Alain Richard said last week that the new Socialist-led government wished to maintain Aerospatiale in the public sector. He added that he would nonetheless attempt to persuade Dassault Aviation to approve a long-planned merger between the two companies, despite repeated insistence by Chairman Serge Dassault that any merger be tied to immediate privatization of state-run Aerospatiale. The means of persuasion was not mentioned, but the government recently ordered a review of a follow-on order for 48 Dassault Rafale fighters, which has yet to be finalized.
Photograph: The Evergreen aircraft, which carried an experimental designation, flew for 43 hr. during the NTSB test program. AL RAIA/NEWSDAY Boeing and NTSB investigators completed nine flight tests with an Evergreen International Airlines 747-100 last month to better understand conditions and loads that may have contributed to TWA Flight 800's crash. All of the tests had common goals.
Photograph: The Aster intercepted an Exocet MM38 sea-skimming missile for the first time on May 23, after striking a C22 target drone in a simulation trial on Apr. 8. Eurosam is preparing a new series of test firings of the Aster antiaircraft antimissile weapon system. A consortium of Aerospatiale, Alenia and Thomson-CSF, Eurosam is responsible for developing, building and marketing the Aster, which will be the first Western surface-to-air missile with an active homing head to enter service.
Raisbeck Commercial Air Group Inc. has completed FAA certification of its Noise Abatement System for the Boeing 727-100 that allows the aircraft to meet FAR Part 36 noise standards without the use of hushkits.
The Administration wants to level the playing field for corporations competing with Intelsat and Inmarsat, but it is finding resistance among some, mostly smaller, member nations of the satellite consortia. Enjoying treaty status, the two satcom majors have privileges and extra orbital slots that make competitors in the private sector howl (see p. 66). No wonder--the global market for fixed and mobile satcom services is likely to zoom to nearly $38 billion in 2002 from today's $9.5 billion, the Federal Communications Commission's Peter Cowhey said.
Photograph: Cobra Ball console in the Air Force's Theater Battle Arena computing center is where senior Pentagon officials can see and participate in simulations of future combat. Developing an affordable system to retaliate quickly and precisely against theater ballistic missile attacks continues to be an elusive goal. Yet it has been more than six years since relatively primitive Iraqi Scud missiles stuck fear into the hearts of Saudi Arabian and Israeli civilians, inflicted 25% of the U.S.
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a $248.3-billion Fiscal 1998 defense appropriations bill that sustains continued production of B-2 bombers, and fully funds the Clinton Administration's $2.1-billion request for the F-22 fighter program.
Delta Air Lines were among 12 individuals indicted last week by a U.S. grand jury in San Juan on charges related to cocaine smuggling at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said the 12 belonged to a major drug trafficking organization, consisting mainly of ramp and cargo workers and gate agents. In an unrelated case, six American Airlines mechanics were arrested at Miami International Airport, and a seventh was being sought late last week on suspicion of having smuggled a half-ton of cocaine and heroin.
Lt. Gen. (select) Lance W. Lord has been named the next vice commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command. He will replace Lt. Gen. Patrick P. Caruana, who is retiring. Lord was commander of the 2nd Air Force at Keesler AFB, Miss.
Charles R. Campbell has been promoted to director of business development for the Communication Systems Div. of Telephonics, Farmingdale, N.Y., from manager of business development for its Digital Airborne Communication Systems Div.
Photograph: BWB-17 model will test low-speed handling and flight control schemes for a blended wing-body transport. NASA, McDonnell Douglas and Stanford University have started testing a 17-ft.-span 6% scale model of a blended wing-body transport to evaluate low speed handling and different flight control schemes. The design is prone to stall pitchup and yaw departures, and dynamic stability characteristics are hard to measure with the model constrained in a wind tunnel. The ``BWB-17'' dynamically scaled flying model should help gather these data.
California lobbyists, bent on saving the Pt. Mugu missile range, have been working Congress hard to head off the Navy facility's demise in any new round of base cuts. The options include corralling new projects from competitors or merging with other facilities like China Lake, congressional staffers said. Environmental concerns plus shipping, air lane and urban congestion are making Pt. Mugu less attractive, particularly for tests of increasingly long-range weapons.
