For an idea of where intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance could be headed in the future, a good place to start is the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which prides itself in looking well beyond even the most far-sighted of its service customers.
A massive U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan next year will trigger a shift in Pentagon priorities and force structure, but do not expect any major changes for the Air Force's intelligence collection fleet. At least, not for now.
Paul Dailey has been named managing director of revenue and competitive analysis and corporate forcecasting at Delta Air Lines, succeeding Dwight James, who will become managing director of transatlantic/joint-venture pricing and revenue management. He follows Mark DeFrancesco, who has become director of domestic pricing.
Turning raw information into useful intelligence for commanders and operators is one of the biggest challenges in intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (Istar). The process involves managing the collected data and fusing it into comprehensive products, which has become more complex as better sensors gather more information and new sources are exploited.
Aerojet will develop a 550,000-lb.-thrust-class main injector and thrust chamber for an oxidizer-rich, staged-combustion, kerosene-fueled rocket engine under a $23.3 million risk-reduction contract. The engine is targeted for NASA's proposed advanced strap-on boosters for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). Under the contract, the fourth that NASA has awarded to begin bringing the heavy-lift SLS to the 130-metric-ton capability ordered by Congress, Aerojet also will prepare for hot-fire tests designed to demonstrate performance and combustion stability.
Jeffrey Vail has been appointed chief marketing officer for Radnor, Pa.-based Quintig. He was senior VP-global corporate marketing for Siemens Enterprise Communications.
The truth is that the future of air traffic management is already here and it is time to start running to meet it. It may be an uphill run, but to achieve our common vision of a globally harmonized and interoperable air navigation system we need to recognize what needs to be done and set about doing it.
International Launch Services (ILS) says the Dec. 8, 2012, failure of a Proton rocket equipped with a Briz M upper stage has been traced to too-high propellant temperatures at liftoff that caused damage to a bearing in the Briz M main engine turbo pump. ILS says the most probable root cause of the failure was a combination of adverse thermal conditions that caused damage to a bearing on the oxidizer side of the turbo pump. The result was a failure of the bearing that caused the fourth burn of the Briz M to end about 4 min.
Eurocopter Mexico has opened an aerostructures manufacturing plant at Queretaro's Aerotech Park that will provide assemblies for its own Ecureil single-engine helicopter series and the Airbus A320 and A330 airliners. The $100 million facility was built as an offset for the Mexican air force and navy's purchase of 15 EC725 helicopters in 2010.
The arrest of Finmeccanica's chairman and CEO and the prospect that the company could be barred from doing business in India's lucrative defense market is shaking the foundations of the Italian aerospace and defense giant, which already was struggling to restructure in the wake of high debt and declining government spending in Europe.
Hand-launched, electrically powered small unmanned air vehicles (SUAV) are usually attached to small formations and in special operations units. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Ground Forces Command (GFC) has been looking at their use at division level, as sensor performance and networking technology improve.
Steven H. Walker, deputy director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has been named a fellow within the Washington-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The honor recognizes long-standing contributions to the aerospace community.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target using an Aegis-launched SM-3 Block IA made by Raytheon. New for this mission is the use of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System demonstrator satellites to cue the Aegis ship on the target's whereabouts; using such an offboard sensor to launch an interceptor is called “launch on remote” and it allows for longer-range engagements.
Philippe Campenon has been appointed deputy director for space and Earth observation and Deepu Krishnan senior consultant for the satcom business division of Paris-based Euroconsult. Campenon was business development manager for Astrium GEO-Information Services, and Krishnan held the same title at a European satellite provider. New senior affiliate consultants are Jean Paul Carnicer, procurement of satellite programs and launches; Eric Choi, space systems engineering and business development; Dennis Jones, U.S.
Astrium, the space division of EADS, will begin development of Europe's first military high-speed satellite broadband network under a roughly €40 million ($52 million) contract awarded by French defense procurement agency DGA.
My professional life encompassed a career in aerospace that culminated in my heading the Radiocommunication Bureau at the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva. Now that I am retired, I still read Aviation Week avidly and I do have some recommendations, as recently requested in your pages.
Increasing frustration at the lack of progress in reorganizing European airspace has led airlines to call for the effort to be refocused on more ambitious changes.
Hooray and hallelujah! Reader Myron Kayton (AW&ST Jan. 28, p. 8) put into words something I too found lacking in your magazine—an emphasis on how things work. I have subscribed ever since I was very young person interested in all things aeronautical. I continue to subscribe well into my adulthood for much the same reason, despite the current emphasis on various forms of marketing, which I fully understand are subjects of interest to a large segment of your readers in the aerospace industry.
Romain Bausch, Robert Zitter, Susan Irwin, Prof. U.R. Rao and Dick Tauber are scheduled to be inducted into the New York-based Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) Hall of Fame on March 19. Bausch is president and CEO of SES and Zitter is executive VP and chief technology officer of Home Box Office. Irwin is president of Euroconsult U.S. and one of the founders of SSPI; Rao is chairman of the Governing Council of the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad, India; and Tauber is VP-transmission systems and new technology for the CNN News Group.
The European Commission (EC) has indicated it will object to Ryanair's third attempt to take over rival Aer Lingus, despite the need for airline consolidation in Europe. Ryanair has offered a package to address competition concerns, but Europe's regulators doubt that would effectively mitigate the merged company's dominance on many routes serving Ireland.
