Amy Butler (Washington), Bill Sweetman (Washington)
In December 2011, Iran proudly displayed on state television a stealthy U.S. unmanned aircraft it claimed it had downed while conducting reconnaissance overflights. The trophy was a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, an aircraft publicly acknowledged by the U.S. Air Force two years earlier.
Jan. 21-22—MRO Latin America. Rio de Janeiro. Feb. 4-6—MRO Middle East. Dubai. Feb. 10—Air Transport World's 40th Annual Airline Industry Achievement Awards. Pan Pacific Singapore Hotel. March 4-5—Defense Technology and Affordability Requirements. Washington. March 6—Aviation Week's Laureate Awards. Washington. April 8-10—MRO Americas. Phoenix. You can now register ONLINEfor Aviation Week Events. Go to www.aviationweek.com/events or call +1 (212) 904-4682.
This week's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on Asiana Airlines Flight 214 is more than a deep dive into why a Boeing 777 crash-landed at a major U.S. hub on a near-perfect summer morning. It is the continuation of an escalating discussion on—as the NTSB puts it so well in its press advisory on the hearing—“pilot awareness in highly automated aircraft.”
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) launched its first Falcon 9 v1.1 mission to geosynchronous transfer orbit Dec. 3, marking the Hawthorne, Calif.-based startup's entry into the commercial launch market and positioning it to unseat United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture that launches most NASA, U.S. Air Force and intelligence community missions. Liftoff occurred at 5:41 p.m. local time from SpaceX Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. The two-stage, liquid-fueled Falcon 9 sent the Orbital Sciences Corp.
In an unprecedented move, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) is planning to resource its industrial base at a level beyond the number of rocket orders placed by the Pentagon.
Recent launches of two converted Soviet-era ballistic missiles have reaffirmed the vehicles' presence in the market for lofting small satellites, a sector once reserved for research and technology demonstrations that is seeing increased demand for commercial applications, including optical and radar imagery and communications.
To call launch market upstart Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) a change agent would not be an overstatement. The company is bursting onto the scene with the stated goal of CEO Elon Musk to break the monopoly for U.S. national security launches now held by the United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. Air Force officials say they are already seeing ULA take measures to become more efficient and reduce cost (see page 43). And SpaceX is infusing the market with new manufacturing and design techniques.
If Lockheed Martin can build the SR-72, it will be a technological marvel. However, with states dependent on computers for all defense functions, the U.S. would be better served by spending the money on cyberwarfare, which can locate and disable or destroy military installations at the speed of light—quite a bit faster than Mach 6. Denver, Colo.
Serving up a most unlikely exception in a town where “Nay!” prevails, the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration have said “Yea!” to the Small Airplane Revitalization Act of 2013, benefitting manufacturers of general aviation aircraft.
Chris van Gend has become Singapore-based manager of engineering for Asia for Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty. He was head of the Asia-Pacific hub for Catlin's energy and construction businesses.
Reader Robert Owen puts forth that the world has changed as an argument for retiring the A-10 (AW&ST Nov. 25, p. 8). Well the world may have changed, but the aircraft is still relevant.
Scott Webster has been named chairman/CEO/managing director of MBDA Inc., Arlington, Va. He succeeds Jerry Agee, who is retiring. Webster has been a member of the board of directors and was a co-founder of the Orbital Sciences Corp.
For years, space industry pundits have been forecasting a coming boom in the small-satellite market. The key question now is not so much the size of the business opportunity, but how best to unlock its full potential.
PhoneSat 2.4, one of the record 29 nanosatellites launched last month on a Minotaur rocket from Wallops Island, Va., as part of the U.S. Air Force ORS 3 mission, has radioed controllers at Ames Research Center that its systems are all “go.” The 1-kg (2.2-lb.) cubesat incorporates the innards of a Stock Nexus S smartphone with the Android operating system in NASA's second demonstration that off-the-shelf cell-phone technology can operate in orbit.
For suppliers of defense equipment, selling a platform or a subsystem is just the beginning. The importance of what would be called “after-sales service” in the commercial market has increased as the global economic climate has worsened, but in certain sectors it has never really been about just selling a product. This is particularly true of electronic warfare (EW) systems.
Since Olympic ski runs rarely occur in palm-treed towns, Russian President Vladimir Putin may soon be sweating the snow report for Sochi. But Rhonda Fullerton is fretting over her summer Olympics conditions now. As director of the Citation Special Olympics Airlift, she must find big-hearted jet operators to supply 175 Citations to carry athletes, coaches or sponsors to and from the games in the Princeton, N.J., area, June 14-21.
The big government rocket Congress has insisted be built for deep-space human exploration is on track for a 2017 first flight. So far, there are no serious technical issues in sight and it is garnering growing interest from other potential users, according to the NASA managers responsible for developing the heavy-lift vehicle known as the Space Launch System (SLS).
Outside experts are responding to NASA's call to lasso an asteroid, providing the agency's Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) planners with new momentum for the two-phase strategy to resume U.S. human deep-space exploration while demonstrating capabilities to find and deflect asteroids that pose an impact threat to Earth.
This week, Aviation Week publishes two editions. On the covers of both is a U.S. Air Force unmanned aircraft capable of penetrating the most advanced air defenses (page 20). We collaborated with artist Ronnie Olsthoorn (www.aviationart.aero) to create this conceptual illustration of the RQ-180 based on government and industry information, public documents and basic design principles. Both editions include reports on the wrangling over EU emissions trading (page 39), China's claim to new airspace (page 31) and the Blue Origin commercial space effort (page 29).
Roddy Boggus (see photo), a senior vice president and aviation market leader at Parsons Brinckerhoff, has been named to the board of directors of the International Association of Airport Executives. He has been a senior executive with architectural and engineering firms active in the aviation market and was co-owner of Hodges-Boggus Architects, an aviation architectural firm serving airline operations, including American and Continental.
NASA gave the green light Dec. 4 to continued work on a plan to extend its crippled Kepler Space Telescope mission. Known as K2, the plan is intended to help resume Kepler's search for other worlds using an orbital maneuver to compensate for the loss of two of the spacecraft's four gyro-like reaction wheels. “This is not a decision to continue operating the Kepler spacecraft or to conduct a two-wheel extended mission,” Paul Hertz, head of NASA's Astrophysics Div., said Dec. 4.
Startup World View Enterprises Inc. envisions a commercial high-altitude balloon experience for luxury-minded passengers and scientific researchers that will strive to deliver many of the prolonged experiences of spaceflight without the confinement, cost, risks or health limitations associated with rocket launches.
Days after word circulated about the FAA's plans to institute sleep-apnea testing for obese pilots and controllers, House lawmakers scrambled to slow the proposal. Last week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a bill that would require the FAA to conduct a formal rulemaking if it mandates that pilots and controllers undergo testing for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and potentially seek treatment.
