May 2007 Archives

Johnny Bombmaker: Ok. Suppose the US Air Force flips out and buys some counter-insurgency aircraft? What do you think they're going to do with it?

The DEW Line: Er, counter some insurgents, I guess.

JB: There happens to be a good reason for a counter-insurgency fleet, but it's not what you're thinking. It isn't just about squadrons of networked Warbirds roaming the earth in search of combined arms engagements against lightly armed opponents.

TDL: Ok, go on.

JB: Have you heard of the 1,000-ship Navy? It's the idea that the US Navy should muster the combined might of the allied navies into a relatively seamless operational force. Partly, that means their navies have to step up to play at the level of our navy. And, partly, it means that our navy has to step down to play at the level of some of their navies, which in reality are often coast guards and river patrols by another name. This is why the USN is suddenly buying high-performance fishing boats and converting them into "riverine vessels" for a new "riverine command".

TDL: So if the USN can buy fishing boats to play with less sophisticated foreign navies, the air force should buy single-engine turboprops to engage with the less sophisticated foreign air forces?

JB: Well, it's an idea anyway. Buy turbo-props so the air force can not only engage with the air forces that fly fighters, but also the air forces in some of the so-called "gap countries" that you keep hearing about these days. It at least gives the counter-insurgency fleet a reason to exist in peacetime. It's a little clumsy to call it the "1,000-aircraft air force", but maybe brand it the "Infinite Wing".

TDL: I kind of like that.

Today, you can:

1. Find out the Afghan National Army has commandos
2. Put in a bid for what's got to be THE WORST JOB ON THE PLANET ... hint: it involves driving trucks, riding in convoys and doing both in Iraq
3. Take a standard 120mm projectile round for a tank, add a seeker and a booster rocket and (drum roll ...) revolutionize tank warfare by allowing the tank gunner to shoot at targets he can't see. (Score for using the terms "revolutionize" and "tank warfare" in the same sentence for the first time since, oh, say, the Yom Kippur War)
4. Invent a system that can somehow detect a sniper before he can fire a shot ... and, while you're at it, help me find my keys

The counter-insurgency aircraft debate continues. Please join in by posting here. While you're thining it over, here's excerpts from the wonderful ongoing discussion on this blog. It's a debate based entirely on facts, reasons and good insight -- how original!

The debate all started when Johnny Bombmaker said:

There's a reason why single-engine turboprops almost disappeared after World War II. They get shot out of the sky faster than a duck flying over a South Texas shooting range. Do you realize how many A-1 Skyraiders got blown out of the sky in Vietnam? The threat in Iraq is even worse. Much better to do it the modern way: just park an F-15 or an F-16 with a targeting pod, a strafing cannon and a guided bomb up above 15,000 feet.

Joe Katzman replied:

Sometimes being slow isn't the worst thing in the world. The British got a Harrier shot out from under them in the Falklands because it was too fast, and had to keep coming back at low level to try and spot its target. If you keep throwing fastballs, folks eventually hit them.

Robot Economist followed:

Not to get too radical here, but why not consider something even lower tech/lower cost like a blimp. They can be virtually stationary over the target and achieve a pretty good altitude at a low operating cost (heck, the bomb and the spotter on the ground do all the work).

Joe Katzman went back to the original question:

If someone told you they had a system that would save 13 pilots and aircraft, but kill 300 soldiers and result in $300 million in economic dislocation due to areas not covered fully and attacked successfully... would that seem like a good deal to you? All aspects of this equation matter. It's not just about the aircraft.

Then HerkEng entered the discussion, siding with the turboprops:

I am not saying that a trainer aircraft is best for the mission but, it would be much better than an F-16 or even an A-10.

But Joe Katzman posted a new warning on tuboprops:

The Super Tucanos, AT-6Bs et. al. DO have an important issue, but it isn't speed. Rather, it's the turboprop engine up front that vents in the forward-center section of the fuselage. Wrong place to attract a missile - unlike, say, a Czech L-159 light attack jet, a missile that detonates behind target looks like a kill rather than a miss and some tail pipe damage.

Dan G joined in, also warning about the relative merits of turboprops:

Just how many JDAMs could a Tucano haul to 15,000' I wonder? Not many I bet.

