Bidding jointly to build the U.S. Army’s Joint Multi-Role (JMR) technology demonstrator, Boeing and Sikorsky have selected the latter’s X2 coaxial-rotor high-speed helicopter configuration as the basis of its proposal, to be submitted by March 6. The two companies have teamed to pursue the JMR technology demonstration (TD) and planned a follow-on Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Medium program to field replacements for first the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and then the Boeing AH-64 Apache.
From locating balloons to re-assembling documents, from crowd-designed vehicles to disaster-response robots, researchers are using challenges to draw ideas from those who would never normally do business with the Pentagon.
As budgets are cut and margins squeezed, and business becomes more competitive, industry is turning to challenges to seek diverse views on difficult problems. And the prize, for the companies, can be ideas, talent or visibility in key markets. “Diversity of thought is key to innovation,” says Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer. “The more different views you get on a problem, the more you can facilitate a culture of innovation.”
Sierra Nevada, with team member Embraer of Brazil, has once again defeated Beechcraft for the U.S. Air Force's Light Air Support aircraft contract for the young Afghan defense forces. The aircraft will be used for flight-training, close air support, intelligence-collection and other security missions.
The U.S. has long been a leader in creating new technologies and in creatively adapting existing ones to new uses. This leadership arises from the interaction of several mutually supportive sectors of innovation. But we face a serious challenge to continuing that creative interaction which is so necessary to keep the U.S. engine of innovation strong.
Bolstered by recent new product introductions and buoyant sales of its turboshaft engines, Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) says plans for a next-generation PT6 family replacement will not be firmed up until at least 2014.
The head of the U.K.'s air navigation service is urging government to take the country's busy airspace into consideration as it examines how to build future capacity. Richard Deakin, CEO of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), says several of the leading ideas to solve London's airport capacity problems have not taken into account the challenges of the airspace around them. Officials deciding on the future of London's airports must plan for more than just concrete and terminal buildings, he says.
The fact that large-scale aerospace and defense manufacturing is no longer as prominent in Southern California as it was in the Cold War-era is not news. But the region still leads the nation in the number of small suppliers and many are trying to come up with new ways of doing business, especially as they see ominous headlines about defense cuts from Washington.
Dennis Tito's plan to send a crew of two around Mars is getting a big assist from NASA via a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with its Ames Research Center (see page 24). While Tito will repay NASA for its work, the agency's inspector general and a powerful member of Congress are examining SAAs—which are less restrictive than standard federal business arrangements—to see if they are being abused. That is one of the charges in a whistle-blower report on alleged malfeasance at Ames (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 19). Rep.
U.S. defense budgets are declining, but Parker Hannifin, a leading supplier of hydraulics, fluid systems and flight controls, still sees lots of opportunity in aerospace. With major positions on platforms such as the Airbus A350, Bombardier CSeries, Comac C919 and Embraer Legacy 450/500, the company projects annual aerospace sales will rise two-thirds by mid-2016, to $3.5 billion. Roger Sherrard, president of Parker's aerospace unit, and Thomas L. Williams, executive vice president and operating officer, spoke with AW&ST Editor-in-Chief Joseph C.
Honeywell is fine-tuning a civil helicopter-specific combined vision system based on a recent flight-test campaign that evaluated fused synthetic vision and enhanced vision technologies for the primary flight displays of higher-end models. Though the company had planned to begin offering a helicopter synthetic vision system (SVS) by 2010, complexities in presenting real and database-generated terrain, obstacles and various safety features to a helicopter pilot have slowed the process. Work continues, but no new date has been issued.
Correction: The story in the Feb. 25 issue (page 25) about Piaggio Aero P.1HH Hammerhead UAV stated the wrong payload. The Hammerhead is designed for 16 hr. endurance with a payload of 500 lb. (225 kg) at maximum fuel capacity. Within the structural envelope, the platform is also able to accommodate, by reducing the fuel load, a payload (mission sensors/equipment) up to 2,000 lb.
Boeing is ready to begin higher-altitude, longer-endurance flights of its private-venture Phantom Eye hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft after a redesigned main landing gear passed the test on the vehicle's Feb. 25 second flight, at Edwards AFB, Calif. The aircraft was damaged on its June 1, 2012, first flight when the skid gear dug into the lakebed on landing. The gear bay is concealed behind Mylar film for takeoff and in flight, to reduce drag, and the gear leg must cut through the film to deploy. The redesign repositioned the Mylar cutter.
The penalty that everyone said was too painful to occur is now happening, with Congress's failure to pass a deal to prevent nearly $1 trillion in government spending cuts over a decade. Now the question is how long the pain will last.