Hughes Space and Communications is tightening up some of its production and testing processes following the discovery of a problem with an HS 376 satellite resulting from improper wiring of antenna waveguides. Reversing the wiring in the interface between the communications payload and the antenna system on the Thor 2 HS 376 created a reception problem that must be corrected on the ground by reprogramming receiver units to reverse their polarization.
Photograph: Cobra Ball's mission commander on the flight was Capt. Tom Filbey (below, front), who is sitting at the technical coordinator's position. A crew can total 17-24 people. DAVID A. FULGHUM/AW&ST From the outside, an RC-135S Cobra Ball's most striking features are its black-painted right wing and engine nacelles and a line of four large, round windows, also on the right side, that begins just behind the cockpit and ends at the leading edge of that single black wing.
Photograph: The Gallery panorama shows some of the lander's deflated air bags, three unfolded side petals and two rover ramps. The Pathfinder lander is beginning a transition to a new phase of operations as the spacecraft completes its primary mission marking a full month of science data-gathering operations on the surface of Mars. Pathfinder, which landed July 4, was still operationally healthy last week--imaging water-ice clouds during a sunrise, making the first full-day weather observations at a 4-sec.
Photograph: MIRA sensors produce a panoramic view of the horizon, enabling Cobra Ball to observe both missile launch and warhead reentry. It is being considered for installation on Rivet Joint. Despite limited budgets, Air Force officials are investigating a series of potential upgrades and new uses for the three-plane, RC-135S Cobra Ball reconnaissance fleet. High on the list is the Snake Eye radar enhancement, a key part of an overall effort to make the Cobra Ball a better all-weather reconnaissance aircraft.
On board the damaged Mir space station for extravehicular activity (EVA) repair and contingency operations has forced NASA to bump astronaut Navy Cdr. Wendy Lawrence from her planned long- duration flight in exchange for astronaut David Wolf, who can fit into the Russian Orlan space suit.
Photograph: Crewmen don protective goggles when the on-board laser rangefinder system is in use. An early warning satellite will provide range information for the upgraded Cobra Ball 2. DAVID A. FULGHUM/AW&ST The RC-135S Cobra Ball--designed to capture the secrets of foreign missile tests from hundreds of miles away--has long been surrounded by secrecy. But the reconnaissance aircraft's capabilities were well enough known and feared by the Soviet military for senior commanders to trigger an international incident by trying to shoot one down in 1983.
A story on the National Transportation Safety Board faulting pilots in the 1996 crash of an Airborne Express DC-8 (AW&ST July 21, p. 42) incorrectly described a 1991 Airborne incident that resulted in revision of stall recovery procedures. In that incident the crew managed to recover from a stall.
The Transportation secretary should invite putative FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and her predecessors to a get-together on agency management and leadership problems. That's the word from Rep. Frank Wolf (R.-Va.), who says agency employees complain to him regularly about their frustrations with management. In an open letter to the secretary, Wolf expressed concern about the progress of two major programs, the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) and Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS).
The ``Big Seven'' airlines walloped the low-fare carriers in the political wars over new aviation taxes. The vaunted tax cut/balanced budget scheme does lower the 10% airline ticket tax rate over the next two years to 7.5%--but imposes a new per-flight-segment fee that starts at $1 and rises to $2.25 over the same period, then to $3 by 2003. This shifts some of the tax burden to travelers on short-haul domestic flights, like those operated by the low-fare carriers. It is exactly what the seven had in mind.
The boom in aircraft deliveries is in full swing, with 715 new transports scheduled to be received this year, says Edmund S. Greenslet, president of ESG Aviation Services of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Greenslet says the current capacity shortage will disappear as 900 aircraft are delivered in 1998, followed by possibly 970 in 1999. The airplane surplus, down to 345 units at the end of 1996, should rise to 600 by the end of the century. Greenslet's new forecast moves the projection of an economic recession to 2002 from 1999.
Photograph: Four 55th Wing aircraft on the ramp at Offutt AFB, Neb., include a Rivet Joint (right), Cobra Ball mission trainer (rear) and Cobra Ball (center) with covers on its large sensor windows. JIM HASLETINE The 55th Wing, with 7,000 people, is the largest wing in the U.S. Air Force, and the intelligence collecting done by its eclectic collection of RC-135s is among the service's most classified endeavors. Its sometimes clandestine achievements have garnered Air Force-wide recognition.
Thierry Antinori has been named Paris-based general manager for Western and Southern Europe for Lufthansa German Airlines. He was general manager for Germany for Air France.
