For those of you who have followed this, the delays are specific to issues with the wiring harness, and the first airframe with the new harness, MSN26, is expected to be powered up this week, but this is still about three months late, which makes it very difficult for Airbus to hit its target of 13 aircraft deliveries for the year.
Their eventual goal is 4 aircraft a month.
One of the central “innovations” of Boeing’s 787 plan was the idea of bringing in suppliers in as fully involved partners, where they would bear much of the risk, and be responsible for much of the design and engineering.
Recent developments appear to indicate that Boeing is walking away from this policy.
Boeing has just bought out Vought Aircraft’s ownership stake in Global Aeronautica, which means that Boeing and Alenia now each own half of the enterprise.
Vought will still be a supplier for the 787, particularly the aft fuselage, but their more senior role in design and engineering has been taken over by Boeing.
I expect to see more in the way of recentralization by Boeing on the 787 to come, with yet more on their next project, a replacement for the venerable 737.
Full disclosure, the CEO of Vought Aircraft, Elmer Doty, was head of my division* when I worked at United Defense/BAE Systems.
*Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
It appears that the USAF is looking to change its draw down on B-52s, with 76, as opposed to 56.
Their justification is that they want some of the B-52s dedicated to nuclear strike, as opposed to swapping squadrons in and out of the service, on the theory that they won’t do stupid stuff like sending detonators to Taiwan, or flying live missiles by mistake.
Once again, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F&^%er) is being tasked to pull the Air Force brass’s ass out of a fire.
In related news, the Navy also says that, the check is in the mail, this will hurt me more than it hurts you, and that it won’t come in your mouth.
I believe that the organization whose latest destroyer’s price has escalated to a number larger than that of the GDP of Zimbabwe when they say that the costs of the naval version of the JSF are under control.
This has disaster written all over it.
Bill Sweetman notices a USAF document touting improvements in the cost and maintainability of stealth operations for the F-22, and notes that they have still not achieved what was promised about 8 years ago, even with the improvements.
While the Air Force is hailing efficiency gains, it appears that maintaining the LO capabilities of the Raptor are a crushing burden.
It looks like they have found a buried parachute in Southwest Washington state, and the FBI is investigating.
I went to high school in the Pacific Northwest, and like most people from Oregon and Washington, there is a bit of interest there.
It appears that we’ve got our first astroturf, Tankerblog.com, which has been anonymously registered, where they brethlessly reveal that A330 tanker cannot refuel the V-22, while the 767 could.
The blog describes itself as, “The blog is moderated by Mike Reilly who spends his days at the Center for Security Policy and a bipartisan group of legislative assistants who spend their days, and most nights, working on Capitol Hill.”
These “staffers” are from the Seattle no doubt, and the CSP has among it members, Richard Perle, Douglas J. Feith, , Frank Gaffney – Project for the New American Century, Monica Crowley and , Laura Ingraham. (You can get a line on their right wing nut supporters here)
No reasons given for why the difference, and in the real world, if refueling were needed it would be done by a KC-130 turboprop, since using a jet to refuel a turboprop that has to operate below 15k feet because it is not pressurized is just nuts.
A bit of humor at this “blog” though, they have a poll on whether congress should stop the deal, and the pro EADS sides in winning.Tanker War Blog, unnamed bipartasin staffers in congress, from Washington state, no doubt. http://tankerblog.blogspot.com/ look at their poll…good yucks.
The kicker is that Northrop Grumman says it can refuel the V-22, “said on Monday its aerial tanker based on the Airbus A330 could refuel the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft flown by the Marine Corps.”
Nice to see some defense procurement related humor.
In the meantime, we are starting to see people worrying that Congress will go xenophobic, and queer the contract which would threaten weapons sales in Europe. *cough* JSF *cough*
As to what Boeing is arguing about, it appears that a lot of this is the spacing between wingtips while parked. The USAF reduced this on the basis of what had actually observed.
Additionally, Boeing complained that the Combined Mating and Ranging Planning System (Cmarps) system which was used to develop operational scenarios for the bidding, was something that NG was more familiar with, but seeing as how the software is over 20 years old, I think that this is more another example of how Boeing was being petulant in the bid process.
Aviation Week (subscription required) also lists the following issues:
For what it’s worth, Airbus tanker is already in test, see picture:
There are 767 tankers flying, but they are substantially different from what was pitched to the USAF.
