Christine Kelly Singley has become managing director of corporate communications for US Airways. She was head of executive, international, operational and internal communications for Delta Air Lines.
Phillip Spector has joined the satellite/space practice at law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in its Washington office. He was general counsel and head of business development at Intelsat.
USAF Maj. Gen. Margaret H. Woodward has been appointed director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office in the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff at USAF Headquarters at the Pentagon. She has been Air Force chief of safety/commander of the Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland AFB, N.M. Brig. Gen. Lee K. Levy, 2nd, has been selected for promotion to major general and appointment as vice director of logistics for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. He has been director of logistics at Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill. Levy will be succeeded by Brig.
Spacecraft manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. are finding new business in Brazil's emerging satellite market, with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Space Systems/Loral (SSL) tapped in recent weeks to build new commercial spacecraft. Brazil, the world's seventh-largest economy, is expected to spend roughly $2 billion between 2012-15 on new civil and military space initiatives.
Aug. 29-Sept. 1—Asian/Australian Rotorcraft Forum. Tianjin, China. See www.arf2013.nuaa.edu.cn/ Sept. 3-6—39th European Rotorcraft Forum. Moscow. See erf2013.org/ Sept. 5-8—China Helicopter Exposition. See www.helicopter-china-expo.com/ Sept. 9-12—Fifth Boeing/Northrop Grumman/Elysium Joint Global Product Data Interoperability Summit. Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort, Chandler, Ariz. See www.gpdisonline.com Sept. 10-12—AIAA Space 2013 Conference and Exposition. San Diego. See www.aiaa.org/SPACE2013
It seems everybody is all “Fired Up” and moving in opposite directions: the UAE's GCAA urges installation of cockpit video recorders (CVR) in its final report on the 2010 crash of UPS Flight 6, and for 13 years the NTSB has pushed the FAA to require just that. But the FAA has declined to act, and pilot unions “are firmly against the idea.” So what else is new?
20% - The amount of federal information technology spending that goes to cyber-security related projects, according to the Office of Management and Budget. $100 Billion - The estimated annual cost of malicious cyberactivity, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. $165 Billion - The potential size of the market for cybersecurity solutions by 2023, according to Strategic Defense Intelligence. 30,000+ - The number of users spear-phished in the March 20 Operation Troy attack in South Korea.
The U.S. Navy has issued separate, $15 million contracts to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics to conduct preliminary design reviews of their bids for the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (Uclass) program. Nearly $5 million of the awards has been obligated to each of the companies, based on the Pentagon's Aug. 14 announcement. In parallel with this work, slated to wrap up next June, each of these contractors is working to mature its air vehicle concepts.
It was a scientist's nightmare: an expensive test meant to study an exotic virus ruined by contamination because someone had forgotten to sterilize the equipment. And it didn't just happen once, but several times. Except the setting wasn't a medical laboratory, it was a military cyber range in Texas. And the tests weren't from leaving old samples of Ebola in the petri dish, but a failure to cleanse and reboot infected computers used in prior tests.
ATK plans to develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever flown, for the planned Stratolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle (ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. Scott Lehr, vice president of ATK's Defense and Commercial Div., says the first- and second-stage motors that ATK will build for Orbital Sciences Corp. will be larger than the 92-in.-dia. cases it currently makes for its GEM 30 line of commercial solid-rocket motors, and larger than the 10.5-ft.
The FAA's fire safety branch is ordering 45,800 lithium-chemistry batteries for “large-scale” fire tests in a Boeing 727 testbed at its William J. Hughes Technical Center this fall. According to a request for quote issued on Aug. 13, the batteries are to be used as part of ongoing research “in support of a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and FAA rulemaking on the shipment of lithium-ion batteries by air. “These cells are to be used for large-scale fire tests that will provide data in support of the rulemaking,” says the FAA.
In what appears to be a major challenge to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, a recent Israeli-launched drone strike against suspected terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula breached Egyptian sovereignty for the first time since the 1979 accord. The strike occurred in the midst of a sensitive time for the Egyptian army; it is still clashing with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood movement—more than a month after Egyptian top brass deposed the movement from power. The two nations have tried to deny that the Aug. 9 strike took place.
Duncan Milne (see photo) has become director of business development for Proxy Technologies, Reston, Va. He is a retired USMC colonel and naval aviator who was chief operations officer of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing in San Diego. Honors And Elections
Northrop Grumman expects to be under contract shortly with Lockheed Martin after being selected to supply the active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for an F-16 avionics upgrade under development for the U.S. Air Force and Taiwan. Lockheed is prime contractor for the Combat Avionics Programmed Extension Suite upgrade and was tasked by the Air Force with making the AESA source selection, choosing incumbent F-16 radar supplier Northrop over rival Raytheon. About 300 U.S.
Eileen Arnold, a systems engineer at UTC Aerospace Systems, Charlotte, N.C., has been named an International Council on Systems Engineering (Incose) fellow for her contributions to systems engineering. She was cited for leadership in establishing Incose's Expert Systems Engineering Professional credential and industry promotion of systems engineering.
Unmanned-aircraft makers and their big-league lobby group, the Aerospace Industries Association, are forecasting a ramped-up public relations campaign to demystify UAVs and warn against allowing them to suffer from export restrictions akin to those weathered by the U.S. commercial satellite industry over the last decade and a half (see page 46).
A divided Congress has generated what is likely to be a contentious conference to iron out differences between the Democratic and Republican versions of the NASA reauthorization bill. In another party-line vote, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee adopted its version of the three-year, $18-billion-plus annual NASA spending plan that was shot down in the Republican-controlled House Science, Space and Technology panel last month (AW&ST July 22, p. 21).
A more robust and maturing sensor network for the U.S. missile defense architecture is allowing planners to expand the options for an enhanced kill vehicle (KV).
Sabine Reim has been named London-based vice president-airline network strategy for the InterVistas Consulting Group, effective Sept. 23. She has been head of network development for British Airways' African, Middle Eastern and Central Asian routes.
Jane Ahrens (see photo) has been named a senior supervising architect in the Dallas office of Parsons Brinckerhoff, to work on the redevelopment of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. She was a senior associate and director of sustainability at a Dallas design firm, where she managed projects at Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport and Gulfport-Biloxi (Miss.) International Airport, and an assistant professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Texas at Arlington.
