Lockheed Martin and U.S. Air Force test crews have completed the first air-to-air refuelings of the F-22 by a KC-10. The qualification tests were conducted last week over Edwards AFB, Calif. The F-22, tail number 4001, was refueled by a tanker of the 6th Air Refueling Sqdn., flying out of Travis AFB, Calif.
India and France plan to develop, build and launch a small scientific satellite intended to enhance the understanding of tropical weather and climate systems. The mission, dubbed Megha Tropiques, was given preliminary approval on Nov. 21 by French space minister Claude Allegre and Vasundhara Raje, India's minister for small-scale industry.
US Airways flight attendants, now in their third year without a contract and exasperated by the lack of progress of negotiations with management, are seeking authorization to begin operational disruptions against the carrier to increase their bargaining leverage.
Gen. John R. Dailey (USMC, Ret.) has been named director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air&Space Museum. Dailey is currently associate deputy administrator for NASA, a post he has held since 1992 following a 36-year military career. Dailey served as a squadron commander in Vietnam and flew 450 combat missions. Dailey said he will carry on the work of the previous museum director, Adm. Don Engen, a close friend who died recently in a glider accident.
Record new transport manufacturing rates and growing regional jet order backlogs are fueling demand for pilot and maintenance technician training. The resulting fleet growth and turnover at world airlines has simulator manufacturers scrambling to catch up. Boeing plans to deliver 620 transports in 1999 and Airbus Industrie about half that. Simulators and training programs also are being developed for several new military types as well as for upgrades of existing military aircraft as fleet lifetimes are extended.
Boeing is updating its 20 X 20-ft. wind tunnel in Ridley Township, Pa., near Philadelphia, as seen in this artist's concept. The goal is to better measure downwash from helicopters, tiltrotors and other vertical-lift aircraft such as the AV-8B Harrier 2 and the proposed Joint Strike Fighter. Modifications to the tunnel included adding 12 X 24-ft. extensions on either side of the floor to allow a fuller outwash flowfield, according to Boeing team leader Art Distasi.
The Administration's decision to replace nuclear weapon testing with analytical techniques is producing monster computers to conduct increasingly massive simulations. The latest product of the Energy Dept.'s Accelerated Strategic Computer Initiative (ASCI) for stockpile stewardship is Blue Pacific, officially dedicated Oct. 28 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Built by IBM, Blue Pacific is an RS/6000 SP computer with 1,464 nodes of four IBM PowerPC 604e processors each, for a total of 5,856 processors.
Maj. Gen. Donald G. Hard (USAF, Ret.) has been appointed Silver Spring, Md.-based vice president/director of the Defense Dept. Services Div. of bd Systems Inc., Torrance, Calif.
Cockpits should be equipped with video cameras, ``to modernize the tools of air safety,'' Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a speech on the Senate floor. ``Think what a difference it would make if there had been a camera in the Egyptian aircraft. The voice recorder was once state-of-the-art, but ``as we are learning each day, audio recording can raise more questions than it answers.
Astronomers that made the first discovery of multiple planets around a star outside the solar system used Research Systems' Interactive Data Language to detect the minute perturbations of the star's motion that inferred the planets' presence. The star is Upsilon Andromedae, located 44 light-years from Earth. ``We explored every available remote data processing language and IDL was the only one that would provide accurate measurement of the smallest movement of a star,'' said Geoff Marcy, San Francisco State University astronomer and distinguished professor.
Singapore Airlines may not have lost interest in Ansett Australia even though it was thwarted earlier this year in a bid to buy a half ownership in the airline. But if it makes a second bid, the cost is likely to be much higher. Aviation analyst Damien Kestrel of Credit Agricole Indosuez has advised clients in a confidential memo obtained by Aviation Week&Space Technology that the SIA is still interested in Ansett, despite anger that its earlier offer was rejected.
Petr Hora, who has been chairman of Prague-based Aero Vodochody, will also be president effective Dec. 1. He will succeed Scott White, who will be president of the Boeing/Czech Airline consortium, Boeing Ceska. Hora has been general manager for the Czech Republic of Meritor LVS Liberec (formerly Rockwell LVS Liberec).
The Technical Research and Development Institute of the Japanese Defense Agency says that preliminary testing of a fly-by-light aircraft control system is promising enough to call for a year's worth of flight tests beginning in April 2000. The institute has spent $19 million since 1997 on the program. It will use a Navy Lockheed/Kawasaki UP-3C for the technology demonstration.
Tecnomatix, ABB Airport Technologies and Dynamic Research Corp. have teamed to develop an airport simulation system based on Simple++ software. When offered for sale later this year, the software will allow airport planners and operators to create, run and compare 2D and 3D visualizations of passenger, baggage, cargo, fuel truck and other ``flows'' in their terminal environment in a variety of scenarios, based on expected airline schedules and constraints such as gate size.
China's successful unmanned flight test of a manned spacecraft--and the uprated booster to carry it--show the Chinese space program has reached a new level of maturity for the design, integration and fabrication of more advanced space systems for both military and civil applications. Designated Project 921, the program marks Asia's first free-flying manned spacecraft design to reach orbit.
Northrop Grumman has agreed to acquire Navia Aviation AS of Norway for $35 million. It supplies instrument landing, air traffic control and digital voice switching systems to airlines.
During a wing up-bending static test of the Raytheon Aircraft Co. Premier I business jet on Nov. 12, the upper right wing skin separated from the spar cap inboard of the wing attachment at 141% of design limit load--9% below the goal of 150%. A company official said the test condition at failure was 370 kt.--50 kt. above the airplane's maximum Vmo limit of 320 kt.--and a 3.2g maximum pull up applied to the wing. The official, however, said a fix for the structure has been developed and will center on the addition of fasteners in the failure area.
Split over how to guarantee aviation program funding, Congress has recessed without acting on the comprehensive reauthorization of the FAA and the Airport Improvement Program. Failure to act has caused a few isolated problems thus far, but the principal effect has been disappointment among airlines, airports and the FAA, which were united in support of the Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century or AIR21, the House version advocated by Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.).
The space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member U.S./European crew are tentatively set for liftoff here Dec. 9 on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope--an increasingly urgent flight following a Hubble gyro failure that has halted all science operations. The $205-million mission is the third of five scheduled servicing flights to Hubble, but its importance is second only to the first repair flight in 1993, which corrected Hubble's initially flawed optics.
In a final swipe at the Fiscal 2000 budget, Congress enacted a 0.38% across-the-board federal spending cut, which nominally keeps the federal budget within statutory spending caps. But the Pentagon reduction exempts military personnel, and elsewhere it must be applied proportionately to all defense accounts, so no single account takes an outsized hit; the maximum cut to any account is 15%.
Further studies of air traffic control at Tokyo's Haneda airport, the country's busiest domestic hub, have persuaded Japan's Ministry of Transport to open takeoff and landing slots for 62 flights (31 round trips). The transport ministry is expected to divvy up the slots by the end of the year. The allocation represents one-third more than was planned two years ago.
United Technologies Corp. has signed an expanded $2.1-billion agreement with Computer Sciences Corp. to consolidate and streamline the information technology infrastructure at UTC's headquarters, central research facility and North American operations of its five businesses.
NASA officials are trying to put the best spin on the temporary loss of its premier ``great observatory.'' A fourth gyroscope's failure on the Hubble Space Telescope shut down science operations. ``We've been extremely lucky,'' says David Leckrone, NASA's senior Hubble scientist, noting that the failure occurred just three weeks prior to a scheduled shuttle servicing mission. But NASA might have avoided the shutdown altogether.
Gulf Aircraft Manufacturing Co. (Gamco) is in talks with several firms about establishing a maintenance joint venture in the region. Interested firms include Lufthansa Technik, KLM Engineering and Air France Industries.
Signal Technology Corp. has won awards worth a total of $2.4 million to supply F-16 radar warning and jamming digitally tuned oscillators to Microwave Electronic Systems Inc. in Ankara, Turkey.