Yours truly re-entered the discussion, taking issue with the notion that turboprops are too vulnerable for the CAS mission:

As long as helicopter pilots are flying even slower and lower than a Super Tucano every day in Iraq, I think we can dispense with the reasoning that fixed-wing pilots must be immune from taking any similar risks, if it is the most effective way to do the mission.

HerkEng made a good point that the turboprop's IR signature problems can be overcome:

Who said that they can't build a shroud around the exhaust like they do on the AC-130s? It is very effective for them and would not be that hard to make for the PT6A.

Dan C rejoined:

Don't forget how the roles of helicopters and CAS aircraft differ. CAS aircraft are deliberately routed into harm's way, while tranport helicopters fly around hot spots. The ones that do - gunships - carry heavy armour, just like the only other aircraft that operates at low level - the A-10. I don't see a titanium bathtub in the Tucano.

Today, you can: 

1. Help military doctors recognize the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder
2. Understand why the chemical properties of rubber insulation create problems for the US Air Force's inventory of solid rocket motors
3. Read something that makes you ponder why the US Army is suddenly issuing RFIs on behalf of Boeing for the Future Combat System program. That used to be Boeing's job. Has the army decided to assert more authority over the program, a la Deepwater?

4. Buy a system that can bring suspicious-looking vehicles approaching traffic checkpoints to a stop, hopefully reducing the need to shoot at the potentially innocent people inside the vehicle

5.  Hire a Catholic "director of faith formation", whatever that is

No one knows his classified military hardware like my former colleague Bill Sweetman on Defense Technology International magazine's "Ares" blog, but I'm going to stick my neck out here and disagree with him.

Last week, Bill wrote on Ares about the existence of a quasi-classified new sensor called the Littoral  Surveillance Radar Surveillance (LSRS). I call it quasi-classified because the sensor's existence is a public fact (see here), but its capability and purpose are kept vigorously secret by the US Navy and contractors Boeing and Raytheon.

Bill wrote that the LSRS is a good fit for the Boeing 737-800-derived P-8A Poseidon, the submarine-hunting twin jet that remains in development. That's the part where I disagree.

Or, more precisely, that's the part where navy Captain Mike Moran disagrees. Moran is the deputy program manager for developing the P-8A fleet. I interviewed him today in Seattle to catch up on the P-8A program. I asked him if the navy was interested in the new radar sensor for the P-8A.

His response: "No. Not at this time." As Moran answered my follow-up questions, it became clear that "not at this time" really meant "never".

Moran's dismissal of LSRS rings of truth, if only because the navy is adamant about focusing the P-8A around the mission of hunting for submarines. It's not clear precisely what the scope of the LSRS capabilities are, but all the public evidence indicates that it is optimized to search for targets on the water's surface, not underneath it -- a la the P-8A.

So I'll not only boldly disagree with Bill, but I'll up the ante with a bit of my own speculation. The sensor may not be a good fit for the P-8A's mission profile, but it could be an excellent candidate for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) fleet. BAMS will be a fleet of unmanned or optionally-manned aircraft primarily tasked with detecting and identifying surface vessels, which is really what the LSRS is all about. BAMS is usually thought of as an open-ocean-type capability, but perhaps LSRS could expand its competency into the littoral regions.

Or, well, I'm completely wrong. Darn these quasi-classified programs! They give you just enough to make you curious, but not enough to understand why they exist in the first place. (Hmm ... sounds very Catholic, doesn't it?)

Government Executive, which has nurtured deservedly top-rank military journalists like James Kitfield, has published an unsusually one-sided critique of the Future Combat System program by relatively new-hire Greg Grant, who jumped to GovExec from Defense News last year.

To the FCS-uninitiated, Grant's solid reporting will open their eyes to the genesis of a potentially deeply flawed program that is even now struggling for its life in this year's budget debates on Capitol Hill. However, Grant sticks mostly to published literature for his research, so if you're looking for any new insights on the program's many ills you may be disappointed.

It surprises me that Grant found no room to directly quote Army or Boeing officials offering a defense of the program. I also know of many independent analysts who would speak to elements of the program that may be beneficial, but no such voice is presented in the form of direct quotes.

Still, it is an admirable piece of research and journalism. I hope Grant soon turns his sharp eye on other fiscal and strategic conundrums in the military's acquisition backlog.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, the amount of carbon commercial airplanes spew mostly into the upper reaches of the stratosphere and lower regions of the troposphere is something of a scandal in Europe.

