Category: Aviation

Boeing 787 Faces More Battery Problems

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Bummer of a birth mark, Boeing

They have found swelling in another 787 battery:

Cells in a second lithium-ion battery on a Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner forced to make an emergency landing in Japan last month showed slight swelling, a Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) official said on Tuesday.

The jet, flown by All Nippon Airways Co, was forced to make the landing after its main battery failed.

“I do not know the exact discussion taken by the research group on the ground, but I heard that it is a slight swelling (in the auxiliary power unit battery cells). I have so far not heard that there was internal damage,” Masahiro Kudo, a senior accident investigator at the JTSB said in a briefing in Tokyo.

Kudo said that two out of eight cells in the second battery unit showed some bumps and the JTSB would continue to investigate to determine whether this was irregular or not.

Ummmm….I spent a few months working for a battery manufacturer. This is not a good sign.

Boeing purchasing McDonnell Douglas, and deciding to let McDonnell Douglas’s failed management then take over the firm is bearing bitter fruit.

My Flight Left Over 4 Hours Late

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I also spent about 2 hours on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up to deplane.

Of course, this means that I missed my connecting flight.

I’m booked on a flight that leaves in 5 hours, and wait listed for one that leaves in 2 hours.

If I were stupid, this would be where I would make an angry, but not serious, statement about what should happen to the good folks at USAir, and their lackadaisically maintained fleet of  aircraft.

Of course, this would pique the interest of the good folds in Fort Meade, and I would end up getting to know FBI special agent Body Cavity Search.

So I will leave our at, “Their mother was a hamster, and their father smelled of elderberries.”

Posted via mobile.

Just When You Thought that the JSF Could Not Get Any More f%$#ed………

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We now find out that they bought into Lithium Ion batteries for the fighter, the technology that has grounded the 787:

The Pentagon said it plans to continue using lithium-ion batteries on the new F-35 fighter jet despite problems with similar batteries that have grounded Boeing Co’s new 787 airliner and are causing Airbus to rethink their use on its A350 jet.

Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for the Pentagon’s $396 billion F-35 program office, said on Tuesday that the lithium-ion batteries used on the new radar-evading fighter were made by different manufacturers than those used on the 787, and the jet’s battery systems had been rigorously tested.

“The bottom line is the lithium-ion batteries used on the F-35s have been through extensive tests and have redundant systems to protect the aircraft and battery compartments; they are considered safe,” DellaVedova said.

DellaVedova said there had been some irregularities with the lithium-ion batteries not starting properly in cold temperatures that were being addressed, but no issues affecting flight safety had come up during years of testing.

All 50 Boeing Dreamliners in commercial service were grounded worldwide on January 16 after a series of battery-related incidents, including a fire on board a parked 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport and an in-flight problem on another airplane in Japan.

The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no solution yet in sight, and have sparked growing concerns among aerospace industry executives about whether the powerful but delicate backup energy systems are technically “mature”, or predictable.

Why am I not surprised?

When you cross reference “advance technology”, “unproven”, and “risky”, the Venn diagram of the intersection is the JSF.

Your Military Video Pr0n

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Here is a video from Saab for the Gripen.

It’s a little bit fantastical, but at least it has a narrative, as opposed a to pr0n movie metal soundtrack.

I think that the Gripen really has the possibility to be this generation’s F-5, small, cheap, and ubiquitous, though it is operating at a political handicap, because it is not made by, or going to be fielded by, the nations that are the biggest players diplomatically or militarily.

H/tThe DEW Line

When You Don’t Meet Performance Targets………

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The Department of Defense lowers the target:

The US Department of Defense is lowering the performance bar for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter according to a new report by the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E).

The specifications for all three variants pertaining to transonic acceleration and sustained turn rates have been reduced. Worst hit in terms of acceleration is the US Navy’s F-35C carrier-based model.

“The program announced an intention to change performance specifications for the F-35C, reducing turn performance from 5.1 to 5.0 sustained g’s and increasing the time for acceleration from 0.8 Mach to 1.2 Mach by at least 43 seconds,” reads the report prepared by J Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s DOT&E. “These changes were due to the results of air vehicle performance and flying qualities evaluations.”

