June 2010 Archives

12:31: Scanning the conclusions of the WTO report, the panel has two statements that seem to contradict a third (although, of course, I'm not a lawyer).

On one hand, the panel says "yes": the US side did prove Airbus received subsidies, and those subsidies "displaced the exports of a like product of the US" in eight countries and the "likely displacement" of exports to another country (India).

But the panel also says "no": the US side did NOT prove that those subsidies allowed Airbus to undercut, suppress or depress prices "significantly" compared to Boeing products in any market.

(This opinion will loom large in the KC-X contract competition, as Boeing's supporters have argued that the Airbus subsidies allow EADS NA to undercut the KC-767 on price in what is expected by both sides to be a price shoot-out.)

11:35: Adding Twitter feed on WTO-related tweets.



11:24: In case you'd like to read another report about this issue, EADS NA also released a new paper today entitled "Don't let Boeing close the door on competition. Boeing Subsidies Report FINAL 5_26_10.pdf.

11:20: EADS North America has also released a statement by email to reporters covering the story.

"The Obama Administration and Department of Defense have opposed every attempt to use the ongoing WTO commercial trade dispute to derail the KC-X competition.  The only beneficiary of such a noncompetitive action would be the Boeing Company.  Everyone else--the warfighter, the taxpayer and 48,000 Americans who stand ready to build the KC-45--would lose. The warfigher would lose the right to choose the only tanker that is real and flying today; taxpayers would lose the benefits of competition; and 48,000 Americans would be robbed of the opportunity to work in support of US national security.  The US warfighter, taxpayer and 48,000 Americans deserve a fair competition decided on the merits--not on politics."

 
10:49: The World Trade Organization today has issued the final report on the US case against the European Union over the matter of alleged subsidies to Airbus, thus conclusively resolving this decades-old issue once and for all with an unchallenged, definitive, legal and binding ruling. Um, or not.

My colleague in London Niall O'Keeffe is covering the news from Europe, while I'm looking at events on this side of the pond.

Here are the most relevant links so far:

• WTO panel report on Airbus dispute
• Statement by US Trade Representative
• Statement by Boeing
• E_WTO Public Report.doc

A press release issued yesterday that promotes a new textbook authored by two Skunk Works engineers contains a reference to a mysterious aircraft program that quickly revived old Aurora conspiracies, yet is apparently not Aurora.

The American Institute for Astronautics and Aeronautics (AIAA) describes Grant E. Carichner -- who co-authored the newly-published "Fundamentals of Aircraft and Airship Design: Volume 1: Aircraft Design" -- as a Skunk Works engineer who worked on several aerospace programs. The list in the press release includes the SR-71 and the "M-5 Methane Penetrator, a suspersonic stealth Short-Take Off/Vertical Landing (STOVL) fighter".

This creates a number of possibilites. There is nothing especially novel about a supersonic, stealthy, STOVL fighter, which exists already as the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. However, the "Methane Penetrator" description strongly suggests a separate project. Depending on your taste for conspiracy theory, you may choose to intepret "M-5" as "Mach 5.0", which is often shortened to "M5". And now we're talking -- wait for it! -- Aurora, the rumored and often-dismissed Skunk Works project that was sometimes described as a hypersonic, STOVL-capable, liquid methane-powered penetrator. Aurora has also been discredited by a wide range of sources as either an inadvertent fraud or a collosal typo in a mid-1980s budget document.

A Skunk Works spokeswoman says the M-5 Methane Penetrator is not Aurora. In fact, it's not even really a secret. Here's Lockheed's full statement:

"The NASA M-5 Methane Penetrator project was a study contract completed by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® in the early '80s. This effort was unclassified and work by Lockheed Martin did not extend beyond the initial study contract. I would suggest contacting NASA public affairs for further information."

Orange County Choppers last year produced motorcycle versions of the B-2 and F-22. Somebody else  -- anybody know who? -- has designed a Su-35BM motorcycle.



While OCC artistically interpreted the USA's finest combat aircraft, the motorcycle Su-35BM is rendered as faithfully straightforward as any good Russian design should be. 



I'm sure all of you understand what this means: It's time for the motorcycle version of the F-35B (Idea: Workshare. Israelis. See where I'm going? It can even be a two-seater!), even if it's only to put this guy out of business. 

I wish the photo above came from inside Boeing's Phantom Works facility in St. Louis, which I toured yesterday morning. The image actually comes from inside the next building we toured, where the C-130 avionics modernization program (AMP) was briefed.

