Few actions could be more damaging to the long-term, game-changing mission of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency than the 2011 Budget Control Act and its recently triggered sequestration cuts and subsequent furloughs, the agency's new director tells Aviation Week. “It's just corrosive,” Arati Prabhakar says. “We work so hard to recruit these amazing people out of universities and companies and other parts of the government.
As Thailand's military seeks to better monitor the country's borders and combat piracy, particularly in the south, it continues to work to boost its network-centric warfare capability. The trend makes Link-T, an indigenously developed data link, the potential linchpin for defense companies hoping to win aircraft contracts there. Avia Saab Technologies, a joint venture between Thai company Savia Satcom and Sweden's Saab, developed Link-T. It was born out of what Thai air force Air Chief Marshal Prajin Juntong refers to as “The Gripen Project.”
Sergey Reznikov has become vice president of Volga-Dnepr Unique Air Cargo (USA). He succeeds Konstantin Vekchine, who was vice president-sales and marketing for charter operations. Reznikov was deputy sales director.
One side-effect of the uncertainties of defense spending is a shrinking of mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity as companies hoard cash rather than invest it. The phenomenon was evident in 2012 and is not limited to the U.S., an analysis by consultants PwC shows. Data extrapolated from the first quarter of this year shows an annual rate of just $6 billion in M&A activity in the aerospace & defense (A&D) sector worldwide compared to a 10-year average of $20 billion.
Sameer Rehman has been named director of international trade support for commercial sales and marketing for Bell Helicopter of Fort Worth. He was managing director of Asia-Pacific commercial sales and has been succeeded by C.M. Hwang, who was commercial business development manager for Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Singapore.
On its fourth attempt, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Boeing X-51A Waverider demonstrator achieved prolonged scramjet-powered hypersonic speeds in its final test flight on May 1. The X-51A is thought to have exceeded Mach 5 and run close to the full duration of the planned powered phase of the test. Based on targets established for the previous test attempts, this could have been as long as 300 sec., followed by an unpowered gliding descent of around 500 sec. prior to impacting the sea off California.
A U.S. Army-integrated upgrade for the Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior has entered flight-testing as the service surprised industry by declaring that no off-the-shelf (OTS) candidate can meet its requirements for the replacement Armed Aerial Scout (AAS).
Inexpensive satellites little bigger than a Rubik's Cube have been the provenance of university and small research projects for more than a decade. Increasingly, innovations from the smartphone world are showing how these classroom projects can play outsized roles in space science.
An opportunity may be slipping from South Korea's hands—if it was ever there. Since at least 2010, the country's government and industry have been working to begin developing a 90-seat turboprop regional airliner, but talks with the latest prospective partner, Bombardier, have failed.
Andy Weeks (see photos) has been named vice president-operations and Deborah Scott group vice president-human resources for Cleveland-based Parker Aerospace. Weeks held senior leadership positions in engineering, sales, marketing, and operations for the Eaton Corp.'s Aerospace Group. Scott was a Parker human resources area manager for the three divisions, as well as the Asia-Pacific region.
Fred Bearden, Senior Appraiser (Laguna Niguel, Calif. ), Aircraft Information Services Inc. (Laguna Niguel, Calif. )
Using retirement age as an indicator affecting future aircraft value seems to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope (AW&ST April 1/8, p. 15). Commercial aircraft do not operate in some standard economic environment. Route structure and operating costs vary significantly from operator to operator worldwide, and have a huge effect on economic viability—and thus useful life and retirement age—of a specific aircraft.
Ian Rollo (see photo) has formed Launch, Technical Workforce Solutions, Oak Brook, Ill., with Jean Rollo and Mike Guagenti. The three are former owners of Volant Aerospace.
Reader Rich Horvath's additions to the list of “sacred cows” that could be eliminated to tighten the U.S. budget have me bemused. His advice to further tighten the U.S. budget was to eliminate U.S. forces in South Korea, Japan and Germany. Of course, those countries will be pressed to go nuclear to replace the “American Umbrella,” but so what.
Australian regional airlines are using an upcoming general election to draw attention to policies they say are strangling the industry. And it appears that a power change is their best hope for seeing at least some of these concerns resolved.
Dave Newton has become Tampa-based engine manager in Central and North Florida and Wolfgang Heuberger Fort Lauderdale-based engine manager for South Florida, both for Dallas Airmotive. Newton was a senior field service manager, while Heuberger was Southern U.S. and Caribbean sales manager for Pratt & Whitney Canada.
Scott Hanratty has become director of sales and marketing and Florin Iancu engineering director of New York-based Advanced Design Technology. Hanratty was vice president-international sales and operations for NEiSoftware, while Iancu was a compressor design engineer for Johnson Controls.
First there were the U.S. defense industry's complaints over a perceived “war on profit.” Then came Ayn Rand-like accusations of a “war on capitalism” by the government. But now, finally, comes the realization among industry executives and analysts alike that as the decade-long fire-hose-strength stream of defense spending is reduced to a trickle, it brings substantially different expectations of the defense industrial base.
Stephen F. Page has joined the board of directors of AeroVironment Inc., Monrovia, Calif. He is retired president/CEO of Otis Elevator and was executive vice president/CFO of Black and Decker. Honors And Elections
