After looking at predictions written 50 years ago for a space-age civilization, I hesitate to predict what the aerospace industry will look like 50 years from now.
K. Peter Maneri has become vice president-corporate and marketing communications of the Computer Sciences Corp., El Segundo, Calif. He succeeds Bruce Plowman, who retired in July. Maneri was managing director of the corporate practice/senior counselor at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.
Cash-rich Singapore Airlines ended 1999 by rocking the industry with a Christmas agreement to buy 49% of London-based Virgin Atlantic for $975 million. CEO Cheong Choong Kong, who also is deputy chairman of Singapore Airlines (SIA), said the carrier isn't done buying yet, but he would not comment on what his remark may imply for 2000. Apparently, SIA and Virgin Atlantic kept their talks off the financial markets rumor mill by not seeking outside advice. ``Secrecy is essential,'' Cheong said.
Messier-Dowty International and Singapore Aerospace Manufacturing are establishing a joint venture company in Singapore to produce landing gear assemblies and related components. Operations are set to commence on Jan. 1 with an order book of more than $30 million. The new company will focus on manufacturing landing gear for small- and medium-sized aircraft such as business jets and regional transports. The venture eventually plans to open a factory in China, according to Dominique Paris, chairman and CEO of Messier-Dowty International.
Boeing has signed an agreement with Smiths Industries Aerospace to supply an improved power management system for AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters. Deliveries will begin in 2001.
Murray Sigler, president/CEO of the Winnipeg (Manitoba) Airports Authority, has won the Airports Council International-North America Leadership Award for his performance as 1999 chairman of the Canadian Airports Council.
DASA-MiG joint venture MAPS has been selected to upgrade Romania's fleet of MiG-29 jet fighters, in collaboration with Romanian firm Aerostar. At least four aircraft will be initially modernized under the agreement.
John Patterson has become managing director of GB Airways, based at London Gatwick Airport. He was director of alliances at British Airways and succeeds John Osborne, who has been named managing director of Virgin Express.
The Army has picked AAI's Shadow 200 to meet the service's long unfulfilled requirement for an unmanned aircraft to provide brigade commanders with a close-range reconnaissance and target acquisition capability. AAI was one of four bidders in the Army's tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (T-UAV) competition. The losing competitors were Alliant Techsystems, General Atomics and a TRW/IAI/S-Tec team. All four participated in a fly-off during October and November.
It is sobering to realize that my contemporaries and I have thus far lived through the entire space age, and fully two-thirds of the aeronautical age. During this period, our profession contributed significantly to winning a world war, ending a prolonged Cold War, exploring the Moon and the planets and--in its spare time--establishing the Global Village.
Franco-Russian launch company Starsem is studying a new version of the venerable SL-4 Soyuz booster intended to further increase the launcher's lift capability into low Earth and geostationary transfer orbits. The new variant, dubbed Soyuz/ST+, would be equipped with an upgraded third stage that would make the booster more attractive for medium-sized Earth observation and scientific satellites, Chairman/CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said here during a Starsem users' conference.
Is discovery still possible? Do we still have the potential to dream as we did only recently in the past century? Do we need the intimate challenge of competition with another power to explore and discover? Have we reached the limits of physical laws? All of us who reached maturity in the second half of the 20th century have thought about these questions. We realize how much more we can do in space, we see how many more opportunities space offers to mankind.
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Keith Hall received a nice gift from Lockheed Martin just days before Christmas. Company officials informed him they were dropping their protest of an NRO award to Boeing to build the next generation of U.S. optical and radar imaging satellites. Lockheed Martin, which has led work on classified U.S. imaging satellites since 1958, was stunned in September when the NRO awarded the work to Boeing (AW&ST Sept. 13, 1999, p. 27). The company appealed the award, but its chances of overturning the selection were viewed as slim.
The hijacking of an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 in Kathmandu, Nepal, with 189 crew and passengers on board on Christmas Eve has pointed up weak spots in India's crisis management aviation policy. The hijacking was still underway last week when Aviation Week&Space Technology went to press, but the essential facts are: -- Flight 814 took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport on Dec. 24 bound for New Delhi when it was seized by five Islamic extremists as it crossed into Indian airspace over Lucknow.
New aircraft under development in Wichita include a smaller version of the CitationJet. Across town, Raytheon is working on two new business jets. One is sized between the Premier 1 and Hawker Horizon. The second is to be bigger than the new Hawker Horizon.
Mark P. Burdick has been appointed vice president/general manager of the Wireless Group and Timothy P. Ross vice president/general manager of the Space and Defense Group of Anaren Microwave Inc., Syracuse, N.Y.
Honeywell and Coherent Technologies Inc. of Lafayette, Colo., have entered into a long-term contract to develop a new hybrid air turbulence warning for air transports. By combining Honeywell's RDR-4B predictive wind shear on-board weather radar with CTI's infrared radar technology, the system will detect every type of turbulence from rough air in thunderstorms to clear air turbulence in dry weather conditions, the companies said. First deliveries are planned for late 2002. The system will weigh less than 50 lb. and mount infrared light sensors on the radome.
The Clinton Administration is weighing a complaint to international aviation authorities that would challenge Europe's impending crackdown against hushkitted U.S. aircraft operating on the continent. In the wake of a December failure at a U.S./European Union (EU) summit to fashion a transatlantic compromise on noise reduction, the U.S. aviation industry has endorsed a putative Administration decision to lodge an Article 84 complaint under the Chicago Convention with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
While much attention has been focused on North Korea's ballistic missile weapons program, the country has more quietly been making advances in its special operations capability, a Defense Dept. official says. In addition to the use of small submarines to insert special forces into South Korea, the North also is expanding its airborne special operations capability. North Korea is fielding an increasing number of small, non-metal aircraft for troop infiltration, the official says. The low-flying aircraft could be hard to detect for South Korean or U.S. radars.
Looking back on 1999, investors in aerospace/defense companies have little to cheer about, and analysts are split on whether stocks are likely to rebound in the first half of 2000. Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown analyst Christopher Mecray, among others, does not expect to see a broad recovery.
Herm Reininga (see photo), vice president-operations of Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has received the Meritorious Public Service Citation for 1999 from the U.S. Navy chief of naval research. Reininga was cited for leadership in manufacturing and technical expertise provided to the USN's manufacturing technology program.
Wesson International has installed a 3D visual control tower simulator at Eurocontrol's research facility in Brussels. The simulator will be used for airport traffic control area and air traffic procedures research.
The signature of the first century of aerospace was high-performance products---larger and larger, faster and faster, more and more capable. These were sold to military organizations and regulated commercial carriers on a cost-plus basis, because performance-at-any-price was crucial to the military, and because the costs of superior performance could be passed through by price-regulated airlines competing on service.
Jean-Luc Lagardere, chairman of Lagardere, has been designated by the French government and Lagardere group to sit on the board of directors of the European Aeronautics, Defense and Space Co. The other members will be: Louis Gallois, chairman/CEO of SNCF French railways and former chairman/CEO of Aerospatiale and Snecma; Philippe Camus, chief executive of Aerospatiale Matra; and Noel Forgeard, chief executive of Airbus Industrie.
Most of us look back to the recent past in order to forecast the near future. If the public has little optimism that there will be significant aerospace progress over the next 35 years, it is because today's ``modern'' supersonic airliners, jumbo transports and business jets have remained virtually unchanged since their initial development in the 1960s.
