aviation week & space technology - january 18-31, 2016 · purepower geared turbofan engines...
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$14.95 JANUARY 18-31, 2016
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TOP TENAIR SAFETY INNOVATIONS
Israel’s Advances In Weapons And Precision
Reinventing Finmeccanica
New Tools forFlight Ops
Why the A380Will Be a Winner
RICH MEDIA EXCLUSIVE
RICH MEDIA EXCLUSIVE
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AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 3
editor-in-chief Joseph C. Anselmo
executive editor James R. Asker
Managing editors Jen DiMascio, Jens Flottau, Graham Warwick
Associate Managing editor Andrea Hollowell
Art Director Lisa Caputo
Director, editorial and online production Michael O. Lavitt
Director, Digital content Strategy Rupa Haria
Defense, space anD security
editors Jen DiMascio (Managing Editor), Jeferson
Morris (Associate Managing Editor), Michael Bruno, (Senior Business
Editor) Amy Hillis, Michael Fabey, Frank Morring, Jr., Tony Osborne,
Amy Svitak, Bill Sweetman (Chief Editor, Defense Technology Edition)
civil aviation/Maintenance, repair anD overhaul
editors Jens Flottau (Managing Editor), Madhu
Unnikrishnan (Associate Managing Editor), Sean Broderick,
Cathy Buyck, John Croft, William Garvey, Molly McMillin,
Guy Norris, Bradley Perrett, Jessica Salerno, Adrian Schofeld,
Brian Sumers, Lee Ann Shay (Chief Editor, MRO Edition)
chief Aircraft evaluation editor Fred George
For individual e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and more,
go to AviationWeek.com/editors
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Show UpdatesGAIN INSIGHTS ON OPPORTUNITIES IN
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In addition to the Asia Business Forum, Singapore Airshow 2016 will introduce three new business forums: the Emerging Technologies Business Forum, which will feature Additive Manufacturing and Big Data Analytics; Training & Simulation Business Forum, which aims to address skills development requirements and the latest training approaches that can apply in today’s aerospace industry; and the France – Singapore Business Forum, which targets to open new doors of partnership between Singapore and France. Registration for the Business Forums is ongoing, visit: http://www.singaporeairshow.com/business-forums to fi nd out more. Please note that only registered trade visitors may attend the forums.
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AW_01_18_2016_p03.indd 3 1/13/16 2:55 PM
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
24 Airbus and Boeing reject
overcapacity concerns and
steadily expand production
26 Budget airline infl ux spurs Asiana
to set up low-cost subsidiary
focused on international routes
27 Pratt & Whitney develops fi x for
geared turbofan startup issue
delaying A320neo service entry
33 Mitsubishi Aircraft’s methodical
approach to fl ight testing delays
fi rst delivery of MRJ to 2018
34 Norwegian requests another U.S.
foreign air permit—for its U.K.
subsidiary—as controversy swirls
36 Speculation about a possible
merger follows Spirit Airlines’
replacement of longtime CEO
59 Peru’s airlines aim to expand,
despite infrastructure constraints
and slow economic growth
BUSINESS
37 Finmeccanica restructures with
“one-company” strategy to
sharpen focus on core business
SPACE
38 SpaceX Falcon 9 core stage
recovery will not change plans for
Ariane 6, Arianespace asserts
DEFENSE
28 U.K. think tank warns governments
to prepare against malicious uses
of commercial UAV technology
29 Australia acknowledges airborne
electronic intelligence program
with order for Gulfstream G550s
31 New fi ghters and frigates are priorities for Belgium as it modernizes armed forces
32 Northrop Grumman begins radar sensor integration for fi rst NATO ground surveillance Global Hawk
39 Winning the KF-X fi ghter contract should be transformative for Korea Aerospace Industries
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
41 Israeili air force cuts fl ying hours, boosts LVC training and advanced, networked simulation
43 With future targets expected to be harder to fi nd and identify, Israel’s defense industry plans strategy
44 Israeli defense companies detail how their technology development maintains an edge on competitors
Israel is making strides in simulation, weapons and sensors. A special report details the advances and explores the unique Israeli defense culture and how it breeds new ideas (page 41). A Smart Quad Rack for the Spice-250 glide bomb is just outboard of the external fuel tank on the right wing of an F-16 in the Rafael photo on the cover. Also in this issue are reports on the reorganization of Finmeccanica (page 37) and new tools for fl ight operations (page 52) and a columnist’s view of why the A380 was a smart move for Airbus (page 12). Aviation Week publishes a digital edition every week. Read it at AviationWeek.com/awst and on our app.
A restructuring process is transforming Finmeccanica and
helping it renew focus on its core
aerospace and defense business
Next-generation fl ight
operations will be ruled less by
new technologies than by creative-
ly employing tools available now
ON THE COVER 37
52
4 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Digital Extras Tap this icon in articles in the digital edition of AW&ST for exclusive features.
ContentsJanuary 18-31, 2016 Volume 178 Number 2
7 Feedback
8 Who’s Where
10-11 First Take
12 Up Front
13 Going Concerns
16 Inside Business Aviation
17 Airline Intel
18 Leading Edge
19 Commander’s Intent
20 In Orbit
22 Washington Outlook
63 Classifi ed
64 Contact Us
65 Aerospace Calendar
AVIATIONWEEK& S P A C E T E C H N O L O G Y
A remotely piloted Boeing 720 was deliberately crashed as part
of NASA’s December 1984 “controlled impact demonstration”
to test an antimisting fuel additive intended to reduce
the severity of postcrash fi res.46
AW_01_18_2016_p04-06.indd 4 1/14/16 5:59 PM
601AWB5.indd 1 1/13/2016 9:49:17 AM
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
24 Airbus and Boeing reject
overcapacity concerns and
steadily expand production
26 Budget airline infl ux spurs Asiana
to set up low-cost subsidiary
focused on international routes
27 Pratt & Whitney develops fi x for
geared turbofan startup issue
delaying A320neo service entry
33 Mitsubishi Aircraft’s methodical
approach to fl ight testing delays
fi rst delivery of MRJ to 2018
34 Norwegian requests another U.S.
foreign air permit—for its U.K.
subsidiary—as controversy swirls
36 Speculation about a possible
merger follows Spirit Airlines’
replacement of longtime CEO
59 Peru’s airlines aim to expand,
despite infrastructure constraints
and slow economic growth
BUSINESS
37 Finmeccanica restructures with
“one-company” strategy to
sharpen focus on core business
SPACE
38 SpaceX Falcon 9 core stage
recovery will not change plans for
Ariane 6, Arianespace asserts
DEFENSE
28 U.K. think tank warns governments
to prepare against malicious uses
of commercial UAV technology
29 Australia acknowledges airborne
electronic intelligence program
with order for Gulfstream G550s
31 New fi ghters and frigates are priorities for Belgium as it modernizes armed forces
32 Northrop Grumman begins radar sensor integration for fi rst NATO ground surveillance Global Hawk
39 Winning the KF-X fi ghter contract should be transformative for Korea Aerospace Industries
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
41 Israeili air force cuts fl ying hours, boosts LVC training and advanced, networked simulation
43 With future targets expected to be harder to fi nd and identify, Israel’s defense industry plans strategy
44 Israeli defense companies detail how their technology development maintains an edge on competitors
Israel is making strides in simulation, weapons and sensors. A special report details the advances and explores the unique Israeli defense culture and how it breeds new ideas (page 41). A Smart Quad Rack for the Spice-250 glide bomb is just outboard of the external fuel tank on the right wing of an F-16 in the Rafael photo on the cover. Also in this issue are reports on the reorganization of Finmeccanica (page 37) and new tools for fl ight operations (page 52) and a columnist’s view of why the A380 was a smart move for Airbus (page 12). Aviation Week publishes a digital edition every week. Read it at AviationWeek.com/awst and on our app.
A restructuring process is transforming Finmeccanica and
helping it renew focus on its core
aerospace and defense business
Next-generation fl ight
operations will be ruled less by
new technologies than by creative-
ly employing tools available now
ON THE COVER 37
52
4 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Digital Extras Tap this icon in articles in the digital edition of AW&ST for exclusive features.
ContentsJanuary 18-31, 2016 Volume 178 Number 2
7 Feedback
8 Who’s Where
10-11 First Take
12 Up Front
13 Going Concerns
16 Inside Business Aviation
17 Airline Intel
18 Leading Edge
19 Commander’s Intent
20 In Orbit
22 Washington Outlook
63 Classifi ed
64 Contact Us
65 Aerospace Calendar
AVIATIONWEEK& S P A C E T E C H N O L O G Y
A remotely piloted Boeing 720 was deliberately crashed as part
of NASA’s December 1984 “controlled impact demonstration”
to test an antimisting fuel additive intended to reduce
the severity of postcrash fi res.46
AW_01_18_2016_p04-06.indd 4 1/14/16 5:59 PM
29
6 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
100 YEARS OF AVIATION WEEK
46 Technology debates and mysterious incidents are unavoidable in improving air safety, history shows
47 These 10 breakthroughs made aviation more safe and enabled the air travel industry to grow
48 In next decades, cyberpilots may fl y commercial aircraft equipped with combined visual systems
NEXT-GENERATION
FLIGHT OPERATIONS
52 Industry cultivates the seeds of connectivity, surveillance and visual immersion
52 Innovators work to meet new European tracking rules, with cost-ef ectiveness in mind
55 Broadband connectivity to and from cockpits will unlock the door to weather situational awareness
56 Near-to-eye display systems
for military pilots are coming
soon to lower-cost civilian
head-up displays
58 Virtual reality head-mounted
displays and gaming technology
will be used to keep aircraft fl ying
TECHNOLOGY
60 Machines will play a key, increasing
role in the Pentagon’s human-
centered “Third Of set” strategy
62 Europe’s Clean Sky 2 will pave the
way for next-gen airliners, fast
rotorcraft and regional aircraft
VIEWPOINT
66 How to maintain competitive
pressure on the F-35 and Long-
Range Strike Bomber contractors
Mobile. Online.
Updated Daily.
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29
28
AW_01_18_2016_p04-06.indd 6 1/14/16 5:59 PM
ASKING ABOUT AOA
John Croft’s article on the crash of [Indonesia] AirAsia Flight 8501 (AW&ST Dec. 7-20, 2015, p. 24) includes references to Air France Flight 447 and Colgan Air Flight 3407, suggest-ing angle-of-attack (AoA) issues. But it would seem that commercial aircraft do not have this important display. Why not?Colin CampbellBRADFORD ON AVON, ENGLAND
The reader is correct that commercial aircraft, including the Airbus A320, do not present the pilots with a direct measurement of angle of attack. In its comments to the fi nal report on the crash of Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501, the French aviation safety organization, BEA, outlines the reasons why.—Ed.
BEA: It is agreed that providing AoA-based information can improve pilot awareness to help avoid loss of control due to aerodynamic stall. Although a direct AoA indicator may improve fl ight-crew awareness in some specifi c circumstances, such as in proximity to a stall, [its]presence in the cockpit would neces-sitate specifi c fl ight-crew training. Having an additional gauge to moni-tor would also marginally increase pilot workload in [routine] fl ying where the information is of little benefi t.
Providing AoA values directly is only one way of presenting informa-tion. AoA-based information can also be presented on airspeed scales (such as speed bands on airspeed scales). This information can be presented even if the airspeed itself
has become invalid. In this way, the AoA information is less prone to misinterpretation, does not require another gauge to be monitored and uses scales with which pilots are already familiar. Thus, in the absence of such research data to the contrary, we support the presenta-tion of AoA-derived information but do not support the direct display of AoA values.
COMMENTS ON A&D 2016
Our “2016 Aerospace & Defense—What you need to know for the year ahead” (AW&ST Jan. 4-17, pp . 42-140) generated online comments from pun-dits and followers of the A&D commu-nity. A sampling follows.
[email protected] notes: It is strange that the authors of
the projections do not completely consider prospects of development of aircraft for special purposes, in particular for forest conservation and wildfi re fi ghting . . .
Talyn comments about “Stealthy Progress,” an overview of the fi ghter sector (page 64):
There’s more than a “potential” gap in air-to-air fi ghters for USAF, there’s a “real” one.
Remf responds:Depends. If the F-35s are used as
recommended, no. If the intent is to do air-to-air with F-35 versus 4g, with key systems including electronic countermeasures turned of , yes. But then, there is a very large air-to-air gap with any 4g fi ghter used against a Mitsubishi A6M . . . or a Fokker D.VII.
Don Bacon weighs in:We haven’t even talked about the
weak F-135 engine, with the rubbing problem due to excessive engine fl ex now only remedied by trenching, which removes some of the ef ect but doesn’t address the root cause of the excessive rubbing. . . . This trenching is the remedy that Amy Hillis (nee Butler) once correctly described as a “workaround.” So now maximum lateral acceleration on “operational” aircraft has apparently been increased to 5.5g from 3.2g, still only less than two-thirds of F-35A specifi cations.
MIG29 responds:[Bacon’s] post summed up the F-35
program extremely well. F-35 support-ers overlook facts or deny that they exist. But he did not touch on cost is-sues . . . [a lengthy list follows online].
Catch-up with or add to the dialog at ow.ly/X47MH or through your Avia-tionWeek.com account.
Feedback Aviation Week & Space Technology welcomes the opinions of its readers on issues raised in the magazine. Address letters to the Executive Editor, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1911 Fort Myer Drive, Suite 600, Arlington, Va. 22209 or send via email to: [email protected]
Letters should be shorter than 200 words, and you must give a genuine identification, address and daytime telephone number. We will not print anonymous letters, but names will be withheld. We reserve the right to edit letters.
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 7
Corrections
In the Jan. 4-17 issue, page 16, the combined revenue of GE and Safran was misstated; it is $160 billion in a com-mentary. An article on page 68 misstated developments relating to the A400M; it should have said Spain hopes to delay half of its A400M purchases and specifi ed that a fi nal report on the May 2015 crash of the airlifter has yet to be fi led. An article on page 130 misstated engine aftermarket demand; it is $282.1 billion. On page 106, NavCanada’s investment toward ATM technology was misstated; it is $1.4 billion.
In the Dec. 21, 2015-Jan. 3, 2016, edition, an article on page 42 misspelled the name of Raytheon’s Steve Bernstein and should have clarifi ed that gallium nitride transis-tors have 5-10 times the power density of gallium arsenide transistors so that chips can be shrunk to much smaller sizes.
AW_01_18_2016_p07.indd 7 1/14/16 6:16 PM
29
6 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
100 YEARS OF AVIATION WEEK
46 Technology debates and mysterious incidents are unavoidable in improving air safety, history shows
47 These 10 breakthroughs made aviation more safe and enabled the air travel industry to grow
48 In next decades, cyberpilots may fl y commercial aircraft equipped with combined visual systems
NEXT-GENERATION
FLIGHT OPERATIONS
52 Industry cultivates the seeds of connectivity, surveillance and visual immersion
52 Innovators work to meet new European tracking rules, with cost-ef ectiveness in mind
55 Broadband connectivity to and from cockpits will unlock the door to weather situational awareness
56 Near-to-eye display systems
for military pilots are coming
soon to lower-cost civilian
head-up displays
58 Virtual reality head-mounted
displays and gaming technology
will be used to keep aircraft fl ying
TECHNOLOGY
60 Machines will play a key, increasing
role in the Pentagon’s human-
centered “Third Of set” strategy
62 Europe’s Clean Sky 2 will pave the
way for next-gen airliners, fast
rotorcraft and regional aircraft
VIEWPOINT
66 How to maintain competitive
pressure on the F-35 and Long-
Range Strike Bomber contractors
Mobile. Online.
Updated Daily.
Free to subscribers. Get new content
daily and read the weekly digital edition
of Aviation Week online or in our app.
DESKTOP/LAPTOP
Go to AviationWeek.com/awst
APPLE APP
Go to the Apple App Store, search
for “Aviation Week” and download the
Aviation Week & Space Technology
app to your iPad or iPhone.
ANDROID APP
Go to Google Play, search for “Aviation
Week” and download the Aviation Week
& Space Technology app for your
Android phone or tablet.
LOGIN
Tap on any locked article to get to the
login screen OR on the menu icon in the
upper right corner of the app screen
(image with three parallel lines) and tap
“Login.” Log in using the email address
associated with your subscription.
Forgot Password? Tap the “forgot
password” link on the login screen
and follow the reset instructions emailed
to you (this password may not be the same
as your digital edition password).
Customer Service If you don’t have
a registered email or password, or are
having problems with the download
or login, contact our customer care
team for assistance:
Toll-free (North America)800-525-5003
Outside North America(+1) 847-763-9147
Email: [email protected]
Web: AviationWeek.com/awstcustomers
29
28
AW_01_18_2016_p04-06.indd 6 1/14/16 5:59 PM
U.S. Air Force Col. Angela M. Cadwell has been appoint-ed to the rank of brigadier gen-eral. She had been executive ofcer to the deputy command-er, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany.
Walt Czajkowski has joined Fisba Optik as managing di-rector of its Tucson, Arizona, production subsidiary. The company supplies optics and related systems to the aero-space and defense industry.
El Al Israel Airlines has ap-pointed Michal Ben Yacov (see photo) West Coast region-al manager for sales and mar-keting, based in Los Angeles.
Etihad Airways has ap-pointed Remco Althuis (see photo) vice president-Europe. Althuis has held several aero-nautics sales and marketing roles in Europe and Asia.
Cedric Leurquin (see photo) has joined the Paris-headquartered Thales Group as the head of media relations and newsdesk. He will report to Matt Pothecary, vice presi-dent-group communications.
Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. has promoted Nicholas Robinson to the position of regional vice president of new aircraft sales for Africa. He had been Gulfstream’s director of product support sales for the Asia-Pacifc region.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Wash-ington has named Katherine Blakeley (see photo) as a policy analysis research fellow. Blake-ley had been a defense policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service and the Cen-ter for American Progress.
Meridian, a private aviation company based at Teterboro Airport in Teterboro, New Jer-sey, has named Kirk Stephen director of marketing.
Mark Tattershall has been ap-pointed director of business develop-ment for AGC AeroComposites based in Hayden, Idaho. He had been busi-ness development director for Ka-
Who’s Where
Heidi B. Capozzi
Remco Althuis
J.E. Boyington, Jr.
Cedric Leurquin
Michal Ben Yacov
Katherine Blakeley
Kevin Eldredge
Boeing has appointed Heidi B. Capozzi (see photo) corporate senior vice president-human
resources. She also will join the Boe-ing executive council. Capozzi replac-es Tony Parasida, who is retiring.
Triumph Group, headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, has named Daniel J. Crowley president and CEO. He had been president of inte-grated defense systems at Raytheon, and previously held various leader-ship positions at Lockheed Martin. Triumph designs, engineers, manufac-tures, repairs and overhauls aircraft components and systems.
L-3 Communications has named U.S. Navy Rear Adm. (ret.) John E. “Ed” Boyington, Jr. (see photo) as president-logistics solutions.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems has appointed Mat Joyce vice president/general manager of strategic and mis-sile defense systems.
International Airlines Group (IAG), parent company to British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus, has appointed Andrew Crawley chief executive of IAG Cargo. He had been British Airways chief commercial of-fcer. Steve Gunning will become Brit-ish Airways’ chief fnancial ofcer.
China Aircraft Leasing Group Hold-ings, China’s largest independent air-craft operating lessor, has appointed as deputy CEO both Barry Mok and Winnie Liu, who also becomes chief commercial ofcer; Mok remains chief fnancial ofcer. Pitney Tang is now chief operating ofcer.
Duncan Aviation has named Lee Bowes regional manger for the central U.S. He had been regional manager for the southwest U.S.
Rich Greener has been appointed senior vice president-cargo programs for GE Capital Aviation Services, based in Shannon, Ireland.
Ontic, a BBA Aviation company spe-cializing in OEM legacy products, has named Matthew Pritchard director of the Cheltenham, England, site.
FlightSafety International has named Daniel MacLellan senior vice presi-dent-operations, based in New York; David Opalach assistant manager of the learning center in Wilmington, Del-aware; and Thierry Pierard assistant manager of the Dallas learning center.
man Helicopters and Breeze-Eastern.
The Mobile (Alabama)Airport Authority has named Brian Belcher director of marketing and air service development for Mobile Regional Airport.
Lancair International Inc., which manufactures high-performance aviation kits, has named Kevin Eldredge (see photo) as director of business development.
15below, which specializes in passenger communications for the travel industry, has ap-pointed Nicholas Key chief executive ofcer.
Marana Aerospace Solutions, located in Marana, Arizona, has appointed Nick Morelos director of maintenance.
Tampa, Florida-based Pemco Aviation Maintenance has named Douglas Ragsdale di-rector of quality.
HONORS & ELECTIONS Ralph Paroli of the National Research Council of Canada has been named 2016 chair-man of the ASTM International board of directors.
The Royal Aeronautical So-ciety has awarded Ric Parker the 2015 Gold Medal for work of an outstanding nature in aerospace. He is director of research and technology at Rolls-Royce.
CybAero, based in Linkoping, Sweden, has appointed Anna Ohrwall Ronnback as board chairwoman and Goran Lars-brink as the new vice chair.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has awarded Arthur Winston the Robert S. Walleigh Distinguished Contribu-tions to Engineering Professionalism award. Winston was IEEE president in 2004. c
To submit information for the
Who’s Where column, send Word
or attached text files (no PDFs) and
photos to: [email protected]
For additional information on
companies and individuals listed in
this column, please refer to the
Aviation Week Intelligence Network
at AviationWeek.com/awin For
information on ordering, telephone
U.S.: +1 (866) 857-0148 or
+1 (515) 237-3682 outside the U.S.
8 AvIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
AW_01_18_2016_p08.indd 8 1/14/16 12:52 PM
6th Annual
Aerospace Raw Materials & Manufacturers Supply Chain Conference
March 7, 2016
Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills, CA
This Conference, to be held at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, CA, is designed to serve a full-
range of participants in the dynamic global commercial and military aircraft markets. The agenda
includes topics of interest for equipment OEMs, sub-tier manufacturers, supply chain executives,
market analysts, investment bankers and raw material suppliers. Speakers will address a broad range of
important topics including military and commercial aircraft supply chain strategies, demand outlook for
aerospace raw materials, market and supplier trends, and the impact of lean manufacturing. If you are
involved in commercial and military aviation supply chains, this Conference is geared for you.
SpeedNews • 11500 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 574 • Los Angeles, CA 90064, USA • Tel: +1-424-465-6501 • [email protected]
For more information on these and other SpeedNews Aviation Industry Suppliers Conferences, please visit www.speednews.com
30th Annual Commercial Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference
March 7 – 9 2016
Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills, CA
For the 30th year, SpeedNews presents its Annual Commercial Aviation
Industry Suppliers Conference in Beverly Hills, California. Hear from
aircraft and engine manufacturers on the status of their current programs
and learn from industry experts about the fi nancial status of the aviation
industry. This Conference is geared towards equipment manufacturers, raw
material suppliers, aviation analysts, fi nancial institutions, and marketing
executives, all of whom will walk away with new knowledge about the
industry. Discounts are available for those interested in attending both
events. Please contact us for more information.
Market Forecasts & Industry Briefi ngs
#ASC
#RMC
601AWB9.indd 1 1/14/2016 3:19:24 PM
U.S. Air Force Col. Angela M. Cadwell has been appoint-ed to the rank of brigadier gen-eral. She had been executive ofcer to the deputy command-er, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany.
Walt Czajkowski has joined Fisba Optik as managing di-rector of its Tucson, Arizona, production subsidiary. The company supplies optics and related systems to the aero-space and defense industry.
El Al Israel Airlines has ap-pointed Michal Ben Yacov (see photo) West Coast region-al manager for sales and mar-keting, based in Los Angeles.
Etihad Airways has ap-pointed Remco Althuis (see photo) vice president-Europe. Althuis has held several aero-nautics sales and marketing roles in Europe and Asia.
Cedric Leurquin (see photo) has joined the Paris-headquartered Thales Group as the head of media relations and newsdesk. He will report to Matt Pothecary, vice presi-dent-group communications.
Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. has promoted Nicholas Robinson to the position of regional vice president of new aircraft sales for Africa. He had been Gulfstream’s director of product support sales for the Asia-Pacifc region.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Wash-ington has named Katherine Blakeley (see photo) as a policy analysis research fellow. Blake-ley had been a defense policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service and the Cen-ter for American Progress.
Meridian, a private aviation company based at Teterboro Airport in Teterboro, New Jer-sey, has named Kirk Stephen director of marketing.
Mark Tattershall has been ap-pointed director of business develop-ment for AGC AeroComposites based in Hayden, Idaho. He had been busi-ness development director for Ka-
Who’s Where
Heidi B. Capozzi
Remco Althuis
J.E. Boyington, Jr.
Cedric Leurquin
Michal Ben Yacov
Katherine Blakeley
Kevin Eldredge
Boeing has appointed Heidi B. Capozzi (see photo) corporate senior vice president-human
resources. She also will join the Boe-ing executive council. Capozzi replac-es Tony Parasida, who is retiring.
Triumph Group, headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, has named Daniel J. Crowley president and CEO. He had been president of inte-grated defense systems at Raytheon, and previously held various leader-ship positions at Lockheed Martin. Triumph designs, engineers, manufac-tures, repairs and overhauls aircraft components and systems.
L-3 Communications has named U.S. Navy Rear Adm. (ret.) John E. “Ed” Boyington, Jr. (see photo) as president-logistics solutions.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems has appointed Mat Joyce vice president/general manager of strategic and mis-sile defense systems.
International Airlines Group (IAG), parent company to British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus, has appointed Andrew Crawley chief executive of IAG Cargo. He had been British Airways chief commercial of-fcer. Steve Gunning will become Brit-ish Airways’ chief fnancial ofcer.
China Aircraft Leasing Group Hold-ings, China’s largest independent air-craft operating lessor, has appointed as deputy CEO both Barry Mok and Winnie Liu, who also becomes chief commercial ofcer; Mok remains chief fnancial ofcer. Pitney Tang is now chief operating ofcer.
Duncan Aviation has named Lee Bowes regional manger for the central U.S. He had been regional manager for the southwest U.S.
Rich Greener has been appointed senior vice president-cargo programs for GE Capital Aviation Services, based in Shannon, Ireland.
Ontic, a BBA Aviation company spe-cializing in OEM legacy products, has named Matthew Pritchard director of the Cheltenham, England, site.
FlightSafety International has named Daniel MacLellan senior vice presi-dent-operations, based in New York; David Opalach assistant manager of the learning center in Wilmington, Del-aware; and Thierry Pierard assistant manager of the Dallas learning center.
man Helicopters and Breeze-Eastern.
The Mobile (Alabama)Airport Authority has named Brian Belcher director of marketing and air service development for Mobile Regional Airport.
Lancair International Inc., which manufactures high-performance aviation kits, has named Kevin Eldredge (see photo) as director of business development.
15below, which specializes in passenger communications for the travel industry, has ap-pointed Nicholas Key chief executive ofcer.
Marana Aerospace Solutions, located in Marana, Arizona, has appointed Nick Morelos director of maintenance.
Tampa, Florida-based Pemco Aviation Maintenance has named Douglas Ragsdale di-rector of quality.
HONORS & ELECTIONS Ralph Paroli of the National Research Council of Canada has been named 2016 chair-man of the ASTM International board of directors.
The Royal Aeronautical So-ciety has awarded Ric Parker the 2015 Gold Medal for work of an outstanding nature in aerospace. He is director of research and technology at Rolls-Royce.
CybAero, based in Linkoping, Sweden, has appointed Anna Ohrwall Ronnback as board chairwoman and Goran Lars-brink as the new vice chair.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has awarded Arthur Winston the Robert S. Walleigh Distinguished Contribu-tions to Engineering Professionalism award. Winston was IEEE president in 2004. c
To submit information for the
Who’s Where column, send Word
or attached text files (no PDFs) and
photos to: [email protected]
For additional information on
companies and individuals listed in
this column, please refer to the
Aviation Week Intelligence Network
at AviationWeek.com/awin For
information on ordering, telephone
U.S.: +1 (866) 857-0148 or
+1 (515) 237-3682 outside the U.S.
8 AvIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
AW_01_18_2016_p08.indd 8 1/14/16 12:52 PM
10 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
DEFENSE
Northrop Grumman is installing the radar in the first NATO Alli-ance Ground Surveillance (AGS)Global Hawk following first flight of the unmanned aircraft in December. After tests at Edwards AFB, California, the first of five NATO AGS will be ferried to Sigonella, Sicily, for integration with the European-developed ground systems (page 32).
Germany is to negotiate with Airbus Defense & Space to lease Israel Aero-space Industries’ Heron TP unmanned aircraft to replace leased Heron 1s now used over Afghanistan and Mali and to bridge the gap to 2025, when a Euro-pean medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV developed by Germany, France, Italy and Spain is to be available.
The U.K. and Japan have completed the first phase of a feasibility study on a Joint New Air-to-Air Missile,
First Take
plans to invest €9.2 billion ($10 billion) in new fighters, six unmanned aircraft systems and new search-and-rescue helicopters, and commit to the use of an aerial refueling aircraft.
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
Boeing delivered 762 commercial aircraft in 2015, up from 723 in 2014, beating Airbus’s record total of 635 deliveries, up from 629 a year earlier. But Airbus took the lead in net orders, booking 1,036 aircraft compared with Boeing’s 768. The European manu-facturer saw a less severe drop than Boeing from 2014 levels (page 24).
All Nippon Airways plans to buy an 8.8% stake in Vietnam Air-lines—worth $108 million—under a memorandum of understanding announced Jan. 12. The carriers intend to codeshare on routes between Japan and Vietnam and on their domestic networks starting in October. The Viet-namese government will remain the largest stakeholder in the local airline.
A cautious approach to flight testing, based on more extensive ground preparations, is behind Mitsubishi Aircraft’s decision to delay first delivery
begun in November 2014. Japan has shown interest
in combining a Mitsubishi-developed active, electronically
scanned array radar seeker with Europe’s MBDA Me-teor beyond-visual-range missile.
In a surprise move, Australia has purchased two Gulfstream G550s modified to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and electronic-warfare aircraft from L-3 Commu-nications for $93.6 million. The U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract is to be completed by the end of November 2017, says the Pentagon (page 29).
Slovakia says a government-to-government deal with Sweden to lease 8-12 Saab Gripen fi ghters could be finalized in the next few months. They will replace expensive-to-operate MiG-29s inherited when Czechoslova-kia split following the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. The Czech Republic and Hungary operate leased Gripens.
Belgium will purchase 34 fighters to replace its fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16s. In a cross-party agreement on its defense plan to 2030, the country
NO
RTH
RO
P G
RU
MM
AN
ANDRE TURCAT, 1921-2016
On March 31, 1976, Andre Turcat ended the chapter of his life that made him famous. For the last time, he turned Concorde’s engines off after landing in Toulouse. After 740 hr. on Concorde and 6,500 hr. total on 110 different aircraft types, France’s best-known pilot went into early retirement. He never f ew an aircraft again.
It was an unusual decision at the age of 54, particularly given that his life as a test pilot reaped many accolades and awards. On March 2, 1969, Turcat, co-pilot Jacques Guignard, Henri Perrier and Michel Retif f ew Concorde for the f rst time. The aircraft took off from Toulouse-Blagnac Airport and returned to the f eld a little less than 30 min. later. He left the landing gear and the air-craft’s famous visor down, climbed to 10,000 ft. and executed some initial handling tests. Concorde performed well, but the weather deteriorated. Back on the ground, Turcat announced that the f rst f ight was “not an achievement” but only the beginning of a lot of work.
Concorde would not be certif ed until late 1975 after six years of testing and dramatic cost overruns. But Turcat defended and fought for the project long after he had left it—in particular following the
May 25, 2000, crash that turned out to be the beginning of the end for the program.
In his second career, Turcat served as a deputy mayor of Toulouse and was a member of the European Parliament. In 1983, he founded the famous Academie de l’Air et de l’Espace. But he
soon left politics in favor of pursuing arts and history, receiving a doctorate in 1990. A deeply religious person, he later studied the-ology. His many books cover not only aviation, but the arts and the Bible as well.
He was born in 1921 into a family of one of the f rst French car manufacturers (Turcat-Mery). He joined the French air force during World War II and was certif ed as a pilot in 1947. After leaving military service, he joined the f ight-test center in Bretigny-sur-Orge in 1950 and set various speed records. He received the Harmon Trophy in 1958 for his early achievements and a second time in 1970 for his role in the Concorde program.
The late Pierre Sparaco, an Aviation Week & Space Technology Paris bureau chief, was a friend and cap-tured much of the essence of the man in his books Andre Turcat: Biography and Concorde: La Veritable Histoire.
Turcat died Jan. 4 at his home near Aix-en-Provence. He was 94.
GETTY IMAGES/HULTON ARCHIVE
AW_01_18_2016_p10-11.indd 10 1/14/16 7:27 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 11
of the MRJ regional jet to the second or third quarter of 2018 from the second quarter of 2017—already delayed from the late-2013 date set when the pro-gram was launched in 2008.
Fatal accidents involving commer-cial aircraft were the lowest ever in 2015, even factoring in intentional acts, according to the Flight Safety Founda-tion’s Aviation Safety Network (ASN). Listing 16 accidents and apparent intentional acts resulting in 560 deaths, ASN says 2015 was the fifth-safest year to date in terms of fatalities.
investigators say it may take weeks to recover information from the damaged flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the West Air Sweden Bombardier CRJ200 freighter that crashed in northwest Sweden on Jan. 7, killing both crew members. Cargo flight PT294 was en route from Olso’s Gardermoen Airport to Tromso in Norway.
SPACE
Sierra nevada corp. (Snc) joins incumbents orbital Atk and SpaceX in the maximum $14 billion second round of contracts to deliver cargo to
the International Space Station. NASA picked the three companies for at least six flights each in 2019-24, adding the cargo version of SNC’s Dream Chaser, a reusable lifting body with folding wings, to fit a standard 5-meter (16.5-ft.) fair-ing for more launch-vehicle options.
orbital Atk plans a booster with which to compete with the United Launch Alliance and Space X for at least six U.S. Air Force launches in 2019-24. The company has won Air Force funding support for develop-ment of a strap-on solid rocket motor, solid-rocket common booster segment and an extendable nozzle for Blue Origin’s BE-3U upper-stage engine.
Moving quickly after congress lifted restrictions on U.S. use of Russian rocket engines under the spending bill passed at the end of 2015, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) has ordered RD-180 engines to power Atlas V boosters for civil and commercial launches. The order will smooth the transition to the U.S.-powered Vulcan booster, ULA says.
european launch provider Ariane-space made record sales of more than €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in 2015, on 12 launches including six heavy-lift Ariane 5 flights. Only 11 launches are planned for 2016, but eight are to be Ariane 5 flights so sales are expected to be higher.
BUSINESS AVIATION
Dassault Aviation took orders for only 45 Falcon business jets in 2015, half the number booked a year earlier, citing the economic environment in emerging markets. An order for 20 Falcons from fractional-ownership operator NetJets was canceled in 2015, and Dassault fell short of its goal to deliver 66 business jets in 2015, ship-ping just 55.
Bombardier is terminating third-party distributor agreements for its business jets, principally TAG Aero-nautics, to increase profits through
direct sales. Agreements with custom-ers have been restructured, resulting in cancellation of 24 orders and 30 options. Bombardier will take a $278 million charge in the fourth quarter of 2015 to cover the changes.
ROTORCRAFT
Russian helicopters has received type certification from Russia for its long-delayed Mi-38 twin-engine heavy
helicopter. In flight-testing since 2003 and powered by two Klimov TV7-117V turboshafts, the 15.6-metric-ton aircraft is to enter serial production in 2016.
helicopter maker AgustaWestland became Finmeccanica helicopters on Jan. 1 under the Italian industrial group’s “One Company” initiative. Alenia Aermacchi and Selex ES are now the Aeronautics and Electronics, Defense & Security divisions of Finmecanicca, respectively.
For the latest, go to AviationWeek.com
Aviation Week’s 100-year archive of past issues is now live online at: archive.aviationweek.com
58 YEARS AGO IN AviAtion Weekour Jan. 20, 1958, cover featured a photo of the first production Boeing 707-120, designed to carry 124 first-class or 150 “tourist” passengers. The jetliner had made its first flight the previous month. Reporting from Seattle, Aviation Week’s Richard Sweeney explained how the 707 was “aimed at reestablishing the company at the top of the commercial market in the jet age.” There was plenty of competition: The same issue featured a photo of the Douglas DC-8, which would be rolled out three months later, and nine months later, the redesigned de Havilland Comet would become the first trans-Atlantic jetliner. For its part, the 707’s performance was greatly improved with the introduction of Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofan engines in 1961.
Russian HelicopteRs
sieRRa nevada coRp.
AW_01_18_2016_p10-11.indd 11 1/15/16 10:36 AM
10 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
DEFENSE
Northrop Grumman is installing the radar in the first NATO Alli-ance Ground Surveillance (AGS)Global Hawk following first flight of the unmanned aircraft in December. After tests at Edwards AFB, California, the first of five NATO AGS will be ferried to Sigonella, Sicily, for integration with the European-developed ground systems (page 32).
Germany is to negotiate with Airbus Defense & Space to lease Israel Aero-space Industries’ Heron TP unmanned aircraft to replace leased Heron 1s now used over Afghanistan and Mali and to bridge the gap to 2025, when a Euro-pean medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV developed by Germany, France, Italy and Spain is to be available.
The U.K. and Japan have completed the first phase of a feasibility study on a Joint New Air-to-Air Missile,
First Take
plans to invest €9.2 billion ($10 billion) in new fighters, six unmanned aircraft systems and new search-and-rescue helicopters, and commit to the use of an aerial refueling aircraft.
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
Boeing delivered 762 commercial aircraft in 2015, up from 723 in 2014, beating Airbus’s record total of 635 deliveries, up from 629 a year earlier. But Airbus took the lead in net orders, booking 1,036 aircraft compared with Boeing’s 768. The European manu-facturer saw a less severe drop than Boeing from 2014 levels (page 24).
All Nippon Airways plans to buy an 8.8% stake in Vietnam Air-lines—worth $108 million—under a memorandum of understanding announced Jan. 12. The carriers intend to codeshare on routes between Japan and Vietnam and on their domestic networks starting in October. The Viet-namese government will remain the largest stakeholder in the local airline.
A cautious approach to flight testing, based on more extensive ground preparations, is behind Mitsubishi Aircraft’s decision to delay first delivery
begun in November 2014. Japan has shown interest
in combining a Mitsubishi-developed active, electronically
scanned array radar seeker with Europe’s MBDA Me-teor beyond-visual-range missile.
In a surprise move, Australia has purchased two Gulfstream G550s modified to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and electronic-warfare aircraft from L-3 Commu-nications for $93.6 million. The U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract is to be completed by the end of November 2017, says the Pentagon (page 29).
Slovakia says a government-to-government deal with Sweden to lease 8-12 Saab Gripen fi ghters could be finalized in the next few months. They will replace expensive-to-operate MiG-29s inherited when Czechoslova-kia split following the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. The Czech Republic and Hungary operate leased Gripens.
Belgium will purchase 34 fighters to replace its fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16s. In a cross-party agreement on its defense plan to 2030, the country
NO
RTH
RO
P G
RU
MM
AN
ANDRE TURCAT, 1921-2016
On March 31, 1976, Andre Turcat ended the chapter of his life that made him famous. For the last time, he turned Concorde’s engines off after landing in Toulouse. After 740 hr. on Concorde and 6,500 hr. total on 110 different aircraft types, France’s best-known pilot went into early retirement. He never f ew an aircraft again.
