Lockheed Martin Chairman/CEO Robert J. Stevens spoke with AW&ST Editor-in-Chief Anthony L. Velocci, Jr., and Senior Business Editor Joseph C. Anselmo about the company's fourth consecutive first-place finish in Aviation Week's Top-Performing Companies study. Stevens also addressed how he is positioning the company for a leaner defense environment as well as criticism of Lockheed Martin's performance on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program.
China's airport construction program is continuing to expand. The latest update of the building campaign for 2011-15 includes 56 airports, up from 45 announced earlier and the 33 commenced under the previous five-year plan. The country is working toward a scheme based on five clusters of airports to serve the north, east, south, southwest and northwest of China. Major international gateways anchor the first three of those clusters, at Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Developers of the T129 ATAK attack helicopter for the Turkish armed forces are in an accelerated mode as they race to meet tight customer delivery schedules.
The Royal Australian Air Force is the first recipient of an Airbus A330 Multirole Tanker Transport (MRTT). Airbus Military on June 1 formally handed over the first of five KC-30As to the Australian government at the tanker's home base at RAAF Amberley.
Charles Carroll (see photo) is the new Southeast U.S. marketing manager for Universal Avionics, Tucson, Ariz. He was owner of CCAvionics and worked for Southern Jet Management and Stevens Aviation.
Most aging airframe stories these days have to do with high-priced avgas and airframes sent to the desert. But Ontic Engineering, a Southern California parts and components re-manufacturing and service specialist, is seeing its business expand by keeping “mature” airplanes flying, even through a recession.
Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush's no-nonsense focus on improving margins and efficiency is paying dividends for this longtime TPC laggard. Northrop's respectable fourth-place finish in this year's TPC study is its best showing in more than a dozen years, and the company could be in a position to challenge General Dynamics and Boeing next year, now that it has divested a weak shipbuilding business that was pulling down its overall results. The bad news: Northrop and its peers face strong headwinds in the coming years as politicians in the U.S.
The editorial “IAM Headed Down The Wrong Path” provides an interesting perspective on whether Boeing has a right to use non-union personnel if it deems such use to be in the company's best interest. Certainly, the company is not under an obligation to allow any union to dictate its plans.
EADS and the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) are looking into bribery charges leveled against a unit of the aerospace and defense giant by former GPT Special Project Management employee Ian Foxley. He brought the charges as part of his case claiming unfair dismissal. Neither the SFO nor EADS says there is evidence of wrongdoing at GPT, which is a subsidiary of Astrium's Paradigm Services operations. Foxley says GPT used unlawful practices to help secure a deal for communications equipment services for the Saudi National Guard.
After two abortive attempts since 2008, the Indian navy this month is hoping to finally jump-start the process to acquire six medium-range maritime reconnaissance (MRMR) aircraft. Maritime surveillance has been a high priority in Indian national security circles since the 2008 Mumbai attack, when terrorists infiltrated India by sea. The competition for the $750 million program will seek to provide the navy with aircraft that augment its small fleet of upgraded Ilyushin Il-38 Mays for littoral reconnaissance and anti-surface warfare.
If the South Korean air force's plans come to fruition, by 2030 its leading combat aircraft will be pilotless—and domestically made. That strike aircraft will be backed by a home-grown manned fighter, which by then will have been in service for nine years. It all seems rather ambitious for a country whose main experience with combat aircraft development so far has been a light attack aircraft based on a supersonic trainer that was designed with guidance from Lockheed Martin.
Gobe Hobona has been appointed to the advisory board of the Open Source Geospatial Laboratory, University of Nottingham, England. He also is a technical consultant at Envitia.
Sierra Nevada Corp. and Brazilian manufacturer Embraer are fielding the EMB-314 Super Tucano, a veteran counter-insurgency aircraft, as one of two finalists in the U.S. Air Force's upcoming Light Air Support program. Hawker Beechcraft's AT-6B is the other contender in the hotly contested procurement. USAF should announce the winner in June or July.
Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute will become the second U.S. organization to conduct vaccine research on the International Space Station (ISS) under a new Space Act Agreement with NASA. Under the nonreimbursable agreement, a team headed by Cheryl A. Nickerson, an associate professor of life sciences at the university, will continue work started on the space shuttle that takes advantage of the effects of microgravity on infectious micro-organisms to produce vaccines against disease. The Arizona State group joins Astrogenetix Inc.
With bidders lining up for a slew of Indian short-range air defense contracts, European missile-maker MBDA is taking an unusual approach to secure sizable deals. Rather than drawing on an existing system, MBDA is gambling by promoting a developmental surface-to-air missile system for army, navy and air force requirements.
The focus of the investigation into why Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic a year ago is starting to change now that safety experts have begun evaluating information from the Airbus A330-200's flight recorders. Questions surrounding human factors are moving into the spotlight as the investigation further unfolds, with concerns of turbulent weather and pitot-tube icing shifting into the background.
Lockheed Martin Chairman/CEO Robert J. Stevens spoke with AW&ST Editor-in-Chief Anthony L. Velocci, Jr., and Senior Business Editor Joseph C. Anselmo about the company's fourth consecutive first-place finish in Aviation Week's Top-Performing Companies study. Stevens also addressed how he is positioning the company for a leaner defense environment as well as criticism of Lockheed Martin's performance on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program.
Air Platforms Saab Aeronautics Avionics/Flight Management/Control Systems Woodward Governor Turbine Systems Civil/Military Training & Support Services Raytheon Technical Services Forgings/Castings/Precision Components Precision Castparts Investment Cast Parts Information Technology Mantech International Land, Missile & Sea Weapons Systems Oshkosh Defense
In the wake of the bin Laden raid, Islamabad is turning a cold shoulder to a program for U.S. military personnel to train Pakistani soldiers in counterinsurgency operations. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen says, “We are not going to zero,” but he notes a “very significant cutback in trainers.” Prior to the raid, the program was expanding. Now, Pakistan's leadership, including the military and intelligence brass, are smarting from Washington's unwillingness to notify them prior to the May 2 raid.
European industry cost estimates are putting pressure on the ExoMars program while NASA budget cuts are forcing a redesign of key elements of the flagship U.S.-European cooperative space project. The European Space Agency (ESA) is negotiating €200 million ($287 million) in hardware cost reductions with European contractors supporting a multibillion-euro ESA-NASA mission that would send robotic science probes and terrestrial rovers in search of life on Mars by the end of the decade.
A two-stage Ukrainian Zenit-2S booster and a Russian Block-DM-SL upper stage is at sea en route to Long Beach, Calif., for the resumption of flight operations by Sea Launch in the third quarter of this year. The first Sea Launch hardware since the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection departed the port of Oktyabrsky, Ukraine, May 31. “Sea Launch has 10 Zenit 3SLs on order, covering . . . launches through the end of 2013,” says Kjell Karlsen, Sea Launch president.
