June 2008 Archives

"We know that McCain influenced the tanker selection process against Boeing with multiple letters to Deputy SecDef Gordon England and SecDef Robert Gates. We also know that McCain, for good and/or bad reasons, stopped the original Boeing tanker lease deal from going ahead. We know that people in McCain's office have also worked as EADS lobbyists. At least one lobbied for EADS while working for McCain. Finally, we have the GAO document, which accuses the Air Force of favoritism and bias, yet doesn't cite any rationale or motive for this bias. There's really just one.

So far, no one has been able to connect these four data points and prove that McCain and his lobbyist associates pushed the Air Force into actively favoring the Northrop/EADS plane. McCain's office has very skillfully maintained plausible deniability."

That's a very remarkable -- and politically explosive -- analysis. Aboulafia appears to be asking: 1) Did McCain steer the KC-X contract requirements to favor Northrop Grumman's bid, and 2) Were McCain's actions improperly influenced by EADS lobbyists?

Check updates in the "Twitter Updates" space on the right for comments by Paul Meyer, Northrop Grumman's VP for tanker programs.

It's not everyday you see a $14.98 million contract announcement by the US Air Force that discreetly launches a $3 billion to $4 billion, long-term development program. Check Monday's list of US Department of Defense contract announcements, and scroll to the bottom of the page.

"The Boeing Co., of Wichita, Kan., is being awarded a cost plus fixed fee contract for $14,983,252. This action will accomplish aircraft integration system engineering studies to support development of critical technologies required to enable airborne stand-off electronic attack. The technologies include low-band, high-power transmitting phased arrays, mid-band high-power transmitting phased arrays, and advanced exciters."

I covered the original B-52 standoff jammer system until it was canceled in 2006, and I had a hunch this contract was its long-awaited -- and, some hope, more successful -- sequel. After checking with Boeing, my hunch was confirmed.

This relatively puny contract kick-starts what could be a decade-long effort to convert about one-third of the B-52 bomber force into long-range, radar-jammers. Interestingly, this contract indicates the USAF has abandoned the original plan to make Boeing compete for the aircraft integration role.

Click on the link posted beneath the video -- I can't resist the (admittedly stretched) tie-in to Dr. Strangelove! -- to read my news story that will appear in next week's Flight International magazine.

I learned in journalism school to always "follow the money", but perhaps a better rule of thumb in the aerospace industry is to "follow the engines".

In more ways than one, engine technology is the propelling force of the aerospace industry. Airframers learned a long time ago never to launch a new aircraft unless at least one of the big engine makers was ready -- both technically and financially -- to support it.

That's partly why I'm fascinated by the General Electric GE38-1B [shown at right], the 7,500shp monster currently under development to power the new Sikorsky CH-53K. Pardon the cliche, but it literally goes where no engine has gone before, filling a yawning gap in the market for turboshaft engines.

Don't think for a second that Sikorsky is the only airframer that recognizes such a new opportunity. Expect both helicopter and fixed-wing manufacturers to quickly leap into the market space created by the existence of an engine in a previously untapped thrust-range.

That's why I wrote a one-page profile of GE's plans for the GE38-1B in next week's Flight International magazine. Click on the link below to get a sneak-preview.

Quick: Name the last time that the US Air Force successfully signed a contract for an all-new aircraft, competitively-sourced, that wasn't later canceled or indefinitely postponed due to legal challenges?

Answer: October 26, 2001, or nearly seven years ago.

That was the date when then-Secretary of the Air Force Jim Roche announced that Lockheed Martin won the Joint Strike Fighter competition. To their eternal regret, I believe, Boeing did not file a protest.

(Of course, even in that case, the JSF joint program office -- led by US Marine Corps Maj Gen Mike Hough -- actually managed the competition. The air force happened to be JSF's "executive agency" at the time, which gave Roche the right to announce the winner.)

The last time the air force successfully managed and signed a contract for an all-new, manned aircraft was in 2000 for the Boeing C-40B. But, in that case, there was no competition and the air force simply gave Boeing the contract. (The USAF has signed a contract since then for the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper, but that was also sole-sourced and based on the design of the MQ-1 Predator.)

Since 2001, the air force has failed even once to successfully select an all-new aircraft after a competition. Failed attempts include the original lease-buy deal for 100 KC-767s in 2003, and the E-10A program that was canceled in 2005.

