The Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin a $341-million contract to buy 88 Patriot PAC-3 ballistic missile defense interceptors. The Pentagon earlier decided to accelerate interceptor purchases to increase the limited inventory for its only deployed theater ballistic missile defense system.
U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin officials are trying to understand and adjust to the Pentagon's $876-million restructuring of the F/A-22 program that at first blush would reduce total production by as many as 63 aircraft--to as few as 276 from the original 339 stealthy fighters requested by the service.
The Air Force/Navy Coriolis test satellite was placed into orbit from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Jan. 6 after five scrubbed launches due to weather and technical problems.
Designed for mission-critical military uses requiring reliability and low power consumption in harsh environments, the CP321 low-power 3U CompactPCI processor board features Motorola's Kahlua II PowerPC processor. An extended temperature version uses passive cooling to provide operation from -40C to 85C; the processor draws 15% less current and provides 32% faster CPU performance and 33% faster memory performance than its predecessor. The processor, an integrated MPC8245, operates at up to 330MHz. The board can hold up to 256MB of soldered SDRAM at 133MHz.
Advantage Plus is an integrated radar scan converter and PC graphics card in a single-slot PCI form factor. The commercial off-the-shelf card is designed for applications in command and control consoles, vessel traffic display systems and radar head monitors. The card converts the radar data and combines the output with that from its onboard Silicon Motion Lynx 3DM+ graphics controller, which supports display resolutions up to 1280 X 1024 at 60Hz. Scan conversion is performed mainly in software running on the Motorola ColdFire processor.
The British Defense Ministry is to begin the call-up of an initial 1,500 armed forces reservists as a contingency against a possible war with Iraq. It also said last week it will bolster Naval Task Group 2003 with additional forces. Through a long-planned deployment, the task group will move to the gulf region if required. c
It's a fluke, but Delta Air Lines has become the first of the six big U.S. network airlines to report a month in which it carried more passenger traffic than it did in the same month prior to Sept. 11, 2001. The month is December, and the fluke arises from the 2002 calendar. Thanksgiving occurred later than usual last year, on Nov. 28, so two very big travel days, the Sunday and Monday after Thanksgiving, spilled over into December. This skewed comparisons with December 2000, which didn't benefit from a Thanksgiving boost.
The Hawkeye Blue line of precision borescopes have improved field of view (FOV) and direction of view (DOV) for applications in aircraft maintenance and parts manufacturing. Permitting rotation of the direction of view by 360 deg. in order to thoroughly scan and inspect machine parts, the scopes are available in diameters ranging from 1-8mm. and lengths up to 33 in. Applications include: inspecting turbine blades; inspecting combustion chambers; inspecting hydraulic valves, manifolds, cylinders and sleeves; and performing airframe inspections.
Late this month and into early February, the Air Force will perform three Global Hawk missions from Edwards AFB, Calif., to Ecuador to demonstrate the system's ability to aid in drug interdiction. Congress asked for and funded the demonstration to support the U.S. Southern Command that has responsibility for the region. The endurance UAV will carry its electro-optical/infrared payload, as well as a radar capable of air and maritime surveillance modes.
EADS can be expected to announce in the next few weeks earnings before interests and taxes for 2002 of about 1.4 billion euros, despite the space division's heavy losses, Philippe Camus, the European group's co-CEO, said late last week. He added that Airbus' military unit is scheduled to secure soon the long-waited A400M airlifter cross-border contract valued at about 18 billion euros.
Maytag Aircraft Corp. has won a six-month $1.8-million contract to provide air terminal and ground handling services at Al Mubarek Air Base in Kuwait City International Airport.
has given approval for national flag carrier Malaysia Airlines to acquire six Airbus 380s, with an option for four more, although the order will not be placed until pricing is fixed. A senior industry official said negotiations are underway with GE Capital Aviation Services to purchase 10 of the 555-seat aircraft and with Atlas Air to purchase five, with options for five, in a freighter version. Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific and Korean Air also have held order talks.
Boeing rolled out the first 737 with a new rudder actuator system designed to reduce the possibility of dual failures that could cause loss of control, and to eliminate the need for special flight manual instructions and piloting skills to handle uncommanded rudder (AW&ST Oct. 14, 2002, p. 42). The 737-800 with the new system made its first flight on Jan. 7. The new system is mandated by an FAA airworthiness directive, and retrofit kits will start shipping this spring. Boeing is shouldering the nearly $1-billion cost to retrofit about 4,200 737s worldwide.
The Independent Pilots Assn. will be urging the 108th Congress and Bush administration to make cargo security a top priority in 2003. The union, which represents 2,500 UPS pilots, points out that the new baggage screening regulations, which became effective Jan. 2, require screening or X-ray of every passenger bag--but excluded cargo, which is vulnerable to terrorists. It cites a recent incident in which a woman jumped a fence protecting the perimeter of the Fargo, N.D., cargo airport and climbed into a UPS aircraft that was ready for departure.
The NTSB quickly set out to determine what caused the Jan. 8 crash of Air Midwest Flight 5481 shortly after takeoff from Charlotte-Douglas (N.C.) International Airport. According to the NTSB, the Beech 1900D, N233YV, powered by twin Pratt & Whitney PT-6A engines, was climbing out from the airport's 10,000-ft. Runway 18R when it suddenly veered left and crashed near a US Airways maintenance hangar at about 8:50 a.m. There were no survivors among the 19 passengers and two crewmembers who were en route to Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C., about 45 min. away.
A 450,000-lb. Boeing 767-400 flown by a suicide pilot wouldn't be able to penetrate containment vessels at nuclear power plants, according to a recent nuclear power industry study.
Commercial off-the-shelf signal processing hardware continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and engineers trying to solve problems like radar and target recognition couldn't be happier. Annapolis Micro Systems recently put forth its Dream Catch- er network of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) boards that can process up to 65.1 gigabytes/sec. of input/output bandwidth. Dream Catcher is built of the company's Wildstar II processing boards that each have up to 3 Xilinx Virtex II 8000-6 FPGAs (AW&ST Feb. 22, 1999, p. 17).
International Space Station Expedition 6 cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin has been disqualified for medical reasons from an extravehicular activity (EVA) planned on the ISS Jan. 15. He will be replaced by astronaut Don Pettit who will perform the EVA with mission commander Ken Bowersox. Privacy rules prevent NASA from discussing the nature of the medical issue, but the agency said Budarin's "on-orbit medical data raised concerns among U.S. flight surgeons responsible for medical certification" for EVAs.
The Transportation Security Administration is scheduling the work of passenger and baggage screeners with airline software--the Sabre Resource Management System. Unisys Corp., the TSA's information technology managed service provider, awarded Sabre the contract expected to be worth $17 million in the first year. The work includes establishing in six major cities training facilities on how to use the system. It includes StaffPlan software to project manning needs and StaffManager to react quickly to operational changes.
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