It was an unusual decision at the age of 54, particularly given that his life as a test pilot reaped many accolades and awards. On March 2, 1969, Turcat, co-pilot Jacques Guignard, Henri Perrier and Michel Retif f ew Concorde for the f rst time. The aircraft took off from Toulouse-Blagnac Airport and returned to the f eld a little less than 30 min. later. He left the landing gear and the air-craft’s famous visor down, climbed to 10,000 ft. and executed some initial handling tests. Concorde performed well, but the weather deteriorated. Back on the ground, Turcat announced that the f rst f ight was “not an achievement” but only the beginning of a lot of work.
Concorde would not be certif ed until late 1975 after six years of testing and dramatic cost overruns. But Turcat defended and fought for the project long after he had left it—in particular following the
May 25, 2000, crash that turned out to be the beginning of the end for the program.
In his second career, Turcat served as a deputy mayor of Toulouse and was a member of the European Parliament. In 1983, he founded the famous Academie de l’Air et de l’Espace. But he
soon left politics in favor of pursuing arts and history, receiving a doctorate in 1990. A deeply religious person, he later studied the-ology. His many books cover not only aviation, but the arts and the Bible as well.
He was born in 1921 into a family of one of the f rst French car manufacturers (Turcat-Mery). He joined the French air force during World War II and was certif ed as a pilot in 1947. After leaving military service, he joined the f ight-test center in Bretigny-sur-Orge in 1950 and set various speed records. He received the Harmon Trophy in 1958 for his early achievements and a second time in 1970 for his role in the Concorde program.
The late Pierre Sparaco, an Aviation Week & Space Technology Paris bureau chief, was a friend and cap-tured much of the essence of the man in his books Andre Turcat: Biography and Concorde: La Veritable Histoire.
Turcat died Jan. 4 at his home near Aix-en-Provence. He was 94.
GETTY IMAGES/HULTON ARCHIVE
AW_01_18_2016_p10-11.indd 10 1/14/16 7:27 PM
Up Front
commentary
In reality, the A380 was a strate-gic coup by Airbus and will still be a fantastic asset for the company in the years ahead. Its birth may have been full of drama and setbacks, but it will be remembered as the aircraft that changed the competitive dynamics not only between Airbus and Boeing but also among international airlines.
In the 1990s, the monopolistic position of Boeing’s 747-400 in the very-large-aircraft segment enabled the U.S. manufacturer to generate dis-proportionate profts, which it could then use to subsidize other product lines and invest in new R&D proj-ects. Boeing had a huge competitive advantage over Airbus. But the launch of the A380 in 2006 essentially put an end to that situation, and orders for the 747 collapsed, efectively bringing the 747 passenger version to its end.
Any proftability analysis of the A380 must take this into account. It may not yet make much proft on its own, but the aircraft contributed to a major market-power redistribu-tion between Boeing and Airbus. It also meant that, for the frst time, the Europeans became the “thought leaders” in one market segment. They
Last November, Airbus announced it would reduce the
production rate of the A380 to 1.8 per month from 2.5
by mid-2017. This capped the frst zero-order year since the
program was launched 10 years ago and made naysayers more
than happy to spread gloomy comments about the future of the
program. What a shortsighted assessment!
Far from FailureThe Airbus A380 is a testament to Europe’s
commercial aerospace success and foresight
of the experience they ofer their passengers.
For many, the A380 has become the fagship of their feets and is a signifcant contributor to their proftability and market leadership. Emirates, the biggest A380 customer, was the second most proftable airline in the world in 2014. Other A380 customers—such as Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Qantas or Etihad Airways—have been increasing their market share and boosting their respective brands in the process.
The A380 launch was as traumatic for Airbus as it was disruptive for the aviation community. For the aircraft maker, the program’s sheer complex-ity and the problems that ensued were a wake-up call that led to a major transformation in its management processes and operational efciency. The so-called Power8 restructuring plan, launched in 2007 in the wake of the A380 production delays and cost overruns, gave the company a big boost of competitiveness that is now benefting all other programs.
Ten years after its launch, the A380 is clearly not yet the commercial hit Airbus would have liked in terms of quantity of airplanes sold. But it must be remembered that 10 years is a young age for an aircraft designed essentially to address tomorrow’s rather than today’s demand. As a benchmark, the Boeing 747 really only became a blockbuster 20 years after the launch of its frst version. Besides, the A380’s popularity with existing customers and discerning air travel-ers is unquestionable in terms of economics for the former, comfort for the latter and environmental consid-erations for both.
There is no question, therefore, that the A380 has redefned the balance of power between Airbus and Boeing. It has propelled Airbus into a much more favorable competitive position overall and given the most innova-tive and forward-looking airlines a product beftting their ambitions. The aircraft has also put air travelers back at the center of the picture.
For all these reasons—with no ofense intended to fnancial analysts and other bean counters—the A380 must be viewed as a success. c
were no longer trying to win market share through incremental innovation and catch up with Boeing; they aimed to set the standards of commercial aviation for the next half-century by introducing a completely new design and architecture that would ft the air travel demographics and constraints of tomorrow. Since then, major in-novations introduced on the A380 in areas such as low-noise and low-emission engines, advanced materials, modular avionics and electrical power generation have benefted all the new Airbus programs.
With the advent of the A380, air-lines suddenly had something more than “cost per available seat mile” to play with. They were able to reassess their entire business model, with a clear focus on product and service diferentiation, and escape the com-modity magnet into which many had been falling, particularly in North America. It is indeed no surprise that all operators of the A380—none of which are American—are among the best-rated by air travelers. Their investment in the type, even if mar-ginal for some, shows a real concern for customer service and the quality
12 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
Quentin Douchet/WikimeDia
By Antoine Gelain
Contributing columnist Antoine Gelain is the managing director of Paragon European Partners. He is based in London.
AW_01_18_2016_p12.indd 12 1/13/16 5:24 PM
Going Concerns
commentary
The fnancial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession started to change that, however. Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems have bowed out of corporate-level attendance in recent years citing costs (or more accurately, a decline in bang for the buck). Now, a more fundamental change is occur-ring, too, and A&D observers continue to look elsewhere to spot the future of A&D technology. The move comes as the commercial world is seem-ingly taking the lead over government contractors when it comes to develop-ing and providing new technology—a shift even the Pentagon is trying to capitalize on with its so-called Third Ofset plan.
Take CES, the big annual consumer electronics show held each January in Las Vegas. “CES is annually a solid predictor of what to expect from the tech sector in the year ahead,” Canac-cord fnancial analyst Bobby Burleson told clients ahead of the Jan. 6-9 event. “We expect highlights of the show to include hobbyist and military drone producers, growing Chinese robotics developers, and robots that can be used for nontraditional service applications.”
Who would have thought a con-sumer electronics trade show better known for the advent of the video-cassette recorder (VCR), compact disc (CD) and high-defnition televi-
Attending the Farn-
borough or Paris
air shows once meant
everything if you were an
aerospace and defense
executive, entrepreneur
or journalist. The annual
European extravagan-
za—which alternates airfelds and is at Farnborough come
July—was the place to see new technology as well as be seen.
Vegas Baby, Vegas!Beyond air shows, A&D analysts are watching
consumer electronics shows for the future, too
sion eras of home gadgetry would become a locus of A&D innovation? Sure, UAVs seem an obvious con-nection. But increasingly there are good reasons to look there, and not just because of the likes of the EHang 184, the self-promoted frst UAV for human passengers that garnered international headlines, or the Mota JetJat Nano UAVs on eye-catching scaled displayed here (see photo).
One adjacent tech sector worth watching is machine vision, which is the synthesis of sensors, cameras and software to allow robots to “see” and “think” without human involvement. “As autonomous platforms continue to be adopted for military and commer-cial purposes, machine vision is a key enabling technology,” Burleson says. Key suppliers include Teledyne Tech-nologies, a conglomerate that won its category in Aviation Week’s Top-Performing Companies (TPC) study last year and had ranked the best performance over the last fve years of among its peers (AW&ST April 27-May 10, 2015, p. 42). Other companies not so familiar to A&D yet but worth watching are Cognex, Keyence, Isra Vision, MV Tech and Perceptron.
Another area is robotic navigation, particularly as mergers and acquisi-tions here are a bellwether for some in the A&D sector. One noteworthy deal last October was automation player
Omron’s roughly $200 million take-over of robot-maker Adept Technol-ogy at more than threefold the latter’s 2014 revenue valuation. “High valua-tion multiples bode well for covered companies, including AeroVironment [another TPC winner] and iRobot, and put a foor on pricing levels in light of any unexpected potential busi-ness downturns,” Burleson says.
Indeed, it is the nexus of autonomy, robotics and artifcial intelligence (AI) that could be the most consequential tie-in for A&D. These and other so-called human-assist capabilities lie at the heart of the Pentagon’s Third Ofset (see page 60). Not surprisingly, U.S. automakers—sometimes viewed as the A&D industry’s older sibling—also are interested in these technolo-gies, and some of the biggest news dominating CES revolved around pairings between Detroit giants and Silicon Valley stars like General Mo-tors and ride-sharing company Lyft. The buzz extended to the Detroit auto show earlier this month.
One pairing talked about both in Las Vegas and Detroit was a pur-ported teaming between Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Ford for ride-sharing and related feets. The alignment reportedly was helped along by former Ford CEO and Boe-ing Commercial Airplanes CEO Alan Mulally, who now sits on the Alphabet board and calls himself a “Googler.”
The deals are coming as both the old and new industries see threats to longer-term growth potential in their native markets but more potential in combining with others. Accord-ingly, A&D analyst Jim McAleese sees another “direct” linkage between Alphabet, Ford and A&D and suggests Washington watch such developments closely.
“Silicon Valley giants are now cash-rich, but opportunity-poor,” he says, noting Google’s restructuring last year and creation of its parent com-pany and separate technology units. “Alphabet’s new subsidiaries will have greatest potential commonality to the Defense Department’s Third Ofset, particularly autonomous vehicles and actual AI machine learning for time-sensitive missions of missile defense, cyber and electronic warfare.” c
aviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 13
Consumer TeChnology AssoCiATion
By Michael Bruno
Senior Business Editor Michael Bruno blogs at:AviationWeek.com/ares
AW_01_18_2016_p13.indd 13 1/13/16 2:41 PM
Up Front
commentary
In reality, the A380 was a strate-gic coup by Airbus and will still be a fantastic asset for the company in the years ahead. Its birth may have been full of drama and setbacks, but it will be remembered as the aircraft that changed the competitive dynamics not only between Airbus and Boeing but also among international airlines.
In the 1990s, the monopolistic position of Boeing’s 747-400 in the very-large-aircraft segment enabled the U.S. manufacturer to generate dis-proportionate profts, which it could then use to subsidize other product lines and invest in new R&D proj-ects. Boeing had a huge competitive advantage over Airbus. But the launch of the A380 in 2006 essentially put an end to that situation, and orders for the 747 collapsed, efectively bringing the 747 passenger version to its end.
Any proftability analysis of the A380 must take this into account. It may not yet make much proft on its own, but the aircraft contributed to a major market-power redistribu-tion between Boeing and Airbus. It also meant that, for the frst time, the Europeans became the “thought leaders” in one market segment. They
Last November, Airbus announced it would reduce the
production rate of the A380 to 1.8 per month from 2.5
by mid-2017. This capped the frst zero-order year since the
program was launched 10 years ago and made naysayers more
than happy to spread gloomy comments about the future of the
program. What a shortsighted assessment!
Far from FailureThe Airbus A380 is a testament to Europe’s
commercial aerospace success and foresight
of the experience they ofer their passengers.
For many, the A380 has become the fagship of their feets and is a signifcant contributor to their proftability and market leadership. Emirates, the biggest A380 customer, was the second most proftable airline in the world in 2014. Other A380 customers—such as Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Qantas or Etihad Airways—have been increasing their market share and boosting their respective brands in the process.
The A380 launch was as traumatic for Airbus as it was disruptive for the aviation community. For the aircraft maker, the program’s sheer complex-ity and the problems that ensued were a wake-up call that led to a major transformation in its management processes and operational efciency. The so-called Power8 restructuring plan, launched in 2007 in the wake of the A380 production delays and cost overruns, gave the company a big boost of competitiveness that is now benefting all other programs.
Ten years after its launch, the A380 is clearly not yet the commercial hit Airbus would have liked in terms of quantity of airplanes sold. But it must be remembered that 10 years is a young age for an aircraft designed essentially to address tomorrow’s rather than today’s demand. As a benchmark, the Boeing 747 really only became a blockbuster 20 years after the launch of its frst version. Besides, the A380’s popularity with existing customers and discerning air travel-ers is unquestionable in terms of economics for the former, comfort for the latter and environmental consid-erations for both.
There is no question, therefore, that the A380 has redefned the balance of power between Airbus and Boeing. It has propelled Airbus into a much more favorable competitive position overall and given the most innova-tive and forward-looking airlines a product beftting their ambitions. The aircraft has also put air travelers back at the center of the picture.
For all these reasons—with no ofense intended to fnancial analysts and other bean counters—the A380 must be viewed as a success. c
were no longer trying to win market share through incremental innovation and catch up with Boeing; they aimed to set the standards of commercial aviation for the next half-century by introducing a completely new design and architecture that would ft the air travel demographics and constraints of tomorrow. Since then, major in-novations introduced on the A380 in areas such as low-noise and low-emission engines, advanced materials, modular avionics and electrical power generation have benefted all the new Airbus programs.
With the advent of the A380, air-lines suddenly had something more than “cost per available seat mile” to play with. They were able to reassess their entire business model, with a clear focus on product and service diferentiation, and escape the com-modity magnet into which many had been falling, particularly in North America. It is indeed no surprise that all operators of the A380—none of which are American—are among the best-rated by air travelers. Their investment in the type, even if mar-ginal for some, shows a real concern for customer service and the quality
12 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
Quentin Douchet/WikimeDia
By Antoine Gelain
Contributing columnist Antoine Gelain is the managing director of Paragon European Partners. He is based in London.
AW_01_18_2016_p12.indd 12 1/13/16 5:24 PM
601AWB14_15.indd 2 1/13/2016 11:46:27 AM
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601AWB14_15.indd 3 1/13/2016 11:46:14 AM
Inside Business Aviation By William Garvey
commentary
Business & Commercial Aviation Editor-in-Chief William Garvey blogs at:
AviationWeek.com
Meanwhile, ITA, which specialized in comparing airfares online, was growing rapidly. Its search system was so advanced—involving stagger-ing computational power and speed; for example, there are 7 billion fight/fare combinations in a roundtrip between Boston and San Francisco—that eventually every major airline and travel company signed on.
In 2010, Google bought ITA for $700 million. At that point, Lewis (see photo), who was head of product marketing, began looking for a new challenge and pulled out the private pilot complaint fle.
While he had delivered travel-pric-ing power to the masses, Lewis noted that coincidentally the air carriers had added fees and squeeze, resulting in mass discontent among travel-ers. He suspected if given the option, passengers would eagerly embrace private aviation—if it was afordable.
FAA data revealed that the average annual usage of a four-seat, single-engine aircraft had declined steadily over the years to just 111 hr., a “rather shocking” fgure, in Lewis’s view. “It’s like owning a second home and using it two days a year,” he says. “It’s absurd.”
Since the overwhelming reason to which pilots attributed the decline was “economic,” Lewis reasoned if he could match the traveling public with private fights in light aircraft, the passengers and pilots would both beneft. And thus was AirPooler born.
The concept was straightforward. Pilots would go to AirPooler’s web-site, list an upcoming fight’s date, origin and destination, along with the aircraft’s make and model and seats available (see photo). Passengers could peruse the site and sign up for a trip that matched their planned travels.
Although not a pilot, Steve Lewis counted several private
aviators among his fellow engineers at ITA Software in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they frequently complained
about the high cost of fying. So he fled that information away.
Web DeadTwo uncommon ‘common carriers’ are grounded
Because private pilots were involved and the fights were noncom-mercial, there could be no charge to any passenger. But the FAA does allow pilots and passen-gers to split operating costs—that is, fuel, oil and parking fees, essentially. So AirPooler would calculate each fight’s allowable expenses, collect the appropriate portion from passengers, deduct a fee for its service and remit the balance to the pilot.
Launched in 2014, AirPooler got an overwhelming response. In a matter of months more than 10,000 pilots signed on. The media hailed it as avia-tion’s Uber.
Meanwhile, just across Boston’s Charles River, Matt Voska, a North-eastern University business student and private pilot, was developing a similar web-based service called Flytenow. Whereas Lewis and a partner self-funded AirPooler, Voska got fnancial support from several sources including his university and Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley “seed accelerator” for startups.
From the outset, Lewis was aware of some private pilots’ concern that Air-
Pooler participation might be seen as a violation of federal aviation regulations regarding commercial operations. He had been assured by a former top FAA attorney that cost-sharing was permis-sible and, further, that putting future fight information online could not be construed as soliciting—“holding out” in legal parlance—to the public.
Just “to clear the air,” on May 19 he sent a legal brief detailing the service to the FAA, but got no response for three months. “They probably thought we were a small tech startup, and that we would just go away,” Lewis recalls.
Finally, in mid-August, the FAA did its best to make that happen. In letters to AirPooler and Flytenow, the agency
said that not only would their private pilots be in violation but that their websites would in-deed be a form of “holding out” to the public, and thus would be violations as well.
Lewis began lobbying, gaining support from aircraft manufacturers, pilot clubs, and senior members of Congress, but to no avail. Then both he and Voska were approached by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. The in-
stitute’s lawyers saw the FAA’s stance as a free speech violation, among other things, and wanted to pursue the mat-ter, pro bono. Voska accepted; Lewis volunteered all his legal documents.
The case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. On Dec. 18, a three-judge panel issued its opinion, essentially supporting every one of FAA’s positions. AirPooler and Flytenow had been shot down.
Voska expressed dismay, noting that the FAA had grounded “the frst ‘common carrier’ in history with no intention of making a proft.” He charged the aviation agency with “seriously stifing aviation.”
A further appeal is possible, but unlikely. U.S. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) has introduced legislation to legalize such fight-sharing opera-tions; that bill is now in the aviation subcommittee.
For his part, Lewis is not optimistic. “We’re done,” he says. “Ridesharing is bound to remain a terrestrial phe-nomenon for the foreseeable future.” c
16 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
AirPooler Photos
AW_01_18_2016_p16.indd 16 1/14/16 5:11 PM
commentary
That the commis-sion considers air transport to be an important industry is obviously good news for airlines. The news would be even better if Europe’s policy mak-ers were to draw the right conclusions from their fnd-ing. As noted in an earlier commentary (AW&ST Dec. 31, 2015-Jan. 3, 2016, p. 18), the package focuses on the wrong issues, such as a regulatory fght against Gulf carriers that includes an EC mandate for another round of nego-tiations that will likely lead nowhere.
But the problem goes deeper than that. The EC is very active in areas where it should not be and shows no action at all where it is needed. The best example of this fawed approach is the ongoing saga of the foreign air carrier permit sought by Norwegian Air International (NAI), the proposed long-haul arm of low-cost carrier Norwegian. The U.S. Transportation Department has withheld approval for the airline for approximately two years, an unprecedented delay that is based on, well, what exactly?
It mainly hinges on strong opposi-tion from U.S. labor, which, in turn, is equally strongly backed by major legacy airlines on both sides of the At-lantic. And in a less obvious example, the credibility of Lufthansa comes into play. The German airline—which is in the process of outsourcing a large
Only a few weeks ago, the European Commission (EC)
presented its much anticipated aviation strategy. The
package is meant to ensure that European airlines will become
more competitive in the global air transport market, as the
sector has now been deemed vital to a healthy economy.
Face the Real Issues
Aviation policy on both sides of the Atlantic
favors established airlines—but why?
part of its short-haul and much of its long-haul operations to lower-pay sub-sidiaries or even lower-pay third-par-ty operators—is now declaring that it is extremely dedicated to protecting workers’ interests. It is so dedicated that it is stating that another air-line cannot be allowed to operate. Lufthansa is not alone in striking a hypocritical stance. Most other flings in the docket are equally involved in self-serving goals.
To be blunt, most transatlantic car-riers are trying to squelch additional competition. But competition is exactly what would be in the best interest of consumers and, ultimately, the airline industry, which stands to beneft from some new business models along with modernized versions of the old ones.
There are remedies. The Euro-pean Commission should address the concerns in the joint committee that is tasked to discuss such issues, as defned in the EU/U.S. open skies agreement. The EC should throw its political weight behind the NAI ap-
plication, which arguably cannot be denied. Norwegian recently launched a second attempt to establish an operating platform, Norwegian UK (NUK) (see page 34), which now faces the same kind of opposition from competitors that could delay its creation by months, if not years. Here, too, the EC should clearly state that it supports the plans of one of Europe’s fastest-growing, most innovative and risk-taking airlines.
Of course and unfortunately, this is not the reality. The aviation package and the lack of action in support of true competition—in this case specif-cally Norwegian—shows how much the old establishment still drives policy.
The aviation package was a pleasant surprise for the likes of Lufthansa and Air France-KLM, the carriers that seem to have the most difculty adapting in the current environment. Equally, on the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. Transportation Department’s inaction in the NAI case is appalling. Perhaps the worst aspect is that it abnegates any responsibility by refusing to take a position on the matter. While labor is ofcially driving the case against NAI and, more recently, NUK, all of it nicely plays into the hands of Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa and the like. Granted, these carriers represent an important part of the industry, but history has shown that protectionism ultimately does not solve structural and strategy issues; companies must solve them themselves. In Delta’s case, it has.
Ironically, there is one instance where continued inaction would be welcome. After nearly a year, the U.S. Transportation Department still has not said whether it will request con-sultations with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as demanded mainly by Delta CEO Richard Anderson. He is seeking such a meeting to discuss what he alleges are unfair government subsidies to Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways.
It is understandable that the de-partment does not want to make such a decision under perceived public or industry pressure, but a clear policy statement that it is not going to act would send an important signal—one that would be visible on the other side of the Atlantic. c
Airline Intel
aviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 17
By Jens Flottau
Follow Managing Editor for Civil Aviation Jens Flottau
on Twitter @AirFlottau
Joepriesaviation.net
AW_01_18_2016_p17.indd 17 1/14/16 3:45 PM
Inside Business Aviation By William Garvey
commentary
Business & Commercial Aviation Editor-in-Chief William Garvey blogs at:
AviationWeek.com
Meanwhile, ITA, which specialized in comparing airfares online, was growing rapidly. Its search system was so advanced—involving stagger-ing computational power and speed; for example, there are 7 billion fight/fare combinations in a roundtrip between Boston and San Francisco—that eventually every major airline and travel company signed on.
In 2010, Google bought ITA for $700 million. At that point, Lewis (see photo), who was head of product marketing, began looking for a new challenge and pulled out the private pilot complaint fle.
While he had delivered travel-pric-ing power to the masses, Lewis noted that coincidentally the air carriers had added fees and squeeze, resulting in mass discontent among travel-ers. He suspected if given the option, passengers would eagerly embrace private aviation—if it was afordable.
FAA data revealed that the average annual usage of a four-seat, single-engine aircraft had declined steadily over the years to just 111 hr., a “rather shocking” fgure, in Lewis’s view. “It’s like owning a second home and using it two days a year,” he says. “It’s absurd.”
Since the overwhelming reason to which pilots attributed the decline was “economic,” Lewis reasoned if he could match the traveling public with private fights in light aircraft, the passengers and pilots would both beneft. And thus was AirPooler born.
The concept was straightforward. Pilots would go to AirPooler’s web-site, list an upcoming fight’s date, origin and destination, along with the aircraft’s make and model and seats available (see photo). Passengers could peruse the site and sign up for a trip that matched their planned travels.
Although not a pilot, Steve Lewis counted several private
aviators among his fellow engineers at ITA Software in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they frequently complained
about the high cost of fying. So he fled that information away.
Web DeadTwo uncommon ‘common carriers’ are grounded
Because private pilots were involved and the fights were noncom-mercial, there could be no charge to any passenger. But the FAA does allow pilots and passen-gers to split operating costs—that is, fuel, oil and parking fees, essentially. So AirPooler would calculate each fight’s allowable expenses, collect the appropriate portion from passengers, deduct a fee for its service and remit the balance to the pilot.
Launched in 2014, AirPooler got an overwhelming response. In a matter of months more than 10,000 pilots signed on. The media hailed it as avia-tion’s Uber.
Meanwhile, just across Boston’s Charles River, Matt Voska, a North-eastern University business student and private pilot, was developing a similar web-based service called Flytenow. Whereas Lewis and a partner self-funded AirPooler, Voska got fnancial support from several sources including his university and Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley “seed accelerator” for startups.
From the outset, Lewis was aware of some private pilots’ concern that Air-
Pooler participation might be seen as a violation of federal aviation regulations regarding commercial operations. He had been assured by a former top FAA attorney that cost-sharing was permis-sible and, further, that putting future fight information online could not be construed as soliciting—“holding out” in legal parlance—to the public.
Just “to clear the air,” on May 19 he sent a legal brief detailing the service to the FAA, but got no response for three months. “They probably thought we were a small tech startup, and that we would just go away,” Lewis recalls.
Finally, in mid-August, the FAA did its best to make that happen. In letters to AirPooler and Flytenow, the agency
said that not only would their private pilots be in violation but that their websites would in-deed be a form of “holding out” to the public, and thus would be violations as well.
Lewis began lobbying, gaining support from aircraft manufacturers, pilot clubs, and senior members of Congress, but to no avail. Then both he and Voska were approached by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. The in-
stitute’s lawyers saw the FAA’s stance as a free speech violation, among other things, and wanted to pursue the mat-ter, pro bono. Voska accepted; Lewis volunteered all his legal documents.
The case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. On Dec. 18, a three-judge panel issued its opinion, essentially supporting every one of FAA’s positions. AirPooler and Flytenow had been shot down.
Voska expressed dismay, noting that the FAA had grounded “the frst ‘common carrier’ in history with no intention of making a proft.” He charged the aviation agency with “seriously stifing aviation.”
A further appeal is possible, but unlikely. U.S. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) has introduced legislation to legalize such fight-sharing opera-tions; that bill is now in the aviation subcommittee.
For his part, Lewis is not optimistic. “We’re done,” he says. “Ridesharing is bound to remain a terrestrial phe-nomenon for the foreseeable future.” c
16 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
AirPooler Photos
AW_01_18_2016_p16.indd 16 1/14/16 5:11 PM
COMMENTARY
The feasibility and benefi ts of chang-ing an aircraft’s shape in response to its environment have been demon-strated, but after decades of work the technology has yet to make it into a development or production program.
The discussion at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astro-nautics SciTech conference Jan. 4-8 reiterated the benefi ts of being able to adapt a single aircraft to signifi cantly dif erent mission requirements, but underlined the complexity and risk issues that have deterred the adoption of morphing technology.
Most aircraft change shape in some way during fl ight—a wing designed for low drag at cruise speeds deploy-ing slats and fl aps for high lift at low speed , for example. But morph-ing implies the ability to actively adapt shape in fl ight to achieve large changes in performance that enable one aircraft to conduct a mission that currently requires two dif er-ent types—such as a hunter-killer unmanned aircraft that can adopt one shape to loiter and another to dash.
There have been several key dem-onstrations over the decades. The F-111 Mission Adaptive Wing (MAW) (see photo) demo in 1985-88 combined seamless variable camber with vari-able sweep to maintain aerodynamic ef ciency at all speeds. In 1994-2001, Darpa’s Smart Wing project tested a
“Where’s my fl ying car?” is the usual cry of those
disappointed with the pace of progress in aviation.
But at an engineering conference in San Diego in early January,
the question asked was “Where’s my morphing aircraft?”
Change Takes Time The promise of morphing aircraft
has yet to be realized
fl exible trailing-edge control surface on a tailless fl ying-wing unmanned combat aircraft in a wind tunnel. And in 2003- 07, Darpa’s Morphing Aircraft project fl ew UAVs that could change wing sweep, chord and area.
These programs showed large per-formance changes were possible but did not make a compelling case for morphing, and there was no pull from the customer to take them beyond technology demonstration and into system development, where all the challenges of optimization, integration and certifi cation as well as reliability, maintainability and the other “ilities” would be tackled.
Morphing is back on the table for a few reasons. One is the design freedom it can give unmanned-aircraft design-ers less constrained by certifi cation requirements. Another is the drive to increase the ef ciency and reduce the emissions of commercial aircraft. A third reason is that advances in compli-ant structures promise simpler, more robust shape-changing mechanisms.
For commercial-aircraft designers, the next step in aerodynamic ef -ciency could come from more slender, lower-drag wings, but these would be fl exible and require active control to suppress fl utter and alleviate loads. This implies variable-camber trailing edges that are in motion throughout the fl ight and not just on takeof and
landing. Another big increase in ef-fi ciency could come from low-drag laminar fl ow, but this requires leading edges that move seamlessly, without gaps to disturb the fl ow.
Morphing fl aps developed by FlexSys have been fl ight tested by Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Research Labora-tory (AFRL) on a Gulfstream III. These have a compliant internal structure and seamless fl exible skins, but use conventional actuation, making them simpler than many morphing con-cepts. The next step is to test compli-ant fl ap tabs on an Air Force Boeing KC-135, which could lead to produc-tion. FlexSys, meanwhile, has teamed with Aviation Partners Inc. to look at commercial applications such as morphing winglets.
In the lab, AFRL is looking at a variable-camber compliant wing that can defl ect the leading and trailing edges simultaneously to optimize the wing for multiple fl ight condi-tions. This is similar in ef ect to the F-111 MAW but with a much simpler mechanism: Applying force to the compliant ribs in one location and one direction results in simultaneous leading- and trailing-edge movement to change camber.
In Europe, the Change project has tested morphing leading and trail-ing edges on an unmanned-aircraft wing that can also vary its span. The goal is to enable the wing to adapt to dif erent mission phases, increasing camber for high lift on takeof and landing, reducing span for high-speed transit, and increasing span and re-ducing camber to maximize the loiter time on station.
Another European early-stage research project, Novemor, led by Em-braer, has designed an active camber wing for a notional regional jet. This has seamless, hingeless compliant-structure leading and trailing edges, which the project team believes could be retrofi tted to conventional wings to reduce drag and noise. So far, only a small model has been tested in the wind tunnel.
So the answer to the question “Where’s my morphing aircraft?” is that it is still on the way—but could be closer than it has been for several decades. c
Leading Edge
18 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
By Graham Warwick
NAS
A
Follow Managing Editor
for Technology Graham Warwick
on Twitter @TheWoracle
AW_01_18_2016_p18.indd 18 1/13/16 10:16 AM
Commander’s Intent
commentary
By Bill Sweetman
Read Sweetman’s posts on
our blog Ares, updated daily:
AviationWeek.com/ares
In the U.S., Congressional budget wars and presidential politics—with some of the most extreme choices in living memory—guarantee only one thing: a lack of stability and predictabil-ity, which will be both a reason and an excuse for the Pentagon to execute pro-grams spasmodically and inefciently.
This will pose challenges for moving the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) program into its next phase. The Boe-ing/Lockheed Martin team’s protest of the contract awarded to Northrop Grumman has thrown a wrench into the schedule. The Pentagon’s task is to put the program back on track before it can become a political football like every U.S. heavy bomber project except the wartime B-24 and B-29.
Whether secrecy will protect the LRS-B remains to be seen. It worked for the B-2 until the program reached the full-size hardware stage—which is only two or three years away for the new bomber. But if it does, expect the Pentagon to do the same with the other new nuclear systems—the Long-Range Stand-Of replacement for the AGM-86 Air-Launched Cruise Missile, and the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent follow-on to the Minuteman III.
Secrecy has already protected these projects from the contentious
One presidential candidate is talking about a task force to
investigate Area 51. Another is threatening to cancel the
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The U.S. Air Force’s next
trainer is getting bigger and more expensive. Defense Secretary
Ash Carter has just cut the Navy’s shipbuilding strategy of at
the knees. It will be a busy year.
Next NewsHeadlines for 2016
discussion that accompanied the last big overhaul of the deterrent, back in the days of disco. Aviation Week’s newly opened digital archive (archive.aviationweek.com) is full of startling ideas from that era—names such as Big Bird, Dense Pack, Shell Game and Midgetman—but the Pentagon has managed to short-circuit that discus-sion this time around. If any of the presidential candidates realize what is going on, things could get interesting.
Hillary Clinton was probably joking when she said her administration would send a task force to investigate Area 51 (more properly called the Groom Lake Flight Test Center) in Nevada. In 1994, her husband, then-President Bill Clin-ton, closed of several thousand acres to the east of the base in 1994, making direct surveillance much more difcult. I would be glad to join Ms. Clinton’s task force, but I am not holding my breath.
Speaking of secrets: Northrop Grumman revealed a glimpse of ankle on its all-new T-X design late last year. We may see more, because as dead-lines get closer, there’s less time to exploit knowledge of a rival’s solution. Boeing should reveal more, because so far the company has not done a brilliant job of explaining why its tie-up with Saab is a good idea (which it is).
Lockheed Martin needs to come of the fence and say whether or not it’s still backing the KAI T-50 for T-X.
But to some degree, the T-X airframe is a distraction. The most important part of the program will be the live, virtual, constructive (LVC) simulation system, which will allow the T-X trainee to fy air combat missions against synthetic threats fown by human pi-lots. Israel’s LVC setup (see photo; see page 41) will be the model that the U.S. Air Force wants to emulate.
I expect that the frst of many JSF stories of the year (whether or not Donald Trump, who says he might kill it, is elected) will be a not-very-friendly review by Michael Gilmore, the Penta-gon’s director of operational test and evaluation. He wasn’t happy with the U.S. Marines’ at-sea test last summer and has been critical of avionics testing.
The fscal 2017 budget should clarify what is happening with U.S. F-35 buys. Carter’s memo to the Navy late last year, curtailing production of the littoral combat ship and its deriva-tives, looked like good news for the JSF—“We will procure 31 additional F-35Cs”—but then he added: “relative to the Navy program objective memo-randum submission (and 10 more than the PB-16 plan).” So that’s 31 more jets than a plan that nobody has seen, which included 21 fewer F-35s than the fscal 2016 plan, which was itself a cutback for the years between now and 2020. It appears that Carter was reversing unpublished Navy plans to push F-35 orders to the right.
Meanwhile, the 11 extra U.S. F-35s that were added in the fnal 2016 budget late last year don’t appear to be “new” buys: They are jets in the 10th produc-tion batch that were supposed to go to export customers who have fallen behind their planned orders. Team JSF needs to secure export contracts—Den-mark, Turkey and Italy for example—in order to not fall further behind.
The likely casualty of all these moves—something that we may hear less about than we should in 2016—is leap-ahead technology such as direct-ed energy and a shift from supersonic manned aircraft into longer-legged, subsonic, stealthy UAVs. It will be for the next administration to pick up that torch in 2017. c
aviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 19
Elbit SyStEmS
AW_01_18_2016_p19.indd 19 1/14/16 11:08 AM
COMMENTARY
The feasibility and benefi ts of chang-ing an aircraft’s shape in response to its environment have been demon-strated, but after decades of work the technology has yet to make it into a development or production program.
The discussion at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astro-nautics SciTech conference Jan. 4-8 reiterated the benefi ts of being able to adapt a single aircraft to signifi cantly dif erent mission requirements, but underlined the complexity and risk issues that have deterred the adoption of morphing technology.
Most aircraft change shape in some way during fl ight—a wing designed for low drag at cruise speeds deploy-ing slats and fl aps for high lift at low speed , for example. But morph-ing implies the ability to actively adapt shape in fl ight to achieve large changes in performance that enable one aircraft to conduct a mission that currently requires two dif er-ent types—such as a hunter-killer unmanned aircraft that can adopt one shape to loiter and another to dash.
There have been several key dem-onstrations over the decades. The F-111 Mission Adaptive Wing (MAW) (see photo) demo in 1985-88 combined seamless variable camber with vari-able sweep to maintain aerodynamic ef ciency at all speeds. In 1994-2001, Darpa’s Smart Wing project tested a
“Where’s my fl ying car?” is the usual cry of those
disappointed with the pace of progress in aviation.
But at an engineering conference in San Diego in early January,
the question asked was “Where’s my morphing aircraft?”
Change Takes Time The promise of morphing aircraft
has yet to be realized
fl exible trailing-edge control surface on a tailless fl ying-wing unmanned combat aircraft in a wind tunnel. And in 2003- 07, Darpa’s Morphing Aircraft project fl ew UAVs that could change wing sweep, chord and area.
These programs showed large per-formance changes were possible but did not make a compelling case for morphing, and there was no pull from the customer to take them beyond technology demonstration and into system development, where all the challenges of optimization, integration and certifi cation as well as reliability, maintainability and the other “ilities” would be tackled.
Morphing is back on the table for a few reasons. One is the design freedom it can give unmanned-aircraft design-ers less constrained by certifi cation requirements. Another is the drive to increase the ef ciency and reduce the emissions of commercial aircraft. A third reason is that advances in compli-ant structures promise simpler, more robust shape-changing mechanisms.
For commercial-aircraft designers, the next step in aerodynamic ef -ciency could come from more slender, lower-drag wings, but these would be fl exible and require active control to suppress fl utter and alleviate loads. This implies variable-camber trailing edges that are in motion throughout the fl ight and not just on takeof and
landing. Another big increase in ef-fi ciency could come from low-drag laminar fl ow, but this requires leading edges that move seamlessly, without gaps to disturb the fl ow.
Morphing fl aps developed by FlexSys have been fl ight tested by Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Research Labora-tory (AFRL) on a Gulfstream III. These have a compliant internal structure and seamless fl exible skins, but use conventional actuation, making them simpler than many morphing con-cepts. The next step is to test compli-ant fl ap tabs on an Air Force Boeing KC-135, which could lead to produc-tion. FlexSys, meanwhile, has teamed with Aviation Partners Inc. to look at commercial applications such as morphing winglets.
In the lab, AFRL is looking at a variable-camber compliant wing that can defl ect the leading and trailing edges simultaneously to optimize the wing for multiple fl ight condi-tions. This is similar in ef ect to the F-111 MAW but with a much simpler mechanism: Applying force to the compliant ribs in one location and one direction results in simultaneous leading- and trailing-edge movement to change camber.
In Europe, the Change project has tested morphing leading and trail-ing edges on an unmanned-aircraft wing that can also vary its span. The goal is to enable the wing to adapt to dif erent mission phases, increasing camber for high lift on takeof and landing, reducing span for high-speed transit, and increasing span and re-ducing camber to maximize the loiter time on station.
Another European early-stage research project, Novemor, led by Em-braer, has designed an active camber wing for a notional regional jet. This has seamless, hingeless compliant-structure leading and trailing edges, which the project team believes could be retrofi tted to conventional wings to reduce drag and noise. So far, only a small model has been tested in the wind tunnel.
So the answer to the question “Where’s my morphing aircraft?” is that it is still on the way—but could be closer than it has been for several decades. c
Leading Edge
18 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
By Graham Warwick
NAS
A
Follow Managing Editor
for Technology Graham Warwick
on Twitter @TheWoracle
AW_01_18_2016_p18.indd 18 1/13/16 10:16 AM
In Orbit
commentary
By Frank Morring, Jr.
Senior Editor Frank Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
The list of companies already working through the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Ca-sis) includes some familiar names— Eli Lilly & Co., Merck, Honeywell, Astri-um—and some cutting-edge startups that have based their business models on commercial space apps, including Made In Space and NovaWurks. The months ahead should produce some surprising additions, say Casis opera-tives, as commercial researchers begin to understand how the microgravity and state-of-the-art laboratory gear on the space station might advance their work.
“Organ-on-a-chip is one of the sweet-spot areas,” says Cynthia Bouthot, who promotes the ISS U.S. National Lab facilities as Casis director of business development.
