Last week's defection by North Korea's ambassador to Egypt is seen as a coup for U.S. intelligence services. Chang Sung Gil is believed to have detailed knowledge about North Korea's sales of missiles and other weapons in the Middle East. U.S. officials have been particularly concerned about Iran's ballistic missile development efforts (AW&ST June 23, p. 65). North Korea's leaders had agreed to talks with the U.S. in New York last week about ballistic missile exports, but they angrily canceled the meetings after the U.S.
Robert F. Rosar has become corporate executive chef for Dobbs International Services Inc., Memphis, Tenn. He was marketing executive chef for Caterair International.
The Space Warfare Center is evolving into a broad-based, yet pragmatic pathfinder for Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). Its tasks now range from exploring the merits of futuristic ideas to developing quick-reaction space-related systems that can be turned over to operational units.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Boeing FlightSafety Training International plan to order 17 flight simulators and training devices from CAE Electronics in preparation for delivery of new Boeing transports, bringing to 37 the number of simulators sold by CAE since its fiscal 1998 year began in April.
Jeffrey P. Penn has been named senior project manager in the international aviation group of McClier of Chicago. He was chief architect for design for the Austin Co.
The Vympel Design Bureau revealed details here of a ramjet-powered version of its RVV-AE long-range missile with active radar guidance. The bureau also introduced two new versions of its heat-seeking R-73 missile with high-off-boresight engagement capability.
Have scheduled informational pickets at three U.S. airports to bring attention to allegations that airline management is not complying with pilot contract provisions. The source of pilot discontent is Delta's shift from a cost-cutting mode after the pilots and the company signed an agreement under which the pilots took a 2% pay cut, according to Air Line Pilots Assn. spokeswoman Karen McGuffey.
Has been delayed again as the Lockheed Martin-Boeing-Pratt&Whitney team and the U.S. Air Force perform inspections of all fuel tank probe connections. Last week, maintenance crews found that one probe may have failed. When the probe was removed and tested, it worked fine, which means the connector probably was the cause of the problem. All fuel tank probe connectors in the F-22 will now be checked to make sure they are installed correctly and properly grounded to avoid the potential of electrical arcing.
Communications and electronics supplier Harris Corp. has been providing weather information to the FAA since 1989 through the integration of computer and software packages, and now the $3.8-billion company is poised to expand its substantial book of business with the government agency yet again.
Steven Markhoff has been named director of safety and regulatory compliance for Kiwi International Air Lines. He has been a legal consultant to Kiwi and was in-house counsel for ValuJet Airlines.
Cor Vrieswijk (see photo) has been promoted to senior vice president-operations of Transavia Airlines of the Netherlands from head of technical services. He succeeds Daan Meyer, who has become head of technical services for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
Photograph: Aircraft shelters provide relief from the heat and rain at RAAF Tindal in northern Australia where the F/A-18s of 75 Sqdn. are stationed. Australia will finish its newest air base before the end of the year--RAAF base Scherger on the isolated Cape York peninsula just south of Papua New Guinea. Scherger's completion will finish the line of six air bases--capable of handling large numbers of warplanes--that now stretch along the northern coast of Australia.
An accurate, reliable and economical method to provide real-time forest fire mapping to fire bosses has been developed by the Academy of Infrared Thermography, Kamloops, British Columbia. The technique uses a mobile, pen-input notebook computer and trained airborne thermographer to overwrite fire boundaries, sketch drawings, text and other information on a GPS-based moving map display. The notations, plus moving map data, are transmitted to ground-based fire managers in real time via radio modem so they can effectively dispatch water bombers and other high-cost assets.
Photograph: Textured rock called Wedge is at left in this view from the rover (above). In the Rock Garden behind Wedge are (from left to right) Shark, HalfDome, Moe and the rectangular rock called Flat Top. Lander image shows rover as it climbed up on Wedge (right). The Pathfinder mission ran into a rocky road last week due to the combined impact of a lander computer problem, limited Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna allocations and rover navigation errors resulting, at least in part, from a drifting gyroscope.
The General Accounting Office says B-2 bombers can't be easily deployed. The Air Force, the GAO says, has concluded that the bombers need special hangars to maintain their stealthy coatings, because they are more sensitive to climate and moisture than expected. Some low-observable materials must be applied and cured in an environmentally controlled shelter after each flight. Some stealth materials were damaged on each test flight, and that repair accounted for 39% of the 80 maintenance man-hours required for a single flight hour.
In an effort to conclude additional strategic alliances and strengthen its European route system, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is expected to acquire, in the next few weeks, a 30% stake in Norway's Braathens SAFE. The Dutch carrier and Ludv. G. Braathens Rederi, a major shipping company that owns Braathens SAFE, are tentatively planning to finalize an agreement ``within four to eight weeks.'' The Norwegian carrier was formed in 1946 to operate charter flights and was initially known as Braathens South American&Far East.
Dozens of passengers on Korean Air Flight 801 may have burned to death or died of other injuries when rescuers on Guam encountered a variety of delays in extinguishing flames in the 747's burning wreck for hours, according to safety officials and some rescue workers.
Joseph A. DiPalermo has been appointed applications engineering manager and Glenn A. Manchester business unit manager of the Parlex Corp., Methuen, Mass. DiPalermo was a technical sales engineer and Manchester a senior technical engineer, both for Strataflex Inc.
Robert Keysselitz has been named London-based European manager for sales development and performance for Delta Air Lines. He was sales manager for southern Germany.
Stephen D. Peck has been named chief financial officer of the American Mobile Satellite Corp., Reston, Va. He was executive vice president/chief financial officer of Philips Publishing International.
Zeev Nachmoni (see photo) has been named corporate vice president/general manager of the Israel Aircraft Industries Electronics Group. He was the group's deputy general manager and general manager of the Tamam Div. Nachmoni succeeds Shmuel Alkon, who has retired.
China appears unlikely to become a major supplier in the international arms market anytime soon, according to a new congressional report (see pg. 21). Although U.S. intelligence claims that China is the world's worst proliferator of items associated with weapons of mass destruction, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that, in the nearly 10 years since the end of the Iran-Iraq war, few clients with financial resources have sought conventional Chinese military equipment.
FAA Administrator Jane F. Garvey, at her first speaking engagement since being sworn in, elicited laughter, a few hisses, but general respect at last week's Air Line Pilots Assn. air safety forum.
Luxell Technologies, Mississauga, Ontario, has developed a bright-sunlight readable electronic cockpit flat panel display. The patented, monochromatic ELT3-series screens exhibit crisp graphics over more than a 160-deg. angle in full sunlight with no ``blossoming'' phenomena, according to Fred Prins, international marketing manager. Key to the patented technology is a black ``optical interference'' layer between the phosphor and counter-electrode layers that essentially cancels out normally reflected sunlight.