The US Air Force F-35A’s time has slipped by eight seconds while the US Marine Corps short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B’s time has slipped by 16 seconds. However, turn rates for both the A and B models have been impacted more severely than the USN variant. Sustained turning performance for the F-35B is being reduced from 5G to 4.5G while the F-35A sinks from 5.3G to 4.6G according to the report.

They also have issues with the horizontal tails getting too hot and delaminating, buffet/wing drop issues, and the they still do not have the helmet mounted display working properly.

And let’s not get started on the software.

This continues to be a clusterf%$#, but with hundreds of billions already invested already, no one is willing to bite the bullet and walk away.

They will continue to throw good money after bad.

I Blame the MBA Mentality

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The Boeing 787 Dreamliners fleet has been grounded worldwide:

Qatar Airways, Ethiopian Airlines and LOT Polish Airlines have joined the list of 787 operators that have stopped flying the aircraft following a U.S. FAA directive on Jan. 16. All 787 fleets worldwide have now been grounded.

………

The groundings were prompted by an incident on Jan. 16 in Japan, when an ANA 787 on a domestic flight declared an emergency and diverted to another airport. Pilots reported messages on cockpit indicators concerning the battery and other systems, and they also noticed an unusual odor in the cockpit and cabin. Inspections revealed that the main battery in the forward electronic equipment bay was discolored and its electrolysis solution had leaked.

The 787 has a lot of innovations, but one of its feature is a change in management strategy.

Boeing has outsourced much of the design and engineering to “risk sharing partners” (some of whom it was forced to buy to get things made right) .

To an MBA, it’s about cutting overhead.  In reality, it’s about losing control of the systems, some of which have never flown on a civil aircraft before, and losing the big picture on how that complex jigsaw puzzle all goes together.

Canada Drops F-35

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The news that Canada has decided to cancel its purchase of 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters is a stunner.

It’s the first cancellation, and Canada is more than a customer, it is also one of the original 9 nations that formed the JSF consortium:

The F-35 jet fighter purchase, the most persistent thorn in the federal government’s side and the subject of a devastating auditor-general’s report last spring, is dead.

Faced with the imminent release of an audit by accountants KPMG that will push the total projected life-cycle costs of the aircraft above $30 billion, the operations committee of the federal Cabinet decided to scrap the controversial sole-source program and go back to the drawing board, a source familiar with the decision said.

This occurred after Chief of the Defence Staff Thomas Lawson, while en route overseas, was called back urgently to appear before the committee, the source said.

The decision is sure to have ripple effects around the world, as any reduction in the number of aircraft on order causes the price to go up for all the other buyers. Canada is one of nine F-35 consortium members, including the United States.

………

Last spring, Ferguson ignited a political firestorm when he reported that the top-line cost cited by the Conservatives in the 2011 election campaign — $9 billion for 65 planes, or $15 billion including maintenance and other life-cycle costs — was $10-billion below the Defence Department’s internal estimate.

Even the internal figure of $25.1 billion was suspect, critics said, because it assumed a 20-year life cycle. The longevity of the Lockheed-Martin-built aircraft, according to the Pentagon, is 36 years.

KPMG’s audit, due out next week, has confirmed the contention, long made by critics such as former assistant deputy minister (materiel) Alan Williams, that the F-35 program’s real cost would be much higher than any previously stated government estimate, sources say.

H/t Christina Mackenzie at the Ares blog.

Understand also that the KPMG analysis almost certainly ignored the elephant in the room, the fact that for any nation operating the F-35, they will be opening themselves up to potentially extortionate charges for support from from the prime contractor over the life of the program, because of the highly integrated, and completely closed, architecture of the aircraft:

It is not often that governments are afforded the luxury of looking into the future before they irrevocably commit to a course of action that will have momentous long-term consequences.

