Stephen Trimble: June 2007 Archives

It's showtime in India -- well, almost.

The aerospace industries of the Europe, Russia and the US have been waiting for two years now for the Indian Ministry of Defense to release a request for proposals for a contract worth $8 billion to $10 billion to buy 126 multi-role fighters.

And they're still waiting. But there is progress. My colleague Graham Warwick reports that India's Defence Acquisition Council has given the thumbs-up to the ministry to release the RFP, which is now expected to be issued within a few weeks. Okay, in India, this timeframe could mean either "in a few weeks" or "in a few months" or even "in a few years". But the DAC has approved the RFP, and that has to be a sign of progress, right?

The competitors are the F/A-18E/F, F-16, MiG-35, Rafale and Typhoon. That's quite a line-up.

Depending on whether India specifies a requirement for active electronically scanned array radar, Lockheed may be wise to offer F-16I Sufa already sold to Israel. It lacks an AESA, but has a radar that can meet most modern military's requirement for air-to-ground functionality.

The real competition, however, may belong to the French and the Russians. Both seem much more willing to offer India access to the airframe, propulsion and electronics technologies it covets, and both may be viewed as far more reliable strategic partners than the US, which is known to be a fairly skittish ally on the subcontinent.

Read Armed Forces Journal for an extraordinary article in which a US Air Force colonel attempts to explain to army pilots how they should be flying their helicopters in Iraq.

(That thundering sound you hear right now is the mob of club-wielding army pilots en route to the good air force colonel's office to register a few of their intellectual objections to his considered opinions.)

The most extraordinary thing about the article is that the air force guy -- Colonel Jim Slife -- may actually be right. His point is that army helicopters are using the wrong tactics -- flying low and fast -- to answer the shoulder-fired missile threat in Iraq. Slife says there are four reasons to make helicopters fly at high altitude. They are: MANPADS envelope is reduced by 20% to 30%, helicopter pilot has four more seconds of reaction time, the pilot also has more energy with which to maneuver and using low power at high altitudes reduces infrared signature.

Slife adds: "Some elements of the US military have begun to employ high-altitude helicopter tactics with great success." Hmmm: I wonder which elements of the US military that the air force colonel is referring to?

Today, you can:

1. Spend a year telling contractors that you want to develop a sophisticated data link to integrate on the air mobility fleet, then abruptly reverse course
and signal that you'd rather buy an off the shelf antenna, but thanks for everybody's time.

2. Develop a new unmanned aerial vehicle designed by InSitu that seems like a good fit for the hunter-killer mission

3. Seemingly defy reason and common sense by seeking to build a new supersonic wind tunnel in California, even as the existing supersonic wind tunnels wither for lack of support

4. Start working on designing yet a new and more agile kill vehicle for the Missile Defense Agency

Southwest Airlines, the only carrier that Wall Street analysts love to love (or LUV?), announced today that it is deferring deliveries of 15 Boeing 737-700s. This is bad news for airlines. Very bad. I've polled my colleagues, who actually know a thing or two about the air transport industry, and no one can remember a time when market conditions forced Southwest to defer aircraft deliveries.

But even worse is the simultaneous announcement by Southwest on two of the steps it is taking to boost revenue: does anybody believe launching a new advertising campaign and revamping the boarding and seating method are the keys to turning things around??

The US Navy is seeking to develop a new target vehicle described as "supersonic" and "multi-stage". You can read the solicitation here.

I have not been previoulsy aware of a specific need in the navy for such a target. It's possible that this is part of the navy's Threat D program, which seeks to do something about the ongoing scare over the emergence in China, India and Russia of supersonic sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, for which the USN has no proven and reliable countermeasure.

So the US Department of Justice has launched an investigation of BAE Systems over allegations that it bribed Saudi officials to buy Eurofighter jets.

Does this open cans of globalized defense industry worms or what?

First of all, what is DOJ's jurisdiction over a deal involving a sale by a British company to the Saudi government? BAE Systems PLC is based in London, while BAE Systems SSA is based in the US. Could the investigation be focused on the SSA's role? Or could DOJ be focusing on the case because it possibly involves the transfer of Eurofighter parts made in the US and subject to the export control regime? I don't know, but it's a question that doesn't appear to have a public answer at the moment.

