John Wade (see photos) has been appointed vice president/general manager and Troy G. Pithoud director of maintenance of Dimension Aviation, Goodyear, Ariz. Wade was senior director of maintenance for America West Airlines.
Russia's conventional military is facing a crisis of massive obsolescence in most major weapons, according to a new congressional report. Procurement has fallen so steeply since 1992--and has never been restored--that recovery might have to wait until 2005, even 2010. In a report billed as the first comprehensive review in the West of Russia's post-Soviet conventional forces, author Stuart D. Goldman of the Congressional Research Service says inventory will continue to atrophy.
A Federal Communications Commission deadline is looming for U.S. companies to submit proposals for future-generation satellite systems that would push the technological limits of the radio spectrum to transmit vast quantities of data around the globe at high speeds.
Was zeroing in on a launch date between Oct. 12-15 for the nuclear powered Cassini mission to Saturn. The launch was delayed from Oct. 6, in order to unstack Cassini from its Titan 4B/Centaur booster to remove insulation debris inside its European Huygens probe--scheduled to land on Saturn's moon Titan. The insulation was shredded by an improperly set airflow system. Cassini and Huygens were set to be returned to Launch Complex 40 by Sept. 14.
An expeditionary role with service members living more and more out of tents and suitcases is the near-term future for the U.S. Air Force. Personnel will be kept far from major population centers. Such urban sites have been successfully used by terrorists to launch attacks on U.S. forces in recent years. The tent city at Al Kharj, an isolated base near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, now houses about 4,000 U.S. military. More often than not, that will be the look of future Air Force deployments, military planners say.
Expects to complete negotiations with OAO Corp. of Greenbelt, Md., by Oct. 31 for OAO to assume management of hardware and software functions for 7,000 of its 12,000 desktop computer stations. JPL, which is managed by NASA, has already used OAO to provide IT functions for the Pathfinder, Galileo and the upcoming Cassini missions. With extensions, the new desktop and network services agreement could run for 10 years and be worth more than $200 million, making it JPL's largest outsourcing contract.
New technology and cooperative ventures highlight Italian avionics suppliers' approach to the changing marketplace. Joint research is giving Alenia an entree into advanced radar development too expensive for a single company to pursue. At the same time, the company is capitalizing on refinements to proven systems for international aircraft upgrades.
Top Boeing officials have set Nov. 1 as an internal deadline for decisions on keeping or dropping manufacture of the various Douglas Aircraft Co. commercial transport lines. Boeing acquired ``warm'' MD-80, -90, and -11 production lines and the yet-to-fly MD-95 program in its merger with McDonnell Douglas. Phil Condit, Boeing chairman and CEO, has said Boeing will keep building Douglas models as long as there is market demand. Boeing has had access to Douglas competitive data, such as manufacturing costs and cycle times, since the merger became effective on Aug 1.
Of the U.S. Defense Dept.'s Global Command and Control System. Joint commanders use GCCS to coordinate widely dispersed units, receive feedback and provide the precise control needed for fast-moving operations. GCCS replaced the Worldwide Military Command and Control System a year ago. Four contracts totaling more than $11.8 million were awarded for research into security management and administration.
The Turkish navy is preparing to buy four more Sikorsky S-70 Sea Hawks from the U.S. to boost its fleet following Congress' recent approval of a long-stalled naval arms package. U.S. and Turkish officials are currently discussing the deal whereby Turkey would procure four S-70B-28 Sea Hawks to supplement the four it already has on order. The second order is expected to be worth roughly the same as the $115 million paid for the first batch of Sea Hawks, now scheduled for delivery in 2000.
Wanda Reiss has been appointed vice president-engineering of Sky Computers Inc., Chelmsford, Mass. She was a technical product manager in the imaging products group of the Polaroid Corp.
The U.S./Russian crew on Mir dealt with another serious computer breakdown in space last week as managers on the ground continued to assess how to patch the depressurized Spektr module following an external inspection by the crew. Cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Paval Vinogradov, along with U.S. astronaut Michael Foale, returned Mir's attitude control system to full operation Sept. 9, a day after its computer shut down because of the apparent failure of an electronic component.