So, the latest update on Boeings increasingly delayed 787 has us seeing that Boeing and partner Fuji heavy industries will have to redesign the center wing box, because it is too weak.
Boeing’s delays on the 787 now rival that of Airbus on the A380, only once the problems with the European super jumbo came out, the all came out, and we are still getting this drip, drip, drip of bad news from Seattle Chicago.
This is yet another reason why the Boeing wonks who suggest that the 787 should have been used instead of the 767 are full of it, BTW.
The USAF needs its tanker sooner, rather than later.
High levels of Formaldehyde have been found in the cockpits’ of F-16I’ss.
The F-16 I (see picture below), is a variant unique to the IAF, with conformal tanks and a spine for additional avionics, and given the IAF’s specific needs, it likely has an air conditioning system tailored to this equipment, which is likely the source of the contamination.
It could come from combustion, but the path from combustor to cockpit would be unlikely.
Now, will you please run with these scissors, and French kiss this cobra.
Yes, in our post 911 environment we decided that it would be a good thing for pilots to carry guns on flights.
Thankfully, Myth Busters has shown that it won’t cause a “Goldfinger” style decompression.
I think that I missed a couple of things from the March 10 Aviation Week issue that I need to address now, specifically some rather telling comments in the “Hometown Hubris” article.
Interesting stuff:
Now I get it. They pitched the 767, and not the 777 because they thought that the latter would compete with the C-17.
Additionally, to the degree that there was a short field requirement, the 777’s short field performance is lacking, with its wing optimized toward the cruise efficiency end of the spectrum,
Note, the boom is not rocket science. McDonnell Douglas developed their own in the 1970s, and Airbus is testing theirs for Australia as as I write.
On the 6th of this month, at the Vidsel Missile Test Range in Sweden.
It’s generally in the AMRAAM range of performance, though it offers significantly better kinematics (Range 100+km reported on the wiki, and I’d bet on more than 150km) due to its solid fuel ramget/ducted rocket propulsion system.
Of note, it will
never fit in an F-22 weapon’s bays, though it might fit in those of an F-35.
It’s supposed to enter service in about 5 years….Yeah…I know…what takes so %$#@ing long.
First, lets start with my analysis. As soon as Airbus proposed the A330, Boeing knew that they were facing a larger, more modern, and more capable plane.
They stuck with the 767 for a very simply reason, they believed that they were God’s gift to tankers, and commercial clients still wanted to buy the 777, so they thought that it was more convenient.
First, Boeing has filed a formal protest on the award, which is as surprising as the sun coming up in the morning. (See here, here, and here.)
Needless to say, Democrats are using this to take shots against John Mccain (Read a fantastically funny riff on the politics here)
Truth be told, the first deal to lease was corrupt, with DoD and Boeing officials going to jail over the deal, and. McCain was right to challenge the deal.
A lot of the problem for Boeing is that they were unbelievably arrogant and unresponsive to the DoD:
“The Boeing team was not responsive and often was not even polite,” said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., based on conversations he said he had with defense officials. “Somehow that all eluded senior management,” Mr. Thompson said. “They were not even aware there was a problem.”
Add to this that Boeing’s record in defense contracting is worse than that of Northrop Grumman in terms of being on time and on budget, and that they had an inferior product, and this was a done deal.
Boeing was hoping to rest on its laurels, and the fact that much of the Congress would flip out over the choice.
Of course it doesn’t help that McCain campaign staffers lobbied for EADS.
Additionally, one of Boeings arguments, that EADS was ill equipped to create a working boom (boom and probe primarily used by the USAF, and products developed for the USAF, everyone else uses hose and drogue), was not accurate. They were already developing a boom for Australia (I guess for their F-111s, the F-18s use hose and drogue).
Furthermore, EADS was motivated to move work to the us, because they wanted to take advantage of the cheap dollar. That’s a reason that all the A330 freighter assembly will be moving to the US. It’s cheaper for them now.
For what it’s worth, The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) has issued a statement supporting the deal, so it met their snif test.
Boeing has now released the specifics of its complaint against the process:
My comment on the last point is that the DoD took a look at your contracting performance with them and decided that you sucked.
It should be noted that this removing a capability form our arsenal. The F-22 only has the internal volume for smaller bombs, and no provisions for laser guidance.
They bought 300 Sony PlayStation 3 for “technological assessment”.
Yeah, sure. Next they will by 450 Nintendo WII for “Human Interface Research”.
