Burn baby burn

Flames erupt from the cockpits, engines and sides of an AH-64 Apache helicopter. Balls of fire burst from the surrounding ground. The "boom" of exploding tires echoes across the flight line.

Firefighters from Boeing in Mesa, Ariz., move in immediately and spray their hoses. They search the fore and aft cockpits, open panels to detect smoldering fires, and douse the flames.

Was this a successful emergency response? No, it's the first practice run with the new Live Fire Trainer that the fire department at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems in Mesa has just purchased.

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Precision artists

As the roar of jet engines fills the air, spectators tip back their heads and turn their eyes toward the sky. It doesn't matter if it's in Malaysia, France or the United States, the members of the F/A-18 Super Hornet demonstration team always see the same looks of awe and delight on faces in every country they visit.

Now, this dedicated team is focused on the Australian International Air Show, set for February 2003. The team's plan is to make the Super Hornet's aerial demonstration there its most exciting ever.

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F/A-22 gets Lean with new assembly process

As part of a Lean initiatives effort, Boeing F/A-22 employees recently installed a new aft fuselage subassembly "tool-less" join station in the Developmental Center factory in Seattle.

The new assembly process, used to join the F/A-22's boom and keel substructures with minimal tooling, will help save time and money by improving the assembly process and reducing the factory's tooling "footprint." Boeing is teamed with Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney to design and build the Raptor for the U.S. Air Force. Boeing provides the F/A-22's wings and aft fuselage sections.

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ISS

The International Space Station has come a long way—with assembly of the core structure now more than two-thirds complete. Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, as prime contractor on the ISS, is getting high marks from NASA for its performance. And as efforts continue on completing the core a year from now, onboard crews will press ahead with additional scientific experiments to benefit life on Earth.

This year promises to be the most challenging so far for ISS construction, as NASA and Boeing are focused on completing the core structure by February 2004. Five NASA Space Shuttle flights are scheduled to launch more than 80,000 pounds of components, supplies and experiments to the station in 2003. The Shuttle missions will launch four new sections of the ISS backbone, or truss. The last element, the Starboard-Six truss, will be launched in January 2004.

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