Yet, this is just what the debate about the future of Britain’s fleet of Apache attack helicopters provides, not just to its own government, but also to other European governments as they prepare to order, at great cost, the US-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Britain’s problem is that it operates the AH-64D Longbow version of Apache, while the US Army is upgrading to the AH-64E Block III version. This means that “essential technical support for the British Apache fleet will be withdrawn from 2017,” as the Daily Telegraph reported Dec. 5, leaving Britain with the choice of either upgrading all or part of its Apaches to the new version, or retiring them after 2017 as they drift into early obsolescence.

………

Whether they realize it or not when they buy a US-made weapon, that is how the system works: US forces only support the weapons they operate, so it’s either keep up or drop out, and in this case either scrap your weapons or see them fade away into technical and operational irrelevance.

The other side of the coin, obviously, is that buyers of US weapons are always assured of having access to the very latest versions, improvements and upgrades decided by the US military.

………

Each time the US military decides a modification or upgrade to its F-35s, foreign customers will have to follow suit, at whatever cost Lockheed and the Pentagon decide, or else see their aircraft become obsolete as US technical support shifts to the newer version.

In fact, the situation will be infinitely more serious in the case of the F-35, as export customers will not have access to the aircraft’s source codes, nor to its more advanced maintenance methods and equipment, because all but the most basic maintenance will be carried out by Lockheed Martin in its own facilities in the United States.

Foreign operators of the F-35 will have to pay to play. But it is probable that European governments do not fully understand this consequence of buying into a major US program.

European buyers of the F-16 in the 1970s – which now all intend to buy the F-35 – were not faced with a similar situation because they had assembled their F-16s in Europe; because software source codes were not an issue at the time; and because the United States had a vested interest in keeping allies’ fighters as effective as possible during the Cold War, when profits took a back seat. None of these circumstances exist today.

Unlike the case of the UK’s AH-64Ds, the architecture of the JSF is such that if you opt out of the upgrade, and Lockheed will stops supporting that model of the aircraft, you won’t simply have an aircraft that is obsolete or obsolescent, you will have an aircraft which cannot fly, because the customer will not be allowed to have tools to maintain it.

Your $100 million dollar aircraft has become a door stop.

As an aside, one wonders whether there is will be an “off switch” on export models of the F-35.

Certainly, if I were directing foreign military sales at the Pentagon, I would demand such a feature, at least for those aircraft shipped to non NATO allies.

I Haz a Sad

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The Big E has finished its last tour, and it will be decommissioned and scrapped:

ABOARD THE USS ENTERPRISE – The world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ended its remarkable career at sea on Sunday when it pulled into its home port for the final time after participating in every major conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The USS Enterprise began shutting down its eight nuclear reactors almost as soon as it arrived at its pier at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, where thousands of cheering family members and friends welcomed the ship home from its 25th and final deployment after nearly eight months at sea. The ship will never move on its own power again and will eventually be scrapped in Washington state.

………

The Navy will officially deactivate the Enterprise on Dec. 1, but it will take several more years for it to be decommissioned as its reactors are taken out. About 15,000 people are expected to attend the deactivation ceremony, which will be its last public ceremony after several days of tours for former crew members.

What a Surprise

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David Axe talks to a former USAF general who says that his career was destroyed, and his retirement delayed in an attempt to cover up his report that was critical of the V-22 Osprey:

Don Harvel thought he was cruising to a well-deserved retirement after 35 years flying cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force. Then in the spring of 2010 he was tapped to investigate the fatal crash of a high-tech Air Force tiltrotor aircraft – and everything changed.

What Harvel discovered about the controversial hybrid aircraft drew him into a battle of wills with his superiors at Air Force Special Operations Command. Harvel, then a brigadier general, uncovered evidence of mechanical problems — and resulting safety woes — in the V-22 Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane. These are issues the Pentagon has been eager to downplay. So when Harvel refused to alter his findings to match the Defense Department’s expectations, he knew that was the final chapter of his decades-long military service. Harvel’s long-planned retirement was held up for more than two years, effectively silencing him during a troubling chapter in the Osprey’s often-troubled history.

“I turned [my report] in and I knew that my career was done,” Harvel says.

