Only, what two years late (Paid Subscription Required).
That being said, they are hitting new milestones:
They are still addressing a weight issue though.
Aviation Week discusses possible issues involved in integrating new weapons into the JSF (Paid Subscription Required).
Because of the limited space in the weapons bays, and the highly integrated nature of the fire control systems, it’s beginning to look like integrating home grown weapons into the airframe will be an expensive and difficult proposition.
The article specifically mentions the UK concerns regarding integrating their Meteor air to air missile.
Commercial bankruptcies up 47% year over year.
Not surprising, considering the state of the economy.
It’s not surprising that Boeing will stick with the 767 for the rebid of the tanker program. They have only a few months to respond, and going with, for example, a shortened 777 would be a very difficult thing.
The problem is that the A330 is a better plain, and the A330 MRTT, which is the airframe that Airbus is using, is flying now, even while Boeing is struggling to deliver its 767 tanker to Italy, which is not the same airframe as is proposed for the US tanker.
Airbus is clearly the better choice, even the GAO review said that while faulting the selection process, but politics being what it is, I would give Airbus a no better than 50/50 chance of winning this if it ends up a soul source bid.
Well, it looks like the Navy is coming to its senses, and that it will be trying to terminate its DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer at just two ships.
I think that this is a good thing. They are too damn expensive to build many, and whatever capabilities you add, you lose too much coverage. A large ship (14,500 tons) simply can not be in two places at once, while two (or three) smaller Burke class destroyers can.
It’s the sensible decision, but I agree with Galrahn that there is a risk that Congress may overrule the Navy, because there are prominent people who want the defense pork, which would be a damn shame.
It’s not an ironclad commitment to purchasing the aircraft, but I think that some sort or series production is almost a certainty for the upgraded Gripen, which is now being referred to as the E/F models.
Below are pictures of the F-22 dropping the 250 lb Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) drop at supersonic speed. This is actually a unique and valuable capability.
It’s a guided weapon, so there is some body lift generated, so if they drop the weapon at above 60,000 feet and supersonic speed, you could strike something 50+ miles away.
There are, however standoff weapons that equal this capability, though the round would be more expensive, but the plane cheaper.
H/t World Wide War Pigs.
This GE-Rolls Royce competitor to the Pratt & Whitney F135 in the JSF has completed a round of tests in STOVL mode, which is generally considered the most demanding part of the engine envelope.
My guess would be the GE/RR want to get as far as possible as quickly as possible, because the Pentagon has repeatedly tried to kill the program, and it’s been Congress keeping it alive.
I have mixed emotions on the F-136. It’s clear that the F-100/F110 competition was a success in the F-15 and F-16, lowering cost and getting increased performance, but the F-110 was a derivative of the F-101 developed for the B-1 bomber, and as such the start up costs were much smaller.
First, it appears that Lockheed-Martin and Boeing will collaborate on the USAF/DARPA Blackswift technology demonstrator. (see below for notational configuration)
Additionally, we are increasingly seeing developments world wide in hypersonics. (Paid Subscription Required)
We have had a number of relatively successful tests in Australia and the USA, and the EU is funding Lapcat II and Atllas concepts (see below), in addition to efforts by France, Italy, the UK, and Germany.
The Russians are working on plasma concepts to manage the shockwave and examining their potential as control surfaces, with, “tests on a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) plasma generator in a simulated Mach 5.15”, being conducted, while the Japanese are looking at a combined cycle turbine with a cooled intake called the “S-Engine”
In terms of meaningful applications, I think that some sort of storable fuel, not the LH2 currently used for demonstrators, will have to be a part of the equation.
Only 12 years after a fuel tank explosion killed 230 on TWA flight 800.
Thank you for your prompt and timely response, guys.
Basically, the folks at Sikorski think that technological advances have made the advancing blade helicopter viable, most notably composites, active fly by wire control systems to reduce vibration, and improved propulsion (the late 1970s version X-59A ABC used two turbojets for forward thrust) (see also here)
By offloading the retreating blade, they hope to achieve cruise speeds in excess of 250 kts, and improved range.
I’m rather more sanguine on this than I am on the tilt rotor concept myself, because the tilt-rotor is really a plane that can take off vertically, while this is a helicopter that can fly faster.
It appears to have fewer compromises, and should have superior performance in the hover and low speed flight regime, which is the helicopter’s raison d’etre.
As Sikorski is self-funding this, I expect progress to be slow, they can’t afford a crash.
They’ve already pushed back first flight a couple of years from 2006, and now there is talk of pushing it back to 2009.
Also, Av Week‘s Bill Sweetman noticed a special ops mockup model of the concept at Farnborough:
The basic physics behind it was discovered by a Russian mathemetician in the 1960s, and now we see Dassault completing a completely autonomous flight of a stealthy UAV, the AVE-D (D for discretion, stealth in French).
It’s actually a fairly impressive feat. It taxied to the runway, took off, executed a series of aerial maneuvers, landed, and taxied back to its parking space without human intervention.
Yeah, they all look pretty much the same….It’s the laws of physics that do this.
And you thought that hedge funds and derivatives were complex.
