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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 1528.PDF
684 FLIGHT, 26 October 1956 THE IMPORTANCE OF TIME . . . those consolation prizes (in the form of prototype and limited-production orders) which have so often been given to the "second best." As air defence, which is this country's prime consideration, isinfinitely more difficult than the attacker's role, it is not now sufficient (except for the "old-fashioned" type of war) to order theodd fighter and leave it at that. Today, defence is a complex and highly integrated problem involving the combined directing ormonitoring of piloted fighters and ground-to-air weapons against an attacker. Therefore, in formulating a requirement the weapon(s)only cannot be considered by itself, but the whole problem must be put to the aircraft industry to solve in the best way possible.In other words, the requirement might be couched as follows: "to evolve a complete weapons system to intercept and destroy at(say) 50 miles from shore an attacker flying at a Mach number of 2 at 70,000 feet." This would involve completely co-ordinated "weapons system"groups within the firms tendering for the requirement, who would advise and then work hand-in-hand with the design staffs. Theonly alternative is to use an outside "weapons management unit" of the type existing in the U.S.A., such as the Ramo-Wooldridgeand Rand Corporations. In my opinion, it is impracticable arbitrarily to consider (asvoiced in some quarters) a banding together^ by Government decree, of the various and individual firms into larger units. Inother words, it is a "sink or swim" philosophy which should actuate Government procurement, and the weakest must go to thewall or accept work from the successful firms—either to supple- ment the production rate by building the complete machine or assub-contractors for components. The Americans have used extensively, both for aircraft andengines, the "shadow" and sub-contracting schemes—the former idea originating in this country. For instance, I know of one(parent) engine firm in the States which reached a peak produc- tion, during the period of the Korean war, of about 750 jet enginesper month with an administrative, engineering and production total of only twelve thousand personnel. This was made possibleby buying from specialist firms completely machined components, such as bladed turbine wheels and shafts and combustion-ware,etc.; and when production was cut, "in one fell swoop," to 100 units, or less, per month, it did not result in complete disorganiza-tion within the company, and not too large a mass of labour was thrown out of work in one area. In fact, the company has managedto keep employment at a reasonable level by applying for, and being awarded, a U.S.A.F. contract for repairing its own engines. Anyway, American labour does not resist going to other areas for work so much as does our own, although I agree that no one wants to change his home if it can possibly be avoided. But there has to be some flexibility in the movement of labour if we are to be competitive in world trade. I understand that it is the deliberate policy of the AmericanDepartment of Defense to "shadow" engine manufacture in peacetime, to avoid large manpower peaks and depressions in theparent companies and to have a war-potential source of supply. For instance, the Pratt and Whitney J57 is being manufactured bythe Ford plant at Chicago and the Wright J65 (Sapphire) has also been built by Buick. To return to my subject, and in retrospect: we have notanticipated or subsequently taken all steps to meet the increasing technical and engineering demands of modern aviation, and someof the more technically capable firms have become overloaded with projects while others seem to have little to offer. If blame attaches to anyone for this lack of appreciation, thenthe industry must share it with the Government departments concerned; for it is the industry who should have been on thealert and prepared itself to meet these heavier and much more highly technical commitments. In fact, the industry appears onlyrecently to have woken up to the fact that the wind tunnel is an indispensable piece of equipment—for much more intensive usethan in the past, to ensure that the aircraft prototype, when built, will perform and handle as the designer intended without majorand time-consuming modifications becoming necessary. But all of us, in Government departments and in the industry, must sharethe responsibility for the present state of affairs. Incidentally, a major cause of future delay in producing satis-factory supersonic prototypes on time can well be in the making of the wind-tunnel model, unless there are new ideas on its designand manufacture. These models require considerable skill in both design and manufacture; and some have taken a full year or moreto make, being virtually tool-room jobs. My experience, of about thirty years, has indicated that thesuccessful aircraft and engine firms have usually been those which anticipated a need and came up with such an attractive proposalthat it often formed the basis of an official requirement. This was certainly the case before and during the last war, but is virtuallyimpossible