Aviation Week & Space Technology - 29 September 2014 PDF

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Put simply, the 787 equals super efciency, dramatically cutting our fuel
costs and contributing to record prots for Ethiopian.
Passengers love it and whenever we introduce the Dreamliner on a route
then our load factors improve.
Its clear that the airplane is a technology game-changer,
representing the future of aviation.
Tewolde Gebremariam
CEO
Ethiopian Airlines
THE DREAMLINER EFFECT.

ETHIOPIAN SUCCESS.
www.newairplane.com/787/dreamliner-effect
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DEFENSE, SPACE AND SECURITY
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Morris (Associate Managing Editor), Michael Bruno,
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8 Feedback
9 Whos Where
10-11 The World
12 Up Front
14 Commanders Intent
16 Inside Business Aviation
17 Airline Intel
18 In Orbit
19 Washington Outlook
47 Classied
48 Contact Us
49 Aerospace Calendar
THE WORLD
10 ATK offers concept for solid-fuel
rocket to replace the Russian-
built RD-180 as Atlas V power
10 Embraer establishes U.S. foothold
for production of defense systems
stateside with rollout of the A-29
10 First ight for Airbus A320neo
opens ight-test campaign with
rst deliveries slated for mid-2016
11 Oleg Ivanovsky dies, was Soviet
space-technology pioneer
who helped design Sputnik 1
BUSINESS AVIATION
20 Airbus engineering expertise to
help accelerate Aerion supersonic
bizjet design toward production
AIR TRANSPORT
21 Aircraft nanciers, other business
leaders voicing concerns that the in-
dustry could be in for an awakening
23 Air Frances acquiescence to key
demands of striking pilots
could seal the carriers fate
24 Wall Street sends message to
JetBlue along with new CEO:
Start acting more like competitors
25 Growing number of avionics pro-
viders working to keep data owing
to ATC despite passengers or crew
32 Upset recovery ight training takes
on new importance as more com-
prehensive rules come into force
DEFENSE
26 Stealthy, twin-engine F-22 nally
has destroyed its rst target in a
conict, after nearly 10 years of use
27 Given regional tensions, many
European nations hope to shore
up supply of cruise missiles
28 Latest vision for data-sharing across
ships, aircraft and satellites is now
being dubbed the combat cloud
29 U.S. Army ponders whether to deve-
lop a new advanced rotorcraft or
put UH-60 through another upgrade
44 Japanese requirement for four
more AEW&C aircraft is
ofering export sales opportunity
45 Denmark bolsters its Arctic claims
by strengthening defenses in
Greenland, exerting its sovereignty
When Expedition 40 returned to Earth on Sept. 11 after 169 days on the
International Space Station, Russian technicians were on hand, as always, to
recover the two cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut from their Soyuz capsule.
NASA photo by Bill Ingalls. Today, the U.S. and Russia rely on each other to
keep their human spaceight programs going. But geopolitical conicts and
funding constraints present space agencies with new obstacles to cooperation
that require innovative solutions. As the 65th International Astronautical
Congress convenes in Toronto this week, special reports starting on page 36 and
an editorial on page 50 examine the future of space cooperation.
Props, simulators and jets
are vehicles in the battle for custom-
ers at worlds largest upset recovery
training providers
ON THE COVER
32
AVIATION WEEK
4 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 29, 2014 AviationWeek.com/awst
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Contents
September 29, 2014 Volume 176 Number 34
20
Aerion possessed the technology and the vision to develop its supersonic
business jet concept, all that was lacking were the resources and some
skillsand thats where the Airbus Group comes into the picture. Some
of its senior engineers from the military aircraft division will be sent to
Reno, Nevada, to work with the Aerion team.
45
EDITORIALS
50 Chinese are intent on being a space
power on par with U.S. and Russia,
so bring them into the tent
50 Pilots will have to share the blame
if Air France folds because it
can no longer be competitive
26
29
SPACE
31 FAA space transportation of ce pub-
lishes recommended practices for
human spaceight occupant safety
SPACE COOPERATION
36 Tensions related to the Ukraine situ-
ation and other matters have left
space alliances relatively unscathed
38 Competition for public funds
worldwide and export controls
complicate space cooperation
40 Following the ISS model, civil
agencies tap private partners
for spaceight developments
42 Chinese space station ofering
a range of opportunities for
international coooperation
September 29, 2014 Volume 176 Number 34
A roundup of what youre reading on AviationWeek.com
The Sept. 25 inaugural ight of the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G-powered Airbus A320neo is the
most signicant milestone in the history of the single-aisle twin since the original CFM56-5-powered
prototype ew for the rst time in February 1987, writes Senior Propulsion Editor Guy Norris. Read
about the ight on page 10, then take a peek inside Aviation Weeks archives to see how we
covered the A320s debut 27 years ago. ow.ly/BV25P AviationWeek.com/100
The F-22 made its rst combat strike last week. Read our story (page
26) and two blogs inspired by the event. Senior International Military
Editor Bill Sweetman asks whether an unmanned aircraft could have done
the job just as well: ow.ly/BUUqX And Senior Pentagon Editor Amy Butler
ponders whether there was more at play than dropping a bomb:
ow.ly/BUUBe AviationWeek.com/Ares
RAPTOR ATTACK
Nominations for Aviation Weeks 58th annual Laureate Awards close Oct. 3.
