Officials at Alenia Aeronautica are proceeding with plans to build a final assembly and checkout facility (FACO) for the F-35, following the closure of a long-awaited agreement with the Italian government and Lockheed Martin. Cost of the facility was not disclosed. Officials hope to deliver the first Italian-assembled aircraft in 2014. The line is expected to provide aircraft for Italy and possibly Dutch customers. Alenia officials had hoped to conclude negotiations at the beginning of the year, but differences over the funding prompted delays.
Resurgent demand for single-aisle aircraft may allow Airbus and Boeing to hold on to their narrowbody duopoly just a bit longer than expected. Both aircraft makers are considering increasing production for their narrowbodies, fearful that a lack of available aircraft may drive airlines toward emergent rivals such as Bombardier’s CSeries. However, the Canadian endeavor could struggle to match the price and profitability of the mature and well-leaned Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 production lines.
Hawker Beechcraft Corp. is morphing its T-6B Texan II military trainer into the AT-6B, a welterweight contender in the U.S. Air Force’s upcoming Light-Attack and Armed Reconnaissance (LAAR) competition. The attack variant utilizes a beefed-up T-6 airframe, capable of carrying 3,350 lb. of external stores on six wing hardpoints. For Mil-Spec-1760 “smart weapons” delivery, AT-6 is being fitted with the A-10C’s Central Interface Control Unit (CICU) mission computer, providing net-centric secure data-link communications capability.
Boeing plans to use the commercial crew capsule it is developing under an agreement with NASA to provide transportation to the private space station Bigelow Aerospace intends to have in service by 2015, the two companies announced.
This year’s biennial Farnborough air show featured several aircraft making their debuts. For the Boeing 787-8 (foreground), it was the first appearance at an international air show. On the military front, Airbus Military’s A400M had its Farnborough coming-out party, although it made its show debut in Berlin last month. Keith Gaskell photo.
“Devil in the Details” (AW&ST July 12, pp. 26-27) should be titled “More Gold-Plated Hammers to Smash Mosquitoes.” The U.S. Air Force continues using operational-level (King Air 90s, Predators) and theater-level (U-2s, Global Hawks, E-8Cs) aircraft to try to perform tactical-level roles and missions. This is not only financially unsupportable over the long duration of irregular wars, it is also only marginally effective tactically. And irregular warfare is fought almost exclusively at a very basic tactical level.
Specialty suppliers—shops that make gears, fan cases, ducting, switches and the like—are often so busy putting out today’s job and looking for tomorrow’s that they have little time to tackle such issues as workforce training or process improvement. Who can afford to set up classes in shop math or blueprint reading for a handful of workers? And how many suppliers with 75 employees have their own kaizen specialist?
An order for four more Global Express XRS ultra-long-range business jets and another two Challenger 605 large cabin bizjets will allow Swiss-based VistaJet to further expand its branded charter business. The company’s all-Bombardier fleet already includes 25 aircraft, with another five to be added this year and 18 more by 2014.
Safran business development manager Jean-Pierre Cojan insists the French government has had no role in Safran’s effort to combine its activities with those of cabin, safety equipment and electrical system specialist Zodiac, despite some analysts’ views to the contrary. “Unlike our earlier talks with Thales, there has been no government meddling in Zodiac,” Cojan says. “It’s a purely business matter. The aeronautics industry is restructuring, working with fewer Tier One suppliers and giving them a bigger scope. Anyone who doesn’t grow will end up Tier Two.”
I must take issue with your recent editorial “China Is Coming. Will It Play Fair?” (AW&ST July 12, p. 62). When it comes to bargaining, China has proven its superiority many times. The slow playful Panda image is a front for a highly experienced and calculating negotiator. In the game of brinkmanship, the Chinese recently won by holding out to the last days before saying they would float the yuan, thus averting being labeled a “currency manipulator” by the Obama administration.
Amid mounting speculation that one of the top two commercial airframers may forgo reengining its narrowbody family altogether, Airbus and Boeing will announce whether or not to upgrade the respective A320 and 737 engines this fall.
