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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 0055.PDF
EDITORIAL INTERNATIONAL Week ending 16 January, 1988 Number 4096, Volume 133 ISSN 0015-3710 IN THIS ISSUE REED BUSINESS PUBLISHING World News Air Transport Defence General Aviation 2 4 12 16 THE RISE OF THE RETICENT 18 Japan has to reconcile military taboos with pressure from the USA to make it bear a greater defence burden. Peter Middleton reports. BOEING'S TWO NEW 400s 22 J. M. Ramsden describes the new -400 vari ants of the 737 and 747, with which it plans to ensure the continued success of the classic airliners. ARIANE: T MINUS SEVEN YEARS AND COUNTING 35 Ariane 5 is due to fly in February 1995. Tim Furniss looks at the new launch vehicle. Spaceflight Simulation Industry Letters Straight and Level 42 43 44 45 46 Published in association with Airline Business by Reed Business Publish ing Ltd, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton. Surrey SM2 5AS. England. © Copyright Reed Business Publishing Ltd 1988 Founded 1909 Second-class postage paid at RAHWAY. New Jersey, and additional entries. Postmaster: Send Address Corrections to "Flight International", c/o Mercury Airfreight International Ltd. Inc., 10B Engiehard Avenue, Avenel, N.J. 07001, Editor David Mason Associate Editor Peter Middleton Assistant Editor Tom Hamill Air Transport Editor David Learmount Air Transport editorial Ian Dormer Defence Editor Mike Gaines Defence editorial Er c Beech Technical Editor Graham Warwick, BSc General Aviation Editor Robin Blech General Aviation editorial Ian Goold, Alan Postlethwaite Photographer Janice Lowe Production Editor Philip Jarrett Art Editor Colin Paine Layout Alison Collins Technical Artists Ira Epton, Tim Hall, John Marsden Washington correspondent Julian Moxon (202) 547 2624 Israel correspondent Ane Egozi 03 945326 Paris correspondent Gilbert Sedbon (1) 4825 5261 US West Coast correspondent Norman Lynn (408) 778 0889 West German correspondent Stefan Geisenheyner 061 21 526894 Publishing Director Murray Johnstone Editor-in-Chief J M Ramsden Advertisement Sales Manager Joanna Macpherson * Regional Manager, UK/Scandinavia Nicholas Wilcox Senior Advertisement Sales Executive Anne Williams Sales Executive Nick White Advertisement Production Howard Mason, Simon Smith Advertisement Sales—France Pierre Mussard, 18,20 Place de la Made leine, Pans 75008, France. Telephone: Paris 42655014. Telex: 215334F BISPRSF. Advertisement Sales—USA (East Coast) Clive Richardson, Reed Busi ness Publishing, 205 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 1001 7 Telephone: (212) 867 2080. Telex: 238327 Advertisement Sales—USA (Mid-West) & Canada Gene Glendinning, Reed Business Publishing, Cahners Piaza, 1350 East Touhy Avenue, PO Box 5080, Des Plaines. Illinois 60018. Telephone: (312) 635 9920 Advertisement Sales—USA (West Coast) John Tidy, Reed Business Publishing, 3700 Campus Drive, Suite 203, Newport Beach, CA 92660. Telephone: (714) 756 1057. Telex: 238327 Subscriptions Manager A Walden Telephone: England (0444) 441212 (Details of UK and overseas subscription rates and agents are available on request) Telephone: 01-661 3315 (Display Advertisement Sales) 01-661 8877 (Classified) 01-661 3267 (Advertisement Production) 01-661 3321 (Editorial) Telegram/Telex 892084 REEDBP G Facsimile (Group llt/ll). Telephone: 01-661 3305 1A6CI Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Front cover: One outstanding feature of Boeing's 747-400 is its all-digital cockpit. The big TV screens, Rockwell built, are in a distinctive horizontal arrangement. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 16 January 1988 German threat to EFA For a nation with the strongest economy in Europe, and probably the third strongest in the free world, the Federal Republic of Germany is show ing unnecessary weakness and prevarication over its major aerospace and defence programme. It is also beginning to wear the patience of its partners thin beyond reasonable limits. In one of his last major moves before he leaves the German Defence Ministry to take over as secretary-general of Nato, Manfred Woerner is overseeing the birth of-EFA, which is not without pain. The Government has called for a review of EFA development costs in an effort to save as much as possible. Already its share has doubled from the $2 billion projected. One of Germany's problems is that, despite having more money than any other country in Europe, it also has a heavy load of military programmes to support. The PAH.2 programme with France is now an almost sacrosanct manifestation of the Franco-German relationship, and is unlikely to be violated. Germany is looking to replace its Atlan- tique I maritime patrol aircraft by 1990. It has a heavy Phantom update programme concerned with avionics and radar. It also faces an unusual difficulty, in military terms, in that the birthrate in the late 1960s fell to the level where Germany may not be able to fill the ranks of its armed forces to the designated level by its normal conscription. Too few conscripts will mean that the professional sector will have to be made attractive enough to keep up the numbers, and that will be costly. Germany has some justification for doing its best to contain EFA costs. Whether it will do this by its present manoeuvrings is doubtful. As a rule of thumb, any delay of six months at the front end of the programme leads to a year's delay or more in the programme's ultimate imple mentation. EFA is already late, and Germany could make it even later. One of the problems that Germany and the other partners face is that EFA will only serve its purpose if it is a more advanced aircraft than any other of its type available to Nato. EFA will be tasked with dealing with Flanker support for incoming Soviet bombers, and with the Fulcrum over the battlefield in its close- air-support and interdictor roles. Unless it is to meet its specification, it is not worth building at all, so there is no opportunity to reduce costs by lowering the standard of the aircraft. The only way to reduce the cost of a new fighter is to abandon EFA and revert to one of the fallback positions which every government has. Obviously, one is to build the aircraft indigenously. EAP devel opment would be a natural course for the UK Government. Germany has its own option, perhaps in partnership with a single American company. Unfortunately, both of these options are also subject to almost uncontrollable cost, in view of the limits of a home-based procurement programme. The second fallback is one which has continually snapped at the EFA heel—to develop one or more of the existing US airframe programmes in collaboration with a group of European partners. Prospective programme leaders and teams of engineers and salesmen have been crossing the Atlantic in recent years to push for a variety of developments of the McDonnell Douglas F-18. The latest umbrella concept is Hornet 2000, which offers at least four options using any permutation from several modifications, such as raised dorsal fuse lage, larger and strengthened wing, greater wingspan, canard-delta, and stretched fuselage. In the close-air-support role a development of the ubiquitous F-16, probably along the lines of the Agile Falcon, has some appeal. In cost terms such a move has looked attractive to the governments concerned, but it has little appeal to the air forces, whose instinct is for a new, custom-built design, rather than for what would in either case be an elderly adaptation when it is still in service in 2010. Whether these two programmes would match what EFA can do by itself is open to doubt, and it is also doubtful whether they would represent a genuine cost saving by the time they were both in place. In the last analysis it is vital that EFA goes ahead, and that the Germans put their names confidently on the list of partner builders and procurers without delay. Europe needs to demonstrate its faith in its own industries, and its determination to defend itself. If the US companies are desperate to participate, it would be beneficial all round if they were to content themselves with the vast range of new programmes available to them, and instead adopt a wholly novel approach to European partnership. A US partner, helping to build EFA for use by European- based American forces and for the Air National Guard, would expand the programme dramatically, would link European and American technologies, and would help stop the Europeans feeling that they were still junior partners in Nato.
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