………

But the stats reflect altered and miscategorized data. Engine fires clearly costing millions of dollars to fix were downgraded in the paperwork. One malfunction that resulted in a V-22 accidentally taking off uncommanded before crashing to the ground was labeled a ground incident and left off the record. Even leaving out the 1991-2000 crashes, the Osprey’s crash rate before this year’s accidents was roughly double the officially stated figure, making the V-22 no safer than the Marines’ conventional helicopters and far, far more dangerous than its fixed-wing cargo planes.

And that’s mostly due to inadequate testing, Harvel claims. “In their hurry to get this thing painted in a positive light for Congress, some things are coming back to haunt them,” he says of the V-22′s supporters.

We need to understand that the military establishment of the United States is completely captured by the defense industry, and this does not serve either our military needs or the interest of the taxpayers.

They are Still Flying Camberras?

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And it appears that they are crucial to the efforts in Afghanistan:

They’re 49 years old, ugly and owned by NASA, not the Pentagon. But two modified WB-57F Canberras are now among America’s most important warplanes. With anonymous-looking white paint jobs, the Canberras have been taking turns deploying to Afghanistan carrying a high-tech new radio translator designed to connect pretty much any fighter, bomber, spy plane and ground radio to, well, pretty much any other fighter, bomber, spy plane and ground radio. That makes the former Air Force reconnaissance planes, originally transferred to the space agency for science missions, essential hubs of the American-led war effort.

 With the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node system, or BACN, the WB-57s act as Star Trek-style universal translators, passing data between planes and troops and finally bringing to life the Pentagon’s decades-old dream of speedy, information-propelled, networked warfare. “It orbits high up and basically receives various platforms’ datalink data, then translates all that data and redistributes it in a fused manner back to different platforms in the operating area,” Aviationintel’s Tyler Rogoway told ace aerospace blogger David Cenciotti.

 “BACN bridges the gaps,” manufacturer Northrop Grumman boasted.

This is an artifact of how the Pentagon buys stuff.

You see, instead of trying to deal with a serious problem, lack of proper interoperability between systems, they come up with a ridiculously over ambitious system, the now canceled JTRS, that never had a realistic possibility of meeting its overambitious requirements.

So now we are resorting to cobbled together electronics on an airframe that first flew almost 70 years ago.

Russia to Order AN-70 Transports

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The Russian Air Force is planning to order 60 of the transports:

Ukrainian company Antonov together with Russian United Aircraft Corporation will participate in manufacturing Antonov An-70 transport airplanes. Russian defense ministry already placed an order for 60 such machines, USD 67 million apiece. Developed since 1978, An-70 can carry heavier cargo than existing transport planes and land on ill-equipped runways.

An-70 can carry 300 troopers, or 200 injured persons, or 47 tons of freight. Comparably, the closest alternative to An-70 – the Airbus A400M Atlas – can carry 37 tons of cargo. Market price of the Spanish A400M is EUR 145 million, whereas the Ukrainian An-70 costs less than USD 70 million.

Planes An-70 will be produced at JSC Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Production Association in Kazan, Russia. The plane can fly at a speed of 780 kilometers per hour at distances of up to 7,800 kilometers. An-70 is capable of landing on 600-800 meter runways with earth surfaces. Onboard navigation equipment allows the plane to land and takeoff at airports lacking special earth-based equipment.

This is interesting, and not just because it represents a rapprochement between Russian and Ukrainian defense industry.

By almost every metric (except for noise where, the contra rotating props create a racket), it equals the A400M, and if this order is sufficient to make the production line viable, it could be a major headache for EADS.

Cessna Jumps on the Diesel Band Wagon

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They will be putting a diesel in the model 182 Sklylane: (Paid Subscription Required)

While avgas consumers and suppliers fret over the future of their leaded fuel, Cessna is partially weaning itself of that toxic brew by equipping its popular Model 182 Skylane with a Jet A-burning diesel engine. Others are likely to follow.