Moreover, the CSAR-X contract remains in competition after the Government Accountability Office twice over-turned the air force's selection of the Boeing CH-47. And now, of course, the second attempt to replace the USAF's oldest KC-135Es is again tied up in GAO purgatory.

Compare that to the navy's record over the same period. Since 2001, the navy, which has other priorities besides buying new aircraft, has successfully signed contracts for P-8A, VH-71 and CH-53K. (Granted, the execution of the VH-71 deal has been problematic, but they at least manged to sign the contract.) Another contract -- for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program -- is signed, but its status is pending a GAO protest verdict.

The army hasn't done so so bad either. Since 2001, the army gave up on the RAH-66, but signed contracts for three manned aircraft: the UH-70 UH-72 light utility helicopter, the ARH-72 ARH-70 and the Joint Cargo Aircraft. (Granted, again, that execution on the ARH-72 ARH-70 deal has been rough.) The army also held a successful competition for a major UAV contract, awarding the extended-range, multi-purpose (ER/MP) contract to General Atomics for the MQ-1C Sky Warrior.

Sure, contract execution is up-and-down, but the air force's sister services are at least able to sign contracts for new aircraft.

Indeed, you have to go all the way back to the YF-22/YF-23 fly-off in 1991 to find the last time the air force successfully managed a competition and completed a contract signing for an all-new, manned aircraft that eventually entered the inventory. (I don't count the C-130J because it was not competed, and, in fact, was forced on the air force by Lockheed's allies in Congress. The RQ-4 Global Hawk and the RQ-1 Predator were also handed to the air force by Congress. Likewise for the variety of business jets also acquired by the air force since 1991.)

Amazing, right?

Two of my favorite aviation writers -- Guy Norris and Bill Sweetman -- are highly dubious about the technical feasibility of adapting the 787, Boeing's next-generation airliner, into a military tanker. Plugging refueling systems into an all-composite fuselage is no easy task, and may very well be impossible. It will certainly be expensive, and, with the 787 still in a difficult developmental phase, the timing is not to Boeing's advantage.

On the other hand, the 787 tanker could help solve one of Boeing's biggest challenges. Since the US Air Force has clearly stated its preference for the KC-30 versus the KC-767, the 787's superior overall performance capabilities could make a very attractive offer.

I liked reading an analysis of the pros and cons of this possibility today at the All Things 787 blog. Here's what it says:

PROS

Well in a nutshell, take all the advantages in weight and fuel efficiency that the 787 has over the A330 and translate that over to the tanker version. The 787 would be larger but lighter than the A330. Boeing can utilized the advantage of better fuel burn and the lighter structure of the 787. The 787 would have a more advanced and modern cockpit compared to the A330. The 787 would beat the A330 on range, usable cargo carried (fuel and/or cargo), and weight. The KC-787 would certainly demolish the KC-30 on life cycle costs and this metric can certainly make the Air Force stand up and seriously look at the 787 as a tanker.

Secondly, because Boeing would probably have to strengthen the 787 in order to carry the weight of fuel and other cargo required by the Air Force as well as a cargo door, Boeing would essentially have designed the 787F. Wow two birds with one stone though Airbus certainly would have a lot to say about DoD Tanker money going to design a commercial cargo aircraft.

Lastly, the Air Force would not have to modify airfields due to the weight of the 787 vs the A330 which is heavier. This was a bone of contention with Boeing as the Air Force underestimated the cost of modifications in operating the KC-30 from existing airfields.

CONS

Production - Boeing is already suffering from the production problems with the 787 and then the ramp up of production is looking to be long and painful. They would have no capacity at all to build tankers based on the 787. In order to do so would require 1) additional investment by Boeing and its suppliers to support increased production of the 787 (more autoclaves, larger facilities, more LCFs), 2) a second assembly line that is ITAR compliant. Now the Air Force would probably take anywhere from 12 to 24 tankers a year meaning a rate of 1 to 2 airplanes, these airplanes can be constructed on the existing assembly line but that would mean up to 2 less commercial 787s being delivered to customers who would none too pleased about their delivery slots going to the Air Force. A second line would be required and later can be used to support commercial production if needed.

