NO TAKERS Even as British Airways announced it was in talks with aircraft manufacturers about countermeasures against shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile attacks, Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon said there was no specific intelligence that Australian aviation interests at home or abroad were at risk from such attacks. "Qantas has tripled its expenditure on security [since Sept. 11, 2001], and the company spent over [U.S.] $180 million on security measures during the 2002-03 financial year.
France, for the moment, has only one type of operational unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, but EADS is focusing on becoming Europe's UAV powerhouse and a worldwide supplier of turnkey systems. With at least eight projects underway, the company's goals are being spurred by its post-merger consolidation of all UAV activities under management of the systems and defense electronics division.
Developed to measure human skin temperatures, the ThermaStat station can be placed at airport transit points or building entrances to assist in screening individuals. Many airlines have regulations that state they will not carry a passenger with a body temperature of 37.5C or above. With the system, a feverish passenger can be identified and directed to medical personnel for additional testing, isolation and/or treatment.
DISCRIMINATING LOOK The Advanced Discriminating Ladar (laser radar) Technology (ADLT) system being developed by Raytheon Co. detected and resolved reentry-like targets at significant ranges and tactical processing speeds during recent testing at the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala. The tests, which began July 28 and continued through Aug. 22, marked the first time the technology has demonstrated capability against tactical scenarios in real time.
USN Rear Adm. (select) William H. McRaven has been assigned as deputy commanding general for operations for the Joint Special Operations Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Ft. Bragg, N.C. He has been director for strategy and defense issues of the National Security Council in Washington.
Those wrestling with unmanned aircraft designs think two issues will redefine their future--the need for those vehicles to perform many different missions and the requirement for stealth to finesse sophisticated new air defenses.
IF IT'S REBUILT, WILL THEY COME? Industry consolidation in the 1990s and the recent downturn in commercial aviation that decimated the aerospace industry have walloped Long Island, N.Y. Until being acquired by Northrop in 1994, Grumman Corp. alone employed nearly 30,000 people (versus less than 3,000 today), and thousands more worked at numerous small companies. Now Northrop Grumman--in partnership with area suppliers, research centers, colleges and government officials--is engaged in a broad-based effort to reenergize the aerospace sector there.
GSI Lumonics has introduced a new range of small high-power Nd:YAG lasers, the Compact-Q series. Applications include PIV, LIF, LIBS, marking and drilling and laser ablation, as well as mass spectroscopy and OPO pumping. The Compact-Q provides 800mJ per 6-8ns pulse at 1064nm with a pulse repetition frequency of 10 Hz. The laser head is 45 cm. long, so the unit fits into small spaces at OEM facilities and laboratories. It is offered with a choice of stable multimode, gaussian-coupled, or TEM00 resonator options.
Back in the 1950s, I worked for four years as an electronic intercept operator providing reconnaissance intelligence to the National Security Agency. As we monitored events in the Soviet Union, including the launching of Sputnik 1, I was in awe at the accuracy and redundancy of our intelligence efforts. With our "leading edge technology" (U-2s, radio fingerprinting, telemetry, etc.--laughable when compared to what's available now), there was scarcely a piece of hard- ware or support equipment, or personnel unit moved, that we didn't know about.
Southwest Airlines has asked the National Mediation Board to step into its 16-month contract negotiations with the Transport Workers Union, which represents its 7,200 flight attendants.
Many articles as well as your readers have criticized the way NASA conducts its business. In defense of NASA, it doesn't matter what kind of space technology you have. There will always be accidents. Second, space technology alone will not provide the necessary means for a manned mission to Mars and beyond. If history is any guide, it will take a great discovery in space to make our government provide the necessary funding and manpower for a manned mission to Mars and beyond. And yes, some manned missions will fail.
India is completing an agreement to acquire eight P-3C Orion long-range patrol aircraft from the U.S. Navy inventory, partly as a replacement for the loss of two Indian Navy Il-38 Russian-supplied patrol aircraft. Indian officials also will have the option to buy 10 more of the Lockheed Martin P-3 aircraft.
SmartScanner is a joystick-operated combination tool for corrective and predictive maintenance tasks. It offers data collection, machine analysis and correction in one instrument and one database. Shaft/coupling alignment and rotor balancing address two of the most frequent causes of rotating machinery damage or failure. The vibration module permits collection and trending of vibration data to observe development of machinery problems, allowing maintenance to take preventive action, according to the company.