Secondly, why just this deal. BAE Systems is being investigated around the globe in various ongoing bribery cases. What makes the Eurofighter scandal so special?

What about the Czech Republic, which is the scene of reports that BAE Systems bribed the government to buy the Saab/BAE JAS 39 Gripen fighter?

In Qatar, BAE Systems is being investigated for bribery in a transaction involving Pirahna armored vehicles.

In Romania, BAE Systems is under investigation for alleged bribery in the sale of frigates to that country.

Finally, in South Africa, the British government is inquiring about possible improprieties in the sale of BAE Systems Hawk trainer jets to Cape Town.

The plot continues to thicken on the mystery of the Joint Cargo Aircraft contract. As I reported in Flight International magazine this week, I have received three different official estimates for cost and aircraft quantity, The joint programme office says the contract will cost $2 billion to buy 78 aircraft. L-3 Communications, the selected prime contractor, claims the $2 billion will buy 55 aircraft. The US Air Force, meanwhile, tells me that they're both wrong and that the whole $2 billion figure is a "misprint". According to the USAF, the actual cost is $1.5 billion and it's going to buy 40 aircraft. I have not seen a more confusing post-contract award scenario yet.

Meanwhile, I still wonder how the USAF can legitimately claim that it fully backs the current JCA program, while also telling me that it's continuing to evaluate the intratheater airlift requirement. The review is their 'get out of jail free' card. They can do anything they wish after the review specified how many and, possibly, which aircraft they need for the intrathearter airlift requirement. I will not stop asking this question until the USAF has put its share of the JCA order on contract with L-3 Communications, and even then I'll probably remain skepitical, such is the depth of my cynicism on this issue.

In case you're wondering, here's the article I wrote from the Paris air show last week.

The official reason for my 1-hour joy ride in a US Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet on June 20 at the Paris air show is quite sensible. I am after all a serious journalist and non-pilot who writes regularly about the aircraft. The real-world exposure, compliments of Boeing's generous invitation, would add a valuable perspective to my understanding of the aircraft and an appreciation for its strengths and limitations.

Or something like that.

Unofficially, my reason for accepting a back-seat ticket in the world's newest carrier-borne aircraft was to have as much fun as possible without throwing up. (Some may argue the no-vomit proviso would seem to be in contradiction with the have-fun philosophy, but I was willing to live with it. It was my key performance parameter, if you will.)

Let's just say the flight and my pilot -- US Navy Lieutenant Page Felini -- exceeded my expectations. Felini, a war veteran, likely felt the fighter pilot's universal temptation to make an intrusive journo barf, but she generously abstained from making the worst of the reverse-g manuevers that predictably clean out the stomachs of aerial acrobatic rookies like myself.

Remember when China blew up one of its own satellites with a missile back in January?

Remember the tsk-tsk diplomatic response by the US government?

Of course, diplomastic posturing is never easy when your government is publicly denouncing an activity that it is privately pursuing with some gusto -- as this new acquisition notice by the US Air Force shows (check the "space" reference).

Tsk-tsk, yourself.

DOD's contract announcement for the Joint Cargo Aircraft says that the L-3 Communications team will be paid an "estimated" $2.04 billion to deliver "up to" 78 C-27Js.

That is not very clear, nor very accurate, and the facts that I discovered yesterday raise some serious questions about the US Air Force's real level of interest in the JCA program.

Let me explain.

First, when I saw that $2.04 billion number, it seemed too low to me. Sure enough, when I divided $2.04 billion by 78 aircraft, the number was too low. According to my calculator, that's $26 million per aircraft, including contractor logistics support. The C-27J sticker price starts at $32 million per aircraft, which is the purchase price quoted to recent customer Bulgaria.

When I asked Giuseppe Giordo, CEO of Alenia North America about this, he agreed that $2.04 billion is too low to buy 78 C-27Js (and, as the manufacturer of the aircraft, he should know). Giordo told me he believes the contract award pays for 54 aircraft, which is the amount quoted in the army's original request for proposals for the fiscal years 2007 to 2011. My calculator says the purchase price rises to $35 million with 54 aircraft, which is in fact a rational number.

But here's where it starts getting more complicated.

The way airlines buy aircraft today makes no sense. The current model doesn't work for the customers, the manufacturers nor the financiers. The system has to change.