Development - Boeing will need significant investment in terms of time, money, resources and personnel to turn the 787 from a commercial passenger aircraft into a military air refueler. Right now they're still grappling with the fall out from the production and supply issues that hurt them over the past year. They will still need a lot of these same resources in order to finish the 787-8 development as well as to develop the -3, -9 and -10 variants for commercial customers. Now since this product would come from Boeing IDS, it is possible to transfer engineering resources from the KC-767 and to work on the KC-787 along with a few of the 787 program engineers. Boeing had earlier transfered some engineers and other resources at IDS to the 787 to help alleviate the issues due to the travelled work and production problems. They could do this again to help develop the 787 into a tanker platform.

Boeing might need to develop a new refueling boom (though I wonder if they could adopt the KC-767 boom for the KC-787) as well as floor strengthening and perhaps landing gear strengthening.

Lastly, timing - the Air Force needs these tankers 4 years ago. There would be little to no timing to get a KC-787 design, tooling, and production going. My guess is that it would take up to two years to get the design going and then another 2-4 years for development, testing and operational evaluation. This on top of doing the rebid (which I think would take another 2 years). So assuming the rebid takes place and that Boeing wins the rebid with the KC-787, it would be another 6 to 8 years before a KC-787 is in the hands of USAF pilots. The KC-30 won't certainly take as long.

These are some broad brush strokes...no details...those can be filled in by people who would certainly know better and more information but the KC-787 might be an option that Boeing can look at if they can effectively reduced the risks, timing and costs of doing a KC-787.

Senator Pat Roberts, of Kansas:


Representative Norm Dicks, of Washington:

Today is Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne's last day on the job. He is speaking to a small group of reporters at 8 am. I will be sending updates via Twitter, assuming I can get a cell phone signal inside Wynne's conference room in the Pentagon. Watch the space on the right for Twitter updates. 

For what it's worth, here's my take on the tanker protest situation. This article will appear in next week's Flight International magazine.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruling that categorically rejects the US Air Force's two-year process to award the KC-X contract sets up a repeat scenario with a changed political backdrop and vastly different views about the product positions of the two competing teams.

The GAO's findings are not binding, but the full weight of the investigative agency's seven-point rebuttal (see below) is expected to compel USAF officials to start over again.

That means the landmark US military contract victory for the transatlantic consortium of Northrop Grumman, EADS North America and Airbus, which offered the A330-200-based KC-30B, is likely to be voided. The USAF has 60 days to respond to the GAO's decision.

Boeing, meanwhile, can expect a welcome reprieve from both the certainty of losing its 50-year monopoly on the USAF's strategic tanker fleet, and of allowing its biggest competitor to gain a prized manufacturing foothold on US soil.

At the same time, a repeat of the tanker competition presents Boeing's executives with some difficult decisions. Boeing had considered the KC-767 the "right-sized" aircraft to meet the USAF's requirements and a sure-thing for the contract award, but the selection team and the USAF's leadership clearly disagreed.

General Arthur Lichte, commander of Air Mobility Command, has used sweeping terms to describe why the USAF selection team decided to pick the KC-30B.

"From my perspective, I can sum [the KC-30B's advantages] up in one word: more," said Lichte, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on 29 February. "More passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more patients that we can carry, more availability, more flexibility and more dependability."

That perception could place Boeing in an awkward competitive position entering the second round, said Richard Aboulafia, the Teal Group's vice president of analysis.

"The weakest aspect of Boeing's counterattack is their product position," Aboulafia said. "If the Air Force really does prefer something in the A330-size class, the 767 looks a bit too small, and the 777 too large. [Boeing's] best hope is to play up their strong tanker experience and the 767's lower costs and footprint."

Northrop's team could submit a second proposal with the confidence of clearly knowing the customer's preference for an aircraft larger than the 767-200ERX.

However, Northrop's seemingly favourable position has been damaged by Boeing's protest. GAO's investigation detected multiple errors in the USAF's sums. The new results reverse Northrop's position as the lowest-cost bidder, although by a tight margin. The GAO report also revealed that Northrop's bid failed to provide for two years of required maintenance support.

"We continue to believe that Northrop Grumman offered the most modern and capable tanker for our men and women in uniform," says Northrop in a statement.

More importantly, perhaps, the Northrop team's offer also faces the fall-out from a protectionist political backlash ignited by the USAF's contract award, and enflamed further by the GAO's findings.