The pharmaceutical industry has been interested in space since the early space shuttle era. Microgravity makes it possible to grow large pro-tein crystals for neutron difraction analysis that could lead to designer drugs. On the ISS, healthy astro-nauts’ bones lose density in a process that mimics osteoporosis, which has advanced the development of drugs to combat the illness. Changes in the way bacteria express virulence and other factors can be a tool for developing new ways to fght drug-resistant infections.
It remains to be seen whether the International Space Station
(ISS) actually will spark self-sustaining industry and markets
in low Earth orbit (LEO), but after four years of efort in space
and on the ground, the ISS is beginning to give the idea a pretty
good tryout. The organization set up by Congress to explore LEO
commercial potential has gained some converts in its missionary
work to businesses that don’t traditionally work in space, and the
research growing out of that work has identifed intriguing pos-
sibilities for space commerce.
Station ExperimentISS is an orbiting testbed
for a new economy in space
Organ-on-a-chip is a technology developed on the ground for simulat-ing biological processes that may be advanced in the low-acceleration envi-ronment on the station, and companies involved in the work are beginning to work with Casis on space experiments.
“A lot of these organ-on-a-chip sys-tems are based on microfuidic-based technologies,” says Michael Roberts, deputy chief scientist at Casis. “So in those particular types of systems, the target is to miniaturize them as much as you can and utilize fuidics that are based on nonbuoyancy-driven convection, so you actually have fuids that are moving around because they’re sticking to the walls. That lends itself very well to the microgravity environment.”
Roberts terms himself a “healthy skeptic” on the long-term commercial potential of LEO research facilities, but he notes that the potential surpasses research alone. Biochip-based diag-
nostics may allow oncologists to tailor cancer treatments by gauging chemo-therapy side efects with living samples of individual patients’ tissue and could even lead to space-based facilities to grow replacement organs for trans-plant. That won’t happen on the ISS, but it’s a long-range possibility, he says.
The unique behavior of fuids in space goes well beyond pharmaceuti-cal applications, and Casis is working with others to leverage funding in diferent felds. It has joined forces with the National Science Foundation to award grants for fuid dynamics research that could have an impact on industries as diverse as electronics, oil and gas, and consumer products.
Total funding available to re-searchers in that joint efort—$1.8 million—does not refect the gov-ernment-supplied launch, in-space facilities and astronaut time to conduct experiments, which otherwise would be prohibitive for all but the most well-heeled companies. In addition to life science (see photo) and physical sci-ence, Casis is targeting Earth observa-tion and technical innovation as areas where businesses can use the station’s National Lab assets.
Last year’s back-to-back station-cargo launch failures have not dimmed growing commercial interest in station research, according to Bouthot. The U.S. has extended its ISS commitment to 2024 from 2000, and most of its in-ternational partners have followed suit, a move initially billed as a way to build confdence among potential commer-cial station users that there would be a place to conduct their experiments once they were ready. Now Casis says interest has grown to the point that the issue is not how long the station will be there, but how soon a user can expect to get an experiment to it.
“What we tell them, and what we’ve proven, is the shortest experi-ment we’ve done is six months from the time we initially put the proposal together,” says Bouthot. “It could be an average of between 12 and 18 months —that’s probably more realis-tic—but especially when we get more crewmembers and we make up [time lost to the launch failures], we can move things quickly, and that is the time line they care about.” c
20 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
NASA
AW_01_18_2016_p20.indd 20 1/13/16 10:11 AM
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601AWB21.indd 1 1/12/2016 10:28:51 AM
In Orbit
commentary
By Frank Morring, Jr.
Senior Editor Frank Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
The list of companies already working through the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Ca-sis) includes some familiar names— Eli Lilly & Co., Merck, Honeywell, Astri-um—and some cutting-edge startups that have based their business models on commercial space apps, including Made In Space and NovaWurks. The months ahead should produce some surprising additions, say Casis opera-tives, as commercial researchers begin to understand how the microgravity and state-of-the-art laboratory gear on the space station might advance their work.
“Organ-on-a-chip is one of the sweet-spot areas,” says Cynthia Bouthot, who promotes the ISS U.S. National Lab facilities as Casis director of business development.
The pharmaceutical industry has been interested in space since the early space shuttle era. Microgravity makes it possible to grow large pro-tein crystals for neutron difraction analysis that could lead to designer drugs. On the ISS, healthy astro-nauts’ bones lose density in a process that mimics osteoporosis, which has advanced the development of drugs to combat the illness. Changes in the way bacteria express virulence and other factors can be a tool for developing new ways to fght drug-resistant infections.
It remains to be seen whether the International Space Station
(ISS) actually will spark self-sustaining industry and markets
in low Earth orbit (LEO), but after four years of efort in space
and on the ground, the ISS is beginning to give the idea a pretty
good tryout. The organization set up by Congress to explore LEO
commercial potential has gained some converts in its missionary
work to businesses that don’t traditionally work in space, and the
research growing out of that work has identifed intriguing pos-
sibilities for space commerce.
Station ExperimentISS is an orbiting testbed
for a new economy in space
Organ-on-a-chip is a technology developed on the ground for simulat-ing biological processes that may be advanced in the low-acceleration envi-ronment on the station, and companies involved in the work are beginning to work with Casis on space experiments.
“A lot of these organ-on-a-chip sys-tems are based on microfuidic-based technologies,” says Michael Roberts, deputy chief scientist at Casis. “So in those particular types of systems, the target is to miniaturize them as much as you can and utilize fuidics that are based on nonbuoyancy-driven convection, so you actually have fuids that are moving around because they’re sticking to the walls. That lends itself very well to the microgravity environment.”
Roberts terms himself a “healthy skeptic” on the long-term commercial potential of LEO research facilities, but he notes that the potential surpasses research alone. Biochip-based diag-
nostics may allow oncologists to tailor cancer treatments by gauging chemo-therapy side efects with living samples of individual patients’ tissue and could even lead to space-based facilities to grow replacement organs for trans-plant. That won’t happen on the ISS, but it’s a long-range possibility, he says.
The unique behavior of fuids in space goes well beyond pharmaceuti-cal applications, and Casis is working with others to leverage funding in diferent felds. It has joined forces with the National Science Foundation to award grants for fuid dynamics research that could have an impact on industries as diverse as electronics, oil and gas, and consumer products.
Total funding available to re-searchers in that joint efort—$1.8 million—does not refect the gov-ernment-supplied launch, in-space facilities and astronaut time to conduct experiments, which otherwise would be prohibitive for all but the most well-heeled companies. In addition to life science (see photo) and physical sci-ence, Casis is targeting Earth observa-tion and technical innovation as areas where businesses can use the station’s National Lab assets.
Last year’s back-to-back station-cargo launch failures have not dimmed growing commercial interest in station research, according to Bouthot. The U.S. has extended its ISS commitment to 2024 from 2000, and most of its in-ternational partners have followed suit, a move initially billed as a way to build confdence among potential commer-cial station users that there would be a place to conduct their experiments once they were ready. Now Casis says interest has grown to the point that the issue is not how long the station will be there, but how soon a user can expect to get an experiment to it.
“What we tell them, and what we’ve proven, is the shortest experi-ment we’ve done is six months from the time we initially put the proposal together,” says Bouthot. “It could be an average of between 12 and 18 months —that’s probably more realis-tic—but especially when we get more crewmembers and we make up [time lost to the launch failures], we can move things quickly, and that is the time line they care about.” c
20 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
NASA
AW_01_18_2016_p20.indd 20 1/13/16 10:11 AM
Washington Outlook
Three weeks into 2016, and the politics of the fscal 2017
defense budget are already in full swing. Late last year, to avoid
a ghastly government shutdown, the White House and Congress
agreed to a two-year budget deal that would provide $573 billion for
defense along with $59 billion to fght ongoing wars in fscal 2017.
The deal bought them another year before any action on the fscal 2017 budget needs to be taken, and with that extra time, Democrats and Republicans are beginning the kind of chatter that could undermine the agreement. In his fnal State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said the U.S. spends more on de-fense than the next eight nations combined, by way of explaining the military’s might. The next day, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was “disturbed at rumors” that the administration might back away from the agreement and seek to spend less on defense in fscal 2017. Thornberry is already putting up a fght to hold the line on the fscal 2016-17 accord.
Of course, with an uptick in global confict since the budget deal was reached, Thornberry might be will-ing to increase spending on defense. Soon after the deal was made, other Republicans started predicting their party would push for a higher level of defense spending in 2017. And that may just have the support of the chairman of the House Budget Com-mittee. Asked if the U.S. is spending enough on its military, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) says: “I think we’re at the lower ragged edge.” c
Staying Power
After years of rejecting U.S. Air Force proposals to retire the A-10 Thun-derbolt II, Congress appears to have fnally succeeded in keeping its beloved close-air support aircraft. Air Force Secretary Deborah James indicated a
delay to A-10 retirements was possible at an event in December. “It’s doing a good job for us, so that’s perhaps a rea-son to keep it a bit longer,” James said.
The Air Force is not formally con-frming it will fund A-10s in fscal 2017, saying it is too soon to discuss details of the upcoming budget. But news of the A-10 coming of the retirement list, frst reported in Defense One, is receiving a warm reception on Capitol Hill. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Ser-vices Committee, says the aircraft is “playing an indispensable role” in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. “When the Obama administration submits its 2017 budget request in the coming weeks, I hope it will follow through on its plan to keep the A-10 fying so that it can continue to pro-tect American troops.” c
in the DoghouSe
United Airlines has racked up $2.75 million in Transportation Depart-ment fnes after an investigation re-
vealed the carrier did not adequately help its disabled passengers and for multiple tarmac delays. The largest share of the fnes, $2 million, was for its treatment of disabled passengers at hubs in Houston, Chicago, Denver, Newark, New Jersey, and Washing-ton. After a “signifcant increase” in complaints, the administration investigated and found that United was not providing disabled passen-gers with enough assistance.
Another $750,000 in fnes was lev-ied for violating tarmac-delay rules: fve fights at Chicago O’Hare Airport on Dec. 8, 2013, and one fight on May 20, 2015, from Denver to Houston that was diverted during a thunderstorm. In the 2013 incidents, the Transpor-tation Department acknowledged United faced severe weather, but the government blamed the Chicago prob-lem on “United’s gate management.”
“We remain committed to fully meeting all [Transportation Depart-ment] rules—particularly during difcult operating conditions [such as] those we encountered on Dec. 8, 2013, at O’Hare Airport—and continue to invest in cutting-edge technologies to improve our ramp processes,” United spokesman Luke Punzenberger says. As is often the case, United will not have to pay all of the fnes in cash. It will compensate for the fnes by investing in parking technology and improvements for disabled passen-gers, including a new feature on the airline’s mobile-phone application. The administration will also credit United a further $650,000 to ofset the compensation it paid to customers who complained about its disability services in 2014. c
Moving on
Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) will not seek re-election in 2016, the con-gressman announced Jan. 14. Rigell, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, represents a district that has the largest concen-tration of military personnel in the U.S. Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District is home to both Langley AFB, where the Air Force’s Air Combat Command is located, as well as Naval Station Norfolk. Rigell was elected in 2010. c
Deal, or No DealWill Washington undermine its budget agreement?
coMMentary
Edited by Jen DiMascio
Managing Editor-Defense, Space & Security Jen DiMascio blogs
at: AviationWeek.com/ares
22 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationweek.com/awst
In its fscal 2017 budget request,
the Air Force breaks from recent
practice, no longer requesting the
A-10 Thunderbolt II’s retirement.
Lockheed Martin
AW_01_18_2016_p22.indd 22 1/14/16 6:50 PM
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601AWB23.indd 1 1/13/2016 9:41:49 AM
Washington Outlook
Three weeks into 2016, and the politics of the fscal 2017
defense budget are already in full swing. Late last year, to avoid
a ghastly government shutdown, the White House and Congress
agreed to a two-year budget deal that would provide $573 billion for
defense along with $59 billion to fght ongoing wars in fscal 2017.
The deal bought them another year before any action on the fscal 2017 budget needs to be taken, and with that extra time, Democrats and Republicans are beginning the kind of chatter that could undermine the agreement. In his fnal State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said the U.S. spends more on de-fense than the next eight nations combined, by way of explaining the military’s might. The next day, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was “disturbed at rumors” that the administration might back away from the agreement and seek to spend less on defense in fscal 2017. Thornberry is already putting up a fght to hold the line on the fscal 2016-17 accord.
Of course, with an uptick in global confict since the budget deal was reached, Thornberry might be will-ing to increase spending on defense. Soon after the deal was made, other Republicans started predicting their party would push for a higher level of defense spending in 2017. And that may just have the support of the chairman of the House Budget Com-mittee. Asked if the U.S. is spending enough on its military, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) says: “I think we’re at the lower ragged edge.” c
Staying Power
After years of rejecting U.S. Air Force proposals to retire the A-10 Thun-derbolt II, Congress appears to have fnally succeeded in keeping its beloved close-air support aircraft. Air Force Secretary Deborah James indicated a
delay to A-10 retirements was possible at an event in December. “It’s doing a good job for us, so that’s perhaps a rea-son to keep it a bit longer,” James said.
The Air Force is not formally con-frming it will fund A-10s in fscal 2017, saying it is too soon to discuss details of the upcoming budget. But news of the A-10 coming of the retirement list, frst reported in Defense One, is receiving a warm reception on Capitol Hill. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Ser-vices Committee, says the aircraft is “playing an indispensable role” in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. “When the Obama administration submits its 2017 budget request in the coming weeks, I hope it will follow through on its plan to keep the A-10 fying so that it can continue to pro-tect American troops.” c
in the DoghouSe
United Airlines has racked up $2.75 million in Transportation Depart-ment fnes after an investigation re-
vealed the carrier did not adequately help its disabled passengers and for multiple tarmac delays. The largest share of the fnes, $2 million, was for its treatment of disabled passengers at hubs in Houston, Chicago, Denver, Newark, New Jersey, and Washing-ton. After a “signifcant increase” in complaints, the administration investigated and found that United was not providing disabled passen-gers with enough assistance.
Another $750,000 in fnes was lev-ied for violating tarmac-delay rules: fve fights at Chicago O’Hare Airport on Dec. 8, 2013, and one fight on May 20, 2015, from Denver to Houston that was diverted during a thunderstorm. In the 2013 incidents, the Transpor-tation Department acknowledged United faced severe weather, but the government blamed the Chicago prob-lem on “United’s gate management.”
“We remain committed to fully meeting all [Transportation Depart-ment] rules—particularly during difcult operating conditions [such as] those we encountered on Dec. 8, 2013, at O’Hare Airport—and continue to invest in cutting-edge technologies to improve our ramp processes,” United spokesman Luke Punzenberger says. As is often the case, United will not have to pay all of the fnes in cash. It will compensate for the fnes by investing in parking technology and improvements for disabled passen-gers, including a new feature on the airline’s mobile-phone application. The administration will also credit United a further $650,000 to ofset the compensation it paid to customers who complained about its disability services in 2014. c
Moving on
Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) will not seek re-election in 2016, the con-gressman announced Jan. 14. Rigell, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, represents a district that has the largest concen-tration of military personnel in the U.S. Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District is home to both Langley AFB, where the Air Force’s Air Combat Command is located, as well as Naval Station Norfolk. Rigell was elected in 2010. c
Deal, or No DealWill Washington undermine its budget agreement?
coMMentary
Edited by Jen DiMascio
Managing Editor-Defense, Space & Security Jen DiMascio blogs
at: AviationWeek.com/ares
22 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationweek.com/awst
In its fscal 2017 budget request,
the Air Force breaks from recent
practice, no longer requesting the
A-10 Thunderbolt II’s retirement.
Lockheed Martin
AW_01_18_2016_p22.indd 22 1/14/16 6:50 PM
24 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Economic uncertainty in China, recessions in Russia and
Brazil, political unrest in the Middle East, heightened con-
fict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the unclear efect
of cheap oil on economies and aircraft demand and, above all,
questions about the future of globalization are all in play; so it
is not hard to fnd reasons for caution when it comes to con-
necting major markets. But impressive backlogs—in spite of a
higher-than-ever aircraft output—are giving Airbus and Boeing
confdence that the marketplace will be able to absorb an even
further increase in production.
Jens Flottau Paris and Guy Norris Los Angeles
Building VolumeAirbus is starting to deliver greater numbers of
A350s as Boeing benefts from high 787 output
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
Airbus, following a short pause in its ramp-up, is considering boosting the output of almost all its products beyond the publicly announced tar-gets. The manufacturer is looking at whether it can go beyond the 60-air-craft-per-month level on the A320neo
family that it envisions for 2019 and above a rate of six per month on the A330neo program. “I just wish Didier would build more [A350s] faster,” Air-bus sales chief John Leahy says, refer-ring to Executive Vice President of Programs Didier Evrard.
Airbus delivered 635 aircraft in 2015, six more than a year earlier. It re-ceived 1,139 gross orders and 1,036 net orders. At current rates, the backlog of 6,787 aircraft is equivalent to 10 years of production. “Our plans are based on frm orders with down payments, not speculation,” says Leahy.
This is meant to reassure investors, some of whom have warned that the amount of new aircraft flooding the market in the coming years is simply too high. There is also considerable concern in the aircraft finance com-munity about the infux of secondhand A330s and Boeing 777s, which, at low capital costs, could pose a threat to newly built jets. Both Airbus and Boe-ing believe the concerns are overdone. “I see no bubble,” says Leahy.
Although Airbus clearly outdid Boe-ing’s net order total of 768 for 2015, the U.S. manufacturer retained the lead in terms of deliveries, with 762 for the year. The tally, which was once again
BOEING
2015 Net Orders
897
60%
588
40%
Total = 1,485
Single-Aisle
A320
737
140
44%
Total = 315
Widebody
A330
787
A350 -3 orders
777
767
58
18%
71
22%
49
16%
2
50%
2
50%
Total = 4
Very Large Aircraft
A380
747-8
747-8F
Airbus vs. Boeing
Source: Airbus
Boeing delivered 135 787s from Everett, Washington, and Charles-ton, South Carolina, plants in 2015.
AW_01_18_2016_p24-27.indd 24 1/14/16 5:22 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 25
boosted by the accelerating produc-tion rates of the 737 and 787, helped the company break its annual delivery record for a third year running. Boe-ing delivered 723 and 648 commercial aircraft in 2014 and 2013, respectively.
The continuing growth in deliveries also marks the fourth year in succes-sion Boeing has delivered more than 600 aircraft in a year. In 2012, it de-livered 601—the most in a single year since 1999. In comparison, 477 were delivered in 2011 and 460 in 2010.
Although orders for the year were only around 50% of 2014’s record-set-ting 1,432, Boeing managed expecta-tions earlier in 2015 by forecasting a book-to-bill ratio of close to one-to-one by year-end. As 2015 closed, the compa-ny’s undelivered backlog stood at 5,795, a fgure remarkably close to the 5,789 in the backlog at the same time in 2014.
Boeing’s 2015 order tally, although valued at a relatively modest $112.4 bil-lion at current list prices compared to 2014’s $232.7 billion, represents “a solid year,” says Commercial Airplanes Presi-dent and CEO Ray Conner, who stresses the company’s broader strategic goals of maintaining a stable production system and a balanced backlog. The mix “will help ensure a steady stream of deliver-ies for years to come,” says Conner.
With the efect of further ramp-up decisions kicking in only later, Airbus is targeting a moderate increase in out-put this year. According to CEO Fabrice Bregier, nearly 650 aircraft are going to be delivered in 2016. Following the in-troduction of the frst A320neo, narrow-body production increases will resume.
Leahy indicates that Airbus could go beyond 60 narrowbodies per month in the 2019-20 time frame, “perhaps even
to 63.” He believes that the current mar-ket shift in favor of the A320neo will be permanent. That type reached a 67% market share last year versus the Boe-ing 737 MAX. “I think the market has spoken very clearly. What was a 50/50 split is now 60/40 and it will stay that way,” Leahy says. Boeing is raising 737 output to 47 aircraft per month in 2017 and to 52 in 2018. It had indicated ear-lier it will consider going even higher.
Boeing delivered 495 737s in 2015, 10 more than in 2014. This increase managed to keep 737 deliveries slight-ly ahead of the A320 family, and again represents the largest number of any one model delivered in a single year in
the history of the commercial jet age.According to Bregier, the frst A320-
neo will be delivered to Lufthansa within the next two weeks. “Thanks to Pratt & Whitney, we’ve not quite delivered our frst A320neo yet,” Lea-hy quipped. Airbus plans to be able to produce 60 A320neo-family aircraft by around mid-2019 but is not ruling
out producing current-engine-option-A320s at that time if customers request more of the older version.
Beyond growth on the narrowbody side, production of the A350 moves into full swing. Airbus will start de-livering signifcant numbers of A350s in 2016 and plans to hand over nearly 50 this year, compared to 14 in 2015. Building 10 A350s per month in 2018 is the goal. Bregier says he expects the in-service feet to reach a dispatch reli-ability of 98.5% this year.
Airbus missed its own target of handing over 15 A350s last year. “We could have, [but we were beset] by some cabin issues,” Bregier says. Now
Airbus will diversify the supply chain in some cases by introducing a second source to reduce the risk of disruption. Delays related to Zodiac’s lavatory and seat order were a major cause for con-cern in the A350 program. “Last year it was Zodiac; I am convinced they will do better this year. But when the top management of a company is in denial,
AIRBUS
491
50%
495
50%
Total = 986
Single-Aisle
A320
737
27
60%
18
40%
Total = 45
Very Large Aircraft
A380 747-8
Widebody
Total = 366
103
28%
A330
A350
98
27%
135
37%
14
4%
16
4%
787
777
767
2015 Deliveries
Source: Airbus; Boeing
TAM Airlines will introduce the Airbus A350 into revenue service later this month.
AW_01_18_2016_p24-27.indd 25 1/14/16 5:22 PM
24 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Economic uncertainty in China, recessions in Russia and
Brazil, political unrest in the Middle East, heightened con-
fict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the unclear efect
of cheap oil on economies and aircraft demand and, above all,
questions about the future of globalization are all in play; so it
is not hard to fnd reasons for caution when it comes to con-
necting major markets. But impressive backlogs—in spite of a
higher-than-ever aircraft output—are giving Airbus and Boeing
confdence that the marketplace will be able to absorb an even
further increase in production.
Jens Flottau Paris and Guy Norris Los Angeles
Building VolumeAirbus is starting to deliver greater numbers of
A350s as Boeing benefts from high 787 output
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Airbus, following a short pause in its ramp-up, is considering boosting the output of almost all its products beyond the publicly announced tar-gets. The manufacturer is looking at whether it can go beyond the 60-air-craft-per-month level on the A320neo
family that it envisions for 2019 and above a rate of six per month on the A330neo program. “I just wish Didier would build more [A350s] faster,” Air-bus sales chief John Leahy says, refer-ring to Executive Vice President of Programs Didier Evrard.
Airbus delivered 635 aircraft in 2015, six more than a year earlier. It re-ceived 1,139 gross orders and 1,036 net orders. At current rates, the backlog of 6,787 aircraft is equivalent to 10 years of production. “Our plans are based on frm orders with down payments, not speculation,” says Leahy.
This is meant to reassure investors, some of whom have warned that the amount of new aircraft flooding the market in the coming years is simply too high. There is also considerable concern in the aircraft finance com-munity about the infux of secondhand A330s and Boeing 777s, which, at low capital costs, could pose a threat to newly built jets. Both Airbus and Boe-ing believe the concerns are overdone. “I see no bubble,” says Leahy.
Although Airbus clearly outdid Boe-ing’s net order total of 768 for 2015, the U.S. manufacturer retained the lead in terms of deliveries, with 762 for the year. The tally, which was once again
BOEING
2015 Net Orders
897
60%
588
40%
Total = 1,485
Single-Aisle
A320
737
140
44%
Total = 315
Widebody
A330
787
A350 -3 orders
777
767
58
18%
71
22%
49
16%
2
50%
2
50%
Total = 4
Very Large Aircraft
A380
747-8
747-8F
Airbus vs. Boeing
Source: Airbus
Boeing delivered 135 787s from Everett, Washington, and Charles-ton, South Carolina, plants in 2015.
AW_01_18_2016_p24-27.indd 24 1/14/16 5:22 PM
26 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Adrian Schofeld Auckland
Low-Cost TacticsAsiana’s new subsidiary is an important
facet of its recovery plan
South Korea’s Asiana Airlines is the latest major carrier to set up a new low-cost subsidiary
to better compete against an influx of budget airlines in its international markets.
The low-cost carrier (LCC )—to be named Air Seoul—is one of the key elements in Asiana’s eforts to re-structure its operations and restore its fnancial health. This will be Asiana’s second low-cost subsidiary but the frst to focus on international routes from the key market of Seoul.
Asiana intends to launch Air Seoul in the frst half of 2016, after gaining an operators’ license from South Ko-rean authorities on Dec. 28. The airline will transfer some of its international routes to the LCC with the expectation that such a business model will be bet-ter suited to those markets.
Many details about the new carrier are yet to be revealed. Asiana has not confirmed Air Seoul’s fleet plan, al-though it will presumably use Airbus
A320s or A321s since both Asiana and its existing LCC subsidiary Air Busan operate these types.
Air Seoul will operate to 11 inter-national destinations in China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The Japanese destinations will be secondary cities, and many of the services to Asia will be overnight fights. Asiana says it will share its maintenance facilities and op-erational expertise with Air Seoul.
The new LCC will be based at Seoul Incheon International Airport, a major point of difference from Air Busan, which fies mostly from South Korea’s second-largest city of Busan. The country has an increasingly com-petitive LCC market, also featuring Jin Air, Jeju Air, T’Way Air, Eastar Jet and multiple overseas-based carriers. The South Korea-Japan market in par-ticular has a heavy LCC presence from both countries.
Analysts from the Korea Investment and Securities Co. (KIS) note that Asiana is particularly exposed to the
expanding LCCs. Short-haul routes, where most of the LCC competition oc-curs, account for 63% of Asiana’s rev-enue, compared to 47% for rival Kore-an Air. Based on published schedules,
KIS estimates the fve South Korean LCCs will increase their international fights by a combined 58% year-on-year during the current winter season, ver-sus an 11.1% collective increase for all South Korean carriers.
While Asiana is establishing Air Seoul to maintain its competitiveness on short-haul routes, “Given the difcul-ties related to fying too many routes too soon, we believe the efects will be gradual,” the analyst report says.
In addition to transferring some fights to the LCC, Asiana will cut other routes as part of its restructuring plan. It will cease fights to Vladivostok, Rus-sia, on Feb. 1 and suspend its Yangon, Myanmar, and Bali, Indonesia, fights from March 1.
The airline’s cost-cutting moves will include closing some branch ofces, of-fering voluntary retirement packages and outsourcing certain services.
As well as suffering from the in-creased LCC competition on many of its international routes, Asiana’s inbound travel demand was badly affected by the scare over Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in June and July. The MERS effect forced Asiana to temporarily scale back fights on some key Asian routes. The carrier reported a net loss of 88 billion won ($73 million) for the first three quarters of 2015, double the loss from the same period a year earlier. c
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Asiana operates several Airbus A321s and will likely use Airbus narrowbodies in its Air Seoul feet.
then this is a recipe for failure,” Bregier acknowledges. Zodiac has been “dese-lected” for the A330neo program as a consequence. But he concedes that “we have some issues beyond Zodiac.” Early A350 operators have reported a higher-than-expected number of replacement items, particularly in the galleys.
Meanwhile, Airbus is still ponder-ing a further stretch of the A350 that would seat 30 more passengers than the -1000, which is due to fy for the frst time before year-end. The double-stretch would come close in capacity to
the 777-9X. Airbus, now in talks with several airlines at this stage, appears to be inching toward the launch of an additional derivative but is still weigh-ing whether the market is big enough to justify the additional investment.
One program that is certainly not going to see a production increase any-time soon is the A380. Indeed, Airbus is trying to cut fxed costs further so it can reach breakeven (on a recurring cost base), even with an output close to 20 aircraft per year. The original tar-get was to break even at around 30 air-
craft. Airbus delivered 27 A380s last year; for orders this year, it notes only that it is in talks with customers about more than 25 aircraft. A frm order for three more A380s—by an undisclosed customer widely believed to be All Nip-pon Airways (ANA)—was announced.
Bregier and Leahy now feel confi-dent that they can comfortably achieve the goal of modifying the A330 to the A330neo at a rate of six per month. Leahy has been holding back A330neo proposals to focus on sales of the cur-rent version, and production has come
AW_01_18_2016_p24-27.indd 26 1/14/16 5:22 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 27
down from 10 aircraft a month to six. Leahy is also “pushing our program people” to increase maximum takeof weight up to 245 tons. “We are produc-tion-constrained on the A330 right now. We need to push it back up again,” he says. This could mean Airbus will re-turn to a level of seven or eight aircraft per month fairly soon.
Boeing also saw a larger widebody output driven by the 787. In 2015, the company completed deliveries of 135 787s, compared with 114 in 2014 and 65 the previous year. The larger volume
was based on sustained production at 10 per month, including the growing supply from Boeing’s Charleston, South Carolina, facility, which delivered more than 40 787s in 2015. Together with the completion of the fnal batch of refur-bished early-build 787s, total deliver-ies of the new twinjet are expected to climb to approximately 140 aircraft in 2016, of which more than 100 will likely be 787-9s. Assembly of the frst 787-10 variant is expected to start later this year; fight testing could begin in 2017.
The 777 program, which was sus-
tained at the rate of 8.3 aircraft per month, came in at 98 deliveries, one fewer than 2014.
Boeing also marked the delivery of the 100th 747-8, although the pro-gram—with only 20 aircraft remain-ing in the backlog—hovers perilously close to subsisting on life-support. The unexpected commercial revival of the 767, meanwhile, rolls on with 16 aircraft delivered in 2015 and 80 remaining in the backlog, not counting airframes al-located for the U.S. Air Force’s KC-46A tanker military derivative program. c
Guy Norris Los Angeles
No downside to GTF ‘motor-to-
start’ upgrade as Lufthansa is
set for delayed A320neo delivery
Fixes to eliminate an engine startup issue at the root of a month-long slip in delivery of the frst PW1100G-powered Airbus A320neo will afect neither operability
nor fuel burn, Pratt & Whitney says.Although the geared turbofan (GTF) is certified and
meets all performance requirements, originally scheduled A320neo launch operator Qatar Airways fagged the start issue as a reason for not taking delivery of the aircraft as planned in December. Lufthansa, the next operator in line for the PW1100G-powered A320neo, then stepped in to take the initial aircraft—but late last month agreed with Airbus to postpone delivery for an additional few weeks pending completion of unspecifed “documentation items.”
Because of the risk of minimal engine-shaft bending un-der certain conditions, operators are required to keep the engines at idle for 3 min. after startup, according to Gregory Hayes, CEO of Pratt & Whitney parent United Technologies Corp. Hayes says a hardware and software fx that eliminates the issue is expected to be available in February.
Pratt & Whitney Commercial Engines President Greg Gernhardt says relatively simple tweaks to the “motor-to-start” system will not have an impact on fuel burn. “There are no issues with operability and fuel burn. We are hitting contractual commitments,” he says.
Gernhardt stresses that “we are within weeks of the entry-into-service date to which we committed, and we are hitting our fuel-burn, noise and emissions targets.” The program to equip the A320neo with the PW1100G ofcially launched in late 2010, and in the context of this time line, the impact of the roughly four-week slip in initial delivery is not expected to be signifcant.
“We are ready for entry into service [EIS] with Lufthansa, which we expect to be in the coming weeks. We are working closely with them to be ready for that,” Gernhardt says. “We
will be hitting fuel at EIS, and we will stay that way and will have 2% improvement on top of that coming in 2019. We are delighted with where we are in noise and emissions,” he adds.
The engine-maker also notes that with the ramp-up in testing and development of the four other PW1000G engine family models and the ongoing Airbus fight tests and Pratt ground endurance tests of the PW1100G, the rate of overall cycle and hour accumulation is accelerating markedly. The geared turbofan program has now amassed 28,000 hr. of testing and 45,000 cycles, compared to late November, when the tally stood at 24,000 hr. and 40,000 cycles.
Although the PW1100G-powered A320neo was certifed in late November, Airbus continues to conduct service-ready and envelope-expansion fight testing with the frst three aircraft. Together they have now fown a total of 1,145 hr., of which the bulk has been amassed by prototype MSN6101 since its frst fight in September 2014.
This aircraft is now back in Toulouse after returning in mid-December from South America, where it was used to conduct high-altitude performance work. The second A320neo, MSN6286, has been performing simulated short-haul airline flights around Europe, most recently flying in France between Brest, Strasbourg, Chalons-Vatry and Nantes, while the third test airframe, MSN6720, last month conducted similar service-ready fights between Toulouse and Seville, Spain.
For the PW1100G, Pratt is increasingly focusing on pro-duction buildup and “going full bore on testing for service readiness and endurance,” says Gernhardt. c
Quicker Starter
Modifcations to reduce extended startup time will include minor changes to hardware and engine control software.
AIR
BU
S
AW_01_18_2016_p24-27.indd 27 1/14/16 5:22 PM
26 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Adrian Schofeld Auckland
Low-Cost TacticsAsiana’s new subsidiary is an important
facet of its recovery plan
South Korea’s Asiana Airlines is the latest major carrier to set up a new low-cost subsidiary
to better compete against an influx of budget airlines in its international markets.
The low-cost carrier (LCC )—to be named Air Seoul—is one of the key elements in Asiana’s eforts to re-structure its operations and restore its fnancial health. This will be Asiana’s second low-cost subsidiary but the frst to focus on international routes from the key market of Seoul.
Asiana intends to launch Air Seoul in the frst half of 2016, after gaining an operators’ license from South Ko-rean authorities on Dec. 28. The airline will transfer some of its international routes to the LCC with the expectation that such a business model will be bet-ter suited to those markets.
Many details about the new carrier are yet to be revealed. Asiana has not confirmed Air Seoul’s fleet plan, al-though it will presumably use Airbus
A320s or A321s since both Asiana and its existing LCC subsidiary Air Busan operate these types.
Air Seoul will operate to 11 inter-national destinations in China, Japan and Southeast Asia. The Japanese destinations will be secondary cities, and many of the services to Asia will be overnight fights. Asiana says it will share its maintenance facilities and op-erational expertise with Air Seoul.
The new LCC will be based at Seoul Incheon International Airport, a major point of difference from Air Busan, which fies mostly from South Korea’s second-largest city of Busan. The country has an increasingly com-petitive LCC market, also featuring Jin Air, Jeju Air, T’Way Air, Eastar Jet and multiple overseas-based carriers. The South Korea-Japan market in par-ticular has a heavy LCC presence from both countries.
Analysts from the Korea Investment and Securities Co. (KIS) note that Asiana is particularly exposed to the
expanding LCCs. Short-haul routes, where most of the LCC competition oc-curs, account for 63% of Asiana’s rev-enue, compared to 47% for rival Kore-an Air. Based on published schedules,
KIS estimates the fve South Korean LCCs will increase their international fights by a combined 58% year-on-year during the current winter season, ver-sus an 11.1% collective increase for all South Korean carriers.
While Asiana is establishing Air Seoul to maintain its competitiveness on short-haul routes, “Given the difcul-ties related to fying too many routes too soon, we believe the efects will be gradual,” the analyst report says.
In addition to transferring some fights to the LCC, Asiana will cut other routes as part of its restructuring plan. It will cease fights to Vladivostok, Rus-sia, on Feb. 1 and suspend its Yangon, Myanmar, and Bali, Indonesia, fights from March 1.
The airline’s cost-cutting moves will include closing some branch ofces, of-fering voluntary retirement packages and outsourcing certain services.
As well as suffering from the in-creased LCC competition on many of its international routes, Asiana’s inbound travel demand was badly affected by the scare over Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in June and July. The MERS effect forced Asiana to temporarily scale back fights on some key Asian routes. The carrier reported a net loss of 88 billion won ($73 million) for the first three quarters of 2015, double the loss from the same period a year earlier. c
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Asiana operates several Airbus A321s and will likely use Airbus narrowbodies in its Air Seoul feet.
then this is a recipe for failure,” Bregier acknowledges. Zodiac has been “dese-lected” for the A330neo program as a consequence. But he concedes that “we have some issues beyond Zodiac.” Early A350 operators have reported a higher-than-expected number of replacement items, particularly in the galleys.
Meanwhile, Airbus is still ponder-ing a further stretch of the A350 that would seat 30 more passengers than the -1000, which is due to fy for the frst time before year-end. The double-stretch would come close in capacity to
the 777-9X. Airbus, now in talks with several airlines at this stage, appears to be inching toward the launch of an additional derivative but is still weigh-ing whether the market is big enough to justify the additional investment.
One program that is certainly not going to see a production increase any-time soon is the A380. Indeed, Airbus is trying to cut fxed costs further so it can reach breakeven (on a recurring cost base), even with an output close to 20 aircraft per year. The original tar-get was to break even at around 30 air-
craft. Airbus delivered 27 A380s last year; for orders this year, it notes only that it is in talks with customers about more than 25 aircraft. A frm order for three more A380s—by an undisclosed customer widely believed to be All Nip-pon Airways (ANA)—was announced.
Bregier and Leahy now feel confi-dent that they can comfortably achieve the goal of modifying the A330 to the A330neo at a rate of six per month. Leahy has been holding back A330neo proposals to focus on sales of the cur-rent version, and production has come
AW_01_18_2016_p24-27.indd 26 1/14/16 5:22 PM
Tony Osborne London
A hierarchy of countermeasures will be needed
to deal with the threat of malicious UAV use
With remotely piloted UAVs joining the proliferation of tablet computers and smart-
phones as the new must-have gadgets, fears are growing that terrorist and criminal gangs will use such systems for nefarious purposes.
While it is generally acknowledged and accepted that governments have certain rights to listen in on phone calls and monitor emails and text mes-sages, legislation continues to struggle to keep up with developments in UAV technology, particularly in terms of in-novative uses now coming to the fore .
A recent report by a British think tank, the Remote Control Project, which is part of the London-based Ox-ford Research Group, is urging govern-ments to begin supporting research and development of sensor systems capable of tracking UAVs. It also calls
for the development of potential coun-termeasures, should they be used for hostile purposes.
Authorities fear that UAVs, which can be purchased for just a few hun-dred dollars, could be used in high-profi le attacks. Terrorist, insurgent, criminal, corporate and activist threat groups have already demonstrated the ability to use civilian UAVs for attacks and intelligence-gathering, the report, which was published on Jan. 11, under-scores.
While the report primarily discussed UAVs as related to England , the issues raised are applicable to a much wider audience , notably throughout Europe where many nations face the threat of terror from extremist groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
That group is already known to have used small unmanned air sys-
DEFENSE
Terror by Drone
28 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
tems to perform reconnaissance and battlefi eld coordination in Iraq. But the report says that the group is “report-edly obsessed with launching a syn-chronized multi-drone attack on large numbers of people in order to recreate the horrors of 9/11.”
Earlier this month , U.K.-based Sky News showed footage of an apparent Islamic State workshop where insur-gents were working on remotely con-trolled systems, one of which was of a car that could carry a bomb.
There are also reports of UAV use by groups such as Hezbollah, while the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian organization Hamas, says it has developed as many as three UAV platforms, two with combat pay-loads and one for surveillance.
The concerns are not new, however. U.S. law enforcement agencies in New York have been consulting with the mili-tary since 2014 about ways to counter the threat, in spite of the New Jersey Of ce of Homeland Security and Pre-paredness stating that the use of UAVs requires a level of profi ciency that “ex-ceeds most terrorist capabilities.”