The aviation industry pumps about 600 million tons of the stuff into the atmosphere every year, which is roughly equivalent to the annual output of the whole of Great Britain, the world's fourth-largest industrial society.

(This fact is interesting to think about as I type this on my Blackberry somewhere in the sky between Washington DC and Seattle: my seat alone is individually accounting for a few hundred pounds of climate-changing carbon emissions! Another fun fact: one pound of jet fuel produces 3.16 pounds of carbon dioxide, as the combustion process fuses two really fat oxygen atoms onto a lonely little carbon atom.)

Right now, my seat's miniscule -- but measureable -- contribution to the world's carbon content costs me -- and the aviation industry -- nothing. But that will have to change if (or, really, when) the European Union enacts proposals to put a cap on airline carbon emissions, with the most efficient airlines allowed to trade "emissions credits" with the least efficient airlines.

This effectively forces the international aviation industry to join the emissions trading schemes imposed on most other industries already by the Kyodo Protocol.

As a (to put it mildly) Kyodo non-signatory, the Bush Administration is predictably very upset about these proposals, and is actively banding together with Third World and emerging countries such as China, and some industrial countries, such as Japan, to vigorously oppose the EU's plan for an aviation emissions trading scheme.

The aviation industry fears that such trading schemes will raise the cost of travel from 1% to 3%. The environmental lobby in Europe effectively hopes to slow the industry's growth. If left unchecked, aviation would grow by 500 million passengers per year by 2030. With emissions trading and other taxes, demand may instead fall to something like 300 miilion more passengers per year. (It's at about 140 million pax per year now.)

It's tempting to ask: will the aviation industry tolerate this artificial ceiling on growth? But the trend-lines suggest that the industry may have no choice and can only hope to influence the process at the margins.

Unlike other carbon-producing industries, aviation has no other source of power to fall back on. The electric grid can shift to nuclear energy. Automobiles can convert to hybrids. No such alternatives are viable for aircraft for at least another half-century, barring a miracle discovery that can unlock the energy potential of the hydrogen atom for aviation. The Fischer-Tropsch experiments by the US Air Force are also no help, as they also use a synthetic version of the same old carbon atom.

In a few weeks, I'll report my observations in more depth in a 10-page special report about the topic for Flight International magazine.

I raise the issue here because I am always impressed -- and sometimes embarassed -- by the knowledge of many of my humble blog's regular readers. If you'd like to discuss your thoughts, please email me at stephen.trimble@flightglobal.com, or open a dialogue by posting your comments on this blog.

Today, you can:

1. Make a balloon that sits at the fringe of space, collecting intelligence data that is returned to ground via a detachable glider -- perhaps saving the air force billions of dollars otherwise spent on orbital satellites.
2. Build up to 10 of that long-awaited hunter-killer unmanned aircraft -- the General Atomics MQ-9B Reaper -- next year
3. Seriously ponder why the US Air Force needs to collect butterflies in Los Angeles
   
4. If someone ever figures out how to keep an aircraft aloft for five years or more, give them some electronics, engines and sensors that work for five years without breaking ... and then, please, donate this technology to the F-22
5. Fly Russian helicopters in Afghanistan for the US military

Mad props to Bill Sweetman at the Ares blog for chasing down the details of the Littoral Surveillance Radar System (LSRS), an apparently quasi-classified new sensor for the P-8A MMA.

I first start noticing references to the LSRS last year here and here (see chart 5), but the Navy, Raytheon and Boeing refused to answer any questions about it. I gave up. Obviously, Bill didn't.

The DEW Line has a tip for Marion Blakey, the US FAA Administrator: make sure you're not reading a hoax news story before you poke fun at the environmental activities of another government.

See here.

David Galula wrote the bible on counter-insurgency warfare. Trained at the French military academy at Saint Cyr, Galula saw conventional warfare action in World War II, then spent the remainder of his career fighting guerrilas and insurgents from Africa to Indochina. In 1961, he published "Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice". The book is 99.98% about tactics, and 0.02% about equipment, which tells you something about the nature of counter-insurgency.

He lived to see his careful instructions ignored by US military planners in Southeast Asia. This was a pattern tragically repeated by US military planners in Southwest Asia.

