A new radar could give USAF F-15Es electronic and cyber attack munitions. Boeing and Raytheon expect to develop and flight test an advanced radar to modernize the Strike Eagle fleet of 224 aircraft. Plans are for test flights to begin in 2011 and operations by 2014. The $238-million development and demonstration contract will feed the Radar Modernization Program and provide the basis for an electronic upgrade package.
Grob Aerospace plans to file for insolvency as a short-term measure, although at least four potential investors remain in talks to help salvage the business jet company. Grob CEO Niall Olver says the filing is necessary because under German bankruptcy law, money couldn’t be raised due to the preliminary insolvency filing on Aug. 18. Most of the 350 employees will be dismissed on Nov. 3 at the Mattsies facility. A small team will remain to try to work out a long-term solution. The insolvency administrator says the goal is to pick one of four bidders to invest by Nov.
Jeppesen is constantly enhancing its digital approach to electronic charts now used in many cockpits. In the past, the Boeing-owned company kept a large inventory of paper charts (which it still produces) on hand. These Jepp charts were stored in 34-in.-wide X 7-ft.-high cupboards. In all, there were once 80,000 pigeonholes at the Englewood, Colo., headquarters. Now the company is giving them to any employees able to haul them away. The dismantling is made possible in part by Hewlett Packard color print-on-demand machines.
Simrad Optronics and Saab had been contemplating a merger based on Norway’s opting for Gripen fighter aircraft. Even though that decision is still pending, they have decided to proceed. The newly formed company, Vingtech Saab, estimates the market potential for projects started there at about 1 billion Norwegian kroner ($150 billion) over 5-10 years, with a much higher projection if Gripens are selected. The company, to be based in Norway, will develop high-tech optronics products.
The Pentagon continues to struggle with the reliability of its weapon fuzes, most specifically those that are needed to attack targets such as weapons of mass destruction facilities and command bunkers buried deeply underground. Such targets are incredibly challenging, largely because the delicate fuzing mechanisms must survive a violent path through layers of concrete and sand before detonating their warheads.
The International Federation of Air Line Pilots on Nov. 1 planned to appeal to the Tokyo Supreme Court to overturn convictions of two controllers involved in the January 2001 near-collision of two Japan Airlines aircraft. In March 2006, the Tokyo District Court convicted the student controller and his supervisor of professional negligence. However, the prosecutor’s appeal was upheld in April.
Steve James, who has been the NATS representative in Brussels, has been named to the board of directors of the Air Traffic Control Assn. and will represent Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He will also assume a U.K.-based role within NATS. James will be succeeded by Alastair Muir, who has been senior asset manager for infrastructure in NATS’ Operations Strategy and Investment Div.
The liquidating trustee for Dornier Aviation North America (DANA) is threatening to seize Hainan Airlines aircraft or other assets. This could disrupt Hainan’s Beijing-Seattle service, because the Chinese carrier has not complied with an August order from a federal judge to pay $14 million in debt, interest and attorney’s fees related to aircraft parts it purchased from the former U.S. company. On Oct.
NASA and South Korea’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology launched an eight-month study to identify potential areas of cooperation in civil space and aeronautics on Oct. 29, following the signature of a statement of intent in Seoul. The two agencies will discuss cooperation on space exploration, Earth and planetary science, human spaceflight and aeronautics research. Potential efforts include contributions of instruments and hardware for missions and collaborative exploration architecture planning.
David Pearson (see photo) has been appointed senior vice president-sales for the global operations of Chicago-based PlaneTechs . He was vice president-sales for affiliate CLP Resources Inc., Reno, Nev.
At the U.S. Air Force’s Eglin development center, weapon engineers are fine-tuning performance on their precision-guided munitions while also pursuing low-tech solutions, such as “old school” guns, to boost performance on a number of systems.
Stephen Barnes has become director of marketing in Asia and head of the Singapore office of Guggenheim Aviation Partners . He was treasurer of Singapore Airlines.
Dalton Allen has become director of strategic business pursuits within the Washington-based government programs and sales unit of Gulfstream Aerospace . He was the unit’s manager of business development. Marc Havis has been named director of tax. He was vice president-tax for the Polymer Group and tax director for Sunoco Products.
