General Dynamics has named Phebe Novakovic president and COO, positioning the 54-year-old as the front-runner to succeed Chairman and CEO Jay Johnson. Novakovic has been a senior executive at the company since 2002 and last headed the Marine Systems group.
New chief executives, like political leaders, traditionally are given a 100-day honeymoon period when they take the helm. For incoming EADS CEO Tom Enders, the honeymoon has ended 100 days before he even takes office.
March 19-21—International Academy of Astronautics/American Astronautical Society's Conference on Dynamics and Control of Space Systems. Hotel Ipanema, Porto, Portugal. See www.astrodynamics.org.pt/ March 19-22—Introduction to Aeronautics. National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, Va. Call +1 (970) 887-3155 or see www.practicalaero.com March 21-22—Avionics Europe 2012 Conference and Exhibition. MOC Event Center, Munich. Call +44 (199) 265-6619 or see www.avionics-event.com
Nelson Ford has become chairman of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, West Sacramento, Calif. He is president and CEO of consulting firm LMI and had been undersecretary of the U.S. Army.
The official Chinese military budget exceeds $100 billion annually for the first time, but don't take that number too seriously. The figure Beijing cops to each year is only a fraction of its actual defense spending. It is more useful to tea-leaf readers trying to divine the message being sent than it is for analysis of year-to-year trends. Personnel costs are proportionally much larger than for Western nations. Still, U.S. lawmakers note, China is extending a buildup in new stealth aircraft, electronic warfare, cyberwarfare and naval fleets.
EADS appears to be rethinking its push of the Talarion unmanned aircraft, after a prolonged period of unsuccessfully trying to get Germany and other European countries to back its development. EADS continues to fly its Barracuda unmanned aircraft demonstrator and, this year, plans another flight-test campaign in Canada. But that does not mean EADS has made its peace with the decision in France and the U.K. to back the BAE Systems/Dassault Aviation Telemos unmanned aircraft for their future medium-extended long-endurance system.
China's new medium space launcher, the Long March 7, should fly late next year, entering service in an initial version capable of lifting 13.5 metric tons (30,000 lb.) to low Earth orbit, making it significantly larger than current Chinese rockets. The launcher will have four boosters, says Shen Lin, the principal engineer at manufacturer CALT, adding that China is also planning new upper stages.
For portions of the U.S. defense industry, China's military rise is viewed as an opportunity. As Beijing develops and fields more advanced defenses, the U.S. plans to respond with new spending on air, naval, missile defense and cyberforces. Indeed, this was underscored by the U.S. strategy pivot to Asia that was unveiled in January. But China's rise could also pose three challenges to U.S. defense companies in ways that may not be currently appreciated or understood.
Ryan O'Toole has become a director in the Aerospace-Defense-Government Group of Los Angeles-based Houlihan Lokey. He was a director at Lazard Freres & Co.
The call by carriers to standardize composite training certification, techniques and material mounts by the minute, with the Boeing 787 an operational fait accompli, and the Airbus A350 waiting to take wing.
When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Washington last year, he unveiled with great fanfare $19 billion worth of purchases for Boeing 737 and 777 jets. There was only one catch: The aircraft had actually been ordered between 2007 and 2009. The central government in Beijing has long used its requisite sign-off on orders by Chinese airlines as a tool to further its political agenda, doling out—or withholding—big-ticket purchases at opportune moments.
Planetary scientists in the U.S. and Europe are smarting from a $226.2 million cut in NASA's requested funding for robotic Mars exploration. That drives the final nail in the coffin of a joint Mars effort with the European Space Agency and obscures the future of Mars exploration in general.
Shanghai Aviation Services Co. signed a two-year maintenance agreement with LOT Polish Airlines for Boeing 767-300 heavy maintenance. This is the first agreement between the two companies.
The promise that high-bandwidth satellites can bring fast, cheap Internet to the masses will be put to the test in 2012 as a new generation of Ka-band spacecraft enters service in the U.S. and Europe, with plans to expand into Russia, Australia and Latin America.
In a speech to the Wings Club in New York last month, Bombardier President/CEO Pierre Beaudoin defended the Canadian aircraft manufacturer's new CSeries against “naysayers,” including the ones who have raised questions about the supposed “slow” order uptake for the 100-145-seat aircraft.
U.S. space-policy leaders remain divided over NASA's direction as President Barack Obama's first term winds down, with another slugfest between the White House and Congress over the agency's fiscal 2013 budget request likely this year.
Aircraft manufacturers are adamant that airlines will continue to be able to raise the needed funds to finance aircraft on order, but a more pertinent question for the airlines is “at what price?”
Gunjan Bagla's admirable “How to Win Indian Business” (AW&ST Feb. 13, p. 58) could be applied to almost any country. I grew up in South America in the 1960s and experienced first-hand the culture of the arrogant U.S. business professional. Most never bothered to learn Spanish. Their children went to American-run schools, and consequently never learned the native language. The Americans had their own compounds, clubs and local culture.
Final site clearing is under way for construction of a 180,000-sq.-ft. delivery center for Boeing's widebody aircraft factory in Everett, Wash. Expected to open early next year, the new Everett Delivery Center north of Seattle is replacing a 60,000-sq.-ft. facility that dates to the late 1960s when Boeing was developing its first widebody jets, the 747-100/-200s. The new center will be built on the same site south of the widebody factory.
This year is supposed to be pivotal for Europe's ambitious effort to redraw its convoluted airspace. But even if states meet deadlines to form new cross-border airspace blocks, airlines are skeptical that this will bring the project's promised efficiency gains any closer to reality.
In perhaps a sign of its seriousness in wanting to balance its defense equipment plan and budget, the U.K. is contemplating reversing a key modernization decision by again switching which F-35 Joint Strike Fighter model the country will buy.
A table listing stored passenger aircraft in the March 5 edition (p. 24) contained an error regarding Boeing 747-400s. Last week, Aviation Week Intelligence Network data showed 58 of the 747 variant were parked. An industry source indicated several of those would return to revenue service soon.
Low-cost carriers such as Ryanair are capturing more market share in Italy, which has prompted Alitalia to fight back by seeking to acquire Blue Panorama and Wind Jet. Blue Panorama, owned by Franco Pecci, operates both charter and leisure flights, as well as scheduled traffic through its low-cost arm, Blu-Express. It has a fleet of 12 mostly leased Boeing aircraft, half of them widebodies, and operates from bases at Rome's Fiumicino Airport and Milan's Malpensa Airport. In 2011, it carried around 2 million passengers.
A billion passengers will board U.S. airlines in 2024, and revenue-passenger-miles will nearly double over the next two decades, the FAA predicts in a new forecast. That number sounds impressive—and it is—but consider it in context: A year ago, the FAA thought enplanements would hit the billion mark by 2021 and that RPMs would more than double in 20 years. What changed? More U.S. airline consolidation and another bankruptcy, for starters, the FAA says.
