by Richard Gardner

Since the digital revolution changed forever the pilot’s working environment, innovators and suppliers of cockpit systems have strived to provide a continuous stream of new developments and products that offer increasingly automated solutions to what has to be done to fly and land an airplane safely.

The search for lighter weight, stronger materials to construct airplanes and spacecraft remains as important as ever. But it takes a long time for new materials in aerospace structures to make their way into production designs. Capital is one reason; it is harder to take risks when it costs so much to develop new composites. Another is the long approval process from regulatory agencies due to safety constraints.

Until recently, AESA radar was utilized almost exclusively by prime aerospace contractors within their own proprietary systems. These customized solutions were relatively costly and time-consuming to manufacture, and not reconfigurable to alternative uses.

Unlike primary radars, Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) calculates the range and azimuth of a target, such as an aircraft, using a bidirectional communication link to gather information. Engineers use SSR in both military and civil aviation, with the former incorporating an identifying friend-or-foe system.

IBC Advanced Alloys Corp.
Wilmington, MA
855-237-2522
www.ibcadvancedalloys.com

IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. will continue production of components for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS).

MASA Group
Paris, France
+33 1 55 43 13 20
www.masagroup.net

Military training tools must work effectively with reduced staff numbers and simulate a large variety of situations. Following 12 years of collaboration, the French Armed Forces have expanded their use of SWORD, a constructive simulation software package developed by MASA Group.

Verotec
Manchester, NH
603-821-9921
www.verotec.us

Using a hit-to-kill approach, a US Army anti-ballistic missile system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. The interceptor missile, developed by Lockheed Martin, carries no warhead, but relies on the kinetic energy of the direct impact to destroy the incoming threat.