Review the categories and enter now! ow.ly/BUu3x
On last weeks column by Pierre Sparaco on the Air France-KLM
pilot strike, Stephane wrote, The main problem is not the Air
France pilots, whose productivity is the same as their European
peers. The big [problem] is the number of ground staff.
ow.ly/BUXlh
Keep up with all the news and blogs from Aviation Weeks editors.
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READER
COMMENT
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CFM International is a 50/50 joint company between Snecma (Safran) and GE.
LIMIT THE LIGHT
LED Astray (AW&ST Sept. 22,
p. 28) is timely. Ive found the green
taxi lights at Denver International Air-
port to be too bright. After landing, we
asked ground control if they could dim
them and were told that they were as
dim as they could be. We were also told
that many such complaints are lodged .
All pilots should tell the FAA to dis-
approve further use of LEDs until the
dimming problem is resolved. Also, the
FAA needs to publish in its Airport/
Facility Directory and in Jeppesen
materials where LED lighting is in use,
and issue appropriate cautions.
Bob Walker
CHULA VISTA, CALIFORNIA
BLUE SOLUTION
LED Astray is long overdue. In the
case of automobiles, it is obvious that
these lights are an order of magnitude
more dazzling than incandescents.
Their introduction was astonish-
ing, and in deance or ignorance of
basic optical physiology. If you wish
to dazzle someone, blue light is best.
French headlight design has always
recognized this. Spectroscopic analysis
is hardly needed, and dimming them
down will merely reduce the area of
the retina rendered inefective.
Lew Creedon
OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA
UPDATED E-8CS, PLEASE
I am dismayed that a very old pho-
tograph accompanied More for Less
(AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 42), an excellent
article about the proposed replacement
Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar
System (Joint Stars) aircraft. The E-8C
on page 44 has a WR tail code, which
dates from the 93rd Air Control Wing
(ACW) at Robins (Georgia) AFB. The
mission and the jets were transferred
to the 116th ACW of the Georgia Air Na-
tional Guard in 2001 and have sported
GA tail codes since then. Each day of
the 13 years that followed has seen these
aircraft and crews deployed for combat
operations. Many photos of the aircraft
with the proper markings are available.
I served as wing historian, so am
particularly sensitive to this matter.
ANG MSgt. (ret.) William T. Brockman
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
AIRPOWER SEA CHANGE NEEDED
J ust as is the case with the current
Joint Stars, U.S. Air Force culture will
continue to be the biggest challenge
facing a replacement aircraft. Despite
the immense advances that have been
made in our ground surveillance and
precision-attack capabilities, the Air
Force continues to see itself as playing
a supporting role to the Army when
ghting land forces. Unlike naval air-
men in the 1930s who had the vision to
recognize that technology was making
it feasible and necessary to reverse
the roles between naval air and sur-
face forces, Air Force leaders continue
to be unable to recognize how our in-
creasing capabilities have made it es-
sential, for war-ghting efectiveness,
to reverse the roles between air and
land forces. As is the case with surface
forces in naval warfare, land forces
will continue to play an important role
in military operations, but increas-
ingly land forces should be supporting
our airpower .
USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) Price T. Bingham
MELBOURNE, FLORIDA
FLIGHT SAFETY, FROM THIS VIEW
I feel that Lee Moaks recent View-
point warrants a rebuttal (AW&ST
Sept. 15, p. 58). On Aug. 1, 2010, Presi-
dent Barack Obama signed PL 111-216,
The Airline Safety and FAA Extension
Act, into law. The act included provi-
sions for creating Federal Aviation
Regulation (FAR) Part 117 Flight Time/
Duty Time rules. Regardless of re-
gional airline new hire issues; this FAR
created an articial pilot shortage in
senior pilot ranks and afected safety.