Galula limits his guidance on equipment mostly to three main paragraphs, with a heading entitled: "Adaptation of the Armed Forces to Counter-Insurgency Warfare".

This blog has discussed whether the US military needs its own counter-insurgency aircraft fleet here and here, provoking great comments from folks like Joe Katzman of the Defense Industry Daily. To inform the discussion as it evolves, it's probably a good idea to read what the master says. To wit:

"As long as the insurgent has failed to build a powerful regular army, the counteringusrgent has little use for heavy, sophisticated forces designed for conventional warfare. For his ground forces, he needs infantry and more infantry, highly mobile and lightly armed; some field artillery for occaisional support; armoured cavalry, and if terrain conditions are favorable, horse cavalry for road surveillance and patrolling. For his air force, he wants ground support and observation planes of slow speed, high endurance, great firepower, protected against small-arms ground fire; plus short takeoff transport planes and helicopters, which play a vital role in counterinsurgency operations. The navy's mission, if any, is to enforce a blockade, a conventional type of operation that does not require elaboration here. In addition, the counterinsurgent needs an extremely dense signal network.

"The counterinsurgent, therefore, has to proceed to a first transformation of his existing forces along these lines, notably to convert into infantry units as many unneeded specialized units as possible.

"The adaptation, however, must go deeper than that. At some point in the counterinsurgency process, the static units that took part initially in large scale military operations in their area will find themselves confronted with a huge variety of nonmilitary tasks which have to be performed in order to get the support of the population, and which can be performed only by military personnel, because of the shortage of reliable civiilian political and administrative personnel. Making a thorough census, enforcing new regulations on movements of persons and goods, informing the population, conducting person-to-person propaganda, gathering intelligence on the insurgent's political agents, implementing the various economic and social reforms, etc. -- all these will become their primary activity. They have to be organized, trained and supported accordingly. Thus, a mimeograph machine may turn out to be more useful than a machine gun, a soldier trained as a pediatrician more important than a mortar expert, cement more wanted than barbed wire, clerks more in demand than rifleman."

The DEW Line is authored by a member of the trade press horde (er, careful how you pronounce that word!) that caters to the defense and aerospace industry.

In the weapons business, this horde generally tends to focus coverage on all the high-tech stuff -- you know, your F-22s, your TSATs, your DARPA phrasealators. The low-tech stuff -- basic small arms and ammunition -- generally gets ignored despite its extremely high relevance to operations in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this spirit, The DEW Line would like to draw your attention to the ATK Lake City Small Caliber Ammunition business. ATK acquired the business after the US Army privatized the Lake City Depot in 1999, gaining a virtual lock on the military's annual appetite for bullets ranging from .50-caliber down to 5.56mm.

In 2000, ATK proudly predicted that total ammunition production should average about 450 million rounds per year to meet the military's demand. Then 9/11 happened. As the overall DOD budget doubled from about $300 billion in 2000 to perhaps $600 billion in 2007, ATK's production also doubled from 450 million rounds per year in 2001 to 1 billion rounds per year in 2007. Truly, it's a good time to be in the ammunition business.

Sometimes you can learn a lot about the future from a single piece of data. If you're wondering how long the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere may continue, you might consider looking up the military's projected demand for bullets.

Perhaps ATK is being overly optimistic, but the company does not foresee any drop-off in demand for small-caliber ammunition. In fact, the company has received funding this year from the army to boost production capacity to 1.6 billion rounds per year, or more than three times the predicted rate in 2000.

It's going to be a long war.

Today, you can:

1. Create a mini-NORAD just for Hawaiian airspace
2. Solicit bids to replace M4 carbine barrels with more reliable HK416 barrels, then abruptly cancel the solicitation, adding this to the long list of failed attempts to do something about the unreliability of M4.
3. Find awkward religious symbolism in a space situational awareness program
4. Add the A-10 precision engagement program to the long list of contracts that Lockheed Martin could lose

The Paris Air Show is only one month away, so let the speculation begin: will the F-22 make a debut appearance?

I believe the official word is "no comment", and the Paris Air Show press kit excludes the F-22 from the list of aircraft on static display. But there are some encouraging signs that a Raptor could make an at least brief appearance at Le Bourget.

A potential clue came last month when the F-22 flying display got road-tested for the first time at the Hampton Roads Air show. Watch the video here. The show happens to be perfectly timed as a Paris Air Show rehearsal. Hmmm ...

