Timothy R. Sample has become vice president-strategic initiatives for the Information Solutions Div. and Vicente Gonzalez director of staff education and leadership development organization at the Arlington, Va.-based Veridian Corp. Sample was staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Gonzalez held a similar position at America Online.
During a meeting dubbed "the Denver Summit" last week, airlines agreed to share more passenger-load information with Transportation Security Administration officials, to enable better scheduling of TSA's passenger-screener workforce. The meeting was set up in response to long waiting lines experienced by travelers at Denver International Airport in late June. A passenger waiting in one of those long lines was U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.), a member of the House aviation subcommittee, who launched a mini-investigation at the suggestion of the panel's leaders.
To help thwart attacks on its encampments in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has deployed a prototype aerostat and other surveillance gear that officials contend has already helped them avoid casualties.
MARS' CHANGING FACE Instruments on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter are giving scientists an unprecedented look at the ongoing processes that continue to change the red planet's surface, once thought to be a dead dust bowl. The spacecraft's gamma-ray spectrometer and neutron detectors have monitored the seasonal retreat of the carbon-dioxide frost at the North Pole, which has revealed deposits of water ice (shown in dark blue) even larger than those found last year at the planet's South Pole.
SFO BAY WATCH An independent peer review panel said the technical and scientific findings that San Francisco International Airport is using to determine the environmental impact of a runway extension into San Francisco Bay are sound. That's a victory for SFO in environmentally contentious San Francisco, but it's a moot finding at the moment. SFO's $2-3.5-billion runway project has been put on indefinite hold until recession-battered traffic levels recover.
JASSM GLOOM Lockheed Martin is trying to fight off a huge cut from its AGM-158 Jassm cruise missile program, imposed by House appropriators concerned about the missile's performance during operational testing in April and May. But the actions proposed, slashing the Fiscal 2004 buy to 100 missiles from 250, is "draconian" and could be "catastrophic" to the project, argues Randy Bigum, LockMart's VP for strike weapons. If the cut were sustained, the Air Force and the contractor would have to renegotiate price commitments.
Amsafe Aviation will retrofit two Airbus A330-200 transports with Aviation Inflatable Restraint Version 1.5 for Cyprus Airways to meet FAR/JAR 25.562 passenger safety requirements.
Elliot G. Pulham, president/CEO of the Space Foundation of Colorado Springs, has won the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation's Space Communicator Award. It recognizes Pulham for contributions to public awareness and understanding of U.S. space programs. NASA Stennis Space Center Director Roy Estess received the National Space Trophy.
Chuck Burch (see photos) is one of five regional sales and marketing directors appointed by International Launch Services, McLean, Va. He will oversee efforts in the Americas. The others are: Ted McFarland, Asia-Pacific; Scott Sobhani, Middle East and Southeast Asia; Robert Twining, Intelsat; and Mesut Ciceker, Europe.
Boeing reported 145 deliveries of commercial aircraft for the first half of 2003, including six 717s, 85 737s, 10 747s, nine 757s, 16 767s and 19 777s. Of those, nine were operating leases: eight 717s and one 767. That puts it slightly ahead of the pace to make its minimum prediction of 275-300 deliveries this year. The company's Integrated Defense Systems unit delivered 55 aircraft, including three F-15s, 13 C-17s, 29 F/A-18E/Fs, 10 T-45Ts and 1 C-40. It also delivered three Delta II and one Delta IV launch vehicles and five satellites.
Douglas Barrie (London), Andy Nativi (Manching, Germany)
The British Defense Ministry is scrutinizing future combat aircraft numbers, including the Eurofighter Typhoon and Joint Strike Fighter, in preparing a key policy document to be released toward the end of 2003. While the ministry has a requirement for up to 150 JSFs, an initial procurement of 100 to meet the Future Joint Combat Aircraft role will likely emerge. In the case of the Typhoon, procurement numbers could also eventually fall by around 50.