Systems (JPALS) Group will recommend several different precision approach/landing techniques that show promise of meeting the diverse needs of the U.S. military services when it briefs the Air Force Requirements Oversight Committee on Sept. 16. Whereas the FAA opted for a Differential-GPS based technique for its future civil landing aids, the JPALS study concludes that GPS is too vulnerable to jamming for some military applications.
Initial trials of prototype engine hardware are planned this fall for a proposed NASA solar thermal propulsion system for satellite upper stages. NASA is investigating solar thermal propulsion to help reduce space vehicle weights, complexity and, ultimately, cost, according to Leslie Curtis, project manager at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Performance gain could be up to double that of current, conventional upper stages, with a specific impulse goal of 1,050 sec. for enhanced, operation-sized test versions by 2006, she said.
Aeropostale, an Air France subsidiary, is considering partnership agreements with foreign carriers and postal services in an effort to acquire additional business. Aeropostale is Europe's second biggest cargo carrier, behind DHL WorldWide Express. Over the years it acquired unique expertise in operating a large passenger-cargo ``quick-change'' fleet, company officials said.
Yielding to months of pressure from the President's Office of Management and Budget, NASA has concocted a $12.4-billion budget proposal for Fiscal 1999--$1 billion less than what it will get in 1998. How does NASA meet the mark? By killing the X-33 and other reusable launch vehicle efforts it has been professing are essential to the nation's future. Nobody's falling for the ploy, however. ``It's a game of chicken,'' said one congressional source.
The FAA amended an airworthiness directive covering the Airbus A300-600 and A310 autopilots, requiring a disconnect whenever the pilot applies significant control forces (AW&ST Apr. 8, 1996, p. 34). The airworthiness directive previously mandated control force disconnect above 400 ft. The amendment also requires testing the disconnect every 18 months. U.S.-registered operators have until October 1999 to implement the change.
Will use Dassault's CATIA-CADCAM Drafting products and IBM's ProductManager data management system as tools in the reengineering and design/manufacturing of the C-130J, upgrading the program from documents distributed on paper and aperture cards.
Keith Hagerich has been appointed director of operations for the Miami Service Center of the BFGoodrich Aerospace Component Services Div. He was director of quality for the Transport Repair and Maintenance Div.
Pentagon officials are becoming quite blunt and self-critical about the punishing schedule they have set for aircrews in the 1990s. ``It's not a reasonable career choice right now, the way we are pushing our crews,'' a senior military planner and veteran combat pilot said. ``The world's not how we predicted it would be. We couldn't predict Somalia and Bosnia, and we can't predict how long we're going to be in some of these places.''
Bill Knudsen (see photo) has been appointed president of the Colorado Springs-based United States Space Foundation. He was president of the Easter Seal Society and Easter Seal Foundation of Dallas. Knudsen succeeds Richard P. MacLeod, who has resigned and joined the foundation's board of directors.
Cutting the E-8 Joint-STARS fleet to 13 aircraft from 19 has left a big hole in plans for expanding real-time, battlefield reconnaissance. Yet the demand for all-weather recon is growing. So the Pentagon is examining cheaper ways to fly synthetic aperture radars and moving target indicators (SAR/MTI)--which can spot mobile targets even through heavy clouds.
Flir Systems Inc., of Portland, Ore., has optimized its Safire thermal imaging system for maritime and humid conditions. The enhanced system, called Star Safire, uses a 3-5-micron indium antimonide focal plane array detector with three fields of view. Advantages include increased range and improved performance when there are high concentrations of water droplets in the atmosphere, according to Blaise Dagilaitis, military sales manager.
Technical Service Order for a multimode receiver for its Series 900 MMR approach guidance system. The MMR combines instrument landing system, microwave landing system and GPS in a single integrated unit. Six months of hardware and software evaluation and flight tests led up to the TSO award, which will permit airframe manufacturers to gain certification on specific aircraft types. Boeing plans its first delivery of a Collins GLU-920 (ILS/GPS) to Copenhagen-based Maersk Air this fall. Airbus plans its first delivery to Air France on a new A340 transport this fall.
