Japan recently decided to order Lockheed Martin F-35s and now the air force has set its sights on aerial refueling tankers. But Tokyo's budget woes and political instability are factors to watch, as they may undermine those procurements. The current government is shaky. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's approval rating is just 29%, according to a Kyodo News poll conducted on Feb. 18-19. Noda has been in the top job for only eight months, which is not too surprising considering that Japan has had six prime ministers in the past five years.
In the 1990s the Pentagon was spending a lot of missile defense money on technology that could link its missile-launch warning sensors to “cue” the missile-intercept weapons it was developing. At the same time, astronomers worldwide were using the Internet and an instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory to cue their ground-based telescopes to gamma ray bursts virtually anywhere in the universe.
Dr. Alexander Zelinsky has been appointed chief defense scientist and head of Australia's Defense Science and Technology Organization, succeeding Prof. Robert Clark, who has retired. Zelinsky was group executive of the Information Sciences Group in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Wayne Trzeciak has become VP-supply chain at Professional Aircraft Accessories, Titusville, Fla. He was manager of spares support for Honda Aircraft Co. and has held leadership positions at Bombardier Aerospace Service Centers.
Amy Butler (Washington), Graham Warwick (Washington)
Not one year after U.S. Air Force officials closed the door on the controversial saga of choosing a contractor for the KC-135 refueler replacement, the service is once again being forced to investigate a source-selection foul-up.
There are many ways to read the deal announced last week between Washington and Pyongyang. Maybe it's just another cynical ploy by North Korea, which has reversed course many times before. Maybe it is a calculated move by Washington to step back from any possibility of a war on the Korean peninsula as the West focuses on Iran. Or just maybe it is the fragile seed of a breakthrough that could lead to a permanent peace in the never-ended Korean War.
LaRoux Gillespie has been elected 2012 president of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Dearborn, Mich. He has been quality assurance manager of Honeywell's Federal Manufacturing & Technologies Div.
Italians are developing a grudge when it comes to Pentagon procurement, and it may come back to haunt the U.S. government. The latest source of frustration is the U.S. Air Force's proposal to mothball 21 C-27J Spartans now on contract with U.S. prime L-3 Communications and the aircraft's maker, Finmeccanica's Alenia Aermacchi unit. At least 13 C-27Js have been delivered, and the Air Force plans to continue production of the final eight—in various stages of construction in Italy—because it would cost more to terminate the contract.
In his article about Mooney Aircraft (AW&ST Feb. 6, p. 23), William Garvey notes that the Kerrville, Texas, manufacturing facility has aged, and suggests that its age contributes to high costs. But there is a bigger story here—why have manufacturing costs to build small airplanes steadily increased since the 1960s? The Kerrville plant routinely produced three M-20s each day back then, using about 1,000 man-hours per plane. Similar facilities—Piper in Vero Beach, Fla., and the Cessna Pawnee factory in Wichita—had even higher production numbers.
Ryan Huss and Brad Homeyer have been appointed airframe service sales representatives for Duncan Aviation in Lincoln, Neb., and Provo, Utah, respectively. Huss was Bombardier Challenger team leader and Homeyer served Bombardier Challenger and Global operators. Joe Tulowitzki has joined the Turbine Engine Service Sales Team. He spent nearly 12 years at Dallas Airmotive.
Larry Loftis (see photos) has been named VP and general manager of the 787 program at Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle. He headed the 777 program and succeeds Scott Fancher, who becomes VP and general manager of the 777 program.
NASA will try to use its advanced technology programs to mollify planetary scientists outraged over the shutdown of the agency's ambitious plans to explore Mars in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). That may help restore some calm, as long as the capabilities developed as part of NASA's new open-ended technology push advance scientists' stated need to examine Mars samples in laboratories on Earth. So far, it is not clear that the work that is just getting started will be able to do that.
European Union emission allowance (EUA) prices eased back in the first half of February, moving lower in line with German power prices and profit-taking on January's gains.
India is not only one of the world's top 10 defense markets, it is growing and heavily reliant on foreign suppliers, with only 30% of its defense needs met domestically.
Girma Wake has been named chairman of Kigali, Rwanda-based RwandAir. He was CEO of Ethiopian Airlines. Rica Rwigamba, head of tourism and conservation for the Rwanda Development Board, also joins the airline's board. Honors and Elections
Paul Witt has been named general manager of Stevens Aviation's Donaldson Center in Greenville, S.C. He was general manager of a Cessna Aircraft service center.
James L. Roche has been named global aerospace and defense manager of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based CIMdata's Aerospace and Defense Product Lifecycle Management consulting practice. Roche joined CIMdata in 2011 after a 20-year career as an international consultant. Clive Richardson has become regional sales director for AJ Walter Aviation, London. He was a global engine management specialist at Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies.
Nearly 16 years after Boeing seriously revisited the idea of stretching the 747, the company is concluding final flight tests of the first airline derivative of the 747-8 in readiness for an expected service debut in April.
Anderson Leveille grew up in Stowe, Vt., and got his first high-school job in the circa-1820 sawmill his dad owned. There were no blueprints or tolerance gauges, so maintaining the wooden teeth on the mill's bevel gears, which were lubricated with sheep tallow, taught Leveille the value of creative engineering.
Chinese airlines, struggling to find flight crews, offered three-year pilot contracts with salaries 70% higher than the U.S. average, at job fairs in Miami and Las Vegas in the past week, says one of the organizers, Pan Am International Flight Academy. The carriers hired almost 100 of 750 pilots who attended the job fairs. The airlines are expected to continue their efforts at hiring in the U.S., with another job fair planned for next year.
While the 500 customers Virgin Galactic has signed up—at $200,000 each—for a few minutes of microgravity on SpaceShipTwo (SS2) attract the headlines, the company is also seeking a different kind of passenger for its suborbital flights: scientists who are just as eager to buy research space in a box, or even a test tube.
Dulce Carrillo-Kuti has become director of communications and media relations for the Miami-based Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association. She was manager of corporate communications for Latin American divisions at Avon and The Clorox Co.
EADS plans another flight-trial campaign using its Barracuda unmanned aircraft demonstrator in Goose Bay, Labrador, this summer. EADS has been using Barracuda to help validate technologies to allow unmanned aircraft to operate in uncontrolled airspace. A previous flight-test campaign focused on the use of traffic-alert collision avoidance systems as part of an unmanned aircraft's sense-and-avoid technology suite.
Pilots still talk of flights across the Atlantic Ocean—one of the busiest international sectors in aviation—as “a crossing.” It implies an element of voyaging into the unknown. In air traffic management (ATM) terms, it also involves something a bit less romantic: changing flight information regions (FIR) at least three times and arriving into an air traffic system unlike the one from which the aircraft departed.
