Aviation Week & Space Technology

FAA "drone" regulations decried; additional notes on propulsion history; merits of amassing aircraft-transmission data weighed; assessing "true" bomber costs.

With the A320neo delivery and 737 MAX rollout under their belts, Airbus and Boeing, respectively, mark a new era in aircraft manufacturing.

Shelby vs. McCain continues. NASA gains $1 billion. And international travelers to U.S. face new restrictions.

Through partnerships and investments, defense primes and OEMs are increasingly turning the page away from the old playbook of acquiring and subsuming new technology.

Fighter operators and Pentagon acquisition troops are talking past each other. That can’t end well.

Shareholders bail over future of aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce, despite restructuring efforts.

From Aegis Ashore to Pakistani nuclear-capable missiles—a look at some of the latest developments on the missile technology and missile defense front.

The six-nation UCAV demonstrator completed an initial phase in November 2015, but will continue flight trials in 2016 and potentially beyond. In a parallel effort, Britain has just completed a third round of flight tests of its Taranis UCAV demonstrator. And a four-nation effort, led by Germany, is to begin designing an unmanned ISR platform in the spring of 2016.

Directed-energy weapons and thermal management will be key, Northrop Grumman executives say.

With a rapid ramp-up of new aircraft using new materials, MRO providers need to increase R&D to develop repairs.

France’s defense ministry will begin work on three new major space-system developments in the coming year, including an international collaboration with Germany in the area of remote sensing and an operational follow-on to the Elisa signals-intelligence demo.

2015 could well turn up in the history books as the year humankind finally realized it could be a spacefairing species, and started reaping the benefits.

China has always preferred administrative allocation of runway access. Now the national drive against corruption has evidently prompted a trial period of auctioning and trading slots.

Virgin Atlantic is using proceeds from collateralizing Heathrow slots for the purchase of new aircraft, including Boeing 787s.

The EC should focus on defending consumer interests rather than protecting Air France-KLM and Lufthansa Group from competition.

“So we are finally—after years of destroying capital—delivering the minimum level of profitability that an investor would expect,” says IATA CEO Tony Tyler.

UP Aerospace takes its experience building and operating low-cost suborbital sounding rockets and applies it to a dedicated launch vehicle for tiny cubesats.

Jails fear UAV smuggling; France leads UAV smallsat launcher; Darpa aims for ubiquitous lidar; Roke takes cellular to high altitude; Airbus Perlan glider moves to new test phase.

Maturing hybrid laminar flow control, active flow control, noise reduction and vibration prediction and mitigation technologies are the focuses of Europe’s AFloNext research program.

The trick to making international collaboration work applies for 21st-century human space exploration just as it did for railroads in the 19th—standard interfaces.

Qatar Airways says it will not take A320neos with PW1100G operational restrictions; Airbus negotiates with Lufthansa to take delivery of first A320neo.

Even with almost 3,000 orders in the bag before first flight, the Boeing 737 MAX is in catch-up mode with the A320neo, which was launched more than a year ahead of it.

Which comes first, small satellites or small launch vehicles? With the growth in plans for cubesat constellations, small booster development is moving into high gear.

Analyses of data culled from five-year fatigue testing on the 787—the first ever on a primarily composite airliner—is underway at Boeing.

The U.S. export credit agency is back but needs a board of directors. Meanwhile, the fight continues over Russian RD-180 rocket engines.