Also, what better way to show solidarity with US President George Bush's new best friend in France, Monsieur Sarkozy?

There is some history to overcome. When the F-117 stealth fighter made its Paris Air Show debut in 1991, the pilot created an international incident when he took a swipe at the arm of the French Defense Minister, who ill-advisedly tried to touch the aircraft's wing. There also remain legendary tales of a conspiracy by French air traffic control to make the F-117 fly a circuitous route that roughly corresponded to a tour of the French military's radar installations.

The DEW Line, for one, hopes that all of this could be overcome. A likely scenario may be for the F-22 to make a brief pass of the air show, but takeoff and land from Britain.

This is what happens when you combine a low-cost ($400k/missile) weapon with high-cost requirements (stealth, standoff, precision guidance). The air force has to learn that they can't wage precision warfare on the cheap and also expect to buy high reliability.

There are two ironies in this situation:

1) JASSM used to be the poster-child for the late-1990s version of acquisition reform, which also gave us the now-discredited C-130J commercial contract and, (drum-roll ...) the scandal of the KC-X tanker lease deal.

2) The JASSM program was launched after the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile, or TSSAM, was canceled because of its (drum-roll... ) high-cost.

It's also become evident that the baseline JASSM missile's 250-mile-or-so range means that the launching aircraft must come within the engagement zone of the S400 surface-to-air missile system, meaning that the act of launching the missile may become something of a suicide mission for the lucky pilot.

The S400 is the latest version of Russia's robust SAM technology.

The JASSM-ER is necessary to ensure that a strike on a target protected by the S400 is a success.

That doesn't mean the JASSM is useless, but merely limited -- in addition to having what appears to be a chronic reliability problem.

My flight to Montreal this morning was canceled due to crew availability.

This makes it the third flight on three different airlines in as many weeks for me that were canceled due to this interesting phenomenon: the weather is good, the plane seems to be working, but we remain on the ground because no one is aboard to officially serve me coffee.

Considering the complexity of overall airline operations, one would think that having crew available for the flight should be the least of an airline's challenges. It's even more dubious when such flights are canceled at airline hubs like O'Hare for United, and National airport for US Airways, where the airline has plenty of staff in residence.

In this case, the flight attendant on board my Air Canada Jazz flight -- a CRJ200 -- passed out just as we started to board. I do hope that she is okay, and wish the best for her speedy recovery. But it is telling how often the excuse of crew availability is abused that the airline felt it necessary to virtually parade the paramedics passed us as if to announce: "indeed, she is sick. We're not lying -- this time." I got the impression that -- if federal laws permitted -- as the poor woman's gurney rolled past, the gate attendant would have tried proving that she really, truly was unconscious by applying fake karate chops at her head.

It's not too late so sign up for Murtha-Fest ... er, I mean the Showcase for Commerce in Johnstown, Pa.

Murth-Fest (er, ... I mean the Showcase -- oh, whatever) is an annual extravangza for defense contractors to peddle their favorite prducts that for whatever reason, sadly, remain unfunded.

The host of Murtha-Fest is, of course, John Murtha, that generous benefactor of the defense industry. From his perch on the defense appropriations committee, the congressman can anonymously dispense millions on any defense project he likes. Not surprisingly, the heaviest hitters in the defense business are pleased to de-camp to Murtha's power base in Cambria County every year for a little show-and-tell.

I've discussed Murtha-Fest before here.

I've also presented a respectable defense of the anonymous earmarks process, as told to me by none other than Rep. Ike Skelton. Read that here.

Please make up your own mind. Or, if you have a free weekend on 1-2 June, go up to Cambria County to see the Murtha-Fest spectacle for yourself.

A brief history of the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS), which sounds a bit sinister but merely seeks to add a guidance system to a standard Hydra 2.75-inch rocket.

1. It started when the Army selected Hydra-maker General Dynamics to integrate a BAE Systems guidance system.
2. That program got cancelled in January 2005, following a few test flights that "failed to meet objectives" (read: "missed the target")
3. Next, the army decided to re-compete the program, inviting bids from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
4. After a year-long competiton, the army surprised Raytheon and Lockheed Martin by selecting the original supplier, with BAE Systems now in the lead and General Dynamics as a subcontractor. That was in September.
5. Four months later, the army pulled the plug again on the program, citing funding shortages as it zero'd funding for the program in the fiscal year 2008 budget
6. It initially appeared that Congress might restore the funding to keep the army program on life support
7. Instead, it now seems that the navy and marine corps has taken the lead, recently issuing a solicitation for a "low cost guided imaging rocket", which sounds very much like a euphemistically named APKWS

You've heard the old saying that old soldiers never die? No. It's their developmental weapons programs that never die.