Unveiled at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s recent annual gathering in Oshkosh, Wis. (see p. 35), the Turbo Skylane JT-A (photo) is fitted with the new SR305-230E engine built by SMA, a subsidiary of Snecma of France. The four-cylinder, 227-hp powerplant is already certificated by both the European Aviation Safety Agency and FAA , and Cessna hopes to begin deliveries of its newest model in early 2013.

While Austria’s Diamond Aircraft has been producing aircraft powered by Austro Engine diesels for several years, the entry into that market by the much-larger Wichita aircraft maker with wide name recognition and a global support network is significant and likely to find favor, particularly in lesser-developed regions where avgas is scarce and expensive. Visitors at the Oshkosh introduction told Cessna personnel that the per-gallon price of 100LL avgas at some remote locations had topped $22.

Austro is a former Diamond Aircraft subsidiary (they spun it off) founded to replace the Thielert engine after that company’s implosion.

Yes, the Pilots Choking is Really Solved This Time

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They say that it’s just an overinflating pressure vest that is part of their G-suit:

The mysterious engineering problem causing F-22 Raptor pilots to choke in their cockpits has been solved, the Pentagon says. And it’s not the nearly $400 million aircraft’s fault after all.

The problem lies with a valve in the pressurized vest pilots wear as they fly the jet at high altitudes, Pentagon spokesman George Little said. The valve inflated the vest, limiting the pilots’ oxygen supply. It does not appear that the vest was affecting quality of the oxygen in the Raptor. The valve will be replaced; the garment’s use will be “suspended,” Little said.

Additionally, the Air Force has decided to remove a filter it placed in the jet to test the oxygen quality. Ironically, the filter ended up limiting the oxygen supply to the pilots. But the charcoal filter resulted in “no oxygen contamination,” Little told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Accordingly, the Air Force will gradually take its premiere stealth jet off of the probation that the so-called “hypoxia” incidents — a term indicating problems with the oxygen in the cockpit — necessitated. Over an unspecified period of time, the F-22 will no longer be restricted to flying short missions at low altitudes near air bases. The first indication that the jet is off probation will be an imminent flight of an F-22 squadron over the Pacific to Kadena Air Force Base in Japan — which will occur at a “lower altitude,” Little said.

I’ll believe this if we don’t have any more incidents for at least 6 months.

The Next Gen Gripen Looks to Be a World Beater

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Click for full size


This is a lot cheaper

Saab put out a very impressive briefing on the next generation of Gripen at Farnborough, where the headline was much lower direct operating costs:

Third (and most important) is that all air forces are finally realizing that operating costs are more important than acquisition costs. The debate over JSF costs – from the Navair leaks of 2010, through program director VAdm Dave Venlet’s “it makes their knees go weak” quote in April 2011 to Lockheed Martin’s recent assaults on the competence of Pentagon accountants – revolves around operating costs, and that is a fight that Gripen wins.

Saab says that the E/F will cost under $5,000 per flight hour – one-third to one-quarter of its estimates for Eurofighter, Rafale or JSF (Saab uses Australian numbers for the latter, which are lower than some).

These numbers are not just pie in the sky. The Gripen has been in service for over a decade, as has its engine, and it’s half the size of its competitors, and you pay for aircraft like you pay for ground beef, by the pound.  (And yes, the numbers for the JSF are unsupportable)

However, what I found most interesting was the fact that they touted the advantages of non-integrated avionics, (page 33) explaining how you can move more quickly if your tactical avionics are separate from flight critical systems, which also allows greater access by the operating nations who might want to make their own upgrades and weapons.

This is a direct challenge to the tightly integrated, and inaccessible avionics package in the JSF.

PDF after the break. (H/T Eric Palmer for the embed.)

Israel Developing Python 6 Based on Stunner SAM/ATBM

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The Israeli defense company Rafael is working to develop a successor to the Python 5 and the Derby based on their Stunner surface to air missile (paid subscription required):

Rafael, Israel’s leading missile development center, continues to work quietly on an air-to-air derivative of the Stunner interceptor—to be designated Python 6, or the Future Advanced Air-to-Air Missile (FAAM).


