The Blair government is formulating more security steps for aviation, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the National Criminal Intelligence Service prepare to tighten the noose on the international terrorist financing suspected behind last month's aircraft hijackings in the U.S.
Washington's reluctance to share Joint-STARS' critical radar technologies has prompted NATO to come up with a new strategy to design and build an airborne ground-surveillance (AGS) system. NATO has decided to have radar houses Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Thales and EADS team to develop the best possible system ``not involving any crown jewels,'' says Bob Bell, NATO's assistant secretary general for defense support. The alliance hopes to field a system by 2010. A NATO group also is studying what the best mix of manned and unmanned systems might be.
Neil Wilson, founder/CEO of Datalex of Dublin, now will be executive chairman. Neil Beck, who has been chief operating officer, will be CEO. Wilson succeeds John F. Tierney, who has resigned.
What a few months ago would have been unthinkable--flying round-the-clock defensive combat air patrols over U.S. cities--is now routine for Air Force and Air National Guard pilots. They typically carry ``hot'' guns and a full load of air-to-air missiles, patrolling the skies for hijacked airline transports and general aviation aircraft flown by terrorists bent on suicide. Every commander, pilot, armament technician and crew chief has quickly adapted to the new domestic mission, and operations have settled into a smooth day/night flow.
Airlines concerned about reduced passenger loads and imminent bankruptcy might consider aligning their prices with those of the smaller carriers. Many of Denver-based Frontier's aircraft, for example, are flying 70-80% full, and the airline is recalling some laid-off employees as load factors climb. Passengers on a recent Denver-Baltimore flight reported Frontier's fares were 40-50% lower than those of United, the dominant carrier at Denver. Counters at Frontier were servicing 100+ passengers at 8 a.m. on Oct. 7, while those of major carriers were virtually empty.
U.S. Space Command's ``cyberwarriors'' remain on high alert for potential terrorist attacks against Defense Dept. computer networks, but, so far, there's been no increase in activity. Whether they have launched offensive computer operations against identified terrorist groups is unknown. Probes by hackers of all stripes have fallen off since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Even after the air campaign in Afghanistan began on Oct. 7, assaults on Defense networks remained inconsequential.
Passenger screeners at the nation's 20 largest airports must pass criminal background checks to continue working, following an order by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta.
Some Epps Aviation employees at the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta will be armed and prepared to protect genav aircraft on their ramp. The fixed-base operator typically has 30-50 transient and permanently based aircraft in its hangars or on the tarmac. E. Patrick Epps, the FBO's president, has ``doubts about the value of fences, ID cards and background checks'' when it comes to airport security.
Air France and British Airways are jointly scheduled to restart Concorde operations on Nov. 7. The French flag carrier plans to serve New York five times per week and BA six times, an indication that the disrupted transatlantic market in the short term could not sustain daily or more frequent supersonic services. Nevertheless, both carriers are convinced that the Concorde's high-yield niche market has not vanished in the wake of last year's mishap and will rapidly resuscitate. Later this year, BA also plans to inaugurate a weekly Concorde flight to Barbados.
Ken Reightler has been named senior vice president of Houston-based Lockheed Martin Space Operations. He was vice president-Science, Engineering, Analysis and Test Operation and will be succeeded by Richard Hieb, a former astronaut. Hieb was vice president-new business and Crew Return Vehicle program manager for the Orbital Sciences Corp. Ted Bilke has become vice president-enterprise solutions. He was chief operating officer for Ascendant Solutions of Dallas.
TOSHIBA SCIENTISTS AT IEEEDM WILL CLAIM the first true Silicon-on-Nothing (SON) MOSFET, as an alternative to Silicon-on-Insulator MOSFETs. The technique manufactures transistors on a thin layer of silicon suspended above empty space. Resulting device improvements include reduced junction capacitance, suppressed short channel effects and reduced self-heating, according to Toshiba.
