VSI is producing helmet-mounted cuing systems for F-15s, F/A-18s and F-16s, and recently completed the first international test flights on Danish F-16s.
CONNEXION EAST Tokyo-based Space Communications Corp. will provide transponder capacity on its Superbird-C satellite for mobile Internet services for Connexion by Boeing for Asia-Europe flights. SCC will set up and operate a ground station at the Ibaraki Satellite Control Center near Tokyo to provide access to terrestrial-based networks as a supplement to the satellite beam for inflight Internet connections.
In 2007, I will have reached the mandatory retirement age of 60 and fully intend to retire if that is still an option. Never have I ever seen an article or letter to the editor by a pilot approaching age 60 saying he/she would like to stay on the job because the pay is so great and the working conditions so pleasurable. Yet I do see a constant barrage of letters from younger pilots, saying the old ones, who used to be young, only want to stay past age 60 because they are greedy and like the pay at the high end of the seniority list.
Sept. 22-24--SAFE (Safety, Survival and Flight Equipment) Assn. Symposium. Adams Mark Hotel. Jacksonville, Fla. Call +1 (541) 895-3012 or see www.safeassociation.com Sept. 22-24--Speednews Fourth Annual Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference in Europe, Hotel Palladia, Toulouse, France. Also, Nov. 2-4--Eighth Annual Regional & Corporate Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference. The Lodge at Rancho Mirage, Calif. Call +1 (310) 203-9603, fax +1 (310) 203-9352 or see www.speednews.com
Physicist and activist Edward Teller, a refugee from Nazi Germany who transformed U.S. defense weaponry with his passionate advocacy of nuclear weapons, died Sept. 9 in Palo Alto, Calif., after suffering a stroke. He was 95. Teller was present when Albert Einstein encouraged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring scientists together to create the atomic bomb. A member of the Manhattan Project that did just that, he was dismayed after World War II when leaders at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico were reluctant to move on to develop the hydrogen bomb.
Spain's decision to acquire the Tiger helicopter could encourage other European nations to join the Franco-German program, while securing a broader foothold for a new multipurpose combat version. The Spanish government announced on Sept. 5 that it would buy 24 units of the Tiger HAD. An outgrowth of the French HAP escort/combat support model, the HAD will carry Mistral missiles and a 30-mm. turret-mounted gun for air-to-air combat, rocket pods for fire support and Trigat LR missiles for tank suppression.
POKER FACE Satellite industry observers remain puzzled by the "informal offer" for Loral Space & Communications assets made late last month by EchoStar chief Charlie Ergen (AW&ST Aug. 25, p. 18). Washington-based Intelsat wants to buy six orbiting Loral satellites, so one theory is that Ergen simply wants to throw sand in the gears of the deal, which could be easy since bankruptcy court is involved.
Cirrus Design Corp. made a record 51 sales of the SR20 and SR22 light airplanes in July as demand for the company's products continues to increase. The previous record was 42 airplanes, according to John M. Bingham, executive vice president of sales and marketing for the Duluth, Minn.-based company. In addition, at the Experimental Aircraft Assn.'s AirVenture 2003 event which wound down the first week of last month, Cirrus sold 12 airplanes and used six aircraft for demonstration flights each day.