The Stunner is a surface-to-air weapon being developed in partnership with Raytheon for Israel’s David’s Sling air and missile defense system. The Python 6 has been chronicled for almost a decade.


Although the Israeli air force (IAF) still has not officially endorsed an air-to-air version, sources at Rafael say consultations over the features of such a missile have been underway since the final stages of development of the Python 5, currently in production.


The IAF could avoid committing its own funding to FAAM development, hoping that Rafael can first strike a deal with a U.S. partner to obtain the next-generation air-to-air missile. But according to Chairman Ilan Biran, Rafael is in the meantime using its R&D budget, estimated at $125 million, to fund the project.


………


The Stunner was designed as a “platform-agnostic” missile that can be adapted for air and ground launch, from rail or ejector racks, in conventional or internal carriage configurations. The Mach 5.5, long-range missile is equipped with a dual electro-optic/radio-frequency seeker and an advanced multistage rocket motor. Designed as a hit-to-kill anti-missile weapon , Stunner has no warhead and instead can carry a more powerful rocket motor capable of ranges beyond any air-to-air missile available today.


Druker says the FAAM will likely cost significantly less than today’s AIM-120 , Derby or Meteor, but more than the current short-range missiles. Although the FAAM and Stunner do not share a common configuration, Rafael expects that the overall life-cycle cost offered by the Stunner will be much lower than any other missile combination.

Personally, I’m a little bit dubious that the missile will go completely without a warhead, the PAC-3 Patriot, for example is hit to kill, but contains a “lethality enhancer” (basically a tiny warhead to scatter shrapnel in the path of the target.

That being said, using a dual mode seeker (you can see how the IR seeker is offset so as to allow a radar to be placed behind it) the missile’s accuracy should be pretty high.

They also expect this to be the last AAM they develop.

Yosi Druker, director of Rafael’s Air-to-Air and Air Defense Directorate, suggests that they will be superseded by new technologies, because “the next generation of interceptors will employ other kill mechanisms, not necessarily a missile, to defeat airborne targets,” which I take to be a reference to directed energy weapons.

I’m dubious of this, but I’ve been wrong more often than not when I have been dubious about a technological development.

Background here.

Another Day, Another Failed Military Procurement Program

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The US Army has canceled the Boeing Hummingbird:

This month, the Army planned to deploy to Afghanistan an unusual new drone: an unmanned eye-in-the-sky helicopter programmed to use high-tech cameras to monitor vast amounts of territory. But now the drone might be lucky to be deployed at all, as the Army has moved to shut down production — possibly ending the program forever.

That drone would be the A160 Hummingbird, which the Army planned to equip with the powerful Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or Argus. But earlier this month, the Army issued a stop-work order — one step away from termination — to the drone’s developer Boeing. The reason? A high “probability of continued technical and schedule delays,” costs and risks that have “increased so significantly that program continuation is no longer in the best interest of the government,” said Donna Hightower, the Army’s acting product manager for unmanned aerial systems modernization.

The A160 was set to be one of the Army’s most radical new drones. The chopper-drone could loiter for 20 hours at up to 15,000 feet, with a range of 2,500 nautical miles. It could observe up to 36 square miles, thanks to its Argus sensors. Also, Argus has a 1.8 gigapixel camera. Viewed through 92 five-megapixel imagers and 65 video windows for zooming in at ultra-high resolution, the the A160 drone would have been well-suited for spying on enemy fighters in vast and remote terrain like in Afghanistan, where three of the drones were scheduled to deploy this month. The A160 has also been sent on special operations workouts.

It appears that there were problems with the sensor suite, but perhaps more significantly, the aircraft experienced vibration problems during a flight test, and it’s innovative variable speed rotor system was supposed to address this, so it puts the basic architecture in question.

Gripen Plans Progress

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It looks like the Swiss and the Swedes have got their program together:

Provided nationally endorsed plans in Sweden and Switzerland survive political or economic upsets, the JAS 39E/F, the product of the Gripen Demo and Next Generation programs, will be delivered to customers in 2018. This will mean that Saab and its supplier team will have created what is in most respects an entirely new aircraft, compared to the original JAS 39A/B, since development of the in-service C/D started in June 1997.

