Clay Lacy, legendary aviator and entrepreneur, was honored with the Pathfinder Award at the Seattle Museum of Flight , also the location of the beginning and end of his record-setting around-the-world flight for children’s charity in 1988.
A major government information technology (IT) trade organization in Washington is predicting overall U.S. defense spending will drop to $633 billion by Fiscal 2021, from more than $700 billion per year now. Moreover, accounting for expected inflation over the decade, the annual defense budget will have plummeted $512 billion in constant Fiscal 2011 dollars—close to the equivalent of a one-year baseline budget now, excluding war costs.
Designers of future spacecraft that need to dock with each other for crew and cargo transfers are likely to use a new set of interface standards just published by the International Space Station partners in the hope they will simplify human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Amy Butler (Washington), Robert Wall (London)
Although political and military preparations are setting the stage for NATO approval of a more expansive involvement in missile defense, next month’s Lisbon summit is once again expected to stop shy of pushing forward full force on the concept of territorial defense throughout the alliance.
Corruption allegations are hobbling the Philippines military from procuring helicopters, but delivery of trainer aircraft and efforts to purchase a second-hand Lockheed Martin C-130 appear to be on track. Derco Aerospace, an arm of Sikorsky, is on the brink of winning a contract to sell a refurbished C-130H to the Philippine Air Force, say officials at the air force and the defense department. This C-130H arrived in the Philippines on Oct. 11 and if it passes the air force’s technical evaluation it will be selected, the officials say.
National security reviews share a pattern the world over. They begin with the best of intentions, strategically driven but fiscally informed; they end up fiscally driven and, when lucky, strategically informed. The results are often pretty ugly. A case in point is the strategy and spending plan unveiled last week in Britain (see p. 20).
Imminent deregulation of China’s low-altitude airspace will help secure the future of the country’s rapidly growing business aviation sector. Opening up the skies for small general aviation aircraft should result in building of the small airports that business aviation will need in the coming years.
The U.K. next year is expected to kick off a competition to modernize and upgrade deployed forces’ ability to use geospatial intelligence products. The effort should produce a cultural shift within the British armed forces, pushing geospatial intelligence to lower levels of command and proliferating the availability beyond a small group of specialists. The program, called the Future Deployable Geospatial Intelligence (FDG) capability, is designed to modernize part of the Joint Aeronautical and Geospatial Organization.
Star Alliance members have been left awaiting the prize of Air India’s entry into their membership and the promise of increased access to the subcontinent that comes with it. The carrier, sponsored by Lufthansa for membership in December 2007, says an ongoing struggle with information technology (IT)-related matters has prompted it to push back its entry into the global airline alliance to summer 2011 instead of the first quarter, as planned.
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The Brazilian government is undertaking a broad-based review of the country’s defense industrial base with the goal of identifying spending areas to strengthen its local supply base. The 18-month effort is being led by the Brazilian agency for industrial development and supported by several ministries. The goal is to assess the competitiveness of public and private elements of the country’s defense industrial base and then devise an industrial development policy as Brazil strives to become less dependent on foreign suppliers for defense products.
Arianespace is warning members of its supply chain and European governments that they must bear more of the operating costs for Europe’s expanding panoply of launcher systems if the systems are to remain viable in the face of growing competition and a tightening launch market.
As the fastest and longest-range business jet ever developed from a clean sheet, the Gulfstream G650 is a bright spot in a beleaguered industry (page 52). The $65-million jet is scheduled to enter service in 2012, but it won’t be alone at the top for long now that Bombardier has unveiled plans to field a competitor (page 59). G6001, the first G650 flight-test aircraft, flies over Savannah, Ga., with a nose boom for gathering data. Gulfstream Aerospace photo.
Bill Colleran (see photo) has been named director-technical information services of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. ; Tony Swift has become field service representative in northern New Jersey, and Robert Glasscock and Mitchell Cannon have been appointed program administrators within the company’s Organizational Designation Authorization office.
Robert Wall (London), David A. Fulghum (Washington)
Evidence continues to emerge that ballistic missile development ties between North Korea and Iran are active and producing improvements in the arsenals of both countries. While Iran has been the junior partner in the relationship in the past—acquiring No Dong and other missile technologies to build its own systems—a reverse flow of technical know-how is now underway.
Michael J. Paul has been named executive director of Stamford, Conn.-based Passur Aerospace Inc. ’s Technology Advisory Board. He was president of Predictive Business Systems and had been chief information officer and vice president-materials planning at Sikorsky Aircraft.
As Italy reconsiders its overall involvement in Afghanistan as part of its NATO commitment, military planners are preparing the ground for a potential quick purchase of Hellfire missiles to arm unmanned aircraft in the region.
India’s domestically developed airborne early warning and control system is taking a big step forward with the first of three modified Embraer EMB-145s headed for flight trials in Brazil. The preliminary testing, due to kick off in the next two months, will be carried out in Brazil by Embraer and a team from the Indian air force’s Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE) in association with Brazil’s Agencia Nacional de Aviacao Civil and its Indian counterpart, the Center for Military Airworthiness and Certification (Cemilac).
