All news – Page 7393
-
News
Pentagon approves...
LOW-RATE INITIAL production (LRIP) of the McDonnell Douglas F-18E/F was approved on 26 March after William Cohen, the new US defence chief, dropped objections to proceeding with production before completion of the Quadrennial Defence Review. Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski authorised the US Navy to begin LRIP of ...
-
News
Ukraine will power Chinese K-8...
China has concluded a deal with Ukraine to purchase powerplants for its Nan Chang K-8 jet trainers, replacing US-built AlliedSignal TFE731 engines. Ukraine's Ivchenko Progress ZMKB design bureau and the Motor-Sich production plant have sealed a contract for delivery of 30 AI-25TL engines for the K-8J jet trainer. ...
-
News
UK Royal Navy begins search for EH101 Merlin anti-ship missile
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has begun a procurement programme for a next-generation air-launched anti-ship missile to equip its EH Industries EH101 Merlin maritime helicopter. "We are in the early stages of looking at an anti-ship missile [for the Merlin] with several studies under way," confirms the ...
-
News
MiG prototype almost lost in test flight
A prototype MIG MAPO MiG-AT advanced jet trainer was almost lost during flight trials when the aircraft, piloted by the company's chief test pilot, Roman Taskayev, went into a violent spin. The incident occurred in August 1996 when Taskayev was flying the aircraft in an ascending spiral at ...
-
News
Textron SFW order...
Textron Systems has been awarded a $142 million US Air Force contract to build 542 additional Sensor Fuzed Weapons (SFW). The smart munitions will be of enhanced configuration, incorporating an integrated altimeter. Deliveries will start in 1998. Source: Flight International
-
News
DoT refuses pleas to delay American-BA consideration
THE US Department of Transportation (DoT) has begun to consider the American Airways-British Airways (American-BA) alliance, brushing aside requests by rival carriers to put the inquiry on hold pending the signing of a UK-US open skies bilateral agreement. Delta Air Lines and Trans World Airlines had both pressed ...
-
News
Air France re-activates Concorde from storage
Air France is boosting its operational BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde fleet to six, with the planned return to service in early July of an aircraft which has been in storage at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport for the past five years. Despite plans for an expanded fleet, however, the French ...
-
News
Lufthansa finds partners for global alliance
Lufthansa is expected to host the signing of an informal agreement on "comprehensive co-operation" with Air Canada, SAS, Thai Airways and United Airlines, in Frankfurt on 14 May, as the next step in turning an existing partnership into a cohesive global alliance. According to Thai press reports, the ...
-
News
Apache scalped by Rooivalk in Malaysia
Malaysia and South Africa are finalising a deal covering the purchase of an initial eight Denel CSH-2 Rooivalk attack helicopters. If signed, it would mark the Rooivalk's first export order. Malaysia has given the clearest indication to date that it has opted to purchase the Rooivalk, rather than ...
-
News
USN revives VTOL UAV
The US Navy's interest in vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned air vehicles (UAV) is being rekindled with a competitive fly-off, which is expected to lead to the service fielding a UAV to supplement the Alliant Techsystems Outrider Tactical UAV. US Navy plans for a maritime VTOL UAV ...
-
News
Building affordability
PROVING THAT THE F-22 can be produced affordably is an increasingly important part of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) effort. "It's E-M-D, not E-D," emphasises Randy Simpson, director of production operations at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems (LMAS). He is responsible for the F-22 assembly line, where the first aircraft ...
-
News
Supplying a total system
DEVELOPINGSUPPORT and training systems concurrently with the aircraft and engine has allowed designers to take advantage of the capabilities of the F-22's integrated avionics. The aircraft has extensive onboard diagnostics, required for sensor fusion and fault tolerance, which can be used to eliminate ground-support equipment, while the flight software is ...
-
News
A changing challenge
It is now a foregone conclusion that the aircraft the F-22 was designed to outperform will never enter service, with the West having seen the last of the big MiGs. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the USAir Force has begun to see potential threats to its air ...
-
News
Working together
THREE COMPANIES came together to develop the F-22 in the belief that their combined resources would be required to see the programme through to production. They are being proved right. So far, the F-22 industry team has invested about $2 billion on the programme, estimates programme ...
-
News
Common modules take control
ADVANCING THE STATE of the art in system design and integration has enabled the F-22 team to meet demanding weight and cost budgets "flowed down" to the subsystem level by the integrated product-team structure. Many of the traditional boundaries between systems have be blurred in a bid to ...
-
News
Human centred
PILOT-VEHICLE INTERFACE is a dry, but accurate, description of the centrepiece of the F-22's array of technologies. The F-22 cockpit is seen as a showcase of the team's achievement in integrating human potential into the aircraft. It is here, under the single-piece canopy, strapped into the modified ACES ...
-
News
Balancing act
BALANCE IS A term used repeatedly by the F-22's designers when describing what they have achieved, and balancing lethality, survivability, supportability and affordability - and several other 'ilities' - has proved a formidable task. Driving the design was the requirement to combine stealth with speed and agility, in ...
-
News
GEC weighs into the Thomson-CSF...
Further controversy over the privatisation of French defence and professional electronics giant Thomson-CSF has been generated by a last-minute "offer" from UK counterpart GEC to take over the Government's 58% stake. French moves to prevent one of its largest defence contractors from falling into foreign hands appear likely ...
-
News
IAE studies latest V2530-A5 failure
International Aero Engines (IAE) is working to determine the cause of a third incident of high-pressure compressor (HPC) damage occurring to a V2530-A5 turbofan operated by Lufthansa on its Airbus A321 fleet. The latest discovery followed an engine stall and rejected take-off on 25 March. HPC blade damage ...
-
News
BGTlooks to pilot low-cost fly-by-wire for Tu-204
German systems house Bodenseewerk Gerätetech-nik (BGT)has launched a feasibility study with Tupolev over fitting future versions of the Tu-204 twinjet with its low-cost, advanced, digital fly-by-wire (FBW)flight-control-system (FCS) technology. The contract with Tupolev comes as BGT steps up efforts to secure applications for its FBW technology, which it plans to ...