In late 2014, researchers at the Uni-versity of Texas looked at a number
SHUTTERSTOCK/GILLES PAIRE AND PETERI
AW_01_18_2016_p28-30.indd 28 1/14/16 11:14 AM
Bradley Perrett Sydney
Canberra’s New EarsAustralia acknowledges intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance ef ort with G550 order
Probably to promote good rela-tions with its neighbors, espe-cially Indonesia, Australia has
avoided any public admission that it puts much ef ort into airborne electron-ic intelligence. But now it has broken cover. Unexpectedly, Canberra says it is buying two Gulfstream G550s as in-telligence and electronic warfare (EW) aircraft from L-3 Communications for $93.6 million.
The aircraft will most likely replace and improve on a low-profile capabil-ity now deployed in maritime patrol aircraft. L-3’s Mission Integration unit, a specialist in manned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, is to deliver the aircraft via the U.S. Foreign Military Sales process. A need for interoperability with other Aus-
tralian systems, predominantly sourced from the U.S., has driven the choice of a U.S. contractor for the aircraft, which will be based on business jets.
“The Australia government entered into a Foreign Military Sales arrange-ment through the U.S. Air Force for the procurement of two Gulfstream G550 aircraft,” a spokesperson for the Aus-tralian Defense Department says in a statement issued to Aviation Week. “The aircraft will be modifi ed to pro-vide an airborne intelligence, surveil-lance, reconnaissance and electronic warfare (Isrew) capability. . . . The acquisition was undertaken through Foreign Military Sales because the Isrew program and its interoperability with other defense capabilities is only available through the USAF.”
of scenarios and concluded that cur-rent-generation UAVs have the ability to “democratize air power,” because their low cost and ease of use could make them viable platforms to attack high-profi le individuals, particularly in public.
The U.K. report also cites a number of so-called lone-wolf incidents where individuals have acted either irrespon-sibly or with malicious intent. UAVs have been flown onto the grounds of the White House and around sensi-tive sites in France, including nuclear power stations.
In one notable incident last April, a quadcopter carrying a bottle fi lled with radioactive sand from the Fukushima nuclear accident site was landed on the roof of the Japanese prime minister’s of ce building in downtown Tokyo .
In the U.K., a freedom-of-information request to London’s Metropolitan Po-lice revealed that between January 2013-August 2015 20 suspicious UAV-related incidents were recorded in and around the city. In one case, a UAV had been used to fl y drugs into a prison.
The report urges governments to en-act stricter regulations limiting the ca-pabilities of commercially available sys-
tems, in particular those with the ability to carry payloads. One concern is that payload-carrying unmanned systems could be used as cheap and effective airborne improvised explosive devices .
M ore than 200 commercially avail-able remotely piloted systems were studied, including those for use in the air, on the ground and on and below wa-ter. Aerial systems were deemed to pose the greatest risk because of their “capa-bilities and widespread availability.
“But developments in unmanned ground and marine vehicles are open-ing up new avenues for hostile groups to exploit,” the report warns .
“The use of drones for surveillance and attack is no longer the purview of state militaries alone,” says Chris Ab-bott, lead author of the report, adding, “drones are a game-changer in the wrong hands.”
The report notes that authorities will need a “hierarchy of countermeasures” including regulatory, passive and active means to deal with the threat. It sug-gests greater use of geo-fencing—pro-gramming that prevents the system from entering a pre-set area as defi ned by satellite navigation coordinates. Also called for are registration and licensing
of UAVs capable of carrying payloads; the U.S. FAA has already initiated this measure.
Among active countermeasures the report discusses are kinetic and laser-based systems; passive coun-termeasures include early warning systems and signal jamming. There is a strong recommendation that law enforcement agencies have access to such systems as a matter of urgency and that governments should thus relax laws governing the use of radio-frequency jamming around sensitive sites in order to effectively monitor unmanned systems .
The report says that groups could potentially circumvent such counter-measures in the future, however. While there is a danger that strict regula-tion could “smother” the commercial unmanned vehicle sector before it is properly established, if rules are too relaxed, the report says, “there is a high probability of misuse. As usual, a compromise needs to be found.
“The technology of remote-control warfare is impossible to control; the ul-timate defense is to address the root drivers of the threat in the fi rst place,” the report concludes . c
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 29
Sightings over nuclear power stations in France, as illustrated in
artist’s concept, are among incidents raising concerns about
illicit use of small UAVs.
AW_01_18_2016_p28-30.indd 29 1/14/16 11:14 AM
Tony Osborne London
A hierarchy of countermeasures will be needed
to deal with the threat of malicious UAV use
With remotely piloted UAVs joining the proliferation of tablet computers and smart-
phones as the new must-have gadgets, fears are growing that terrorist and criminal gangs will use such systems for nefarious purposes.
While it is generally acknowledged and accepted that governments have certain rights to listen in on phone calls and monitor emails and text mes-sages, legislation continues to struggle to keep up with developments in UAV technology, particularly in terms of in-novative uses now coming to the fore .
A recent report by a British think tank, the Remote Control Project, which is part of the London-based Ox-ford Research Group, is urging govern-ments to begin supporting research and development of sensor systems capable of tracking UAVs. It also calls
for the development of potential coun-termeasures, should they be used for hostile purposes.
Authorities fear that UAVs, which can be purchased for just a few hun-dred dollars, could be used in high-profi le attacks. Terrorist, insurgent, criminal, corporate and activist threat groups have already demonstrated the ability to use civilian UAVs for attacks and intelligence-gathering, the report, which was published on Jan. 11, under-scores.
While the report primarily discussed UAVs as related to England , the issues raised are applicable to a much wider audience , notably throughout Europe where many nations face the threat of terror from extremist groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
That group is already known to have used small unmanned air sys-
DEFENSE
Terror by Drone
28 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
tems to perform reconnaissance and battlefi eld coordination in Iraq. But the report says that the group is “report-edly obsessed with launching a syn-chronized multi-drone attack on large numbers of people in order to recreate the horrors of 9/11.”
Earlier this month , U.K.-based Sky News showed footage of an apparent Islamic State workshop where insur-gents were working on remotely con-trolled systems, one of which was of a car that could carry a bomb.
There are also reports of UAV use by groups such as Hezbollah, while the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian organization Hamas, says it has developed as many as three UAV platforms, two with combat pay-loads and one for surveillance.
The concerns are not new, however. U.S. law enforcement agencies in New York have been consulting with the mili-tary since 2014 about ways to counter the threat, in spite of the New Jersey Of ce of Homeland Security and Pre-paredness stating that the use of UAVs requires a level of profi ciency that “ex-ceeds most terrorist capabilities.”
In late 2014, researchers at the Uni-versity of Texas looked at a number
SHUTTERSTOCK/GILLES PAIRE AND PETERI
AW_01_18_2016_p28-30.indd 28 1/14/16 11:14 AM
High-fl ying G550s offer a
far greater horizon than the
Orions, so they will be able to
stand off farther from emitters
The work on the aircraft, to be done at L-3’s Greenville, Texas, site under a fi xed-price contract, should be com-plete by Nov. 30, 2017, the U.S. Defense Department says. More details will be revealed this year in Canberra’s planned defense white paper.
The timing and price suggest that a mature system, or at least one under development for the U.S., will be fi tted. The U.S. Air Force agency handling the contract is the 645th Aeronauti-cal Systems Group, better known as Big Safari, the program of ce for such special-mission aircraft as the Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint.
Apart from introducing systems of presumably higher performance, the program will advance Australia’s capabilities by removing the burden of electronic intelligence (elint) and surveillance from the country’s mari-time patrol squadrons. Under Project Peacemate, two of the Royal Australian Air Force’s Lockheed Martin P-3C Ori-on maritime aircraft were reportedly modifi ed in the 1990s for elint, includ-ing signals intelligence, which is the interception of radio communications.
Alternatively, Peacemate may have procured elint equipment that could be moved between dif erent Orions.
Either way, Australia now needs a replacement. The country is phasing out the Orion, preparing to replace it with the Boeing P-8 Poseidon and Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton in the maritime role. So the G550 looks like the successor for elint operations.
By operating ostensibly submarine-hunting Orions as elint aircraft, and keeping their modifi cations unobserved, Australia has avoided acknowledging ownership of dedicated aircraft for the role. Although Indonesia has been an
obvious target, it was displeased by revelations in 2013 that Australia had been at least trying to listen to phone conversations of leaders in Jakarta.
Canberra’s confirmation of the Isrew role of the G550s appears to be the closest it has come to mentioning a specialized airborne elint capability. No doubt that was unavoidable. While it is
unclear how the adapted Orions have been kept out of public view, the G550s’ role will be obvious, especially if they look anything like elint versions of the type operated by the Israeli air force.
Before this announcement, it seemed likely that Tritons would quiet-ly take on the elint role. If that was the plan, then Australia either doubts the Triton’s capability or readiness in that area, or it cannot wait for the type to arrive; Canberra has not yet placed its Triton order. Buying the G550s may be a stopgap. The low price leaves room for L-3 to install the Isrew systems
only in secondhand business jets.The high-flying G550s will offer a
far greater horizon than the Orions, so they will be able to stand of farther from emitters. New listening equip-ment will presumably be more sensi-tive while also able to handle signal formats that have appeared since the Peacemate program was implemented.
By referring to EW, the department may mean the aircraft will have a spe-cialized jamming capability, but maybe not for combat missions. Since G550s will lack the performance of combat aircraft, they cannot be intended to go close to serious air-to-air and surface-
to-air threats—although business jets can be used as powerful standoff jammers. A high-perfor-mance electronic-attack force is already coming to Australia in the form of 12 Boeing EA-18G Growlers ordered in 2014.
The department’s emphasis on interoper-
ability being available only through the U.S. Air Force refl ects the domi-nance of U.S. aircraft and shipboard systems in the Australian forces. The strike wing is equipped with Boeing
F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, while the fi ghter squadrons operate F/A-18A/B Hornets, which will be replaced with Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightnings. Boeing E-7 Wedgetails provide air-borne early warning and control. c
—With Tony Osborne in London and Bill Sweetman and Dan Katz
in Washington
DEFENSE
30 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
ISR aircraft that L-3 will deliver to Australia could look somewhat like IAI’s G550 conversion.
WIKIPEDIA/NEHEMIAG
ISR G550s will work with advanced U.S. systems that predominate
in Australia’s forces, such as EA-18G Growlers.
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE
AW_01_18_2016_p28-30.indd 30 1/14/16 11:29 AM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 31
Tony Osborne London
Less Is MoreBelgium ups spending on defense equipment,
but only enough to af ord new fi ghters
Belgium’s political leaders have agreed to increase the amount of money spent on defense, but
the changes will result in less equip-ment and fewer personnel.
The country’s complex political coali-tions have come to terms on a strategic plan that will see Brussels spending €9.2 billion ($9.89 billion) on new equipment between now and 2030, raising the coun-try’s defense spending as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), although it is unlikely ever to meet NATO’s stand-ing expectation of 2%.
Currently, Belgium’s defense spend-ing barely scrapes in at 1% of GDP.
With this budget, Belgium has set itself a challenge. In recent years, the country has done little to modernize its armed forces and purchase new equip-ment. Now is its laying out a shopping list of what of cials call “concrete in-vestments,” including 34 new fi ghter aircraft to replace the aging fl eet of 56 F-16 Fighting Falcons. Two new frig-ates and six minesweepers are also planned for the country’s navy.
Commanders want a fl eet of UAVs for surveillance as well, and there will be additional investments in the country’s cybercapabilities and special forces.
But there will be rationalizations, too. Steven Vandeput, the country’s de-fense minister, announced on Dec. 22. The number of full-time personnel serving will be reduced from the cur-rent 30,000 to around 25,000. Of cials hope this will reduce the average age in the armed forces to about 34; it cur-rently stands at 40.
The plan also calls for the retire-ment of a Dassault Falcon 20 utility aircraft at the end of 2016 and a VIP-confi gured Falcon 900 in 2018.
In addition, the budget commits Bel-gium to studies of an aerial refueling capability—perhaps joining the multi-national tanker force being established by the Dutch, in conjunction with Ger-many, Norway and Poland. Ministers are also drawing up plans for a so-called white fl eet of passenger aircraft that could be used as troop transports.
Brussels will also lease-in a search- and-rescue helicopter capability, re-placing its Westland Sea Kings but leaving the four NH90s that it pur-chased to replace the Sea Kings to perform the antisubmarine warfare and maritime patrol mission.
Vandeput describes the cross-party defense agreement as a “major step,” but a more formal plan is now being established, with tendering to closely follow.
It is not yet clear, however, whether this master plan will af ect the current schedule for Belgium’s new fighter program—that is, the Air Combat Ca-pability Successor program, likely to be the most expensive of the procure-ments on the agenda.
Defense of cials are surveying cur-rent Western-made fighter options, following a request for information issued in 2014 for the Lockheed Mar-tin F-35, Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hor-net, Dassault’s Rafale, the Eurofi ghter Typhoon and Saab Gripen. A request for proposals is anticipated in the coming weeks.
This is expected to lead into a governmental approval process in mid-2016 and the beginning of the procurement phase, which likely will last into mid-2018, when the next gov-ernment should approve the procure-ment.
Belgium wants to start replacing its F-16s in 2023 and achieve full opera-tional capability in 2029.
The plans would give Belgium a smaller fighter fleet than its neigh-bor, the Netherlands, which is slated to purchase 37 F-35As. Dutch of cials have recently said they hope Brussels will follow and also acquire the F-35 so that both can benefit from closer cooperation.
A plan for joint air policing of the two nations’ airspace is likely to be en-acted toward the end of 2016.
A thorn in Belgium’s fi ghter selec-tion process will be the country’s sta-tus in NATO’s nuclear-weapon-sharing agreements. Under a dual-key ar-rangement, a number of U.S.-owned B61 nuclear bombs are housed at Kleine Brogel air base and would be fl own underneath Belgian aircraft in the event of a confl ict.
However, nuclear capability will not be included in the fi ghter request for proposals, Belgian of cials said at the International Fighter Conference in London last November.
The Belgian government is report-edly eager to maintain the nuclear ca-pability, a move that would generally point toward selection of a U.S.-built aircraft fi tted with the necessary sys-tems to operate the weapon, such as the F-35. Alternatively, Belgium could fund the fi tment of a nuclear weapon onto another aircraft, but this would likely come at a high cost and only with the approval of the government of the fi ghter’s country of origin.
It is unclear what sort of unmanned system Belgium desires, but it is likely to follow in the footsteps of other Euro-pean air arms with a medium-altitude, long-endurance system in the class of the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper or IAI Heron. Belgium has said it wants two such systems by 2021 and an ad-ditional four by 2030. c
Belgium is studying several fi ghters to replace the F-16, but questions over nuclear capability may push Brusselstoward the F-35.
TONY OSBORNE/AW&ST
AW_01_18_2016_p31.indd 31 1/14/16 3:53 PM
High-fl ying G550s offer a
far greater horizon than the
Orions, so they will be able to
stand off farther from emitters
The work on the aircraft, to be done at L-3’s Greenville, Texas, site under a fi xed-price contract, should be com-plete by Nov. 30, 2017, the U.S. Defense Department says. More details will be revealed this year in Canberra’s planned defense white paper.
The timing and price suggest that a mature system, or at least one under development for the U.S., will be fi tted. The U.S. Air Force agency handling the contract is the 645th Aeronauti-cal Systems Group, better known as Big Safari, the program of ce for such special-mission aircraft as the Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint.
Apart from introducing systems of presumably higher performance, the program will advance Australia’s capabilities by removing the burden of electronic intelligence (elint) and surveillance from the country’s mari-time patrol squadrons. Under Project Peacemate, two of the Royal Australian Air Force’s Lockheed Martin P-3C Ori-on maritime aircraft were reportedly modifi ed in the 1990s for elint, includ-ing signals intelligence, which is the interception of radio communications.
Alternatively, Peacemate may have procured elint equipment that could be moved between dif erent Orions.
Either way, Australia now needs a replacement. The country is phasing out the Orion, preparing to replace it with the Boeing P-8 Poseidon and Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton in the maritime role. So the G550 looks like the successor for elint operations.
By operating ostensibly submarine-hunting Orions as elint aircraft, and keeping their modifi cations unobserved, Australia has avoided acknowledging ownership of dedicated aircraft for the role. Although Indonesia has been an
obvious target, it was displeased by revelations in 2013 that Australia had been at least trying to listen to phone conversations of leaders in Jakarta.
Canberra’s confirmation of the Isrew role of the G550s appears to be the closest it has come to mentioning a specialized airborne elint capability. No doubt that was unavoidable. While it is
unclear how the adapted Orions have been kept out of public view, the G550s’ role will be obvious, especially if they look anything like elint versions of the type operated by the Israeli air force.
Before this announcement, it seemed likely that Tritons would quiet-ly take on the elint role. If that was the plan, then Australia either doubts the Triton’s capability or readiness in that area, or it cannot wait for the type to arrive; Canberra has not yet placed its Triton order. Buying the G550s may be a stopgap. The low price leaves room for L-3 to install the Isrew systems
only in secondhand business jets.The high-flying G550s will offer a
far greater horizon than the Orions, so they will be able to stand of farther from emitters. New listening equip-ment will presumably be more sensi-tive while also able to handle signal formats that have appeared since the Peacemate program was implemented.
By referring to EW, the department may mean the aircraft will have a spe-cialized jamming capability, but maybe not for combat missions. Since G550s will lack the performance of combat aircraft, they cannot be intended to go close to serious air-to-air and surface-
to-air threats—although business jets can be used as powerful standoff jammers. A high-perfor-mance electronic-attack force is already coming to Australia in the form of 12 Boeing EA-18G Growlers ordered in 2014.
The department’s emphasis on interoper-
ability being available only through the U.S. Air Force refl ects the domi-nance of U.S. aircraft and shipboard systems in the Australian forces. The strike wing is equipped with Boeing
F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, while the fi ghter squadrons operate F/A-18A/B Hornets, which will be replaced with Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightnings. Boeing E-7 Wedgetails provide air-borne early warning and control. c
—With Tony Osborne in London and Bill Sweetman and Dan Katz
in Washington
DEFENSE
30 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
ISR aircraft that L-3 will deliver to Australia could look somewhat like IAI’s G550 conversion.
WIKIPEDIA/NEHEMIAG
ISR G550s will work with advanced U.S. systems that predominate
in Australia’s forces, such as EA-18G Growlers.
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE
AW_01_18_2016_p28-30.indd 30 1/14/16 11:29 AM
32 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Graham Warwick Washington
NATO plans to fi eld ground
surveillance capability based on
unmanned Global Hawk in 2017
NATO’s long-running program to fi eld a ground surveil-lance capability is a step closer as Northrop Grum-man begins integrating the radar sensor onto the fi rst
of fi ve RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft for the alliance.
The Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) platform made its fi rst fl ight on Dec. 19, fl ying from Northrop’s Palmdale, California, facility to Edwards AFB, where integration and testing of the system will be performed. The 2.5-hr. fl ight focused on basic airworthiness, fl ying qualities and naviga-tion performance of the AGS air segment—the aircraft and its command-and-control system.
The AGS is based on the U.S. Air Force’s Block 40 Global Hawk and carries the Northrop/Raytheon-developed ZPY-2 Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) sensor—which provides long-range, high-resolution synthetic-aperture radar imaging and ground moving-target indication capabilities using an active electronically scanned
array. With a 30-hr. endurance at 60,000 ft., the Block 40 completed initial operational test and evaluation in 2015.
Changes to Block 40 to meet the NATO requirements have been minimized, says Rob Sheehan, Northrop’s AGS deputy program manager. The primary dif erence is the move to Internet Protocol-based rather than serial-based command-and-control and onboard processing, he says. Dif-ferent radios and data links are used.
“NATO AGS is a true system-of-systems and fully self-contained,” he says. “The mission control element [MCE] for the sensor system is dif erent, and how they do mission planning and data exploitation is dif erent.” The aircraft and associated ground systems comprise the AGS Core capabil-ity being acquired by 15 NATO nations, to be operated on behalf of all 28 members. France and the U.K. will provide data from national systems to the AGS ground segment.
Testing of the air segment at Edwards, including the sen-sor and ground control system, is planned to be completed this summer, after which the fi rst AGS Global Hawk will be ferried to its main operating station at Sigonella on Sic-ily, Italy. There it will be integrated with the operational
control center and transportable ground station developed by Finmeccanica Electronics, Defense & Security Systems (formerly Selex ES) and the mobile ground station developed by Airbus Defense and Space.
Airbus delivered the fi rst mobile ground station in Decem-ber. NATO has ordered six of the deployable units, which will exploit and disseminate radar images of stationary and mov-ing ground and maritime targets received from the Global Hawk via direct or satellite broadband data link. Packaged into two containers, the units are air-transportable. Finmec-canica is supplying two transportable stations. Norway’s Kongsberg is supplying the master archival/retrieval system for radar imagery.
“At Sigonella, another series of system-level performance verifi cation tests will be conducted before sell-of to NATO,” says Sheehan. The AGS Global Hawk will be owned and op-erated by NATO and based at Sigonella, alongside U.S. Air Force Global Hawks and Navy MQ-4C Tritons, so Italy is responsible for their airworthiness certifi cation. The fi rst aircraft has an Italian tail number, and the U.S. State De-partment had to help arrange diplomatic clearance for the transit fl ight through unrestricted airspace to Edwards from Palmdale, he says.
Flight testing at Edwards will involve the Italian Air Ar-maments and Airworthiness Directorate (DAAA) as well as Northrop, the U.S. Air Force and NATO’s Shape (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) as the operating
agency. Agreed between DAAA and the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Manage-
ment Agency responsible for procuring the system, the certification basis combines NATO standards and U.S. requirements to establish the airworthiness of the AGS Global Hawk, Sheehan says.
Airworthiness certifi cation by the DAAA will ensure the aircraft complies with European airspace rules, but Shee-han points out that Air Force Global Hawks fl y routinely from Sigonella. NATO exercise Unifi ed Vision in 2014, dur-ing which a Global Hawk fl ew from Sigonella to Norway and back, helped pave the way for operations in Europe, he says.
The European-developed AGS ground segment also un-derwent risk-reduction testing in Unifi ed Vision 2014 and NATO’s large-scale maneuver exercise Trident Juncture in 2015, passing messages to test the ground stations. Systems are being delivered to Sigonella for early integration and “all four elements will come together this summer at the main operating station,” Sheehan says.
The second AGS Global Hawk is scheduled to be ferried to Sigonella soon after the fi rst aircraft, with the other three following at two-month intervals. Initial operational capabil-ity is scheduled for 2017, and the training system is being put in place. Initial familiarization training has started. c
DEFENSE
Alliance Asset
NATO’s AGS is based on the radar-carryingRQ-4B Block 40 Global Hawk.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN
AW_01_18_2016_p32.indd 32 1/14/16 4:23 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 33
Bradley Perrett Sydney
Development DecadeMRJ regional jet delivery deferred to 2018
Mitsubishi Aircraft is expecting more of the unexpected. The company has added about a
year to the already delayed develop-ment schedule for its MRJ regional jet, now expected to extend more than a decade beyond its 2008 launch.
Accepting that the MRJ will enter
service only about two years before its close competitor, the Embraer 175-E2, the company is now allowing for far more ground testing in support of the fl ight-test program that began Nov. 11.
Whereas the MRJ was originally due for delivery in the last quarter of 2013—and most recently in the second quarter of 2017— the updated
schedule shows the first customer, likely All Nippon Airways, receiving its fi rst aircraft in the second or third quarter of 2018. Other early deliveries are due to Trans States Holdings and Sky West Inc. of the U.S.
The contrast between the program execution of the MRJ and that of the
similar Embraer E-Jet is startling. Mitsubishi Aircraft’s airframe contrac-tor and major stakeholder, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), is by any standard a sophisticated supplier to the commercial aircraft industry but has no recent experience in develop-ing complete civil aircraft. Creating its regional jet will take about 123 months.
Embraer, after decades of experience developing smaller aircraft, delivered its fi rst E-Jet in March 2004, just 57 months after program launch.
The MRJ’s engineers are strength-ening its airframe and modifying its software, but these are not the pacing items in the new schedule. And this time
the problem is not dif culty in follow-ing certifi cation requirements—which resulted in the two previous big delays, announced in 2012 and 2014. Rather, Mitsubishi Aircraft, following advice from U.S. experts at its engineering cen-ter in Seattle, has simply taken a more conservative, or realistic, view of how it needs to proceed with fl ight testing.
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
2015 2016 2017 2018
Old
Schedule
New
Schedule
MRJ Schedule Changes
Ground Testing
Ground Testing
Flight Testing in Japan Flight Testing in the U.S.
Flight Testing in Japan Flight Testing in the U.S.
Fir
st
Flight
Fir
st
Flight
Delivery
Modifcations
Following Test Results
Modifcations
Following Test Results
Sources: Mitsubishi Aircraft, MHI
Delivery
Allowance for
Modifcations
Following
Test Results
Allowance for
Modifcations
Following
Test Results
MIT
SU
BIS
HI A
IRC
RAFT
On its third fl ight, the fi rst MRJ fl ight-test aircraft fl ew with landing gear and fl aps retracted.
AW_01_18_2016_p33-36.indd 33 1/13/16 6:20 PM
32 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Graham Warwick Washington
NATO plans to fi eld ground
surveillance capability based on
unmanned Global Hawk in 2017
NATO’s long-running program to fi eld a ground surveil-lance capability is a step closer as Northrop Grum-man begins integrating the radar sensor onto the fi rst
of fi ve RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft for the alliance.
The Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) platform made its fi rst fl ight on Dec. 19, fl ying from Northrop’s Palmdale, California, facility to Edwards AFB, where integration and testing of the system will be performed. The 2.5-hr. fl ight focused on basic airworthiness, fl ying qualities and naviga-tion performance of the AGS air segment—the aircraft and its command-and-control system.
The AGS is based on the U.S. Air Force’s Block 40 Global Hawk and carries the Northrop/Raytheon-developed ZPY-2 Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) sensor—which provides long-range, high-resolution synthetic-aperture radar imaging and ground moving-target indication capabilities using an active electronically scanned
array. With a 30-hr. endurance at 60,000 ft., the Block 40 completed initial operational test and evaluation in 2015.
Changes to Block 40 to meet the NATO requirements have been minimized, says Rob Sheehan, Northrop’s AGS deputy program manager. The primary dif erence is the move to Internet Protocol-based rather than serial-based command-and-control and onboard processing, he says. Dif-ferent radios and data links are used.
“NATO AGS is a true system-of-systems and fully self-contained,” he says. “The mission control element [MCE] for the sensor system is dif erent, and how they do mission planning and data exploitation is dif erent.” The aircraft and associated ground systems comprise the AGS Core capabil-ity being acquired by 15 NATO nations, to be operated on behalf of all 28 members. France and the U.K. will provide data from national systems to the AGS ground segment.
Testing of the air segment at Edwards, including the sen-sor and ground control system, is planned to be completed this summer, after which the fi rst AGS Global Hawk will be ferried to its main operating station at Sigonella on Sic-ily, Italy. There it will be integrated with the operational
control center and transportable ground station developed by Finmeccanica Electronics, Defense & Security Systems (formerly Selex ES) and the mobile ground station developed by Airbus Defense and Space.
Airbus delivered the fi rst mobile ground station in Decem-ber. NATO has ordered six of the deployable units, which will exploit and disseminate radar images of stationary and mov-ing ground and maritime targets received from the Global Hawk via direct or satellite broadband data link. Packaged into two containers, the units are air-transportable. Finmec-canica is supplying two transportable stations. Norway’s Kongsberg is supplying the master archival/retrieval system for radar imagery.
“At Sigonella, another series of system-level performance verifi cation tests will be conducted before sell-of to NATO,” says Sheehan. The AGS Global Hawk will be owned and op-erated by NATO and based at Sigonella, alongside U.S. Air Force Global Hawks and Navy MQ-4C Tritons, so Italy is responsible for their airworthiness certifi cation. The fi rst aircraft has an Italian tail number, and the U.S. State De-partment had to help arrange diplomatic clearance for the transit fl ight through unrestricted airspace to Edwards from Palmdale, he says.
Flight testing at Edwards will involve the Italian Air Ar-maments and Airworthiness Directorate (DAAA) as well as Northrop, the U.S. Air Force and NATO’s Shape (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) as the operating
agency. Agreed between DAAA and the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Manage-
ment Agency responsible for procuring the system, the certification basis combines NATO standards and U.S. requirements to establish the airworthiness of the AGS Global Hawk, Sheehan says.
Airworthiness certifi cation by the DAAA will ensure the aircraft complies with European airspace rules, but Shee-han points out that Air Force Global Hawks fl y routinely from Sigonella. NATO exercise Unifi ed Vision in 2014, dur-ing which a Global Hawk fl ew from Sigonella to Norway and back, helped pave the way for operations in Europe, he says.
The European-developed AGS ground segment also un-derwent risk-reduction testing in Unifi ed Vision 2014 and NATO’s large-scale maneuver exercise Trident Juncture in 2015, passing messages to test the ground stations. Systems are being delivered to Sigonella for early integration and “all four elements will come together this summer at the main operating station,” Sheehan says.
The second AGS Global Hawk is scheduled to be ferried to Sigonella soon after the fi rst aircraft, with the other three following at two-month intervals. Initial operational capabil-ity is scheduled for 2017, and the training system is being put in place. Initial familiarization training has started. c
DEFENSE
Alliance Asset
NATO’s AGS is based on the radar-carryingRQ-4B Block 40 Global Hawk.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN
AW_01_18_2016_p32.indd 32 1/14/16 4:23 PM
34 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Madhu Unnikrishnan San Francisco and
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
All Over AgainNorwegian tries for a U.S. foreign
air permit a second time, but
opposition remains
Two years ago low-cost carrier Norwegian fled to receive a foreign air permit in the U.S. for its Irish subsidiary, Norwegian Air International (NAI). What would nor-
mally have been a routine administrative task has turned into a protracted and bitter political fght centered on mar-ket access and competition. Now Norwegian has again fled for a U.S. permit through the U.S. Transportation Depart-ment, this time on behalf of its U.K. afliate, Norwegian UK (NUK). And early flings to the docket indicate history may repeat itself.
Players both for and against Norwegian Air International’s application to fy to the U.S. have reiterated their positions on a similar proposal for NUK. Organized labor strongly opposes the plan, while cargo carriers, travel groups and airports are staunch supporters of the new service.
Norwegian says it has not created NAI and applied for the approvals because of cheaper labor deals or access to the U.S. Because Norway is associated with the U.S.-European Union open skies agreement, Norwegian can use its own air operator certifcate (AOC) for unlimited access to the U.S. from Norway or any EU airport and already does so with the NAI decision pending. However, the airline wants to not only expand long-haul fying into the U.S. but also into Asia, where its Norwegian trafc rights are strictly limited. A European AOC would allow the airline to expand more
rapidly into key Asia-Pacifc markets using its growing feet of Boeing 787s. But Norwegian is seeking to create just one AOC for all of the long-haul routes so it can be fexible in terms of aircraft rotations.
An Irish AOC would provide this advantage and additional benefts in terms of aircraft fnancing—NAI could use export credit for Airbus aircraft and would provide deeper security to lessors and lenders because Ireland is an early signatory of the Cape Town Convention, which, among other things, regulates what happens in case of defaults.
The U.K. AOC would still make it easier for Norwegian to operate long-haul services from EU destinations to places in Asia and could, in theory, serve as a backup solution in the U.S. in case the NAI application is permanently rejected—assuming, of course, that it does not sufer the same fate.
The issue is slightly diferent from that of the Irish-domi-ciled Norwegian Air International. When NAI applied for permission in 2014, it did not have much of a presence in Ireland, other than its air operator certifcate. NUK, on the other hand, is the third-largest carrier at its base at London Gatwick Airport and is seeking to expand its operations to the U.S. But organized labor in the U.S. does not agree that NUK’s case has enough substantive diferences to support the application.
Unions including the Air Line Pilots Association, Trans-portation Trades Department, Association of Flight Atten-dants-CWA, European Cockpit Association and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers argue in comments fled to the Transportation Department’s dockets that NUK’s application is similar to NAI’s.
NAI’s lack of a presence in Ireland sparked those that op-pose the carrier’s business model to claim that the low-cost airline is a “fag-of-convenience carrier.” Opponents homed in on NAI’s practice of using crews sourced from Europe, the U.S. and Asia and likened that to the U.S. maritime industry, in which ships can be fagged in a country with favorable labor and tax laws and crewed internationally. Opponents
CommerCiAl AviAtion
Successful experience with pro-longed ground preparations before the November 2015 frst fight buttressed the decision to extend the schedule. “At the Seattle Engineering Center, we con-ducted a review before the frst fight, working with aviation development ex-perts there,” Mitsubishi Aircraft says. “This brought to light some additional items for confrmation through ground tests prior to the frst fight.” That fight was delayed while additional work was done on the ground. “The result was that through three fight tests, including the frst, we were able to obtain valid, reliable results.”
Thorough ground preparation worked then, and the company in-tends to stick with the slow-and-steady procedure. “For the work that is scheduled in the future, we will con-duct reviews in the same way,” it says.
“And these reviews may bring to light the need for additional tests and test confrmation items.”
Although the items in the flight-test program have not changed, the assessment of time needed to com-
plete them has changed enormously because of the allowance for concur-rent ground testing. In August 2013, Mitsubishi Aircraft and MHI allowed two years between the beginning of flight testing and the 2017 first de-
livery. As the date of the frst fight slipped in April 2015 from the sec-ond quarter to the fourth, Mitsubishi Aircraft stuck by the delivery target, implying that fight testing and sub-sequent preparations for delivery
could be compressed to about 18 months.
T h a t h a s n o w ballooned to 30-33 m o n t h s , t h e n ew time line shows (see graphic on page 35). The additional time is d iv ided among three phases. Most of
the extra allowance has been added to the first phase, initial flight testing in Japan only. But the main flight-test effort, at Moses Lake, Washington, has also been extended, as has the interval between the end of airborne
All fight testing should be
complete near the end of 2017,
about nine months later than
previously scheduled
AW_01_18_2016_p33-36.indd 34 1/13/16 6:20 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 35
joepr
ies
avia
tio
n.n
et
at that time said that NAI’s crewing practices were in viola-tion of Article 17 bis of the U.S.-EU open skies agreement, which stipulates that “opportunities created by the agree-ment are not intended to undermine labor standards or the labor-related rights and principles contained in the parties’ respective laws.” In other words, NAI’s opponents said the Irish AOC was a ploy to skirt Norway’s strict labor laws and would violate the agreement. The labor groups, joined in a fling by the Allied Pilots Association, are urging the Trans-portation Department to ask NUK for information on its labor practices to ensure that they are compliant with Article 17 bis.
Norwegian rejects the allegations that it is seeking cheap labor and has offered to use only European or U.S.-based crews on its transatlantic ser-vices. The airline also has a crew base in Bangkok and uses contract workers through agencies.
Norwegian’s supporters say the labor opposition is nothing more than a delay-ing tactic anyway, which is quietly backed by major airlines that are concerned a new, large low-cost carrier will have a detrimental efect on yields. Cargo carriers FedEx and Atlas Air, as well as the U.S. Travel Association and several U.S. airports, contend that NUK’s application is fully compliant with the U.S.-EU open skies agreement. Furthermore, the EU and the U.S. agreed in 2009 that carriers from either side are not required to fle such documentation as long as they are certifed to operate in either the U.S. or the EU. In its fling, FedEx wrote that this is “because the decision of the certifying authorities deserved mutual respect.” The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has approved NUK, and this should be enough for the Transpor-
tation Department, FedEx said. “Article 6 bis of the U.S.-EU agreement requires [the Transportation Department] to recognize CAA’s fndings with respect to [NUK’s] ftness and citizenship,” Atlas argued.
The U.K. government appears to support NUK’s applica-
tion. Last month, just prior to NUK’s application for a for-eign air carrier permit, a senior government ofcial joined Norwegian Air Shuttle CEO Bjorn Kjos in meetings with the Transportation Department on NUK’s plans, people familiar with the matter said. Since NUK is a U.K. carrier and under the CAA’s purview, supporters say accusations that NUK’s safety oversight will be lacking are spurious. NAI opponents argue that the Irish civil aviation authority would not have adequate safety oversight over a carrier that has limited operations in Ireland, but this cannot be said for the third-largest carrier at Gatwick, NUK supporters counter. c
Low-cost carrier Norwegian wants to secure a single air operator certifcate for its growing feet of Boeing 787s.
evaluation and the first delivery.The newly conservative approach
of the two companies appears most prominently in the time allowed dur-ing the Moses Lake phase for modi-fcations to the aircraft, systems and software in response to test fndings. This feedback allowance has more than doubled to about eight months. In other words, the program now in-cludes more tolerance for the unex-pected, Mitsubishi Aircraft says.
Flight testing at Moses Lake is now due to begin in the last quarter of 2016, pushed back from the second quarter. And all fight testing, includ-ing by aircraft flown only in Japan, should be complete near the end of 2017, about nine months later than previously scheduled.
The airframe is being strengthened, but Mitsubishi Aircraft says that was
part of the plan when the previous schedule delay was announced in April 2015. Static testing revealed that the wing, for example, would not pass its test of ultimate load, 150% of the highest forces that could be expected in operation. Some components were not strong enough. The modifcations are minor and will not add to empty weight, the company says. That im-plies that thickening in some places will be ofset by thinning elsewhere, or that new materials will be substituted.
Software in avionics, fight controls and the engine control unit is being upgraded as well.
Mitsubishi Aircraft and MHI are re-organizing the sharing of program work between three main sites. The head of-fce at Nagoya Airport will be respon-sible for documentation for type certif-cation, preparations for manufacturing
(at various plants in Japan, with fnal as-sembly alongside Nagoya Airport), and customer support. Design development, notably, is now a responsibility of the Se-attle Engineering Center, while Moses Lake concentrates on fight testing.
Taxi tests from Oct. 3 to Nov. 7, 2015, confrmed satisfactory performance in steering, speed-range expansion, re-jected takeof, and braking, including emergency braking. The three fight tests to date have produced similar “as planned” results for takeof and land-ing performance, ascent, descent and turning, landing gear and fap opera-tions, and fight characteristics at up to 15,000 ft. and 200 kt.
The frst fve fight-test aircraft have been built to the design of the MRJ90, the 88-seat version of the aircraft. Cer-tifcation of the MRJ70, with 76 seats, will follow. c
AW_01_18_2016_p33-36.indd 35 1/13/16 6:20 PM
34 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Madhu Unnikrishnan San Francisco and
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
All Over AgainNorwegian tries for a U.S. foreign
air permit a second time, but
opposition remains
Two years ago low-cost carrier Norwegian fled to receive a foreign air permit in the U.S. for its Irish subsidiary, Norwegian Air International (NAI). What would nor-
mally have been a routine administrative task has turned into a protracted and bitter political fght centered on mar-ket access and competition. Now Norwegian has again fled for a U.S. permit through the U.S. Transportation Depart-ment, this time on behalf of its U.K. afliate, Norwegian UK (NUK). And early flings to the docket indicate history may repeat itself.
Players both for and against Norwegian Air International’s application to fy to the U.S. have reiterated their positions on a similar proposal for NUK. Organized labor strongly opposes the plan, while cargo carriers, travel groups and airports are staunch supporters of the new service.
Norwegian says it has not created NAI and applied for the approvals because of cheaper labor deals or access to the U.S. Because Norway is associated with the U.S.-European Union open skies agreement, Norwegian can use its own air operator certifcate (AOC) for unlimited access to the U.S. from Norway or any EU airport and already does so with the NAI decision pending. However, the airline wants to not only expand long-haul fying into the U.S. but also into Asia, where its Norwegian trafc rights are strictly limited. A European AOC would allow the airline to expand more
rapidly into key Asia-Pacifc markets using its growing feet of Boeing 787s. But Norwegian is seeking to create just one AOC for all of the long-haul routes so it can be fexible in terms of aircraft rotations.
