It is quite a telling experience to try and search for information about Rollin King on Southwest Airlines’ website. In the “Officers” category of the company’s official online history presentation, King is only mentioned once: “Rollin W. King, a founder and former president of Southwest Airlines, has been named Vice Chairman and Chief Executive of Panama Air International” (Nov. 26, 1991).
As I read Bill Sweetman’s recent commentary “Hot Air” ( AW&ST May 26-June 2, p. 15), regarding the landing mat challenges for the F-35B vertical-landing aircraft, I wondered if a low-cost, low-tech solution to this problem is already on hand. Why not investigate the use of a mat that has tubes filled with water?
Surely the caption accompanying a photograph in “New World” ( AW&ST June 30, p. 53) should indicate that the aircraft is an Airbus A350, not the A340, as stated. (The reader is correct—Ed.)
It is fascinating to me how many organizations, contracts, people, studies, tests and reports (to say nothing of various journalists) have climbed on the bandwagon of “What will the F-35B exhaust do to a ship’s deck during a vertical landing?” Perhaps nobody in charge of paying for all this has noticed that the rubber tires on the wheels can handle such landings just fine.
Cyriel Kronenburg has become vice president-sales and marketing for Aireon, McLean, Virginia. He was global head of air traffic control matters for the International Air Transport Association and had been its head of government and infrastructure affairs for North America and the Caribbean.
Bill Toti has been appointed president of San Diego-based Cubic’s Mission Support Services segment. Toti also will be a senior vice president of the Cubic Corp. He was vice president/account executive for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Accounts for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services. Toti will succeed Jimmie Balentine, who is retiring but will remain as the segment's chairman.
Wayne Prender (see photo) has been named vice president of the Ground Control Technologies organization of Textron Systems’ Unmanned Systems, Hunt Valley, Maryland. He was program director within the small/medium-endurance unmanned aircraft systems group.
J ohn Rood has become vice president-domestic business development for the Lockheed Martin Corp. , Bethesda, Maryland. He succeeds John Ward , who plans to retire Aug. 1. Rood was vice president-U.S. business development for Raytheon.
July 14-20—Farnborough air show. www.farnborough.com/airshow-20124 July 16-18—Quantum Control User Group Annual Conference. San Diego. www.quegroup.camp7.org/events?eventId= 803805&EventViewMode=EventDetails July 19—Washington Island (Wisconsin) Lions Club’s 61st Annual Fly-In Whitefish Boil. Washington Island Airport. Call Gregg Gaura at 920-847-2070.
The Iraqi defense ministry has taken delivery of 10-12 Sukhoi Su-25 ground-attack aircraft from Russia. The Su-25s are expected to become operational soon, but late last week, it was not clear exactly how many had been received or who will fly them. It is unlikely that Iraqi pilots will have had enough time to adapt to the type, although the Iraqi air force previously flew the model during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Four F-35Bs are due at RAF Fairford in England to allow pilots time for verification flights in advance of their debut flying displays at the Royal International Tattoo this week followed by the Farnborough air show next week. As of July 2, the single-leg transatlantic crossing of the foursome was on hold, as the single British F-35B slated for the show remained on the ground at Eglin AFB, Florida. The other three F-35Bs, operated by the U.S. Marine Corps, had arrived at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, the departure point for their historic Atlantic crossing.
The U.S. Navy awarded about $5.6 billion in aviation transactions at the end of June. Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems received a $3.6 billion modification to change the advanced acquisition contract for E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes to a multiyear, fixed-price-incentive-firm target contract. The contract modification further provides for procurement of 25 full-rate-production E-2Ds. Work is expected to be completed in August 2021. Meantime, Boeing received a $1.94 billion fixed-price-incentive-fee contract for full-rate production of 11 Lot 38 F/A-18E Super Hornets and 33 EA-18G Growlers.
The U.S. Navy last month tested how radar-absorbing, carbon-fiber clouds can prevent a missile from detecting and striking its maritime target, Navy officials say. The Navy tested the manmade clouds, called maritime obscurant generator prototypes, to assess their tactical effectiveness for anti-ship missile defenses. The systems and tactics were tested off Guam under a variety of at-sea conditions using unidentified assets from the Army, Navy and Air Force to evaluate how the radar-absorbing, carbon-fiber clouds can protect naval assets as part of a layered defense, officials say.
Mars One, the Dutch nonprofit with ambitious plans to start a human colony on the red planet in the mid-2020s, has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a range of engineering payloads suitable for the robotic lander it hopes to dispatch in August 2018. The lander and its landing area are intended to serve as the staging site for the organization’s first settlers. The 17-page RFP seeks responses from the private sector, academia and nonprofits prepared to compete for 44 kg (97 lb.) of total lander payload availability.
NASA faces $1.1 billion in environmental cleanup liabilities from decades of rocket testing and other research activities, according to the agency’s inspector general. But NASA’s entire budget for such work could be overwhelmed by a single project: restoration of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory northwest of Los Angeles. Working with California officials, NASA has committed $200 million in 2016-17 to the cleanup of the former rocket-testing facility shared with the U.S. Air Force, which is more than the agency’s entire environmental management budget of $153 million.
