Maureen P. Cragin (see photo) has become vice president-communications for Boeing's Washington Operations. She was assistant secretary of Veteran Affairs for public and intergovernmental affairs.
Kevin Ficco has been promoted to vice president-airline distribution and business development for the Worldwide Travel Supplier Services Div. of Atlanta-based Worldspan. He was director of corporate initiatives in the Business Services and Strategic Planning Group. Niel Bainton has been named vice president-strategy and new business development within the Business Services and Strategic Planning Group. He was staff vice president for e-commerce marketing.
After abandoning the hugely expensive, ultra-secret stealthy Quartz and TR-3 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft projects in the 1990s, interest is beginning to revive for a very survivable, long-range unmanned surveillance system. In an attempt to attract interest in filling this long-standing Air Force requirement, Lockheed Martin's advanced development program has unveiled study plans for a Penetrating High-Altitude Endurance UAV. Company officials say they could have a prototype in a year.
The British Royal Air Force is now ready to operationally deploy the Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile, despite a prolonged gestation period. The air force's Tornado F3 air-defense units are now beginning to explore changes in tactics given the leap in performance over AIM-9L/M Sidewinder. Deliveries of the MBDA-manufactured Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile (Asraam) are underway to all front-line F3 units, with sufficient missile stocks to support operational deployment.
The European Commission's competition directorate is adopting an increasingly flexible stance on global airline alliances. Last week, EC Commissioner Mario Monti indicated that the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines/Northwest Airlines partnership would be approved as well as the proposed United Airlines/Lufthansa German Airlines/Scandinavian Airlines agreement.
The International Civil Aviation Organization reports that worldwide passenger traffic could experience ``robust growth'' next year if global economic conditions improve. The remainder of this year, however, is forecast to experience zero growth from the depressed levels of late 2001. The world's airlines are not expected to recover financially from the current downturn in traffic until 2004.
The mental image of an air operations center, at first blush, may appear far less interesting than a new stealth aircraft design, but planners contend that streamlined, portable, highly automated versions of the facility are more lethal than a ramp full of strike aircraft. ``It is our weapons system, our holy grail, the family jewels and we need to understand what we can do with it,'' said an Army colonel attached to the Air Force's Joint Air Operations Center (JAOC), set up here as part of the Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2002.
Pentagon and White House war plans appear on schedule for a post-November-election assault on Iraq, unless Saddam Hussein permits the unhindered resumption of inspections to search for illegal development, production or storage of weapons of mass destruction. Even though Iraq last week agreed to inspections, few in the U.S. believe a thorough search will be carried out without considerable obstruction from Iraqi officials and attempts to conceal the nation's weapons-building efforts. The U.S.
The U.S. Air Force's investigation of the Apr. 17 friendly fire incident in which an Air National Guard F-16 dropped a 500-lb. laser-guided bomb on an Canadian ground forces' exercise places the blame on the pilots in the two-ship formation. Four soldiers died in the accident. The need for equipment upgrades was stressed. Among those was a call for E-3 AWACS to be given the ability to record external/internal communications or for the situational information displays to assist in mission debriefings.
The Pentagon doesn't expect to make decisions on the fate of some major programs for several weeks. Reviews of projects such as the V-22, F-22 and RAH-66 Comanche will run into November, says Stephen Cambone, the director of Program Analysis and Evaluation. ``It will take . . . some period of time to sort through those [service budget plans] to just figure out what they did,'' Cambone noted. The Defense Dept.'s answers aren't slated to be forwarded to the White House Office of Management and Budget until December.
NASA is moving to change its management and procurement strategy for billions of dollars in shuttle, Station and Space Launch Initiative (SLI) contracts--including a possible full restructuring of the shuttle program--in the wake of a Rand Corp. study which found that contract management and safety reform is essential across all U.S. manned space projects. NASA has just hired three of the 12 Rand team members to jump-start reforms within the space agency.
Lockheed Martin researchers working on advanced concepts have their sights on special ops missions expected to go to Boeing's V-22. They say the short-takeoff, vertical-landing propulsion system perfected for the Marine Corps/U.K. version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would readily serve the needs of a clandestine assault aircraft. Moreover, the lift-fan, swivel-nozzle design could be stealthy because there are no large rotating propellers to create a rotorcraft's distinct signature on enemy radar.
Northrop Grumman confirmed that it is on track to close its acquisition of TRW Inc. before year-end. It recently made two filings, one with the Justice Dept., the other one with the European Commission, that keeps the transaction on target for the fourth quarter.
