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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 0434.PDF
u~s£Nce Firet X-35B STOVL flight delayed STEWART PENNEY/LONDON LOCKHEED Martin has pushed back the first flight of the X-35B short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) version of its Joint Strike Fighter until early June. Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president JSF, says that die delay has been caused pri marily because Pratt & Whitney needs to complete an accelerated maturity test (AMT) of the JSF119 powerplant. The AMT is critical to receive clearance to fly die X-35B. Initial flight had been expected in April. Before the X-35B flies it will complete a series of tethered tests attached to a balance for force and moment measurements and a number of low hover tests - known as press-ups - that are expected to kick off in late April/early May. Burbage says eight weeks have been allocated for AMT, although it could take half this time if all goes well. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin is seeking clearance for a series of tests in the middle of the flight envelope. These are considered low risk compared with STOVL oper ations. Starting these trials earlier would allow the inclusion of addi tional flight data in the proposal to be delivered to the US Department of Defense by mid-August. The Lockheed Martin executive says that by the end of January the engine had run for around 300h, while more than 200 engagements of the clutch - which links the main propulsion engine to the lift fan drive shaft - had been completed. Burbage says that earlier prob lems with the lift fan have been overcome by developing a run- ning-in procedure for the system so that bearings and other mechan ical components can bed down. For the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) aircraft, Burbage says Lockheed Martin and its team have reviewed the "engineering hard ware" and identified "simplifica tions" to improve the systems. The X-35C carrier version is soon to fly to the US Navy's Patuxent River test centre to start 30 days of trials. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are due to submit their EMD pro posals to the DoD on 8 February. After a six-to-eight week bid evalu ation, a series of questions will be issued and possibly direction to modify the proposals. Final proposals are due around 15 August with selection expected to take four weeks. Contract negotiations are expected to stretch into early 2 002, although Burbage says work is on going to shrink the time between selection and contract signature.Q Boeing predicts its Joint Strike Fighter will beat cost targets The X-32 has opened its weapons bays inflight to reveal an AMRAAM GUY NORRIS/SEATTLE ANEWLY COMPLETED analysis of the full develop ment costs of the Boeing X-32A/B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) concept demonstrator aircraft (CDA) sug gests the company will be able to "significantly better the cost" tar gets set for production versions by the US Government. The detailed review, revealed for the first time by Boeing, could counter Congressional concerns over the rising costs of the JSF programme. Although the Boeing and Lockheed Martin-led JSF teams have focused on affordability as a key design driver, it is only now that theX-32B short take-off and verti cal landing (STOVL) variant is on the verge of first flight that Boeing has been able to confirm projected cost cuts for a production model. BoeingJSF programme director of affordability Dave Brower says results show production costs for the CDA "are 50% less than it would have cost had we used exist ing production systems. The bot tom line is we did better than that." Brower says Boeing expects to "meet or beat" the targets of $30 million for the conventional take off and landing (CTOL) version, $35.6 million for the STOVL and $38 million for the carrier variant (CV). Using guide prices of $28 million for the CTOL, $30-$35 million for the STOVL, and $31 and $ 3 8 million for the CV, Brower says: "We can significantly better these costs. We can equal or better the targets put forward by the Joint Program Office. "The request for proposals in 1996 required us to break the upwardly spiralling cost of tactical aircraft acquisition. We've actually reversed it. We have put the clock back 2 0 years. The reason I can say that is we recognised that the CDA aircraft would be unaffordable using today's technology." Key savings came from the use of advanced design, digital pre- assembly and construction tech niques such as three-dimensional solid modelling, resin transfer and injection moulding, high-speed machining, lean assembly and high commonality between the three variants. "We brought in new com mercial and military fabrication processes and, instead of doing a [Burt] Rutan or [LockheedMartin] Skunkworks type process, we took a risk and tried to bring it all together on one programme," says Brower. The gamble paid off, he adds, citing examples such as a cut in typ- ical design release time from five weeks to five days. Direct labour design costs for the X-32A, calcu lated in terms of hours per lb of structure, were around 50% of those incurred on the YF-22, while assembly cost (touch labour hours), was calculated at around one-third that of the McDonnell Douglas/ Northrop Grumman-built for ward fuselage of the YF-2 3. By comparison, Boeing says the costs of the X-32B were 20% less than those of the X-32A. Assembly defects, running at more than 2,000 on the YF-22 mid and aft fuselage, were reduced to a little over 200 on the X-32A. "We are highly confident that everything we did on this programme is direct ly transferable to engineering, manufacturing and development," says Brower. Recent X- 3 2 A tests have includ ed flights with the weapons bay doors opened in flight for vibration and acoustic measurements. During the the tests an instrument ed Raytheon AIM-12 0 AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missile and a Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) were carried in the bay. JDAM and AMRAAM are the JSF baseline weapons fit. • 18 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 6 - 12 February 2001
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