Faced with a Government Accountability Office decision sustaining protests by the losing bidders in the $10-15- billion CSAR-X combat search and rescue helicopter competition, the U.S. Air Force is looking for ways to comply with the spirit while avoiding the letter of the GAO recommendations. The bid-protest decision disrupts Air Force leadership attempts to put past procurement scandals behind it. How the service responds will be closely watched, in Congress and industry, and may trigger unwanted scrutiny in future acquisitions.
In "Vanishing Act" (AW&ST Feb. 5, p. 44), Rockwell Collins CEO Clayton Jones comments: "So while we're losing experience, we're gaining some innovation and entrepreneurial spirit." Translation: "We will find creative, new ways to make old mistakes."
The Defense Ministry is contracting with BAE to provide flight-line support for its Hawk TMk1 jet trainer aircraft. The £74-million ($144-million) Hawk integrated operational support project will see BAE maintain the Hawk to 2011. The ministry is also seeking a support contract for the Hawk 128 advanced jet trainer now on order.
Norway intends to extend the service life of its P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft by 20-25 years. Oslo has signed a deal with Lockheed Martin for life-extension kits.
Flat sales failed to dent preliminary results of British-headquartered engineering group GKN, with pre-tax profit up 8%. Sales for 2006 stood at £3.634 billion, £14 million less than in 2005. Aerospace sales, however, were up 11%, while profits climbed by 30%.
David Hughes' article "Glass for the Masses" (AW&ST Jan. 29, p. 58) missed its mark when he stated "but until recently avionics companies haven't focused as much on soup-to-nuts refits of older cockpits" and did not mention Chelton Flight Systems.
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Even as Airbus has gone from misstep to misstep in its long-range product portfolio, it has been introducing significant efficiency enhancements in its single-aisle production process to keep pace with strong demand (see pp. 37 and 44). In its Hamburg facility, Airbus has introduced a moving line to speed the building of fuselage assemblies, which has allowed the manufacturer to boost output of A320-family aircraft steadily. Another production hike may be in store as Airbus decides whether it can build 40 single-aisle aircraft per month at its Toulouse and Hamburg sites.
Mistral Air, the French postal service's carrier, will start offering charter passenger flights in April. The service aims to increase fleet utilization, by flying aircraft during the day and on weekends in passenger roles and continuing to use them at night for postal missions. Mistral Air is leasing three Boeing 737s, which can be reconfigured in less than 1 hr. from a cargo role (with a 16-18-ton payload) to a full passenger configuration with 142-148 seats. The three aircraft are to be delivered by June.
Helicopter service life extension study work is being funded by the Defense Ministry as it struggles to come up with a coherent Future Rotorcraft Capability program. EADS will study upgrade options for the Royal Air Force's Puma, to extend the helicopter's service life at least until 2022. Up to 35 Pumas could be upgraded with improved engines, avionics, communications and defensive aids.
NASA will need to spend about $1 billion more a year than it has allocated in the past to keep the International Space Station supplied with crews and cargo once the space shuttle fleet is grounded for good in 2010.
Skimming toward its closest approach on Feb. 25, the Philae lander on the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe imaged Mars's Syrtis region and took a self-portrait at the same time (see photo). Four minutes later, the spacecraft passed within 1,000 km. (621 mi.) of the surface in a gravity-boost swingby that will bring it back for another Earth flyby in November. The winding route is designed to take Rosetta and its lander to the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 (AW&ST Mar. 14, 2005, p. 17).
There are plenty of pitfalls ahead for Airbus as it tries to solidify its business and move from crisis management mode onto smooth operations. As if overcoming A380 production problems, designing the A350XWB twin widebody, implementing the Power8 cost-cutting scheme, and boosting production on the single-aisle family weren't enough, the strength of the air transport market continues to present more challenges.
The first launch of a medium-lift Soyuz booster from the Kourou Space Center is increasingly likely to miss its 2008 launch target. But the sting from the latest delay could be eased by unrelated schedule problems with the European Galileo satellite navigation system, which is to provide some of the first payloads for the Europeanized Russian rocket.
The Australian government is combining helicopter aircraft training programs for the army and navy. Under the restructured Helicopter Aircrew Training System project, the service plans to spend $390-700 million to replace Kiowa and Squirrel helos with a common type. The Australian Defense Ministry says joint training should make it easier for army and navy troops to fight better side by side. A final procurement decision is slated for 2009.
There are small aerospace electronics companies and then there are tiny ones like Kinetic Avionics Products Ltd., which started up two years ago and has already sold 4,000 units of the first system it invented. Not bad for a company run by two owners with two full-time employees who together design equipment but outsource almost everything else, from production to product support. "We outsource, but we ensure quality," says David Goodman, managing director and co-founder of Kinetic, headquartered in London.
Bell Helicopter Textron has completed a landmark, nine-year fatigue test program for the V-22 Osprey, demonstrating the airframe has sufficient structural integrity to fly for at least 20,000 hr. or 20 years.
Prof. Tina Anderson has become assistant chair for academics for the Aviation Dept. in the University of North Dakota's John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.
The American Civil Liberties Union calls it a "virtual strip search," but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) thinks it has a solution to the revealing images provided by new backscatter X-ray passenger screening technology. Using the SmartCheck screening system manufactured by American Science and Engineering (AS&E), TSA is testing the controversial technology at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport.
There are least 30 Chinese anti-satellite concepts and tactics that could be a factor in any future U.S.-Chinese military space face-off. This is in spite of Chinese assertions that it is only working on civilian space projects now that its Jan. 11 anti-satellite (Asat) test was a success, says the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission (see p. 24). This political stance does not necessarily pass for reality, however, the report indicates.
NASA spending cuts in Fiscal 2007 will add four to six months to the four-year gap after the space shuttle retires before the U.S. can launch humans into space again. Administrator Michael Griffin tells the Senate Commerce space subcommittee his agency has been struggling to meet the 2014 deadline President Bush set to get the Orion crew exploration vehicle flying atop its Ares I launch vehicle.
Veteran Rep. Ike Skelton, 75, (D-Mo.) became chairman of the House Armed Services Committee when Democrats won control of Congress after the last election. Skelton, who's been a House member since 1977, sat down with AVIATION WEEK editors John M. Doyle and Michael Bruno in his Capitol Hill office to discuss the war in Iraq, technology transfer and the committee's priorities. Excerpts follow:
Brad Lawrence has been appointed corporate group vice president of the Esterline Corp., Bellevue, Wash. He was president of Esterline's Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-based Advanced Input Systems subsidiary and general manager of Esterline's Interface Technologies Group.
JSA Research expects Boeing to overtake Airbus in delivered aircraft in 2009 and hold the lead at least into the middle of the next decade. Analyst Peter J. Arment expects Boeing to produce 444 aircraft this year, up from 398 in 2006. At that new rate, its current backlog of 2,457 will take 5.5 years to burn off. JSA evaluates the 2006 backlog at $250 billion and expects Boeing to add another $64.2 billion worth in 2007. Of that, $100 billion is in the company's best-seller, the 737. Arment's look at Boeing's numbers brings up an interesting point.
The first airline passenger rights legislation arising from the Feb. 14 Eastern U.S. icestorm that caused massive flight cancellations and delays has been introduced in Congress. The measure, introduced by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), gives passengers the right to deplane after ground delays of 3 hr. or more, with some exceptions. It also calls on the FAA to work out a plan with airlines to allow passenger offloading from long-delayed flights, without losing positions in the departure sequence.
