Dear Reader:

Welcome again to Challenge magazine, a publication of Boeing Technology designed specifically for our engineering and technical work force.

Across the enterprise, our employees are embarked on many exciting programs that are literally defining the future of aerospace. Because these programs present technical challenges that have never been faced before, our engineers and technicians must constantly dream up innovative ways to overcome these challenges—ways that more often than not require cross-enterprise collaboration and a certain amount of risk taking.

We also update you on Boeing’s initiative to deploy common processes and systems across the enterprise and explain how Connexion by Boeing is working with Phantom Works and Integrated Defense Systems to provide network-centric operations (NCO) capabilities to our government customers.

Along NCO lines, we describe how our Future Combat Systems program is meeting the challenge of providing a networked system of 18 different types of ground, air and space systems to the U.S. Army, and also how our Advanced Air Traffic Management team continues to work on NCO solutions for the inevitable return of air traffic congestion.

We also want you to meet some of our test pilots, whose engineering knowledge and courage help ensure the quality and safety of our products,
as well as some of our other engineers across the enterprise working on a variety of programs in a variety of disciplines. These folks include our relatively new leaders of the Engineering and Manufacturing team at Commercial Airplanes and the Structural Technologies, Prototyping and Quality team in Phantom Works.

As always, we hope you enjoy these stories and learn something from them that might apply to your own projects and initiatives. We also hope you will continue to provide us with feedback and suggestions for future issues. Meanwhile, keep up your great work and remember—we are doing truly amazing things for the world.

—Jim Jamieson
Boeing Chief Technology Officer