"I've been saying that this process was flawed, we shouldn't hand away billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, and that Boeing should build these tankers," Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said on the Senate floor on 19 June.

"The GAO decision backs up each of my concerns," Murray added.

If the Democratic party sweeps presidential and congressional elections in November, Boeing can expect strong political support for keeping the tanker contract away from Airbus, Aboulafia said.

 

Finally, the USAF must answer the GAO's ruling amidst an unprecedented leadership crisis that removes two key defenders of the contract award for the KC-30B.  Two weeks ago, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley were forced to resign as a result of nuclear security lapses.

 

SIDEBAR

The Government Accountability Office identified seven categories of flaws in the US Air Force's selection process that awarded the KC-X contract to the Northrop Grumman/EADS North America KC-30B.

Here are the categories:

1. Wrong metrics: the USAF ignored its own evaluation criteria and neglected to account for Boeing's lead on satisfying an undisclosed list of "non-mandatory requirements"

2. Extra credit: the USAF gave Northrop bonus points for exceeding the fuel offload threshold, violating its own rule

3. No aircraft left behind: the USAF failed to prove that it could correctly assess the KC-30B's ability to refuel all fixed-wing aircraft

4. Double-speak: the USAF told Boeing it had fully satisfied a requirement. The USAF later changed its opinion, but did not inform Boeing

5. Not just an oversight: Northrop's refusal to provide two years of maintenance support was "unreasonably" judged by the USAF to be an administrative oversight

6. Math mistakes: correcting mistakes in the USAF's cost estimates shows that Boeing submitted the lowest estimated lifecycle cost, not Northrop

7.  Improper increases: the USAF did not think Boeing's estimates for non-recurring engineering costs were too low, but decided to raise them anyway because Boeing failed to explain them. The USAF also couldn't prove that its own model for predicting costs was accurate.

For my commentary on today's news, I will invoke the sage words of (soon-to-be-former) Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne.

On November 1, 2003, DOD's then-undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics wrote his aides an email. The subject of that email was never disclosed. Only a single, non-redacted line from Wynne's email was released into the public record, courtesy of Senator John McCain.

The email reads, and I quote:

"Tankers - aaaaarrrrgggghhh!!! enough said."

I think that pretty well sums it all up.

If you'd like to read the full story I wrote in 2004, click on the link below.

Watch the space on the right for Twitter updates today for news on the Government Accountability Office's pending decision on Boeing's tanker protest.

Twitter is normally used by people (usually much younger and more socialable than this journo-blogger) to send mass text messages lots of friends. But, with a little bit of help from Twitter's automated javascript coding machine, it's also a handy way to instantly update a blog using a cell phone.

Meanwhile, here's a few relevant (if not reputable) tanker blogs:

• TAnchorman
• Representative Todd Tiahrt's tanker blog
• Boeing's Tanker Facts
• Tanker War Blog

My colleague Rob Coppinger (see Hyperbola) attended last week's AUVSI North America show in San Diego, and kindly forwarded me these pictures. The slides show the USN's strategy on the only recently emerging F/A-XX competition, which appears to pit the Northrop Grumman X-47 against a future aircraft vaguely resembling a blend between the Lockheed Martin F-35 and Boeing's old X-32 contender. Click on image to view larger photo.

The University of California-Berkeley obviously has both Apple and UAV geeks, which is probably a dangerous combination. But this is a really interesting idea.

Figuring out the Lockheed Martin F-35 program can sometimes be like whack-a-mole.

First flight of the short-takeoff-vertical-landing (STOVL) BF-1 aircraft on Wednesday offers a good example. Did the milestone event occur on schedule, as Lockheed and program officials claimed, or did it not?

Well, that all depends. It was supposed to fly on May 23^rd, so you'd think it actually occurred 19 days late. But an engine problem identified several months ago was expected to delay first flight by 30 to 60 days. By that reckoning, Lockheed actually delivered 11 to 41 days early.

But perhaps we're just being nit-picky. After all, Lockheed's schedule for BF-1s first flight was set 18 months ago. What do a few days here or there really matter?

Falling within three weeks of the original target was certainly enough to impress Doug Pearson, Lockheed's VP for the F-35B's integrated test force.