An Irish AOC would provide this advantage and additional benefts in terms of aircraft fnancing—NAI could use export credit for Airbus aircraft and would provide deeper security to lessors and lenders because Ireland is an early signatory of the Cape Town Convention, which, among other things, regulates what happens in case of defaults.
The U.K. AOC would still make it easier for Norwegian to operate long-haul services from EU destinations to places in Asia and could, in theory, serve as a backup solution in the U.S. in case the NAI application is permanently rejected—assuming, of course, that it does not sufer the same fate.
The issue is slightly diferent from that of the Irish-domi-ciled Norwegian Air International. When NAI applied for permission in 2014, it did not have much of a presence in Ireland, other than its air operator certifcate. NUK, on the other hand, is the third-largest carrier at its base at London Gatwick Airport and is seeking to expand its operations to the U.S. But organized labor in the U.S. does not agree that NUK’s case has enough substantive diferences to support the application.
Unions including the Air Line Pilots Association, Trans-portation Trades Department, Association of Flight Atten-dants-CWA, European Cockpit Association and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers argue in comments fled to the Transportation Department’s dockets that NUK’s application is similar to NAI’s.
NAI’s lack of a presence in Ireland sparked those that op-pose the carrier’s business model to claim that the low-cost airline is a “fag-of-convenience carrier.” Opponents homed in on NAI’s practice of using crews sourced from Europe, the U.S. and Asia and likened that to the U.S. maritime industry, in which ships can be fagged in a country with favorable labor and tax laws and crewed internationally. Opponents
CommerCiAl AviAtion
Successful experience with pro-longed ground preparations before the November 2015 frst fight buttressed the decision to extend the schedule. “At the Seattle Engineering Center, we con-ducted a review before the frst fight, working with aviation development ex-perts there,” Mitsubishi Aircraft says. “This brought to light some additional items for confrmation through ground tests prior to the frst fight.” That fight was delayed while additional work was done on the ground. “The result was that through three fight tests, including the frst, we were able to obtain valid, reliable results.”
Thorough ground preparation worked then, and the company in-tends to stick with the slow-and-steady procedure. “For the work that is scheduled in the future, we will con-duct reviews in the same way,” it says.
“And these reviews may bring to light the need for additional tests and test confrmation items.”
Although the items in the flight-test program have not changed, the assessment of time needed to com-
plete them has changed enormously because of the allowance for concur-rent ground testing. In August 2013, Mitsubishi Aircraft and MHI allowed two years between the beginning of flight testing and the 2017 first de-
livery. As the date of the frst fight slipped in April 2015 from the sec-ond quarter to the fourth, Mitsubishi Aircraft stuck by the delivery target, implying that fight testing and sub-sequent preparations for delivery
could be compressed to about 18 months.
T h a t h a s n o w ballooned to 30-33 m o n t h s , t h e n ew time line shows (see graphic on page 35). The additional time is d iv ided among three phases. Most of
the extra allowance has been added to the first phase, initial flight testing in Japan only. But the main flight-test effort, at Moses Lake, Washington, has also been extended, as has the interval between the end of airborne
All fight testing should be
complete near the end of 2017,
about nine months later than
previously scheduled
AW_01_18_2016_p33-36.indd 34 1/13/16 6:20 PM
36 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Brian Sumers Los Angeles and Madhu Unnikrishnan San Francisco
Change at the TopWhere will new CEO take Spirit?
When Spirit Airlines abruptly replaced longtime CEO Ben Baldanza with former
AirTran chief Robert Fornaro on Jan. 5, some analysts speculated about whether a merger could be in the of-ing. But while Fornaro helped orches-trate AirTran’s 2010 sale to Southwest Airlines, and though eventually he could act similarly at Spirit, making a deal might not be his frst priority in his new job.
In roughly a decade in charge, Bal-danza transformed the carrier from a plodding hub-and-spoke airline with relatively high costs into the U.S.’s frst real ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC). In the past year, however, as fuel costs have dropped and opponents have grown more aggressive, Spirit’s busi-ness has suffered. The model is still massively proftable—Spirit signaled it will report roughly a 17.5% proft margin for 2015’s fourth quarter—but Fornaro may need to stabilize the airline before he can start negotiating mergers.
Many analysts expect Fornaro to curb the airline’s growth. In 2015, Spirit increased capacity by about 30%, and yields and load factors fell, spooking some investors. The growth also strained operations. In one highly publicized misstep, Spirit said it lost $20 million during the second quarter after it had trouble recovering from storm-related delays and cancellations.
Spirit has said it will grow by about 20% in 2016, and with 13 new aircraft set to arrive this year, according to the most recent feet plan, the airline almost certainly will add considerable capacity. But it may not be quite as robust as it would have been under
Baldanza, and at some point, analysts say, Spirit could defer orders.
“In general, what the investors were concerned about was how rapidly Spirit was growing,” says Michael Derchin, an analyst with Sterne Agee CRT. “That type of growth is ambitious to manage.”
Fornaro also must decide how the network should evolve. Under Baldan-za, Spirit had an unusual approach. It would fy nearly any route on which it calculated it could make substantial margins. That produced profts, but it also created a disjointed network, lead-ing to some operational issues.
“Ben selected city pairs that were most interesting no matter where they were,” says Craig Jenks, founder of the Airline/Aircraft Projects consultancy. “It was a strategy that wasn’t a strategy. People were a little bit uncomfortable about that. [The question was,] ‘Where would Spirit would strike next?’ Inves-tors starting getting rattled,” he says.
In general, Baldanza liked to go into a legacy carrier’s hubs, such as Chicago O’Hare International, Hartsfeld-Jack-son Atlanta International and Dallas/Fort Worth International, and try to stimulate trafc with the lowest fares. As recently as two years ago, with fuel expensive, legacies rarely matched Spirit. But American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have all altered their strategies; now it is not un-usual for them to match fares on popu-lar routes such as Los Angeles-Dallas.
In a Jan. 6 note, analyst Hunter Keay of Wolfe Research predicted Spirit and its chief competitor, Frontier Airlines, would expand in 2016, not in legacy carrier hubs but in markets served by Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines Jet-
Blue Airways and Virgin America. He called Seattle and Boston the two most “underserved” ULCC markets.
Fornaro is not expected to recre-ate the hub-and-spoke model. While AirTran relied on an Atlanta hub, Spirit has little connectivity, prefer-
ring point-to-point routes. “A hub-and-spoke model would move them into a higher-cost model,” Derchin says.
Indeed, Baldanza had been fanatical about costs. In the third quarter, Spirit reported a cost per available seat mile excluding fuel, of 5.39 cents, a decrease of 9% compared with the same period in 2014. That advantage has helped Spirit keep margins high despite the poor revenue environment.
The business model is “just fine,” Derchin says. “They’re the lower-cost producer in the industry, and that is almost certain to continue. Fornaro knows how to manage a low-cost entity.”
Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at At-mosphere Research Group, says he ex-pects Fornaro will focus on revenues. In the third quarter of 2015, Spirit report-ed an average one-way ticket revenue of $68, or $12 less than in 2014. Meanwhile, average ancillary revenue per passen-ger was about $54, $1 less than in 2014.
“They are certainly growing and they are making money, and they re-main one of the most profitable air-lines,” Harteveldt says. “But I don’t think the revenue growth met the air-line’s or investors expectations.”
Finally, there is the merger issue. Harteveldt says Baldanza was gener-ally reluctant to pursue one, believing Spirit could succeed alone. Fornaro has already successfully merged an airline—Southwest paid a major pre-mium over AirTran’s stock price, pleas-ing investors, so a merger is not out of the question. Helane Becker of Cowen & Co. named Frontier, JetBlue, Virgin America and “possibly” Allegiant Air as possible merger partners, as all fy a sig-nifcant number of A320-family aircraft.
“While a merger may be something Mr. Fornaro will tasked with exploring, it may be as likely to be the seller as a buyer,” Harteveldt says. “I don’t think a merger [is his] Job One. . . . He’ll need to focus on improving the airline’s opera-tional reliability and performance and exploring network strategies [to] ben-eft Spirit’s business performance.” c
CommerCiAl AviAtion
SPIR
IT
Analysts predict the appointment of AirTran veteran Robert Fornaro as CEO could be a precursor to a merger.
AW_01_18_2016_p33-36.indd 36 1/14/16 11:14 AM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 37
Tony Osborne London
Finmeccanica renews focus on core
business in bid to revive its fortunes
After cutting away its unprofi table public transport businesses in 2015, Finmeccanica CEO Mauro Moret-ti is hoping a fresh start in 2016 will reinvigorate the
long-troubled Italian aerospace and defense conglomerate.A restructuring, 18 months in the making, has trans-
formed the group from a bunch of semi-independent busi-nesses into a divisionalized organization under the single brand of Finmeccanica.
Moretti has followed the path taken in 2014 by EADS—now Airbus Group—by eliminating unprofi table or noncore elements of the company and focusing on aerospace, defense and space. This strategy seems to be working.
Moretti claims the transformation process has been posi-tively received by the fi nancial markets . The company’s share price has been steadily on the rise, revenues are back in the black and the company’s high debt levels —the result of vari-ous unsuccessful expeditions into other markets—are falling.
The so-called “one-company” strategy took ef ect on Jan. 1, eliminating long-established and well-known names such as AgustaWestland, Alenia Aermacchi and Selex ES. These have been absorbed into the larger Finmeccanica entity and will operate as divisions rather than separate companies.
Noncore businesses in the energy and public transport sectors were divested in 2014 and 2015 . The last of these to go was the rail business of Ansaldo Breda and Ansaldo STS, sold to Japanese group Hitachi .
Meanwhile, weapons manufacturer OTO Melara and tor-pedo specialists Whitehead Sistemi Subacquei were merged into a single company back in September.
Moretti has established four business sectors : Aeronau-tics, managed by Filippo Bagnato ; Electronics, Defense & Security Systems, headed by Fabrizio Giulianini ; Helicop-ters, run by Daniele Romiti; and Space to be guided by Luigi Pasquali.
Under the initiative, AgustaWestland becomes Finmec-canica Helicopters, while aircraft manufacturer Alenia Aer-macchi becomes Finmeccanica Aeronautics. Finmeccanica Helicopters has stated on Twitter that the company’s heli-copters will retain the AgustaWestland brand . However, it is not yet clear whether other companies will retain their respective product brands.
Moretti has hinted several times that an altered corpo-rate identity must follow the changes, and a rebranding of
the company could be in the of ng later in 2016, company of cials have said.
Moretti is keen to sweep away a corporate image that had been tainted by allegations of corruption in 2013 in the purchase of VIP helicopters by India, an investigation since dropped by Italian authorities but still being pursued in India.
“This move is overdue,” says Richard Aboulafi a, vice presi-dent of analysis for the Teal Group. “For years, they had this image as a state-run holding company, with minimal synergy and no real brand identity. Anything that allowed their operating units to stake out a common identity with greater shared services would help.”
Others are skeptical about the impact of the changes, how-ever. One London-based analyst says it is unlikely to change the way Finmeccanica “performs and operates.”
“What it will do is break down some of the fi efdoms that have developed over the years, and that can only be a good thing,” says the analyst .
Removing the corporate identity from elements of the company—such as the AgustaWestland name—means these could now be seen as separable assets, which could be stripped away and sold to the highest bidder.
Indeed, the name change from AgustaWestland to Fin-meccanica Helicopters has not gone down well, particularly in Yeovil, England, where 100 years of Westland were cel-ebrated last July. When the London Sunday Times reported in November that Boeing had made a bid to buy the helicopter manufacturer, Moretti said: “We didn’t have any request, and even if we had we wouldn’t think of selling.”
Furthermore, there is little sign of Moretti’s long-stated hope of divesting or taking control of joint ventures where Finmeccanica did not have full control. His statements, made in 2015, cast a shadow over the future of the company’s two important regional aircraft joint ventures —the ATR tur-boprop airliner program shared equally with Airbus, and SuperJet International, the joint venture established with Sukhoi to sell the SuperJet 100 regional airliner. The Italian element of missile manufacturer MBDA was also studied as an option for divestiture.
Key to the company’s success in 2016, analysts say, is to firm up the contract with Kuwait for 28 Eurofighter Ty-phoons following the fi ghter’s selection by the Persian Gulf state last September. The deal, which was reportedly de-layed by Finmeccanica in November, could be “a signifi cant catalyst,” according to some analysts, and may do for Fin-meccanica what the Al-Yamamah deals with Saudi Arabia in the 1980s did for BAE Systems. c
Fresh Start Analysts see fi nalizing the Kuwaiti Eurofi ghter deal as a critical step for the newly restructured Finmeccanica group.
EU
RO
FIGH
TER
BUSINESS
AW_01_18_2016_p37.indd 37 1/13/16 11:21 AM
36 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Brian Sumers Los Angeles and Madhu Unnikrishnan San Francisco
Change at the TopWhere will new CEO take Spirit?
When Spirit Airlines abruptly replaced longtime CEO Ben Baldanza with former
AirTran chief Robert Fornaro on Jan. 5, some analysts speculated about whether a merger could be in the of-ing. But while Fornaro helped orches-trate AirTran’s 2010 sale to Southwest Airlines, and though eventually he could act similarly at Spirit, making a deal might not be his frst priority in his new job.
In roughly a decade in charge, Bal-danza transformed the carrier from a plodding hub-and-spoke airline with relatively high costs into the U.S.’s frst real ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC). In the past year, however, as fuel costs have dropped and opponents have grown more aggressive, Spirit’s busi-ness has suffered. The model is still massively proftable—Spirit signaled it will report roughly a 17.5% proft margin for 2015’s fourth quarter—but Fornaro may need to stabilize the airline before he can start negotiating mergers.
Many analysts expect Fornaro to curb the airline’s growth. In 2015, Spirit increased capacity by about 30%, and yields and load factors fell, spooking some investors. The growth also strained operations. In one highly publicized misstep, Spirit said it lost $20 million during the second quarter after it had trouble recovering from storm-related delays and cancellations.
Spirit has said it will grow by about 20% in 2016, and with 13 new aircraft set to arrive this year, according to the most recent feet plan, the airline almost certainly will add considerable capacity. But it may not be quite as robust as it would have been under
Baldanza, and at some point, analysts say, Spirit could defer orders.
“In general, what the investors were concerned about was how rapidly Spirit was growing,” says Michael Derchin, an analyst with Sterne Agee CRT. “That type of growth is ambitious to manage.”
Fornaro also must decide how the network should evolve. Under Baldan-za, Spirit had an unusual approach. It would fy nearly any route on which it calculated it could make substantial margins. That produced profts, but it also created a disjointed network, lead-ing to some operational issues.
“Ben selected city pairs that were most interesting no matter where they were,” says Craig Jenks, founder of the Airline/Aircraft Projects consultancy. “It was a strategy that wasn’t a strategy. People were a little bit uncomfortable about that. [The question was,] ‘Where would Spirit would strike next?’ Inves-tors starting getting rattled,” he says.
In general, Baldanza liked to go into a legacy carrier’s hubs, such as Chicago O’Hare International, Hartsfeld-Jack-son Atlanta International and Dallas/Fort Worth International, and try to stimulate trafc with the lowest fares. As recently as two years ago, with fuel expensive, legacies rarely matched Spirit. But American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have all altered their strategies; now it is not un-usual for them to match fares on popu-lar routes such as Los Angeles-Dallas.
In a Jan. 6 note, analyst Hunter Keay of Wolfe Research predicted Spirit and its chief competitor, Frontier Airlines, would expand in 2016, not in legacy carrier hubs but in markets served by Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines Jet-
Blue Airways and Virgin America. He called Seattle and Boston the two most “underserved” ULCC markets.
Fornaro is not expected to recre-ate the hub-and-spoke model. While AirTran relied on an Atlanta hub, Spirit has little connectivity, prefer-
ring point-to-point routes. “A hub-and-spoke model would move them into a higher-cost model,” Derchin says.
Indeed, Baldanza had been fanatical about costs. In the third quarter, Spirit reported a cost per available seat mile excluding fuel, of 5.39 cents, a decrease of 9% compared with the same period in 2014. That advantage has helped Spirit keep margins high despite the poor revenue environment.
The business model is “just fine,” Derchin says. “They’re the lower-cost producer in the industry, and that is almost certain to continue. Fornaro knows how to manage a low-cost entity.”
Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at At-mosphere Research Group, says he ex-pects Fornaro will focus on revenues. In the third quarter of 2015, Spirit report-ed an average one-way ticket revenue of $68, or $12 less than in 2014. Meanwhile, average ancillary revenue per passen-ger was about $54, $1 less than in 2014.
“They are certainly growing and they are making money, and they re-main one of the most profitable air-lines,” Harteveldt says. “But I don’t think the revenue growth met the air-line’s or investors expectations.”
Finally, there is the merger issue. Harteveldt says Baldanza was gener-ally reluctant to pursue one, believing Spirit could succeed alone. Fornaro has already successfully merged an airline—Southwest paid a major pre-mium over AirTran’s stock price, pleas-ing investors, so a merger is not out of the question. Helane Becker of Cowen & Co. named Frontier, JetBlue, Virgin America and “possibly” Allegiant Air as possible merger partners, as all fy a sig-nifcant number of A320-family aircraft.
“While a merger may be something Mr. Fornaro will tasked with exploring, it may be as likely to be the seller as a buyer,” Harteveldt says. “I don’t think a merger [is his] Job One. . . . He’ll need to focus on improving the airline’s opera-tional reliability and performance and exploring network strategies [to] ben-eft Spirit’s business performance.” c
CommerCiAl AviAtion
SPIR
IT
Analysts predict the appointment of AirTran veteran Robert Fornaro as CEO could be a precursor to a merger.
AW_01_18_2016_p33-36.indd 36 1/14/16 11:14 AM
38 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Amy Svitak Paris
Europeans question economics of
Falcon 9 core-stage refight
Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium sees no need to change its strategy following the dramatic recovery by U.S. rival SpaceX of its Falcon 9 rocket core stage.
“It’s very complicated to see how this is going to evolve and to assess the economics of launch vehicle reusability,” Ari-anespace Chairman and CEO Stephane Israel told reporters in early January during the company’s annual forecast at a meeting with French media. “It would be a mistake for us to put our heads down and chase somebody else’s strategy.”
SpaceX’s Dec. 21 launch of a Falcon 9 rocket carry-ing 11 small communications satellites to low Earth orbit marked the debut of the com-pany’s most powerful iteration to date of the medium-lift ve-hicle. It also culminated in the frst successful recovery of a Falcon 9 first stage, which landed intact and on target at Cape Canaveral after de-livering its upper stage and payload to the edge of space.
Israel, whose company launched more than half of all commercial satellites orbited in 2015, using the heavy-lift Ariane 5, says SpaceX’s move toward reusable launch vehicles was well-known within the European Space Agency (ESA) when it approved develop-ment of an Ariane 5 successor in December 2014.
Known as Ariane 6, the smaller, more modular rocket de-sign was crafted even as SpaceX was testing its Grasshopper vehicle, a precursor to a potentially reusable Falcon 9.
“We already integrated the possibility of reusability into our thinking about Ariane 6 in the run-up to December 2014,” Israel says, adding that at €90-100 million ($97-107 million) per launch, the new rocket will cost roughly half that of an Ariane 5. “SpaceX had been working with Grasshopper for several years, so it wasn’t a total surprise. But we are not going to be divert-ing from our road map one iota. What we need is consistency.”
Jean-Yves Le Gall, director of French space agency CNES and formerly the head of Arianespace, asserts SpaceX is still in the early stages of learning to reuse the Falcon 9. Le Gall, who played an instrumental role in shaping Ariane 6’s design, says it is too soon to know whether the process of refurbish-ing and refying the core stage will be cost-efective enough to close that company’s business case.
“SpaceX’s rocket-stage recovery was impressive,” Le Gall
told reporters during an annual CNES forecast event here. “But recovery is not the same as reuse, which is where the cost savings are found.”
In the meantime, Arianespace is reporting a record opera-tional performance and order backlog for last year, including a total of 12 launches and sales of more than €1.4 billion, the highest total in the company’s history.
In 2015, the company carried out six Ariane 5 launches, along with three missions atop the Europeanized Soyuz and three launches of the new Vega light launcher, with the latter marking a threefold increase over the previous year.
The company also won contracts in 2015 for 33 new launch-es, including 21 atop Soyuz to start delivering the new OneWeb constellation of low-circling Internet satellites to orbit in 2017.
Another eight Ariane 5 launches were ordered last year to lift 14 geostationary satellites, from a total of 25 commercial satellite missions open to competition last year.
This year, the launch services provider is planning just 11 launches, though the manifest includes eight launches of the Ariane 5 that are expected to boost revenue beyond the re-cord set last year.
This is due in part to a pair of rare, dedicated commercial missions that will launch on the typically dual-manifest Ariane 5 ECA. Israel says fexi-ble pricing for both launches—one for feet operator Intelsat in January and a second in March for Paris-based Eutel-sat—was enabled by the new Airbus Safran Launchers joint venture, which has more room to maneuver than Airbus or Safran did separately.
With the Ariane 6 slated to enter service in 2020, Israel says Arianespace will place its frst order for the new rocket
later this year, following a program review scheduled between Airbus Safran Launchers and ESA this fall.
Israel says the current Ariane 5 rocket will be phased out over a three-year period starting in 2020, and that the com-pany is likely to place its last Ariane 5 order this year.
In addition, the consortium will order the first Vega C launchers, which are expected to cost the same as the cur-rent Vega rocket—owing to some design commonality with Ariane 6—while ofering considerably more lift performance.
As Arianespace anticipates SpaceX’s debut of its much larger Falcon Heavy rocket this year, he says other new entrants to the commercial market loom, including Russia’s new Angara family of launchers and vehicles in development in China and India.
In addition, he notes International Launch Services, the Reston, Virginia-based company that markets commercial missions for Russia’s Proton, has taken steps to attract new business after a string of mishaps in recent years.
“It’s still a very complex, competitive environment, with the Falcon Heavy being introduced and Proton still there and showing themselves to be ofering extremely aggressive pric-ing,” Israel says. “It’s a race to the bottom of the ladder, and we will not join them in this, but we do have to take account of it.” c
SPACE
Recovery
Versus Reuse
In late 2016, Europe’s Arianespace will place orders with Avio SpA and Airbus Safran Launchers for the frst commercial Vega C and Ariane 6 rockets.
ES
A
AW_01_18_2016_p38.indd 38 1/13/16 11:22 AM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 39
Bradley Perrett Sydney
KAI slated to deliver indigenous
South Korean fi ghters in 2026
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fn Dfcffbfr 2015. Tfaf lookfd lfkf onlf fnougf for forf dfffgn ffudfff, confffffnf ffff parlfaffnf’f rfpfaffd rf-fufal fo fund full-fcalf dfvflopffnf ffncf 2012, fffn fff dfffnff ffnfffrf fi rff afkfd for a prograf launcf. Buf fff fpokffpfrfon faff a furfffr 72.5 bfllfon fon ff avaflablf frof unfpfnf allocaffonf fn 2013 and 2014. Tffff appfar fo bf fuff ffaf parlfaffnf provfdfd fo fff ffnfffrf’f Dfffnff Acqufffffon Prograf Adffnfffraffon (DAPA), fafbf nof orfgfnallf for fff KF-X.
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DEFENSE
KF-X Launched
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rffourcff fff largfr afrcraff fould dffand.
The South Korean air force insisted that the KF-X have two engines.
AGENCY FOR DEFENSE DEVELOPMENT
AW_01_18_2016_p39.indd 39 1/13/16 11:22 AM
38 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Amy Svitak Paris
Europeans question economics of
Falcon 9 core-stage refight
Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium sees no need to change its strategy following the dramatic recovery by U.S. rival SpaceX of its Falcon 9 rocket core stage.
“It’s very complicated to see how this is going to evolve and to assess the economics of launch vehicle reusability,” Ari-anespace Chairman and CEO Stephane Israel told reporters in early January during the company’s annual forecast at a meeting with French media. “It would be a mistake for us to put our heads down and chase somebody else’s strategy.”
SpaceX’s Dec. 21 launch of a Falcon 9 rocket carry-ing 11 small communications satellites to low Earth orbit marked the debut of the com-pany’s most powerful iteration to date of the medium-lift ve-hicle. It also culminated in the frst successful recovery of a Falcon 9 first stage, which landed intact and on target at Cape Canaveral after de-livering its upper stage and payload to the edge of space.
Israel, whose company launched more than half of all commercial satellites orbited in 2015, using the heavy-lift Ariane 5, says SpaceX’s move toward reusable launch vehicles was well-known within the European Space Agency (ESA) when it approved develop-ment of an Ariane 5 successor in December 2014.
Known as Ariane 6, the smaller, more modular rocket de-sign was crafted even as SpaceX was testing its Grasshopper vehicle, a precursor to a potentially reusable Falcon 9.
“We already integrated the possibility of reusability into our thinking about Ariane 6 in the run-up to December 2014,” Israel says, adding that at €90-100 million ($97-107 million) per launch, the new rocket will cost roughly half that of an Ariane 5. “SpaceX had been working with Grasshopper for several years, so it wasn’t a total surprise. But we are not going to be divert-ing from our road map one iota. What we need is consistency.”
Jean-Yves Le Gall, director of French space agency CNES and formerly the head of Arianespace, asserts SpaceX is still in the early stages of learning to reuse the Falcon 9. Le Gall, who played an instrumental role in shaping Ariane 6’s design, says it is too soon to know whether the process of refurbish-ing and refying the core stage will be cost-efective enough to close that company’s business case.
“SpaceX’s rocket-stage recovery was impressive,” Le Gall
told reporters during an annual CNES forecast event here. “But recovery is not the same as reuse, which is where the cost savings are found.”
In the meantime, Arianespace is reporting a record opera-tional performance and order backlog for last year, including a total of 12 launches and sales of more than €1.4 billion, the highest total in the company’s history.
In 2015, the company carried out six Ariane 5 launches, along with three missions atop the Europeanized Soyuz and three launches of the new Vega light launcher, with the latter marking a threefold increase over the previous year.
The company also won contracts in 2015 for 33 new launch-es, including 21 atop Soyuz to start delivering the new OneWeb constellation of low-circling Internet satellites to orbit in 2017.
Another eight Ariane 5 launches were ordered last year to lift 14 geostationary satellites, from a total of 25 commercial satellite missions open to competition last year.
This year, the launch services provider is planning just 11 launches, though the manifest includes eight launches of the Ariane 5 that are expected to boost revenue beyond the re-cord set last year.
This is due in part to a pair of rare, dedicated commercial missions that will launch on the typically dual-manifest Ariane 5 ECA. Israel says fexi-ble pricing for both launches—one for feet operator Intelsat in January and a second in March for Paris-based Eutel-sat—was enabled by the new Airbus Safran Launchers joint venture, which has more room to maneuver than Airbus or Safran did separately.
With the Ariane 6 slated to enter service in 2020, Israel says Arianespace will place its frst order for the new rocket
later this year, following a program review scheduled between Airbus Safran Launchers and ESA this fall.
Israel says the current Ariane 5 rocket will be phased out over a three-year period starting in 2020, and that the com-pany is likely to place its last Ariane 5 order this year.
In addition, the consortium will order the first Vega C launchers, which are expected to cost the same as the cur-rent Vega rocket—owing to some design commonality with Ariane 6—while ofering considerably more lift performance.
As Arianespace anticipates SpaceX’s debut of its much larger Falcon Heavy rocket this year, he says other new entrants to the commercial market loom, including Russia’s new Angara family of launchers and vehicles in development in China and India.
In addition, he notes International Launch Services, the Reston, Virginia-based company that markets commercial missions for Russia’s Proton, has taken steps to attract new business after a string of mishaps in recent years.
“It’s still a very complex, competitive environment, with the Falcon Heavy being introduced and Proton still there and showing themselves to be ofering extremely aggressive pric-ing,” Israel says. “It’s a race to the bottom of the ladder, and we will not join them in this, but we do have to take account of it.” c
SPACE
Recovery
Versus Reuse
In late 2016, Europe’s Arianespace will place orders with Avio SpA and Airbus Safran Launchers for the frst commercial Vega C and Ariane 6 rockets.
ES
A
AW_01_18_2016_p38.indd 38 1/13/16 11:22 AM
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601AWB40.indd 1 1/13/2016 9:43:30 AM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 41
Bill Sweetman Hazerim and Hatzor, Israel
Better Than RealIsraeli air force cuts fl ying, boosts simulation
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
At the Israeli air force’s newest training base, two groups of squadron pilots each fly two
four-ship missions a day against a full range of threats that include hostile fighters and surface-to-air missiles (SAM). Meanwhile, student pilots on the service’s new Finmeccanica Aero-nautics M-346 trainers—named Lavi in the Israel Defense Force (IDF)—will soon be able to train with radar, elec-tronic warfare systems and weapons. At the same time, the IDF is scaling back its fl ying hours.
This is possible because the IDF has made a strategic decision to switch re-sources from fl ying hours to live, vir-tual and constructive (LVC) training and advanced, networked simulation, using an array of domestically devel-oped hardware and software. “The air force took a 5% cut in fl ying hours to pay for the new training systems,” says Sagi Peleg, vice president of strategy and business development for Elbit’s aerospace unit, “and they plan to dou-ble that.” Elbit is the prime contractor for both the new Mission Training Cen-
ter at Hatzor air base and the ground segment of the Lavi training system at Hazerim and operates the ground-based systems under private-fi nance initiative arrangements with the IDF.
The programs lead the world, says Peleg . The systems are built around dome simulators with all-new video systems, jointly developed by Elbit and Barco. They integrate the latest Elbit Targo helmet-mounted displays (HMD), and Israeli M-346s are equipped with El-bit’s Embedded Virtual Avionics (EVA). This is a one-box system that emulates radar, electro-optical sensors and de-fensive avionics, projects virtual targets and threats on the HMD, incorporates a high-speed data link that connects the airplane to the other participants in the virtual air battle in near-real-time, and records all relevant information for post-mission debriefi ng.
EVA implements the LVC concept—“live” means that actual aircraft are combined with simulated threats or wingmen; “virtual” means the use of human-controlled simulated assets; and “constructive” refers to computer-
controlled simulated entities—within the M-346 program. The air force is exploiting this capability to reduce the cost and time expended in training, while making it more ef ective.
Simulation and rehearsal are used throughout the M-346 syllabus, but the single largest change made possible by LVC is the addition of a new phase to the M-346 program. Previously, the air force used its advanced trainers—Boe-ing TA-4J Skyhawks—for a six-month undergraduate pilot training program, followed by a year of operationally ori-ented work and lead-in fi ghter train-ing (LIFT). Additionally, pilots became part of a fi ghter training unit (FTU) equipped with F-16s.
Now, using LVC, the service can add a final phase—defined as “LIFT in a squadron environment”—which in-cludes the use of the HMD, targeting pods, radar and guided weapons in com-bat, all simulated via the EVA and dis-plays. For example, SAM smoke trails can be recreated as helmet video. The goal is to halve the time (currently about a year) that it takes to train a new pilot after joining an operational squadron. It is that “downloading” of training from F-15s and F-16s to the M-346 that saves money. “Why do you need to spend $22,000 an hour to learn HMD opera-tions or how a beyond-visual-range mis-sile works?” Peleg asks . Additionally, the
High-resolution, real-time imagery and the fast data links necessary to deliver it to multiple cockpits are key to
unlocking the potential of advanced simulation.
ELBIT
AW_01_18_2016_p41-42.indd 41 1/13/16 12:40 PM
F-16 FTU has been shut down.The full M-346 program is not yet
fully operational because the aircraft are new and some of the 30-aircraft force are still to be delivered. Since the new Hazerim facility opened in Octo-ber 2014, however, examples of all the new equipment have been delivered. After basic desktop-computer-based training, the student graduates to skill-based training (SBT) with simulators that use mostly commercial hardware but run in real time with the aircraft’s own operational software. That leads to the full mission trainer, a half-dome simulator with the Targo HMD (the helmet tracker is live, and helmet sym-bology, normally projected at infi nity on the visor, is emulated on the dome).
All missions are practiced in this trainer, and so far it appears that one-third of the 150-hr., A-4 syllabus can be “of oaded” to the full mission trainer for further savings in cost.
Similar technology is used at nearby Hatzor, in the Mission Training Center (MTC) for operational pilots. Although the training center does not yet have a “live” element, Peleg says its new tech-nology—high-defi nition displays, data links and computer-generated forces—are “a new dimension in training that [is] more realistic than Red Flag.”
IDF and industry professionals gen-erally regard new simulation technol-ogy as more than complementary to live exercises like Red Flag, as do many of their associates worldwide. Always limited by resources—“How many pi-lots have been to Red Flag twice, even in the U.S.?” asks Peleg—even Red Flag
is limited in the employment of realis-tic SAM or electronic warfare (EW) threats. A training range may have an SA-6 or SA-11 missile simulator, Peleg notes, but will it be the latest model or the latest in a specific theater? Real-world exercises are constrained in their ability to simulate long-range weapons and by rising concerns about security against electronic monitoring of radars and communication signals.
The MTC project started in the late 2000s and operations began in 2013. It is built around two sets of four full-dome simulators, each using 13 pro-jectors with 4K resolution (specially developed by Elbit and Barco) and roll-in crew stations to simulate dif erent aircraft types and front and rear seats. The facility can therefore simulate one four-ship formation of two-seaters or two formations of single-seat air-craft: Currently it is equipped for the F-16C/D and F-16I, with F-15 cockpits arriving later this year.
The MTC also has two half-dome simulators for “Red Air” aggressors. Other Red forces can be managed from desktop simulators or generated by computers: The system can gener-ate more than 2,000 “entities,” one IDF of cer says, “and we rarely use more than 150, with only a couple of dozen being really engaged.”
The normal pattern of operations at the MTC is to have one squadron in attendance for a week. Each is divided into two teams, so that one is “fl ying”
while the other is briefi ng or debrief-ing. Briefi ngs, mission planning tools and command message formats are as realistic as possible, and the mission commander—overseeing the battle from the MTC control center—will be a fi ghter formation leader with at least 10 years of experience. “In hundreds of fi ghts over two years, none look the same. You take the same squadron and the same exercise and get totally dif er-ent results,” an IDF of cer says.
The IDF of cer in command of the facility (who cannot be named under Israeli security rules) says that the ser-vice is “still learning the benefi ts and limitations” of the system. “We think that every pilot who comes through here has an interesting experience, regarding their emotions and taking real-life decisions. You have to think during the performance.”
Restrictions on live training—safety limits, staying inside the range “box”—are no longer there, one of many ways in which the MTC is more realistic than live training. “We have combat-experienced people who get out of the cockpit and say ‘this is the real thing,’ ” the IDF of cer notes.
The air force is also gaining expe-rience with pilots making multiple trips through the MTC. “The first time is unique,” the commander says. “People experience the ‘wall ef ect’—they’re amazed by the visuals and by the performance of the simulator. The second time, there is an obvious shift—the conversation is more tacti-cal and professional.” Squadrons, too, change on later visits. “They are taking lessons very seriously. They’re doing more research and exchanging lessons with other squadrons.”
In turn, data from lessons are being fed back to the MTC to improve the ex-perience. “It’s still under development and every year it looks dif erent,” the commander says. “I don’t think anyone knows where the research and devel-opment will end.” c
42 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
Israel’s M-346 trainers have no radar, EW systems or long-range weapons, but all of these can be
imitated on the aircraft.
FINM
EC
CAN
ICA
AW_01_18_2016_p41-42.indd 42 1/13/16 12:40 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 43
Bill Sweetman Haifa and Yehud, Israel
Massive PrecisionIsrael pushes the state of the art
in weapons and sensors
Rafael’s Spice-250 guided bomb, now in its fi nal stages of devel-opment, will allow fighters to
perform accurate stand off launch-and-leave attacks against an unprec-edented number of targets. Coupled with the company’s new Litening 5 targeting pod, it gives the fi ghter the ability to designate its own targets well beyond ef ective laser range.
These are two of a number of weap-ons and systems that constitute new-technology reconnaissance-strike com-plexes emerging from Israel’s combat experience and intended to attack hard-to-fi nd targets with minimal collateral damage. Spice-250, for instance, has an 80-kg ( 176-lb.) warhead, while Israel Aerospace Industries’ Harop loitering weapon—in full production for the Is-rael Defense Forces and for export—carries a 15-kg lethal payload.
In the 250-lb. class, Spice-250 is somewhat similar in mission and size to the Raytheon Small-Diameter Bomb Increment 2 but has a proven guidance technique, already in service on the larger Spice-1000 and -2000, that is dif-ferent in principle and dispenses with an active radar. It is an electro-optical scene-matching system, using a dual-band (daylight and infrared) sensor, and its distinguishing feature is that it does not aim at the pixel containing the target or use geographical coordinates.
Instead, the system is programmed before launch with a set of images of points surrounding the target, derived from satellite or airborne imagery and converted into a map with the aid of a terrain database. The guidance algo-rithm then locates the target by refer-ence to the relative position of those images. According to Rafael engineers, this approach has several advantages.
The target itself may be camoufl aged,
but the guidance system can select high-contrast points around it. The system will store more points than it needs for accurate target engagement, so that even if the target or some of the aim-points are obscured by cloud or smoke, the target can still be hit. Because the guidance system focuses on specific points in the target scene, it is not con-fused by extraneous changes in the pic-ture. “We can live with a 50% change in the scene, because we’re not looking at the target,” a Rafael engineer observes.
Rafael claims a 1.5-meter ( 5-ft.) cir-cular error probability, independent of range—Spice-250 will glide as far as 100 km ( 62 mi.)—and notes that the image-based guidance system does not require the capability to geo refer-ence satellite navigation signals, a ca-pacity not all nations possess. A key requirement for the Spice family was independence from GPS or other satel-lite navigation systems, because these were considered likely to be jammed or otherwise unavailable in a confl ict.
Rounding out the Spice-250 guid-ance system’s modes are semi active laser homing—if a designation source is available—and a two-way data link that provides damage assessment, a moving-target capability outside laser range, and the ability to abort an attack (for example, to avoid collateral damage if noncombatants enter the target area during an engagement). The weapon is designed for use with a four-round Smart Quad Rack that includes the mission planning processor and data link, with front and rear antennas for 360-deg. coverage. An F-16 can carry 16 weapons, and an F-15I can carry seven racks and 28 rounds, creating what Ra-fael calls “mass precision” capability.
Litening 5, which started fl ight tests last year and is expected to enter service
by 2018, complements the new weapons. It has new optics with a larger aperture and zoom range, and introduces a third operating band—the shortwave infared (SWIR) band, about 1.5 microns. SWIR operates well in nighttime conditions, but its most important attribute is that it is absorbed less by atmospheric mois-ture than visible light (0.5-0.7 microns) and provides longer oblique range than either midwave IR or daylight high-defi -nition TV. According to Rafael, Litening 5 will be able to detect and track vehicle targets at ranges of up to 60 km, using an ultra telephoto SWIR sensor with a 0.3-deg. fi eld of view and new automatic moving-target-indication algorithm.
Longer range changes the pod’s role. “This is more than a small step,” says a Rafael executive. “It goes from be-ing a laser targeting pod to a stand of , multi weapon pod.” The 60-km range is beyond the reach of accurate laser des-ignation, because of low-altitude atmo-spheric absorption and distortion, and geometrical “smearing” of the laser spot along the beam axis. The pod uses Rafa-el’s MatchGuide software to generate the multipoint template for Spice guidance.
Long-range precision targeting and reconnaissance is also the role of the M-19HD sensor turret, from Israel Aerospace Industries’ Tamam Division and in production for the new Super Heron UAV and other applications.
