European companies are likely to capture less and less of the defense export trade, according to a new report by a congressional agency. The General Accounting Office reasons that European nations, in response to defense exports shrinking by 70% since 1987, have decreased their defense R&D spending to one-third of what the U.S. spends. To compensate for the competitive disadvantage, European companies are angling for technology exchanges with U.S. industries. Otherwise, senior NATO officials warn, the alliance may break down.
The U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC), a formerly classified unit that detected nuclear explosions, then collected and analyzed radioactive debris from foreign weapon tests throughout the Cold War, is assuming a critical international monitoring role under the new Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Imagine this: Sometime in the 21st century, somewhere in Asia, a large explosion triggers a global network designed to detect nuclear detonations. Data point to the distinctive seismic signatures of a weapons test. Signatories to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) make accusations. But they are met with denials by the suspect state: ``Prove it! That was just a big mining blast.'' A standoff ensues, sanctions are imposed, and the issue strains relations for years.
THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF of the U.S. Transportation Command says the Air Force needs an additional 16 C-17 transports beyond the 120 currently on order from Boeing. Gen. Walt Kross, also commander of Air Mobility Command (AMC), said C-141 transports in the AMC fleet are being retired at a rate faster than new C-17 aircraft are being added to the force. Kross said the additional C-17s are required because the organization needs another squadron of the aircraft to cover its special operations requirements. In addition, the organization wants to modernize its 126 C-5s.
U.S. war plans have an interesting flaw, says Rear Adm. John Johnson, Navy aviation's plans and requirements honcho. The U.S. will not be able to blanket future battlefields with electronic jamming because that could thwart its precision bombing capabilities, which are dependent on satellite navigation. ``There is no better GPS jammer on the battlefield than the EA-6B,'' he said. What's more, the EA-6B, the only tactical jamming aircraft left in the U.S. inventory, will face foes that have learned the lessons of the Persian Gulf war.
Terry D. Stinson, president of Bell Helicopter Textron of Fort Worth, has been appointed chief executive officer. Webb Joiner will remain as chairman until his expected retirement in mid-1998. Stinson also has been chief operating officer.
A U.S. Congress already polarized by China policy is reacting with predictably mixed feelings to the outcome of the Sino-American summit, which broke up eight years of diplomatic ice accumulated since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The summit was the stage for business and trade agreements potentially worth tens of billions of dollars to U.S. industry, and it coincided with a $3-billion Chinese purchase of Boeing aircraft (see opposite page).
European and Japanese space executives are worried about their ability to compete against newly created U.S. mega-contractors, but concur with their American counterparts that a big reduction in launch costs is a top priority. And while leading executives expect telecommunications to drive the space industry's growth for the foreseeable future, they agree commercial space is nowhere near replacing the large role played by government-funded projects.
Craig Williams has been named director of sales and marketing for Thanom Aerospace Information Services of Amsterdam. He was vice president of NationAir Insurance Agencies.
Nearly a year and a half after the big launcher's first flight failure, the Ariane 5 booster achieved a successful qualification flight last week, placing into space a dummy communications satellite and an engineering test payload--but into an orbit nearly 2,000 mi. lower than planned. The Oct. 30 launch came as a huge relief to European Space Agency and CNES French space agency officials and their contractors, restoring their faith in a high-profile, $8-billion program that had been severely disrupted by the initial failure.
ONE OF SEVEN IRIDIUM satellites launch-ed on a Proton booster was lost after its thrusters failed, stranding it in parking orbit. It was the second Iridium spacecraft to fail. The venture now has 32 working satellites in orbit--a 94% success rate.
Comair by the end of the year plans to open a maintenance base at Dayton (Ohio) International Airport to perform A checks and routine maintenance on Embraer EMB-120 and Bombardier/Canadair Regional Jet aircraft. Comair will continue outsourcing maintenance in Montreal and at three locations in the U.S. The 21,000-sq.-ft. Dayton facility is being leased from Wright Brothers Aero and will employ 32 additional maintenance workers. Cincinnati-based Comair performs most of its maintenance at its facility at Cincinnati/
Fine Air Services expects to resume full operations within the next few weeks after receiving FAA approval to do so late last month. The Miami-based cargo carrier, which serves Latin America and the Caribbean, had undergone an extensive examination by the FAA following the crash of a DC-8-61 at Miami International Airport on Aug. 7 and voluntarily suspended operations on Sept. 4. Investigators had focused on improper aircraft loading and balancing as the cause of the accident (AW&ST Aug. 18, p. 29).