"I've never seen [a first flight] predicted 18 months ahead of time and then taken place on that date," he told reporters.

(Pearson, by the way, should know. Before he was hired by Lockheed, Pearson commanded the air force's flight test center, and personally cleared Lockheed's F-22 for operations. More trivia: Pearson was the F-15C pilot in 1985 credited for shooting down a satellite with a specially-built missile.)

On the other hand, a more cynical observer (blush) might point out that the F-35's in-service remains delayed by 18 months, and BF-1 was originally supposed to enter flight test eight months ago.

But that isn't the only complication. Sure, BF-1 entered flight test more or less on time (according to the revised schedule). But the rest of the developmental aircraft have just been hit by a completely new delay.

I interviewed Dan Crowley, the F-35's executive vice president and general manager, yesterday. About two weeks ago, the program rolled out the third major update to the F-35's master schedule called 6.1. I originally reported this proposed schedule change in March.

This revision shifts delivery dates across the board for the rest of the 19-aircraft developmental fleet by approximately three to five months. It gives Lockheed's final assembly plant some needed extra time to build the aircraft, and the timing for the delay is based on actual manufacturing flow data accumulated so far.

The big difference between this major schedule revision and the last one is that it only changes the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase, not anything else.

The timing of the low-rate initial production phase and the flight test phase has been compressed, but both are still scheduled to end at roughly the same time as before.

As an outsider observer, it's difficult to understand how Lockheed is going to make this work.

Crowley points out that he expects the F-35 flight test phase to go much faster than previous test programs. He believes the F-35 will start out as a far more reliable and stable platform, and therefore can be cycled faster. He also notes that the development and operational testing phases could be combined, which should also shorten the qualification process.

Of course, flight tests by their nature can be unpredictable. And it's difficult to imagine a more complicated and challenging program than the F-35, which must qualify three different variants and perhaps two different engines.

The American News Project, an independent documentary producer, takes aim at the infamous US military-industrial complex. The report doesn't provide any new insight on the problem of wasteful spending on weapons systems. But the reporting is well-grounded in facts and offers a decent introduction to the issue. I hope the ANP's sponsors stay dedicated to the problem, and follows-up with more detailed reports.

The Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program continues to live up to its reputation as the "just confusing aircraft" program.

The confusion now focuses on Boeing's always-mercurial role in the L-3 Communications/Alenia Aeronautica partnership that's supplying the C-27J to the US Army.

Here's what a Boeing spokesman told Roxana Tiron at The Hill newspaper last Thursday:

"There is a lot of potential in the Joint Cargo Aircraft program, but the business case for Boeing was such that the parties jointly decided to move on without Boeing," said Boeing spokesman John Williamson.

On Monday, I followed up with Alenia, and got very much the same response:

"After negotiating with no real success, we jointly made the decision that Alenia could not afford to delay our investment anymore in Jacksonville," Alenia said.

Later in the afternoon, however, Boeing started to back-pedal. A spokesman told my colleague Andrew Doyle yesterday that the parties were still trying to close a business case. Andrew also talked to Chris Chadwick, president of Boeing's precision engagement and mobility systems business. Here's what Chris told him:

"We're trying to close the business case."

I've heard of spin, but this is ridiculous.

Continue reading to see the full article we posted on FlightGlobal.com last night.

  Flateric, a frequent Secret Projects contributor, has posted this video, which offers a great history (sponsored by Northrop Grumman) of Tacit Blue from 1997.

Now we know: the humidity of Guam is not merely unpleasant for transplanted, mainland Americans, but actually fatal for $1.4 billion stealth bombers (yet, thankfully, not their crews).

I checked the literature, and perhaps we all should have paid more attention to this paragraph in a General Accounting Office report, dated August 1997.

Testing indicated that B-2s are also sensitive to extreme climates, water, and humidity -- exposure to water or moisture can damage some of the low-observable enhancing surfaces on the aircraft. Further, exposure to water or moisture that causes water to accumulate in aircraft compartments, ducts, and valves can cause systems to malfunction. If accumulated water freezes, it can take up to 24 hours to thaw and drain. Air Force officials said it is unlikely that the aircraft's sensitivity to moisture and climates or the need for controlled environments to fix low-observability problems will ever be fully resolved, even with improved materials and repair processes. Therefore, if B-2s are to be deployed, some form of aircraft sheltering at a forward operating location will likely become a requirement in the future.

