Stephen Trimble: March 2008 Archives

Arguably the most interesting development in the US air-to-air missile industry in recent years has been the conceptual rise of the air-launched, anti-ballistic missile (ABM).

Lockheed Martin's air-launched hit to kill (ALHTK) program is pursuing an air-launched version Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), with the first flight test scheduled for this spring.

Raytheon's netcentric air defense element (NCADE) program is modifying an AIM-120 advanced medium range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM) with a solid rocket booster and a modified version of the AIM-9X Sidewinder infrared search and track (IRST) seeker.

I have the opportunity later today to interview both Raytheon and Lockheed officials about these programs.

The concept implies that electronics miniaturization has come far enough to allow even a relatively small missile like AMRAAM to perform the ABM role.

One wonders, however, about whether the US military's sensor networks and communications links have advanced far enough to make the air-launched ABM concept feasible in the real-world.

In other words, even if an air-launched ABM is technically feasible, is it practical? Will an F-15C flying a combat air patrol receive enough data in time to give the weapon a reasonable chance of shooting down a ballistic missile or rocket in the boost or ascent stage?

You can find a great backgrounder on the NCADE concept at Defense Industry Daily.

Meanwhile, tell me what you think. I'll report back after my interviews this evening.

[Clarification: Lockheed Martin's ALHTK is officially marketed as a terminal phase weapon, although it is potentially useful as a boost-phase weapon. However, the PAC-3 is not exoatmospheric because it does not have a divert and attitude control system for guidance control in space, unlike the proposed NCADE design.]

UPDATE: Browsing the exhibit hall at the missile defense conference in Washington DC today, I snapped a couple photos of the two concepts.

Here's Lockheed's ALHTK:

And here is Raytheon's NCADE:

So much for Airbus being the new aerospace darling of the Deep South, which is courtesy of the future, US Air Force-sponsored, A330-200 assembly facility in Mobile.

As of this morning, Boeing is the proud joint-owner of a major aircraft assembly center in Charleston, South Carolina. Boeing bought out Vought's share in Global Aeronautica, a 50-50 joint venture with Italy's Alenia.

The Charleston plant assembles aft fuselage sections for the 787 and ships the structures to Boeing's huge assembly center in Everett, Washington.

Boeing now has a manufacturing presence in the deep south to rival that of Airbus. I have to think that somehow this fact will play in a role in the unfolding tanker war between Boeing and the USAF over the award of a $35 billion tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and Airbus-affiliate EADS North America.

Northrop: it's your move.

Lockheed Martin delivered the first 30 F-22As with an inadequate adhesive -- dubbed C493 -- for low observable (LO) coatings.

The manufacturer has since fixed the problem, but the first 30 airframes are stuck with the bad glue.

There's a reason we now know this bit of F-22A arcana. On November 1, a small patch of LO material sheared off the inlet for the right engine on takeoff. The material was sucked into the engine, causing more than $1.2 million in damage.

I reported about the mishap on this blog on Monday, a few days before the Air Combat Command released the accident investigation report. The report attirbutes the Class A mishap mainly to the poor adhesive used to attach the LO to the engine inlet.

That's one mystery solved.

Today's question comes from NTV, who writes (in reply to my post about the "Lost 767" below):

This leads to the question(s) that I have had since the KC-45 winner was announced. What direction will the Air Force's C4ISR planes move now that there wont be a KC-767? If the Boeing would have won the competition, then using the 767 airframe to replace the JSTARS, AWACS, Rivet Joint, etc would have made sense. Now, things are much more open. With the continued miniaturization of electronics it doesnt, IMO, make sense to have an A330 sized replacment for these aircraft. Will we see a trend towards small aircraft like the 737 AWACS and the P-8? How much of the missions will be taken over by UAV's? Stephen, how do the tea leaves look to you?

Great question! You make a good point. Even if the USAF thinks the KC-30 is sized about right for a KC-135 tanker replacement, that does not mean it's the right fit for a JSTARS or AWACS replacement. However, with the 767 production line prospects looking fairly bleak at this point, it's hard to think that the USAF will have any other options.

More immediately, I think the "Lost 767" could be considered as a candidate to carry the former E-10A's wide area surveillance sensor. It's a long shot, but stranger things have truly happened recently.

Freelance photographer Matt Cawby has posted great photos of the first flight of N526BA, a 767-400ER once destined for service as a US Air Force testbed for the aborted E-10A program. Two more good shots on the ground here and here.