nowadays, due to the prohibitive cost of embarking upon any military project as a private venture. An important point, and one not always appreciated by thoseoutside the armaments industry, is that there is really no such thing as a firm "backlog of orders" when holding Governmentcontracts, since the Government (for political or other reasons) can reduce or cancel completely any such contract with little or noprior notice. This is another reason why firms tend to get over- loaded with various projects; and they have to be very shrewd, orvery good at crystal-gazing, to know whether or not they are on a good thing. Therefore, they generally take on a number ofprojects, one or two of which, they hope, will eventually get into production. There is lack of a good assessment team and a statistical andlogistical section within the M.o.S. to analyse the results of a requirement, from the brochures submitted by the industry, andto put a capability factor on each firm. I am aware that there already exist projects and plans sections (AD/RD Projects andT.D. Plans) who, with the various technical directorates, assess the designs and advise on their technical merits, etc.; but thesesections are hopelessly understaffed and do not have the standing or authority which should be theirs. What I wish to see is a single self-contained team whose job itis not only to assess new designs but to analyse the firms' cap- ability to design, develop and produce aircraft or their equipmentat the desired rate. And, incidentally, there is no need for the separate "empires" of aircraft and guided weapons within theM.o.S. These should be combined, in the interests of economy in personnel and funds. In the last war, the Ministry of Aircraft Production had astatistical and planning department which, for some reason or other, was afterwards disbanded. It is urgendy required today,in order to give the lead on the proper use of manpower—to assess the man-hours needed to build a prototype and to vet the industry'sproductive capacity in these terms. While a relatively small firm with limited but capable technicaland engineering staff can design and manufacture a satisfactory prototype, in due course, much more is necessary; and thereshould be greater certainty than there appears at present of getting a successful prototype and clearing it to production in reasonabletime. By "reasonable time" I mean five years and not seven or ten. A high-supersonic aircraft may, however, take up to ten years.It may be argued that the lack of proper facilities and equipment make this reduction in time impossible of achievement, but wecannot otherwise hope to compete in world aviation or afford the wasted effort in achieving the obsolete. For the very reason diat an aircraft takes so much effort todesign and build, it is mandatory that any firm tendering for a contract has full facilities for completing that commitment. Inother words, it should have adequate technical and engineering strength and testing facilities, with aerodynamic, mechanical andall necessary systems' test rigs, to ensure that the prototype will have the minimum of "tricks" when it flies, and a high degree ofoperational reliability built into it from the start. Military Procurement—In the case of military aviation inrecent years, the Air Ministry (Air Staff) and the M.o.S. have suffered from "restrictive practices," in that a requirement doesnot go from the former direct to the latter, for transmission to the industry, but has first to be considered by the Defence ResearchPolicy Committee (D.R.P.C), the Air Defence Committee and, I believe, the Cabinet Defence Committee. It will be appreciated,therefore, that the chance of any decision being made at all is probably very small, and the chance of the right decision beingmade is practically zero. Even before these hurdles were placed between the Air Ministry and the M.o.S., the length of time takenby the Air Staff to issue a requirement was largely due to the delays in getting Treasury approval. When considering the various projects which have been initiatedsince the end of the war one cannot avoid the conclusion that the Air Ministry has not always had sound technical advice regardingthe types of aircraft to order; and, presumably, it was such advice that caused two more-advanced bomber prototypes to be put inhand. But, to get something more quickly, a less ambitious specification was implemented, i.e., the Valiant, which at the timeof its conception represented a good start to the bomber pro- gramme. But still more chilly feet caused the Sperrin to beordered, which was not, I believe, an Air Staff requirement. In fact, some of the projects of recent years bear the stamp of"hunches." While the Sperrin might have been conventionally reasonable,there was no need for both machines; and the relative merits of delta and crescent wings could surely have been resolved in thewind tunnel. If it is contended that we then had no suitable wind tunnel to evaluate these designs, I think our American friendswould have offered their facilities if approached. All this is past history, but I mention it because we still appear to be living in the era between the two wars and have yet to reach
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