Amy Butler (Washington), Michael Bruno (Washington)
The Pentagon is trying to balance demands for restoring readiness and pushing for next-generation technologies in its fiscal 2015 budget request, despite congressional spending limits imposing a $45 billion cut to its expected plan.
Bell has secured its first orders for its Model 525 super-medium and its Model 505 JetRanger X light single-engine helicopters. The JetRanger X received 94 orders on the opening day of Heli-Expo 2014 in Anaheim, Calif., on Feb. 25. The company also announced the first orders for the 525, with 10 from Abu Dhabi Aviation.
The price of carbon dioxide allowances (EUAs) under the EU Emissions Trading System rallied to a 14-month high in February as the European Commission's short-term market intervention proposal gained final agreement and became law.
Space Exploration Technologies is one step closer to competing against the United Launch Alliance, the Pentagon's monopoly rocket provider, for defense work. The U.S. Air Force has ruled that the maiden Falcon 9 v1.1 flight last fall will be counted as one of three required for SpaceX to be certified to compete for boosting U.S. national security payloads.
This week, Aviation Week publishes two editions. A special report on air traffic management includes articles on Nav Canada's initiatives to improve the flow over the busiest oceanic routes (page 32). Nav Canada graphic. Elsewhere in both editions are reports on Rolls-Royce's plans (page 20), changes looming for helicopter operators (page 28), a new U.S. military satellite system (page 22) and repairing damage to composites (page 36). Our MRO Edition cover photo by SR Technics shows a mechanic working on a Rolls-Royce Trent 900.
Some aircraft are regarded as seminal, as having defined or shaped a market, as Boeing's 707 did for the jetliner and General Atomics' Predator has for unmanned aircraft. Such a status could be due the Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-Max helicopter as soon as unmanned cargo delivery becomes routine.
Pamela Drew has been promoted to executive vice president of Exelis, McLean, Va. She will continue as president of the company's information systems business. Drew has been senior vice president-strategic capabilities and technology at TASC Inc. and was vice president-business development for Northrop Grumman Mission Systems.
The pilots of UPS Flight 1354 set up for a non-precision “profile” instrument approach that is rarely used in practice as their Airbus A300-600 freighter approached Birmingham, Ala., in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 13, 2013. For reasons that are still not clear, the captain later switched to a more rudimentary “vertical speed” non-precision approach, used even more infrequently in operations, before the aircraft struck trees and then a hill less than 1 mi. short of the airport's Runway 18.
USMC Lt. Gen. Robert E. Schmidle, Jr., has been named principal deputy director for cost assessment and program evaluation at the Pentagon. He has been deputy commandant for aviation at USMC Headquarters. Schmidle is to be succeeeded by Col. Paul J. Rock, Jr., who has been nominated for promotion to brigadier general. He has been head of the Command and Control Branch under the deputy commandant for aviation.
Jeffrey L. McRae has been appointed senior vice president/CFO of the Triumph Group Inc., Berwyn, Pa. He succeeds M. David Kornblatt, who is now director of corporate development. McRae was president of Triumph Aerostructures' Vought Aircraft Div.
Dennis Tito's ambitious plan to send a married couple on a fast near-term tour of the inner Solar System is losing lift in the face of technical and fiscal reality, but his can-do spirit and choice of working partners is paying off in technology. A deeper dive into mission requirements ruled out the space-tourism pioneer's hope that his personal wealth could seed a two-person Mars flyaround in 2018, and his revised plan for a 580-plus-day trip to Mars via Venus is a long shot.
The civil upheaval in Ukraine is not expected to hamper commercial cargo deliveries to the International Space Station with OSC's Antares launch vehicle because enough of the rocket's Ukrainian hardware has been delivered to support missions into early 2015. Orbital buys the Antares core stage from Ukraine, which inherited a major aerospace center with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Antares stage was developed by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau with legacy from the Soviet-era Zenit rocket, and built at the nearby Yuzhmash state-owned factory.
“Define the Dragon” and “Many on Many” (AW&ST Feb. 3/10, pp. 64 and 66) together present a useful database of the “dogfight” situations in Asia and the world as a whole. But one may need to reach beyond and behind the real-time apparent behavior of those in power, displayed weapons systems and calculated, or often “good enough,” strategic moves of nations.
Aerospace and defense companies feature prominently as partners in two public-private advanced manufacturing institutes launched by the Obama administration. Led by EWI and headquartered in Detroit, the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute (ALMMII) involves a 60-member consortium that includes Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Electric and United Technologies Research Center.
Chris A. Hadfield, former Canadian Space Agency astronaut, author, and musician, has been named to receive the 2014 Space Communicator Award from the Houston-based Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation. Hadfield is a veteran of two space shuttle missions, STS-74 and STS-100, and International Space Station (ISS) mission Soyuz TMA-07M. He was the first Canadian to operate the shuttle's Canadarm in space, the first Canadian to walk in space and the first Canadian commander of the ISS.
Nathan Manning (see photos) has become Fort Worth-based vice president/general manager of the Eaton Aerospace Group's Fluid and Electrical Distribution Div. and Benjamin Yiu Shanghai-based Asia-Pacific general manager. Manning was president/CEO of General Electric and Aviation Industry Corp. of China joint venture Aviage Systems in Shanghai. Yiu was mobile business manager for Power and Motion Controls in the Eaton Hydraulics Group. He had worked for the Concurrent Computer Corp. and China Aerospace International Holdings Ltd.
The successful launch of a Delta IV with the GPS IIF-5 spacecraft Feb. 20 indicates fixes added to the launcher's engine-processing procedures worked as planned, even though final reports on the 2012 Delta IV anomaly that generated low thrust in its RL-10B-2 upper-stage engine are not expected until April. The big rocket carrying the timing and navigation satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8:59 p.m. EST, right on time after a five-month delay, while the issues raised by the 2012 launch were addressed.
Rebecca Rhoads, president of Raytheon Global Business Services and chief information officer, has been inducted into the California State Polytechnic, Pomona, College of Engineering's 2014 Hall of Fame.
Bill Sweetman asks in “Money for Nothing” (AW&ST Feb. 24, p. 16), “Do long research and development programs make contractors rich?” Whenever an aircraft program has been approved, the original equipment manufacturer immediately has two governing rules affecting its income. The first is to develop the new product line and the second is to keep the existing programs pouring money into their coffers.
With a clean sheet and no drag from concerns about commonality with an existing fleet, Bombardier was able to enlist its pilots, engineers, customers and supplier base to come up with a fresh new environment for the flight deck of the CSeries, the company's largest aircraft to date and its first fully fly-by-wire design. It remains to be seen how airline pilots will respond to the new design when deliveries of the CS100 begin in 2015, but a recent “flight” in the company's engineering simulator reveals a cockpit designed specifically with them in mind.