The USAF cancelled the contract for the N526BA in October 2007 after deciding not to make the third and final progress payment.

So Boeing now has a 767-400ER and -- so far, I think -- no customer. The USAF has paid about $90 million, or two-thirds of the total price tag, but has no airframe.

It is now the "lost 767-400ER".

Boeing updated the press corps today about its missile defense programs. Lunch was included, and we -- the Pavlovian press -- showed up en masse.

My angle for Flight International magazine will be an update on the YAL-1 Airborne Laser (ABL). Boeing is now warning that funding to buy a second aircraft -- notionally based on the 747-8F -- needs to come much sooner than currently planned.

The Missile Defense Agency wants the program to take a breather after the first ABL shootdown (originally scheduled for 2003, now pencilled to take place in August 2009). Boeing is concerned that any gap in activity will make it difficult to keep the ABL's 747 industry team up to speed on the program, potentially causing further delays and cost increases downstream.

I asked the program manager if other platforms besides the 747-8F would be considered for the second aircraft -- dubbed "Tail 2". When I suggested the 747-400BCF or the 777F as potential alternatives, he nodded his head but stuck to the line that the 747-8F delivers the best performance (which, in truth, is hard to argue. But I also wonder about affordability?)

Then I asked Boeing's ABL program manager my "crazy, blue sky" question: has Boeing considered the Airbus A380F as a potential candidate for Tail 2? After all, it could easily haul the 225,000-lb laser payload. To my complete shock, he replied "yes". But he also again stuck to the line that the 747-8F is still the best answer.

"Nothing compares because nothing can compare"

That's one of Lockheed Martin's slogans printed in a new marketing brochure for the F-16IN (tip: Sweetman).

Is this the worst marketing slogan for a military aircraft of all time, or are there even dumber ones?

"We never forget who we're marketing for" (Source: Lockheed Martin)

Losing the massive KC-X order exposed already creeping concerns about a barren backlog for Boeing's military division.

Using my company's Milicas database, I tracked exactly how many fixed-wing aircraft orders remain in Boeing's pipeline. The results, as you'll see, clearly reveal that the clock is ticking on Boeing Integrated Defense Systems to do ... well, something.

Here's the order backlog, excluding helicopters:

F/A-18 = 275 (US Navy 251, RAAF 24)
P-8M = 108
F-15E = 54 (Korea 30*, Singapore 24)
C-17A = 27 (USAF 19, Canada 2, NATO 4**, RAF 2)
737 Wedgetail = 10 (RAAF 6, Turkey 4)
KC-767 = 7 (Italy 4, JASDF 3)

(* includes pending order for 20)
(** includes pending order for 4)

As it stands, Boeing's only fixed-wing military aviation product continuing in production beyond 2013 is the 737-based P-8.

In the near term, Boeing is competing for new contracts to build the Broad Area Maritime Surviellance UAS (but with the Gulfstream G550), and a P-8 derivative for the USN's EP-X requirement. The P-8 also is competing for a contract with the Indian Navy.

In the longer-term, Boeing is partnered with Lockheed Martin to compete against Northrop Grumman for the next-generation bomber, notionally to be delivered after 2018.

Boeing also is hoping to keep production alive at least a few years longer for the C-17, F-15 and F-18, tapping both domestic and international customers.

[UPDATE: Matt comments that the list above excludes South Korea's order for four 737 AEW&C aircraft, and he is correct! So add those to the list. The last one is scheduled for delivery in 2012. The same aircraft type also is competing for military orders in India and the UAE.]

A Lockheed Martin F-22A on November 1 experienced an "in-flight emergency" and landed safely at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, but the previously undisclosed incident caused more than $1 million of damage to the aircraft, the US Air Force confirmed to me this morning.
No details of the so-called "Class A" mishap are being released pending a report by the Accident Investigation Board (AIB). Any incident that causes at least $1 million is classified as a Class A mishap and prompts an investigation by the AIB.
The first notice of the new F-22A mishap appeared on the AIB's official web site, which was recently updated with the new information.
The F-22A incident occured on November 1, not on November 2 as reported on the AIB site, says a spokesman for the Air Combat Command.
More details to follow ...

(Source: US Air Force)

Read the news story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINL2139527520080321?rpc=44

If you know Hebrew, I believe you can read the Israeli military's statement here: http://dover.idf.il/IDF/News_Channels/today/08/03/2102.htm

The forums at F-16.net are not yet discussing the story, but I'm sure you'll be able to read more about what I'm calling the Great Sufa Cancer Scare of 2008 here: http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-9727.html

More to follow ...

