UAVS CONTINUE TO PROSPER with a $36-million award to General Atomics for new medium-altitude Predator system hardware. The Pentagon's Joint Program Office let the contract to beef up deployed operational units with approximately five aircraft and another ground station. Additional funds are expected to support development of an electronic intelligence payload. Predator units are expected to be operational over Bosnia through March, long after NATO-sponsored ground troops have left.
U.S. airlines are expanding their use of ``ticketless'' travel systems, and industry officials predict that international travelers may begin seeing their traditional paper travel coupons disappear within the year. American Airlines is the latest convert to ticketless reservations, unveiling plans to install electronic boarding systems for revenue passengers at its 21 busiest domestic U.S. stations by the end of September.
The Kamchatka Volcanic Institute recently told the Russian/American Coordination Group for Air Traffic Control that its Russian Federation funding source has been terminated, and that it would not be able to continue detecting and alerting the aviation community about seismic activity and potential eruptions of volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Kurile Islands. United Airlines, concerned about hazards to its aircraft from an undetected volcanic eruption on the Kamchatka Peninsula, requested the International Air Transport Assn. to seek new funding.
Shuttle By United expects to operate a fully-dedicated fleet of 45 Boeing 737s, each with reconfigured cabins and painted in the Shuttle livery. The 23 737-300s and 22 737-500s will retain first-class sections. With new galley equipment, each aircraft will have eight more coach seats, for a total of 134 seats in the -300s and 116 in the -500s. Seat widths and pitch will be identical to that on other 737s in United's fleet. The Shuttle operates 360 daily departures to 12 U.S. Western cities.
Efforts to tighten security at the nation's airports will focus on passenger screening, baggage and cargo handling, and access to aircraft by service personnel. But government and aviation industry officials warn that while security certainly can be improved, there is nothing available that will guarantee a 100% risk-free environment.
Cheong Choong Kong has been promoted to chief executive officer/deputy chairman from managing director of Singapore Airlines. As deputy chairman, he succeeds Lim Chin Beng, who has retired.
NASA'S GET-AWAY SPECIAL (GAS) program remains backlogged with dozens of small self-contained payloads awaiting eventual launch on the space shuttle. Nearly 550 potential payload sponsors have booked reservations with NASA for ``GAS can'' payloads, although many of the sponsors will not follow through with actual payload development. Twenty-seven GAS payloads are currently being built under NASA specifications, with two ready to fly on upcoming shuttle missions.
European satellite builders are seeking more efficiency as they battle U.S. competitors for an increased share in the telecommunications satellites market. Today, European manufacturers claim about 25% of an expanding world market. According to an Arianespace market forecast, 200-240 commercial satellites will be launched from 1996-2003, up from 158 during the previous eight years. In the next few years, the combined market share of Aerospatiale and Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA) is expected to slightly increase to about 13%.
Stealth's golden era may be over, warns John F. Cashen, an authority on low observability who helped design the B-2. He worries that the U.S. is abdicating its lead in stealth and sophisticated intelligence gathering through a lack of long-range planning and investments in demonstrations of advanced technology. ``There is no roadmap for continuing evolution of the art. To me it's a fuzzy picture,'' Cashen said. Meanwhile, he said, ``throughout the world there are programs investigating counter-stealth.'' Cashen urges an assessment of these countering schemes.
The leaders of tomorrow's U.S. combat operations in space could be military officers flying today as NASA astronauts. Senior Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) and Pentagon officials are actively ``recruiting'' USAF astronauts to resume military space careers after completing their stints with NASA. Air Force pilots, flight engineers and mission specialists now assigned to the shuttle fleet are technically ``on loan'' from AFSPC. Eight are colonels and have been with NASA since the early to mid-1980s. Col. Jerry L.
Wall Street analysts think aerospac e/defense stocks are holding up relati vely well, considering the market's recent turbulence, investors' high anxiety and th e drubbing some other technology sectors are taking. Better still, they'r e encouraged about the prospects for improved price-appreciation in the se cond half of 1996 due to the increasingly robust demand for commercial aircra ft. The group was up more than 10.9% on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index for the six months ended June 30.
SAUDI ARABIA SELECTED Eurocopter's Cougar Mk. 2 helicopter to upgrade its armed forces' search-and-rescue capability. The agreement, which also covers flight crew training and logistics, ``is expected to significantly contribute to Eurocopter's workload,'' French Defense Minister Charles Millon said.
