Pacific Aerospace&Electronics Inc. has received separate purchase orders totaling $2.3 million from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin's Sanders to supply modular components and assemblies for the U.S. Army's Hellfire anti armor missile.
Pierre Moskwa has been named director of CNES French space agency's French Guiana space center. He succeeds Michel Mignot, who is now CNES' adviser for French Guiana's economic development.
Flir Systems of Portland, Ore., is introducing a stabilized, dual-sensor infrared airborne camera aimed at law enforcement markets. The turret-mounted Ultra 7000 employs an indium antimonide infrared focal plane array operating in the 3-5-micron range to sense minute thermal signatures in a variety of atmospheric conditions. It incorporates a 10X continuous zoom capability to allow crews to fly higher and see better IR detail, according to Andrew Teich, senior vice president of marketing. A collocated CCD camera provides clear color video for daytime surveillance.
CFM International's long-awaited strategy for maintaining propulsion dominance in the highly profitable 18,500-34,000-lb.-thrust-range engine market should be decided upon early next year.
PHOTOBIT HAS DEVELOPED a CMOS image sensor on a chip that uses only 48 microwatts of power and can run on a 1.2-volt watch battery. A comparable CCD array would consume 10,000 times more power, according to Photobit. The microdot sensor has a 176 X 144 array of detectors, each with an embedded amplifier, on a 2-mm. square die. Photobit's active-pixel technology combines camera signal-processing on one piece of silicon to provide full-frame 8-bit monochrome video at 20 frames per sec.
Boeing has consolidated its commercial aircraft group into a single organization to increase operational efficiency, optimize asset use and improve its customer focus.The change essentially melds Boeing's narrow- and wide-body divisions and their related sales, marketing and engineering functions. It will be phased in at sites and component-making facilities in the Puget Sound area as well as Long Beach, Calif. Layoffs are expected, although the company said the exact number is yet to be determined. No interruption to production is planned.
Bouncing back from dramatic drops in passenger and freight bookings during the peak of Asia's financial crisis in 1998, South Korea's Asiana Airlines plans on hiring 1,100 new employees this year. The total includes 120 pilots and 290 cabin crew. A program of rolling one-month furloughs, instituted to avoid staff layoffs after the crisis hit, ended last June. Aided in part by the poor safety record of competitor Korean Air, Asiana in December had a 38% domestic market share and carried 22% of all international traffic and 20% of all air freight to and from the country.
An oversupply of transponders in a weak economy will be relatively short-lived for Asia, but the challenges posed by regulatory liberalization, telecom globalization and the Internet invasion will be longer lasting. Satellite industry analysts commenting at the recent Pacific Telecommunications Council conference here see an Asian market ready to move after two years of recession. ``We are seeing slow but perceptible improvement,'' Loral-Asia Pacific President William H. Wright said.
FLIGHTSAFETY INTERNATIONAL has received orders for 25 business aircraft simulators scheduled for delivery through 2001. The simulators, all certified to FAA level D standards, are being built for the Gulfstream IV and Gulfstream V, and eight different versions of Cessna Citations including the Sovereign, Excel, CitationJet, Citation X and Ultra. Simulators also are being built for the Falcon 2000 and 900EX, Bombardier's Challenger 604 and Global Express as well as the Learjet 31A, 45 and 60 models, and the new Continental, which is under development. Raytheon Aircraft Co.
Diane Soucy Bergan has become city manager for Boston operations for United Airlines. She previously worked in the carrier's governmental affairs division office in Washington.
The U.S. Air Force plans increased oversight of its launchers as it transitions to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. The service has spent the last two months studying recommendations from a White House-chartered space launch review that examined a spate of launch failures in 1998 and early 1999. EELV contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin made their own recommendations, and the Air Force is now drawing up its action plan.
The U.S. Army has scored its third successive intercept with the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile and air-defense system. The test at the Army's White Sands Missile Range, N.M., on Feb. 5 was the first time the system's remote engagement capability--in which the launcher and fire control radar are separated by several kilometers--was demonstrated. The Army will conduct 14 more Pac-3 firings in the development program.
Honeywell plans to accumulate some 7,500 test hours and 50,000 simulated flight cycles on 17 engines before completing certification of the AS900 turbofan engine family in March 2001. The AS900 series is the company's latest propulsion offering for regional transports and business jets and its first all-new turbofan engine in 25 years.
It was 55 years ago that the International Civil Aviation Conference assembled in Chicago at the invitation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some say the 1944 conference failed. Others say it was a success. I believe it was a great success. However, there were numerous failures. I want to recount important things that failed as well as things that succeeded in the conference. Finally, I will look through the small window that has been allotted to me at some of the events that may occur in aviation's future.
Advanced Communication Systems' SEMCOR Div. will provide imaging systems for tactical reconnaissance/surveillance aircraft of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory under a $3.4-million, four-year contract.
CONCERNS ABOUT THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF GPS to interference has led the Office of Naval Research to solicit proposals for affordable approaches to both make GPS more reliable/robust and to offer reliable precision navigation/timing alternatives. Areas of particular interest are GPS user equipment, inertial navigation systems, celestial navigation systems, small stable clocks and the integration of multiple navigation/timing technologies into unified communications/navigation/identification (CNI) architectures.
Donald Dombrowski has been named airframe programs director of AirLiance Materials of Chicago. He was a senior technical sales and purchasing consultant at Solair Inc.
As part of a reorganization drive to prop up its fading auto manufacturing business, Nissan Motors Co. will sell its Aerospace Div. to Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries. The sale, expected to be completed by the end of March, will be the first major buyout in the history of Japan's aerospace and defense sector. The sale is expected to fetch 40 billion yen ($374 million) for Nissan, which has been overtaken as Japan's No. 2 automaker by Honda. Officials said IHI bested an offer from Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
Pratt&Whitney and General Electric are preparing to test the first core for their GP7000 engine family in early March. The tests will be conducted at General Electric facilities in Ohio and should run through May. GE and Pratt will evaluate the efficiency and operability of the core engine's nine-stage high-pressure compressor and the engine's variable stator system. The two U.S.-based companies are targeting the 75,000-lb.-thrust GP7000 at the Airbus A3XX and Boeing's growth 747.
AHF-Duocomm and Aerochem subsidiaries have signed extension contracts worth a total of $85 million to produce components and exterior surface materials for the space shuttle's Lockheed Martin external fuel tank.
General Electric engineers will rely on the materials and manufacturing methods already used to make fan blades for the company's 94,000-lb.-thrust GE90-94B powerplant when developing the increased thrust version of the engine designated the GE90-115B.
At the behest of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Japan Airlines is to open 747 sightseeing services via Vancouver this summer. The flight to Havana is scheduled to operate four times weekly from Osaka's Kansai International Airport. It will operate as a charter and be booked by a Cuban travel agent.
The Pentagon slashed at many of its aviation projects in a $291.1-billion budget submission that represents little real growth and provides additional money for only a few intelligence and missile defense programs.
South Korea's Multipurpose Satellite (Kompsat) has begun sending science data following its Dec. 20 launch from Vandenberg AFB in California. Developed by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute and TRW Inc., Kompsat (called Arrirang I in Korean) is instrumented for space physics studies, an ocean-scanning multispectral imager and an electro-optical camera with 6.6-meter (22-ft.) resolution. The latter will be used for topographical purposes such as flood monitoring, land use planning, archeological surveys and hydrological studies.