But you can't take cameras, cell phones, tape recorders, laptops and possibly even in hearing aids inside Phantom Works. It's a no-electronic-device kind of environment, like Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works compound in Palmdale, California.

Phantom Works has been busy lately. The X-45C that the US Air Force canceled in 2006, and the US Navy rejected for a carrier-based demonstration in 2007, turned up again last year as the internally-funded Phantom Ray demonstrator that could fly later this year. In the hangar opened to the press tour, major structures had piled up for the surprisingly large Phantom Eye high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft, another internally-funded investment aimed at breaking the Boeing Condor's 58hr endurance record. I also saw my first glimpse of small drone named RM-1, which was literally fabricated by machines over a weekend after engineers loaded the plastic design into a computer on a Friday.

More long-term is an on-going effort to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet with a next-generation (Boeing: Don't call it "6th-generation"!), carrier-based air dominance fighter. Phantom Works also is trying to figure out how the Air Force will replace the Predator/Reaper series -- the MQ-X requirement -- and whether the Navy really wants to buy a carrier-based, stealthy unmanned aircraft for strike and surveillance -- the UCLASS requirement. According to Phantom Works president Darryl Davis, the Pentagon is currently debating whether to combine the MQ-X and UCLASS into a single requirement.

All of this activity comes amidst looming budget cuts that promise to fall hardest on the Pentagon's research and development accounts. Davis acknowledges the dilemma, but says Boeing is not slowing down internal spending during the downturn -- so far.

"We're not throttling back on [developing new] capabilities," he says. "We want to make sure we're ready" when the defense spending cycle reverses direction again.

My favorite French magazine Air & Cosmos published last week a photo obtained from the French Air Force showing a Lockheed Martin F-22 in the target sights of a Dassault Rafale. The apparent intercept took place during the exercises at Al Dhafra AB, UAE, in November and December, Air & Cosmos' Guillaume Steuer reports.

In late December, the French Ministry of Defense boasted one kill in six engagements versus the F-22 in aerial combat. In turn, US Air Force F-22 pilots, however, told the media that their aircraft was undefeated during the exercise.

It's impossible to make any sensible judgments from a single photo of an alleged air-to-air engagement, but this is certainly a significant image to appear in the history of both fighter programs.

If you blink you'll miss it, but it's clearly there. In a flash between the :12 and :13-second mark on the video below, a large black object is observed ejecting forcefully in the opposite direction of the F-35B during the first short takeoff attempt at NAS Patuxent River on March 17.

Doug Pearson, Lockheed Martin's F-35 flight test manager, saw the mystery object. His first thought: "Oh my gosh, what came off my airplane?!"



The mystery ejection, preserved on video posted on YouTube by Aviation Week technology editor Graham Warwick, was quickly solved on inspection of said object by Pearson's staff.

The force of the F-35B's vectored exhaust nozzle had ejected a rubber grommet placed around a runway light. The grommet had survived multiple takeoffs and landings by other jets at Pax over the years, but succumbed to its first encounter with the F-35Bs vectored thrust on short takeoff.

But there is a simple explanation, Pearson says. Such grommets are not glued or attached to the runway, but simply placed around the lighting fixture, he says. NAS Patuxent River has made changes.  

I'm about two minutes away for boarding a plane to get to St. Louis, but here's a quick snippet from visit to Marine Corps Air Station New River. The two V-22s in the video belong to VMM-261, the unit that is just returning from a deployment to Afghanistan. [CORRECTION: We flew on two birds from VMM-263.]

[As promised, here's the link: US Air Force, industry prepare for T-38 replacement)

I'm amazed that the unfolding T-X contract battle, which I'm previewing in this week's magazine (I'll add the link after the story is posted online), isn't one of the biggest news stories in military aviation today.

It's a story that has it all. Controversy? Three largely foreign aircraft in competition with potential American rivals. Size? Projected initial orders range from 350 to 500 aircraft, with follow-on potential up to 1,000. Emotion? Replace the US Air Force's venerable Northrop T-38 Talon, the advanced jet trainer that has primed three generations of fighter and bomber pilots for combat.

And it's a story that's moving very fast. Until a few years ago, the USAF had delayed plans for a T-38 replacement past 2020. A fatal crash in 2008 caused by an over-fatigued aileron helped to change the plan. The in-service date was accelerated to 2017. Since then, the USAF has released two fairly explicit requests for information to industry, detailing what the service thinks it needs.