This has been done so far under fixed-price contracts for development, new production and retrofits, according to a presentation by FMV, the Swedish defense procurement organization. After the delivery of the last Gripen C/D, Saab returned an unspecified sum of money to the Swedish government because costs were lower than predicted.

More details of the JAS 39E/F emerged at an aerospace conference hosted by the Swedish air force and Saab earlier this month at Malmen air base, and attended by current and prospective Gripen operators.

The schedule is set by two interlocking commitments. The Swedish government has decided to replace the C/D with the E/F and has committed to developing the aircraft in time to support Switzerland’s requirements. The Swiss government has selected the E/F as the sole affordable replacement for the F-5E/F, and subject to a referendum and negotiations will sign a contract in 2014, triggering a full-scale go-ahead by Sweden .

Some development work will continue to lay the foundation for the four-year program. As long as the political process stays on track, the first of two built-from-the-ground-up E/F development aircraft, identified as 39-8, will fly in late 2013. The Gripen Demo has been equipped with a prototype of the Selex Raven ES-05 active, electronically scanned array radar and will be used to test the E/F’s revised avionics system and weapons.

The E/F airframe will be largely new, although it should be possible to use some major components from existing C/D airframes, including the wings. Mid and aft fuselage sections will be new, to accommodate the General Electric F414 engine (and its larger airflow) and the new landing gear. The blended wing-body sections will be larger, placing the wing attachment points an estimated 30 in. farther apart. The goal is to maintain the same wing loading for the E/F’s 2.5-ton increase in gross weight. The body will be slightly longer, maintaining or improving fineness ratio. Sources suggest the design will incorporate F-35-style diverterless supersonic inlets.

So, it looks like the New Gripen is going to be basically a new aircraft.

One of the interesting points is that they intend a large amount of systems commonality between the E/F and the C/D, particularly in terms of upgrades, which can serve to address concerns about the costs of upgrades, which Norway used as an alibi to select the F-35. 

It should that this did problem did occur with Italy, when they were the sole customer for the Sparrow capable F-104S, and were stuck with shouldering upgrades on their own.

Seeing as how the Gripen is about half the direct operating cost of the Typhoon and Rafale, and probably less than 1/3 that of the F-35, I think that it continues to occupy a niche at the low end of the market.

Eclipse to Restart Production

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I thought that they were dead, but it appears that repirts if its death are greatly exaggerated🙁paid subscription required)

As Eclipse Aerospace loads the jig for its first new-production very-light jet, the company’s ambitions are not those of its predecessor, which failed spectacularly in its bid to blacken the sky with low-cost air taxis. The new company instead aims to make a solid profit on modest production.

The original Eclipse Aviation was formed in 1998 with the vision of selling thousands of million-dollar jets into a booming air-taxi market. But its biggest customer, unable to raise financing in an economic downturn, closed its doors in 2008, taking with it 1,400 of the 2,600 orders on the books.

The new-build Eclipse 550 will have better cockpit displays and processors, synthetic and enhanced vision and autothrottle.

Eclipse’s business model was based on high volume, and the failure of air-taxi operator DayJet helped push the company into bankruptcy and eventually liquidation. Its successor has a more moderate approach, with a slow production ramp targeting a recovery in the global business-jet market by around 2014-15.

“We are not in the same position as other manufacturers,” says Chairman and CEO Mason Holland. “We are growing the business at a measured pace behind the speed at which the market is moving, where others have had to consolidate and cut back to get down to the pace of the market.”

The first new-production Eclipse 550, an improved version of the original Eclipse 500, is slated for delivery in July-August 2013 and, where the original company built more than 100 aircraft in its first full production year, Eclipse Aerospace is targeting 45-50 deliveries in 2014.

It’s still (relatively) cheap, just under $3 million, which is well above what they were selling the aircraft for when they went belly up, it’s still at a good price point.