Cheers to Fortune magazine for spotting one possible solution to this problem: hedge funds! (Really.)

Here's an excerpt, but check out the full article here:

Traditionally, airlines purchased most of their fleets, renting the rest from a few big leasing companies owned by firms like GE (Charts, Fortune 500) and AIG (Charts, Fortune 500), which could afford to ride out the industry's ups and downs. But hedgies spotted a flaw in the model: Aircraft were financed based on the creditworthiness of airlines rather than the value of the actual planes. And with global demand for travel trending up, the funds bet that the metal could be alchemized into flying gold.

The US Army has thankfully upheld my professional reputation, such as it is, by selecting the C-27J for a $2 billion contract awarded earlier this evening.

I risked public embarassment and several free beers to the Raytheon/EADS North America PR team by sticking my neck out last week and predicting that the L-3/Alenia/Boeing/etc product would win the program. You can read my prediction here.

The question I have now is whether the US Air Force will let the army actually buy the aircraft it just put on contract this evening.

The air force may indeed come around to the idea, and the Inside the Air Force newsletter has written some compelling articles in this vein. The service's leadership has apparently made peace with the idea of buying an alternative to the crown jewel of its tactical mobility fleet, with new plans to park a number of C-27Js in the Guard and present the aircraft as a new bond of brotherhood with the foreign militaries of Africa, South America and the poorer parts of Asia.

So maybe I was right for the wrong reasons, but I'll take it.

The US Air Force wants to know whether very light jets (VLJs) could make good military aircraft for a variety of applications, to include spying. Read the air force's notice here.

Boeing today has released its latest current market outlook for civil airliners, predicting again that air traffic growth should far out-pace the world's economic growth. (China: Boeing says "thank you".)

Read it here.

And Randy Tinseth's Paris Air Show briefing here.

Vago Muradian, editor of Defense News, reports today that the US Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a classified contract to develop a hypersonic, unmanned spy plane that could evolve into a bomber.

How this plays with the USAF's announcement last month that it will seek to develop a subsonic, manned bomber for the long range strike mission by 2018 is unclear to us.

Read the full story here, or, if you prefer, here's an excerpt:

The Air Force has awarded Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects arm a top-secret contract to develop a stealthy 4,000-mph plane capable of flying to altitudes of about 100,000 feet, with transcontinental range. The plan is to debut the craft around 2020. The new jet -- being referred to by some as the SR-72 -- is likely to be unmanned and, while intended for reconnaissance, it could eventually trade its sensors for weapons.

Bill Sweetman, of Defense Technology International, follows-up with some useful insight on Aviation Week.com's Ares blog:

... Early last year I had a conversation with a senior Skunk in which he talked about the company's proposal for a new high-speed, high-altitude X-plane. The X-plane would be the size of a fighter and would be designed for a speed of Mach 6.5 -- 4300 mph -- at 100,000 feet. (The SR-71 Blackbird, retired in 1990, could manage up to Mach 3.3 in sprints at 85,000 feet). It would be powered by two jet engines -- bigger versions of the engine used on the Skunk Works' RATTLRS (Revolutionary Approach To Time-critical Long Range Strike) cruise missile -- integrated into ramjets. The speed -- less than DARPA'S Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle project or the USAF's X-51 scramjet demonstrator -- is important. At Mach 6.5, the vehicle can be powered by ramjets, rather than having to incorporate a scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) mode into the system. It would take off from a runway and land under power, not as a high-speed glider. It can burn near-standard hydrocarbon fuel, not hydrogen or a similarly exotic propellant. It could be made from conventional materials -- even composites -- with heat-resistant materials confined to the leading edges.

Today, you can:

1. Show the army how to zap enemy aircraft with lasers, ushering in a whole new method for air defense

Is the AGM-129A -- the US Air Force's only stealthy cruise missile with a nuclear warhead -- dead or not?

This post by the Federation of American Scientists blog on March 7 says yes.

But this solicitation by the US Air Force on April 27 would seem to indicate otherwise. The air force says it intends to award Raytheon a contract to maintain the missile in the inventory for up to five years, starting on January 1, 2008.

Hmmm ...

The C-27J will be announced the winner of the Joint Cargo Aircraft competition later this week. Put it in the bag.