Your tax dollars at work.
This is not the end of the world, any more than the delays on the Airbus A380 were, but there has been another 3 month slippage on the program, with the first flight moving from March to June.
It’s about a 1 year delay.
These are largely due to issues with suppliers, who have had much more authority than in previous aircraft, so one wonders if this might lead to a more centralized for the successor to the 737, which is likely next on Boeing’s plate.
I really am getting sick and tired of the machinations of the fighter pilot Mafia.
Yes, General Bruce Carleson, who has raised insubordination to an art form, is saying that, “Air Force officials must develop and buy new aircraft or risk the service becoming irrelevant”.
In any likely conflict for the next 20 or so years, we are looking at a few weeks of the “kinetic” phase, followed by months or years of peacekeeping, where it does not matter if you are flying an F-16, F-22, or for that matter, a WWII era piston engined A-1 SPAD.
You are bombing and rocketing insurgents from a position of absolute air supremacy.
The Air Force as a combat service is largely irrelevant. What might be important is airlift, and there was just a 30+ billion award made on that a 2 weeks ago.
To the degree that you might need to exert “dominance” if challenged by a real air threat, the critical issue will be situational awareness and communications, which can be handled through system upgrades.
Well, you can check out just how aggressively the politicians from Boeing Washington and Kansas are flipping out, here, and here.
I haven’t heard such hystirical muddled thinking since I argued with someone over the lone gunman theory.
Mostly, I see this as parochial politics, though there are Democrats out there who also see it as a club to use against John McCain, who torpedoed the original, highly corrupt and expensive, deal, it what might have been the only time he’s been right in his entire career.
There is at least a small good coming from the folks running around like chickens with their heads chopped off though, it appears that the outbrief on the decision, giving a rundown of the competition, will be accelerated to provide data as soon as possible to lawmakers and the public.
Even so, I expect a challenge from Boeing that will not be resolved until 2009 at the earliest.
There are also some indications that Boeing was sloppy on its bid. It appears that they did not provide a lot of deal on some of their cost estimates, which led to some downrating.
DID also has an analysis of the 9 Key Performance Parameters (KPP) for the bid, and it’s pretty clear that EADS won or tied them all, and I would particularly note that it demolished the Boeing bid for cargo capacity, and tanking at 1000 and 2000 miles from a base, both of which are critical in the Pacific theater.
They are wringing their hands because all these people will be retiring over the next few years, and there is no one in the wings to replace them.
It’s because the course of study is hard, the pay is not great, particularly once one gets past the 5 or 10 year mark, and at the slightest whiff of a downturn, you get laid off.
It doesn’t help that what once took 6 months (the P-80 shooting star), now takes 18 years or so (F-22), either.
These folks can do numbers, they know that they will be poorly paid, won’t have a secretary, and half-way through their careers, they may be asking, “Would you like fries with that”.
People don’t go into the field because it is an underpaid unattractive field.
The Scandinavian airline SAS: is saying that its MD-80s would still be cheaper to operate, even if the cost of fuel doubled.
It doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense, given that the cost of oil is at an all time high, until you look at this quote:
n its newly-released annual report SAS Group says the effect of capital costs means the MD-80 is SKr5-10 million ($0.8-1.6 million) more profitable to the carrier than newer aircraft.
Capital costs for the type are SKr20 million lower, more than offsetting the SKr10-15 million in higher fuel and maintenance costs.
…
n its newly-released annual report SAS Group says the effect of capital costs means the MD-80 is SKr5-10 million ($0.8-1.6 million) more profitable to the carrier than newer aircraft.
Capital costs for the type are SKr20 million lower, more than offsetting the SKr10-15 million in higher fuel and maintenance costs.
(emphasis mine)
This is interesting not from an aviation perspective, but from a larger economic one.
It implies one of two things:
The first reason is simply not credible. If it were, we’d all still be flying DC-3s, or at least upgrades 707s and DC-8s, since they take people to the same places just as fast.
That leaves reasons two or three, or reasons two and three.
From a macroeconomic standpoint, however, it’s reason 2, the cost of capital, that is most interesting.
This may very well be a major capital purchase that is being delayed because the capital markets have frozen up. That the increased risk premium that has resulted from the credit crunch simply make it too expensive to upgrade to better equipment.
That is how a credit crunch creates a recession, which makes the credit crunch worse.