The 19-in. turret is slightly fl attened to ease ground-clearance issues. Be-hind the large-aperture, wide-zoom-range Newtonian-telescope optical system is a complete array of sen-sors—high-definition day and night sensors and SWIR—and the system includes an eye-safe laser rangefi nder and laser designator.
Not surprisingly, a Tamam engi-neer lists stabilization of the long-focus optics—carried by a diesel-powered UAV—as a big challenge. But he shifts quickly to a dif erent topic, the software challenges of sensor fusion, image pro-cessing and exploitation in meeting the specifi c requirements of intelligence-gathering and targeting: “It’s not Na-tional Geographic”; that is, it involves more than just acquiring a picture. “It’s a real art, and there are only four
The Smart Quad Rack for the Spice-250 glide bomb incorporates front and rear data link antennas. In long-range strike confi guration, this F-16 also carries the new Litening 5 targeting pod.
RAFA
EL
AW_01_18_2016_p43-45.indd 43 1/13/16 3:29 PM
F-16 FTU has been shut down.The full M-346 program is not yet
fully operational because the aircraft are new and some of the 30-aircraft force are still to be delivered. Since the new Hazerim facility opened in Octo-ber 2014, however, examples of all the new equipment have been delivered. After basic desktop-computer-based training, the student graduates to skill-based training (SBT) with simulators that use mostly commercial hardware but run in real time with the aircraft’s own operational software. That leads to the full mission trainer, a half-dome simulator with the Targo HMD (the helmet tracker is live, and helmet sym-bology, normally projected at infi nity on the visor, is emulated on the dome).
All missions are practiced in this trainer, and so far it appears that one-third of the 150-hr., A-4 syllabus can be “of oaded” to the full mission trainer for further savings in cost.
Similar technology is used at nearby Hatzor, in the Mission Training Center (MTC) for operational pilots. Although the training center does not yet have a “live” element, Peleg says its new tech-nology—high-defi nition displays, data links and computer-generated forces—are “a new dimension in training that [is] more realistic than Red Flag.”
IDF and industry professionals gen-erally regard new simulation technol-ogy as more than complementary to live exercises like Red Flag, as do many of their associates worldwide. Always limited by resources—“How many pi-lots have been to Red Flag twice, even in the U.S.?” asks Peleg—even Red Flag
is limited in the employment of realis-tic SAM or electronic warfare (EW) threats. A training range may have an SA-6 or SA-11 missile simulator, Peleg notes, but will it be the latest model or the latest in a specific theater? Real-world exercises are constrained in their ability to simulate long-range weapons and by rising concerns about security against electronic monitoring of radars and communication signals.
The MTC project started in the late 2000s and operations began in 2013. It is built around two sets of four full-dome simulators, each using 13 pro-jectors with 4K resolution (specially developed by Elbit and Barco) and roll-in crew stations to simulate dif erent aircraft types and front and rear seats. The facility can therefore simulate one four-ship formation of two-seaters or two formations of single-seat air-craft: Currently it is equipped for the F-16C/D and F-16I, with F-15 cockpits arriving later this year.
The MTC also has two half-dome simulators for “Red Air” aggressors. Other Red forces can be managed from desktop simulators or generated by computers: The system can gener-ate more than 2,000 “entities,” one IDF of cer says, “and we rarely use more than 150, with only a couple of dozen being really engaged.”
The normal pattern of operations at the MTC is to have one squadron in attendance for a week. Each is divided into two teams, so that one is “fl ying”
while the other is briefi ng or debrief-ing. Briefi ngs, mission planning tools and command message formats are as realistic as possible, and the mission commander—overseeing the battle from the MTC control center—will be a fi ghter formation leader with at least 10 years of experience. “In hundreds of fi ghts over two years, none look the same. You take the same squadron and the same exercise and get totally dif er-ent results,” an IDF of cer says.
The IDF of cer in command of the facility (who cannot be named under Israeli security rules) says that the ser-vice is “still learning the benefi ts and limitations” of the system. “We think that every pilot who comes through here has an interesting experience, regarding their emotions and taking real-life decisions. You have to think during the performance.”
Restrictions on live training—safety limits, staying inside the range “box”—are no longer there, one of many ways in which the MTC is more realistic than live training. “We have combat-experienced people who get out of the cockpit and say ‘this is the real thing,’ ” the IDF of cer notes.
The air force is also gaining expe-rience with pilots making multiple trips through the MTC. “The first time is unique,” the commander says. “People experience the ‘wall ef ect’—they’re amazed by the visuals and by the performance of the simulator. The second time, there is an obvious shift—the conversation is more tacti-cal and professional.” Squadrons, too, change on later visits. “They are taking lessons very seriously. They’re doing more research and exchanging lessons with other squadrons.”
In turn, data from lessons are being fed back to the MTC to improve the ex-perience. “It’s still under development and every year it looks dif erent,” the commander says. “I don’t think anyone knows where the research and devel-opment will end.” c
42 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
Israel’s M-346 trainers have no radar, EW systems or long-range weapons, but all of these can be
imitated on the aircraft.
FINM
EC
CAN
ICA
AW_01_18_2016_p41-42.indd 42 1/13/16 12:40 PM
Bill Sweetman Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashdod, Israel
Israel’s business and military
environment breeds new ideas
Corporate structures that promote innovation, verti-cal integration of technologies and a unique relation-ship between technology companies and the military
user—all are major factors that, in the view of Israeli defense industry leaders, have powered the industry’s long-term push toward export-led growth.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel’s government-owned missile and weapons company, was principally a supplier to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the 1990s. Today, 44% of its sales are exports. The U.S. is the largest single market for Elbit Systems. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)—also government-owned —makes almost 80% of its income from export sales.
“We have 15 people here who come into work, and their bosses have no idea what they are doing,” says Roni Potas-man, Rafael’s executive vice president for research and development. “We let them do whatever they want.” They defne their own projects and set their own goals and are part of a culture that features “subcritical chaos,” Potasman says, along with “risk tolerance and fail-ure tolerance—we never punish anyone who fails by taking risks.”
Asaf Ashkenazi, senior vice presi-dent for research and development at Elbit Systems, which focuses on de-fense and aerospace electronics and is Israel’s largest publicly owned defense company, says Elbit fosters a “foundry for startups” and speaks favorably of Google’s policy of encouraging employ-ees to spend 20% of their time doing things other than their primary jobs. Results in the past year have included the launch of Canary, a helmet-mount-ed system that can detect hypoxia or G-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC)—a goal that has eluded re-searchers since G-LOC was identifed in the 1980s—and the unveiling of Ev-erysight, a spinof that is preparing to deliver a head-mounted display (HMD) system for recreational bike riders.
Israel Aerospace Industries’ Ashdod campus, home to its ELTA Systems division, combines “radar, signals intelligence, communications and electronic warfare,” says Avishai Izha-kian, deputy general manager for marketing, who heads sales eforts for IAI-ELTA special mission aircraft. Modifcation and fight test take place a 35-40-min. drive away, adjacent to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. “It’s a unique, very, very efective process of development and integration,” Izhakian says.
The company recently delivered two Global 5000s to an Asian customer—IAI does not identify customers, but it is reported elsewhere to be India—with an integrated ground-surveillance radar and long-range electro-optical sensor. The all-new confguration went from contract to delivery in 36 months, half the time taken by some comparable eforts, Izhakian says. “It’s mostly related to the fact that all the people are here. We solve problems in minutes or hours,” he says.
The fexibility of IAI’s Malat division, focused on unmanned air vehicles, is an interesting contrast to other companies in the business. “They have one large customer, and we have many customers with small numbers,” one executive says. The fagship Heron medium-altitude/long-endurance UAV is ofered in standard and “widebody” versions, alongside the new Super Heron (with either gasoline or diesel engines) and the veteran Searcher, which is still selling well. The result is
a UAV fnal assembly hangar that re-sembles an automotive racing shop as much as a mass-production line, with engine development, modifcation and testing alongside it.
Israel decrees universal military ser-vice and a mandatory reserve commit-ment until the age of 40-49 for males, depending on specialty. (Females have a reserve commitment under diferent rules.) “Out of 900 people in this divi-sion, 500 are still in the reserves and 100 are air crew,” says Sagi Peleg, vice president of strategy and business de-velopment for Elbit’s aerospace unit. As a result, “requirements reach the indus-try in a matter of hours,” he notes. “It’s not just how to fx problems, but unmet needs in a broader sense.”
Aviation Week interviewed an Israeli executive on a specific program and the following day talked to an Israeli air force officer serving on the same system—as an operator, not a buyer. It was the same person. Says Rafael’s
Secret Sauce
or fve players worldwide who can do it,” he says. “It’s a game of understand-ing the nature of the problem, which is not obvious.” And as a military tool, the system “must be easy to use,” he notes.
The military user needs to know the exact location of objects in the picture.
“We know where we are, but we don’t have a digital terrain model for the en-tire world,” the engineer says.
The basic optics are good enough to see colors clearly at 40-km slant range in daytime mode. However, by using an adaptive color enhancement program,
it’s easier to see small details—wires and poles, for instance—in the scene. SWIR can be fused into the image to penetrate haze—providing a “defog” mode—but tends to be noisy, requiring more custom processing.
A turbulence mitigation mode re-
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
44 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Rafael engineers worked 20-hr.days to bring the unique Iron Dome counterrocket system into action.
Rafael
AW_01_18_2016_p43-45.indd 44 1/13/16 3:29 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 45
duces the efect of heat haze, difcult to do but vital at long slant ranges. For the operator, “working for 2 or 3 hr. with a turbulent image is a huge headache,” the engineer says. The U.S. was using neural-net processing in the 1990s to correct for atmospheric distortion in
overhead images, but oblique multi-spectral video is a far bigger challenge. “It’s similar to the software that we use to autotrack targets at sea,” the engi-neer says. “Nothing in the natural sea environment has straight lines.”
Finally—since the M-19HD gener-
ates a vast amount of raw data—the system manages the use of the data link, tracking targets automatically and sending imagery as required. All this advanced processing can be port-ed from the top-of-the-line M-19HD to other Tamam payloads. c
Potasman: “People here are in the reserves, or they have kids in the reserves.”
This adds to the industry’s intense focus, particularly on directly defensive technologies or unmanned systems that keep IDF personnel out of harm’s way. When the Iron Dome counterrocket missile system was under development, “peo-ple here were working 20 hr. a day. They were sleeping on the foor,” Potasman says.
Industry executives are, however, aware of a competitor: Is-rael’s fast-growing commercial technology sector, comprising both domestic companies and global technology leaders keen to access Israel’s pool of talent. Google and Intel are just two of the familiar names on buildings visible from Elbit’s Haifa complex among 300 multinationals with operations in Israel.
This is one reason for Elbit’s startup culture, according to Ashkenazi. “People start working on an idea, passionately, in parallel with their daily jobs, and then they come in asking for funding. Ninety percent of the ideas aren’t good enough—it won’t work, someone else has solved the problem or there is no market. But there are the stubborn people who prove you wrong.”
There are no standard flters for promising “next big thing” ideas, Ashkenazi says, but he applies a “3M” flter. “Market: Are you able to get into a sus-tainably large market? Do we have a margin? Moat: That’s a term Warren Bufet uses to mean, do we have an edge, and how easy is it for anyone else?” His third “M” is Mafat, named for the Israeli government’s military R&D organization, which implies a link to any partner that can support R&D. In the case of Elbit’s commercial enhanced-vision systems (EVS), for example, Elbit’s early “Mafat” comprised Gulfstream and Federal Express, early enthusiasts for EVS.
In the case of Canary, Elbit partnered with LifeBeam, found-ed by two Israeli air force pilots to develop health-monitoring systems for cycle helmets and other protective gear. LifeBeam had developed a sensor to monitor blood oxygenation levels, but “it had very low accuracy, even sitting still.” Elbit started a joint project with LifeBeam and the IDF to improve and validate the sensor, and unveiled it as an option for the Targo helmet in June. Now, LifeBeam is working on a consumer ver-sion that will add $100 to the cost of a cycle helmet. “Defense is the early-adopter market,” Ashkenazi says.
Cycling is likewise the launch market for Everysight, which expects to announce price and availability data soon. Unlike most other “smart glasses,” the product uses Elbit’s projec-tion-on-visor technology to place information centrally in the feld of view, without any intruding hardware.
Rafael is not as well placed to do spinofs but has neverthe-less accomplished something of a revolution in 15 years by
establishing itself on the international market. “If you’d asked whether our security role and a business model could [coex-ist] back then,” Potasman says, “people would have said, ‘No way.’” Today, 61% of the workforce is under 50. “That was not the case 15 years ago.”
Despite the growth of the commercial technology sector, Rafael manages to hold attrition among its engineering staf to 1% per year (often associated with marriage, he says, to a spouse who moves elsewhere).
“Brilliant people attract brilliant people,” says Potasman. Since the government established a national defense prize scheme in 1958, Rafale has taken 47% of them, including six of 14 lifetime awards. More than 60% of its employees hold
an engineering degree and 26% have a higher degree. Almost three-quarters of its engineers graduated from Technion, Is-rael’s national technology university in Haifa.
The company’s culture, he says, stems from its role in na-tional defense. “We have to continuously surprise our enemies,” he says. That means that Rafael has to respond to immediate needs while thinking 10-15 years ahead. “It’s like running a marathon and the 60-meter hurdles at the same time.” One ex-ample of that approach is the Spike missile family: It originated with a weapon, long kept secret, that was developed after the Yom Kippur war of 1973 to defeat massed tank attacks and has since been developed into a fast-expanding family of weapons.
Other diferentiators, Potasman says, result from Rafael’s role as a national laboratory. Unlike most, if not all, of its com-petitors, Rafael owns its own component technologies: rocket motors, warheads, fuzes, down to thermal batteries. (Rafael makes 100,000 batteries a year. They have to last 15 years, while carried on aircraft and vehicles, then deliver exact design voltage within 300 millisec.) Its products are not all the result of “requirements pull” from the customer. “Four or fve of our major programs were the result of technology push,” Potasman says, where Rafael developed a technology and found a mili-tary use for it. Extensive combat experience—and feedback through the IDF and reserves—are also vital. c
Elbit Systems has launched a spinof
company to develop the Everysight consumer
head-mounted display, exploiting more than 25
years of experience in military HMDs.
Elbit
AW_01_18_2016_p43-45.indd 45 1/13/16 3:29 PM
Bill Sweetman Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashdod, Israel
Israel’s business and military
environment breeds new ideas
Corporate structures that promote innovation, verti-cal integration of technologies and a unique relation-ship between technology companies and the military
user—all are major factors that, in the view of Israeli defense industry leaders, have powered the industry’s long-term push toward export-led growth.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel’s government-owned missile and weapons company, was principally a supplier to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the 1990s. Today, 44% of its sales are exports. The U.S. is the largest single market for Elbit Systems. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)—also government-owned —makes almost 80% of its income from export sales.
“We have 15 people here who come into work, and their bosses have no idea what they are doing,” says Roni Potas-man, Rafael’s executive vice president for research and development. “We let them do whatever they want.” They defne their own projects and set their own goals and are part of a culture that features “subcritical chaos,” Potasman says, along with “risk tolerance and fail-ure tolerance—we never punish anyone who fails by taking risks.”
Asaf Ashkenazi, senior vice presi-dent for research and development at Elbit Systems, which focuses on de-fense and aerospace electronics and is Israel’s largest publicly owned defense company, says Elbit fosters a “foundry for startups” and speaks favorably of Google’s policy of encouraging employ-ees to spend 20% of their time doing things other than their primary jobs. Results in the past year have included the launch of Canary, a helmet-mount-ed system that can detect hypoxia or G-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC)—a goal that has eluded re-searchers since G-LOC was identifed in the 1980s—and the unveiling of Ev-erysight, a spinof that is preparing to deliver a head-mounted display (HMD) system for recreational bike riders.
Israel Aerospace Industries’ Ashdod campus, home to its ELTA Systems division, combines “radar, signals intelligence, communications and electronic warfare,” says Avishai Izha-kian, deputy general manager for marketing, who heads sales eforts for IAI-ELTA special mission aircraft. Modifcation and fight test take place a 35-40-min. drive away, adjacent to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. “It’s a unique, very, very efective process of development and integration,” Izhakian says.
The company recently delivered two Global 5000s to an Asian customer—IAI does not identify customers, but it is reported elsewhere to be India—with an integrated ground-surveillance radar and long-range electro-optical sensor. The all-new confguration went from contract to delivery in 36 months, half the time taken by some comparable eforts, Izhakian says. “It’s mostly related to the fact that all the people are here. We solve problems in minutes or hours,” he says.
The fexibility of IAI’s Malat division, focused on unmanned air vehicles, is an interesting contrast to other companies in the business. “They have one large customer, and we have many customers with small numbers,” one executive says. The fagship Heron medium-altitude/long-endurance UAV is ofered in standard and “widebody” versions, alongside the new Super Heron (with either gasoline or diesel engines) and the veteran Searcher, which is still selling well. The result is
a UAV fnal assembly hangar that re-sembles an automotive racing shop as much as a mass-production line, with engine development, modifcation and testing alongside it.
Israel decrees universal military ser-vice and a mandatory reserve commit-ment until the age of 40-49 for males, depending on specialty. (Females have a reserve commitment under diferent rules.) “Out of 900 people in this divi-sion, 500 are still in the reserves and 100 are air crew,” says Sagi Peleg, vice president of strategy and business de-velopment for Elbit’s aerospace unit. As a result, “requirements reach the indus-try in a matter of hours,” he notes. “It’s not just how to fx problems, but unmet needs in a broader sense.”
Aviation Week interviewed an Israeli executive on a specific program and the following day talked to an Israeli air force officer serving on the same system—as an operator, not a buyer. It was the same person. Says Rafael’s
Secret Sauce
or fve players worldwide who can do it,” he says. “It’s a game of understand-ing the nature of the problem, which is not obvious.” And as a military tool, the system “must be easy to use,” he notes.
The military user needs to know the exact location of objects in the picture.
“We know where we are, but we don’t have a digital terrain model for the en-tire world,” the engineer says.
The basic optics are good enough to see colors clearly at 40-km slant range in daytime mode. However, by using an adaptive color enhancement program,
it’s easier to see small details—wires and poles, for instance—in the scene. SWIR can be fused into the image to penetrate haze—providing a “defog” mode—but tends to be noisy, requiring more custom processing.
A turbulence mitigation mode re-
DEFENSE IN ISRAEL
44 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Rafael engineers worked 20-hr.days to bring the unique Iron Dome counterrocket system into action.
Rafael
AW_01_18_2016_p43-45.indd 44 1/13/16 3:29 PM
NASA’s December 1984 “controlled impact demonstration,” the deliberate crash of a remotely piloted Boeing 720, tested an antimisting fuel additive intended to reduce the severity of post crash fi res. It didn’t.
Debate swirls around the right way forward for air safety.
Advocates of enhanced and synthetic vision want those
systems to be given more credit so that their users can
keep fl ying when the ducks are walking. Other operators are
concerned that long sectors and automated aircraft leave crews
unfamiliar with real fl ying. And as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
shows, aviation at 100 years can still present riddles. But the
history of air safety shows that debates and mysteries are part
of the process.
If 1962 fatal accident rates were cou-pled with today’s rate of departures, there would be a major jet crash every other day. But there were only two in 2015, one the result of a pilot suicide and the other, almost certainly, from a bomb. The air safety process has been neither linear nor organized, and
there’s no one single factor involved. Comedian George Carlin once asked, “If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuf ?” Not only has there not been a technological breakthrough of that kind, but one of today’s most
Bill Sweetman and John Croft Washington
Staying AliveVital innovations have improved air safety
widely produced airliners is an evolved version of an airplane designed in 1965.
Rather, today’s level of air safety is the result of gradual changes in how aircraft are built, maintained, equipped and op-erated. As one cause of accidents was reduced or eliminated, its place as the most dangerous threat was taken by an-other problem, and the industry focused on that. Better tools and techniques for accident investigation pointed to un-derlying causes, which could in turn be addressed and their ef ects mitigated. Technology, training and psychology have dealt with problems that were once dismissed as “pilot error.” But some is-sues remain to be addressed and will keep the industry focused during avia-tion’s second century. c
Fourth in a series celebrating
Aviation Week’s 100th anniversary
Gallery Even early jets were far safer than the propeller aircraft of the post-World War II era, and the pre war days were more hazardous still. We review some of the lessons learned and mislearned in the pioneer era : AviationWeek.com/AirSafetyInnovations
46 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Check 6 Aviation Week editors discussthe past and future of air safety:AviationWeek.com/podcast
NASA
AW_01_18_2016_p46-51.indd 46 1/14/16 5:01 PM
Safety’s Top TenThe innovations that revolutionized air safety
SOLVING STRUCTURAL MYSTERIES
In an era of post war austerity, the de Havilland Comet—the fi rst jet airliner, entering service in 1952 when rivals were still on the drawing board—was an object of national pride for Britain. But in January and April 1954, two Comets broke up in fl ight over the Mediterra-nean, and the type was grounded. An unprecedented investigation, including pressure tests of a complete Comet in a specially built water tank, revealed that the fuselage construction and de-sign was subject to premature fatigue around windows, doors and other cut-outs. Comets in service were retired or scrapped—the redesigned Comet 4 en-tered service in 1958—and subsequent designs refl ected a better understand-ing of metallurgy, ways to avoid stress concentrations, and features intended to avoid cracks from propagating.
Lockheed’s fast, economical tur-boprop-powered Electra sold briskly after its launch and entered service in early 1959. Again, however, two of the type broke up in fl ight (in September 1959 and March 1960). The cause was an unexpected “whirl-mode” vibration of the outboard engines and propellers, resonating with a natural bending fre-quency of the outer wings. Like the Comet, the Electra returned to service but its sales never recovered.
Lessons from these complex inves-tigations were incorporated into later designs, and more fatigue-resistant al-loys began to be used, ef ectively elimi-nating low-time structural failures as an accident cause.
CONTROLLING AIR TRAFFIC
On June 30, 1956, a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 and a TWA Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation collided over Arizona’s Grand Canyon, with no survivors among the 128 occupants—the worst commercial air disaster up to that time. The DC-7 was fl ying under in-strument fl ight rules, but “of airways,”
Bill Sweetman Washington
and the Constellation was operating under visual fl ight rules. It is believed both aircraft were maneuvering around cloud formations at 21,000 f t.
As the investigation unfolded, Con-gress focused on the patchy and divided surveillance and control of U.S. airspace and funded the Civil Aeronautics Ad-ministration (CAA) to acquire more ra-dars and expand its control centers. But en route control remained split between the CAA and the U.S. Air Force. After an April 1958 midair collision that de-stroyed another United DC-7 and an Air Force F-100, then another military-civil collision the following month, Congress formed the Federal Aviation Agency (later the Federal Aviation Administra-tion) to replace the CAA and develop a surveillance system to manage all U.S. airspace.
The new system, which reduced but did not eliminate midairs and “airmiss-es,” included requiring transponders for all aircraft in controlled airspace. It was recognized in the 1950s that aircraft could be fi tted with interroga-tors as well as transponders, theoreti-cally forming the basis for an onboard collision-alert system, but it was not until the 1980s that computer technol-ogy permitted a practical system with a low rate of false alarms. This was the Traf c Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), installed across the airline fl eet in the 1990s.
BRINGING DATA TO INVESTIGATIONS
In the 1954 Comet crashes, there were no survivors or witnesses, and the ini-tial failure had to be found amid dam-
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 47
Building on Boeing’s bomber designs, the 707 fl ew much better at low speeds, and hundreds of its military cousins are still fl ying. But its fl ight controls were still manual and it could be a handful in rough weather.
WIKIPEDIA
AW_01_18_2016_p46-51.indd 47 1/14/16 4:15 PM
NASA’s December 1984 “controlled impact demonstration,” the deliberate crash of a remotely piloted Boeing 720, tested an antimisting fuel additive intended to reduce the severity of post crash fi res. It didn’t.
Debate swirls around the right way forward for air safety.
Advocates of enhanced and synthetic vision want those
systems to be given more credit so that their users can
keep fl ying when the ducks are walking. Other operators are
concerned that long sectors and automated aircraft leave crews
unfamiliar with real fl ying. And as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
shows, aviation at 100 years can still present riddles. But the
history of air safety shows that debates and mysteries are part
of the process.
If 1962 fatal accident rates were cou-pled with today’s rate of departures, there would be a major jet crash every other day. But there were only two in 2015, one the result of a pilot suicide and the other, almost certainly, from a bomb. The air safety process has been neither linear nor organized, and
there’s no one single factor involved. Comedian George Carlin once asked, “If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuf ?” Not only has there not been a technological breakthrough of that kind, but one of today’s most
Bill Sweetman and John Croft Washington
Staying AliveVital innovations have improved air safety
widely produced airliners is an evolved version of an airplane designed in 1965.
Rather, today’s level of air safety is the result of gradual changes in how aircraft are built, maintained, equipped and op-erated. As one cause of accidents was reduced or eliminated, its place as the most dangerous threat was taken by an-other problem, and the industry focused on that. Better tools and techniques for accident investigation pointed to un-derlying causes, which could in turn be addressed and their ef ects mitigated. Technology, training and psychology have dealt with problems that were once dismissed as “pilot error.” But some is-sues remain to be addressed and will keep the industry focused during avia-tion’s second century. c
Fourth in a series celebrating
Aviation Week’s 100th anniversary
Gallery Even early jets were far safer than the propeller aircraft of the post-World War II era, and the pre war days were more hazardous still. We review some of the lessons learned and mislearned in the pioneer era : AviationWeek.com/AirSafetyInnovations
46 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Check 6 Aviation Week editors discussthe past and future of air safety:AviationWeek.com/podcast
NASA
AW_01_18_2016_p46-51.indd 46 1/14/16 5:01 PM
48 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
John Croft Washington
Work in ProgressUAVs and robotics dominate
the next frontier
RecoveRing fRom Upsets
The airline industry had known for decades that pilots were sometimes losing their edge when it came to taking control back from autopilot systems that work so well in general that humans rarely touch the controls except to land and take of. Interventions, in the form of new training regimes, had been underway in the 1990s—but their efectiveness was challenged after the American Airlines 587 crash in Queens, New York, in late 2001.
The Airbus A300’s frst ofcer had attended the carrier’s Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program, designed to teach better stick-and-rudder skills, but his response to a wake-turbulence encounter was a series of hard rudder inputs that overloaded the vertical fn. The accident highlighted the efects of “negative training,” particularly for simulators and training that did not accurately refect real-life situations.
Industry took a pause to reconsider upset training until a spate of accidents in 2009—Turkish Airlines Flight 1951, Col-gan Air/Continental Connection Flight 3407 and Air France 447—made it clear that intervention was crucial.
The FAA, largely in response to pressure from families in the Colgan accident, issued new rules in 2013 requiring upset prevention and recovery training in pilots’ initial and recur-rent training, including full stalls in the simulator, by 2018. The FAA also greatly expanded the minimum fight time experience for frst ofcers and issued new fight and duty time limitations to cut down on the fatigue that can cloud a pilot’s response to an upset. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European authorities have made similar upgrades to standards and recommended practices to help member nations battle upset and fatigue issues.
age caused by high-speed breakups and surface impact. Flight data recorders (FDR) had been used in test programs, and trains had been ftted with speed recorders since the early 1900s, but the Comet accidents inspired an Australian inventor, David Warren, to adapt analog recording technology to a crash-surviv-able FDR in the 1950s. The U.K. was the frst nation to make FDRs mandatory on commercial aircraft, under a 1962 ruling that required fitment by 1965-66, depending on class. Early systems recorded 24 parameters.
Basic FDRs removed some of the guesswork from accident investiga-tions and led to faster, more complete analysis of causes, but the U.S. led the way in adding a cockpit voice recorder
(CVR) to the required list. Because of pilots’ concerns about privacy, the CVR was designed to record only the last 30 min. of operation and erase itself automatically on shutdown. Its first high-profile use was in the in-
vestigation of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, a then-new Lockheed TriStar that crashed in the Florida Everglades en route to Miami. The CVR tape showed that the crew was so focused on the
Before the development of live computer-generated imagery in the late 1970s, high-end simulators used terrain models, with miniature video cameras “fying” above them on a moving gantry.
into thin AiR
When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished completely in March 2014, the fying public began to understand just how little is known about the exact position of multitudes of jet aircraft overfying the oceans and remote areas of the globe around the clock. Standard practices developed half a cen-tury ago—allowing for voice position reports over the radio, sometimes hours apart—now seemed ludicrous in the age of satellite communications, and rightly so. The global airline industry agreed to voluntarily begin tracking their aircraft on 15-min. intervals by 2016, but later pushed for more time, until 2018. ICAO, with the industry, in 2015 launched the concept of a Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety Sys-tem (GADSS) to progressively change the tracking paradigm through standards that will be codifed by member nations. Europe is the frst nation to implement portions of GADSS in regulations, mandating normal mode tracking every 15 min. and abnormal mode updates for certain failures every 1 min. By 2021, new aircraft must be equipped with distress mode systems that automatically transmit data every minute when triggered by unusual attitudes, speeds or other failures, and must have either deployable data recorders or a method to transmit key data from the aircraft before a crash. The 1-min. position updates are meant to locate a crash site to within a radius of 6 nm.
thRoUgh A glAss BRightly
The optimal fusion of synthetic vision systems with sensor-based enhanced vision systems, known as combined vision systems (CVS), will soon provide pilots with the best of both worlds, boosting safety by virtually eliminating the tradi-tional concept of fight by reference to instruments. With CVS, pilots have a synthetic view of the environment, gen-erated with static terrain, obstacle and airport databases, but merged with a real-time sensor-generated view forward. New rules, expected to be approved by the FAA this year, will allow airlines to reap the benefts by providing for lower landing minimums for various levels of CVS equipage, using the technology in lieu of natural vision. In the long term, advanced technologies in forward-looking sensors should
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allow CVS operations that will essentially eliminate traditional instrument flight rules opera-tions, which slow air trafc sys-tem throughput compared to visual fight operations.
Cyberpilots
Industry observers might ar-gue about the cause of a pilot shortage—some say pay is too low, and some say kids are just no longer interested in the pro-fession—but all can agree that an immense number of pilots will be needed to fly an ever-expanding global fleet, while U.S. airlines face a retirement bubble in the next 5-10 years. NASA has been intensely studying the idea of a long-distance relationship between the traditional captain and frst ofcer: The frst ofcer would be located in a high-tech ground station, acting as a pilot and a “super dispatcher,” handling up to a dozen fights at the same time under normal (noncrisis) situations. Information through secure broadband communica-tions channels would allow the super dispatcher to come to the captain’s aid in an emer-gency. The aircraft could also be fown from the ground station, if required.
Industry observers say if you can reduce onboard crew to one, however, you can reduce it to zero since the backup systems would already have to be in place in case that one person became incapacitated. The economy of scale for frst
officers would in theory help with the pilot shortage, but much more work is in store to come to terms with the soci-etal and security implications of further reducing the crew.
the Drone MenACe
There are few reliable esti-mates of the total number of commercial unmanned air vehicles (UAV) in service, whether for commercial or rec-reational use, but the numbers are likely in seven digits and rising. So far, there has been no confrmed drone-to-aircraft collision involving a commer-cial UAV, but two incidents in which aircraft struck unknown objects that were apparently not birds are under investiga-tion in the U.S. The FAA re-ported in September 2015 that there had been 650 reports of UAV sightings by commercial and general aviation pilots last year, versus 238 in all of 2014, and at the end of 2015 required all UAV users to register their vehicles before flying them outdoors. So far, there’s little
data on the actual collision hazard posed by mini-UAVs, but the potential for airspace disruption—which itself is a safety hazard—is real.
Some companies, such as Selex, are actively pushing counterdrone systems, designed to detect, classify and identify drones and if necessary take control of them for the protection of civil infrastructure, airports included. c
causes of a warning light that it failed to monitor altitude; the fnding led to a new emphasis on “cockpit resource management” in training.
MAking AirplAnes eAsier to Fly
To say that some early jet airliners were demanding to fly is a decided under-statement. The primary fight controls of the top-selling frst-generation jet, the Boeing 707, were manually operated (with trim and servo tabs) apart from the spoilers and variable-incidence tail-plane, which had hydraulic boost. Brit-ish authorities insisted that Boeing in-stall a yaw damper—a gyro-controlled rudder boost —to avoid a weaving roll-yaw instability called Dutch roll. “Jet upsets”—high-speed dives due to
mishandling, often in turbulence—were all too common, as were short-landing accidents due to poorly stabilized ap-proaches in bad weather.
The later Boeing 727 sufered from an early spate of accidents because it could quickly reach an unrecoverably high descent rate if the crew allowed speed and power to decay on approach. The contemporary British T-tailed, aft-engine jets, the BAC One-Eleven and de Havilland Trident, introduced “stick pushers” to reduce angle of at-tack, because they could enter a deep-stall condition where airfow from the wing blanketed the tail and made re-covery impossible.
Britain’s graceful (but heavy and uneconomical) BAC VC10, introduced
in 1964, was the first commercial air-plane with full, redundant powered controls—using electrohydraulic actua-tors, similar to the Joint Strike Fighter. The frst widebody jets (the Boeing 747, McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lock-heed TriStar) were designed from the outset with triple or quadruple hydraulic systems.
trAining better pilots
Ed Link used his training as a builder of organs and nickelodeons to help him engineer his flight training devices in the 1930s. But as commercial air-planes became more complex, faster and less forgiving, airlines acquired simulators that precisely emulated specifc aircraft types and reproduced
The abolition of weather: After 25 years of work, combined visual systems that fuse synthetic imagery, based on aircraft position and terrain data-bases, with video from multiband electro-optical sensors, are ready to reliably take the mystery out of in-weather operations.
NAS
A
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48 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
John Croft Washington
Work in ProgressUAVs and robotics dominate
the next frontier
RecoveRing fRom Upsets
The airline industry had known for decades that pilots were sometimes losing their edge when it came to taking control back from autopilot systems that work so well in general that humans rarely touch the controls except to land and take of. Interventions, in the form of new training regimes, had been underway in the 1990s—but their efectiveness was challenged after the American Airlines 587 crash in Queens, New York, in late 2001.
The Airbus A300’s frst ofcer had attended the carrier’s Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program, designed to teach better stick-and-rudder skills, but his response to a wake-turbulence encounter was a series of hard rudder inputs that overloaded the vertical fn. The accident highlighted the efects of “negative training,” particularly for simulators and training that did not accurately refect real-life situations.
Industry took a pause to reconsider upset training until a spate of accidents in 2009—Turkish Airlines Flight 1951, Col-gan Air/Continental Connection Flight 3407 and Air France 447—made it clear that intervention was crucial.
The FAA, largely in response to pressure from families in the Colgan accident, issued new rules in 2013 requiring upset prevention and recovery training in pilots’ initial and recur-rent training, including full stalls in the simulator, by 2018. The FAA also greatly expanded the minimum fight time experience for frst ofcers and issued new fight and duty time limitations to cut down on the fatigue that can cloud a pilot’s response to an upset. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European authorities have made similar upgrades to standards and recommended practices to help member nations battle upset and fatigue issues.
age caused by high-speed breakups and surface impact. Flight data recorders (FDR) had been used in test programs, and trains had been ftted with speed recorders since the early 1900s, but the Comet accidents inspired an Australian inventor, David Warren, to adapt analog recording technology to a crash-surviv-able FDR in the 1950s. The U.K. was the frst nation to make FDRs mandatory on commercial aircraft, under a 1962 ruling that required fitment by 1965-66, depending on class. Early systems recorded 24 parameters.
Basic FDRs removed some of the guesswork from accident investiga-tions and led to faster, more complete analysis of causes, but the U.S. led the way in adding a cockpit voice recorder
(CVR) to the required list. Because of pilots’ concerns about privacy, the CVR was designed to record only the last 30 min. of operation and erase itself automatically on shutdown. Its first high-profile use was in the in-
vestigation of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, a then-new Lockheed TriStar that crashed in the Florida Everglades en route to Miami. The CVR tape showed that the crew was so focused on the
Before the development of live computer-generated imagery in the late 1970s, high-end simulators used terrain models, with miniature video cameras “fying” above them on a moving gantry.
into thin AiR
When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished completely in March 2014, the fying public began to understand just how little is known about the exact position of multitudes of jet aircraft overfying the oceans and remote areas of the globe around the clock. Standard practices developed half a cen-tury ago—allowing for voice position reports over the radio, sometimes hours apart—now seemed ludicrous in the age of satellite communications, and rightly so. The global airline industry agreed to voluntarily begin tracking their aircraft on 15-min. intervals by 2016, but later pushed for more time, until 2018. ICAO, with the industry, in 2015 launched the concept of a Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety Sys-tem (GADSS) to progressively change the tracking paradigm through standards that will be codifed by member nations. Europe is the frst nation to implement portions of GADSS in regulations, mandating normal mode tracking every 15 min. and abnormal mode updates for certain failures every 1 min. By 2021, new aircraft must be equipped with distress mode systems that automatically transmit data every minute when triggered by unusual attitudes, speeds or other failures, and must have either deployable data recorders or a method to transmit key data from the aircraft before a crash. The 1-min. position updates are meant to locate a crash site to within a radius of 6 nm.
thRoUgh A glAss BRightly
The optimal fusion of synthetic vision systems with sensor-based enhanced vision systems, known as combined vision systems (CVS), will soon provide pilots with the best of both worlds, boosting safety by virtually eliminating the tradi-tional concept of fight by reference to instruments. With CVS, pilots have a synthetic view of the environment, gen-erated with static terrain, obstacle and airport databases, but merged with a real-time sensor-generated view forward. New rules, expected to be approved by the FAA this year, will allow airlines to reap the benefts by providing for lower landing minimums for various levels of CVS equipage, using the technology in lieu of natural vision. In the long term, advanced technologies in forward-looking sensors should
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50 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
the operations of engines, hydraulics and electrical systems. Pan American Airways—always a technical pioneer—was in the lead, commissioning a Boe-ing 377 Stratocruiser simulator from Curtiss-Wright in 1948.
Britain’s Rediffusion (which had started as a cable radio and TV ser-vice) built a pitch-only moving-base Comet simulator for BOAC in 1958, and by the early 1970s, 6-deg.-of-free-dom moving-base simulators were the industry standard, owned even by airlines with modest fleets. The proportion of training carried out on simulators increased rapidly; they were used for all major emergency and systems-failure training.
Until the late 1970s, the state of the art in visual systems comprised a TV image of a 3-D small-scale landscape model, viewed through a camera on a moving gantry. Computer-generat-ed imagery (CGI) nighttime visuals were introduced early in the decade, with the frst daytime system enter-ing service with Lufthansa in 1977. (For viewers of the new “Star Wars” movie, this was where the CGI efects now the norm in such movies got their
start.) CGI and other advances such as higher-fidelity models of aircraft systems opened the way to regulatory approval of zero-fight-time training in the 1980s. Combined with cockpit resource management (CRM) disci-pline, this has been instrumental in the steady decline of human-factor-related accident rates.
Deploying neW Avionics
One of many innovations on the Boe-ing 747 was the first inertial naviga-tion system (INS) on a commercial airplane, providing the crew with ac-curate position data without external radio. Before development of the Delco Carousel IV, INS was used on military aircraft and missiles but was too costly and unreliable for airline use. After the introduction of the 747 and the con-temporary DC-10 and TriStar, no new Western jet with more than 100 seats was ofered without it.