The British Defense Ministry is pursuing liquidated damages over delivery delays to its Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, threatening to further lower the temperature in its currently cool relationship with U.K. prime contractor BAE Systems. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) was due to receive the first of its planned 232 Typhoon aircraft in June, but this date had to be pushed back until at least December as, perhaps predictable, teething troubles emerged in the build program for the first production-standard aircraft.
General Electric's 115,000-lb.-thrust GE90-115B engine for the Boeing 777-300ER and -200LR has made its first flight mounted on the company's 747 flying testbed. The Sept. 18 flight was staged from the engine-maker's Mojave (Calif.) Flight Test Operations Center with the GE90 generating 95,000 lb. thrust at takeoff. During the flight, company test pilot Phil Schultz, co-pilot Mark Hussey and flight engineer Gary Possert conducted engine aeromechanical and operability tests and vibration surveys verifying, in flight, the integrity of the GE90's fan blades.
Bombardier is determined to size its aerospace operations to a level in keeping with demand for its business jets, President and CEO Robert Brown said last week. ``The market for business jets has nothing to do with security concerns or convenience of business travelers. It has to do with corporate profits, and the [North American] economy hasn't improved that much.'' Bombardier has downsized recently and may shed more jobs at its Belfast factory.
If there was ever any doubt about the heavy toll that the commercial aerospace downturn is taking on overall industry market valuations, one need only consider what has happened to Aviation Week's Aerospace 25 stock market index in just the last 11 weeks. As of July 1, the dynamic benchmark of aerospace companies' performance worldwide was up 18.7% for the year. It has been declining ever since and, as of last Wednesday, that highly respectable performance had been all but wiped out, with a slender 0.9% gain year-to-date.
In a strategic move aimed at filling out its product line and positioning the company to compete head-to-head with rivals in virtually all but the entry-level segment of the business-jet market, Gulfstream Aerospace Co. will introduce three derivative aircraft in the next three years and upgrade its existing models. One of the new aircraft, the G150, will be developed in collaboration with Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI).
American Trans Air (ATA) officials are looking forward to increased use of the carrier's 13 Lockheed L-1011s when they begin flying Air Mobility Command's passenger charter airlift services, beginning Oct. 1. The award is worth $111 million. In the second-quarter downturn, use of the wide-body transports had slipped to about 3.5 hr. a day. In addition, ATA has received a $20-million, long-term expansion contract for military charters, that has potential to grow. Military charters have represented about 14% of the airline's annual revenues.
Paul Revere flew into town hoping to demonstrate some dramatic shortcuts in the kill chain, the critical time from first spotting to destroying such pernicious enemy targets as battlefield ballistic-missile launchers and mobile antiaircraft missiles or for rescuing downed airmen. But the results from the joint expeditionary forces experiment (JEFX) conducted here amounted to less than the great leaps many had hoped for. ``We've made progress toward machine-to-machine communications, but we thought we were going to be taking bigger steps than we did,'' said Lt. Col.
U.S. Northern Command, slated for activation here on Oct. 1, has adopted a patch/logo containing symbology associated with the Sept. 11 attacks. The command is charged with protecting North America from future terrorist acts. A standard U.S. military eagle with shield, olive branch and clutch of 13 arrows overlaying a depiction of North America, Northern Command's geographical Area of Responsibility (AOR), is portrayed. Three gold stars in the AOR represent sites struck by the hijacked aircraft. The stars also have links to World War II, when U.S.
If you think the FAA's air traffic control system is 20 years out of date, you should take a look at Norad. That is, until Sept. 11 showed how atrophied air defense capability was, and the Air Force applied software and communications to bring Norad into the late 20th century. The main problem was that Norad's regional Air Defense Sectors (ADS) were only connected to radars that looked outward from the U.S. for invading aircraft, and had little view of the Sept. 11 traffic inside the country. That has now largely been fixed by connecting FAA radars throughout the U.S.
With general aviation's vulnerability to global terrorism a growing concern, it was evident at the National Business Aviation Assn. (NBAA) annual convention that more companies are turning to special training to ensure the safety of their executives, flight crews and aircraft in the air and on the ground worldwide. Houston-based Air Security International, a 13-year-old security consultancy to corporations, offers three courses: -- CEST, or Corporate Executive Security Training course, is a 3-4-hr.
Avionics activity at the NBAA annual convention centered on product enhancements that are quickly evolving to meet universal demand for safe flight operations and instant global communications. Airborne telecommunication provider AirCell Inc. of Louisville, Colo., introduced the AST 3500 combined cellular/Iridium-based system and the ST 3100 Iridium-only system. The AST 3500 (see photo) uses AirCell patented cellular technology to provide telephone, fax, e-mail, data and weather within the continental U.S.