Today, you can:

1. Plug in the US Air Force's "battlefield airman" to a network, but not that silly army network that already exists
2. Learn that the air force has a concept for a Predator-related unmanned aerial vehicle called MQ-1X
3. Kick the air force off a radio frequency used for missile-launching practice and give it to cellular phone companies
4. Play Bingo!
5. Buy 90 sets of tank armor and 1.2 million suits of body armor

The capture of five people accused of plotting a terrorist-style shooting rampage at Fort Dix yesterday is a good excuse to talk about base security -- and the many Orwellian methods the US Air Force is adopting to detect, identify and kill intruders.

1. My personal favorite: kill the intruders remotely. Just put a remote button on a discretely-placed M4 carbine, M16A2 rifle, M240 or M249, and  shoot the intruders dead from your living room.
2. Give a military base all the "situational awareness" of a high-security prison, with automated sensors, laser tracking and mini-UAVs
3. See the full concept of the air force's Integrated Base Defense Security System concept here (warning: huge power-point file). Thanks to the Fort Dix story, there shouldn't be any need to worry about the health of the program's budget for the next several years.

Johnny Bombmaker: You write about counter-insurgency aircraft as if you're a fan of the concept?

The DEW Line: Well, what's not to like?

JB: There's a reason why single-engine turboprops almost disappeared after World War II. They get shot out of the sky faster than a duck flying over a South Texas shooting range. Do you realize how many A-1 Skyraiders got blown out of the sky in Vietnam? The threat in Iraq is even worse. Much better to do it the modern way: just park an F-15 or an F-16 with a targeting pod, a strafing cannon and a guided bomb up above 15,000 feet.

TDL: But the question is not exclusively which aircraft is more survivable, but which is more effective? If survivability was the only criteria, you'd never see something as slow, loud and enticing as a cargo helicopter lumbering from Basra to Baghdad. A helicopter is still the best way to move from point A to point B if neither point happens to be a secure 6,000-foot runway.

A single-engine turboprop with guided weapons, air-to-ground communications and modern avionics may still be the most effective way to deal with a fleeting threat like insurgents.

You dig?

JB: I do. I'm also not the guy in the cockpit, trying to outrun bullets and missiles in an aircraft that would lose a dogfight to a P-51 Mustang.

Today, you can:

1. Build a new sensor for the NPOESS satellite constellation that has slightly higher odds of actually being affordable
2. Play with model rockets
3. Learn that somebody in the US Army wants to find out about Fischer-Tropsch technology. This is the same technology the air force is currently testing. It is a process for turning natural gas or coal into a sythentic fuel. Fighters and tanks both use the same kind of jet fuel. Hmmm ...
4. Make the ingenius realization that a next-generation military helmet should be designed to protect a person's ENTIRE head
5. Investigate the danger to critical infrastructure from an electromagentic pulse emission

I'm sitting in Terminal 1 at O'Hare on stand-by, taking the scenic route back to DC from Cincinnati.

I've recently changed reporting jobs, moving from an all-defense beat at Jane's to an all-aerospace beat at Flight. Happily, this means I have license to pay a visit to the headquarters of CFM International just north of Cincinnati.   

As the well-maintained joint venture between General Electric and France's Snecma, CFMI is the brainchild behind the world's highest-selling engine: the CFM56 family that currently powers the two (not coincindentally) highest-selling commercial airliner designs in history: the entire Airbus A320/319/321 line-up and all members of the Boeing 737 family after the -200. Throw in the CFM56-5C that powers the Airbus A340.

As with most commercial aviation innovations, the CFM56 owes its existence to the military on two counts. First, GE's work on the F101 engine for the Rockwell B-1A bomber produced the high-pressure core that merged with the Snecma-built fan and low-pressure section. Later, it was the US Air Force that kept the program alive by agreeing to re-engine a portion of the KC-135 fleet (hence the KC-135R).