Less than a decade after the 747 entered service in 1970, Boeing was developing the 757 and 767 with a revolutionary “glass cockpit.” Mid-1970s researchers believed that mono-chrome displays might be ready for
mid-1980s aircraft, but the pace of electronics development was already fast enough to put sharp, crisp color displays on the new Boeings. In addi-tion, the complex stabilized platform and mechanical gyros of the Carousel IV were replaced by fxed “strapdown” Honeywell ring-laser gyro (RLG) INS, and the navigation, fight control and display systems were integrated on a common databus. The result, said
Boeing was that the 707-size 767 could be fown by just two pilots.
Another major advance in naviga-tion evolved in the 1970s, far from the airline business: The U.S. Navy needed a system that would allow missile-fr-ing submarines to determine their own position instantly and precisely with-out transmitting a signal. The answer was Navstar, or the Global Positioning System (GPS). Since the receiver was passive, anyone could use it as long as they had a compatible processor, which between the 1970s and 1990s shrank from a cabinet to book-size and then to a chip. “The crew was unaware of their position” has vanished from ac-cident reports.
The Boeing 747 was a step forward in the airliner’s state of the art when it was rolled out in Septem-ber 1968, featuring fully powered fight controls, quad-redundant hydraulics and a standard inertial navigation system.
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Preventing ground Collisions
The CVR quickly improved the under-standing of controlled fight into terrain (CFIT) and how crews lost awareness of their position, terrain and altitude. Scandinavian Airlines System, Boeing and Sundstrand Corp. demonstrated the first ground proximity warning system (GPWS) in 1969-70. With CFIT accidents continuing, and new technol-ogy cutting the cost of GPWS (one of the frst safety devices based on digital computing), the FAA made the new de-vice mandatory in 1974. At frst it was controversial because its relatively sim-ple modes threatened to result in high false-alarm rates. Its primitive digital voice system and alarmed-duck vocal-izations did not help.
CFIT rates declined, and GPWS was rightly given credit for this. How-ever, the system had its limitations, particularly if the aircraft was not fy-ing in a straight line. Following some widely publicized CFIT accidents in the 1990s (including an American 757 in Colombia and the loss of a U.S. Air Force CT-43A in Croatia carry-ing then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown) the FAA drafted require-ments for Enhanced GPWS, which in-tegrated GPS navigation and a terrain database into the system and provides maneuvering-fight warnings.
Building AirPlAnes to lAst
Lessons from the Comet and Electra accidents had virtually eliminated the risk of structural failure, designers believed. But in May 1977, an ex-Pan American 707-321C operated by Brit-ain’s Dan-Air was making its approach to Lusaka, Zambia, on a cargo fight. The frst ofcer selected the landing fap and the starboard tailplane broke of. The 707 crashed immediately, kill-ing all six on board.
Despite the aircraft’s age and the small death toll, the accident chal-lenged the engineering discipline that was supposed to keep aircraft structures safe over tens of thou-sands of hours. The stabilizer had been designed to be “fail-safe”—that is, no single failed part should cause it to fail completely before the failure was obvious enough to be found on
inspection. That had not happened, and many other 707s were found with incipient failure.
Changes in materials, including more ductile alloys, and new design technologies such as computer-driven fnite-element analysis were already in the works. However, certification authorities also changed design stan-dards to require more detailed testing and demonstration, as well as more fo-cus on “damage-tolerant” structures that would remain safe even after ma-jor failures.
Boosting reliABility
When Boeing launched the 767 in 1978, the company planned to adapt it into a three-engine airplane that
would replace 707s and DC-8s on “long, thin” routes and gave it a large enough wing to perform that mission. But at the same time, new transatlan-tic air service agreements were open-ing up many more U.S. gateways, cre-ating a short-term need for a smaller oceanic-range jet.
The answer, for Boeing and its cus-tomers, was to re-examine the limits on overwater twin-engine aircraft operations, which had been set in the piston-engine era. At the time, the FAA required that any twin operation with one engine inoperative should stay within 60 min. flying time of a diversion airfeld. (Other nation’s au-thorities set a 90-min. limit.) Boeing proposed to increase that to 120 min.
The change required Boeing, its engine suppliers and airlines to dem-onstrate unprecedented levels of re-liability. This was done, and the 767
was introduced on Atlantic fights. The three-engine version was never built, the 777 was designed from the ground up for ETOPS over the Pacific, and Boeing has never so much as looked at an aircraft with more than two en-gines.
But ETOPS also was an important spur to the industry, with the result that airframes, engines and systems were engineered to be more reliable, reducing the incidence of the abnor-mal and emergency conditions that contribute to accidents.
sWitChing to Fly-By-Wire
Before Roger Beteille joined the new Airbus project as its technical direc-tor in 1967, he had headed develop-ment of a low-level supersonic cruise missile. His familiarity with complex, automated air vehicles was a factor in Airbus’s bold decision, in the early 1980s, to ft the A320 with a fy-by-wire (FBW) fight control system, full fight envelope protection and side-stick controls, as well as the most advanced glass cockpit in existence.
An “envelope protection” system pre-vented the aircraft from exceeding pre-set limits on angle of attack, bank angle and high and low speeds. In startling air show demonstrations of the A300 test-bed for the new system, Airbus pilots showed that the aircraft would respond rapidly to a full-force control input but envelope protection would begin to slow the pitch or roll as it approached its lim-its, fnally holding the aircraft frmly in-side its stable envelope.
FBW, Beteille believed, would also be easier to adapt to the next genera-tion of twin-aisle Airbus jets and make it easier for pilots to qualify on mul-tiple types.
The A320 became even more con-troversial after an early spate of acci-dents, including at least two in which fully functional aircraft descended into the ground. Major operators such as Northwest Airlines—an early customer—experienced high failure rates in their conversion courses. But as training procedures were adapted to the high-technology aircraft, its accident rate normalized. “It will do everything for you very well,” Clay Foushee, Northwest’s director of fight operations, said in 1992, “but if you just sit there and let it fy itself, something awful will happen.” FBW and envelope protection are now standard on new commercial aircraft. c
In 1986, the Airbus A320 cock-pit looked like something out of “Star Wars,” with big screens and sidesticks. Boeing insisted on using back-driven yokes for the later 777. “It’s like putting a steering wheel on a horse,” was one Airbus comment.
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Source: Boeing
50 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
the operations of engines, hydraulics and electrical systems. Pan American Airways—always a technical pioneer—was in the lead, commissioning a Boe-ing 377 Stratocruiser simulator from Curtiss-Wright in 1948.
Britain’s Rediffusion (which had started as a cable radio and TV ser-vice) built a pitch-only moving-base Comet simulator for BOAC in 1958, and by the early 1970s, 6-deg.-of-free-dom moving-base simulators were the industry standard, owned even by airlines with modest fleets. The proportion of training carried out on simulators increased rapidly; they were used for all major emergency and systems-failure training.
Until the late 1970s, the state of the art in visual systems comprised a TV image of a 3-D small-scale landscape model, viewed through a camera on a moving gantry. Computer-generat-ed imagery (CGI) nighttime visuals were introduced early in the decade, with the frst daytime system enter-ing service with Lufthansa in 1977. (For viewers of the new “Star Wars” movie, this was where the CGI efects now the norm in such movies got their
start.) CGI and other advances such as higher-fidelity models of aircraft systems opened the way to regulatory approval of zero-fight-time training in the 1980s. Combined with cockpit resource management (CRM) disci-pline, this has been instrumental in the steady decline of human-factor-related accident rates.
Deploying neW Avionics
One of many innovations on the Boe-ing 747 was the first inertial naviga-tion system (INS) on a commercial airplane, providing the crew with ac-curate position data without external radio. Before development of the Delco Carousel IV, INS was used on military aircraft and missiles but was too costly and unreliable for airline use. After the introduction of the 747 and the con-temporary DC-10 and TriStar, no new Western jet with more than 100 seats was ofered without it.
Less than a decade after the 747 entered service in 1970, Boeing was developing the 757 and 767 with a revolutionary “glass cockpit.” Mid-1970s researchers believed that mono-chrome displays might be ready for
mid-1980s aircraft, but the pace of electronics development was already fast enough to put sharp, crisp color displays on the new Boeings. In addi-tion, the complex stabilized platform and mechanical gyros of the Carousel IV were replaced by fxed “strapdown” Honeywell ring-laser gyro (RLG) INS, and the navigation, fight control and display systems were integrated on a common databus. The result, said
Boeing was that the 707-size 767 could be fown by just two pilots.
Another major advance in naviga-tion evolved in the 1970s, far from the airline business: The U.S. Navy needed a system that would allow missile-fr-ing submarines to determine their own position instantly and precisely with-out transmitting a signal. The answer was Navstar, or the Global Positioning System (GPS). Since the receiver was passive, anyone could use it as long as they had a compatible processor, which between the 1970s and 1990s shrank from a cabinet to book-size and then to a chip. “The crew was unaware of their position” has vanished from ac-cident reports.
The Boeing 747 was a step forward in the airliner’s state of the art when it was rolled out in Septem-ber 1968, featuring fully powered fight controls, quad-redundant hydraulics and a standard inertial navigation system.
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52 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
European mandates for aircraft tracking and crash site identif-cation are driving an evolution
in legacy surveillance technologies and creating new solutions. But both approaches will have to pass airlines’ cost-beneft muster.
Among the innovations are Rockwell Collins’s MultiLink fight-tracking ser-vice, which fuses legacy surveillance technologies already onboard for more frequent tracking updates, and Thomp-son Aerospace’s Secure Aircraft Track-ing Module (SATM), an independent, tamperproof add-on designed to meet upcoming mandates at minimum cost and with maximum return.
The new rules, approved by the Eu-
ropean Commission in mid-December, generally follow the design and imple-mentation schedule of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)-proposed standards for tracking and alerting, developed in response to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) in March 2014. While Europe may have been frst to roll out new rules to codify the recom-mendations, other countries are likely to follow suit once the ICAO proposals are fnalized, most likely this year.
Included in the multitiered ICAO global aeronautical distress safety system will be normal mode tracking updates every 15 min.; an abnormal mode with 1-min. updates; a distress
On TrackAirline tracking options increase
next-GenerAtion fliGht operAtions
mode with 1-min. intervals that is au-tomatically triggered by “very specifc events” (including unusual attitudes or unusual speeds), and methods for fight data recovery—via a deployable box or streaming data—before a crash occurs. The 1-min. reporting interval is meant to limit the search radius to 6 nm. Basic tracking likely will be required of airlines by 2018, with new aircraft equipped from the factory for distress mode and data recorder re-trieval starting in 2021.
Europe, through the European Avia-tion Safety Agency (EASA), by Decem-ber 2018 will require airlines to have a tracking system in place for aircraft with more than 19 seats on routes more than 180 nm from shorelines. By January 2019 they will be required to equip those aircraft with an 8.8-kHz underwater locator device (ULD) to augment the existing 37.5-kHz “ping-ers” on the fight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder. The more sensitive ULD, an improvement initi-
Operations NexusIndustry cultivates the seeds of connectivity,
surveillance and visual immersion
John Croft Annapolis, Maryland
John Croft Annapolis, Maryland
Next-generation fight deck and airline operations will be
ruled not so much by new technologies but by optimizing
and creatively employing tools available now or in the
near future.
By crowd-sourcing onboard weather radar through software modifcations and nascent broadband satellite links, airlines will soon be able to create a global grid of real-time hazardous conditions, flling in large gaps in the global weather picture for increased safety and routing efciency for the broader aviation community
(see page 55). An unnamed carrier has already contracted Honeywell to do just that, and test fights have proven successful.
Connectivity—whether through newly minted satellite broadband or combinations of legacy high-frequency, very-high-frequency, and lower-rate sat-ellite links—is the key to an airline hav-ing constant awareness of the state and
AW_01_18_2016_p52-54.indd 52 1/13/16 3:55 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 53
ated after the Air France Flight 447 crash in 2009, increases the underwa-ter range from which the pinger can be detected from approximately 0.8 nm for the 37.5-kHz pinger to 6 nm for the 8.8-kHz ULD.
EASA, however, will waive the ULD
requirement if the aircraft is equipped with a “robust and automatic” dis-tress mode that can pinpoint the end point of a crashed fight to within 6 nm, a number achievable only with position updates every 1 min. or more frequently.
While airlines had largely commit-ted voluntarily to implementing a 15-min. position update rate through existing equipage after the MH370
and now that EASA has published its rule, it’s going to force something to happen,” says Thompson Aerospace President and CEO Mark Thompson. “Our view is that if you pick the right technology, you’ll get the tracking for free,” he adds.
Thompson is banking on the fact that his company’s SATM technology, for which he expects to receive frst installation approvals in March, is roughly equivalent in cost to a ULD—about $10,000 per unit—but provides many more features and is therefore a better choice. Two unnamed small airline customers are signed up to equip their fleets with SATMs, be-ginning in March, to provide real-time monitoring of information in the fight data recorder stream over the Arinc 717 avionics bus—includ-ing engine performance—while also satisfying many, if not all, EASA and ICAO tracking needs.
Weighing about 1 lb. and drawing 2 watts, the SATM is an Iridium radio mounted on the inside within 1 ft. of an Iridium antenna located on top of the aircraft. The unit has an internal 9-axis motion sensor, dual global-po-sitioning system inputs and a battery pack that provides 14 hr. of operation. The system is tamperproof, in that as long as the antenna remains con-nected, data will continue to fow even
location of its assets, especially in a cri-sis. That is a smart idea in general but one that will soon be mandated by regu-lators as lessons learned from the Air France Flight 447 and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disasters evolve from talking points to codifed requirements (see fol-lowing article). Connectivity combined with a visual immersion and education technologies culled in part from the
AeroMexico, the launch customer for Rockwell Collins’s Arinc MultiLink service, receives position reports from its aircraft from a variety of sources and media, including HF-based position over the HF data link.
New methods of fying and operating next-generation aircraft include in-situ snapshots of severe weather, relayed in real time from one aircraft’s weather radar to ground stations and other aircraft.
gaming industry will allow aircraft to fy rather than sit as maintainers learn their trade (see page 56).
In the cockpit, new U.S. and European performance-based rules for vision sys-tems will beneft those who equip. Head-mounted display systems on tap from Elbit and Thales will make the option available for legacy aircraft that here-tofore could not qualify (see page 56).
if the aircraft loses power or circuit breakers are pulled.
Along with 15 min. position updates over Iridium, airlines can program SATM to send more frequent data
disappearance, carriers are now ana-lyzing how to deliver everyday value from the upgrades. “A lot of people are signed up for normal mode re-porting through various channels,
Ro
ck
well c
ollin
s
kent wien
Check 6 Aviation Week editors discuss the next-generation hardware and new techniques that will save money and boost the safety of fight operations, maintenance and training:
AviationWeek.com/podcast
AW_01_18_2016_p52-54.indd 53 1/13/16 3:55 PM
52 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
European mandates for aircraft tracking and crash site identif-cation are driving an evolution
in legacy surveillance technologies and creating new solutions. But both approaches will have to pass airlines’ cost-beneft muster.
Among the innovations are Rockwell Collins’s MultiLink fight-tracking ser-vice, which fuses legacy surveillance technologies already onboard for more frequent tracking updates, and Thomp-son Aerospace’s Secure Aircraft Track-ing Module (SATM), an independent, tamperproof add-on designed to meet upcoming mandates at minimum cost and with maximum return.
The new rules, approved by the Eu-
ropean Commission in mid-December, generally follow the design and imple-mentation schedule of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)-proposed standards for tracking and alerting, developed in response to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) in March 2014. While Europe may have been frst to roll out new rules to codify the recom-mendations, other countries are likely to follow suit once the ICAO proposals are fnalized, most likely this year.
Included in the multitiered ICAO global aeronautical distress safety system will be normal mode tracking updates every 15 min.; an abnormal mode with 1-min. updates; a distress
On TrackAirline tracking options increase
next-GenerAtion fliGht operAtions
mode with 1-min. intervals that is au-tomatically triggered by “very specifc events” (including unusual attitudes or unusual speeds), and methods for fight data recovery—via a deployable box or streaming data—before a crash occurs. The 1-min. reporting interval is meant to limit the search radius to 6 nm. Basic tracking likely will be required of airlines by 2018, with new aircraft equipped from the factory for distress mode and data recorder re-trieval starting in 2021.
Europe, through the European Avia-tion Safety Agency (EASA), by Decem-ber 2018 will require airlines to have a tracking system in place for aircraft with more than 19 seats on routes more than 180 nm from shorelines. By January 2019 they will be required to equip those aircraft with an 8.8-kHz underwater locator device (ULD) to augment the existing 37.5-kHz “ping-ers” on the fight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder. The more sensitive ULD, an improvement initi-
Operations NexusIndustry cultivates the seeds of connectivity,
surveillance and visual immersion
John Croft Annapolis, Maryland
John Croft Annapolis, Maryland
Next-generation fight deck and airline operations will be
ruled not so much by new technologies but by optimizing
and creatively employing tools available now or in the
near future.
By crowd-sourcing onboard weather radar through software modifcations and nascent broadband satellite links, airlines will soon be able to create a global grid of real-time hazardous conditions, flling in large gaps in the global weather picture for increased safety and routing efciency for the broader aviation community
(see page 55). An unnamed carrier has already contracted Honeywell to do just that, and test fights have proven successful.
Connectivity—whether through newly minted satellite broadband or combinations of legacy high-frequency, very-high-frequency, and lower-rate sat-ellite links—is the key to an airline hav-ing constant awareness of the state and
AW_01_18_2016_p52-54.indd 52 1/13/16 3:55 PM
54 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
for abnormal and distress modes to the same secure node in the Amazon Web Services cloud when certain thresholds are tripped, including path anomalies, or when engine or other operational issues occur. “The airline can go in and say, ‘Give me all the [exhaust gas temperature] data for the engines,’ and we start send-ing that data about 2-3 sec. delayed,” says Thompson. “Any data that goes through the FDR we can send to the airline, but we can’t send it all at once—we don’t have enough band-width over Iridium.”
In addition to the installation costs, airlines pay a monthly fee of $100-150 for the basic ICAO 15-min. tracking
outputs per aircraft, with fees in-creasing as trending or other data are sent.
Rather than adding new technolo-gies, Rockwell Collins Information Management Services (IMS) is fo-cusing on diversifi cation of position information via legacy links to meet the upcoming EASA and ICAO nor-mal and abnormal mode tracking mandates.
“We’re trying to use information the airlines are already receiving,” says Yuri Maslov, principal program man-ager at Rockwell Collins IMS. “Any ad-ditional data they have to generate will bring additional costs.”
The company’s new MultiLink ser-vice, now in use by launch customer AeroMexico, combines surveillance information already carried over legacy Arinc networks—Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) and ACARS position re-ports—with air navigation service pro-vider radar feeds, Automatic Depen-dent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) from third-party providers and Rock-well Collins’s proprietary high-fre-quency data link-based (HFDL) posi-tion reports to give airlines multiple options for position reporting.
“If tracking is dependent on a single data source or a single piece of equip-ment, the likelihood that tracking could be disrupted is quite high,” says
NEXT-GENERATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS
Rockwell Collins in its MultiLink sales materials. The company converts all tracking “feeds” to the same format and provides the information to airline customers either through a streaming data feed or as an integrated aircraft situational display with its WebASD or Hermes SkyView platforms. Approxi-mately 30 airlines are customers for the two platforms.
For normal reporting (15 min. or more frequent intervals) in oceanic areas, the lowest-cost option for air-lines is typically the HFDL “diagnos-tics” mode, a feature Rockwell Col-lins previously used to monitor the health of the HFDL network, but is now added at no cost into the data feeds to airlines to provide position reports as frequently as every 5 min. For oceanic flights, radar tracking and ADS-B feeds are typically not available.
Although more expensive, airlines will also obtain period position re-ports through ADS-C over Inmarsat or Iridium satellite links, which can also be set up to automatically send higher-frequency position reports when un-expected altitude or waypoint changes
Source: Thompson Aerospace
Air Traffc
Service
Providers
Airline
Operations
Centers
Rescue
Coordination
Centers
Status
Other Aircraft Data
Discrete Inputs
Flight
Aware
Thompson GatewayIridium Server
IridiumGPS
Satellite-based position
Attitude
Iridium
Battery Backup
SATM
Secure Aircraft Tracking Module (SATM)
occur. ACARS over satellite or HFDL links can also be used for position re-ports, and in some cases the avionics can also be set up to automatically report at higher rates when certain thresholds are crossed.
To help airlines monitor their flights, MultiLink has a built-in “mute” alert that notifi es the opera-tions center when an aircraft has not sent or received communications for a certain time period, and Rockwell Collins IMS engineers are also de-veloping a course deviation alert. In both cases, the likely reaction will be to increase the position reporting rate of ADS-C or ACARS messages, either automatically or through up-linked commands from the airline or Rockwell Collins IMS.
Maslov says if ACARS is not equipped with the logic to automati-cally increase rates in certain failure conditions, the equivalent can be done from the ground. For a portion of its fl eet, Emirates, which uses the SkyView aircraft situational display, will send an uplink request for posi-tion data every 60 sec. in distress situations. c
Thompson Aerospace plans to begin delivering the SATM in March to two small airlines equipping their widebody aircraft. The company says money-saving operational data coming through the same links can make tracking essentially free.
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AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 55
John Croft Las Vegas
Crowdsourced information could
soon fll voids in the weather grid
Before the end of 2016, Honeywell Aerospace plans to release a new software version for its IntuVue RDR-4000 weather radar that will allow an unnamed airline
customer to begin downlinking snapshots of weather activ-ity and threats directly from onboard radar to the ground through broadband links.
The action is part of a broader plan by avionics manufactur-ers to gather “crowdsourced” weather in order to form a more comprehensive global signature of weather threats.
“We’ll get the data on the ground and mash it together—analogous to what Google does for highway trafc—and then we’ll be able to stitch together vast [swaths] of airspace with real-time aviation weather that, heretofore, never existed,” says Carl Esposito, vice president of strategy, marketing and prod-uct management for Honeywell. Esposito has two U.S. patent applications on fle detailing a system that distributes weather radar data—including convective cells, precipitation, hail and turbulence regions—between aircraft and ground stations.
“It lets the aircraft share what it’s seeing with lots of other people—maybe an aircraft 1,000 mi. behind it, maybe a gen-eral aviation aircraft that doesn’t have any weather radar,” says Esposito. “Maybe it goes into wind models, into [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] or other weather-forecasting applications.” Crowdsourcing holism would occur when feets of aircraft covering the globe can downlink the weather radar snapshots, most likely on command from a ground station.
Honeywell recently tested a software modifcation to an RDR-4000 on its Boeing 757 testbed, sending weather radar information to its Global Data Center (GDC), where the data was aggregated with other weather and threat information and sent back via broadband data link to the cockpit using the company’s new subscription-based Weather Information Ser-vice. The RDR-4000 stores in its computer memory weather information in a 120-deg. wedge of airspace from the surface
to 60,000 ft. and outward for 300 nm. Esposito says critical elements of the software design change involve compressing and securely ofoading that data from the unit, which he says was “never designed to share that volume of data.”
Esposito says the frst version of the software, which will be released in 6-9 months, provides for exporting the weather radar data, but adds that the company is already working on a second version with additional capabilities.
Competitor Rockwell Collins is also researching crowd-sourcing for its MultiScan weather radar systems, largely to ofer the same benefts—generating a uniform, comprehensive global weather picture, particularly in remote areas where none exists, and getting that information simultaneously to pilots and dispatchers via nascent broadband links.
“Our air transport customers want that additional infor-mation,” says Kevin Kronfeld, principal systems engineer in Rockwell Collins’s Advanced Technology Center. “We know there’s a big gap from a global weather perspective for high-quality weather information.” The company supplies opera-tors with weather updates through its ArincDirect service.
Rockwell Collins is a long-time participant in nonradar, crowdsourced “Metcars” and “Amdar” weather data through its Information Management Services arm, formerly Arinc. Approximately 2,000 aircraft capture the in-situ data for the programs through onboard sensors, sending 300,000 wind, temperature, dew point and in some cases turbulence mea-surements per day through ACARS to airline operations cen-ters and the U.S. National Weather Service. While the raw data is private, the forecast products are public. “Weather ra-dar is an extension of that type of system,” says Matt Carrico, senior engineering manager and fellow at Rockwell Collins.
Research areas include compressing the weather radar data for transmission, as well as the broader topics of how best to simultaneously present all the information to pilots and dispatchers without overwhelming them. Rockwell Col-lins is focusing on a “fused” approach, guided by industry protocols, that provides an integrated view of weather and threats based on availability of data, mission phase and plan-ning horizon. Kronfeld says the resulting images should have “high glance value” so that pilots “don’t have to tab through diferent weather products” to see what is most important.
Data-linked weather radar will be a key input for remote and oceanic areas with no ground-based radar coverage. Re-searchers are initially flling the gaps using lightning data from Vaisala’s global lightning data network, correlating the activ-ity with convective weather. The results would be displayed on a tablet or the installed avionics as a “simulated radar” output similar to Nexrad, updating every 5-10 min. Beyond lightning, future inputs are likely to include satellite observa-tions, ground radar and airborne radar data compressed and downlinked via broadband links.
Once fused on the ground, Rockwell Collins would send the “best estimate” of the weather situation back up to sub-scribers using “fairly low-bandwidth” transmissions, says Kronfeld. “The lack of connectivity has been a show-stopper in the past,” he says. c
Helping Hands
Uplinked weather radar information from various aircraft in a feet will be merged, possibly in a separate layer, with Honeywell’s subscription-based Weather Information Service, operated from the company’s Global Data Center.
Honeywell
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54 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
for abnormal and distress modes to the same secure node in the Amazon Web Services cloud when certain thresholds are tripped, including path anomalies, or when engine or other operational issues occur. “The airline can go in and say, ‘Give me all the [exhaust gas temperature] data for the engines,’ and we start send-ing that data about 2-3 sec. delayed,” says Thompson. “Any data that goes through the FDR we can send to the airline, but we can’t send it all at once—we don’t have enough band-width over Iridium.”
In addition to the installation costs, airlines pay a monthly fee of $100-150 for the basic ICAO 15-min. tracking
outputs per aircraft, with fees in-creasing as trending or other data are sent.
Rather than adding new technolo-gies, Rockwell Collins Information Management Services (IMS) is fo-cusing on diversifi cation of position information via legacy links to meet the upcoming EASA and ICAO nor-mal and abnormal mode tracking mandates.
“We’re trying to use information the airlines are already receiving,” says Yuri Maslov, principal program man-ager at Rockwell Collins IMS. “Any ad-ditional data they have to generate will bring additional costs.”
The company’s new MultiLink ser-vice, now in use by launch customer AeroMexico, combines surveillance information already carried over legacy Arinc networks—Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) and ACARS position re-ports—with air navigation service pro-vider radar feeds, Automatic Depen-dent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) from third-party providers and Rock-well Collins’s proprietary high-fre-quency data link-based (HFDL) posi-tion reports to give airlines multiple options for position reporting.
“If tracking is dependent on a single data source or a single piece of equip-ment, the likelihood that tracking could be disrupted is quite high,” says
NEXT-GENERATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS
Rockwell Collins in its MultiLink sales materials. The company converts all tracking “feeds” to the same format and provides the information to airline customers either through a streaming data feed or as an integrated aircraft situational display with its WebASD or Hermes SkyView platforms. Approxi-mately 30 airlines are customers for the two platforms.
For normal reporting (15 min. or more frequent intervals) in oceanic areas, the lowest-cost option for air-lines is typically the HFDL “diagnos-tics” mode, a feature Rockwell Col-lins previously used to monitor the health of the HFDL network, but is now added at no cost into the data feeds to airlines to provide position reports as frequently as every 5 min. For oceanic flights, radar tracking and ADS-B feeds are typically not available.
Although more expensive, airlines will also obtain period position re-ports through ADS-C over Inmarsat or Iridium satellite links, which can also be set up to automatically send higher-frequency position reports when un-expected altitude or waypoint changes
Source: Thompson Aerospace
Air Traffc
Service
Providers
Airline
Operations
Centers
Rescue
Coordination
Centers
Status
Other Aircraft Data
Discrete Inputs
Flight
Aware
Thompson GatewayIridium Server
IridiumGPS
Satellite-based position
Attitude
Iridium
Battery Backup
SATM
Secure Aircraft Tracking Module (SATM)
occur. ACARS over satellite or HFDL links can also be used for position re-ports, and in some cases the avionics can also be set up to automatically report at higher rates when certain thresholds are crossed.
To help airlines monitor their flights, MultiLink has a built-in “mute” alert that notifi es the opera-tions center when an aircraft has not sent or received communications for a certain time period, and Rockwell Collins IMS engineers are also de-veloping a course deviation alert. In both cases, the likely reaction will be to increase the position reporting rate of ADS-C or ACARS messages, either automatically or through up-linked commands from the airline or Rockwell Collins IMS.
Maslov says if ACARS is not equipped with the logic to automati-cally increase rates in certain failure conditions, the equivalent can be done from the ground. For a portion of its fl eet, Emirates, which uses the SkyView aircraft situational display, will send an uplink request for posi-tion data every 60 sec. in distress situations. c
Thompson Aerospace plans to begin delivering the SATM in March to two small airlines equipping their widebody aircraft. The company says money-saving operational data coming through the same links can make tracking essentially free.
AW_01_18_2016_p52-54.indd 54 1/13/16 3:55 PM
56 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
John Croft Las Vegas
John Croft Orlando, Florida
Bionic Eyes
Games for Gain
Head-up displays evolve into head-worn devices
Virtual scenarios for maintenance, repair and
overhaul training keep aircraft fying
In 2017, avionics maker Elbit Sys-tems plans to certify a near-to-eye display that will put all the informa-
tion air transport and business avia-tion pilots need for critical operations right in front of their eyes, or rather, one eye. Competitor Thales plans to do the same in 2019.
Enabled by advances in displays, electronics miniaturization and com-pact guidance, and new rules that will allow for lower-visibility takeofs and landings when equipped with ap-proved vision systems, the industry is cautiously but unquestionably moving toward the era of head-mounted dis-plays (HMD).
Long a staple of military pilots, par-ticularly attack helicopters, HMDs du-plicate information traditionally pre-sented on a head-up display (HUD), but allow the pilots to see a data read-out without having to keep their heads locked into a certain position looking forward to stay within the “eye box.” The HMD also requires little to no equipment on the fight deck, remov-ing the space constraints that, to date, have largely limited HUDs to larger business jets and airliners.
While sure to present certifcation challenges—not the least of which re-lates to accuracy guarantees for low-visibility operations and the human
factors involved in having symbology in view no matter where the pilot is looking —the evolution will allow new capabilities not possible with the fxed HUD. These include trafc alerts that show the pilot where in the sky to look, the ability to select a waypoint just by looking at it, and the ability to see in-formation no matter where the pilot is looking. A traditional HUD, typically priced at about $500,000 in-stalled for a top-end system, provides a conformal image of about 30 deg. in the vertical and 40 deg. in the horizontal.
Thales is aiming to sell its TopMax HMD for “half the price” of a conventional HUD, says Richard Perrot, marketing director for Thales Avion-ics. Aviation Week sampled TopMax in a ground simulation mode in November, using a modifed Bose noise-canceling head-set with the HMD at-tached in front of and above the pilot’s right
eye. Thales also has an alternate ar-rangement (see photo) that places the HMD hardware, which weighs 0.8 lb. (360 grams), on a lighter headset.
The display uses waveguide technol-ogy to show images created by a pro-jector located in the electronics com-partment above the eye. The system has built-in accelerometers and gyros that combine with a head-tracking sys-tem to conform the displayed informa-tion to the aircraft’s motion and ori-entation. Rather than using cameras in the cockpit to actively track head motion, Thales reverses the process, placing a camera at the top of the
NEXT-GENERATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS
Anyone attending an aerospace conference of late is sure to have seen humans wearing
3-D goggles and acting strangely. The virtual reality devices—which fully im-merse the wearer, at least visually, in a computer-generated world—leading to exaggerated head-panning and tilting motions that come across to the exter-nal observer as unnatural and silly.
Inside some of those goggles, how-ever, there can be real work going on, particularly in the areas of efficient training. Rockwell Collins is rapidly advancing the technology to remove distance and asset availability from the cost of doing business in maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) training or familiarization programs. The compa-ny envisions a time 4-5 years from now
when maintenance technicians will re-port to a “holodeck” room for training with an instructor located anywhere in the world and a virtual aircraft in a computer-generated hangar with simulated tools and test equipment.
Aviation Week tried out an early prototype of the holodeck and 3-D goggles at a simulation conference in Orlando in early December. The task—debugging an avionics prob-lem using diagnostics in the Pro Line Fusion cockpit displays and virtually changing out a faulty electronics box from a Beechcraft King Air—is part of a broader virtual reality training movement that could help operators keep their aircraft fying, rather than just being used for a training session,
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“It’s very expensive . . .
no one likes taking an
aircraft out of service for
maintenance training”
HMD and tracking a series of 22 pas-sive targets (stickers) placed on the cockpit ceiling. The HMD is hardwired to an electronics box with the graph-ics processor; the box is mounted on the fight deck and connects into the avionics bus.
The HMD is not instantly comfort-able (compared to 3-D goggles such as the Oculus Rift) and the display may not come fully into view initially, but both issues are solved with some adjustments and time. Perrot says pi-lots on the test flights have worn the HMD for three or more hours with no discomfort.
Once in place, the display itself is captivating, with attitude, synthetic vision (SV), terrain and trafc sym-bology shown in multiple colors, and special features enabled by tilting your head in certain directions—down and to the left for a scratchpad, upward for the Autoflight system confguration. Perrot says the frst re-lease of the system will include SV as well as enhanced-vision system input, allowing for low-visibility takeofs and landings with 150-ft. minimums (spe-cial authorization Category 1). Later versions will allow landings with 100-ft. minimums (Cat. 2).
T h a l e s s e e s potential for the HMD in the air-line market, but is starting with busi-ness aviation.
Elbit is choos-ing to start in the commmercial air transport sector. The company has finished aircraft a n d s i m u l a t o r proof-of-concept testing of its Sky-lens HMD with more than 200 pi-
lots in an ATR-72 for launch customer ATR. Dror Yahav, vice president of commercial systems for Elbit Sys-tems, says there were “no major fnd-ings” in the testing, but it did result in some recommendations for the next phase of development, which will en-compass operations, applications, sym-bology and, ultimately, certifcation.
Pilots wear Skylens as they would ski goggles. Yahav says proof-of-con-cept pilots described the devices as “very comfortable” after a couple of hours of fying. The electronics unit, located above the eyes, includes an im-age generator that produces light that refects of of the visor to show a mono-chrome image to one eye. The goggles, which weigh about 1 lb., are hardwired to an electronics box that connects to the aircraft’s avionics. Head tracking is done with an active line-of-sight detec-tor placed under the glare shield.
ATR plans to push the state-of-the-art for HMDs, certifying the system as a primary fight display, complete with SV and enhanced vision, with the capability to complete the equiva-lent of Cat. 3 instrument approaches with a 50-ft. decision height and 1,000-ft. visibility. Future enhance-ments will include displays for trafc, terrain, clouds and threats, including
volcanic ash.Yahav says “several air-
framers” are interested in the technology, including Dassault for its business jets. He says other air-line customers will come through ATR. c
Head-worn displays being developed by Elbit (left) and Thales will allow for advanced head-up display capabilities without any bulky fight deck infrastructure.
John Croft/AW&St
allowing instructors to stay in one place while overseeing students any-where in the world.
Rockwell Collins is partnered with Santa Barbara, California-based vir-tual reality software company World-Viz for the virtual maintenance trainer project. WorldViz provides the virtual reality “toolset” that Rockwell Collins has been using in its advanced manu-facturing facilities for eight years. “When we build a box, we take all the [computer-aided design] drawings and build a prototype in the virtual world, then bring in maintenance and factory operators so they can check it for ft and clearance as well as how to build it,” says Steve Kennell, director of publications and training solutions
for Rockwell Collins. “We’re saving millions of dollars on that process, and now we’re extending it into scenarios for distance learning.”
Along with eliminating the revenue loss of parking an aircraft for a train-ing session, the virtual trainer is also meant to address a shortage of avion-ics instructors—today they have to
physically fy to an increasing number of customer locations around the globe to conduct the training. With the holo-deck, Kennell says instructors can stay
in one place and interact with a dozen or more students in a day.
“Training today is done by moving a student and an instruc-tor and taking an asset offline and creating a scenario where they’re all together along with the test equipment,” says Ken-nell. “It’s very expensive and the logistics are very complex, and
no one likes taking an aircraft out of service for maintenance training.” Fur-ther complicating the logistics is the test equipment, which, Kennell says, “gets bounced around” on the journey
AW_01_18_2016_p56-58.indd 57 1/14/16 12:38 PM
56 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
John Croft Las Vegas
John Croft Orlando, Florida
Bionic Eyes
Games for Gain
Head-up displays evolve into head-worn devices
Virtual scenarios for maintenance, repair and
overhaul training keep aircraft fying
In 2017, avionics maker Elbit Sys-tems plans to certify a near-to-eye display that will put all the informa-
tion air transport and business avia-tion pilots need for critical operations right in front of their eyes, or rather, one eye. Competitor Thales plans to do the same in 2019.
Enabled by advances in displays, electronics miniaturization and com-pact guidance, and new rules that will allow for lower-visibility takeofs and landings when equipped with ap-proved vision systems, the industry is cautiously but unquestionably moving toward the era of head-mounted dis-plays (HMD).
Long a staple of military pilots, par-ticularly attack helicopters, HMDs du-plicate information traditionally pre-sented on a head-up display (HUD), but allow the pilots to see a data read-out without having to keep their heads locked into a certain position looking forward to stay within the “eye box.” The HMD also requires little to no equipment on the fight deck, remov-ing the space constraints that, to date, have largely limited HUDs to larger business jets and airliners.
While sure to present certifcation challenges—not the least of which re-lates to accuracy guarantees for low-visibility operations and the human
factors involved in having symbology in view no matter where the pilot is looking —the evolution will allow new capabilities not possible with the fxed HUD. These include trafc alerts that show the pilot where in the sky to look, the ability to select a waypoint just by looking at it, and the ability to see in-formation no matter where the pilot is looking. A traditional HUD, typically priced at about $500,000 in-stalled for a top-end system, provides a conformal image of about 30 deg. in the vertical and 40 deg. in the horizontal.
Thales is aiming to sell its TopMax HMD for “half the price” of a conventional HUD, says Richard Perrot, marketing director for Thales Avion-ics. Aviation Week sampled TopMax in a ground simulation mode in November, using a modifed Bose noise-canceling head-set with the HMD at-tached in front of and above the pilot’s right
eye. Thales also has an alternate ar-rangement (see photo) that places the HMD hardware, which weighs 0.8 lb. (360 grams), on a lighter headset.
The display uses waveguide technol-ogy to show images created by a pro-jector located in the electronics com-partment above the eye. The system has built-in accelerometers and gyros that combine with a head-tracking sys-tem to conform the displayed informa-tion to the aircraft’s motion and ori-entation. Rather than using cameras in the cockpit to actively track head motion, Thales reverses the process, placing a camera at the top of the
NEXT-GENERATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS
Anyone attending an aerospace conference of late is sure to have seen humans wearing
3-D goggles and acting strangely. The virtual reality devices—which fully im-merse the wearer, at least visually, in a computer-generated world—leading to exaggerated head-panning and tilting motions that come across to the exter-nal observer as unnatural and silly.
Inside some of those goggles, how-ever, there can be real work going on, particularly in the areas of efficient training. Rockwell Collins is rapidly advancing the technology to remove distance and asset availability from the cost of doing business in maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) training or familiarization programs. The compa-ny envisions a time 4-5 years from now
when maintenance technicians will re-port to a “holodeck” room for training with an instructor located anywhere in the world and a virtual aircraft in a computer-generated hangar with simulated tools and test equipment.
