U.S. government regulators have yanked a commercial launch permit for Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Pegasus booster, delaying a key launch for the Orbital-led Orbcomm satellite venture.
Conventional arms proliferation is the overlooked issue of international security in the 1990s, argues Andrew J. Pierre of Johns Hopkins University. He is editor of a new book, ``Cascade of Arms: Managing Conventional Weapons Proliferation,'' copublished by the Brookings Institution and World Peace Foundation. Excerpts follow. The proliferation of conventional weapons will be a critical dimension of national order, regional stability and international security in the decades ahead.
Contractor delays on NASA's Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) have sent agency officials scrambling to reschedule a space shuttle launch, and the planned startup of space station assembly next summer is greatly limiting their options.
FAA rulemaking will be speeded up, effective next year, Garvey promised. Addressing a safety/security conference sponsored by Aviation Week, Garvey said the FAA intends to cut the time it takes to develop rules by involving major stakeholders and key senior government managers earlier in the process. Review times will be streamlined as well. ``Building in quality early in the process'' is more important than shortening it, she added.
Gen. Hiraoka Yuji has been promoted to Japanese chief of air staff from deputy chief, succeeding Gen. Muraki Koji, who has retired. Gen. Ogusi Yasuo, who was commander of the air development and experiment wing, will be deputy chief.
THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE has selected a team led by Raytheon E-Systems as one of three contenders to perform initial design work for the ``Wedgetail'' airborne surveillance program. Under terms of the $6-million contract, E-Systems will perform initial design activity (IDA) on the system, which would use an Airbus Industrie A310-300 as its airborne platform. Wedgetail's early warning and control mission would provide air and maritime surveillance and be capable of coordinating and controlling operations of the Australian Defense Force.
THE U.S. DEFENSE DEPT. logged one of its safest flying years in Fiscal 1997 despite a batch of late-year accidents. Fatalities declined to 76 from 116, the second-best record since the Pentagon began keeping statistics in 1958. The major aircraft accident rate was 1.5 per 100,000 flying hours, unchanged from the previous two years. The number of accidents was down from 71 in Fiscal 1996 to 68, the lowest ever. Aircraft destroyed in both the air and on the ground totaled 54, another all-time low. That figure was 66 the year prior.
The Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker AFB has added 184 additional workers to accommodate an increased aircraft maintenance and modification workload. Many are experienced employees transferring from the USAF's Sacramento, Calif., depot, which is being phased-out and privatized. Other workers came from the USAF's San Antonio, Tex., depot, which also is scheduled to close, as well as Homestead AFB in Florida and neighboring Altus AFB in Oklahoma.
Wilksch Airmotive Ltd. of the U.K. has successfully flown an advanced two-stroke diesel aero engine in a Piper light aircraft. The Nov. 21 flight, which follows a three-year development program, lasted 20 min. The engine, part of a family of engines being developed by Wilksch covering a wide range of power output and aircraft types, has undergone total test run time in excess of 200 hr.
Bridge Reports is new airport noise abatement software with graphics to present noise data to local residents. Analysis features help with planning. Bridge Reports is available from BCS International of Costa Mesa, Calif., for $50,000 and operates under Windows NT or 95 . . . Rapid PLUS is a rapid prototyping tool to develop embedded systems for man-machine interfaces. It does not need coding to set up, yet produces statechart formalism and automatically generates C/C++ code and test documentation.
The F/A-18 software development team at the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center was recently given a Level 3 maturity rating by the Software Engineering Institute, putting it in the top quintile of organizations assessed by SEI. The Navy-contractor team develops software for out-of-production F/A-18s, and will add the F/A -18C/D models next September. The team has a formal process to remove defects through software inspections, and has found about 2,000 defective lines of code. Each inspection costs about $1,500 but saves seven times that amount.
Photograph: ``Eagle Eye'' tiltrotor unmanned aerial vehicle demonstrator made a 31-min. flight Dec. 3 at company facilities in Fort Worth in preparation for extensive tests by the U.S. Navy early next year. Climbs, descents and lateral movements were made to test the aircraft's dual redundant flight control system, which included manual and automatic hover to a height of 80 ft. and airspeeds up to 20 kt. Winds were 11-15 kt. Landing was made within a 24-ft. circle. The aircraft was flown only in helicopter mode.
A high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft being developed by Scaled Composites Inc. is designed to perform commercial and military missions ranging from data relay services to launching small satellites into low-Earth orbit. First flight of a proof-of-concept vehicle is scheduled for mid-1998, with FAA certification and initial production to follow shortly thereafter. The project is funded by Scaled's parent, Wyman-Gordon Co.
NASA has delayed the next shuttle mission to the Mir space station by at least five days to enable the Mir's joint U.S./Russian crew to complete the unloading of a Progress resupply vehicle and finish work on the exterior of the vehicle before arrival of the orbiter Endeavour.
Sales of space-related products in Japan dropped 4.5% to $2.67 billion for the 1996 fiscal year, which ended Mar. 31. The Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies (SJAC), however, forecasts a turnaround in fiscal 1997 and 1998, when sales are expected to reach $3.05 and $3.09 billion, respectively. Last year, satellite manufacturing provided the most revenue, slightly more than $1 billion, while ground facilities accounted for $775 million. Launch vehicles including sounding rockets were the third biggest item at $365.2 million.
First of 16 F-16A/B fighters refurbished under the U.S. government's Peace Falcon program were slated to be ferried to the Royal Jordanian Air Force last week. A total of six of the former USAF F-16s are to be delivered to Jordan by year-end, with the remainder by April. The $220-million, five-year lease covers aircraft refurbishment, engine upgrade, training, spares, training devices and in-country technical support. As part of the program, airframe structure was upgraded to an 8,000-hr. lifetime. Several other nations have asked the U.S.
MATRA MARCONI SPACE and Digimed, a subsidiary of the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority, have formed a new company to create a geostationary communications satellite system for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The U.K.-based Euro African Satellite Telecommunications (EAST) Ltd. Co. aims to provide mobile and fixed telephone and data services in remote areas.
Signals intelligence, a crucial element of 21st century information warfare, got a boost last week with the first flight of the High-Band Prototype sigint system in a Navy EP-3. The Air Force and Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office are leading development of the mix-and-match joint-service sigint system, aimed at improved capability and use in platforms including U-2, RC-135, RC-7, RC-12, EP-3 and ES-3 aircraft, and the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle.
Stephen Markey, vice president-corporate and government affairs for Canadian Airlines International, has been elected chairman of the Air Transport Assn. of Canada for 1997-98. He succeeds Ken Glaze of Helijet Airways Inc. Michael Skrobica is acting president, succeeding John W. Crichton, who has resigned to become president/CEO of NAV Canada. Other officers elected are: first vice chairman, Stephen C.
The Russian government has grounded the entire 26-aircraft Antonov An-124 military transport fleet pending the results of an investigation into the crash of a Russian air force An-124 on Dec. 6.
The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization has endorsed an updated air navigation plan for the Africa-Indian Ocean region. The plan contains 128 recommendations approved by 350 participants from 56 nations at a regional meeting at Abuja, Nigeria, last May (AW&ST June 2, p. 34). Several key recommendations include mandatory carriage of collision avoidance systems and pressure-altitude transponders by Jan. 1, 2000, and a standard methodology for identifying, assessing and reporting of air navigation deficiencies in the region.
NTSB efforts to elicit potentially vital information from witnesses to the flight and crash of TWA Flight 800 were stymied for months by FBI agents who blocked any attempts to interview the witnesses, according to a copy of a safety board report obtained by Aviation Week&Space Technology.