It's an interesting time to pay CFMI a visit. The joint venture is plotting how to build a new engine that power the (still undetermined) aircraft types that will eventually replace the 737 and A320, as both are presumed by industry to become out-of-date at some point within the next decade.

CFMI's answser is bold and highly interesting: an all-new engine core driving two sets of counter-rotating blades. Instead of the usual ducted fan, the 12-14-foot diameter blades spin out in the open. Compared to the single-digit air bypass ratios of most conventional ducted fans, the CFMI's "open rotor" concept offers bypass ratios on the order of 35:1.

This is the concept that CFMI hopes to literally propel the single-aisle airline industry from 2020 until -- presumably, if the 1980-2020 lifespan of the 737 is any indication -- 2060 or beyond.

Now, there are quite a few "if's" that come up. The new engine core has to be developed to make the open rotor configuration possible. The extra noise generated by the free-spinning blades will have to be mitigated in some way or accepted despite the worldwide clampdown on aircraft noise emissions. And, not least, airlines will have to sell consumers on the idea of flying on a jet that looks an awful lot like a turboprop.

Another interesting sub-plot is watching the relationship between GE and Snecma evolve with an all-new engine program. Legend has it that the CFM56 was only days away from cancellation when the first order came through to re-engine United DC-8s. Among joint ventures, the CFMI pairing is unusally strong -- see this article (warning: subcription required) in this week's The Economist, which hails CFMI as perhaps the world's most sucessful joint venture in history.  The agonies of developing a sophisticated and original new engine will surely put even CFMI's winning formula to the test.

• Airpower asks: "how many of these rounds will end up in other Iraqis?"
• BAE Systems purchased Lockheed Martin-Sanders in 1998 and United Defense in 2005. With a $3 billion warchest amassed from selling off its stake in Airbus, whom shall be purchased in 2007? The WSJ may have the answer
• Will low-cost weapons make a comeback? Jacques Gansler says: "yes"
• Kris Osborn reports that the Apache can forsake its past as a static-firing tank-killer and become a moving, nimble insurgent-killer
• Thanks to Mike at the Iamnetcentric blog for pointing out this new publication on military command and control

The Iraqi Air Force in two years will be flying a new fleet of single-engine turboprops as counter-insurgency (COIN) aircraft. See the contract solicitation, posted by the US Air Force, here.

The requirement limits the potential bids to companies that have an aircraft that a)is already in wide use and b) is powered by the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 engine.

That narrows the bidders to four that The DEW Line can think of: the Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano, the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 Texan, the Korean Aerospace KO-1 Wong Bee and the Pilatus PC-9M.

Not to play favorites, but The DEW Line humbly suggests this means there are only two serious candidates: the AT-6 and EMB-314 -- with the AT-6 gaining a huge advantage from the "Made in America" sticker stamped on the program's marketing literature.

But don't count out the Brazillians with the Super Tucano. Expect the executives in Sao Jose Dos Campos to propose moving the EMB-314 assembly -- or opening a second production line -- to Florida, if they win the contract.

Keep your eye on this programme. This could be the first of many such requirements for a dedicated counter-insurgency aircraft fleet to come down the line, both abroad and in the US.

I'm also re-posting comments on this very subjected submitted a few weeks ago to this blog by regular visitor Airpower:

"The T-6 is a trainer, and attempts by Hawker Beechcraft (or whatever it's called this week) to remodel it as an armed platform are not convincing. That's not what it was designed to do.

"Remember, the T-6 is just a Pilatus PC-9 and the original Swiss design is forbidden by law from being armed...anyone with armed PC-9s has made their own, alternative, arrangements. So flying in combat is not in its genes. Attempts by Raytheon to compare the armed T-6 with the F-15 were met with an embarrassed silence at one show I remember, not so long ago.

"The Super Tucano on the other hand was designed to be a combat aircraft from Day 1 - that's why it makes a lousy trainer because it's so big and heavy. The Brazilians deploy it into Amazon dirt strips to fight drug smugglers, it has guns (not an "internal gun pod" but two 0.50-cals in the wing), it can carry air-to-air missiles and has a very sophisticated (datalinked) cockpit (thank you Elbit). In its class the Super Tucano is probably the aircraft you want to go to war in."

Also, see my colleague John Croft's account of his recent experience flying the AT-6 here on FlightGlobal.com.

