Aerospace & Defense News - Technology

AirGuide Business, May 5, 2008

May 5, 2008

Senate committee approves European missile defense sites. A White House request for U.S. missile-defense installations in the Czech Republic and Poland was approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday. The proposal for an interceptor site in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic still needs approval from the full House and Senate. May 2, 2008

Air Force says tilt-rotor aircraft performs well in tests. An Air Force official is ready to send the new tilt-rotor aircraft on a mission before the "combat-ready" deadline of February 2009, according to media reports. Bell Helicopter makes the CV-22 aircraft, which takes off and lands like a helicopter and flies like a plane. May 1, 2008

An unmanned Predator B aircraft patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border before dawn slammed into a hill just north of Nogales, Ariz. No one on the ground was injured, and no buildings were hit, but the loss of the $6.5 million aircraft, part of a fleet operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, set in motion a chain of events that led to the first National Transportation Safety Board investigation of an aerial drone crash. Last fall, the NTSB investigation identified human error as the cause of the crash, and an NTSB board member fingered a mentality at Customs and Border Protection that was more gamer than pilot. The drone operator lacked enough log hours to fly the plane alone, and when a problem arose, he failed to follow a checklist because he was in a "hurry." The result: an out-of-control plane not showing up on air-traffic control radars. With that history in mind, the NTSB today begins a two-day forum on the safety of unmanned aircraft systems at its conference center on L'Enfant Plaza SW. (It will also be streamed live over the Internet.) More than 50 unmanned planes have flight permits, and the NTSB hopes to subject them to the same scrutiny as traditional aircraft. Speakers include Andrew Hahn, a conceptual aircraft designer from NASA's Langley Research Center, and representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration's Unmanned Aircraft Program Office, the Air Force and the Air Line Pilots Association. Apr 30, 2008

Keith Matasci has joined wireless infrastructure provider Meru Networks as vice president of operations. Reporting to Meru CEO Ihab Abu-Hakima, he is responsible for the company's supply chain, order fulfillment, planning, forecasting and facilities. Matasci comes to Meru with more than 18 years of experience in global supply chain operations, customer service, information technology and facilities management. He was previously vice president of operations at Terayon Communications (acquired by Motorola in 2007). Before that he served as vice president of operations for CoSine Communications and vice president of customer service at Silicon Graphics. He holds a B.S. degree in engineering technology/mechanical engineering and an honorary M.S. in engineering management from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif. "With an average 100 percent annual growth over the past three years, we need an executive who can methodically and systematically plan and execute in a highly dynamic environment," said Abu-Hakima. "As rising demand for Meru's fourth-generation WLAN technology results in deployments of ever-larger magnitude and complexity, Keith's track record of successfully getting products out the door and into customers' hands will make him an ideal addition to our team." Meru Networks develops and markets wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise. Its industry-leading innovations deliver pervasive, wireless service fidelity for business-critical applications to major Fortune 500 enterprises, universities, healthcare organizations and local, state and federal government agencies. Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control technology brings the benefits of the cellular world to the wireless LAN environment, and its WLAN System is the only solution on the market that delivers predictable bandwidth and over-the-air quality of service with the reliability, scalability and security necessary to deliver. Apr 30, 2008

The European Union launched the second and final test satellite for its $5.3-billion (2.7 billion pound) rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System on Sunday, brushing off industry doubts over its viability. The Galileo project, Europe's biggest single space program, has been plagued by delays and squabbling over funding that ended only when the 27-nation EU agreed to funnel public funds into it. The experimental satellite, Giove-B, was put into orbit by a Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan and is due to test technologies for Galileo such as a high-precision atomic clock and the triple-channel transmission of navigation signals, the executive European Commission said in a statement. "(The project) will be operational in 2013 and already we think this will be profitable," EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot told Reuters after monitoring the launch from the Fucino control centre in the hills of central Italy. "We're already working on putting its products and services on the market in 2013, so we really believe that starting at the operational phase of Galileo, this is a system that can be profitable." Apr 28, 2008