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Aviation History
1966
1966 - 0021.PDF
FUGHT Interactional, 6 January 1966 17 products and techniques which find uses outside the industry and provide a general stimulus to technological innovation throughout the nation. jt is often argued that these indirect benefits, sometimes called technological "fall-out," are an important ground for maintaining an aircraft industry in this country. In order to test this argument, the total technical benefits offered by the aircraft industry and its fall-out must be compared with the ; equivalent benefits, including fall-out, from other industries.... Technological "Fall-Out" Ideally, the worth to the economy of technological "fall- out" should be evaluated. This is not possible, so we are reduced to constructing a general argument from a number of specific cases. A list, which is not exhaustive, is at Appendix J. Five examples of fall-out are discussed briefly below: — (a) Materials. The demands of aviation have led to the development of materials with high strength /weight properties, often coupled with resistance to high tempera- tures. These have found applications in other branches of engineering. High-strength aluminium alloys, heat- resistant steels, nickel-based alloys and titanium are examples. Titanium was developed only recently for high-speed aircraft. Ten years ago the aircraft industry was the sole customer for it, but now nearly half the British production is sold outside the industry. (b) Digital computers. The development of digital computers received a great stimulus from their use in military aviation. (c) High-pressure, lightweight hydraulic systems for military aircraft were developed during the Second World War. They have since been applied to pit-props, all kinds of tractors and earth-moving machines, and automatic rail- way shunting and marshalling. One British firm closely linked with the aircraft industry now sells annually on the home market alone about £30 million worth of hydraulic equipment for mining. (d) Gas turbines are now being used in industry to provide quick extra generation of power for the electricity grid at peak periods, and at sea to power a growing range of warships and other vessels. The present order book for non-aeronautical gas turbines is about £20 million. (e) Electronics, radar, and radio. Aviation provided an initial impetus to electronics, radar, and radio. Most modern developments arise from aviation demands. Printed and potted circuits, microminiaturisation, tran- sistors and other solid-state devices are examples: all are profoundly affecting computers, control of industrial processes, radio, television and tape recorders. The evidence convinces us that the technological fall-out from the aircraft industry is important. It is more difficult to gauge whether comparable or larger benefits could be achieved from deploying in other ways the 8,600 scientists and tech- nologists who produce it. It seems probable that no other single industry would have such a pervasive effect on the technological progress of the nation. The industry has a unique combination of character- istics. First, flight demands high power/weight and strength/ weight ratios in the products of the industry. Second, as a defence industry, its products are required to surpass those of potential enemies. Together these characteristics have led to engineering standards higher than in most other industries. Finally, though some other industries, atomic energy, com- puters, and chemicals, match these standards, only the aircraft industry embraces so wide a range of scientific and engineer- ing skills. It covers aerodynamics, materials, structures, hyd- raulics, instrumentation, propulsion, fuels, electrics, and elec- tronics. It is through these skills that the high standards of the aircraft industry are spread, both to directly linked indus- tries such as electronics, computers and telecommunications, and beyond. The existence of the aircraft industry with its high standards of technology has also contributed to the advancement of engineering as a profession in this country. It has stimulated technical education, and has undoubtedly attracted many young men into engineering. Even if no single other industry could provide such useful and extensive indirect "fall-out" as aviation, greater scientific and technical progress might be achieved if the scientists and technologists now in the aircraft industry worked directly on problems concerning the whole range of British industry. This might be done through greatly expanding government financed non-military research, through absorbing the scientists and technologists in a large number of firms across the country, or through some combination of these. After all, it may be urged, Germany and Japan, with only small and late-developing air- craft industries, have shown great technological prowess. They have been particularly successful in areas which might be expected to benefit most from advances made in aviation: cameras and electronic and radio devices. This is a persuasive argument; but it must be qualified. First, against the apparent wastefulness of deriving techno- logical progress as a by-product must be set the difficulty of fixing the objective when tackling problems directly. In build- ing aircraft, demands are pitched higher than the person who receives the eventual fall-out, or any government research committee concerned with predicting his needs, would set them. The stimulus of having to meet a deadline for the rest of a project produces a concentration of effort and a speed of advance not otherwise attainable. Second, in the short or even medium term, the wholesale transfer of skilled research workers could not be achieved without serious loss. Many of the best people, with skills and training highly specific to aircraft, would be unwilling to change their field completely and would be less effective in different work. Some of them would emigrate to other aircraft producing countries. It is also doubtful how quickly the rest of British industry could absorb and use aircraft scientists and technicians. The firms which could most benefit from an injection of scientific manpower are likely to be those least aware of their need or able to use research ability. It is in this context that the comparison with Germany and Japan should be considered. Their example considerably weakens the case for relying on the aircraft industry to pro- vide our technical advance, but does not in our view destroy it. The degree of wartime damage in Germany and Japan provided a stimulus for the successful post-war drives to reconstruct their economies and build up their exports. This did not exist to the same extent in the United Kingdom . . . More broadly, we believe that the wider spread of techno- logical progress in industry is limited not so much by the volume or nature of the new discoveries or advances being made by the nation's scientists and engineers, or even the areas in which they are being made, as by industry being unaware of them and unwilling to apply them. We conclude that there would probably be a significant loss to the nation's technology in the short term if the aircraft industry disappeared altogether or even if it suffered a large and speedy contraction. On the other hand, taking a long view, the technological fall-out from the industry cannot be advanced as a major justification for support to ensure that the industry survives or is maintained at any particular level. While we can form a reasonably clear picture of fall-out in the past, we cannot be sure that in future there will be as much, nor that practical applications will not take longer to emerge. Moreover, the strength of the fall-out argument in the long-term depends on what general Government policy is adopted for technology. The more money and effort the Government is prepared to put into systematically encouraging the use of advanced technology throughout British industry, the less it need rely on the stimulus of the aircraft industry. . . . Finally, we believe that the benefits from fall-out could be increased if there were machinery to ensure that potentially valuable research reached British firms who could make use of it. Setting up some kind of scientific clearing house merits consideration. Even with new machinery the task would b« difficult. . . . To supplement our enquiries, we commissioned a study by the consultants, Arthur D. Little Ltd, into the general lines of American thinking on fall-out from aerospace work. The approach differed somewhat from ours in that the consultants were much more concerned with fall-out from the vast Ameri- can space programme. Nevertheless, their report did not con- flict with the evidence we ourselves obtained. To i>» continued
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