But there is one thing holding this story back, and it's a 'biggie'. So far, the USAF hasn't put any real funding into the budget for T-X, despite plans to award a full-scale development contract before 2013. Industry expects that oversight to be cleared up in the Fiscal 2012 budget request that will be released in early February.

The USAF will not lack for options. Three off the shelf options exist to replace the T-38: AleniaAermacchi M346 Master, BAE Systems Hawk 128 and Korea Aerospace Industries/Lockheed Martin T-50 Golden Eagle. The catch: All of them are primairly designed and built overseas, although final assembly of course would shift to the US for the T-X contract winner.

But the USAF doesn't have to settle for off the shelf. It's possible that Boeing and perhaps Northrop Grumman could propose an alternative route: design a "purpose-built" -- and, more importantly, "all-American" -- advanced jet trainer.

That option may please a faction of parochial lawmakers, but it will add at least $3 to $5 billion to the program price tag. Given that buying new trainers rank among the lowest of any air force's spending priorities, that may be asking a lot.

One more option still exists, and it's perhaps Northrop's favorite strategy. Rather than buy an all-new aircraft, simply launch a "super-SLEP" (service life extension program) on the T-38 fleet.  

Posted on Russia Today's YouTube channel this morning:

India aerospace journalist Shiv Aroor's LiveFist blog today brings us the first conceptual renderings of AURA, the stealth UCAV project that India apparently decided to leak into the public domain a few weeks ago.

 
India's is part of a growing global craze for bat-wing-shaped UAVs. Consider the following list of acknowledged, bat-wing UCAV projects in development across the world:

• BAE Systems Taranis
• Boeing Phantom Ray
• Dassault Neuron
• Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel
  
• Mikoyan Skat
• Northrop Grumman X-47B

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the last are the omissions. Where is China? What about Israel? Stay tuned ...

Since I apparently now have a voice in PLAAF decision-making, I'm voting for the red-and-black scheme with the Michael Jackson "Beat It" vibe. 

From China Defence Blog today:

Say No To White Rabbit

Due to pubic outcry over the ugly "white rabbit" paint scheme (here) , the PLAAF "August First" flight demonstration team recently released four new sample color schemes for people to choose from. Cast your vote here http://mil.news.sina.com.cn/nz/j10tuzhuang/index.shtml

Remember, vote early and vote often

Boeing bravely invited about 20 of the "world's leading aviation journalists" -- cough, cough -- to Australia last month to show us how far they've come since August 2008.

Two years ago, the company parted ways with its previous leadership team on the continent, starting from scratch to rebuild relationships with a skeptical Australian military customer.

On our week-long tour, we saw unmanned aircraft flying in Toogoolawah, C-17s and F/A-18Fs parked in Amberley and a high-end composite factory in Fishermans Bend. I filed a 3-page feature on the experience in this week's copy of Flight International, which is now online.

The story includes a rebuttal by David Withers, Boeing's previous top executive in the country, who says of the current leadership: "It's actually got worse over the last two years [for Boeing Australia] rather than better. When I was there we were still winning business."

The facts on the ground show that's not an entirely fair assessment. Boeing appears to have stabilized its worst-performing programs, including Wedgetail, High Frequency Modifications and Vigilaire. But it is true that the company must show more improvement to fulfill it's ambitious goal to double sales results in Australia by 2014. 

Roger Munk may have died in February, but his first paying customer finally came through yesterday.

The US Army signed a $517 million contract to buy at least three hybrid airships yesterday from Northrop Grumman, which had partnered with Hybrid Air Vehicles -- the last in a long line of airship ventures launched by Munk.

Munk, a naval architect turned airship designer, spent the last three decades trying to make the dirigible a commercial reality. Whether it was the short-lived Sentinel 1000 sponsored by the US Navy or the aborted SkyCat launched by Advanced Technologies Group, Munk's name and ideas were the driving force.

It wasn't until the last few years that market demand and Munk's design ideas appeared to merge.

First, Munk conceived of an improved airship design that combined the bouyancy of the lighter-than-air airship, the aerodynamics of a rigid aircraft and the easy ground handling of a hovercraft with an air-cushioned landing system. 

Then, the US Army suddenly became unlikely airship aficionados, launching the LEMV program as a trailblazer for a series of potential future applications, such as manned cargo hybrid airships lifting 20,000 tons for up to 1,000 miles.