Vacuum Arc Technologies, Scottsboro, Ala., has devised a process to recycle the superlight aluminum-lithium alloy used to make the space shuttle's external tank. About 70% of the metal stock used to make each tank is machined away. To date, the waste has not been recycled since lithium cannot be present in the food and drink containers where most recycled aluminum eventually ends up. Vacuum Arc's new vacuum alloy separation process, while proprietary, has extracted a 65% lithium sample from a solid Al-Li material in initial tests, according to Jack Weeks, president.
Congressional committees are debating bills for easing limits on operations at airports here, in New York and Chicago that opponents claim could unravel facility financing pacts, traffic-distribution plans and community noise-abatement agreements.
China President Jiang Zemin recently returned to Shanghai, where he was once mayor, to break ground on Pudong, the city's second international airport. Passenger traffic has increased an average of 23.5% since 1991 and reached 12.6 million last year. With forecasts of 33 million by 2005, the city decided its present airport, Hongqiao, needed help. The Pudong master plan calls for four parallel 13,000-ft. runways and enough terminal capacity to handle 70 million passengers and 5 million metric tons of cargo annually.
The consolidation of electronic warfare testing resources here is expected to greatly reduce avionics and EW system development risks for the F-22, Joint Strike Fighter and aircraft already in the USAF inventory.
Photograph: LOCKHEED MARTIN AND THE U.S. Air Force have tested an F-16C fitted with self-adhesive appliques designed to improve affordability and maintainability of the Joint Strike Fighter, according to William Campbell, engineering specialist at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems. He said the applique was made from an aluminum alloy metallic foil with a pressure-sensitive adhesive backing. The F-16 Combined Test Force at Edwards AFB, Calif., applied the film to the upper fuselage and wing surfaces that are equivalent to about 600 sq.
Joe Leach, manager of onboard products for Delta Air Lines, has been elected president of the World Airline Entertainment Assn. (WAEA). Other officers elected were: vice president, Patrick Brannelly, manager of passenger entertainment for Emirates; secretary, Joan Barker, sales and marketing director of Inflight Productions; and treasurer, Linda Palmer, senior vice president of Buena Vista Non-Theatrical.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has delivered its first flight element for the International Space Station--computer hardware and software for the Data Management System (DMS-R)--to the Russian Space Agency. The element will be installed on the Russian Service Module, which is being built by RSC Energia, and is to be launched in December 1998.
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have patented a method of embedding information in the quantization noise of image files and other data, without increasing the size of the host file. The general technique is not new, but the Los Alamos approach does it without making the changes detectable. Noting that the eye can detect about 6 bits of information per pixel while many image files have 8 bits, researcher Ted Handel said the lower bits can be encoded covertly.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is complaining that Japanese supercomputers are being excluded from the U.S. market by anti-dumping taxes that range from 173-454%. A recent report by Cato analyst Christopher Dumler said the practice ``demonstrates everything wrong with U.S. anti-dumping law.
Alicia Gardiner has become director of marketing, Dan Ciomek purchasing and inventory control manager and Robin Lemoine controller, all of Professional Aviation Associates of Atlanta. Gardiner was a sales representative. Ciomek was a regional sales manager for Raytheon Aircraft, and Lemoine was assistant controller of Banner Distribution Inc.
AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY has been testing a laser-propelled projectile and hopes to reach an altitude of 0.6 mi. in 18 months. A 10-kw. pulsed laser is aimed at a 6-in.-dia. aluminum craft, which is machined to focus the energy into an annular chamber where it bursts the air into a plasma, creating thrust. The craft weighs 40-50 grams and has risen 14 ft. vertically in 2-sec. gyroscopically-stabilized flights at the White Sands Missile Range, N.M. An orbital concept uses a ground-based laser to heat air while in the atmosphere, and an onboard gas when in space.
