COMPACTED AWACS Gulfstream announced a $473-million contract to supply four G550 business jets to the Israeli defense ministry for modification into airborne early warning aircraft. The Israeli government also placed options for two more G550s. The deal includes a 10-year, $18-million logistics support package, with an option for another 10 years valued at $26 million. The aircraft will be delivered to Israel Aircraft Industries, which will modify them with the surveillance equipment.
The White House has nominated acting Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Wynne to hold the post permanently. Wynne served as deputy acquisition chief under E.C. (Pete) Aldridge and has been the acting successor since May.
Only a few weeks after first flight of the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar in an F/A-18E Super Hornet, the U.S. Navy awarded a contract worth $49.5 million to Boeing and subcontractor Raytheon for low-rate initial production of eight of the all-weather sensors. AESA is part of the fighter's Block II upgrade which includes advanced mission computers, a high-speed data network and cockpit controls and displays. The system, designed to jam enemy radars and find small and stealthy targets such as cruise missiles, is expected to be operational in 2006.
European space officials are attempting to accelerate and refocus efforts to develop future launch vehicle technologies, which have been sidelined by problems with Europe's existing launch system. Last spring, plans for a 145-million-euro ($158-million) first phase under the European Space Agency's Future Launcher Preparatory Program (FLPP) fell victim to costly measures required to restructure and reinforce Ariane 5. That effort is intended to develop new expendable and reusable launch vehicle (ELV/RLV) technologies for a next-generation launcher.
One year ago, when the U.S. observed the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it was a time for solemn rededication of national efforts to survive what for all but the most prescient had been, literally, bolts from the blue. At that time, U.S. military forces had ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan or driven it underground, and destroyed the considerable Al Qaeda infrastructure there. U.S. diplomacy had forged unprecedented military, intelligence and law-enforcement collaboration against worldwide terrorism among nations unused to working together.
HOMING IN As part of its continued effort to destroy an adversary's air defenses even after they shut down, the U.S. Navy last month conducted another test of its Quick Bolt HARM upgrade. The initiative involved the addition of a dual-mode seeker to the antiradar weapon, as well as the ability to provide cues from intelligence satellites to the missile. QB-2, the latest test, was conducted at the Navy's China Lake, Calif., weapons range. The missile homed on the target using the combined passive antiradiation and active millimeter-wave seeker.
The first Boeing Delta IV Heavy booster--a candidate to launch a manned Orbital Space Plane to supplement the shuttle--is assembled at Cape Canaveral for a U.S. Air Force demonstration flight. With three linked RS-68 engine cores, the vehicle is designed to put 50,000 lb. in low orbit and 29,000 lb. in transfer orbit (see p. 48). Photo by Duffin McGee, InDyne Imagery Services for Boeing.
Guangzhou-based China Southern Airlines reported a substantial loss of 1.23 billion yuan ($164 million) in the first six months ending June 30--a sharp contrast to a $123-million profit for the same period last year.
Manuel Gutierrez Sola has been appointed chief commercial officer of Mexico City-based Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste. He has been acting chief commercial officer and was concessions manager.
Russian guided-weapons manufacturers have revealed several new programs aimed at providing the air force, and export customers, with enhanced accuracy, including a Glonass/GPS-guided munition.
THALES BIDS FOR HDW Thales has reportedly submitted a bid to acquire submarine builder HDW from U.S. investment firm One Equity Partner. Germany's ThyssenKrupp, French shipyard DCN, Izar of Spain and Northrop Grumman are also said to be interested in HDW, which the German government wants to become the nucleus of a European naval engineering consortium (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 40).
Strip away the references to Machiavelli and Ayn Rand, and Mark Fay's letter (AW&ST Aug. 25, p. 6) may be summarized as follows: The aerospace industry's problems are the result of too much emphasis on "quality" and too many employees of the wrong ethnicity or gender.
The Allied Pilots Assn. and Air Line Pilots Assn.'s unrelenting lobby to maintain mandatory age 60 retirement is directly contrary to the interests of their members.
