The U.S. Air Force has just completed a dress rehearsal for EFX '98, the first annual Expeditionary Force Experiment, and plans to work the last bugs out before the experiment begins this week.
NASA and its subcontractors continue to wrestle with the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), an ambitious plan to collect and archive as much data as the Library of Congress holds every two years. Changing technology and a sellers market for software engineers has hampered the effort, the space subcommittee is told. Now planning is underway to transfer responsibility for the task to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been collecting and storing data from the nation's weather satellites for 30 years.
U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen, in a last ditch plea to congressional appropriators, asked for approval of a $1.8 billion supplemental for the cost of Bosnia operations and restoration of proposed cuts in weapons accounts for fiscal year 1999.
EDWARD STIMPSON, president and chief executive of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association for 25 years and currently its vice chairman, will receive the 1998 Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, the National Aeronautic Association said Friday.
EGYPT has received a letter of offer from the U.S. government for initial F-16 depot level maintenance at a cost of $200 million. The foreign military sales arrangement would include repair of landing gear, hydraulics, pneumatics, fuel and electrical equipment on the F-16s, the Pentagon said. It would also include other support, such as training and training equipment. The support program would last about five years.
Lockheed Martin Control Systems (LMCS) and Woodward Governor Co. have formed a limited-liability corporation to provide aero-engine control systems design, integration, manufacturing and product support. The joint venture, called AESYS, is part of a strategic relationship between the companies first announced at Farnborough '96.
The U.S. Air Force will put its fleet of 112 Slingsby T-3A trainer aircraft into "minimum maintenance" status because of slow progress in resolving problems last year that caused engine stoppages and resulted in the deaths of three people.
The U.S. Navy has taken nine F/A-19B/C strike fighters to Laage, Germany, to test their capabilities against German MiG-29s inherited from the former East Germany. The purpose of "Operation Ambitious Venture" is to test the Hornet's APG-73 fire control radar, ALE-47 countermeasures dispenser, ALR-67 radar warning receiver and 11C-plus software against the MiG-29 Fulcrum, the U.S. Navy said Friday. Engagements will include one-on-one and four-on-four scenarios.
Gulfstream Aerospace said it has entered into a joint venture with Lockheed Martin to study the feasibility a Mach 1.6- to 2.0 supersonic business jet. The proposed SSBJ would be able to carry eight passengers more than 4,000 n.m. As envisioned, the SSBJ would have the airport performance and noise characteristics of today's business jets.
The U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research is funding duPont Aerospace Co. to develop and build a transport aircraft that would be capable of operating in either vertical or conventional takeoff and landing modes. DuPont Aerospace is building a 53% scale prototype of an operational aircraft under a multi-year demonstration program. First flight of the prototype is expected in about a year. The demonstration will run through March 2001 and include about 100 flight hours.
Although the U.S. Air Force is only now embarking on a 42-month program to develop a weapon to attack facilities that manufacture or house chemical and biological weapons, some operational capability might be available earlier. An AF officer points out that during the 1991 Persian Gulf War the 5,000-pound GBU-28 bomb was quickly fielded - its target was deeply buried command bunkers - and that the same thing could be done today to defeat chem-bio targets. Some tests have already been conducted with a view to keeping collateral damage low.
Standard&Poor's said Friday it may downgrade its debt rating for Globalstar LP/Globalstar Capital Corp. in the wake of Wednesday's launch failure that destroyed 12 of the "Big LEO" communications company's satellites. The S&P single-"B" unsecured debt and corporate credit rating for Globalstar was placed on "CreditWatch with negative implications," pending a meeting with Globalstar management to assess the company's plans and near-term liquidity needs following the loss of the satellites and their Zenit launcher (DAILY, Sept. 11).
Employees at NASA headquarters do their part to keep the Internet running. An all-hands e-mail sent out early Friday afternoon warns the curious that "viewing, printing, downloading or otherwise accessing the Kenneth Starr report regarding President Clinton ... does not constitute official NASA business," and asks employees not to use agency computers to read the report. Michael D. Christensen, headquarters operations chief, says to do so "would clearly create an inordinate network load that would severely impede Headquarters operations."