William Dennis (Kuala Lumpur), Neelam Mathews (New Delhi)
In a final ruling, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has affirmed its opposition to Qantas' proposed purchase of 23% of Air New Zealand's stock for NZ$550 million ($320 million), saying the deal would be "highly anti-competitive."
NASA's Ames Research Center will transfer the NASA/Army XV-15 tiltrotor aircraft to the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Washington this week. The dual-rotor XV-15 was the precursor for the Army's V-22 Osprey and nine-passenger Bell Agusta 609 civilian aircraft.
HUBBLE HELP European Space Agency scientists have used a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm that the Rosetta probe will indeed be able to land on a backup comet picked when launch delays forced the mission to retarget. A team of astronomers from France, Hungary and the U.S. collected 61 Hubble images of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G) on Mar. 11-12, using the telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to determine that the comet's nucleus is an ellipsoid measuring three miles by two miles, rotating about every 12 hr.
NAGOYA EXPANSION Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plans an expansion of the H-IIA assembly building at its Tobishima plant in Nagoya, following Japan's decision to expand the launcher into a multi-lift family of vehicles (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 38). The company expects to spend 2-3 billion yen ($17-26 million) on the project. The new version of the rocket will include twin cryogenic LE-7A engines in the first stage, which requires widening the stage's diameter from 4 meters to 5 meters.
ASIANA CODE SHARES Asiana Airlines plans to add a route to its code share with United Airlines and establish service to additional U.S. points through a code share with a second Star Alliance partner, Air Canada. The Korean carrier and United notified the U.S. Transportation Dept. that United will carry passengers with Asiana tickets on their fourth code-share route, between Seoul and Los Angeles via Tokyo, beginning Dec. 19. They already serve San Francisco-Seoul (United flights), Seoul-Delhi (Asiana) and Seoul-Bangkok (Asiana).
A ground-handling mishap at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.'s Sunnyvale, Calif., satellite factory severely damaged the final civilian weather satellite in the Tiros series last week, triggering two separate accident investigations and questions of liability for the "significant rework and retest" that will be required on the $239-million spacecraft.
While not yet officially acknowledged, the U.S. Air Force dropped 80 inert 500-lb. Boeing-built JDAMs from a B-2 Sept. 10. The mission was conducted over the Utah test range by the B-2 Combined Test Force at Edwards AFB. Only a week before, the largest drop had been 32 inert weapons. The idea is for one aircraft to strike 80 separate targets on a single mission.
The Russian government has chosen a joint design from Yakovlev and Ilyushin to develop a new family of a short- to medium-haul twinjets. The 130- to 170-seat airliner family, dubbed MS-21, was one of two contenders for launch aid under a government program to support new-generation civil aircraft development administered by Russian aviation and space agency Rosaviakosmos. The other was the Ilyushin Il-214, an airlifter derivative proposed by Ilyushin and NPK Irkut.
Markus Lehmann has been promoted to station manager for Jet Aviation in Saarbrucken, Germany, from inspector at Jet Aviation Kasse and Heiko Lübbersted to station manager from deputy station manager in Cologne.
FOR HIGH DYNAMIC FLIGHT TESTS, L-3 COMMUNICATIONS Interstate Electronics Corp. has developed a Digital GPS Translator (DGT) which has the ability to track even tumbling missiles with jerks of 20g per sec., per sec., per sec. Use of radar to track a beacon on a test vehicle will phase out at most U.S. test ranges after 2005 due to budget cuts. Compared with a conventional GPS receiver-tracking system, the DGT weighs less, doesn't require initializing, provides first fix in less than 3 sec., and has a built-in telemetry transmitter that can send up to 10 Mbps.
A heavy-duty screw jack designed by Cignys provides in-the-field truck-bed-height loading and unloading of ISO containers. It features a two-stage, telescoping, square tubular design that permits the 48-in.-long unit to produce 68 in. of stroke. It's packaged as a system of four, with jack pads, ratchet handles, brackets and straps required for deployment included. The capacity for each jack is 10,000 lb., which accommodates conventional 20,000-lb. ISO containers.