Three African regional airlines, Benin Air Express, Air Niger and Peace Air Togo , this week are planning to form Air Inter Afrique, a new short-haul carrier scheduled to feed Air Afrique's international route system from Lome, Cotonou and Niamey. Operations are expected to begin in the fourth quarter with Aero International Regional ATR42/72 twin turboprops. The doors are open to additional partners, according to an Air Inter Afrique official.
Severe deficit pressures continue to force major space-faring nations to curb their government space budgets, but commercialization increasingly supports the industry's growth, according to Euroconsult, an independent consulting group based in Paris. The U.S. government is investing about $27 billion per year in space programs, or 73% of the total space budgets worldwide and remains by far the leading space nation. However, allowing for inflation, the U.S. Defense Dept. and NASA last year suffered from the second successive budget reduction.
No one should doubt the European Ariane 5 engineering team's ability to recover from the program's disastrous first launch failure on June 4. The Ariane technical team has demonstrated its ability to recover effectively after the handful of other accidents over the course of the 20-year program. Strong thanks are due the accident investigation board headed by Jacques-Louis Lions of the French Academie des Sciences. The board conducted a timely and open investigation that will serve as a roadmap to get the program back on track.
The Theseus high-altitude drone undid its scary first flight by making a successful 1-hr. 17-min. second flight recently, reaching an altitude of 8,000 ft. at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards AFB, Calif. The prior flight had problems with propeller speed control, but the subsequent flight on July 1 showed new controller gains fixed the problem (AW&ST June 10, p. 58).
USAir brought suit last week against its alliance partner British Airways and American Airlines, the British carrier's partner-to-be, alleging violation of a 1993 alliance agreement and breaches of competition laws. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court, New York, USAir asked the court to direct British Airways' representatives on the USAir Board to resign, and further, to direct the British carrier to sell its equity interest in USAir in an orderly manner.
THE SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR is set to undergo eight months of modification and refurbishment beginning this week at Rockwell International's orbiter assembly facility in Palmdale, Calif. Performing the work at Rockwell has generated controversy because many shuttle managers believe it could be done just as effectively and more inexpensively at the Kennedy Space Center. About 100 modifications will be added to Endeavour, with about 10 of them directly related to operations to assemble the international space station.
European airports are lobbying hard to protect duty-free sales revenues within the European Union. According to proposed regulations, on July 1, 1999, passengers traveling within the EU will lose access to duty-free shops--and the initiative is expected to cost EU airports up to $1.5 billion/year.
The market research and development staffs from 13 U.S. and international satellite, booster and communications service organizations provided data for the new Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) geosynchronous satellite mission model. The participants were: Boeing, Comsat, CTA Space & Telecommunications Co., GE Americom, Hughes Space and Communications, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Lockheed Martin ILS, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, Motorola, Orbital Sciences Corp., Space Systems/Loral and TRW.
ValuJet was a victim of overwhelming and relentless media attention following the May 11 crash of its DC-9 in the Everglades, resulting in a grounding which may or may not have taken place otherwise, according to the FAA's former top enforcement official. Anthony J.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN'S ELECTRONIC SENSORS AND SYSTEMS DIV., formerly Westinghouse, will upgrade the E-3 AWACS radar fleet under a U.S. Air Force contract that could reach $97 million over the next five years. Improvements to the 20-yr.-old system APY-1 and -2 radars will include work on the transmitter and adding solid state, high-voltage power supplies to improve the system reliability, maintainability and supportability. Each radar will be individually assessed and given a ``tune-up'' to improve performance, which has degraded as the system aged, according to the company.
Wanda Austin (see photo) has become general manager of the Electronic Systems Div. of the Aerospace Corp. Engineering and Technology Group of Los Angeles. She was principal director of systems development and operations in the Systems Engineering Div.
Engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rockwell and NASA are testing whether solar-powered drones can autonomously fly in bird-like formations to reduce the total drag of the flock. They have built a prototype battery-powered drone and hope to build five drones to test the formation scheme, which theory predicts will reduce induced drag by 20-60% at a lift coefficient of 1.0 if lateral station-keeping can be held within 0.6-wingspan accuracy. The problem is that station-keeping is nonlinearly unstable.
BRUCE D. NORDWALLJOSEPH C. ANSELMO ( WASHINGTON EAST MORICHES, L.I.)
Evidence so far from the explosion of TWA Flight 800 still seemed to point toward a bomb as the likely cause, but investigators were increasingly frustrated by the lack of conclusive evidence. While the painstaking recovery of aircraft segments and victims' bodies continued last week, both National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FBI investigators pored over the remains looking for hard evidence that would pinpoint the cause as a bomb, missile attack, midair collision or aircraft malfunction.
