The Army will return to the size it was prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, for now, critical capabilities such as helicopters, UAVs and airlift will be retained. And there ends the good-news portion of last week's announcement from the chief of staff, Gen. Raymond Odierno. The bad news? The 80,000-soldier active-force reduction has nothing to do with sequestration, but rather the first half of the 2011 Budget Control Act—and it will take an act of Congress, literally, to keep from hollowing out the military over the next few years.
Jim Albaugh, retired president/CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and corporate executive vice president and previously president/CEO of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, has been named to receive the 2013 Distinguished Achievement Award of the New York-based Wings Club on Oct. 25.
The University of Maryland's Gamera human-powered helicopter team completed its latest flights on June 26 without, in one flight, meeting the duration, altitude and control requirements required to win the American Helicopter Society (AHS) International's $250,000 Sikorsky Prize—the longest-standing award for human-powered flight. Canada's AeroVelo team believes it may have met the requirements, with its Atlas quadrotor flying for 65 sec., reaching an altitude of 3.3 meters (10 ft.) and drifting no more than 10 meters on a June 14 flight.
As a retired Air National Guardsman (ANG) and former active-duty type, there is a lot of truth to the what was said about ANG members not wanting to go to war, as mentioned in the recent commentary “The Ghost of Vietnam” (AW&ST June 10, p. 23). You cannot blame the active-duty senior leadership for feeling the way they do with regard to the ANG. Many of them have friends listed on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.
European space agencies will spend the rest of the summer evaluating whether there is a role for them in NASA's proposed asteroid-capture mission. Jean Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency, tells NASA Administrator Charles Bolden he has set up a multi-agency working group headed by ESA human-spaceflight chief Thomas Reiter “tasked to elaborate a coherent approach with regard to your new initiative.” Representatives of the space agencies of France, Germany, Italy and the U.K.
Thomas W. Kirchmaier has been named vice president of General Dynamics, Falls Church, Va., and president of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems. He succeeds Lewis F. Von Thaer, who has resigned. Kirchmaier has been the senior vice president and general manager of the Intelligence Solutions Div. of General Dynamics Information Technology.
$450,000 and 80—the amount the Experimental Aircraft Association will pay—under protest—to FAA to cover the expenses of the four-score additional controllers and supervisors required to manage traffic at the July 29-Aug. 4 AirVenture gathering in Oshkosh, Wis., during which 8,000-10,000 aircraft are expected to alight and depart. This is the first time the agency has charged for the service.
Bombardier has delayed first flight of the CSeries airliner by up to a month to allow for additional software upgrades and ground testing. The first flight-test vehicle (FTV1) is now planned to fly “by the end of July.” This is the second slippage and follows postponement of first flight to the end of June from December 2012 because of delays in final assembly and system testing for the all-new narrowbody. The latest delay follows completion of ground vibration tests “as well as software updates and corresponding tests,” Bombardier says.
Nimish Doshi (see photo) has been appointed vice president-business management/CFO of the Falls Church, Va.-based Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Technical Services Sector, effective July 29. He will succeed Dave Harvey, who plans to retire. Doshi has been vice president-business management for the company's Integrated Logistics and Modernization Div. Ian Irving (see photo) has been named chief executive for Australia, effective July 15. He has been managing director of government and defense management consultancy Altilus and had been a deputy CEO of Thales Australia.
SAS made a bold decision to renew its entire long-haul fleet. But whether the airline will actually survive and be able to fund the investments, is beyond its control. That decision is made by the European Commission.
Andrea Greenan has been appointed vice president-communications for Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Jessica Nielsen vice president-communications for Lockheed Martin's Information Systems and Global Solutions Div. Greenan was communicatons director for the Corporate Engineering & Technology Div., acting vice president-enterprise communications and acting vice president-media relations and international communications. Nielsen was executive director of global communications and influencer relations for Dell's IT Services
Until the mid-1990s, nearly 75% of all airline maintenance was performed in-house. In part, that was due to lack of credible alternatives, but it was also a vestige of the pre-deregulation period when maintenance and operations stood as essential and equal pillars of an airline's success, with cost being a far less important element than it is today.
The medium-Earth-orbit constellation designed to bring broadband satellite service to the “other 3 billion” (O3b) customers in the developing world is taking shape above the equator with the launch June 25 of the first four spacecraft on a Soyuz from the European Spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana. Built by Thales Alenia Space, the O3b satellites weigh 700 kg each, and will move 8,062 km above the equator in a repeating orbit that will present the same satellite to a given ground station every 6 hr.
Paul Desgrosseilliers (see photo) has been appointed general manager of ExecuJet Haite Aviation Services, the company's joint venture with the Sichuan Haite Group, Tianjin, China. He was chief representative in China for Jet Aviation and general manager of the Shenzhen Business Aviation Center.
Jazz Air Capt. Murray Munro has won a Presidential Citation from the Washington-based Air Line Pilots Association for his efforts to assist pilots and their families in times of crisis. He was cited for three decades of work with ALPA's Canadian Pilot Assistance Group for contributions to the physical and emotional well-being of cockpit crewmembers at Jazz Air and the eight other Canadian airlines represented by ALPA. FedEx Express Capt.
