The Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missile failed to destroy its target in an Apr. 25 test, the Army now says after initially reporting a successful intercept. The PAC-3 hit the target, but not where it should have. In the same test another PAC-3 failed to launch. It was the third of four planned Initial Operational Test and Evaluation firings, none of which has been entirely successful.
The extraordinary 60% reduction in intercontinental nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia are slated to sign this week in Moscow will leave both sides with about 2,000 deployed warheads each in 2012, plus thousands more in reserve and tens of thousands of short-range tactical nuclear arms.
Lufthansa German Airlines next month will become the first airline to offer scheduled transatlantic services with corporate jets. It plans to inaugurate in June a Dusseldorf-New York/Newark route with a Boeing Business Jet configured with 48 business-class seats. Six round trips per week are being planned with a BBJ wet-leased from Switzerland-based PrivatAir. The round-trip fare will be 2,880 euros ($2,592 at current exchange rates). A contract with PrivatAir covers an initial 12-month period but could be extended.
Information describing a project can reside in several databases, and joining them may be productive. Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter has three-dimensional design descriptions in a Catia system and alphanumeric info in a Metaphase product data management system. The company recently decided to join the two with the Catia Metaphase Interface (CMI) by the German firm T-Systems (www.t-systems.com). The software was first developed for Daimler-Benz.
Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Integrated Systems sector will relocate its headquarters to El Segundo, Calif., from the Dallas area, by the end of this year. About 100 people probably will lose their jobs as a result of the move. The reason for the relocation is to place the headquarters' functions close to the sector's largest business unit and thus achieve efficiencies that otherwise wouldn't be possible.
Australia's new defense budget calls for spending US$12.4 billion, a $600-million increase over last year's projection. It includes $109 million for the war on terrorism and money to increase the Army's counterterrorism capability. Canberra also warned it may reduce the number of Army aircraft it is buying due to increased cost. The Air Force and Navy would each get $3.2 billion and the Army would receive $2.9 billion.
A nascent German-Italian anti-radiation missile program could yet provide a road map to bring the remainder of Germany's missile sector within European missile house MBDA. The German and Italian governments are discussing a potential joint effort over the former's Armiger rocket-ramjet anti-radiation missile (ARM), intended to eventually succeed the U.S. AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (Harm) currently in the German inventory.
Air India has sold three of its Airbus A300-B4 transports to Ariana Afghan Airlines for $7 million and will send pilots, flight attendants and maintenance engineers to help the Afghanistan-based carrier place the aircraft into service. Air India has replaced the A300s with A310s through a wet lease. Ariana officials plan to use the A300s for flights to London, Paris and Frankfurt from the capital of Kabul. The only other airplanes operated by the airline are one Boeing 727-200 and an Antonov An-24.
William J. (John) Nichols has become Washington-based vice president-government relations for the United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn. He was vice president-congressional relations for the Raytheon Co. Nichols succeeds Wade H. Robert, who has retired.
American Airlines has asked the U.S. Transportation Dept. for authority to code-share to Vietnam six times per week with Japan Airlines. Under the proposal, American would sell AA tickets for Tokyo-Ho Chi Minh City service by JAL four days a week and for Tokyo-Hanoi flights two days each week. In 2001 the department divided 21 third-country code-share frequencies equally among United, Delta and Northwest, but American maintains that the Northwest frequencies are dormant and should be reassigned.
L-3 Communications has been selected by Saab to supply the crash survivability memory unit for the JAS 39 Gripen fighter jet. The five-year contract is valued at up to $1.5 million for deliveries to begin this November and run through 2007. Also, L-3 subsidiary EER Systems Inc. will integrate measurements and signature intelligence capability into the U.S. Air Force Distributed Common Ground System. The initial award value is $3.3 million, beginning in March 2003, and has a total potential worth of $57.4 million through 2008.
The U.S. aerospace/defense community has an image problem--and it's largely self-inflicted, thanks to a propensity for saying one thing and doing the opposite.
The South African government has cleared the way for BAE Systems to take a 30% equity stake in Denel. Jeff Radebe, the minister of public enterprises, told the parliament that the government had approved the strategic equity partnership deal, which could be concluded between the two companies later this year.
