Business & Military

Virgin Galactic’s new SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, flew a first trial Thursday as the company continues to develop the newest version of its space-tourism vehicle. Virgin Galactic called the test, which lasted 3 hours and 43 minutes, a “captive carry” trial, during which the WhiteKnightTwo aircraft carried the space vehicle throughout the flight to monitor performance. […]

Drones hovering over fires have often been the bane of firefighters, but now special versions of the unmanned aircraft are going to be put to work on emergency response teams. The New York City Fire Department is training some of its crews to deploy bright red drones to view fires using video and infrared cameras,according […]

AVweb‘s search of news in aviation found announcements from Able Flight, Partners in Aviation, L-3 Aviation Products and Yingling Aviation.Able Flight and Lockheed Martin announced a scholarship to aid wounded warriors of the United States armed services. The Lockheed Martin Fighting Spirit Scholarship provides sports and physical activity programs for wounded veterans.Partners in Aviation, recently […]

From the unintended consequences file comes this: The Third Class medical exemption rips away the last vestiges of logic—if there ever was any—for retaining the weight limit for light sport aircraft. If you can fly a 6000-pound airplane without a medical, why are you limited to 1320 pounds under essentially the same conditions?The whole thing […]

There’s been a lot of talk lately about a shortage of pilots for both military and civilian jobs, and now the U.S. Air Force says it has to hire private contractors to fly its drones. The contract drone pilots are not allowed to fire weapons, but they can operate reconnaissance missions, according to a story […]

Researchers at NASA are “investigating promising advances” in high-temperature materials that can be used to make turbine engines run more efficiently, the agency said last week. The materials, called ceramic-matrix composites, or CMCs, are lighter and stronger than the metal alloys used today, and can withstand the extremely high temperatures of 2700 degrees Fahrenheit and […]

Icon will establish a production plant in the city of Tijuana, in Baja, Mexico, company spokesman Brian Manning told AVweb on Tuesday, confirming an online report published over the weekend at a Tijuana news site. The new facility will produce composite airframe components for the A5 assembly plant in Vacaville, California, Manning said. It’s scheduled […]

The U.S. Air Force has created a new kind of testing regime for evaluating military aircraft, and recently announced that Textron AirLand’s Scorpion jet will be the first product to go through the process. The process, called a cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, is open to any industry partner, on a first-come, first-served […]

The Red Bull Air Race series moves to North America in a few weeks and the last race on its European leg set the stage for drama on this side of the Atlantic. Australia’s Matt Hall won Sunday’s race at EuroSpeedway Lusitz in Germany followed by Germany’s Matthias Dolderer. Canada’s Pete McLeod was third for […]

The producers of “Sully,” the movie based on the ditching of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009, are apparently so confident of its authenticity they’ve invited a theater full of pilots to a preview screening on Sept. 7, two days before it opens to general audiences. Warner Bros. has given free tickets to […]