Daniel G. Korte has been appointed president/CEO of LMI Aerospace Inc. of St. Louis to succeed the retiring Ronald S. Saks, who will remain non-executive chairman of the board. Korte was president of Defense Aerospace at Rolls-Royce and had been vice president/general manager of Global Strike Systems at Boeing.
Daniel F. Akerson, former chairman/CEO of General Motors, has been named to the board of directors of the Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md. He also was a managing director of The Carlyle Group, and is a director of the United States Naval Academy Foundation.
The British Army has been cleared to begin flying the Thales U.K. Watchkeeper unmanned aerial system (UAS). The long-delayed UAS received its initial release to service documentation from the U.K. Military Aviation Authority on March 5. British Army pilots may now begin training flights with the system in segregated airspace over the Salisbury Plain Training Area in southern England. An interim contingency deployment capability for Watchkeeper is expected to be ready by the end of 2015.
John S. Rego (see photo) has been appointed CFO of Virgin Galactic, Mojave, Calif. He was CFO of AppSense Inc. in New York and had been executive vice president/CFO/treasurer of the Vonage Holdings Corp.
Aerospace and defense companies feature prominently as partners in two public-private advanced manufacturing institutes launched by the Obama administration. Led by EWI and headquartered in Detroit, the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute (ALMMII) involves a 60-member consortium that includes Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Electric and United Technologies Research Center.
The price of carbon dioxide allowances (EUAs) under the EU Emissions Trading System rallied to a 14-month high in February as the European Commission's short-term market intervention proposal gained final agreement and became law.
Rachel Ehrenfeld's Viewpoint, “Protect Airliners from SAM Threat” (AW&ST Feb. 17, p. 58) is dead-on. One of the clearest lessons learned from the events of 9/11 was the failure to imagine risk. Airline executives make risk decisions—both business and safety related—every day and those decisions are informed by hard facts concerning the likelihood and consequence of an event. Clearly the likelihood of a surface-to-air missile (SAM) attack against an airliner is growing, but are the airlines and their insurance companies prepared for the consequences?
Ron Anderson-Lehman has been promoted to executive vice president/chief administrative officer from senior vice president/chief information officer of Hawaiian Airlines.
As composite structures become larger, more integrated and more critical, guaranteeing the integrity of a major repair when the aircraft returns to service is a growing imperative. Research into methods of checking repairs in situ could pave the way for wider structural health monitoring.
Developed with a Cold War mind-set, communications for stealthy aircraft were largely intended to be limited. But that has become a hindrance to operating the F-22 and F-35 on the modern battlefield.
Unlike the 1987 movie “Trains, Planes and Automobiles,” low-cost Latin American airlines Azul Linhas Aereas and VivaAerobus.com are connected by buses and aircraft. They also are based in countries with growing middle classes that are first and second in terms of potential market size.
Bill Sweetman asks in “Money for Nothing” (AW&ST Feb. 24, p. 16), “Do long research and development programs make contractors rich?” Whenever an aircraft program has been approved, the original equipment manufacturer immediately has two governing rules affecting its income. The first is to develop the new product line and the second is to keep the existing programs pouring money into their coffers.
“Define the Dragon” and “Many on Many” (AW&ST Feb. 3/10, pp. 64 and 66) together present a useful database of the “dogfight” situations in Asia and the world as a whole. But one may need to reach beyond and behind the real-time apparent behavior of those in power, displayed weapons systems and calculated, or often “good enough,” strategic moves of nations.
March 14-16—Valiant Air Command 2014 Tico Warbird Air Show. Titusville, Fla. www.vacwarbirds.org March 18-19—2014 Precision Strike Annual Review (PSAR-14). Waterford Conference Center. Springfield, Va. www.precisionstrike.org/Events/4PSAR/4PSAR.html March 18-21 and 24-27—Fatigue Concepts Courses in Fatigue, Fracture Mechanics and Damage Tolerances of Aging and Modern Aircraft Structures. Perth, Australia. Call +1 (916) 390-5000 or see www.fatcon.com/s March 25-30—FIDAE. Santiago, Chile. www.fidae.cl/portal_fidae.aspx
A statistical technique for analyzing data from the Kepler planet-finder, based on the discovery that multi-planet systems are more common than once thought, has confirmed 715 new exoplanets orbiting distant stars, say scientists using the NASA-funded dataset. The “verification by multiplicity” results almost doubles the number of exoplanets scientists consider “confirmed,” including four planets only slightly larger than Earth that orbit in their stars' habitable zones, where liquid surface water is at least possible.
Flying the Piaggio P180 Avanti twin-turboprop pusher from the front seat is a unique experience, but taking control of the same Avanti using a sidestick and a virtual windscreen from a side-facing seat in the rear of the cabin is a rare treat indeed.
With a clean sheet and no drag from concerns about commonality with an existing fleet, Bombardier was able to enlist its pilots, engineers, customers and supplier base to come up with a fresh new environment for the flight deck of the CSeries, the company's largest aircraft to date and its first fully fly-by-wire design. It remains to be seen how airline pilots will respond to the new design when deliveries of the CS100 begin in 2015, but a recent “flight” in the company's engineering simulator reveals a cockpit designed specifically with them in mind.
A Japanese H-IIA launcher lifts off Feb. 27 with the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) Earth-science spacecraft onboard, setting up unprecedented coverage of rain and snowfall from a slot in the sun-synchronous “A-train” satellite constellation. Liftoff of the GPM “core observatory” came at 1:37 p.m. EST (3:37 a.m. Feb. 28 local time) from the launch site on Tanegashima Island in southeastern Japan, and the big rocket performed nominally.
Aurelien Blanc has been appointed managing director of the Turbomeca Asia Pacific subsidiary of Safran. He had been commercial director for Southeast Asia for Airbus Helicopters.
Chris A. Hadfield, former Canadian Space Agency astronaut, author, and musician, has been named to receive the 2014 Space Communicator Award from the Houston-based Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation. Hadfield is a veteran of two space shuttle missions, STS-74 and STS-100, and International Space Station (ISS) mission Soyuz TMA-07M. He was the first Canadian to operate the shuttle's Canadarm in space, the first Canadian to walk in space and the first Canadian commander of the ISS.
Space Exploration Technologies is one step closer to competing against the United Launch Alliance, the Pentagon's monopoly rocket provider, for defense work. The U.S. Air Force has ruled that the maiden Falcon 9 v1.1 flight last fall will be counted as one of three required for SpaceX to be certified to compete for boosting U.S. national security payloads.
Nathan Manning (see photos) has become Fort Worth-based vice president/general manager of the Eaton Aerospace Group's Fluid and Electrical Distribution Div. and Benjamin Yiu Shanghai-based Asia-Pacific general manager. Manning was president/CEO of General Electric and Aviation Industry Corp. of China joint venture Aviage Systems in Shanghai. Yiu was mobile business manager for Power and Motion Controls in the Eaton Hydraulics Group. He had worked for the Concurrent Computer Corp. and China Aerospace International Holdings Ltd.