Keep in mind that this is a blog and not a news story. I have no information that confirms the sentence above. If I did, you can trust that I'd save it for my employer: Flight International magazine.

This is purely informed speculation, akin to a sports analyst predicting who wins a game between two teams in which he or she has no personal stake. In other words, I'm guessing.

I also bear no grudges against the Raytheon/EADS CASA North America C295 team. Indeed, until a few days ago, I would have put my money on the pride of Spain's aerospace industry. Them's the breaks.

Some of you I'm sure will think I'm full of crap. But before you press the "send comment" button, please read why I'm predicting the C-27J has won. Here goes:

With the Paris Air Show right around the corner, it's a good time for a French arms-media-political scandal -- or at least complaints that there should be a scandal.

This week's The Economist says:

"More troubling are links between politics, the media and missiles. The Lagardere Group, which owns Le Journal du Dimanche, Paris Match and a radio station, Europe 1, still has a stake in the aerospace group EADS. Arnaud Lagardere is another friend of Mr Sarkozy's; journalists at Le Journal du Dimanche are embroiled in a row over interference in a censored story about the president's wife, Cecilia. The Dassault Group, whose aviation division makes Rafale and Mirage fighters, owns 87% of Socpresse, which includes Le Figaro and many regional titles; Serge Dassault is a senator from Mr Sarkozy's party. With defence firms so depednent on government contracts, these conflicts of interest ought to generate more censure in France than they do."

Paul Richfield's Big Scoop on BAMS

Props to my competitor Paul Richfield, editor of C4ISR Journal, for scooping us on BAMS in this month's issue. Richfield got Boeing to publicly acknowledge that it will partner with Gulfstream to offer the G550 business jet as optionally manned/unmanned aircraft for the US Navy's BAMS program. (BAMS=Broad Area Maritime Surveillance).

In Seattle last month, I directly asked Boeing's people if they were ready yet to publicly confirm that they would offer the G550 for BAMS, which has been speculated ever since Boeing and Gulfstream each received study contracts from the navy in 2005. Alas, Boeing refused to answer me. Maybe my buddy Paul has pictures of them cavorting with sheep? Who knows. But here's a good excerpt of his interview with Boeing's Tim Norgart:

I am very happy to announce that TDL has a new and better home. Go to the new link here at http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/.

FlightGlobal is the web site of my employer, who is generous (and brave) enough to support my musings, ramblings and bloggings on all matters about aersopace and defense.

The content of the new blog will be mostly the same, with defense sharing the stage a bit more with items about the large airliner market and aircraft engines. But defense is still what I'm all about.

I hope you'll all join me at the new location.

With the Paris Air Show right around the corner, it's a good time for a French arms-media-political scandal -- or at least complaints that there should be a scandal.

This week's The Economist says:

"More troubling are links between politics, the media and missiles. The Lagardere Group, which owns Le Journal du Dimanche, Paris Match and a radio station, Europe 1, still has a stake in the aerospace group EADS. Arnaud Lagardere is another friend of Mr Sarkozy's; journalists at Le Journal du Dimanche are embroiled in a row over interference in a censored story about the president's wife, Cecilia. The Dassault Group, whose aviation division makes Rafale and Mirage fighters, owns 87% of Socpresse, which includes Le Figaro and many regional titles; Serge Dassault is a senator from Mr Sarkozy's party. With defence firms so depednent on government contracts, these conflicts of interest ought to generate more censure in France than they do."

Props to my competitor Paul Richfield, editor of C4ISR Journal, for scooping us on BAMS in this month's issue. Richfield got Boeing to publicly acknowledge that it will partner with Gulfstream to offer the G550 business jet as optionally manned/unmanned aircraft for the US Navy's BAMS program. (BAMS=Broad Area Maritime Surveillance).

In Seattle last month, I directly asked Boeing's people if they were ready yet to publicly confirm that they would offer the G550 for BAMS, which has been speculated ever since Boeing and Gulfstream each received study contracts from the navy in 2005. Alas, Boeing refused to answer me. Maybe my buddy Paul has pictures of them cavorting with sheep? Who knows. But here's a good excerpt of his interview with Boeing's Tim Norgart:

"When you look at the load-carrying requirements optimized for BAMS, the G550 became the obvious choice," Norgart said. "We did the same thing when we chose the 737 for the P-8A program. We looked at all the available air vehicles and determined that for BAMS, we need a regional jet-sized airplane. The G550 is just superb in every way.