ALLIEDSIGNAL said it is launching full-scale development of a new turbofan engine series for regional and business aircraft. The AS900 series will be designed with a thrust range from 4,000 to 9,000 pounds. The new engine is scheduled for FAA certification in the first quarter of 2001.
CIMBER AIR of Denmark has ordered two ATR-72-500s and placed options for two more, with the first delivery scheduled for next February. The carrier had previously ordered three ATR 42-500s. Cimber Air said it has experienced a steady increase traffic on its Copenhagen-Berlin route, which it began last spring in cooperation with Lufthansa and SAS.
LOCKHEED MARTIN wants to join Europe in building a Future Large Aircraft (FLA) airlifter "so long as it is not a worked-over C-130J," Micky Blackwell, president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, told Aviation Week's Farnborough Show News. He is also interested in joining with Airbus - or the FLA team - to develop a replacement for the KC-135 tanker. "In 10 years there will be a huge need to replace that aircraft, and I would hate to give it to Boeing," he said. Blackwell said Lockheed Martin has been waiting to see what Europe decides an FLA should look like.
Normal federal procurement procedures are hampering NASA's congressionally mandated efforts to buy satellite data from private companies, but the agency might shift to an innovative "catalog" approach pioneered with satellite buses as a way to streamline the process. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator for Earth Science, tells the House Science space subcommittee the idea has merit, but cautions the issue goes beyond space data purchases to the whole question of federal procurement and could be stymied higher up the chain of command. Courtney A.
The Caspian Sea will be a major global hot spot, says Adm. T. Joseph Lopez, commander of Allied Forces Southern Europe. "I think that area is going to be the next Persian Gulf," he says, noting that there may be more oil in the region than in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. The area is already unstable - Chechnya, Abkazia and Nagorno-Karabach top the list - and competing interests from Iran, Russia, China and the West could cause more problems, according to Lopez.
British electronics manufacturer Racal is so confident that it will be selected for the Airborne Standoff Radar (ASTOR) contract that it's anticipating moves by competing consortia to undermine its U.K.-designed equipment. "We expect every trick to try to overturn a British solution on the radar," Racal senior marketing manager John Palmer said at the Farnborough air show.
A recent U.S. Air Force decision to upgrade its fleet of A-10 close support aircraft will soon allow the planes to use GPS-guided weapons. The key is the 1760 databus through which GPS coordinates can be passed to weapons, Maj. Curtis Viall, A-10 force programmer, said in an interview at the Pentagon on Friday. He said funds have now been budgeted to provide such a databus to A-10s. "That was our push this year," he said.
The U.S. Congress-Israeli Knesset Interparliamentary Commission on National Security is slated to hold its first hearing today to examine missile threats facing Israeli citizens and American troops stationed in the Persian Gulf region.
KAMAN AEROSPACE CORP. said one of its K-Max helicopters, being operated by Helog of Switzerland, was involved in an accident that claimed the life of the pilot Sept. 4 about 12 miles south of Kempten, Germany. The aircraft, which was delivered to Helog in May 1995, was engaged in a logging operation at the time of the accident. A team of Kaman officials was dispatched to the site to aid Swiss and German authorities in the ongoing investigation.
In the wake of the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton says, "I think we'll see an increase in terrorist activity." He warns that the threats will become more sophisticated because even players who aren't backed by governments will have access to state-of-the-art equipment. Shelton says the U.S. won't be able to rely on technology alone to combat such threats, but will look at the best ways to employ technology.
Congressional sources say the fiscal 1999 defense authorization conference still hasn't closed out the three potential conference-buster issues - gender integration in the military, tritium production and export controls on missile and satellite components and technology. The F/A-18E/F issue is still said to be unsettled, although not considered veto bait. The defense appropriations conference may get underway this week.
