Aviation Week & Space Technology

Aug. 25-28—9th Asia-Pacific Congress of Aerospace Medicine. Beijing. See apfama.org/2014 Aug. 25—10th Chinese Conference of Aerospace Medicine. See apfama.org/2014

General aviation community needs better airways; various takes on congressional inaction re: Ex-Im bank; reusability might not be key to reducing space transport costs

NASA demo will take first step towards deploying a system that can manage large-scale unmanned aircraft operations in low-altitude airspace.

Offshore helicopter operators are suffering from the steep decline in world oil prices.

Ryanair reconfirms interest in feeding long-haul flights.

With India’s original Rafale fighter deal scrapped after years of holdups, will its naval helicopter purchase see the same fate?

ISS crewmembers have taken a first, small bite out of the problem of keeping astronauts fed on deep-space missions.

The cost of ballistic missile interceptors, and the chance of failure, is high, but lasers pose their own efficiency and cost challenges.

How an aerospace metals supplier drew the interest of one of the world’s savviest investors and led to a mega-deal.

Aviation Week and its readers mourn the loss of a unique voice.

DEFENSE After years of delays, the U.S. Army and Navy have awarded Lockheed Martin a $66.3 million contract to develop a dual-mode millimeter-wave-radar/semi-active-laser guidance section for the Hellfire II air-to-surface missile under the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile program.

Senator decries added airline fees; geometry helps figure out Ukrainian plane downing; FAA investigates Love Field; and a special exception in American Samoa

The A&D industry finds it can’t always get what it wants in the workforce; but it gets what it needs.

The Aerospace and Defense (A&D) industry sectors continue to evolve and face their own special challenges:

Hear what disciplines are most in demand, salaries, sign-on bonuses, and the value that work/life balance plays in the compensation package.

Weakening ruble could impede Russia’s air force bomber and fighter development programs.

Russia bolsters Arctic military units to reinforce claims on the region’s natural resources and shipping lanes

Finland wants a multirole fighter and ground-based air defenses to replace its F/A-18 Hornet fleet.

A pair of new histories reveals little-known details about the interaction of the U.S. space program and the civil rights movement in the South.

Lasers, microwave weapons and railguns have flopped before. Here are some ways to stop that from happening again.

Volatile commodity prices and currency exchange rates threaten the defense spending outlook, but there are positive flip sides for governments and defense contractors alike.

Aircraft carrier arrangement becomes another casualty of Ukraine incursion.

Climate changes are making the northern reaches of greater economic and strategic interest, but the U.S. military has a long way to catch up to the Russians and other nations.

Berkshire Hathaway’s bid to acquire Precision Castparts and Google’s restructuring are among the developments discussed by Aviation Week's editors.

NASA has chosen Lunar IceCube for inclusion of secondary smallsat payloads on the the multibillion-dollar SLS-Orion test flight, which could provide potential encouragement for researchers to push deeper into space using CubeSat technologies.