Bahrain will acquire six Hawk 127 jet trainers under a deal inked late last month. The aircraft are part of a training package provided by BAE Systems.
Mar. 10-11--European Transport Leaders Conference. Landmark Hotel, London. Mar. 12-13--Toulouse Symposium. Toulouse (France) Congress Center. Mar. 27-28--Defense Budget Conference. Holiday Inn, Rosslyn, Va. Apr. 15-17--MRO 2003 & MRO Latin America. Broward County Convention Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. May 6-8--Aerospace Defense & Finance Conference. Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York. May 14-16--Homeland Security Summit & Exposition. Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, Va.
The buildup of U.S. military forces around Iraq, continuing unabated, has cost $2.1 billion so far, Rumsfeld tells the committee, and other operations in the global war on terrorism are costing about $1.5 billion a month. The Fiscal 2003 budget doesn't cover these costs, so the outlays are putting the Defense Dept. in a financial hole. Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim warns that the military may have to rob training accounts in the spring, the third quarter of the fiscal year, and hope Congress approves a supplemental appropriation to restore those funds.
The Transportation Security Administration plans to improve the ability of federal air marshals to communicate with flight and cabin crews as well as with organizations on the ground. In a discussion of the TSA Fiscal 2004 budget, Adm. James M. Loy said there are a number of interesting initiatives in this area and commercial-off-the-shelf equipment will provide the agents with a more sophisticated capability. Being able to communicate with the pilots if something is going on in the cabin while keeping the cockpit door closed is "enormously important," Loy said.
share Claude G. Luisada's sadness at Boeing's decision to shut down the Sonic Cruiser program. However, in advocating a 200-250-passenger Mach 1.15 transonic transport, Luisada left out two important advantages that were established more than 40 years ago by a team led by James Floyd at Hawker Siddeley Aviation's Advanced Projects Group in the U.K. The sonic boom from a properly designed Mach 1.15 transport, such as Floyd's Type 1011, would not reach the ground.
The loss of the shuttle Columbia made NASA's human spaceflight budget request for Fiscal 2004 academic even before it was unceremoniously released two days after the accident, but the agency's $15.469-billion spending plan includes a challenging new nuclear-powered robotic mission to Jupiter and several other initiatives that don't need the shuttle to go forward.
Textron Inc. is forming an independent panel, led by former FAA official Michael J. Dreikorn, to advise on safety, quality and compliance systems and processes at its Lycoming business unit. The initiative is part of a broad-based program to address reliability of components and recalls that affected certain Lycoming engines.
AMR Corp. is calling for $1.8 billion in concessions from unions at American Airlines as the struggling carrier turns to labor for crucial help in its fight to stem the increasing flow of red ink.
The British Defense Ministry was expected to announce Feb. 7 it had down-selected Thales and Northrop Grumman to complete the final phase of its Watchkeeper unmanned aerial vehicle program. Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems were the two unsuccessful bidders. BAE could yet emerge, however, as part of the Northrop Grumman team.
STAT MedEvac has awarded Fidelity Flight Simulation a contract to complete a full-motion flight simulator device for the Eurocopter EC135. The Pittsburgh-based consortium of hospitals uses a fleet of the helicopters for emergency medical services. The simulator, which would allow pilots to be trained in Pittsburgh instead of traveling to Florida, will be the first full-motion FSD in North America for Eurocopter aircraft, according to the company.
Mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, 41, brought a high-achievement profile to the astronaut program from Karnal, India. Holder of a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, she left home for post-graduate studies in the U.S. and became a citizen, although she remained close to Indian education programs and was regarded as a leader of India's diaspora. She earned a master's degree at the University of Texas and a doctorate from the University of Colorado, both in aerospace engineering.
Military planners are looking for ways to attack or encircle an adversary even in the face of modern, sophisticated defenses. The proliferation of better air defenses and ballistic missiles is creating what the Defense Dept. terms an "anti-access" problem. To deal with it, U.S. experts are turning to technology, including stealth, to mitigate an enemy's advantage. A big part of the problem is that the military is tied to arriving at ports and airfields, says Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James E. Cartwright, the Joint Staff's director of plans and resources.
William Birtcil has been appointed vice president-communications for the aerospace business unit of Honeywell, Morris Township, N.J. He succeeds Dennis Signorovitch, who has retired. Birtcil was vice president-corporate affairs for the Pillsbury Co.
The British government has informed Singapore it would be able to permanently station a squadron of Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft in the U.K. if it was selected as the winner of Singapore's ongoing fighter competition. The Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) intends to replace its aging A-4SU Skyhawks around 2007. An initial batch of 20 aircraft could be purchased, along with follow-on orders to replace the air force's F-5s.
Europe's Airports Council International (ACI) and Assn. of European Airlines (AEA) jointly asked the European Union to set aside its rules prohibiting state aid to industry and begin building an "urgently needed" contingency plan for war or terrorist attack. The financing for any new security measures "must not be passed directly onto airports or air passengers," said Philippe Hamon, director general of ACI Europe.
Network-centric warfare (NCW) means many things whether relative to reconnaissance, targeting, ordnance on target, or bomb damage assessment. As Admiral Cebrowski said: "We don't want the one best warfighting concept . . . the single architecture . . . the single standard."
The Columbia shuttle tragedy comes at a pivotal time for the Pentagon, as senior officials were beginning to question the Defense Dept.'s annual spending on the dual-track "assured access to space strategy," born largely from the Challenger accident 17 years ago.
French Foreign Minister Dominque de Villepin has reiterated a proposal to provide U.N. weapons inspection teams with supersonic high-flying Mirage IV reconnaissance aircraft, which captured invaluable information in the Afghan conflict. The proposal, first put forward by Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie last October, would give the U.N. an imaging capability similar to that obtainable with the U-2.
Rich Bjelkevig (see photos) has become president/director of operations, Gary Emmerson vice president/chief pilot and Wallace Nestingen secretary/treasurer and director of maintenance, all for Mountain Aviation of Denver.
Two years after its maiden presentation at Heli-Expo, Eurocopter's new EC130 high-end single has received better-than-expected market acceptance and is well positioned to benefit from potential growth in the single-engine sector, according to company officials. The EC130 (originally dubbed the AStar/Ecureuil B4) was created to provide an advanced, quiet, wide-cabin product in the 6-8 seat single market to complement existing AStar/Ecureuil models and the new-generation five-passenger EC120, whose sleek look it shares.
The independent investigation board named by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to parallel work by the agency's internal probe began its task quickly last week. Those may not be the only probes of the Columbia accident, however (see p. 21). The independent panel is being led by retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman, Jr. Gehman (pronounced GAY-mun) co-chaired the independent commission that investigated the attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, Oct. 12, 2000, and once served as the commander-in-chief of the Joint Forces Command. Other board members are:
Questioning what went wrong with the space shuttle Columbia, and why, quickly exploded last week from narrow technical issues to the broadly political. As the White House hunkered down, Capitol Hill prepared to probe basic assumptions underlying space policy decisions that ranged from shuttle safety funding to building the International Space Station to the need for reusable space launch vehicles.