Aviation Week tried out an early prototype of the holodeck and 3-D goggles at a simulation conference in Orlando in early December. The task—debugging an avionics prob-lem using diagnostics in the Pro Line Fusion cockpit displays and virtually changing out a faulty electronics box from a Beechcraft King Air—is part of a broader virtual reality training movement that could help operators keep their aircraft fying, rather than just being used for a training session,
AW_01_18_2016_p56-58.indd 56 1/14/16 12:38 PM
and “half the time doesn’t work” once it arrives. “In the virtual world, once [the test equipment] is working, it will always work,” he adds.
The prototype holodeck in Orlando used an Oculus Rift DK2 3-D headset and WorldViz wand input device, both equipped with infrared LEDs that are tracked by four cameras placed at the upper corners of the holodeck, a square area roughly 12 X 12 ft. wide
and 8 ft. high. The DK2 was surpris-ingly comfortable, even fitting over my prescription glasses, and motion was evenly synchronized between the visual scene and my perceived head motion, except during accelerated mo-tion such as when nodding my head to acknowledge commands.
In the scenario, I was placed in the pilot’s seat of the King Air parked in a hangar, noting that I could turn around and see the seats in the back, the wings on the side, and could move
my head through the sidewall and see the outside of the cabin. With the in-structor guiding me orally through headphones, I used the wand to power up the displays and fnd a problem with an avionics box mounted in an exter-nal compartment in the nose. Next, the scenario jumped me to the outside of the aircraft, where I used the wand to open an access door and remove an avionics box, placing it on a tray.
While the wand does not allow the student to use fingers, as would be the case in an actual procedure, the “point and click” process becomes natural after a few tries. Although the technology may later include some type of gloves with dexterous fngers, the concern is that if the student grabs for a knob or button that is not
physically there, “it will destroy the illusion,” says Ida Derra, a WorldViz sales representative.
Kennell says the next step is to in-crease the number of scenarios, im-prove the “human interface” and in-tegrate a total learning management system. The management system would track the student’s training, noting when new or recurring train-ing is needed, and crediting for cours-
es completed. “I’ve got a badge and I get a notice that I need concurrency training on a topic,” says Kennell. “I go up to a room confgured with this system. I plug my badge in, it confg-ures the environment for the training I need to do and keeps track of my progress in the learning management system.” c
58 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
NEXT-GENERATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS
A participant in Rockwell Collins’s virtual maintenance trainer demo uses 3-D goggles and a customized wand to remove avionics boxes from the nose compartment of a virtual Beechcraft King Air.
Rockwell collins
AW_01_18_2016_p56-58.indd 58 1/14/16 12:38 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 59
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
Per capita, air travel in Peru is as low
as China’s, but growth is hindered
Following a nearly unprecedented period of growth, Peru’s economic development seems to be settling down . But the country’s airline industry is still ex-
panding rapidly, in part because there are few other com-fortable transport options available . Although this could be an enviable position for airlines, the limits of airport infrastructure are a huge impediment.
In spite of many years of double-digit traffic growth, Peru’s airline industry shows no signs of slowing. “We still have a long way to go,” says Felix Antelo, CEO of LAN Peru, the country’s largest carrier. While development has been impressive, per capita penetration of air travel is still low. Peruvians take an average of 0.35 trips per year, which is about equivalent to air travel use in China. Neighboring Chile is at 0.9 trips, Europe clocks in at 1.21 and North America, the most developed market, is at 1.63, according to data from the most recent Airbus global market forecast.
Peru’s domestic market has expanded to approximately 10 million passengers in 2015, based on a 10% growth rate. That compares to the almost 100 million cross-country bus trips taken by Peruvians annually . Airlines are aware that this is an important group to target . “We have to take passengers from the bus onto the plane,” Antelo says.
Five airlines operate on Peru’s domestic routes. LAN Peru controls about 60% of the market, followed by Peruvian Air-lines and Avianca at around 13% each. Star Peru has a 7% share and LC Peru, with a 3% share, is the smallest player . Of the fi ve, Peruvian has been the fastest growing. The airline began operations in 2009 with a small fl eet of Boeing 737-200s ; it has since added Boeing 737-300s as well as one -400 and one -500 for what is, so far, a purely domestic network. But the privately owned carrier plans to soon expand to in-ternational destinations in the region.
“The [domestic] market should [reach] 11 million passengers in 2016,” says Antelo. “Fares will fall due to competition, but we should be able to recover this through a higher load factor.” LAN Peru plans to fl y a fl eet of 10 Airbus A320s and eight A319s on the domestic network by year-end , a boost of 1-2 more to its current fl eet. With an anticipated increase in utilization and the
gradual transition toward more A320s rather than the smaller version, a 10-15% rise in capacity is expected. “Stimulation of the market is still very strong,” says Antelo.
Peru’s domestic market is burgeoning , but the geographi-cal location of Lima, the capital, and its main airport, Jorge Chavez International, makes it an attractive hub for much of Latin America. LAN in particular has been growing a net-work into the Caribbean and North America that links with domestic and international fl ights in the region. Avianca, too, has recently been expanding to Caribbean destinations, no-tably to one of Mexico’s popular resort areas, Cancun. LAN will soon open a new route to Washington that complements its existing destinations of Los Angeles, New York, Orlando and Miami. But Antelo is concerned that “Bogota will win the hub competition if we don’t accelerate [our] growth.”
Which leads to the key predicament for Peruvian airlines—infrastructure constraints. “Lima is a collapsed airport,” says Antelo. The statement is somewhat surprising given that the airport has been judged to be a pleasant experience follow-ing its privatization to a consortium led by Frankfurt airport operator Fraport. But the facility has become the victim of its own success. The terminal was constructed to handle 12 million passengers per year , but processed 17 million in 2015, because the growth in air travel has exceeded all expectations.
Fraport’s head of the international division, Alexander Zinell, says the company is meeting all of its commitments made as part of the concession agreement with the Peru-vian government and has for years been trying to expand the current terminal. However, the country’s air force and police, among other entities, have been unwilling to free up space adjacent to the passenger terminal, which would have allowed it to expand the facility quicker.
As part of the master plan, a second terminal is envisioned on the other side of what is now the airport’s single runway. The capacity of that building will depend on decisions related to how to best utilize the original terminal; options range from operating it as a separate entity to closing it entirely.
The other issue the airport and its airlines are facing in-volves runway capacity. Lima can process 38-40 movements per hour at peak times, which compares with up to 55 per hour at other hub airports in Latin America, a distinct stra-tegic disadvantage. Although a second runway is planned, it is unlikely to be opened before 2020 due to outside delays; a major road connecting the city with the harbor is being held up because a key component of this plan involves a tunnel, which is under construction . Once that is completed, runway work can begin. “We need to make it happen earlier,” Antelo emphasizes . c
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
Ahead of
the Curve
LAN Peru is by far the largest operator at Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport. Its fl eet includes A320s, A319s and 767s.
LIM
A A
IRPO
RT
AW_01_18_2016_p59.indd 59 1/13/16 10:13 AM
and “half the time doesn’t work” once it arrives. “In the virtual world, once [the test equipment] is working, it will always work,” he adds.
The prototype holodeck in Orlando used an Oculus Rift DK2 3-D headset and WorldViz wand input device, both equipped with infrared LEDs that are tracked by four cameras placed at the upper corners of the holodeck, a square area roughly 12 X 12 ft. wide
and 8 ft. high. The DK2 was surpris-ingly comfortable, even fitting over my prescription glasses, and motion was evenly synchronized between the visual scene and my perceived head motion, except during accelerated mo-tion such as when nodding my head to acknowledge commands.
In the scenario, I was placed in the pilot’s seat of the King Air parked in a hangar, noting that I could turn around and see the seats in the back, the wings on the side, and could move
my head through the sidewall and see the outside of the cabin. With the in-structor guiding me orally through headphones, I used the wand to power up the displays and fnd a problem with an avionics box mounted in an exter-nal compartment in the nose. Next, the scenario jumped me to the outside of the aircraft, where I used the wand to open an access door and remove an avionics box, placing it on a tray.
While the wand does not allow the student to use fingers, as would be the case in an actual procedure, the “point and click” process becomes natural after a few tries. Although the technology may later include some type of gloves with dexterous fngers, the concern is that if the student grabs for a knob or button that is not
physically there, “it will destroy the illusion,” says Ida Derra, a WorldViz sales representative.
Kennell says the next step is to in-crease the number of scenarios, im-prove the “human interface” and in-tegrate a total learning management system. The management system would track the student’s training, noting when new or recurring train-ing is needed, and crediting for cours-
es completed. “I’ve got a badge and I get a notice that I need concurrency training on a topic,” says Kennell. “I go up to a room confgured with this system. I plug my badge in, it confg-ures the environment for the training I need to do and keeps track of my progress in the learning management system.” c
58 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
NEXT-GENERATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS
A participant in Rockwell Collins’s virtual maintenance trainer demo uses 3-D goggles and a customized wand to remove avionics boxes from the nose compartment of a virtual Beechcraft King Air.
Rockwell collins
AW_01_18_2016_p56-58.indd 58 1/14/16 12:38 PM
60 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
DARPA
NAtioNAl ARchives
DARPA
Graham Warwick Washington
Humans at the Core Eforts to restore U.S. military superiority will
build on AI and manned/unmanned teaming
The Pentagon’s “Third Offset” strategy to restore the U.S.’s conventional technological su-
periority over Russia and China will be built on using artifcial intelligence (AI) and autonomy to assist human operations, says Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work.
Commercial advances in AI and au-tonomy are core to the central theme of the strategy—using human-machine collaboration in decision-making and teaming of manned and unmanned sys-tems in combat to overcome the prolif-eration of precision munitions and ad-vances in electronic warfare (EW) and cyberattack that have eroded the U.S.’s military edge over potential adversaries.
The Third Ofset will kick of with $12-15 billion in funding in the Pen-tagon’s fiscal 2017 budget request for “wargaming, experimentation and demonstrations,” Work said in a speech at the Center for New Ameri-can Security in December. He noted that beginning in 2017 the focus will be “on doing the intellectual underpin-ning and as much of the demonstration work as we possibly can, so Congress will help us keep this going and we can
maintain a lasting advantage.”The frst ofset strategy in the 1950s
sought to blunt the Soviet numerical and geographical advantage in Europe by developing the capability to deploy battlefeld nuclear weapons. That ap-proach was successful up to the 1970s, when the Soviets achieved strategic nuclear parity and the risk of escala-
tion to all-out nuclear war became too great, Work said.
The U.S. response was the second ofset strategy to develop conventional weapons with “near-zero miss.” The Darpa-led Assault Breaker demonstra-tion in 1977 led Soviet military leaders to conclude that precision-guided mu-nitions would be as efective as tactical nuclear weapons. “And, unquestion-ably, I would say that it helped lead to the end of the Cold War,” Work said.
The breakup of the Soviet Union gave the U.S. an advantage in guided weapons for 25 years, but now Russia and China are approaching precision-munition parity with the U.S., and other second ofset technologies such as unmanned aircraft are proliferating. At the same time, Work said, the U.S. focus on fghting Islamic extremists has slowed its response to high-end threats.
The result is the anti-access/area-denial challenge (A2/AD) facing U.S. forces. “Our conventional deterrence posture . . . is based on the assump-tion that we can project overwhelm-ing power across transoceanic dis-tances and exert our will on any opponent,” Work said.
“So the first prob-lem is breaking into a theater where the op-
ponents enjoy guided-munitions parity and can throw long-range missile strikes as dense
and as accurate as our own and [for] as long as we can. That’s the anti-access or ‘A2’ part of the A2/AD threat.
“Then, once you’re in the theater, the second problem is fghting against an adversary with conventional capabili-ties that are as advanced as our own. That is the ‘AD’ or area-denial part of the A2/AD problem,” he noted. “And the
third is doing both while under intense cyber- and electronic-warfare attack.”
Work said Russia’s long-range con-ventional strikes in Syria provide a “rough sense” of the A2/AD problem. “They’re firing missiles from surface ships, from submarines, strategic bombers, and medium-range bomb-ers.” The Chinese military’s massive
“counterintervention” exercises are another sign.
Eastern Ukraine, meanwhile, is “an emerging laboratory for future 21st-century warfare,” with Russian units using advanced sensors and small un-manned aircraft backed up by highly capable intelligence-collection plat-forms. Within minutes of coming up on the radio net, Ukrainian forces are being targeted with cluster munitions, thermobaric warheads and top-attack submunitions, he said. Russia is jam-ming GPS, knocking out Ukrainian UAVs and the proximity fuses on ar-tillery shells, disabling them.
“The operations in Ukraine high-lighted the new speed of war, driven by automated battle networks, boosted by advances in computing power,” said Work. “We are moving at cyberspeed,
Technology
Deployment of swarms of recover-able UAVs to over-whelm defenses is one A2/AD strategy.
AW_01_18_2016_p60-61.indd 60 1/14/16 2:13 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 61
DAR
PA
Wearable electronics, air and ground robots will enhance future ground forces.
Legged robots must overcome challenges to
become part of combat patrols.
and [with] intense electronic-warfare battles to dominate the information war along the forward line of troops.
“This trend is only going to continue as advanced militaries experiment with these technologies, as well as others [such as] hypersonics. In the not-too-distant future, we’ll see directed-energy weapons on the battlefeld which oper-ate at the speed of light,” he said.
Work noted that the Defense Science Board’s 2015 Summer Study concluded: “[W]e are at an infection point in the power of artifcial intelligence and au-tonomy,” which will “allow entirely new levels of . . . man-machine symbiosis on
the battlefeld. . . . That is why human-machine is explicitly in what we talk about. The way we will approach this is that this is designed to make the hu-man more efective in combat.”
Five technological building blocks of the Third Ofset strategy have been identifed. Initially, the focus will be on experimentation and demonstration to verify the soundness of the Pentagon’s hypothesis on these key components.
The frst component is autonomous deep-learning systems. These are al-ready changing the way intelligence is analyzed, but the Pentagon plans to create learning machines that will provide indications and warnings that “something is happening in the gray zone,” Work explained.
Learning machines will be used to cue intelligence systems, Work said,
citing the National Geospatial-Intel-ligence Agency’s Coherence Out of Chaos program to take all data from overhead-imaging satellites, make sense of it, and cue human analysts to look at specifc areas.
Learning systems that react at machine speeds can also be used for air and cyberdefense, he said, citing Israel’s highly automated Iron Dome counterrocket system and Darpa programs that will enable electronic-warfare platforms such as the EA-18G to counter new waveforms on the fy.
The second component is human-machine collaboration for decision-making. Work cites the F-35’s helmet-mounted display, which processes 360 deg. of information and portrays it in a way that speeds operations by allowing the pilot to make better decisions faster.
The third component is “assisted human operations,” using technologies such as wearable electronics, head-mounted displays and exoskeletons. “Our adversaries . . . are pursuing en-hanced human operations. And that scares the crap out of us. . . . But we are very comfortable going after as-sisted human operations,” he said, cit-ing Darpa’s Alias program to develop a robotic co-pilot to reduce the crew in the cockpit.
The fourth ingredient is advanced human-machine combat teaming in-volving cooperative operations with unmanned systems. Existing examples include Army AH-64 attack helicop-ters operating with MQ-1 Gray Eagle unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and
Navy plans for P-8 patrol aircraft to operate with MQ-4 Triton broad-area surveillance UAVs.
“We’re looking at large-capacity UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] that cascade medium-size UAVs that cascade out smaller-diameter UUVs and form networks. We’re looking at all sorts of diferent electronic-warfare networks. We’re looking at small sur-face vessels operating as swarms,” he said, adding “collaborative autonomy will help transform operations.”
The ffth and fnal building block of the Third Offset is network-enabled semiautonomous weapons hardened to operate in EW and a cyberenvironment and when GPS is denied. “Just like in the Cold War, when electromagnetic-pulse hardening was required, every weapon and system [must] be hardened for cy-ber,” Work said.
“Those are the fve components, and they’re going to ride on the back of a learning network,” he said. “There is a lot of skepticism right now within the Department of Defense that we’ll be able to perfect and protect such a net-work, but if you do the smart design up front, coupled with learning defenses, we believe it is not only possible, but it is a requirement.”
Work summed up: “We know that advances in AI and autonomy are driven by the commercial world—not government—which means they’ll be available to everybody. [And] second ofset technologies are widely prolifer-ated. So we shouldn’t count on a last-ing advantage.” c
The submunition-dispensing Army Tactical Missile System emerged from the Assault Breaker demo.
AW_01_18_2016_p60-61.indd 61 1/14/16 2:13 PM
60 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
DARPA
NAtioNAl ARchives
DARPA
Graham Warwick Washington
Humans at the Core Eforts to restore U.S. military superiority will
build on AI and manned/unmanned teaming
The Pentagon’s “Third Offset” strategy to restore the U.S.’s conventional technological su-
periority over Russia and China will be built on using artifcial intelligence (AI) and autonomy to assist human operations, says Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work.
Commercial advances in AI and au-tonomy are core to the central theme of the strategy—using human-machine collaboration in decision-making and teaming of manned and unmanned sys-tems in combat to overcome the prolif-eration of precision munitions and ad-vances in electronic warfare (EW) and cyberattack that have eroded the U.S.’s military edge over potential adversaries.
The Third Ofset will kick of with $12-15 billion in funding in the Pen-tagon’s fiscal 2017 budget request for “wargaming, experimentation and demonstrations,” Work said in a speech at the Center for New Ameri-can Security in December. He noted that beginning in 2017 the focus will be “on doing the intellectual underpin-ning and as much of the demonstration work as we possibly can, so Congress will help us keep this going and we can
maintain a lasting advantage.”The frst ofset strategy in the 1950s
sought to blunt the Soviet numerical and geographical advantage in Europe by developing the capability to deploy battlefeld nuclear weapons. That ap-proach was successful up to the 1970s, when the Soviets achieved strategic nuclear parity and the risk of escala-
tion to all-out nuclear war became too great, Work said.
The U.S. response was the second ofset strategy to develop conventional weapons with “near-zero miss.” The Darpa-led Assault Breaker demonstra-tion in 1977 led Soviet military leaders to conclude that precision-guided mu-nitions would be as efective as tactical nuclear weapons. “And, unquestion-ably, I would say that it helped lead to the end of the Cold War,” Work said.
The breakup of the Soviet Union gave the U.S. an advantage in guided weapons for 25 years, but now Russia and China are approaching precision-munition parity with the U.S., and other second ofset technologies such as unmanned aircraft are proliferating. At the same time, Work said, the U.S. focus on fghting Islamic extremists has slowed its response to high-end threats.
The result is the anti-access/area-denial challenge (A2/AD) facing U.S. forces. “Our conventional deterrence posture . . . is based on the assump-tion that we can project overwhelm-ing power across transoceanic dis-tances and exert our will on any opponent,” Work said.
“So the first prob-lem is breaking into a theater where the op-
ponents enjoy guided-munitions parity and can throw long-range missile strikes as dense
and as accurate as our own and [for] as long as we can. That’s the anti-access or ‘A2’ part of the A2/AD threat.
“Then, once you’re in the theater, the second problem is fghting against an adversary with conventional capabili-ties that are as advanced as our own. That is the ‘AD’ or area-denial part of the A2/AD problem,” he noted. “And the
third is doing both while under intense cyber- and electronic-warfare attack.”
Work said Russia’s long-range con-ventional strikes in Syria provide a “rough sense” of the A2/AD problem. “They’re firing missiles from surface ships, from submarines, strategic bombers, and medium-range bomb-ers.” The Chinese military’s massive
“counterintervention” exercises are another sign.
Eastern Ukraine, meanwhile, is “an emerging laboratory for future 21st-century warfare,” with Russian units using advanced sensors and small un-manned aircraft backed up by highly capable intelligence-collection plat-forms. Within minutes of coming up on the radio net, Ukrainian forces are being targeted with cluster munitions, thermobaric warheads and top-attack submunitions, he said. Russia is jam-ming GPS, knocking out Ukrainian UAVs and the proximity fuses on ar-tillery shells, disabling them.
“The operations in Ukraine high-lighted the new speed of war, driven by automated battle networks, boosted by advances in computing power,” said Work. “We are moving at cyberspeed,
Technology
Deployment of swarms of recover-able UAVs to over-whelm defenses is one A2/AD strategy.
AW_01_18_2016_p60-61.indd 60 1/14/16 2:13 PM
62 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Graham Warwick Washington
Rethinking
Single-AislesAn all-new narrowbody aircraft
may still be 15-20 years away, but
Europe’s industry is getting ready
Europe will advance toward an all-new single-aisle air-liner around 2030 or beyond with large-scale airframe technology demonstrations under the €4 billion ($4.3
billion) Clean Sky 2 public-private research program.Building on the Clean Sky 1 program that began in 2008 and
will conclude in 2017, the new program “is not starting from scratch, but will revisit diferent elements of the airframe to achieve step changes in efciency in all of them,” says Bruno Stoufet, Dassault vice president of research and develop-ment and vice chairman of the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking that manages the programs.
The Airframe Integrated Technology Demonstration (ITD) is one of the major elements of Clean Sky 2 and will mature technologies that will be validated through three integrated air-craft demonstration platforms (IADP)—for large passenger air-craft, fast rotorcraft and regional aircraft.
The technologies to be matured to a readiness level of 6—“to de-risk their use in novel products for 2030-plus,” says Stoufet—include in-novative architectures, more efcient airframes and improved engineering and manufacturing processes to reduce time to market and enhance Europe’s competitiveness against low-labor-cost countries.
The Airframe ITD has nine technology streams. These include: advanced engine/airframe integration; laminar-fow wings and nacelles to reduce drag; transonic aircraft with fexible wings and new fuselage shapes; smart multifunction control surfaces; and more fexible and passenger-friendly cabins. Airbus, Dassault, Saab and German research organi-zation Fraunhofer head up these endeavors.
Also on the docket are a next-generation wing box with low-cost composite structure; optimized high-lift and adaptive wing for turboprop aircraft; advanced integration of electrical systems into the airframe and wing structure; and novel tail-less or pressurized composite fuselages for rotorcraft. These are led by Airbus, Alenia Aermacchi, AgustaWestland, Airbus Helicopters, Evektor, Fraunhofer, Piaggio and Saab.
The innovative architecture stream will include large-scale wind-tunnel tests of an airliner confguration with highly opti-mized integration of open-rotor and ultra-high-bypass turbo-
fan engines with the rear fuselage. The main concept studied under Clean Sky 1 has a U-shaped tail that shields the engines to reduce noise.
Under the advanced laminarity stream, Europe will dem-onstrate natural and hybrid laminar-fow engine nacelles and conduct a large-scale natural laminar-fow wing ground demo. This will include more fight tests of the Airbus A340 laminar-fow fight demonstrator being built under Clean Sky 1, says Stoufet. The project will also explore the potential for lami-narity on “adverse” high-lift wing confgurations.
Areas the high-speed airframe stream will look at include optimizing wing aero-structural design using tow-steered composites; tailoring the shape and systems integration for
the forward fuselage to reduce drag; and improving metallic fuselage design with low-density and multifunction materials. Ground demonstrators will include a com-posite wingbox and metallic partial fuse-
lage—the most likely materials combina-tion for a next-generation Airbus A320 replacement.
The novel control technology stream includes development of enhanced gust-load alleviation; anti-flutter control to gain aeroelastic stability margin; efcient
multifunction control surfaces; and integrated moving leading edges incorporating electric ice protection.
The remaining technology streams are structured around providing components required by the three IADPs. These in-clude advanced composite wingboxes for the large passenger and regional aircraft demos, and for the tiltrotor and com-pound fast-rotorcraft demonstrators to be fown by Agusta-Westland and Airbus Helicopters, respectively.
The advanced fuselage stream is focused on supporting the fast-rotorcraft IADP with a full-scale fightworthy tail assem-bly and pressurized fuselage demonstrator for the next-gen-eration civil tiltrotor. A full-scale, more afordable composite fuselage barrel and smaller-scale, low-weight, low-cost cabin demos will support the other IADPs.
Supporting the regional-aircraft IADP, the high-lift tech-nology stream will look at improved nacelle and engine in-tegration and advanced high-lift systems to reduce drag on high-wing configurations with large-diameter turboprop propulsors. The integrated structures stream will include an “electrical wing” demo and a full-scale forward fuselage with systems integrated into the cockpit structure. c
Clean
Sk
y Jo
int U
nd
er
tak
ing
daSSaUlt aviation
Clean Sky 2 will look more closely at rear-fuselage engine/airframe integration.
Dassault is investigating the noise-shielding U-tail under Clean Sky 1.
TECHNOLOGY
AW_01_18_2016_p62.indd 62 1/14/16 12:58 PM
AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 18-31, 2016 63
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62 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 AviationWeek.com/awst
Graham Warwick Washington
Rethinking
Single-AislesAn all-new narrowbody aircraft
may still be 15-20 years away, but
Europe’s industry is getting ready
Europe will advance toward an all-new single-aisle air-liner around 2030 or beyond with large-scale airframe technology demonstrations under the €4 billion ($4.3
billion) Clean Sky 2 public-private research program.Building on the Clean Sky 1 program that began in 2008 and
will conclude in 2017, the new program “is not starting from scratch, but will revisit diferent elements of the airframe to achieve step changes in efciency in all of them,” says Bruno Stoufet, Dassault vice president of research and develop-ment and vice chairman of the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking that manages the programs.
The Airframe Integrated Technology Demonstration (ITD) is one of the major elements of Clean Sky 2 and will mature technologies that will be validated through three integrated air-craft demonstration platforms (IADP)—for large passenger air-craft, fast rotorcraft and regional aircraft.
The technologies to be matured to a readiness level of 6—“to de-risk their use in novel products for 2030-plus,” says Stoufet—include in-novative architectures, more efcient airframes and improved engineering and manufacturing processes to reduce time to market and enhance Europe’s competitiveness against low-labor-cost countries.
The Airframe ITD has nine technology streams. These include: advanced engine/airframe integration; laminar-fow wings and nacelles to reduce drag; transonic aircraft with fexible wings and new fuselage shapes; smart multifunction control surfaces; and more fexible and passenger-friendly cabins. Airbus, Dassault, Saab and German research organi-zation Fraunhofer head up these endeavors.
Also on the docket are a next-generation wing box with low-cost composite structure; optimized high-lift and adaptive wing for turboprop aircraft; advanced integration of electrical systems into the airframe and wing structure; and novel tail-less or pressurized composite fuselages for rotorcraft. These are led by Airbus, Alenia Aermacchi, AgustaWestland, Airbus Helicopters, Evektor, Fraunhofer, Piaggio and Saab.
The innovative architecture stream will include large-scale wind-tunnel tests of an airliner confguration with highly opti-mized integration of open-rotor and ultra-high-bypass turbo-
fan engines with the rear fuselage. The main concept studied under Clean Sky 1 has a U-shaped tail that shields the engines to reduce noise.
Under the advanced laminarity stream, Europe will dem-onstrate natural and hybrid laminar-fow engine nacelles and conduct a large-scale natural laminar-fow wing ground demo. This will include more fight tests of the Airbus A340 laminar-fow fight demonstrator being built under Clean Sky 1, says Stoufet. The project will also explore the potential for lami-narity on “adverse” high-lift wing confgurations.
Areas the high-speed airframe stream will look at include optimizing wing aero-structural design using tow-steered composites; tailoring the shape and systems integration for
the forward fuselage to reduce drag; and improving metallic fuselage design with low-density and multifunction materials. Ground demonstrators will include a com-posite wingbox and metallic partial fuse-
lage—the most likely materials combina-tion for a next-generation Airbus A320 replacement.
The novel control technology stream includes development of enhanced gust-load alleviation; anti-flutter control to gain aeroelastic stability margin; efcient
multifunction control surfaces; and integrated moving leading edges incorporating electric ice protection.
The remaining technology streams are structured around providing components required by the three IADPs. These in-clude advanced composite wingboxes for the large passenger and regional aircraft demos, and for the tiltrotor and com-pound fast-rotorcraft demonstrators to be fown by Agusta-Westland and Airbus Helicopters, respectively.
The advanced fuselage stream is focused on supporting the fast-rotorcraft IADP with a full-scale fightworthy tail assem-bly and pressurized fuselage demonstrator for the next-gen-eration civil tiltrotor. A full-scale, more afordable composite fuselage barrel and smaller-scale, low-weight, low-cost cabin demos will support the other IADPs.
Supporting the regional-aircraft IADP, the high-lift tech-nology stream will look at improved nacelle and engine in-tegration and advanced high-lift systems to reduce drag on high-wing configurations with large-diameter turboprop propulsors. The integrated structures stream will include an “electrical wing” demo and a full-scale forward fuselage with systems integrated into the cockpit structure. c
Clean
Sk
y Jo
int U
nd
er
tak
ing
daSSaUlt aviation
Clean Sky 2 will look more closely at rear-fuselage engine/airframe integration.
Dassault is investigating the noise-shielding U-tail under Clean Sky 1.
TECHNOLOGY
AW_01_18_2016_p62.indd 62 1/14/16 12:58 PM
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Jan. 25-28—IMAC 34. Rosen Plaza Hotel. Orlando, Florida. See sem.org/conf-imac-top.aspFeb. 2-4—The Unmanned Systems Conference and Exposition. World Forum. The Hague, Netherlands. See tusexpo.comFeb. 3—The Next Generation of Aircraft Fuel Systems: A Step Ahead Forum. Bristol Zoo Gardens. Bristol, England. See safuel-fp7.eu/page/fuel-system-forumFeb. 9-10—Microelectronics Reliability and Qualifcation Working Meeting. The Aerospace Corp. El Segundo, California. See cvent.com/d/5fq8yp Feb. 9-11—PNAA’s 15th Annual Aerospace Manufacturing Conference. Lynnwood Convention Center. Lynnwood, Washington. See pnaa.net/events/annual-conference/2016-conferenceFeb. 16-21—Singapore Airshow 2016. Changi Exhibition Center. Singapore. See singaporeairshow.comFeb. 17-19—IATA Legal Symposium 2016. The Hotel Arts. Barcelona, Spain. See iata.org/events/Pages/legal-symposium.aspxFeb. 25—IATA & The Wings Club Aviation Day USA. Grand Hyatt New York. New York. See iata.org/events/pages/aviation-day-usa.aspxFeb. 28-March 1—Istat Americas 2016. JW Marriott Desert Ridge. Phoenix. See istat.org/AmericasFeb. 29-March 3—Ground System Architectures Workshop. Renaissance Los Angeles Airport Hotel. Los Angeles. See gsaw.orgMarch 1-2—IATA Incident Review Meeting. Emirates Airline Headquarters. Dubai. See iata.org/events/Pages/incident-review-meeting.aspxMarch 1-3—European Space Components Conference. Space Research and Technology Center/European Space Agency. Noordwijk The Netherlands. See congrexprojects.com/2016-events/16c03/introductionMarch 5-12—IEEE Aerospace Conference. Yellowstone Conference Center. Big Sky, Montana. See aeroconf.org
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Economists have long extolled the power of competition to deliver the best products at the lowest prices. Sadly, competition is often lacking in major military aircraft
procurements. Indeed, the contractors for the largest U.S. combat aircraft programs over the next two decades—the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Lockheed Martin) and the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) (Northrop Grumman)—will probably have no competitors through almost their entire production runs.
However, there still is a way to put competitive pressure on them. The need to replace the F-15E Strike Eagle two de-cades from now presents an enticing opportunity to push these two massive programs toward minimizing costs and maximizing capability now.
But how does the Pentagon get in this sort of jam in the frst place? In today’s era of a consolidated defense indus-try, the longest the Defense Department can usually hope to maintain competition is to the engineering and manufactur-ing development phase, when a single contractor is chosen
to actually build the design it ofered. Long before the ma-jority of production contracts will be signed, the prospect of another contractor stepping in and snagging the work will have become an empty threat.
Intelligent contract mechanisms can mitigate the efect of poor manufacturer performance somewhat—but only to a degree. In the rare instances when competitive pressures do exist throughout a production run, the result is often superior quality and lower cost. In a famous example, the Government Accountability Ofce found that introducing a second engine option for the F-16 saved taxpayers more than 20% in acquiring the powerplants.
Unfortunately, neither the F-35 nor the LRS-B program has competition built into it. The F-35 is six years behind schedule and unit costs have risen by almost 50%, but ul-timately there is no other option to replace Air Force F-16s and Marine Corps AV-8Bs or to provide a piloted stealth ca-pability for the Navy. While we hope the LRS-B efort will perform better, it, too, will cease to be a competitive pro-gram as soon as a bid protest is resolved. Making cost a key performance parameter when the two contractor teams were ofering competing designs and procuring the aircraft
through the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Ofce might keep the program on time and within budget. But here again, there will probably be no option but to build 100 LRS-B air-craft to replace the B-52 and B-1 feets.
How then can some competitive pressure be placed on the F-35 and LRS-B? That’s where the requirement to replace the F-15E comes in. The Air Force is currently upgrading 217 F-15Es, which will enable the type to remain a capable strike platform until around 2040.
Conveniently, both the F-35 and the LRS-B will be reach-ing the end of their production runs around that time. The payloads and costs of the aircraft make them somewhat substitutable as strike platforms. According to the latest numbers, the F-35A’s unit procurement cost will be $83.5 million in 2037 and will average $103 million over the entire 1,763-aircraft run. Among the few details thus far released about the LRS-B is the price ceiling: The average procure-ment cost for the frst 100 aircraft will be no more than $607 million (in fscal 2016 dollars). In short, an LRS-B will cost approximately six times more than an F-35A.
Payloads are harder to compare because LRS-B specif-cations have not been disclosed. But it seems reasonable to expect that the LRS-B’s weapons bay will accommodate 8-16 2,000-lb. bombs—4-8 times the bomb load of the F-35A.
Of course, there is more to capability than that. The LRS-B will have far greater range than the F-35A and be stealthier and able to carry larger weapons. Meanwhile, it is highly unlikely that the LRS-B will carry air-to-air missiles or be able to dash at supersonic speeds. So the tradeofs would not be simple. Still, one or the other might perform the F-15E role.
The payof could be large. Building an additional 200 F-35As or 40 LRS-Bs would be worth about $20 billion to a contractor. And the benefts to the government would come soon. Both Lockheed and Northrop would know for the re-mainder of their current programs that every delay and cost overrun would count against their chances of extending pro-duction to replace the F-15E.
The advent of other platforms—a sixth-generation fghter or a stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle—may present additional options to replace the F-15E. If these enter pro-duction in time to compete, so much the better; more op-tions, more competition. But an early announcement that the Pentagon will consider the F-35 and LRS-B as replace-ments for the F-15E will maintain competitive pressure on these programs in the near term. And it might just save the taxpayer a few billion dollars while delivering a bit more ca-pability for the warfghter. c
Daniel Z. Katz is the director for defense analysis and data for Aviation Week Intelligence and Data Services. He served in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces soldier and later in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
““
Can JSF or LRS-B
Replace F-15E?
Viewpoint
By DaniEL Z. KatZ
66 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
USAF AirmAn 1St ClASS JoShUA Kleinholz
When competitive pressures exist throughout a production run, the result is often superior quality and lower cost.
AW_01_18_2016_p66.indd 66 1/14/16 4:00 PM
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601AWBIBC.indd 1 1/12/2016 10:33:55 AM
Economists have long extolled the power of competition to deliver the best products at the lowest prices. Sadly, competition is often lacking in major military aircraft
procurements. Indeed, the contractors for the largest U.S. combat aircraft programs over the next two decades—the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Lockheed Martin) and the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) (Northrop Grumman)—will probably have no competitors through almost their entire production runs.
However, there still is a way to put competitive pressure on them. The need to replace the F-15E Strike Eagle two de-cades from now presents an enticing opportunity to push these two massive programs toward minimizing costs and maximizing capability now.
But how does the Pentagon get in this sort of jam in the frst place? In today’s era of a consolidated defense indus-try, the longest the Defense Department can usually hope to maintain competition is to the engineering and manufactur-ing development phase, when a single contractor is chosen
to actually build the design it ofered. Long before the ma-jority of production contracts will be signed, the prospect of another contractor stepping in and snagging the work will have become an empty threat.
Intelligent contract mechanisms can mitigate the efect of poor manufacturer performance somewhat—but only to a degree. In the rare instances when competitive pressures do exist throughout a production run, the result is often superior quality and lower cost. In a famous example, the Government Accountability Ofce found that introducing a second engine option for the F-16 saved taxpayers more than 20% in acquiring the powerplants.
Unfortunately, neither the F-35 nor the LRS-B program has competition built into it. The F-35 is six years behind schedule and unit costs have risen by almost 50%, but ul-timately there is no other option to replace Air Force F-16s and Marine Corps AV-8Bs or to provide a piloted stealth ca-pability for the Navy. While we hope the LRS-B efort will perform better, it, too, will cease to be a competitive pro-gram as soon as a bid protest is resolved. Making cost a key performance parameter when the two contractor teams were ofering competing designs and procuring the aircraft
through the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Ofce might keep the program on time and within budget. But here again, there will probably be no option but to build 100 LRS-B air-craft to replace the B-52 and B-1 feets.
How then can some competitive pressure be placed on the F-35 and LRS-B? That’s where the requirement to replace the F-15E comes in. The Air Force is currently upgrading 217 F-15Es, which will enable the type to remain a capable strike platform until around 2040.
Conveniently, both the F-35 and the LRS-B will be reach-ing the end of their production runs around that time. The payloads and costs of the aircraft make them somewhat substitutable as strike platforms. According to the latest numbers, the F-35A’s unit procurement cost will be $83.5 million in 2037 and will average $103 million over the entire 1,763-aircraft run. Among the few details thus far released about the LRS-B is the price ceiling: The average procure-ment cost for the frst 100 aircraft will be no more than $607 million (in fscal 2016 dollars). In short, an LRS-B will cost approximately six times more than an F-35A.
Payloads are harder to compare because LRS-B specif-cations have not been disclosed. But it seems reasonable to expect that the LRS-B’s weapons bay will accommodate 8-16 2,000-lb. bombs—4-8 times the bomb load of the F-35A.
Of course, there is more to capability than that. The LRS-B will have far greater range than the F-35A and be stealthier and able to carry larger weapons. Meanwhile, it is highly unlikely that the LRS-B will carry air-to-air missiles or be able to dash at supersonic speeds. So the tradeofs would not be simple. Still, one or the other might perform the F-15E role.
The payof could be large. Building an additional 200 F-35As or 40 LRS-Bs would be worth about $20 billion to a contractor. And the benefts to the government would come soon. Both Lockheed and Northrop would know for the re-mainder of their current programs that every delay and cost overrun would count against their chances of extending pro-duction to replace the F-15E.
The advent of other platforms—a sixth-generation fghter or a stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle—may present additional options to replace the F-15E. If these enter pro-duction in time to compete, so much the better; more op-tions, more competition. But an early announcement that the Pentagon will consider the F-35 and LRS-B as replace-ments for the F-15E will maintain competitive pressure on these programs in the near term. And it might just save the taxpayer a few billion dollars while delivering a bit more ca-pability for the warfghter. c
Daniel Z. Katz is the director for defense analysis and data for Aviation Week Intelligence and Data Services. He served in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces soldier and later in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
““
Can JSF or LRS-B
Replace F-15E?
Viewpoint
By DaniEL Z. KatZ
66 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/JAnUARy 18-31, 2016 aviationWeek.com/awst
USAF AirmAn 1St ClASS JoShUA Kleinholz
When competitive pressures exist throughout a production run, the result is often superior quality and lower cost.
AW_01_18_2016_p66.indd 66 1/14/16 4:00 PM
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601AWBBC.indd 1 1/13/2016 9:45:58 AM