Matthew Haggerty has been appointed to the board of directors of Thermedics Detection Inc., Cambridge, Mass. He is CEO and founder of Product Genesis. Charlene Wheeless has been promoted to vice president from director of corporate communications of DynCorp, Reston, Va.
In Hong Kong, air services have long meant big jets because in Asia the emphasis has always been on moving a lot of people among a relatively few airports. But the prospects of new flight opportunities to secondary sites in China and elsewhere has started some rethinking. At Hong Kong's two-year-old Chek Lap Kok airport, fees are being relaxed for helicopters as a ``timely incentive to boost helicopter services, which have considerable potential given our reviving economy,'' CEO Billy Lam Chung-lun said.
A news item on the European Commission's investigation of Boeing's proposed acquisition of Hughes Electronics' satellite business incorrectly stated the relationship of that unit to DirecTV and PanAmSat (AW&ST June 5, p. 33). While Hughes owns a majority of PanAmSat, that company is not an operating unit of Hughes. In addition, the satellite fleets of both DirecTV and PanAmSat include spacecraft that were not manufactured by Hughes.
Raymond Pellichero has been elected president of Gebecoma Belgian aerospace industries association. He succeeds Christian Jacqmin, chief executive of Sonaca. Pellichero is chief executive of Sabca.
Robert P. Perkins has been named interim chief financial officer of the Laser Power Corp. of San Diego. He has been a company director and succeeds Paul Wickham, who has resigned.
New Zealand, which canceled its F-16 lease earlier this year, says it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its army, air and maritime transport, and maritime surveillance. The Labor government's defense policy was announced last week, and Prime Minister Helen Clark said the armed forces could not be deployed overseas again with the current aged equipment. But there has been no answer yet on a replacement for the country's A-4s.
Nancy S. Berg has been named executive director of the Dearborn, Mich.-based Society of Manufacturing Engineers. She was director of its Expositions Div.
A House of Commons Defense Committee report warned that the U.K. government's revised proposals for partial privatization of the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) continued to pose risks that ``outweigh the still hypothetical benefits.'' Despite changes to the original plan, including retaining a larger portion of DERA under government control, the committee said the latest proposal provides ``insufficient details'' and leaves ``many issues to be resolved.'' These include questions about how ``genuinely open collaboration'' with U.S.
Rolls-Royce has upped its forecast for global engine demand, projecting a market for more than 48,100 new engines, including spares, over the next 20 years with an overall value of $337 billion.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory have developed a computer program that provides group intelligence for a swarm of mini-robots. Being tested as a method to help rescuers more quickly find avalanche victims equipped with radio beacons, the technology, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is actually intended to precisely locate friendly and hostile radio frequency senders in enemy territory or trace biological or chemical plumes, according to Rush Robinett.
ANALOG DEVICES HAS DEVELOPED a full-duplex, digital-signal speech processor on a single chip. Full duplex permits talking and listening at the same time. The first market will be for hands-free car kits for cellular phones, but aerospace applications should not be far behind.
THE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY DIV. OF INTEVAC INC. will develop a low-light surveillance and targeting camera for the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command, sharing the $10-million development cost under the dual-use science and technology program. The camera will use a pulsed laser operating at 1.5 microns as the illumination source. The National Institute of Science and Technology is developing the electron-bombarded active pixel sensor (EBAPS) technology for the camera under a separate contract.
Frank Cappello has been appointed vice president/chief financial officer of Cleveland-based Sifco Industries. He succeeds Richard Demetter, who is retiring. Cappello was vice president-finance and administration of Ashta Chemicals.
Robert B. Carter is scheduled to become executive vice president-information technology/chief information officer of the FedEx Corp., Memphis, Tenn., when Dennis H. Jones retires at the end of the year. Carter has been senior vice president/chief technology officer.
Eric Novotny has become vice president-marketing and sales, Michelle Lyle vice president-corporate affairs, Phil Slack vice president/chief financial officer and James Youdale vice president-commercial launch programs, all for International Launch Services of San Diego.Novotny was vice president/general manager of international operations for Orbcomm Global Data Communications, while Lyle was director of communications for Iridium.
Jon H. Lax has been promoted to director of customer service administration from director of service engineering at the Dassault Falcon Jet Corp., Teterboro, N.J. He succeeds Gerald A. Goguen, who has been promoted to senior vice president. Donald J. Pointer will succeed Lax and has been manager of service engineering.
Steady progress toward creating a common European defense capability is leading military leaders to reassess Europe's ability to project and support such a force. The European Council has set a target deployment date of 2003 for a joint rapid reaction force, which is to be the centerpiece of this new capability. Three elements have been approved so far: -- A NATO Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). -- The European Air Group, encompassing airlift and aviation support capabilities and, eventually, air combat units.
The U.S. Army plans to determine through experiments whether it can use its Shadow 200 tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (T-UAV) for signals intelligence. Conducting Sigint from the UAV could force the service to buy more of the AAI-built air vehicles.
Artisan Software Tools of Portland, Ore., which produces Real-time Perspective (RtP) object-oriented modeling software, has made its general design methodology freely accessible in an ``RtP Mentor'' online tutorial at www.artisansw.com. Object-oriented design techniques are widely applied in information systems computing. . . . Mechsoft.com of Austin, Tex., says its MechSoft.com mechanical design automation software can be integrated with SolidWorks 2000. The addition of MechSoft.com should allow engineers to design by function as well as form. SolidWorks Corp.
Atlas Air says it can comfortably add an additional 5-7 large freighters a year to its fleet in each of the next several years as world cargo markets experience strong growth fueled by the spread of e-commerce internationally, lower product life cycles and the increase of just-in-time manufacturing from global supplier networks.
Aniello Riccio of the Cira Italian research agency and Jouke Hijlkema of the Onera French aerospace research agency have won the Pratt&Whitney/Assn. of European Research Establishments in Aeronautics Prize. Riccio studied non-linear procedures to analyze damage composite materials, and Hijlkema worked on applications of kinetic modeling and numerical simulation of a dense liquid spray to solid propellant rocket boosters.
The U.S. Senate unanimously adopted a $54.7-billion Fiscal 2001 Transportation Dept. appropriations bill that fully funds the FAA's Office of Aviation Regulation and Certification, but falls short of the Administration's $6.59-billion request for FAA operations. The Senate approved $6.35 billion. Aviation lobbyists voiced concern about the shortfall, but praised the bill for shunning nearly $1 billion worth of White House-proposed user fees. In total, the FAA would receive $12.4 billion next year under the Senate bill, well above the current $10 billion.