"With it, we have the flexibility of being optionally manned but we're pitching this as an [unmanned aerial system]. We have commercial aircraft reliability and can fly all day, every day. And we have speed; we can get to where we need to be very quickly.

"Our payload capacity is another huge discriminator. When we're on station, we have all the possible tools in the tool belt; all the sensors all the time, and we get there first. The other, small unmanned systems can only carry so much."

Boeing declined to go into detail regarding just how the G550 will be configured for BAMS. Norgart did say, however, that the aircraft would include "two basic FAA-certified modifications" that Gulfstream has delivered on other special mission G550s.

Two key technologies still in development for the G550, however, are the aircraft's unmanned flight control and collision avoidance systems.

"Those are the easy part," he said. "We have a tremendous amount of experience, as do our teammates, and we plan to leverage all that capability as we have in the past on other programs."

The C-27J will be announced the winner of the Joint Cargo Aircraft competition later this week. Put it in the bag.

Keep in mind that this is a blog and not a news story. I have no information that confirms the sentence above. If I did, you can trust that I'd save it for my employer: Flight International magazine.

This is purely informed speculation, akin to a sports analyst predicting who wins a game between two teams in which he or she has no personal stake. In other words, I'm guessing.

I also bear no grudges against the Raytheon/EADS CASA North America C295 team. Indeed, until a few days ago, I would have put my money on the pride of Spain's aerospace industry. Them's the breaks.

Some of you I'm sure will think I'm full of crap. But before you press the "send comment" button, please read why I'm predicting the C-27J has won. Here goes:

When the Senate Armed Services Committee marked up the Fiscal Year 2008 authorization bill a few weeks ago, it inserted language to make the US Air Force the purchasing authority for the Joint Cargo Aircraft program.

I interpret this move as the air force taking insurance. If the army selects the aircraft that the air force doesn't like, the latter can ensure the former doesn't get to buy it.

The air force participated -- but did not get the decisive vote -- in the source selection process. The process concluded in March, meaning the air force likely knows which aircraft won the competition. Following this logic, the SASC's mark is an indication that the air force disapproves of the selected aircraft.

The question then becomes: which aircraft does the air force oppose?

For various reasons, I think the air force is opposed to the C-27J as too near a competitor in performance and mission to the prize of its entrenched tactical airlifter community: the C-130J. The C295, while an effective, proven aircraft, is not as likely to be confused as a rival to the venerable Hercules family, and therefore the aircraft the air force could support.

I admit: This is a prediction based purely on speculation. It's more like a conversation over a beer or two than a professional observation. But, well, that's kind of the point of having a blog. I might be completely wrong, and I hope Raytheon and EADS CASA North America will continue to return my phone calls. But this is my best guess.

Baker Spring at the Heritage Foundation makes the case that the defense budget should be pegged to 4% of the Gross Domestic Product. He warns that if no action is taken soon, defense spending as a percetange of national economic output will decline to 3.2% by 2012.

This is the calm before the storm. The US defense budget tends to rise and fall at roughly 15-year intervals. The current upward cycle since 1998 is stretching the interval beyond its normal apogee. A defense spending freefall could be around the corner, although some analysts, such as defense industry optimist Loren Thompson, believe the upward spending track may continue indefinitely. But the fear of a freefall among defense hardliners and profitmakers remains, so expect to hear many such calls for tying defense spending to economic output over the next few years.

(With apologies for my five-day blogging lapse, as my wedding to the world's most amazing woman proved to be quite a distraction ...)

Today, you can:

1. Learn that the Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle is now seen as a percursor to two new such vehicles called Insight and Integrator
2. Bid for a contract that transforms F-16 fighters into targets for air-to-air missile practice, now that there's only a few old F-4 Phantoms left to blow up for fun
3. Compete to build the next-generation of Global Positioning System satellites
4. Find out the bullets on board the F-16 and F-18 don't work right
5. Feel oddly sorry for the plight of Lockheed Martin, which won the Joint Common Missile contract, then lost it for no apparent reason in 2005, then kept the program on life support through the company's allies in Congress, then lost the contract again after the army decided to re-compete the resurrected program