MANAGEMENT ON THE MOVE
LOCATIONS
06 Apr 08. 25 Squadron RAF: Disbandment. A parade was held at RAF Leeming on 4 Apr 08 to mark the disbandment of 25 Squadron RAF. The Reviewing Officer was the Chief of the Air Staff. The Squadron’s Standard was laid up at St Clement Danes Churchin London on 6 Apr 08.
Comment: The disbandment is part of a phased programme which will see the Eurofighter Typhoon replacing the Tornado F3. All Tornado F3 activity is now concentrated at RAF Leuchars, where 43 Squadron is expected to disband in April 2010 and 111 Squadron in April 2011. (Source: DNA DEFENCE NEWS ANALYSIS, Issue 0815, 15 Apr 08)
16 Apr 08. India’s private-sector defense giant, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), is setting up a new port facility in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The facility will be able to handle military ships including submarines, a senior L&T official said. The company is already building the hull of India’s stealthy nuclear submarine, the Advanced Technology Vehicle. The port facility, located at Kaatupalli in the Thiruvallur district, is being built jointly with the state of Tamil Nadu and is likely to cost around $750m. The joint venture agreement to set up the facility was signed in the state’s capital, Chennai. (Source: Defense News)
15 Apr 08. EADS wants to become a fully fledged American industrial company, building rather than selling products to the Pentagon, Chairman and Chief
Executive Louis Gallois said April 15. The European company wants to change its EADS North America division into a defense company with an “industrial density and industrial responsibilities,” Gallois told a press breakfast organized by the Anglo-American Press Association. Acquisitions would be one of the ways of building a U.S. corporate citizenship, he said. The management of EADS North America was already led by Ralph Crosby, former division head at Northrop Grumman, and the tradition of a strong U.S. staffing would be maintained, he said. A true American company status was a precondition to supplying military equipment to the Defense Department, Gallois said, declining to give details of acquisition plans.
14 Apr 08. General Dynamics NASSCO laid the keel for USNS Wally Schirra, the eighth dry cargo-ammunition ship in the U.S. Navy’s T-AKE program. Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter recently named the ship in honor of the late Navy captain and original NASA pioneer. The Wally Schirra is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in the third quarter of 2009. On April 21, NASSCO will begin construction of the ninth ship of the Lewis and Clark (T-AKE) class. The ship will be named later and is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in the first quarter of 2010.
15 Apr 08. Alenia Aeronautica begins operations with the largest anechoic shielded chamber in Europe. The DA7 Eurofighter Typhoon prototype is the first aircraft to enter the new anechoic shielded chamber, the largest in Europe, built by Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica company, to test in the most favourable conditions the electromagnetic compatibility of aircraft and systems and measure the performance of emitting devices, specifically in the field of radio frequencies. The new facility, located in the Alenia Ground Test Centre at Turin-Caselle airport, is a 900 square meter building, 20 meters high and with an internal volume of 18,000 cubic metres. It is built of zinc-coated steel, wholly covered by about 11,000 pyramids of radio-absorbing material, which assure high protection screening levels against internal and external electromagnetic interferences. A hoist system capable of lifting aircraft up to 25 tonnes of weight and with a maximum height of 16 metres enables aircraft to be irradiated from below. Turin anechoic chamber is fitted with many advanced systems. These include a mobile antenna positioner with 9 degrees of freedom to handle the irradiating antennas; a monitoring system using cameras in the visual and infra-red ranges; a modern broadband