Murdo Morrison: August 2012 Archives

For too long, a business jet boom in Brazil has been threatened only by a shortage of infrastructure.

Few countries have a richer history with aviation. Local legend Alberto Santos-Dumont is a worthy peer to the Wright brothers and Louis Blériot. Aviation opened the Brazilian frontier 40 years ago; the nation's aerospace industry is the envy of most of the world.

But Brazil's government has never embraced the rise of its business jet market. Despite a recent census showing 714 paved runways dotting the nation, fixed-base operations remain illegal there. This forces business jet operators to share slots at 130 airports used by an equally booming commercial aviation sector. Capacity at metropolitan airports is naturally biased towards the commercial sector, forcing operators of business aircraft to plan routes carefully and avail of airports sometimes dozens of miles from their actual destination.

At LABACE, government officials finally embraced a plan to relieve the pressure. New legislation pending the signature of President Dilma Rousseff would allow private airports to charge operating fees for the first time, clearing the way for fixed-base operators.

The measure is long overdue, to the point of being too late to address urgent needs: the football World Cup comes to Brazil in 2014, along with a swarm of business jets. But at least the country might finally receive the infrastructure its business jet sector deserves.

(This first appeared as the second leading article in Flight International

An advanced defence aerospace sector offering both high-technology jobs and an independent production capability is the dream of many governments. Nowhere is this more true than India. New Delhi's recent revamp of its defence offset policy seeks to address some of the shortfalls of its previous efforts to ensure that 30% of its defence import expenditure is reinvested at home.

Technology transfer is given greater emphasis through the use of multipliers, and foreign vendors are granted more time to dispense offset obligations. The new rules also allow a higher degree of flexibility to make amendments to an offset agreement after it has been signed.

On paper, it all sounds great. Certainly, it seems that vendors need only to sell a modest part of their soul in return for vast contracts. However, behind the scenes another picture emerges.

In private, contractors question the ability of India's still nascent defence sector to absorb advanced technologies, materials and processes. The leap from where Indian industry is now to where parliament wants it to be is, in some cases, simply too great.

Moreover, the monetary value of intellectual property may be open to debate. One industry source indicates that companies are content to hand over advanced blueprints in return for high-value offsets because the blueprints end up in desk drawers, unused, and there is limited follow-up to check whether offset agreements are implemented properly.

Figures released by the Indian defence ministry certainly highlight the importance of getting offset arrangements right. Across the financial years 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the nation's defence equipment spending favoured indigenous sources over foreign manufacturers by a factor of 2:1, but in 2011-2012 the gap narrowed to 15%, and in the first quarter of the current financial year, external suppliers slightly got the better of their domestic counterparts. In absolute terms, each group was favoured with more than $1 billion of spending in that single quarter.

For India to make offsets work, it needs to make a realistic assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of its defence sector, and reward the types of offset agreements that will help it rise up the global value chain.

More crucially, it must increase the level of transparency and accountability involved in the execution of offset obligations.

(This first appeared as the main leader in Flight International 28 August)

Boeing's CH-47 Chinook might become the first rotorcraft to fly for a century. Its success is due to innovative design and prodigious power margins.

It is fast, agile and has outstanding high altitude performance. It can also be quickly and easily upgraded - and will continue to evolve for the foreseeable future.

But the Chinook's success and longevity also highlights a quandary in the helicopter design world.

Since the introduction of gas turbine engines, there had not been a real technological breakthrough until the advent of Sikorsky's X-2 compound helicopter prototype. But while the X-2 shattered speed records - thumbing its nose at retreating blade stall - it is unclear if it will ever find a buyer.

Nor is it clear if Eurocopter's X3 high-speed compound helicopter is on any better a footing.

Meanwhile, tilt-rotor technology increasingly looks to be an evolutionary dead end. The compromises to hover performances imposed by that design do not appear to be acceptable to most potential customers. Nor is the high price of such aircraft something many customers are willing to pay.

The bottom line is that while speed is always nice to have, the market does not appear to be willing to pay a premium for that added performance. This means that aircraft like the Chinook will probably soldier on decade after decade.

(This first appeared as the second leading article in Flight International 14 August 2012)

As the Martian dust began to settle around NASA's Curiosity rover, jubilant mission-control scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were treated to a rousing pep talk by President Obama's science advisor, John Holdren. Having just monitored the entry, descent and successful landing of the car-sized Curiosity, they hardly needed anybody to tell them they were good. But Holdren pumped them up a bit more, anyway.

The "most challenging mission... in the history of robotic planetary exploration", he said, "will stand as an American point of pride far into the future."

However, Holdren went on: "Our continued pre-eminence and progress in space and here on Earth... depends on our continuing commitment to science, technology and innovation, and the passion for adventure that has driven us to explore new worlds.

"By maintaining our investment in basic research and exploration we ensure America will remain at the forefront of the scientific frontier."

All of that sounds like very good value for the $2.5 billion that it will have cost to build Curiosity, launch it and run it on Mars for the next two years.

But just in case the President's message was unclear, Holdren added: "The administration is committed to a vibrant and co-ordinated strategy of Mars exploration and planetary exploration more generally."

President Obama, of course, does not need to tell those scientists at JPL they are doing something worthwhile. But Holden surely chose his words carefully, in particular the phrase "a vibrant and co-ordinated strategy", because he was really addressing Congress, which controls the money.

The sad fact is that as things stand NASA has no funded Mars plans beyond Curiosity. A mission with no follow-on does not represent a strategy, let alone a vibrant one.

Nor is it co-ordinated, which everybody at NASA knows it needs to be. Earlier this year, NASA told the European Space Agency that, thanks to Congress's refusal to play ball, it had to pull out of planned joint 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions.

The Russians stepped in, so everybody's Mars goals - including, eventually, a sample return mission - can carry on after Curiosity.

Let us hope, though, that Congress changes course and lets NASA rejoin the Mars effort. Curiosity is magnificent, but it would be a terrible shame if its final achievement was to come to rest at the end of USA's exploration road.

(This first appeared as the main leading article in Flight International 14 August 2012)