COMPUTER CONTROLLED Engineers working on a crew transfer vehicle to replace the space shuttle have certified the design of an autonomous rendezvous testbed for launch next year. The Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) satellite would validate technology for rendezvous and proximity operations that the proposed Orbital Space Plane (OSP) can use to approach the International Space Station (see p. 48). With the completion of design certification, DART is on track for a Pegasus launch and demonstration rendezvous in orbit next year.
Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, who was a member of the team that repaired and refurbished the Hubble Space Telescope in March 2002, has been named NASA's chief scientist. He succeeds Shannon Lucid, who is returning to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
SPECIAL DELIVERY After years of chatter about the need for a new airlifter for its special operations units, the U.S. Air Force is slowly moving out on defining what this aircraft might be. AFSOC, the Air Force Special Operations Command, has issued a request for information for such an aircraft, designated M-X, to support a new analysis of alternatives. The in-service date for the first four of a larger fleet would be 2018.
David A. Fulghum (Washington and Langley Afb, Va.)
The U.S. has weapons that can fly to within 8-10 in. of any three-dimensional coordinate they are fed. A nagging problem has been that the spot warfighters want to hit isn't always the one that gets calculated as the aim point. Pentagon planners are now focused on eliminating that remaining looseness in the targeting chain, and unmanned aircraft, tied into a high-speed communications network, are a key part of the solution.
Swiss International Airlines is revising its European strategy and implementing a fare structure inspired by low-cost carriers. In the shorter term, however, ailing Swiss may need bailout funding to buy time while it downsizes. The company is in the process of cutting 3,000 jobs and slashing its fleet to 79 aircraft from 112 (AW&ST Aug. 18, p. 38). In the first half, Swiss lost SF333 million ($235 million) on SF2.09 billion in revenues--an amount that gives a new sense of urgency to recovery efforts.
The first U.S. Air Force/Boeing "Delta IV Heavy" Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, a strong candidate to be the next U.S. manned launch vehicle, has been assembled here in preparation for rollout to Launch Pad 37B for several months of checkout before a demonstration flight in May 2004. The nearly 2-million-lb.-thrust vehicle combines three Delta IV common booster cores and three Rocketdyne liquid oxygen/hydrogen RS-68 engines.
FAA contract towers, which are VFR towers staffed by contractor personnel, are operated somewhat more safely and considerably less expensively than comparable towers staffed by FAA air traffic controllers, Transportation Dept. Inspector General Kenneth Mead reported Sept. 4. The findings put Mead squarely in the middle of controversy over this year's FAA reauthorization bill.
There's more encouraging evidence that the U.S. airline industry is earnestly on the mend: The most recent statistics confirm that air travel was comparatively strong in July and August; operating costs, with the exception of fuel, are declining; the sector's financial outlook for all of 2003 and 2004 is rapidly improving, and investors smart (or lucky) enough to buy the right stocks when they were in the tank are seeing their returns soar well beyond the shares' 52-week lows.
ADVANCED PROPULSION EADS will collaborate with Russia's Chemical Automatics Design Bureau to develop and test technologies for a non-bypass space propulsion system. Among the technologies to be investigated under the three-year, 1.5-million-euro ($1.6-million) Tehora 3 project will be the use of high-energy-density hydrocarbons with liquid oxygen. Previous phases of the Tehora project, which dates back to the 1990s, focused on fuel injection, combustion chamber design and nozzle concepts.
RETIRING ENGINE The planned USAF launch this week of a secret National Reconnaissance Office signals intelligence spacecraft on a Titan IVB-Centaur will mark the last use of one of the older versions of the Pratt & Whitney RL10 oxygen/hydrogen engine used on the Centaur upper stage. The $1.5-billion mission, delayed more than 18 months, is set for liftoff on Sept. 8. The twin 10,000-lb.-thrust RL10s on the vehicle--the RL10A-3-3A--is the last of a family of early RL10s that have been launching on Titans since 1974.
Leo Millstein has been named senior vice president/general counsel/corporate secretary of the Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Va. He was vice president/general counsel/secretary of Merant plc.