I believe I have seen the future replacement for the E-8C Joint STARS fleet (shown pictured), and it's not going to be a US Air Force aircraft.

The US Navy is preparing to replace the EP-3E ARIES II, an electronic intelligence aircraft, with a new-start acquisition program called EPX.

But the navy's requirements for EPX call for an aircraft that would not only spy on enemy electronic signals, like the EP-3E, but also find and track moving targets, like the E-8C.

Interestingly, the EPX program of record will acquire 19 to 26 aircraft to replace only 11 EP-3Es flying today. At the high end of that range, 26 aircraft would nicely replace all 11 EP-3Es and all 16 E-8Cs in service. (One E-8C is a testbed, and doesn't count.)

If the air force can't pay for an E-8C replacement to appear after 2015, or even to modernize the radar on the current fleet, watch for the navy to steal this mission with the EPX. It's the roles and missions equivalent of a pick-pocketing.

And it's happened before. In 1998, the air force lost the EC-135 Looking Glass mission to the
navy's E-6 take-charge-and-move-out (TACAMO) aircraft. Now, it's happening again, unless the air force acts very quickly.

This all became clear to me during my weeklong tour of Boeing's defense sites based in the Pacific Northwest. Paul Summers, Boeing's capture lead for EPX, briefed reporters about the navy's requirements, explaining that the size of the future EPX fleet had grown from 14-19 aircraft to 19-26 aircraft since last year.

The obvious question later occurred to me: Why does the navy need 26 EPX aircraft to replace 11 EP-3Es. Clearly, the navy has bigger ideas for this fleet.

Paul also discussed the new radar for the EPX. This in itself is noteworthy. The EP-3E does not have a radar. The aircraft intercepts and maps enemy communications and other electronic transmissions.

We've known for about a year that Boeing and Raytheon have installed the new littoral surveillance radar systems (LSRS) on a subset of the P-3C fleet, giving the navy its own mini-Joint STARS capability.

It is now clear that the LSRS is the proverbial trojan horse, injecting the navy into the Joint STARS business for the long-term.

Paul also explained that Boeing will consider the LSRS or another radar for EPX. The only possible alternative is a new variant of Northrop Grumman's wide area surveillance sensor developed under the multi-platform radar technology insertion program (MP-RTIP).

This will force Northrop to make a tough choice. Northrop, you see, is the prime contractor the E-8C, so it has everything to lose if the navy takes over the mission. However, if the company decides to join Boeing's EPX bid, that could be a signal that it believes the air force will never get around to replacing the E-8C.

The navy has money in the budget beginning next year to launch EPX. The air force has no funds to replace E-8Cs for the foreseeable future, and now faces a potentially disruptive leadership transition.

I'm not a betting man, but, if I was in Northrop's position, I know where I'd place my bet.

The air force has only itself to blame. The folly of the E-10 program, which spectacularly failed to combine an E-8C, and E-3A AWACS and an airborne operations center onto the same platform, has left the air force without a discernible plan to replace its aging fleets of 707-based aircraft.

The air force's only hope to stay in the E-8C business may be to observe the adage: if you can't beat them, join them.

Establishing a true "joint" partnership to acquire and operate a new fleet of narrowbody-class aircraft to serve all of the specialized missions performed today by 707s looks like the only way back in. (This idea also has the charm of making sense.)

Indeed, it has been proposed several times in the past. The only difference now is that the air force won't be calling the shots.

The navy, meanwhile, is not in this position merely through good fortune.

In 2004, the navy picked the Boeing P-8A -- based on the 737-800ERX -- to replace the P-3C, giving itself a versatile and capable platform to expand into new missions.

That's not to say that Boeing won't have to face challengers to win the EPX contract. The navy is inviting other companies to compete for EPX, but it will be difficult for the Airbus A320 and the Embraer E190 to overcome the incumbent advantages of the P-8A.

Paul Summers told us that Boeing had to make more than 50 modifications costing $1 billion to simply adapt the basic 737 airframe to meet the navy's more demanding certification requirements. The A320 and the E190 would face similar costs, possibly killing the chances for holding a fair airframe competition on EPX.