Chinese aircraft conglomerates Avic 1 and 2 have been merged back together as a prelude to further reorganization, including a dedicated helicopter subsidiary. The combined group, foreshadowed earlier this year, is called Avic or China Aviation Industry Corp., as it was before it was split into Avic 1 and 2 in 1999. It covers almost the whole industry. But both the monolithic character of the industry and the name Avic may fade into the background, since the next step will be to allocate many of its operations among six subsidiaries, probably along product lines.
Israel’s Rafael and Bluebird Aero Systems researchers have flown its SkyLite B, mini-UAV to 36,000 ft. during a demonstration of capabilities while working with a tactical reconnaissance team operating in mountainous areas. The man-portable UAV provides independent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and carries advanced processing capabilities including automatic motion detection.
Alexis Livanos, who is corporate vice president/president of the Northrop Grumman Corp. ’s Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Space Technology Sector, has received the International von Karman Wings Award from the California Institute of Technology . The award was presented by the Aerospace Historical Society , in recognition of Livanos’s achievements in space science and technology. He has more than 30 years’ experience in research and applications in microelectronics, solid-state physics, electro-optics and signal processing.
China Eastern Airlines will be allowed to resume flights on two of the routes that it lost after protest action by pilots earlier this year, Chinese media report. The carrier lost rights to a range of services in the southern province of Yunnan as punishment after pilots turned 21 flights back to originating airports in March as part of a contract dispute (AW&ST Apr. 14, p. 21). The airline will again be allowed to fly between the provincial capital, Kunming, and two tourist towns, Xishuangbanna and Dali.
The ongoing global financial turmoil is forcing Finmeccanica to adjust its plans to acquire DRS Technologies, taking on more debt than anticipated and effectively freezing the prospects for another major transaction soon.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Bettina H. Chavanne (Washington)
The Pentagon is quietly backing away from overly rapid development of new signals- and communications-intelligence, cyberwarfare, electronic attack and electronic warfare systems. The U.S. pushed the Soviet Union to bankruptcy with space, stealth and advanced precision weapons 20 years ago. Now the Pentagon doesn’t want to go broke developing separate responses for every foe that wields an Internet-ordered, off-the-shelf, throw-away electronic or cyber-attack weapon.
Japan Airlines’ premium economy seat—which uses a shell design reminiscent of the carrier’s international first-class seat and features electrical connections and a large tray table to accommodate laptop computers—has received a good-design award from the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization. First introduced on a Tokyo-London flight on Dec. 1, 2007, the seat has a sliding seat-back design and 9-in. television screens.
Proposed changes in new European telecom regulations go partway to meeting concerns of European satellite operators with respect to licensing and spectrum access, but the companies say the rules remain seriously flawed.
Eleven days after SpaceDev founder Jim Benson died of a brain tumor, the microsatellite and space products company agreed to be acquired by Sierra Nevada Corp. for $38 million. The privately owned company plans to combine SpaceDev with its MicroSat systems subsidiary to form a space technologies unit to build satellite, propulsion and space vehicle systems, along with subsystems and components. SpaceDev’s products have flown on 250 spacecraft since Benson founded the San Diego-area company in 1997.
NASA may not be able to provide much help to Europe for its ExoMars mission. Technicians at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are replacing a complex series of tubes in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) descent stage because of unqualified welds, exacerbating what is already at least a $300-million cost overrun.
Industry officials are somewhat skeptical about reports that the French government is again ready to privatize solid propulsion and explosives specialist SNPE. Such a step is reported to be in the 2009-14 defense budget plan due to be presented to parliament in early November (AW&ST Oct. 20, p. 35).
“We could not be more happy” with the new Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellite placed into orbit over the Pacific region a year ago, says Col. Jim Wolf, Air Force Space Command’s lead for military satellite communications. The Boeing satellite will provide new Ka-band communications to users as well as adding capacity to existing X-band communications. This will allow some Defense Dept. users to shift from using commercial Ku-band into the WGS system, which can take advantage of more encryption, he says.