CAE will supply aviation training services in contracts totaling up to U.S. $22.5 million. CAE will provide pilot training to pilots of Horizon Air's Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft for the next 14 years. CAE's South America Training Center has signed a contract with Aerolineas Argentinas for Airbus A340 full-flight simulator training. Also, the U.S. Navy Reserves have selected CAE's Dallas Training Center to provide initial and recurrent pilot ground-school and simulator training on a Boeing 737NG simulator for C-40 aviators.
Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Navigation Systems Div. has been selected by the U.S. Navy to supply inertial navigation systems for aircraft carrier-based pilots. The $12-million contract covers 78 LN-92 inertial navigation units and mounts for F/A-18E/F, E-2C, AV-8B aircraft and for approach landing systems of aircraft carriers.
Rob Lisk has been named chief operating officer of Jedco, Grand Rapids, Mich. He was president of the Pratt & Whitney manufacturing facility in Lansing, Mich.
After two years of negotiations, Japan's Meteorological Agency has agreed to pay $5.78 million to bring Goes-9 off the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) bench as a pinch hitter for the aging GMS-5 weather satellite. The Japanese agency expected to replace GMS-5 by now with MT-SAT, an advanced meteorological satellite that was to double as the country's first air traffic control spacecraft. But the original MT-SAT was lost in a November 1999 H-2 launch failure. Launch of its replacement has been delayed until midsummer 2003.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. plans advanced tests this summer of the Iridium commercial satellite system linked with a commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) processor to demonstrate the feasibility of close air support (CAS) strike missions in a beyond-line-of-sight communications environment. The tests are part of a research and development program at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. (LMAC) to investigate the feasibility of using COTS technologies to improve tactical missions.
After listening last week to 32 aerospace/defense CEOs describe the recent performance of their companies and the businesses' medium-term outlooks, it would be hard not to conclude that much of the industry is on an upward trajectory. The setting was Aviation Week's seventh annual finance conference in New York, produced in partnership with Credit Suisse First Boston. Some sectors--most notably commercial aviation and space--more than likely will remain in the doldrums for at least the next few years.
Asiana Airlines is turning to some familiar turf--South Korea's traditionally strong market with Japan--and renewed optimism about Korea's economy to put a dismal 2001 behind it. A challenger to Korean Air, South Korea's traditional flagship carrier, Asiana finished fiscal 2001 with a 272.5-billion-won ($209-million) loss. But its executives see a faster-than-expected recovery already building for 2002. Their optimism began last December when load factors jumped to 73.9% from the 61.2% level they held in October--an all-time low.
Cargolifter's financial situation has become even more serious after an issue of a convertible bond only marginally improved the cash status and financial outlook of the German airship manufacturer. It may have to file soon for Chapter 11-like protection from creditors. Late last week, company executives were seeking to determine a rescue plan with Brandenburg's Economics Minister Wolfgang Fuerniss.
A safety-critical flight system is generally run on a dedicated computer to prevent the flaws of other programs from affecting it. Smiths Aerospace is teaming with Wind River Systems and Ada Core Technologies to make a software development environment that can put several programs on a single computer, yet keep them partitioned at different levels of criticality, per the ARINC 653 standard for avionics application software. Placing several programs on the same real-time operating system is expected to save time and certification costs.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appears on the Hill to defend his assault on the Crusader artillery program. It's not about killing a bad system, he says, but balancing risks and transforming the military. Precision weapons specialists say he is right. The development of small, cheap guidance packages integrating GPS receivers and inertial measurement units that can withstand 40g of acceleration means industry can make a precision weapon even out of cheap Katyusha-type rocket systems.
A year after Inchon International Airport opened, the South Korean government has committed $3.62 billion to ensure its role as a primary hub for northeast Asia. ``Identifying and promoting Inchon's strengths and aggressively targeting potential new routes and airlines across the globe is the key to the airport's marketing strategy,'' said Tong Myung Lim, the airport's acting executive director for marketing. ``Inchon is strategically located at the heart of a market containing 43 cities of more than one billion people within 3.5 hr. of flying time.
