The recent rebranding of EADS into Airbus is a superb example of how to justify a top management decision with some strategic rationale that really does not exist. There was clearly an issue with the EADS brand. The name was poorly recognized internationally, but that problem had less to do with the brand itself than with the underlying dynamics within the group.
One hundred years ago, the University of Michigan hired Felix Pawlowski to teach the first U.S. students the subject of aeronautical engineering. Preparing a generation of engineers to build and assure the safety of a country's fledgling airline and aircraft industry was a daunting task. Today, the industry faces a similar challenge in laying the path to develop the nation's next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Aerospace and defense companies large and small plan to hire in 2013. While much of the hiring will replace workers leaving for retirement or a new opportunity, the numbers also include some all-new jobs and new skills.
As a war-weary nation grapples with how to cut military spending and a dysfunctional Congress allows meat-ax budget cuts to fall on the Defense Department and NASA, one might expect that the U.S. aerospace and defense (A&D) industry's best and brightest talent would be heading for the exits. Indeed, one-in-five A&D professionals under the age of 35 submitted resignations in 2012, up from 12% the year before. The good news: most left to go work for another aerospace company.
Obituary: Long-serving NASA astronaut, research pilot and U.S. Air Force test pilot C. Gordon Fullerton died Aug. 21 at home in Lancaster, Calif. He was 76. Fullerton, who logged 382 hr. in space on two shuttle missions, was particularly well known for his work at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, where he was a research test pilot for 22 years.
Long-span wings generate less drag, but design rules limit their slenderness to avoid the potentially catastrophic aeroelastic instability known as flutter. Now, as part of the search for fuel efficiency and long endurance, flexible-wing control technology is being flight-tested to overcome those limits.
Autonomy and low-carbon propulsion are two areas likely to receive greater emphasis at NASA as it embarks upon its new strategy for aeronautics research. The new strategy aligns civil aeronautics research under six thrusts: safe, efficient growth in operations, low-boom supersonic and ultra-efficient subsonic commercial aircraft, low-carbon propulsion, real-time system-wide safety assurance, and assured autonomy.
LONDON — The U.K. National Police Air Service (NPAS) is launching a tender to standardize its fleet of Eurocopter EC135T2 helicopters based around the country. The NPAS operation, which is headed by West Yorkshire Police, has requested information from suppliers to provide mission equipment for several aircraft used by NPAS. The tender covers the installation and integration of the aircraft’s electro-optical camera system, communications and radio equipment, mission system workstations, searchlights and public address system.
The U.S. Army and Marine Corps need more analysis of their simulation-based training to better gauge its costs and benefits vs. live training, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). GAO recommends the services develop metrics and a methodology to compare live and simulation-based training costs. The Pentagon partially concurred, but noted that it “captures all relevant costs needed for decision making,” GAO says in its Aug. 22 report.
Congressional auditors tell U.S. lawmakers that the Pentagon may have more work to do justifying its acquisition of the high-profile Next Generation Jammer (NGJ), given its overlap with other military efforts. “Redundancy in some of these areas may, in fact, be desirable,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in its Aug. 20 report to the Democratic chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.