Part 117 is a asco for many inter-
national pilots. Crew rest has been
impinged by longer working hours and
fewer hours of scheduled rest at layover
hotels. Now international ights are
treated the same as a 1-hr. city-hopping
ight between small towns.
Stakeholders, FAA, Airlines 4
America (industry group), and the
Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) each
had politics and economics to consider.
Commercial interests were correct, the
rule does require more pilots and costs
more. Pilots on property are now sufer-
ing the brunt of longer working hours
and less layover time between ights.
The overall excuse we hear from the
pilots unions is that Part 117 rules are
based on science. But there are aws in
the pseudo-science used to create new
rest rules. International ying is not re-
gional ying. During some international
trips pilots, in-theater are scheduled
for multiple legs over water with short
layovers for 2-3 consecutive days.
It is time for Congress to demand
answers from the FAA, airline man-
agement, and ALPA as to why they
have lengthened ights and shortened
layovers between ights.
Capt. William M. Ermolovich
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
EYES ON THE SKIES WHEN FLYING
I agree with reader Keith Darrow
that the sele category added to this
years Aviation Week annual photo
issue is dangerous (AW&ST Sept. 22,
p. 10). It is not safe to use a camera
when ying solo. Either in the late
1970s or early 80s the Air Force lost
two A-7 jets due to a mid air collision
between a lead and his wingman.
Cause: Lead was ying his jet while
looking through a camera lens trying
to take a picture of his wingman.
David Delisio
WALKERSVILLE, MARYLAND
C-130 BUST
Surely the photograph with Slice
and Dice (AW&ST Sept. 22, p. 18) was
not a C-17 dispersing ares. It looks
like the venerable C-130.
Mark Canepa
FRESNO, CALIFORNIA
(The reader is correct-Ed.)
Feedback
Aviation Week & Space Technology welcomes
the opinions of its readers on issues raised in
the magazine. Address letters to the Executive
Editor, Aviation Week & Space Technology,
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22209. Fax to (202) 383-2346 or send via e-mail
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Letters should be shorter than 200 words, and
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print anonymous letters, but names will be
withheld. We reserve the right to edit letters.
based U.S. Bank Multi-Service
Aviation. He was director of sales
and marketing for Air Training
International, also in Houston.
Scott Harris has been named
head of aerospace programs
at Northrop Grumman Austra-
lia. He was head of customer
business for Qantas Defense
Services, which was acquired by
Northrop Grumman.
Bryan Zidar has become man-
aging director of corporate com-
munications for Alaska Airlines.
He was director of corporate com-
munications for T-Mobile U.S.
Greg Marshall (see photo)
has been appointed acting vice
president-global programs for
the Alexandria, Virginia-based
Flight Safety Foundation. He
was director of FSFs Basic Avi-
ation Risk Standard program
in the Melbourne, Florida, of-
ce. Marshall succeeds Rudy
Quevedo, who is now director
of safety at the International Air
Transport Association.
Paul Archambeault has
been promoted to senior vice
president/chief nancial and
operating ofcer from CFO for
Washington-based Airlines for
America.
Phillip J. Cagnassola, a
member of the board of direc-
tors, has become a minority
partner in the Paramount Avia-
tion Resources Group, Freder-
icksburg, Virginia.
Chin Feng (see photo) has
been named CEO of the Hong
Kong branch of Allianz Global
Corporate & Specialty, efective
Nov. 1. He has been regional
manager for nancial lines in
Asia at the Singapore branch
and succeeds Mark Mitchell,
who has been appointed region-
al CEO in Singapore.
Joe Migis has been promoted
to vice president-technology for
product solutions from senior direc-
tor of product solutions at Southwest
Airlines.
Jerrol Jay Littles has been named
to lead Aerojet Rocketdynes new Ad-
vanced Hydrocarbon Propulsion Devel-
opment Ofce in Huntsville, Alabama.
Andreas Otto
Greg Marshall
Jefrey MacLauchlan
Chin Feng
John Riggir
Kristyna Smith
Harry Lee
A
ndreas Otto (see photo) has
been appointed chief commer-
cial ofcer of Austrian Airlines,
efective Oct. 1. He has been executive
board member for product and sales
at Lufthansa Cargo. Otto succeeds
Karsten Benz, who will become group
infrastructure ofcer for Austrian par-
ent Lufthansa Group.
Johannes Bussmann has been
named chairman of the executive
board of Lufthansa Technik, efective
April 1. He will succeed August Wil-
helm Henningsen, who plans to retire.