Washington Post editors need not look for confirmation from James Clapper on their blockbuster “Top Secret America” series. He’s not buying the newspaper’s three-part account of an intelligence community that has grown bloated to the point of unmanageability since the 2001 terrorist attacks, with spooks and analysts falling over each other in a hyper-redundant scramble for information.
David Warren, the Australian government scientist who invented the flight data and cockpit voice recorder, died on July 19. He was 85. Warren was born in 1925 on an island off the north coast of Australia. His father died in an aircraft crash nine years later.
John R. Watret has been named executive vice president/chief academic officer of the Worldwide Campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University . He was associate vice president/chief academic officer and succeeds Martin Smith, who is retiring.
Protracted negotiations between manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the U.S. on the next lot of stealthy, single-engine F-35s are nearing a conclusion as program officials close in on a new baseline for the embattled program. But the shock waves of recent cost increases to the multinational Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) continue to ripple; Israel, for one, is sharply curtailing its buy. Lockheed Martin, however, continues to insist the price is lower than estimated by the Pentagon (see p. 41).
The pursuit of commercial and military programs worldwide has pitted U.S. and European aerospace and defense companies against each other for decades. But sharp declines in military equipment spending by NATO member nations—not to mention the emergence of new rivals seeking to develop indigenous aviation industries with exportable products—will force established players to take their sales campaigns to a whole new level.
Robert Wall (Farnborough), Andy Nativi (Farnborough)
The competitive landscape in the military and government helicopter market is intensifying as manufacturers focus on that sector to offset continuing weakness in commercial markets. One area that is keeping the military market so buoyant is sustained combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, driving even smaller militaries to spend precious procurement funds in this area.
The U.S. and Israel are near agreement on the sale of a sharply reduced number of conventional takeoff and landing F-35s, owing to the ballooning cost of the system. Israel now intends to buy 19 in the first batch, with options for two or three. Originally, 75 were planned, with an option for 25 more, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.
You know times are tough when a company singles out the stagnant U.S. defense market as a growth opportunity. But that is exactly what EADS NV is doing. Leaders at the European defense giant used the Farnborough air show to reiterate an ambitious plan to grow their U.S. revenues eight-fold by 2020, to $10 billion a year. “International” is the new buzz word in the defense industry as contractors brace for their first downturn since the 1990s. And EADS’s U.S. strategy doesn’t sound so audacious if you consider what is going on in Europe.
Early X-ray emissions from the birth of a distant black hole temporarily overwhelmed the software on NASA’s Swift gamma-ray observatory last month, forcing mission scientists to backtrack through the recorded data to conclude the six-year-old spacecraft had spotted the brightest X-rays ever detected. Measuring 143,000 X-ray photons per second at its brightest, the burst originated at a source designated GRB 100621A, some 5 billion light-years distant.
All this talk about privatizing human space exploration is an intentional diversion to justify doing nothing. America’s space program has always been a partnership of private and public enterprise funded by taxpayers.
The Joint Strike Fighter distributed aperture system could be useful for ballistic missile defense, according to Tom Burbage, executive vice president of F-35 program integration at Lockheed Martin. During a recent flight of the system on Northrop Grumman’s BAC-111 testbed near Baltimore, the system captured the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket 650 mi. away. Burbage notes that missile defense is not currently a mission for JSF, but its sensor capabilities could be helpful for this role.
The Obama administration is cautiously hopeful the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will ratify the New Start treaty with Russia before the chamber’s August recess, and that the full Senate will ratify it after Congress returns in September. But the vigorous campaign mounted to promote ratification suggests the White House and arms control advocates are not taking the outcome for granted.
The Pakistan air force is in the process of integrating the Chinese PL-12/SD-10 medium-range, radar-guided air-to-air missile on its JF-17 light fighter aircraft. The Chengdu FC-1/JF-17 is in production in Pakistan, and two of the aircraft were on static display at the show. Test rounds of the PL-12 are believed to have been delivered to the Pakistan air force. The missile is in service with the Chinese air force. Other weapons on display with the aircraft included the C-802A air-launched anti-ship missile.