So Lockheed-Martin is trying to set realistic prices for the F-35 (paid subscription required), so that it can finalize deals, particularly with countries on board the program who have not yet made official decisions to purchase the fighter.
The most recent estimates are the CTOL at $49.5 million, STVOL at $69.3 million, and the carrier variant at $64.5 million, and I don’t believe any of that. I would be surprised if the CTOL variant is less than €50m and the STOVL and CV versions were under €65 million, and I expect the dollar to fall against the Euro a lot over the next 5-8 years.
In any case, L-M is looking for a “consortium buy”, where the partners in the program lock in the price by paying for jets in 2011 that are delivered after 2014, think of it as a stealthy Brooklyn bridge purchase.
Of course LM officials maintain that their cost models are “more reliable” than of past fighter programs…which honestly is not saying all that much.
The idea is to lock the partners into multiyear procurement when the US Congress won’t allow the US military to do so until the aircraft is certified for full rate production.
Only that certification comes in 2014 at the earliest, so they want to have multi year pre-paid contracts to buy in 2011, for delivery in 2014, even though that is the earliest date one can expect to have the aircraft certified for full rate production.
When you add to this the fact that the system will be highly integrated, and customers will find it very difficult to install their own upgrades (the Israelis are already in talks on this), I think that this will be much more expensive than they are claiming here.
I could be wrong, but it’s tough to be wrong when you expect cost overruns and schedule slips in a major defense contract.
It’s the Dutch, so it would actually be Guilder, or Euro, Meijer, or Snip, or Geeltje, but in any case, the the kickback scheme that has the Netherlands as a JSF customer is now up for negotiation.
Basically, Dutch industry got a lot of offsets as a part of the F-35 deal, and the Dutch government is supposed to get a percentage of that revenue back from the defense contractors.
The problem is that the deal is not fully fleshed out, and the government is now asking for 10.3% of all revenue JSF related orders through 2053 as opposed to their original figure of 3.5%, because the falling US dollar will reduce public revenues in this scheme.
This may explain why the government is going through the charade of reexamining the procurement decision on the JSF, asking to look at the Eurofighter Typhoon (refused to respond with proposal), Dassault Rafale (Refused to respond with proposal), and SAAB Gripen.
They are using it as a lever to get more money out of their private defense contractors.
It’s the AH-64 Apache Block III Upgrade.
This is actually a non trivial upgrade:
The Block 3 improvements are pretty fundamental, requiring a new airframe, more than 1 million lines of code, a new transmission system, longer range and automatic recognition radar, UAV connectivity, the ability to communicate with a much wider range of platforms (but not stealthy aircraft), software that will help the air crew make rapid decisions and a host maintenance management systems that are expected to reduce the average flight hours lost to fixing and maintaining things by 30 percent.
And it appears that it’s working because of the basics, keeping up good lines of communications and avoiding requirement creep.
That last one seems to be the biggie in defense procurement fiascoes, which is why the entire spiral development model is problematic.
It looks like manufacturers are starting to offer relatively inexpensive and low cost active, electronically-scanned array (AESA) radars as retrofits to existing aircraft. (Paid Subscription Required)
Basically, you have hundreds of solid state radars on a chip working together, and these chips are following the same trajectory as did processors and memory in the early days of the integrated circuit.
Raytheon is exhibiting its X-band Raytheon Advanced Combat Radar(RACR) at Farnborough†, which is designed to be lighter, cheaper, and require less power (and thus less cooling is required).
These radars are not up to the performance of, for example the F-22’s APG-77 radar, but they still provide a significant improvement in capability, including increased range, better resolution (with perhaps some anti-stealth capability), and the possibility of the radar being used for electronic warfare.
*Moore’s Law says that computer chips will double in power every 18 months (or 2 years depending on how you define power).
†If anyone knows of a way for me to get an all-expense-paid trip to either the Farnborough or the Paris air show, and they need a kidney….
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, is planning to test an unmanned aircraft to test out supersonic passenger aircraft concepts, with the first tests in the 2012-2013 time frame.
It’s pretty clear from the design that a big part of their noise reduction is through using the airframe to shield engine noise.
The Russian air force would like purchase 2-4 dozen of the new Su-35 fighters as a stop gap until the PAK-FA enters service.
This is notable because these would be new build airframes, thesw would be the first new build multi-role fighters since the Soviet days (paid subscription required) for the Russian AF.
Northrop Grumman is now saying that it will complete all 4 system design and development (SDD) tanker airframes by the end of 2009, even with the hold for the rebid.
This is in stark contrast to Boeing, where they are so far behind schedule for their 767 tanker for the Italian Air Force, that hief of the defense staff, Gen. Vincenzo Camporin, will refuse to meet with Boeing executives at the Farnborough air show.
The tankers are already over 3 years late.
More evidence as to why EADS should be the winner on this.
About a month ago, I blogged about how the noise levels of the F-35 might be an issue for the Norwegian Air Force.
Well, Lockheed Martin is now saying that, in violation of the laws of physics, the noise level in the “far field” areas will be less than the F-16, which has about 60% the installed thrust.
I inclined to believe that this is Lockheed speak for “we’ll cook the books with a test we design, and you’ll like it.”