I expect that the navy will try to level the playing field in other ways. Perhaps, the navy will select the P-8A as the baseline platform and invite bidders -- including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop -- to compete for the systems integrator role.

Thanks to the US Air Force for posting video. To find out what caused this crash, read this story.

A Bell Helicopter employee has send me a brilliant comeback on my series of posts that elected his employer the "George Costanza" of the defense industry.

THE WRONG GEORGE?

Sorry Stephen, I never found the time or desire to watch "Seinfeld".  I am an avid fan however of old Jimmy Stewart movies.  I especially like
Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life".    You must have seen this classic
movie about a man named "George Bailey". The Jimmy Stewart character George Bailey is a small business man that struggles against larger and more powerful companies in a valiant if sometimes unsuccessful effort to improve humanity.  Only after decades of personal sacrifices, often placing his business at the brink of financial ruin does George and his entire community fully recognize the wonderful and spectacular accomplishments his business achieved.

Yes, for the past 25 years Eurocopter and Sikorsky have profited well by improving their products at a snails pace (still using metal airframes?, mechanical flight controls?) while Bell invested heavily in both military and commercial Tiltrotor technology.

For George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" Christmas Eve marked the turning point of all his life?s sacrifices.  For Bell, with the successful Iraq deployment of the V-22 Osprey and the upcoming FAA certification of the BA609 commercial Tiltrotor, Christmas bells may soon be ringing.

Have fun,

CTR

First fly-by-wire commercial rotorcraft: Bell Agusta BA609

First commercial rotorcraft with composite fuselage: Bell Agusta BA609

First pressurized fuselage rotorcraft: Bell Agusta BA609

First rotorcraft with fully triplex flight control system meeting FAA reliability requirements for commercial fixed wing aircraft: Bell Agusta BA609

World?s fastest commercial rotorcraft (over 280 kts): Bell Agusta
BA609

A Boeing bus will transport me and other journalists this morning from a plush hotel in downtown Seattle to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. In a drizzly ceremony, we will witness Secretary of the Navy Don Winter accept the delivery of the first EA-18G Growler to the USN's fleet readiness squadron.

This would be a fairly routine affair except for a couple of very distinguishing facts: first, the event is occurring exactly according to the original schedule and, second, Boeing's five-year-old development program is not over-budget.

It'd be nice to think those two facts weren't so extraordinary, but, in the world of military acquisition, it is.

To be sure, there remain a few caveats. The operational test phase begins in September, which will expose any unresolved design or technology glitches. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that a few software issues need to be fixed before operational tests can be performed. We'll see how that pans out, but none of the issues sound like show-stoppers.

Some of the more cynical observers (blush) might also say that Boeing and the Navy cheated with the EA-18G.

This is not the same as starting a new weapon project from scratch. The airframe for the EA-18G is based on the design of the already proven F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the electronic warfare package is based largely on the ICAP III suite already flying on the EA-6B Prowler. The ALQ-99 jammer is merely a decade-old, upgraded version of a pod that first flew in 1971 (and needs to be retired as threats evolve over the next decade).

But it's also not fair to Boeing to dismiss the complexity of this project. Repackaging the ICAP III to fit inside the Growler involved no small risk. The "football" ALQ-218 receiver mounted on the EA-6B's tail was split into two pieces and installed in the more aerodynamically harsh environment of the EA-18G's wingtips. I'm still curious how they managed to pull off the ALQ-218's radome, which must be sturdy enough to survive on the wingtip, yet not too sturdy to interfere with the operations of the embedded antenna.

Integrating the all-new Raytheon-made Communications Countermeasures Set (CCS) also added some complexity to the project, as did the introduction of the highly useful interference cancellation system (INCANS), which allows the EA-18G to continue jamming an enemy radar even while the pilot continues to communicate with other friendly aircraft.

It's reasonable to question whether the navy should have been still more ambitious. Why not introduce an all-new, digital-era jamming pod with the first delivery of the EA-18G? Why not design a next-generation jammer aircraft around a more stealthy platform, like the navy's forthcoming F-35C due to be delivered in 2015? Why not challenge your contractor -- to which you're paying billions of dollars -- to invent something completely new, versus "repackaging" two familiar systems?

At the end of the day, the navy is getting exactly what it paid for, on-time. In this day and age, maybe that's all you can really ask for.