It was never that easy for Munk, even to the last. Although his Hybrid Air Vehicles company had partnered with Northrop, the team faced strong opposition from Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division, which had demonstrated the similarly-designed P791 hybrid airship in 2006.

Speaking to reporters today, Gordon Taylor, director of sales and marketing for Hybrid Air Vehicles, acknowledged the bittersweet tone of the moment.

"We're all terribly excited about what happened [yesterday]," Taylor says. "I was speaking with Roger's wife -- widow -- Annie today. ... We're very, very excited. But it is a sad loss. Roger was a great friend.  Even the Northrop Grumman people have been very respectful. They got to know the man well enough to realize what we've got our hands on."

Defense News Editor and must-watch TV host Vago Muradian yesterday took a stand on F-35. Last month, the Department of Defense's top cost-estimating group raised the program's overall price to $382 billion. Muradian obliquely chastises the estimators by labeling them as "pessimists". 

In the latest Eurofighter World magazine, Typhoon's in-house propaganda press tells us how they really feel.

See page 8.

Including the Lockheed Martin F-35, which suffers from "inflexibility issues", in a discussion about 5th generation fighters "is a mistake", reads the pro-Typhoon article. Why, the Typhoon is even more 5th generation than the allegedly 5th generation F-35, according to Eurofighter. They've even got a handy info-graphic (shown below) that summarizes the argument.

The Toronto-based Globe and Mail headline today says "Harper bending to US on sole-source fighter purchase, documents reveal".

If you're familiar with the sensitivity of US-Canadian relations, especially when viewed from north of the border, you know that headline is aimed at striking an emotional bulls-eye in Ottawa.

According to the article, leaked documents apparently show Canadian cabinet ministers are being pressured to dispense with competition and award a sole-source contract to Lockheed Martin for 65 F-35s.

Boeing and Eurofighter have been angling to open the CF-18 replacement contract to competitive bidding, as I reported from Ottawa last June. At that time, these erstwhile competitors both expected the Canadian government to make a decision within the year. If the Globe and Mail's sources are to be believed, the time is apparently coming to an immediate head.

The Globe and Mail's leaked documents reportedly show the acquisition cost for 65 F-35s will be $8.9 billion, which averages $135 million per aircraft. That's interesting because Canada is among the last three F-35 international partners expected to order jets, starting in 2014.

Below is a briefing presented in Canada in May 2009 by Keith Knotts, Lockheed Martin's top salesman in Canada and the UK. Slides 10-18 describe Canada's stake and potential future in the F-35 program.

Australian aviation videographer Ross Stenhouse has posted a video of the ScanEagle briefing and demonstration that I and a group of journalists received a couple of Tuesdays ago in Toogoolawah, Australia.

The Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle, designed by Aerovel founder Tad McGeer, has become by far the most popular unmanned aircraft system in the size class beneath the AAI RQ-7 Shadow.

ScanEagle solves the problem of runway dependence for small UAS using a catapult launcher and a clever recovery method, in which a wing-tip hook snags a wire suspended from a crane. Witnessing ScanEagle's moment of recovery was actually worth a roughly 4-hour bus ride into the Australian bush in a cramped bus full of increasingly cranky aviation journalists! 

As Tom Burbage closed the F-35C first flight media teleconference on Monday, the Lockheed Martin vice president and ex-US Navy fighter pilot sought to lend a perspective to the occasion.

The 55-minute flight on 6 June by CF-1 -- the first carrier variant -- may seem a minor event in the history of the F-35 program.. But, in the sweep of naval history, CF-1's airborne debut will be remembered as a "very historic day", Burbage says.

Designing and flying an aircraft that must takeoff and land from a postage-stamp, moving runway in open water and possibly under attack has never been easy. It was hard enough in the era of straight-wing aircraft powered by turboprop engines. Adding swept-wings and jet engines in the 1950s inserted a new level of complexity.

Last year's discovery that the F-35C requires a keel redesign to survive repeated carrier landings may indicate the scale of the learning curve, even though the company is no stranger to carrier-based aviation with the S-3 Viking.

