Land buy helps protect Whiting

MILTON, Fla. - The Navy has partnered with Santa Rosa County to buy nearly 600 acres near Naval Air Station Whiting Field to help prevent encroachment at the base in Milton. In the last eight years the county has been using state money to buy up land to keep development away. The Navy contributed $2.8 million, 75 percent of the cost. (Source: WEAR-TV, 04/16/09)

Center to provide new service

FOLEY, Ala. - Goodrich Corp.'s Alabama Service Center received approval from Boeing to provide overheat service bulletin inspections and modifications for Boeing Next-Generation 737 aircraft. The bulletin outlines instructions for inspection of the aircraft's CFM-56-7 engine thrust reverser inner walls as well as insulation blankets. In 2007, the Alabama Service Center became the third facility in Goodrich's worldwide maintenance, repair and overhaul network authorized to participate in Boeing's Network Service Center program to repair and overhaul Next-Generation 737 and 777 thrust reversers. (Source: Goodrich, 04/16/09)

Gulfport hosts airline summit

GULFPORT, Miss. – The Mississippi Gulf Coast Airline and Tourism Development Summit will be held at the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino with a dinner April 28, followed by a day of presentations and tour of the Coast. The first Airline Summit was held soon after Hurricane Katrina and the fourth summit this year will give airline executives a look at the progress on the Coast and plans for more development. (Source: The Sun Herald, 04/16/09)

Lakota program chief wins award

The Huntsville, Ala.-based program manager for EADS North America’s Light Utility Helicopter, John Burke, will receive the 2009 Leadership Excellence Award from the National Defense Industrial Association’s Tennessee Valley Chapter. Through March 2009, the company has delivered 62 of the Columbus, Miss.-built UH-72As to active Army and National Guard units nationwide. The Army plans to buy 345 Lakotas through 2016, and the Navy wants five. (Source: EADS North America, 04/15/09) Gulf Coast note: EADS also has an engineering center and maintenance operation in Mobile, Ala.

NASA picks 16 STTR projects

Mississippi State University and a company in Winona, Miss., think they’ve come up with a way to ensure the purity of hydrogen fuel that’s important for engine testing at Stennis Space Center, Miss. The proposed is among 16 selected by NASA for negotiation of Phase 2 contract awards in the Small Business Technology Transfer program. Mississippi Ethanol LLC and MSU want to develop a technique and sensor to measure simultaneously concentrations of several contaminants in hydrogen gas storage tanks and supply lines. The purity of hydrogen fuel is important in NASA engine testing. The proposed sensor may also be used for quality control in pharmaceutical, chemical and food processing industries. (Source: NASA, 04/15/09)

Director steps down

GULF BREEZE, Fla. – Brice Harris, director of the Andrews Institute's space-tourism program, resigned Tuesday in the wake of accusations he used his state job to get the position. Gov. Charlie Crist is seeking an Ethics Commission inquiry into Harris' role in developing the institute's contract for Project Odyssey, designed to get tourists ready to launch into orbit.(Source: Pensacola News Journal, 04/15/09)

Goodrich Alabama center wins award

FOLEY, Ala. - Goodrich Corp's Alabama Service Center in Foley and Customer Services campus in Monroe, N.C. received Corporate Diamond Certificate of Excellence awards from the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Maintenance Technician program. The Corporate Diamond award is the highest award presented in the AMT program. The award has now been presented eight times to the Alabama center. (Source: Goodrich, 04/15/09)

F-35 to visit Eglin

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will make its inaugural landing at Eglin April 21 and will remain at the base for four days. Base officials invited local mayors, county commissioners and school board members to see the plane that has been the focal point of several lawsuits. The city of Valparaiso wants to stop the Air Force from establishing a JSF training center at the base, but the county is suing the city to get it to drop its suit. No pubic events are scheduled. (Source: Northwest Florida Daily News, 04/15/09)

More money for pro-tanker Web site

MOBILE, Ala. - The Mobile County Commission approved paying a Pensacola, Fla., company $63,500 to train county workers to run a Web site that encourages the Air Force to select Mobile as the site for construction of new refueling tankers. Birdwell Photography & Multimedia Inc. has previously been paid nearly $450,000 by the county to build and maintain the Web site, www.keepourtanker.com. (Source: Mobile Press-Register, 04/14/09)

Stennis center wins award

STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss. - The NASA Shared Services Center won the Best New Captive Services Delivery award from the Shared Services Outsourcing Network. The award recognizes the most successful shared services organization launched within the last three years. About 30 public and private sector organizations applied for the award. The center is a public-private partnership between NASA, CSC, Mississippi and Louisiana. CSC provides administrative, financial, human resources and procurement support services to about 20,000 NASA employees, applicants, contractors and university partners. The center combined the services that were once done at NASA headquarters and 10 NASA centers. (Source: PRNewswire, 04/13/09)

