Next month Boeing will begin using wind tunnels at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center to augment its testing capability for future commercial airline designs and advanced development of the company's Joint Strike Fighter. The initial agreement calls for a three-year contract that includes an indefinite number of extensions, and could be worth up to $30 million annually for AEDC. ``It is good business for us to expand into the commercial realm and utilize these tunnels more,'' an Air Force official said.
Japan's growing enthusiasm for wine might well be measured in the veritable river of the 2000 vintage Beaujolais Nouveau that is being rushed to markets in Tokyo. By French law, the wine must be held in bond until public release on the third Thursday of November--meaning the 16th this year. To get ready, Japan Airlines has added three freighters to supplement four scheduled freighters and belly space on 13 passenger aircraft for this year's shipment. Its first freighter shipment of 100 tons--527,650 bottles for those counting--was due at Narita airport on Nov. 11.
Thomson Racal Defense will conduct a three-year study of counterstealth measures under a 3-million-pound ($4.3-million) contract from the U.K. Ministry of Defense. The University College London and the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency are involved in the work, which will focus on innovative methods of detecting, tracking and classifying stealth aircraft, unmanned air vehicles and weapons. The study covers 10 individual projects including bistatic and multistatic radar systems.
The judges for Aviation Week&Space Technology's Fourth Annual Technology Innovation Awards bring a wide variety of experience in aerospace and defense. They are: Dee H. Andrews, a human factors expert who is technical director of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Warfighter Training Research Div., Mesa, Ariz. Anthony J. Broderick, a safety consultant who represents manufacturers, airlines and governments. He retired from the FAA as associate administrator for regulation and certification.
In a move enthusiastically anticipated by Russian government officials, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Nov. 4 to merge the country's two major state-owned specialized arms trading companies--Rosvooruzhenie and Promexport--into a single entity.
Threat Image Projection is on its way to becoming commonplace at U.S. airports, and the companies that use the technology in their baggage screening systems are working with the FAA to manage the vast amounts of data generated by the systems.
BAE Systems said last week that it will extend until November 2006 one of the industry's largest infotech outsourcing contracts with Computer Sciences Corp. The new deal is for $2.2 billion and completes an initial agreement signed in April to extend an existing $1.1-billion contract that was due to expire in March 2004. CSC will handle all of BAE's U.S.- and U.K.-based IT infrastructure. The contract means that 600 IT personnel that formerly drew paychecks from BAE will now receive them from CSC.
The MM series of short-stroke part formers includes high-speed, five-die part formers with quick-change features. They offer heavy, oversized frames of nodular cast iron with integrated gear train in oil-tight casings and oversized connecting rods, crankshafts, bearings and pitman for long life. The linear feed system allows accurate feeding of short cut-off lengths and adjustment of feed lengths without stopping operations. Transfer, preset outside the machine, changes quickly from straight to rotating movement for increased flexibility.
Insat-2B's loss of Earth-pointing capability has prompted the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to halt operations of the telecommunications satellite. The majority of the spacecraft's services such as TV and very small aperture terminal previously were transferred to ISRO's Insat-2C/3B satellite. Insat-2B exceeded its seven-year design life last July, and position-keeping fuel reserves are nearly depleted.
William J. McMillan has been appointed corporate executive vice president/chief financial officer of Vought Aircraft Industries Inc., of Dallas. He was vice president-business management for the Northrop Grumman Corp. Commercial Aircraft Div. Other new Vought executives are: Tom Risley, corporate senior vice president/chief operating officer; Margo Parker, corporate vice president/chief human resources and administration officer and former vice president- human resources and administration for Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems and Aerostructures Sector; Vernon H.
Improved asset management rather than just the buying and selling will be an early focus of Aeroxchange when it goes live in the first quarter of next year. Senior managers met at Aeroxchange's Dallas headquarters last week with FedEx Vice President Edith Kelly-Green, who has been named its interim CEO. They worked on details of how Version 1.1 ``is and how it works'' so they can ``go back to their members and spread the word,'' she said.
UPS AVIATION TECHNOLOGIES' automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) system, recently certified for passenger and cargo jets by the FAA, has a graphical range monitor that pilots can use to maintain precise spacing when following another equipped aircraft, speeding up departures and arrivals. ADS-B transmits an aircraft's identity, location and speed vector.
DRS Flight Safety&Communications plans to begin production deliveries of its DFIRS 2100 deployable flight incident recorder early next year for use on U.S. Air Force RC-135s. But the Carleton Place, Ontario, company really wants to capture the much larger commercial transport market with the device that combines the functions of a flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder as well as an emergency locator transmitter.
Thomas R. Burke has become director of strategic planning and information assurance for the Federal Sector of the Computer Sciences Corp., Falls Church, Va. He was assistant commissioner for the Office of Information Security for the General Services Administration.
The SM2315, a standard Nema 23 frame servo, is the first in an emerging line of low-cost, high-performance motors. It is a controller, amplifier and encoder built into a true brushless DC servo motor--priced competitively with many stepper motor systems, according to the company. A single microcontroller handles all processing functions, including the PID loop, the trajectory generator, the user program execution, I/O control and all communications over as many as three high-speed serial channels simultaneously.
NASA LANGLEY WILL MODERNIZE the aft flight deck cockpit of its Boeing 757 Airborne Research Integrated Experimental System (Aries) with eight Rockwell Collins 8 X 8-in. color, active matrix liquid crystal displays. The flying laboratory is being modified from a passenger-configured revenue aircraft, with a conventional front cockpit and a reconfigurable aft flight deck for research.
Sontara AC is a launderable cleaning wipe engineered to reduce snagging and linting and is produced with strict quality and uniformity controls. This hydroentangled, or spunlaced, nonwovens process invented by DuPont avoids the use of binders and glues and is made from a special combination of wood pulp and polyester fibers. It meets specification qualifications for Boeing (BMS 15-5F), Aerospace Material Specifications (AMS 3819A) and the Air Force (TO-1-1-8) and is included on their authorized specification lists.
Jason Crabtree has been promoted to chief executive of Umeco plc's Aerospace Components Div. He was managing director of Umeco's Pattonair International subsidiary and has been succeeded by Michael Berry.
The Internet is having a profound impact on today's global economy, and as most aerospace executives can attest, the Web unquestionably is challenging long-held business norms in their industry sector.
To help reduce costs and guarantee future capacity, some airframe and jet engine manufacturers are forging deals directly with raw material vendors. But there's a down side to this tactic, which some observers believe will spread as the aerospace industry becomes more creative in leveraging the Web.
Approaches to spur development of new products, technologies and processes vary widely in the changing landscape of the aerospace industry The need to increase safety could be a key driver of innovation and new product development in the 2000s, if the winners of the Aviation Week&Space Technology Fourth Annual Technology Innovation Awards winners are any indication.
Lee Macenczak has become senior vice president-sales and distribution for Delta Air Lines. He succeeds Vince Caminiti, who is now senior vice president for e-business. Macenczak was vice president-customer service.
One of NASA's working prototypes for more cost-effective science missions is scheduled to be launched from Vandenberg AFB this week into an orbit that will track the space agency's most advanced Earth-imaging satellites.