I recommend a new article in the Naval War College Review to gain a better appreciation for the story of carrier-based aviation. The author, Robert C. Rubel, argues the Navy's carriers didn't fully recover from the transition to the jet age until the arrival of the F/A-18 Hornet. An excerpt:

Some histories of naval aviation regard the transition to jets to be substantially complete with the phasing out of the last propeller driven fighter, the F4U Corsair, while others maintain that the transition lasted until the introduction of the F-8 Crusader and F-4 Phantom II--the first Navy carrier-based fighters that were the equals of their land-based counterparts. Another way of looking at it is through the lens of safety: one might declare the transition to have been complete when the Navy aviation accident rate became comparable to that of the U.S. Air Force. The logic behind this reasoning is that whereas a multitude of factors--technical, organizational, and cultural--constitute the capability to operate swept-wing jets, the mishap rate offers an overall indicator of how successful an organization is in adopting a new technology.
Using this criterion, the Navy's transition process lasted until the late 1980s--which was, not coincidentally, the era in which the F/A-18 arrived in the fleet in numbers. This article argues that tactical jet aircraft design and technology presented Navy aircrews, maintenance personnel, and leaders with several major challenges that were in fact not substantially overcome until the introduction of the F/A-18 Hornet in 1983.

Cheers to the Royal Australian Air Force for releasing a series of lovely new photos of Boeing's pride-and-joy, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The aircraft apparently can't impress the Canadians this week, but it still looks good in a photo.

My colleagues covering the ILA air show in Berlin this week captured the Airbus A400M's flying display yesterday. It's definitely worth a good look. Also, read Craig Hoyle's article.

European launch aid for the Airbus A330 -- also known as KC-45 for the KC-X contract -- makes Boeing's supporters in Congress very upset. Some have proposed to legally restrict the Department of Defense from buying any aircraft that was launched with subsidized loans from European governments.

Now Boeing proposes to replace the presidential helicopter fleet with a licensed, US-made version of the AugustaWestland AW101.

We know the AW101 also benefited from launch aid. See transcript of 1992 discussion in the UK House of Commons:

EH101 Helicopter

3. Sir Jim Spicer : To ask the President of the Board of Trade what proposals he has for methods by which Her Majesty's Government can enhance the sale prospects of the EH101.

Mr. Sainsbury : My Department has provided £60 million of launch aid for the civil version of the EH101. We shall help to promote export sales of the civil version through our overseas trade services and we are ready to respond to any requests for assistance in pursuing civil export sales prospects.

Update: EADS NA has released a statement about Boeing's announcement.

"We're pleased that Boeing has openly acknowledged the contribution that international teams, products and platforms make to U.S. national security. For several years, Boeing and its allies have been harshly critical of the participation of EADS North America in the KC-X tanker competition. With this announcement, we now expect Boeing to cease its shrill rhetoric and finally allow the KC-X competition to focus on the merits of the tanker offerings."

A Royal Air Force Harrier pilot safely ejects after crash-landing at Kandahar, Afghanistan, last year on 15 May in this clip posted on YouTube earlier this week.

Initial reports in the UK press that the Harrier's undercarriage failed to lower are clearly incorrect. I'm not a crash forensic expert. Does anyone know why the Harrier crashed?

Here's a scary scenario for the Fort Worth crowd:

The US Navy, seeking to overcome a tactical aircraft shortfall that peaks in 2017, decides to buy 126 more Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from 2011 to 2015. At the same time, the 8,000hr service life for 509 Hornets is extended by 600hr.

To offset that cost, 93 fewer F-35B/Cs are purchased between 2018 and 2023, reducing the navy and Marine Corps' Joint Strike Fighter order to 587 jets. The Navy thus replaces F/A-18C/Ds with AESA-equipped fighters, but loses a large fraction of its stealth inventory after 2020.

That scenario is contemplated under a new report released quietly last Friday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The report analyzes four scenarios for maintaining the navy's and marine corps' inventories of fighter aircraft. In the long run, the scenario that exchanges F-35s for Super Hornets costs $3.8 billion under a multi-year procurement approach. That's roughly half the long-run cost of executing a $7.7 billion program to extend the service life of about 60% of the existing Hornet fleet, and maintaining the F-35 plan.

But most intriguing about the CBO scenario described above is that it may already be happening. The CBO report says that buying the extra 126 Super Hornets would start next year by adding eight aircraft to the FY2011 budget request. That happens to be exactly the amount added by the House Armed Services Committee two weeks ago, which could become law if the Senate and appropriators agree.
 

First day back from my work/holiday trip to Australia (okay, mostly work, but with a little time off at the end), and here's the first thing I find in my Inbox:

Ten people were injured, including a 1-year-old girl, by MV-22 downwash during a Memorial Day picnic yesterday on Staten Island. The New York Post has the best coverage, including an interview with the MV-22 pilot. 

But, as usually the case these days, the story is best told by watching the amateur video, and here's the best clip.