President Bush has issued an executive order protecting critical-information system infrastructure. It orders pretty much what you would expect--information-sharing, coordination, policy collaboration and the like among federal, state and local governments, plus the private sector, and the inevitable interagency committee, this one with at least 27 members. The chairperson of the board, appointed by the President, will have the title of special advisor to the President for cyberspace security.
The Canadian government, under its broad-based Anti-Terrorism Plan, recently proposed legislation and provided C$79 million to further enhance airport security in which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police may play a larger role.
BAE Systems' Information and Electronic Warfare Systems unit has fulfilled one of its strategic objectives with the recent opening of an advanced technology office in the Washington area (AW&ST May 7, p. 78). The operation was established to enhance the company's ties with key defense laboratories, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Naval Research Laboratory. The Washington Technical Office, as the operation is known, can support up to 50 technical, program-management and business-development personnel.
Capacity cutbacks enabled Continental Airlines to regain some of the load factor it lost following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but yields remained low. The carrier said its system-wide load factor was 65.5% during the first two weeks of October, down 5.5 percentage points from the same period in 2000, but 13.2 points higher than the preceding two weeks. The load factor for domestic operations, 71.3%, was up 1.3 points year over year. Revenue per available seat mile (RASM), the product of load factor and yield, was down 26-28% Oct. 1-14, year over year.
Ukraine has acknowledged that the fatal crash of a Russian Tu-154 on Oct. 4 was caused by an errant Ukrainian surface-to-air missile. ``We know that we are implicated, and I present my excuses to the families and friends of those who died in the catastrophe,'' said Defense Minister Alexander Kuzmuk. However, the exact cause of the error, Kuzmuk said, remained to be determined. A Russian commission of inquiry had earlier found that the plane had indeed been downed by a missile, without naming the country responsible.
As he prepared to meet President Bush and other Asian leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai on Oct. 20, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was engineering a remarkable turnaround in his country's foreign policy.
Southwest Airlines reported net income of $151 million for the third quarter--down 18% from $184 million a year ago--in the wake of terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11.
Ann F. Whitaker (see photo) has been promoted to director from deputy director of the Science Directorate at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
Members of the House Science Committee have a gut understanding about bioterrorism this week, as they return to their offices following a five-day hiatus while experts checked the Capitol complex for anthrax contamination. The shutdown forced cancellation of a closed hearing for members and staff Friday on bioweapons and bioterrorism that was to have included a presentation by Ken Alibek, a former top Soviet germ warfare official. Even before the germ warfare scare, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), the committee chairman, was explaining how the Sept.
Delta Air Lines has put its brand name on the 16-year-old charter operation Comair Jet Express, changing its name to Delta AirElite Business Jets. The company, a subsidiary of Delta's Comair regional carrier, operates 10 aircraft, four of which are owned by Delta. Frederick Reid, Delta president and chief operating officer, said demand for charter operations and aircraft management has been growing. The branding of the Comair operation was part of a ``business strategy to provide professional services to these premium clients.''
Five airports--Stockholm Arlanda, Dublin, Lyon-Saint Exupery and Nice Cote d'Azur in France, and the EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg serving Switzerland, France and Germany--are implementing Maestro arrival manager system software, which DGAC, the French Civil Aviation Administration, began developing in the late 1980s. . . . The U.S. Air Force Academy is using CEI's EnSight software to visualize airflows generated by computational fluid dynamics.
THE EARTHDATA COMPANY USED LIGHT DETECTION and ranging (Lidar) laser terrain-modeling systems for rapid airborne mapping of the World Trade Center wreckage, to support recovery and cleanup efforts. The airborne position of the sensors was established using GPS and inertial navigation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geodetic Survey aided the accurate aircraft positioning by increasing the data rates on the Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) from the standard 30-sec. interval to 5 sec. at Sandy Hook, N.J., and 1 sec.
The 43,000 workers at Rolls-Royce were bracing for layoffs as the company's board of directors met last week to discuss the impact of the attacks on the U.S. and the resulting drop in airlines' demand for equipment. Like other companies heavily dependent on the civil aviation market, Rolls-Royce's stock has been hammered, losing one-third of its value since Sept. 11.
