An unidentified blended wing-body aircraft was photographed over Wichita on April 15, a little more than a month after an apparently similar aircraft was seen over Amarillo, Texas ( AW&ST March 31, p. 30). The trailing edge seems to be less jagged than that of a B-2, and the sweep angle greater. The U.S. Air Force’s 509th Bomb Wing, which earlier confirmed that the Amarillo aircraft was not one of its B-2s, has refused to further discuss individual operations. Air Force headquarters has not responded to request for comment on the Wichita photo.
One or more of the contenders for the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (Uclass)—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrop Grumman—may decline to bid unless they can persuade the Navy to change its requirements, according to government and analyst sources close to the program.
May 5-8 —32nd Annual Space Power Workshop, Manhattan Beach (Calif.) Marriott. www.cvent.com/d/g4qjz1 May 5-9 —American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ SpaceOps 2014: 13th International Conference on Space Operations. Pasadena (Calif.) Convention Center. www.aiaa.org/spaceops2014
In the midst of an ongoing lobbying fight over the fate of the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the Air Force chief of staff is making a last-minute pitch to Congress to retain the service’s plan to retire the aircraft affectionately known as the Warthog. Gen. Mark Welsh, himself a former A-10 pilot, is casting his argument in economic terms: the Air Force stands to save $4.2 billion by retiring the A-10 fleet, he says.
The world's largest maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) market may not grow much in the next decade, but the lack of expansion will not hold back change in response to shifting customer demand and market dynamics.
Two new composite fan blade manufacturing plants for Safran are coming alive this month and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that indicate the Paris-based company’s latest mark of confidence in the CFM Leap-1 engine and the U.S. market.
Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST for data on the Air France- KLM Group’s fleet, financial results and Transform 2015 initiatives, or go to AviationWeek.com/AFKLM