I don’t speak Dutch, German, Norwegian or whatever language is used in this song.

But this appears to be the very first protest song and video produced about the Joint Strike Fighter. It was posted on YouTube last week.

I’m assuming it’s a protest -- as opposed to a tribute -- owing to the big “X” across the picture of the JSF and the rather unhappy tone of the singer, whose musical oeuvre appears inspired by the vocal stylings of a Northern European Twisted Sister.

You be the judge.

Note to Defenselink.mil's lead photo gallery today: the Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler is powered by two J52 jet engines. Just FYI.

Boeing's KC-X campaign continues to stir the protest pot with the public release of its redacted complaint filed to the Government Accountability Office. I'm sure the 22-page document will be poured over by reporters, politicians and, not least, the GAO's auditors.

While most protest filings are typically dense legal documents, Boeing's report is impressively accessible. It almost makes you wonder if the intended audience is a team of GAO auditors, or a mass audience.

But one sentence more than any other stands out. It says:

"Furthermore, the US Air Force's actions show that it altogether failed to comprehend the inherent manufacturing genius of the 767 bid."

Um, did they really say "inherent manufacturing genius"?

Yes, that's what the document says. See page 3, last paragraph.

Download file

Everybody else seems to be Monday morning quarterbacking how Boeing lost the KC-X contract, so why can't I?

The US military acquisition community always SAY they want best value, but what they really want is best performance. Best value is a conveniently loose term that can be fudged to justify any decision.

That's why I wonder if Boeing botched the bid by failing to offer a tanker version of the 787.

Yes, it would mean the USAF might have to wait a few more years for production slots to become available. Yes, the all-composite fuselage would present some engineering challenges to make it a tanker. Yes, it would be more costly than a KC-30B proposal.

But, with hindsight, you have to wonder how a Boeing bid anchored on a KC-787 proposal would have turned out.

Remember that the 787 is just larger than the A330-200, but not quite so large as the 777F. Remember, too, that the 787 was designed to knock the A330-200 out of the commercial market, and it is by all accounts a formidable machine on paper (once Boeing works out the costly bugs in its production system).

And remember that the USAF above all prizes performance when it buys aircraft. One wonders in retrospect if the KC-787 could have been unbeatable, and whether Boeing made a classic strategic error by failing to promise the aircraft's availablility for KC-X.

The US Air Force wants Boeing to integrate the GBU-57 bomb on the Northrop Grumman B-2A, or so says this solicitation document released earlier this week.

I find that very interesting on a number of levels, not least because the USAF has never before disclosed the existence of a weapon called the GBU-57!

(Designation-systems.net, in fact, lists weapons all the way up GBU-54, so that means a GBU-55 and GBU-56 could be somewhere in the classified inventory, too!)

But the existence of the GBU-57 gets even more interesting after a Google search. The only direct mention to the weapon appeared in an article London's Guardian newspaper in 2003, and then bizarrely as a passing reference. I would love to know how the Guardian's reporter so casually came across that seemingly classified factoid for his article.

I would also love to know more about the GBU-57. The Guardian article describes the weapon as a 5,000lb-class penetrator. That puts it in the same class as the GBU-28/B. It likely shares the BLU-122 or improved BLU-113 warhead for 5,000lb-class penetrators. I wonder what makes the GBU-57 different in capability than the GBU-28?

I'm also interested in the timing of the USAF's plan to integrate the weapon on the B-2. The GBU-57 would be the largest weapon ever integrated on the stealth bomber, and it's capabilities seem ideal for a strike on heavily fortified, underground bunkers (ahem, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Dick Cheney is on line 2.)

The USAF hoped to integrate the even larger Massive Ordnance Penetrator (30,000lbs) on the B-2A, but last year Congress blocked the funding. There's a chance the Guardian article was completely wrong, and the GBU-57 is in fact the new designation for the MOP. Even if that's the case, I still wonder how the Guardian reporter came up with that designation in 2003, long before the MOP was conceived.

I seem to be writing a story about algae on a monthly basis now, and I still think that's weird for an aerospace journalist. (Question: What is algae precisely? Wikipedia classifies it as a "plant-like" organism. Any biology majors here know what that means? Is it a plant or not?)

Of course the reason for my recent algae obsession is simple. The US Air Force and airlines want alternatives to petroleum. Algae consumes carbon dioxide and produces oil in potentially feasible quanitites for the aviation industry. Thus, it is one of the leading feedstock candidates for the blossoming demand for biofuel.