Navy won't expand Wolf OLF

MOBILE, Ala. - Wolf Field in Lillian was removed from consideration for expansion to meet the needs of a new Navy training aircraft. The Navy is replacing the T-34C trainer with the T-6B, which requires longer runways. Three other fields in Baldwin County are still being considered. The planes will be operating out of Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Milton, Fla. Outlying fields, or OLFs, are used to practice takeoffs and landings. (Source: Mobile Press Register, 04/13/09)

Contract: Lockheed, $41.2M

Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $41,200,000 modification to a previously awarded advance acquisition contract for long lead materials and effort associated with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Air System Low Rate Initial Production Lot IV procurement of three additional Navy Carrier Variant Air Systems and one United Kingdom Short Take Off Vertical Landing Air System. Work is expected to be completed in January 2010. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity. (Source: DoD, 04/09/09) Gulf Coast note: Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., is scheduled to become home of the Joint Strike Fighter Training Center.

Civic leaders briefed on security issues

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - Civic leaders from 20 states got an in-depth view of Eglin and Hurlburt Field's national security programs during the National Security Forum Alumni Tour March 31 to April 3. More than 50 community leaders looked at the McKinley Climatic Lab, the Air Force Research Lab's Taconi Room and Air Force Special Operations Command's Special Tactics Training Squadron at Hurlburt. The program is hosted by the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. (Source: Eglin Air Force Base, 04/08/09)

GE chief backs split tanker buy

The head of General Electric is supporting a move to split the Air Force tanker contract between Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. Jeff Immelt, GE's chairman and chief executive officer, said the compromise proposed by Rep. John Murtha may be the best way to get the troubled program back on track. "I think Murtha has created a path to break the deadlock," Immelt told The Enquirer newspaper in Cincinnati in an interview published Wednesday. (Source: Mobile Press-Register, 04/09/09) Gulf Coast note: The Northrop Grumman/EADS North America team wants to build the tankers in Mobile, Ala.

County sues city over F-35

VALPARAISO, Fla. - Okaloosa County filed suit Wednesday in circuit court against the city of Valparaiso, seeking to torpedo the city’s suit against the Air Force over the Joint Strike Fighter Training Center. Valparaiso sued the Air Force because of concerns over the noise of the F-35, claiming the Air Force did not consider alternate sites at Eglin Air Force Base that would mitigate the noise. But some are concerned Valparaiso’s suit is jeopardizing the center, which will have a $350 million impact through construction alone. (Sources: Northwest Florida Daily News, WEAR-TV, 04/08/09)

International flights to resume

NEW ORLEANS, La. - International air service will return to Louis Armstrong International Airport in July. AeroMexico will begin offering nonstop flights to Mexico City from New Orleans July 6. The flights will operate six times a week. AeroMexico will be the first foreign line to operate out of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. (Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, 04/07/09)

Contract: BAE, $22.4M

BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services, Inc., Rockville, Md., is being awarded a $22,427,138 modification to a previously awarded contract to exercise an option for maintenance, logistics, and life cycle services in support of communication-electronic equipment/systems and subsystems for various Navy, Army, Air Force, Special Operations Forces and other federal agencies. Two percent of the work will be done in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, St. Inigoes, Md., is the contracting activity. (Source: DoD, 04/07/09)

FWB company wins Boeing award

A Fort Walton Beach, Fla., company is among nine named by Boeing as 2008 Suppliers of the Year. Fort Walton Machining Inc. was chosen in the diversity/veteran owned small business category. The winners are from among the company's 10,800 active suppliers worldwide. Winners were judged on quality, delivery performance, cost, environmental initiatives, customer service and technical expertise. (Source: Boeing, 04/06/09)

Louisiana aviation market stable

NEW ORLEANS, La. - New Orleans and Louisiana in general have stable aviation business, aviation consultant Mike Boyd said during the Louisiana Airport Managers & Associates conference this week. Part of the reason is a higher demand in Louisiana for air service. Nationwide, about 41 million fewer passengers flew in 2008 than 2007, a 7 percent decline. (Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, 04/07/09)

Fire Scout preps for final exam

Fire Scout unmanned helicopters will be ready for their first deployment later this year, paving the way to full-rate production, possibly before 2010. A story in the April issue of Seapower said two Fire Scouts will be aboard the guided missile frigate USS McInerney when it deploys with the Fourth Fleet to the Southern Command’s area of operations. The Fire Scout was designed for use on Littoral Combat Ships, but delays in that program prompted the Navy to test the system on a frigate. The Fire Scout, MQ-8B, is designed to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance using electro-optical sensors, UHF radios and a data link to relay videos to a receiver station on a ship. The Navy plans to buy 168 of the aircraft, built in part in Moss Point, Miss. (Source: Seapower, April 2009)