REQUIREMENTS DEBATE If the Pentagon wants the development and fielding of unmanned combat aircraft to stay on budget and schedule, it must formulate acquisition plans early and stick to them, says a new General Accounting Office report on matching resources with requirements. Air Force and Navy officials counter, however, that warfighters are only now realizing the real potential of unmanned aircraft and how they can be used.
The U.S. Air Force has tapped Lockheed Martin to supply retrofit kits to modify 22 Block 40/42 F-16 aircraft for a $26.6-million contract, under Phase 3 of the F-16 Common Configuration Implementation Program. With follow-on options to provide kits for up to 400 Block 40/42 USAF F-16s, the full contract is valued at up to $396 million.
Rick Hinkle has been promoted to vice president-program development from vice president/general manager of the Flight Services Div. of Keystone Helicopter, West Chester, Pa. He has been succeeded by Larry W. Adams, who was director of flight operations for Rocky Mountain Holdings.
Delta, American and Northwest airlines last week collectively raised about $1 billion in cash by selling their equity stakes in Worldspan LP, a travel technology resource firm, to Travel Transaction Processing Corp. Delta received $285 million cash plus $125 million in future credits against Worldspan services and a $45-million subordinated promissory note. Northwest received $280 million cash, plus credits for future Worldspan services.
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John A. Ross, Honeywell Manager (Electronic Systems Test Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Tex.)
Mark H. Rinder's comments in "Lunar Proximity An Advantage" (AW&ST June 16, p. 26) on reasons to return to the Moon should include a visit to an Apollo landing site. There is a wealth of "foreign" material left behind from those missions. Its deterioration from environmental exposure could be the basis of a doctoral thesis. We should decide what to do and do it fairly quickly because postponements almost guarantee cost multiplication and astronauts by then may need Chinese visas.
The art and reality of building a major orbiting observatory has been compared to the creation of one of Europe's great cathedrals. Both require a grand plan, an ability to keep working under stress and similar amounts of toil.
HEAT STORMS Three spacecraft making simultaneous observations have given astronomers their best look yet at the huge storms that rip material from the Sun and hurl it into space, sometimes with damaging consequences on Earth. The Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopc Imager (RHESSI); the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (Trace) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) all observed a big coronal mass ejection (CME) on Apr. 21, 2002. Observing in the X-ray wavelength, RHESSI picked up the start of the solar flare associated with the CME.
NASA will use wind tunnel and computational facilities at the Langley and Ames research centers to totally recharacterize the aerodynamics of the space shuttle before the program returns to flight, reclassified as more of a developmental vehicle, than the operational space transport NASA has been trying to make it for two decades. "Clearly there is more to understand about this vehicle and we have committed ourselves to doing that before we go back to flying again," said William Readdy, NASA associate administrator for space flight.
MID-LIFE UPDATE The Portuguese air force and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. have completed the first F16 to receive a Mid-Life Update (MLU) under the Peace Atlantis II initiative. The airplane was delivered to the air force during ceremonies late last month in Lisbon, marking the beginning of the service's modernization program for its fighter fleet. Work on the aircraft is being conducted at the Industria Aeronautica de Portugal facility. The aircraft was the first of 20 (16 single-seat F-16A and four two-seat F-16B models) to be retrofitted.
Boeing and Raytheon have each captured a $6,965,320 contract from the U.S. Air Force to conduct research of a Miniature Navigator Demonstration. The research dovetails with earlier research and development work on miniaturized inertial navigation technology to build new, smaller, cheaper, jam resistant and more precise combined INS/GPS guidance packages for aircraft and weapons. The device is to provide the ability for GPS systems to adaptively acquire the faint navigation signals from space and maintain a track despite severe jamming.
Edo Corp. has been awarded a $1.1-million contract by Boeing Integrated Defense Systems to provide the multifunction antenna for existing F/A-18E/F strike fighter aircraft. Annual options are expected to continue for new production aircraft, for a total program value of more than $6 million.
