Rebecca Springate: April 2012 Archives

Required navigation performance (RNP) - the future of airport approach and departure systems - has finally come to Europe.
It would be unfair to Atlantic Airways and the Faroe Islands to say that RNP has entered Europe by the back door, but they will understand the point. The Faroes' airport at Vagar cannot be served by any other kind of all-weather approach aid because terrain at both ends of the runway makes straight approaches impossible. For the same reason, a decade ago Alaska Airlines and the US Federal Aviation Administration began installing just such approaches in Alaskan valley-based airports. It has been a massive success there. New Zealand has acted in the same way as the USA - setting up RNP approaches where nothing else would work.
Alaska was America's back door, but since then Southwest Airlines has been championing the widespread introduction of GPS-based precision area navigation (PRNAV) approaches and departures even where they are not the only way, simply because RNP approaches and departures save time and fuel, and limit noise and pollution.
China has used RNP widely for years, admittedly starting at its more challenging airports. But China has the advantage of working from a blank canvas. Europe's canvas is far from blank, but is it too much to hope that it might start thinking laterally? Probably.
 
(This first appeared as the lead Comment article in Flight International 3 April)

Terminating the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor programme after 187 production examples was shortsighted and irresponsible. The USA spent some $70 billion on a fighter that will have no true rival for decades - but that investment was squandered amid an ideological debate over the changing nature of warfare.
Ultimately, the view that future enemies will be  bands of guerrillas or poorly armed despots won over the mantra of being prepared for high-end peer-level threats. Instead of 750 jets, the US Air Force was allowed to buy barely enough F-22s for six squadrons, while training and test units go neglected.
More astonishing is that production was only ended just as the programme was entering into full-rate production, so the costs sunk into it were never recouped through relatively low-cost high-volume production, which would also have yielded a more robust fleet.
The USA's strategic shift towards the Pacific and China signals that a world without peer-level threats was a fantasy. Against high-end threats, a fighter with the stealth, sensors and kinematics to defeat the most potent of anti-access threats is invaluable. The Raptor is that fighter, designed to "kick down the door" by ­annihilating enemy air and ground-based defences. 
Threats include surveillance radars networked with a new generation of integrated air defence systems, which pose a lethal threat to non-stealthy fourth-generation fighters such as the Lockheed F-16 or Boeing F-15 and F/A-18. These systems include the Russian-built S-300, S-400 and S-500 surface-to-air missile systems and Chinese copies. The S-400 system is reputedly able to engage aerial targets from as far away as 400km, and the new S-500 able to shoot down aircraft 600km away.
In development are Russian and Chinese fighters that are superior to existing Western fourth-generation designs, including Sukhoi's PAK-FA and potentially Chengdu's J-20. Other fighters such as Sukhoi's Su-30 and Su-35 variants of the Flanker and Chengdu's J-10 can match current-generation US fighters.
While superior pilot training gives US pilots an edge, it cannot assure air dominance. And although the F-35 is a very capable aircraft with its stealth and powerful integrated sensors and avionics, it does not afford the same level of assured dominance that the Raptor does.
If the F-35 is not flown correctly with tactics that play to its strengths, it can be easy to lose. The F-22 affords such a gross advantage that it can compensate for errors - so its pilots hold all the cards.
 
(This first appeared as the lead Comment article in Flight International 3 April)