I'll just note that an armed variant of the T-6A is flown by the Hellenic Air Force, but lacks internally mounted guns in favor of a 50-cal pod.

The next bomber in the US Air Force inventory should be stealthy and subsonic. It should travel 2,000-nautical miles to its target and have enough fuel on board to get home. It should carry at least 28 500-pound bombs. And (surprise!) there should be a human pilot on board.

These are the conclusions of the air force's recently completed analysis of alternatives for a next-generation bomber to be fielded around 2018.

This is supposed to be a new thing, of course, but those specifications seem strangely familiar.

Anyone remember the A-12 Avenger II? It, too, was a stealthy, subsonic, manned aircraft that blurred the boundary between an attack aircraft and a bomber.

Dick Cheney cancelled the A-12 program on 7 January 1991, just as the bombs started to fall on Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm.

True, the A-12 was conceived as a carrier-based land attack aircraft, but it wasn't entirely a navy bird. According to our dog-eared copy of Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1991-92, a "USAF A-12" had been proposed as a replacement for the F-111.

The F-111 was designed to carry 24 500-pound bombs and travel 1,800 miles, and it's not unfair to think the proposed USAF variant of the super-secret A-12 would have been very similar in capability.

So, congratulations, taxpayers: Watch the air force spend billions of dollars over the next decade for an aircraft that General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas very nearly delivered to the navy and the air force 15 years ago.

Today, you can:

1. Build a radar network spanning the globe that can detect any object in Earth's orbit. This will be called the Space Fence.
2. Work on an Air Intelligence Agency project code-named Sensor Beam, which is the database for the electro-magnetic signatures of all friendly and enemy weapons systems
3. Give Raytheon money to upgrade the performance of a bunch of old AIM-120B AMRAAMs
4. Update the multi-mode terrain-following radars that special operations needs to fly the MC-130 Combat Talons
5. Put something else on a V-22 engine to keep the sand out, despite the fact that the aircraft's engine air particle separator is supposed to do the job

The American Forces Press Service, the internal news organ of the Department of Defense, is breaking news today with the stunning revelation that the F-22A Raptor has deployed to the Middle East.

The press service story states:

"When the Raptor, a fifth-generation fighter jet, left Langley Air Force Base, Va., in February for its first real-world deployment to the Middle East, Air Force Lt. Col. Dan Daetz, operations officer for the 411th Flight Test Squadron, was wowed by its power, maneuverability and stealth. " (Full story)

I'm aware of only two F-22 deployments to Okinawa and to Alaska, with the Okinawa trip tainted by bad software that shut down the cockpit computers while crossing the International Date Line.

I think we can assume this is just a bad typo, like when DOD announced it would export missiles to a new country called the United Arab Emigrants.

The day the F-22 shows up at Tallil or Al Asad is probably the day when we need to send a message to a certain neighboring country.

Some of the good folks at MIT have just figured how many bombs it would take for the Israeli Air Force to blow up Iran's entire nuclear weapons infrastructure. Apparently, it isn't so hard after all. For those keeping score at home, here's what the Israelis would need:

• 24 5,000-pound BLU-113 penetrator warheads to collapse the underground centrifuge halls at Natanz,
• 2 2,000-pound bombs to destroy the above ground pilot production plant at Natanz
• 12 2,000-pound BLU-109 penetrator warheads to blow up the underground uranium conversion facility at Esfahan
• 10 2,000-pound GBU-10s laser guided bombs to hit the heavy water production plant and reactor site at Arak

According to the MIT, there is one major catch: the air strike on Natanz could fail if Iran's air defenses succeed in downing only two of the IAF's strike package of 24 F-15Is if each is loaded with a single BLU-113.

But MIT concludes:

"The foregoing assessment is far from definitive in its evaluation of Israeli military potential. However it does seem to indicate that the IAF, after years of modernization, now possesses the capability to destroy even well-hardened targets in Iran with some degree of confidence. The operation appears to be no more risky than the earlier attack on Osirak and provides at least as much benefit in terms of delaying Iranian development of nuclear weapons."

The study can be found here (http://web.mit.edu/ssp/Publications/working_papers/wp_06-1.pdf).

The US Air Force is retiring the AGM-86D penetrator only a few years after spending tens of millions of dollars to make the weapon. Why?

Here's the article, which I wrote, posted on  FlightGlobal.com: