Prime contractor Lockheed Martin has agreed to reimburse the Pentagon for future failures of the troubled Theater High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system. Thaad has failed all five of its intercept tests--each failure was due to a different problem--and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization faces mounting pressure from Capitol Hill to fix the program. Under an agreement reached with the Defense Dept.
U.S. National Mediation Board said an impasse has been reached in talks between Northwest Airlines and the Air Line Pilots Assn. over a new contract. The NMB declaration and ALPA's subsequent decline of arbitration trigger a 30-day cooling-off period--to 12:01 a.m. Aug. 29--after which the pilots may strike. Negotiations between Northwest and its pilots began in August 1996. Both sides said last week they would seek to resolve their differences before the ``negotiation deadline.''
Japan's deputy defense minister, Masahiro Akiyama, confirmed last week that wing crack and flutter problems will delay flight and static tests of the Mitsubishi F-2 close air support fighter (AW&ST July 20, p. 26). Akiyama said the tests, already two months behind, will take about nine months more than planned, delaying their completion until December 1999. Deployment of the F-16-like fighter by the Japanese air force is still expected in 2000, as scheduled, he said. The Japanese Defense Agency had planned about 870 test flights but now expects to fly more.
Japan's Ministry of Transport, in an effort to stem a decline in domestic services, is expected to lower local airport landing fees by a total of 50 billion yen ($360 million) beginning next April, with the start of the fiscal 1999 budget. Japanese carriers say the steep charges are one reason they have been withdrawing local services for some time in favor of more lucrative trunk routes. Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Japan Air System--the three largest carriers--pay about 300 billion yen ($2.15 billion) in landing fees annually for domestic services.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is on track for its 16th consecutive year of record passenger totals, logging nearly 12-million passengers in the traditionally weak first half of the year. Passenger totals for the January-June period show a 3.5% increase in the number of domestic passengers, while international travelers using the airport are up 11.4%, despite the Asian economic crisis.
Singapore Changi Airport is offering free Internet connections courtesy of Singapore Telecom. The airport has installed 20 PC connection points in departure and transit lounges of Terminals 1 and 2 for transmitting and receiving e-mail, and to charge laptops. . . . Encanto Networks of Santa Clara, Calif., is bundling its e.go Commerce e-mail business software with UPS' OnLine Office software so that Internet orders to merchants will automatically be shipped by UPS. . . .
Russia's plans for a 21st century fighter remain in limbo, given an environment of economic hardship and the lack of a clear concept of how the country's military forces should be restructured. The Russian Air Force command cannot even say whether it will have one type of fighter, or two, like the current MiG-29/Su-27 mix.
Atlas Air has sent a second 747-200 freighter to Ameco-Beijing, the China Airlines-Lufthansa maintenance center in Beijing, for a C check and Section 41 modification. The first was completed in February and marked the first U.S. aircraft overhaul at the Beijing facility. However, Ameco, the largest overhaul center in China, is building its foreign client list. Lufthansa provided its first overseas work in 1997 with a D check and strut modification of a -200 freighter.
Six civilians were killed when a Chinese-built F-7P of the Pakistan air force crashed last week. The pilot ejected, and the abandoned aircraft flew into a Karachi neighborhood. Another 25 people were injured and more than a dozen homes burned. Air force officials said the aircraft developed engine problems while on a training flight. The aircraft was seen to be in flames and flying low before it crashed into the Orangi district of the port city.
Guiliano Berretta will be the new director-general of Eutelsat, effective Jan. 1. He will succeed Jean Grener, who is scheduled to retire. Berretta was commercial director.
Additional upgrades and technology demonstrations are in the works to further enhance the information warfare capabilities of the Saab Gripen multirole aircraft, now operational with the Swedish air force.
Swiss Air Navigation Services has awarded Raytheon Systems Co. a $6.6- million contract for software support and user training for the Air Traffic Management/Aeronautical Information System Data Acquisition Processing and Transfer air navigation system.
A Ukrainian-built Zenit booster carrying a large Russian electronic intelligence spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome July 28. The Cosmos 2,360 spacecraft was placed into an 850-km. (527-mi.) orbit inclined 71 deg. The launch is important because it helped bolster Russia's elint constellation, which has not been replenished in more than a year because of a Zenit failure in May 1997.
There is Pentagon concern that a dense mix of manned and unmanned aircraft, flying strike and reconnaissance missions over 21st century battlefields, may be much harder to track, control and clear for attack than planners anticipate. Some concepts of operations foresee manned mother ships, perhaps even F-22 derivatives, directing small squadrons of 10-16 unmanned aircraft, all cued to fly together while awaiting individual attack orders. Researchers say this is feasible. Operational planners are less convinced.
Photograph: Galileo's 92-meter resolution image of Ganymede's northern polar cap is contrasted with the best Voyager resolution of 1.4 km. Sunlight is from lower right. The Galileo probe missed most observations during last month's Europa flyby due to upsets in the spacecraft's main processors. Engineers were able to restore it to health, and it is now cruising toward the next Europa encounter on Sept. 25.
James Wilson has been appointed senior sales executive for Wessex Aerospace, Robertsbridge, England. He was senior spares controller for Pilatus Britten Norman Ltd.
U.S. Air Force officials are furious with mid-level Joint Chiefs of Staff planners for botching intelligence coverage of Iran's Shahab 3 missile test in July.
Henri Ziegler, founder and first managing director of Airbus Industrie, died July 23. He was 91. His vision of the creation a consortium of European aerospace companies to build commercial aircraft, and rival the dominant U.S. companies, initially earned him the enmity of the French government, which accused him of being anti-French. But he lived to see his brainchild reach, this year, an equilibrium with the Boeing Co. in new jet transport orders.
Scaled Composites' high-altitude, multimission Proteus aircraft made its first flight on July 26, conducting basic envelope-expansion tests during a 1.7-hr. mission.
Back-to-back crashes of USAF aircraft on July 24 are causing more headaches for U.S. forces in Japan. The first involved a Lockheed Martin F-16C stationed at Misawa, a civil/military airfield in northeastern Japan. The aircraft overran the runway during takeoff, crashed and burned, seriously injuring the pilot. The airport was temporarily closed, causing Japan Air System to cancel four flights. Later that day, a U.S. Marine Corps Bell UH-1N helicopter from the Futema air base crashed during a landing at Camp Hansen, Okinawa.
A new generation of fighters could be less effective in combat than older aircraft unless pilots receive top-notch training in the air, according to experienced instructors. ``You can build the best fighter in the world, but without good training, the pilot will get shot down,'' said USN Cdr. Dennis D. Poulos (Ret.), a former F-14 and adversary instructor pilot. ``When I flew F-5s as an adversary, we often beat up on F/A-18s, because they were flown by kids who didn't know how to fight their airplane.''
Hoping to bounce back from a poor second quarter financially, Boeing won orders and options last week for 90 commercial transports from lessor Boullioun Aviation and the U.K.'s easyJet. If all options are exercised, the deals will total almost $4 billion.
