November 2011 Archives

Embraer's decision to follow the heavyweights in Toulouse and Seattle down the re-engining path might have given Bombardier a clear run with customers favouring an all-new aircraft, but it is hard not to wonder whether this leaves the CSeries as a solution waiting for a problem.

Seeing the avalanche of orders and commitments for the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 Max - as well as the paucity of interest in the CSeries - doubtless gave the Brazilian airframer a shove in favour of similarly improving its already-successful regional jet family.

Embraer is effectively completing a pincer movement on its Canadian rival, squeezing the CSeries from below just as Airbus and Boeing are from above - and both sides in this multinational vice hope to make customers wonder what the CSeries will offer that an A319, 737 or E-Jet with lower fuel-burn cannot.

Less clear, of course, is the degree to which Embraer needs to tweak the E-Jets in order to retain the family's competitive edge without hefty investment.

Crucial to the whole plan is the powerplant question. General Electric has basked in cosy exclusivity on the E-Jet family, which has logged more than 1,000 orders, but will need to come up with a serious successor if it plans to retain that comfortable position. Pratt & Whitney's geared turbofan has not only a strong foothold within the Airbus re-engining camp, but also a position on the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, which surely puts it firmly among the starting line-up to power Embraer's next-generation aircraft.

Embraer has loosely discussed various possibilities for airframe enhancements but will need discipline to avoid temptation. Like the apocryphal family broom that has only needed a couple of new heads and handles, there is a hazy line between an improved aircraft and a distinctly new one, and it is a short sleepwalk from new engines and landing-gear to new wings, avionics, fuselage and cabin.

Talk of potential orders is premature for an aircraft yet to come into sharp focus. Casual expressions of interest cost nothing - and would hardly be unexpected from major E-Jet operators - but are a long way from contractual documents and pre-delivery payments.

There might have been a certain "safety in numbers" element to Embraer's decision to re-engine, rather than follow Bombardier down the road less-travelled, but the only numbers that will count are the ones that stack up in the Brazilian order backlog.

(This piece appeared as the main Leader article in the 29 November issue of Flight International and does not necessarily represent my personal views)

Manufacturers of perhaps the world's most powerful piece of military kit - the fighter aircraft - have never seemed so helpless.

The UAE is wise to wrangle the best deal it can get, but should move fast. They may not have such a strong bargaining position for very long. ■

[This article appeared as the lead Comment article in the 22 November issue of Flight International]

There is an old joke in the software industry: a new product can be on time, it can be on budget, or it can work properly - pick any two. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is blemished on all three counts, and the US government thinks it knows why.

"Concurrency" is the latest culprit for the F-35's acquisition and development challenges. In acquisition parlance, concurrency means the development phase overlaps with the production phase. The government decides, at programme start, to order hundreds of production aircraft, years before development problems are discovered and fixed - and then pays to retrofit redesigned parts on aircraft delivered late because changes complicated the manufacturing process.

Why does the government adopt a concurrent schedule? In theory, it should allow the military to get new weapon systems into operational service much sooner. Linear schedules allow the contractor to finish development before shifting into production mode. For decades, the US Government Accountability Office has advocated that the Department of Defense adopt this approach with new weapon systems. However, the DoD has nearly always ignored the advice.

Every major combat aircraft programme in modern history, including the F-22 and F-15, has had highly overlapping development and production phases. Even commercial programmes, where limiting financial risk is prioritised, have concurrent schedules. Hence, Boeing has built dozens of 787s, but the first one has yet to enter scheduled service with All Nippon Airways.

Two DoD studies - published in 1988 and this year - have examined concurrency and found no correlation with cost or schedule growth. The most recent study actually found concurrency is most likely to decrease risk of cost growth in major weapon systems.

The real problem with concurrency seems to concern what happens, not at the beginning of the programme, but at the end. When production is stopped short by hundreds of aircraft, the level of concurrency risk appears much higher than was assumed when the programme's acquisition plan was approved. The F-22 may be the perfect example. When the plan called for buying 750 aircraft, buying several dozen production aircraft during the development phase did not seem so unbalanced. When the numbers were cut to 187 F-22As, the concurrency risk seemed unacceptably high.

This mismatch between plans and execution is the root of the problem, and the F-35 is paying the price.

[This piece originally appeared as the Flight International leader in our 8 November issue].

On both sides of the Atlantic, the debate about government spending in this time of austerity is taking on increasingly apocalyptic tones. The governments' need to grapple with debt crises threatens - we are warned with ever-greater urgency - to discard a Western aerospace technology superiority built up over the best part of a century. Meanwhile, spending cuts will deprive the industry of the fuel that has made it a driver of desperately needed economic growth.

Not surprisingly, one of the most vocal doomsayers is the US Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). Faced with severe - and possibly automatic - defence spending cuts, AIA president Marion Blakey has gone on the offensive. In Blakey, who headed the Federal Aviation Administration before moving over to lead the AIA, the US industry has as strident a lobbyist as can be hired. Last week, she actually joined forces with the IAM machinists' union - typically a thorn in the industry's side - to warn Washington that saving $45 billion in annual spending would slash $85 billion from the economy and bump up unemployment by 0.6%.

Also last month, Boeing Commercial Airplanes boss Jim Albaugh, in his capacity as AIA chairman, called on national leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to remember, as they grapple with financial crises, that aerospace is not a cost - it is an investment. The AIA's opposite number in the UK, the ADS, forecast that up to 30,000 jobs will go as defence spending gets trimmed. Airbus boss Tom Enders, speaking as head of Germany's aerospace association, has echoed a widely expressed sentiment in warning that defence cuts will lead to a permanent loss of technological capability.

While it is no surprise to hear that from the industry, it is notable that no less august a body than the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has joined the fray. Dating back to 1847 - its first president was "father of the railways" George Stephenson -
IMechE is proudly independent of government and business. And IMechE is alarmed.

Its immediate concern is for the UK, but its reasoning applies equally well throughout the West. While quiet on the impact of buying more or less fighter jets, IMechE knows what it is talking about when it says that strategic and intensive government support for basic aeronautics research is the only way to we can hope to develop technology that will define the aircraft of the future. If those aircraft are to be Western, we had better keep the R&D machine spinning at full throttle.

(The above article appeared as the main leader piece in the 1 November issue of Flight International. We will be running every Flight International weekly leader in this blog)