Word: aircrafting
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From its conception in the late 1960s, the B-1B bomber has been a child of controversy. A breathtakingly beautiful airplane with slim-silhouette wings that meld into a fuselage that breathes speed, the swanlike aircraft is designed to penetrate Soviet air defenses, unleashing nuclear-tipped missiles at targets deep inside the country. But skeptics lampooned the B-1B -- at $283 million a copy the most expensive plane in aviation history -- as an unnecessary and probably unworkable interim successor to the aging B-52s, and in 1977 President Jimmy Carter scuttled the project. Newly elected Ronald Reagan revived...
...plan accordingly." The Air Force is also withholding almost $300 million from contractors for poor performance. Last week, tucked away in the Defense Department's 1988 budget proposal was the Air Force's most public admission yet of troubles: a request for $600 million to repair problems with the aircraft...
...rush to deploy the B-1B, the Air Force went into production while the aircraft was still undergoing major design modifications. Even before the first bombers became operational last fall at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, there were portents of trouble. The plane's fuel tanks, built directly into the wings without rubber bladders, leak jet fuel. Early flight tests revealed problems caused by loading cruise missile launchers and antiradiation pods onto the original airframe design. In gaining an extra 41 tons -- nearly a 25% increase -- without additional wing surface, the B-1B had acquired an extraordinary "wing loading...
...advanced one. Next month United will also begin testing the device, known as TCAS II (for traffic alert and collision avoidance system); Northwest and Republic will quickly follow. By 1991, says FAA Administrator Donald Engen, all U.S. commercial planes will be required to carry the TCAS II; eventually, foreign aircraft entering U.S. airspace will too. At a price of about $80,000 a plane, the system will cost upwards of $500 million for the entire U.S. commercial fleet...
...position. When two planes are on a potential collision course, onboard TCAS computers alert the pilots with flashing lights, voice messages and a radar screen display showing the planes' relative positions; the computers even indicate up or down evasive action. Following the Cerritos tragedy, the FAA ordered that no aircraft be allowed into the terminal control area above major airports without an altitude-signaling transponder. Although such transponders are now useful only to air traffic controllers, eventually they will be an integral component in the air-to-air warning system...