James R. Mellor, D. Larry Moore and James D. Woods have been named to the board of directors of Howmet International Inc., Greenwich, Conn. Mellor is retired chairman/CEO of the General Dynamics Corp. Moore is retired president/chief operating officer of Honeywell Inc., and Woods is retired chairman/president/CEO of Baker Hughes Inc.
TELEDYNE RYAN AERONAUTICAL has laid off 220 employees as a result of Boeing's cancellation of TRA's contract to build airframes for the Apache helicopter program. Boeing, which took the action late last year, plans to move the work from TRA in San Diego to Boeing helicopter facilities in Philadelphia. Teledyne Ryan countered last month with a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego which maintained TRA has exclusive rights to manufacture the Apache airframe.
U.S. and Japanese negotiators meet again this week here in what may be the final round of talks to hammer out a new bilateral aviation agreement. It won't be ``open skies.'' Everyone knows Japan won't agree to that. But the pact would provide significant new opportunities for both U.S. and Japanese carriers. The evolving accord is supported by a wide range of interests--but not Northwest Airlines, a beneficiary of the status quo, which remains adamant that the U.S.
Program leaders for the Boeing-led Sea Launch project to launch modified Ukrainian Zenit boosters from a seagoing platform say they are close to finalizing an inaugural flight before the end of the year.
Christopher P. Jones has been named project manager of NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, Fuk Li manager of the New Milleniumn Program and Thomas R. Gavin deputy director for the Space and Earth Science Program Directorate, all at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Jones was spacecraft development manager and Gavin spacecraft manager, both for the Cassini mission. Li was manager of the Earth Science Program and succeeds Kane Casani, who resigned.
THE FRENCH DGAC HAS GRANTED VFR certification to the Eurocopter AS 350-B3, a high-performance version of the Ecureuil/AStar equipped with FADEC-controlled Turbomeca Arriel 2B engines. Eurocopter has received 45 orders for the variant: the first will be handed over to Osterman Helicopter of Sweden shortly. In December, a 32-aircraft order from the French Ministry of the Interior launched the BK-117C2, another enhanced-performance model.
IBM has doubled its own world record for data storage on a hard disk; it has stored 11.6 billion bits, or gigabits, per square inch, or the equivalent of 725,000 double-spaced typed pages. The areal density (bits per square inch) was reached at data rates of 14 million bytes per second. IBM expects to introduce products with 10-gigabit density by the year 2001.
A crucial factor determining whether Asia's recession is nasty or mild, regional or global, is what happens next in China, U.S. analysts say. ``China is the crisis that hasn't happened yet, and there are two major reasons to worry about China at the moment,'' said Edward J. Lincoln, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
HONEYWELL AIR TRANSPORT SYSTEMS is using two history-based software tools from Quantitative Software Management (QSM) of McLean, Va., to more accurately estimate cost and schedule for projects with large software developments. The software life-cycle management and control tools use Honeywell's own history in past projects to establish the organization's efficiency. Other nonlinear historical data is used to develop better estimates and control than were possible using linear estimates of lines of code and man-hours, according to Honeywell.
New software algorithms developed by Systems Dynamics International Inc. of Gainesville, Fla., are being examined by engineers in a number of U.S. Air Force precision weapon programs to increase the speed at which the navigation systems of the weapons can be aligned. Tests with the new system are underway at Eglin AFB, Fla., and the system is being assessed by the Joint Direct Attack Munition program, the Joint Standoff Weapon program and other related efforts.
USAF Lt. Col. Brian T. Bishop has become commander of the Thunderbirds. He was operations officer of the 309th Fighter Sqdn. at Luke AFB, Ariz. Bishop succeeds Lt. Col. Ron Mumm.
Yolan DePhillips, assistant manager of ground operations for El Al Israel Airlines in the U.S., has been named Woman of the Year at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. She has been president of the Kennedy Airport Airlines Management Council.
RECENT BRITISH MINISTRY OF DEFENSE'S CHOICE of the AAR-57 common missile warning system (MWS) for the British Army's WAH-64 Longbow Apache helicopters was a ``tough call'' for the Ministry. The AAR-57 is a key subsystem in the ALQ-212 Advanced Tactical Infrared Countermeasures (ATIRCM) system being developed by Sanders, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Army Longbow Apache (AW&ST Oct. 27, 1997, p. 52).
Jan Szymankiewicz has been retained by Triangle Management Services, Beaconfield, England, to develop its global logistics outsourcing survey. He was managing director of supply chain consulting at P-E International.
In some future international crisis, communications switching stations may be primary targets for offensive attacks by computer hackers serving the U.S. military. These sites provide several needed elements for getting ``inside an opponent's mind,'' as some U.S. officials describe the task of penetrating foreign computers to read communications traffic.
Global Hawk and the redesigned DarkStar, the military's new long-endurance reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles, may both make their first flights in the next 60 days. The first Lockheed Martin DarkStar crashed on takeoff during its second flight, slowing the program by a year. But the redesigned, stealthy UAV is expected to start taxi tests in mid-February. Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical's Global Hawk (with a 1-ton payload, high operating altitude and longer endurance) was to have conducted high-speed taxi tests last weekend. First flight could come as early as Jan.
Norman R. Augustine, now retired as chairman of the Lockheed Martin Corp., is one of five winners of the 1997 National Medal of Technology as announced by President Clinton. Augustine was cited for his ``visionary leadership of the aerospace industry, and for identifying and championing innovative technical and managerial solutions to many challenges in civil and defense aerospace systems.''
U.S. ARMY PLANS TO REORGANIZE the reserves and National Guard will cost $3 billion and not reduce military spending for at least a decade, says a new report by the Congressional Budget Office. CBO analysts offer four alternatives that they think will work better. Option one would increase reliance on nations being defended by the U.S. and hire civilian contractors to provide basic items like food, laundry and shelter. It would cut the need for 62,000 troops.
Meteorologist John McCarthy of the Naval Research Laboratory at Monterey, Calif., is a specialist in aviation weather hazards. The views he expresses here are not necessarily those of the NRL or U.S. government.
PAUL MANN(Contributing to this report was Geoffrey Thomas in Perth, Australia.)
Southeast Asia's financial crisis will result in a regional recession, pummeling Asian airlines, rippling through global aviation and stalling arms exports to the area, economists and strategic analysts predict.
The space shuttle Endeavour is set for launch this week on NASA's final mission to deliver a U.S. astronaut for a long-duration stay on the Russian Mir station. The 10-day flight is scheduled to lift off at 9:48 p.m. EST on Jan. 22 at the opening of a 5-7-min. window.
Bruce Hughes has been appointed president of the GE-P&W Engine Alliance, Evendale, Ohio. He had been co-general manager. Hughes succeeds Larry Scott, who died last year.
Two years ago, SAP AG started looking at the aerospace industry as a new income source for tailored applications of its R/3 server/client business software, which already serves the electronics, automotive, insurance, health care and more than a dozen other sectors.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has begun operating its $4-million Permanent Noise Monitoring System (PNMS), which is designed to be an electronic arbitrator in local aircraft noise disputes. The system uses 35 microphones placed strategically in nine cities and towns in three counties to detect noise. Additional data on flight tracks is collected by the FAA.
