Signs are emerging that the Pentagon's electronic warfare interest is on the rise, with the promise of new money and programs, but exuberance is tempered by the recent disbandment of one of the Defense Dept.'s central EW offices.
Look for Barbara Morgan, the Idaho schoolteacher who backed up Christa McAuliffe on her ill-fated 1986 mission on board the space shuttle Challenger, to get a flight assignment soon. Already trained as a mission specialist, Morgan will kick off a renewed teacher-in-space effort at NASA designed to get schoolkids to knuckle down in math and science. To that end, the agency is also moving ahead with plans to recruit more classroom teachers for shuttle missions, and it may even give students a say in who gets to go.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are scrutinizing the wreckage of a Beechcraft King Air A100 that crashed and burned Oct. 25 during a non-precision instrument approach to Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport in Minnesota, killing U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter and five other occupants.
Frances Fiorino (New York), Michael A. Dornheim (Washington)
Last week's NTSB public hearing into the American Airlines Flight 587 accident left the main question unanswered--why did the Airbus A300-600R's rudder move from stop to stop five times, causing the vertical stabilizer to be torn from the transport? The hearing proceeded with the implicit assumption that a crewman was moving the rudder, and not a system malfunction. "To date, investigators have found no indications of any rudder system anomalies, but investigation in this area continues," said Robert Benzon, the NTSB investigator-in-charge.
The U.S. Army is looking for a helicopter-borne radar to allow it to track individual soldiers and vehicles under trees; low and slow-flying aircraft; and much faster flying projectiles fired by multiple rocket launcher systems. The foliage-penetrating sensor also would serve as a moving target indicator/synthetic aperture radar.
A second group of families has reached a damage settlement in the April 1994 crash of a China Airlines Airbus A300600 at Nagoya International Airport that killed 15 crewmembers and 249 passengers. The 38 families settled for an undisclosed amount, but they appear to be getting $236,000 each--about $100,000 more than they were originally offered. Airbus was eliminated as a defendant. A third group of 122 families is still in court.
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A modified C-130 has received its flight qualification to serve as the test aircraft for the U.S. Navy's E-2C Radar Modernization Program (RMP). The NP-130H has been specially configured to accommodate an E-2C rotordome. The test aircraft features modified cooling and power systems, wing changes, cabling and the pylon to hold and operate radar equipment. Lockheed Martin develops and builds the RMP radar, which features a 360-deg. solid-state electronically steered antenna (ADS-18) and new signal processing. The NP-130 will undergo several months of flight testing.
Northrop Grumman's twin-booster architecture for its Space Launch Initiative proposal (AW&ST Sept. 16, p. 32) creates many possibilities. However, the booster fuel should be liquid methane (LCH4) rather than kerosene. Boosters fueled by LCH4 would be similar in size to kerosene-powered ones, but have higher performance. The high specific impulse of LCH4/LOX would permit the orbiter to use the same propellants. The result will be a single-fuel system with a compact reentry vehicle.
Once upon a time SIRTF stood for Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility, a 1-meter-class cryogenically cooled infrared telescope that would ride to orbit as a Spacelab payload and be tended by astronauts. That was in 1979, and scientists on the Space Infrared Telescope Facility today are glad it didn't work out, because they have a much more capable and probably more reliable observatory.
Ronald E. Mutzelburg has been named director of Phantom Works for Boeing's Washington Operations. He was deputy director for air warfare in the U.S. Defense Dept. Office of Strategic and Tactical Systems.
The U.S. Air Force's Ogden Air Logistics Center (ALC) in Utah and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. (LMAC) have signed an agreement aimed at moving away from the traditional buyer/supplier relationship. The initial pact sets up a framework "for more extensive cooperation" instead of increased competition between the aerospace industry and the ALC community for modification work and funding, according to Maj. Gen. Scott C. Bergren, commander of Ogden ALC.
United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton's compensation doesn't violate the letter of last September's aviation bailout legislation, but it surely tests the spirit. Under a Sept.
Deliveries of new general aviation aircraft fell 16.6% in the first three quarters of the year, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Assn. (GAMA), which represents suppliers of airframes, engines and avionics in the U.S., Canada and Europe. A total of 1,766 aircraft worth $8.4 billion were shipped during the period. Deliveries by U.S. manufacturers decreased 16.9% to 1,551 units worth $6.4 billion. Shipments of piston-powered airplanes by GAMA members sank 14.1% and turboprops 40.1%. Business jets were least affected, with deliveries off by 12%.
Launch customer Qantas Airways took delivery last week of the first of six 747-400ERs. Accepting on behalf of the Sydney-based carrier was actor John Travolta, who is a Qantas "goodwill ambassador" and recently flew his own 707 in Qantas livery on a world tour. The -400ER's maximum takeoff weight has been boosted by 35,000 lb. above a standard 747-400 to 910,000 lb. Qantas will use them on transpacific routes.
Extending the boundaries of code share, Finnish national carrier Finnair has struck an agreement with SBB, the Swiss Federal Railway, to provide cross-ticketing on flights from Helsinki to Zurich. Flight numbers will be assigned to rail connections from Zurich to Basel, Berne, Lausanne and Lucerne. In other European airline news, Air France subsidiary Regional has begun direct flights from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Bristol, England, to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. Both routes feature three flights daily during the week using Embraer 145s.
Naval Air Systems Command's Integrated Test Team has added two more MV22 Osprey tiltrotors to the flight test program underway at NAS Patuxent River, Md. One is the second EMD aircraft and the other is a low-rate initial production MV-22. A key goal of the program is assessing the effects of vortex ring state on aggressive maneuvering at low airspeeds and high sink rates. By mid-summer 2003, seven MV-22s are scheduled to be flying at Patuxent River along with two U.S. Air Force CV-22s at Edwards AFB, Calif.
Douglas Shockey has been promoted to chief operating officer from vice president-maintenance and engineering for Pinnacle Airlines Inc., Memphis, Tenn. He succeeds Philip Trenary, who will remain president/CEO.
Asia's most profitable carrier, Singapore Airlines, kept its record intact for the first half of fiscal 2002 with a pre-tax profit of S$656 million ($386 million), but CEO and Deputy Chairman Cheong Choong Kong has a gloomy outlook, given terrorism in nearby Bali and the possibility of war in Iraq.
In "CRJ700 Confers New Flexibility on Comair" (AW&ST Oct. 14, p. 49), James Ott attempts to make the case that Delta Air Lines is "hamstrung" by the Delta pilots' scope clause. I'm fairly certain Delta can fly as many RJs as needed as long as Delta pilots fly them. Most scope clauses limit the number of RJs flown by affiliates, such as Comair, not the mainline.
USNR Lt. Cdr. Eric S. Towe (Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio)
With his letter advocating the breakup of United Airlines, John Thomas must be some sort of genius. He seems to have all of the answers for the airline industry (AW&ST Oct. 7, p. 8). Since AMR, Delta, Continental and Northwest also have stock prices in the sewer, maybe they also should be broken up to spare their stockholders.
