I noticed in “Question Time” (AW&ST Jan. 28, p. 30) that you write about the two 32-volt main lithium-ion batteries on the 787. Later, you say that the batteries are made up of eight 3.7-volt cells Do your math and you will find that 8 X 3.7 is 29.6 volts—a far cry from 32 volts. Are there more cells or is the voltage per cell wrong?
Matt Ganz has been appointed president of Berlin-based Boeing Germany and Northern Europe and VP-European technology strategy, effective April 1. He succeeds Marlin Daily, who has retired. Ganz has been VP and general manager of Boeing Research & Technology.
French arms exports were down sharply last year, from €6.5 billion ($8.7 billion) in 2011 to an estimated €5 billion in 2012, thanks to stiff competition from increasingly hungry U.S. contractors and technological gains in countries that until now posed little threat to the world's No. 4 defense exporter.
Dan Nale (see photo) will become senior VP-programs, engineering and test at Savannah, Ga.-based Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., effective April 1, succeeding Pres Henne, who plans to retire March 31. Nale is VP-advanced aircraft programs.
Boeing's Phantom Eye hydrogen-fueled, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle undergoes a 40-kt. taxi test Feb. 6 at Edwards AFB, Calif., on its takeoff trolley before a second flight attempt. The 150-ft.-span aircraft was damaged on its first flight in June 2012 when its landing skid dug into the lakebed runway, but Boeing is persisting in its hopes of building a still larger operational version. A survey of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology strategies worldwide, including new and unconventional platforms, starts on page 38. NASA/Carla Thomas photo.
March 5-6—Defense Technology Requirements. Arlington, VA. March 7—Aviation Week's Laureate Awards. Washington. March 12-14—ATC Global. Amsterdam, Holland. March 12-14—JEC Europe. Paris, France. March 19-21—AeroDef Manufacturing. Long Beach, CA. April 8-11—Space Symposium. Colorado Spring, CO. April 16-18—MRO Americas/MRO Military. Atlanta. April 17-18—MRO Military. Atlanta. May 7-8—Civil Aviation Manufacturing. Charlotte, NC.
Warfare has always been dependent on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Good ISR is a force multiplier; a force with inferior ISR is trusting to luck. Military operations today are even more reliant on ISR and this trend will continue. The reason? Ubiquitous and more precise guided weapons shift more targets from the “easy to find, hard to kill” category (a Soviet tank army crashing through the Fulda Gap was the Cold War exemplar) into the “hard to find, easy to kill” column. Osama bin Laden typifies the last category.
Dean Athans has been named president of the East Hartford, Conn.-based Engine Alliance, succeeding Mary Ellen Jones, who will return to a senior leadership position at Pratt & Whitney. Athans led the LMS100 power turbine product line at GE Power & Water Aero Derivatives business.
The long-delayed solicitation for proposals to host six unmanned aircraft system (UAS) test sites across the U.S. has been issued by the FAA, along with the agency's proposed approach to addressing public concerns over privacy. Initially ignored by the FAA, concerns voiced by civil-liberties organizations that UAS operations at the sites could potentially violate individuals' privacy forced a lengthy delay in responding to the February 2012 congressional direction to establish the test centers.
For an idea of where intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance could be headed in the future, a good place to start is the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which prides itself in looking well beyond even the most far-sighted of its service customers.
A massive U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan next year will trigger a shift in Pentagon priorities and force structure, but do not expect any major changes for the Air Force's intelligence collection fleet. At least, not for now.
Paul Dailey has been named managing director of revenue and competitive analysis and corporate forcecasting at Delta Air Lines, succeeding Dwight James, who will become managing director of transatlantic/joint-venture pricing and revenue management. He follows Mark DeFrancesco, who has become director of domestic pricing.
Turning raw information into useful intelligence for commanders and operators is one of the biggest challenges in intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (Istar). The process involves managing the collected data and fusing it into comprehensive products, which has become more complex as better sensors gather more information and new sources are exploited.
Aerojet will develop a 550,000-lb.-thrust-class main injector and thrust chamber for an oxidizer-rich, staged-combustion, kerosene-fueled rocket engine under a $23.3 million risk-reduction contract. The engine is targeted for NASA's proposed advanced strap-on boosters for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). Under the contract, the fourth that NASA has awarded to begin bringing the heavy-lift SLS to the 130-metric-ton capability ordered by Congress, Aerojet also will prepare for hot-fire tests designed to demonstrate performance and combustion stability.
Jeffrey Vail has been appointed chief marketing officer for Radnor, Pa.-based Quintig. He was senior VP-global corporate marketing for Siemens Enterprise Communications.
The truth is that the future of air traffic management is already here and it is time to start running to meet it. It may be an uphill run, but to achieve our common vision of a globally harmonized and interoperable air navigation system we need to recognize what needs to be done and set about doing it.
International Launch Services (ILS) says the Dec. 8, 2012, failure of a Proton rocket equipped with a Briz M upper stage has been traced to too-high propellant temperatures at liftoff that caused damage to a bearing in the Briz M main engine turbo pump. ILS says the most probable root cause of the failure was a combination of adverse thermal conditions that caused damage to a bearing on the oxidizer side of the turbo pump. The result was a failure of the bearing that caused the fourth burn of the Briz M to end about 4 min.
Eurocopter Mexico has opened an aerostructures manufacturing plant at Queretaro's Aerotech Park that will provide assemblies for its own Ecureil single-engine helicopter series and the Airbus A320 and A330 airliners. The $100 million facility was built as an offset for the Mexican air force and navy's purchase of 15 EC725 helicopters in 2010.
The arrest of Finmeccanica's chairman and CEO and the prospect that the company could be barred from doing business in India's lucrative defense market is shaking the foundations of the Italian aerospace and defense giant, which already was struggling to restructure in the wake of high debt and declining government spending in Europe.
Hand-launched, electrically powered small unmanned air vehicles (SUAV) are usually attached to small formations and in special operations units. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Ground Forces Command (GFC) has been looking at their use at division level, as sensor performance and networking technology improve.