Yesterday, I interviewed Robert Do, president and CEO of The Solena Group, which is a Washington, DC-based bioenergy company. (Read my article here.)

On March 7, Solena announced that it is developing one of the world's first biofuel production plants to open in California in 2011. The US Air Force is in price negotiations with Solena for a five-year offtake deal, as are multiple airlines, he says.

Solena's feedstock for the biofuel is the roughly 10,000 tons of urban waste produced every day by the good citizens of San Francisco and Sacremento.

Solena will use about one-tenth of that output per day to produce about 1,800 barrels of biofuel of aviation, although I won't bore you with the details of the production process. Solena eventually plans to open a more efficient factory that harvests algae to produce oil, but the technology for algae isn't ready yet, he says.

Do was very honest with me about some of his concerns. Harvesting biofuel is not really a technical challenge, but he is concerned about the economics.

For example, Do's current business model depends on two financial assumptions: 1) the US Congress will extend tax credits for biofuel producers currently set to expire in 2008, and 2) OPEC keeps the price of oil at current market rates, which, as you may have heard, are surging past $100 per barrel.

Even if Congress comes through on the tax credits, OPEC's next move may not be so reliable. I wonder if all OPEC needs to do to crush the biofuel movement is to summarily reduce oil prices to pre-Katrina levels. It's happened before, but could it happen again?

KC-X is dominating defense acquisition news coverage, and that is appropriate. But don't forget that another major contract award -- sharing certain KC-X acquisition dynamics -- may be announced any day.

I'm referring, of course, to the US Navy's potentially $2 billion Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) contract.

This is also a contest between Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Lockheed Martin is also bidding.

BAMS is also a competition between mostly off-the-shelf products modified for a specific mission, a la KC-X. (Notably, however, the only major foreign supplier I'm aware of is Israel, which is supplying the sensor for Lockheed's bid.)

Finally, it is also fair to expect a protest -- and even a political fight -- no matter which contractor the navy selects.

For background on the competition, allow me to refer you to my one page wrap-up published in Flight International during the Paris Air Show last June.

Also, see my recent blog on BAMS, in which I admitted screwing up by failing to ask an important and seemingly logical question about the navy's acquisition process.

Regular updates will return on March 12.

Until then, I invite you to view the growing list of comments about Northrop Grumman's shocking victory for the KC-X contract.

Also, I'll invite you to revisit some highly speculative thoughts I wrote a few months ago about the potential industrial base implications of a KC-30 victory.

Here's a quick excerpt:

But it is because: The implications of the USAF decision, especially in the event of a victory for the Northrop Grumman/EADS KC-30, are enormous for the US industrial base.

We’re talking about nothing less than the revitalization of a competitive domestic civil aircraft industry for the first time since Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

We may never know how Northrop Grumman's price compared to Boeing's offer because the loser never has to say.

Neither may we ever learn exactly how price factored into the US Air Force's surprise selection of the KC-30, which is based on a modified Airbus A330-200 passenger airliner. USAF officials merely said that price was among the lesser of five evaluation categories.

But -- thanks to the commercial background of the KC-X competition -- we can be certain that Northrop's bid gave the USAF a great bargain on price.

Airbus doesn't regularly publish list prices for A330s, but some of their customers do. In June, for example, aircraft lessor Aircastle quoted an average list price for a new A330-200F, which is a pure freighter. That figure was $173.3 million per aircraft.

Of course, Northrop is not offering the A330-200F precisely. Instead, the USAF is buying a passenger A330-200, which is then coverted to a freighter. The difference is subtle, but it means the list price for the KC-X (er, now KC-45A) type should be roughly equivalent to the A330-200F.

That figure -- $173 million per aircraft -- does not include any tanker-unique equipment or systems, such as the refuelling boom, refuelling pods, remote operating controls, etc., etc.

So what was Northrop's price?

The USAF revealed that Northrop is promising a $10.6 billion price to deliver 64 new tankers during the production phase. My calculator says that amounts to average price of about $166 million per aircraft.

If you wish, throw in Northrop's $1.5 billion price tag to deliver four additional test aircraft and the average price rises to $178 million.

Of course, no airline customer pays list price for a new aircraft, but by any measure the USAF is still getting a good bargain.

Some may fairly ask whether Northrop low-balled the government. The history of military acquisition is filled with examples of balloning costs based on unrealistic price offers. It will be Northrop's responsibility to prove the critics wrong.