Sensing continued financial pressure even in the well-protected electronic-warfare domain, the U.S. Navy is slicing through red tape to streamline acquisition of its prized Next Generation Jammer (NGJ).
USMC Lt. Col. (ret.) Paul E. Damphousse has been named executive director of the Washington-based National Space Society. He was chief of advanced concepts for the National Security Space Office and the Defense Department executive agent for space.
Thank you for naming United Technologies Corp. Chairman/CEO Louis R. Chenevert your 2011 Person of the Year (AW&ST Jan. 2, p. 42). As a worker for an aerospace manufacturing operation in India, I must say that during Chenevert's shop tour of our facility in 2008 it was clear he was a hands-on leader who understood the nuances of operations and manufacturing. All workers in these tumultuous economic times must embrace the basics of competence and excellence. Chenevert personifies those qualities.
Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate most likely to support reductions in defense spending, ranks third in terms of donations from defense industry employees. Paul might want to end the war in Afghanistan, scrap all aid to foreign governments and see Pentagon spending tumble by $1 trillion, but the Texan with Libertarian tendencies strikes a chord with the defense industry's techno-geek workforce.
Guiseppe Coccon is the new senior VP-communications at Avio Group, Turin, Italy. He was communications and media relations director at the Barilla Group.
Bart LaGrone (see photo) has been appointed VP-airborne early warning and battle management command control programs at the Bethpage, N.Y., facility of Northrop Grumman. He was deputy integrated project team leader for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program.
The uncontrolled reentry of Russia's stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft presented a moving target to satellite trackers just days before pieces of the botched Mars mission were expected to fall to Earth.
Thailand Receives First of Two C212-400s on OrderThailand Receives First of Two C212-400s on OrderThailand Receives First of Two C212-400s on Order....
Shame on Aviation Week for naming UTC Chairman Louis Chenevert “Person of the Year.” You have American workers making a world-class product at a profit (building nacelles in California) and the first thing Chenevert wants to do is to send these jobs overseas? This type of action is the reason middle-class workers in this country are unemployed and unable to find jobs. Corona, Calif.
Hugh Dunleavy (see photo) has joined Kuala Lumpur-based Malaysia Airlines as the leader of network, alliance, strategy and planning, and Shihaj Kutty as head of revenue management. Dunleavy was executive VP-strategy and planning at WestJet, and Kutty head of pricing at Etihad Airways.
With little publicity, South Korean engineers are working on the largest and most complicated aircraft their country has built independently, an unmanned surveillance aircraft called MUAV. From the scanty information available, they seem to have a technically successful program on their hands, one that augurs well for their ambitious national industry. The problem is that it might turn out to be a fiscal failure.
Tired of cost and schedule overruns, the U.K. Defense Ministry is applying top-level oversight on troubled programs to force companies to cure persistent ills. Unfortunately, in one of the first test cases—the Watchkeeper unmanned aircraft program—that strategy has not panned out.
Jan. 24-25—SMI Conferences' Joint Forces Simulation & Training. Grange City Hotel, London. Call +44 (207) 827-6000 or see www.jointforcestraining.com Jan. 28—American Heroes Air Show. Lee County Sports Complex, Fort Myers, Fla. See www.heroes-airshow.com/fortmyers/ Jan. 31-Feb. 2—Aerial Refueling Systems Advisory Group's Winter Planning Meeting. Hilton Palacio del Rio, San Antonio. Call +1 (937) 431-8106 or see www.arsaginc.com
Lockheed Martin is putting NASA's first Orion multipurpose crew vehicle through ground test at its facility near Denver. Lockheed Martin photographer Patrick H. Corkery shot the ground test article in an acoustic chamber, with and without the ogive that would protect it from the plume of the launch abort system at the top if it is needed to pull the capsule off a failing launch vehicle. Then he digitally blended the two photos to get the see-through effect on the cover image. Next up will be system vibration testing on the crew module.
Just in time to help carry out new defense priorities and changes that the White House and Pentagon announced last week, the four-star chief of the National Guard has taken his seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The move marks the first significant change to the Joint Chiefs since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, and brings full and equal Joint Chiefs representation to a part-time element of the military that not only is not a free-standing armed service, but is also shared with state governors. The move caps a decade-long effort.