Bussmann has been the board member
responsible for human resources, en-
gine and VIP services.
Silvano Cassano has been appoint-
ed CEO and Ariodante Valeri chief
commercial ofcer of Alitalia. Cassano
has been chairman/CEO of shipping
company Grandi Navi Veloci, CEO of
Benetton Group and CEO of Fiat Auto
Financial and Consumer Services.
Valeri has been general manager at
Grandi Navi Veloci and president/CEO
of Targa Services at Gruppo Fiat Auto.
Christian Blanc has become CEO
of Tunisia-based Syphax Airlines. He is
a former chief executive of Air France
and later was an adviser to Middle East
Airlines. Blanc succeeds Syphax founder
Mohamed Frikha, who has resigned.
Jefrey D. MacLauchlan (see
photo) has been appointed senior vice
president-corporate development for
Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
He succeeds Barry Abzug, who plans
to retire in December. MacLauchlan
held the same position at the Lockheed
Martin Corp.
Mary M. Meg VanDeWeghe has
been named to the board of directors
B/E Aerospace, Wellington, Florida. She
is president/CEO of Forte Consulting
Inc. and a professor of the practice
of nance at Georgetown Univer-
sitys McDonough School of Business.
VanDeWeghe has been a senior vice
president-nance at the Lockheed Mar-
tin Corp.
John Riggir (see photo) has become
vice president/general manager of Jet
Aviation Singapore. Riggir was execu-
tive vice president-corporate business
development for the Hawker Pacic
Group in Singapore.
John Harpool has been appointed
national sales manager for Houston-
HONORS AND ELECTIONS
Kristyna Smith (see photo)
has been elected president of
the Boston Professional Chapter
of the Society of Asian Scientists
and Engineers. She is an aero-
space and mechanical engineer
at the Draper Laboratory,
Cambridge, Masschusetts,
working on inertial navigation
technology and an airdrop sys-
tem that autonomously deliv-
ers supplies such as fuel, food
and water from cargo aircraft
to soldiers on the ground.
U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers
(R-Ky.) has received the Arling-
ton, Virginia-based Aerospace
Industries Associations annual
Wings of Liberty Award in rec-
ognition of his longtime support
of the aerospace and defense
industry. He is chairman and a
30-year member of the House
Appropriations Committee.
Rogers also has served on its
Defense subcommittee, and
chaired the Transportation,
Commerce, Science, Justice
and the Homeland Security
subcommittees. The award is
presented to a member of Con-
gress for signicant contribu-
tions to help bolster aerospace
and national defense.
Harry Lee (see photo), vice
president-corporate contracts,
pricing and supply chain for the
Falls Church, Virginia-based
Northrop Grumman Corp., has
received the National Associa-
tion of Asian American Profes-
sionals 100 Award. It is given
annually to individuals who
have made substantial contri-
butions to their profession and the Asian
community. Lee leads all aspects of con-
tracts and pricing including Northrop
Grummans risk review process and
development of companywide contracts
and pricing policy, and is the principal
interface with regulatory ofcials. c
To submit information for the
Whos Where column, send Word
or attached text files (no PDFs) and
photos to: stearns@aviationweek.com
For additional information on
companies and individuals listed in
this column, please refer to the
Aviation Week Intelligence Network
at AviationWeek.com/awin For
information on ordering, telephone
U.S.: +1 (866) 857-0148 or
+1 (515) 237-3682 outside the U.S.
Whos Where
SPACE
SpaceX Delivers to ISS
A temporarily reduced crew of three
on the International Space Station
pending arrival on a Soyuz capsule late
Sept. 25 EDT of three new crewmates
that was launched earlier that day
grappled the fourth SpaceX Dragon car-
go capsule to reach the orbiting outpost
under the companys $1.6 billion, 12-ight
contract with NASA. Astronauts used
the stations robotic arm early Sept. 23
to catch the vehicle with its 4,885-lb.
cargo as it rendezvoused with the orbit-
ing science laboratory, and berthed it
to the U.S.-segment Harmony module.
The cargo includes 20 mice, fruit ies
and plant samples, which will serve as
subjects in experiments intended to
investigate changes in physiology and
metabolism brought on by weightless-
ness at the molecular and genetic levels.
The RapidScat sensor, which arrived
in the Dragons unpressurized trunk,
will be extracted with the robot arm and
mounted outside the stations Columbus
module to measure wind speed and
direction on ocean surfaces, providing
information that could in part improve
tropical weather forecasts (AW&ST
Sept. 15, p. 17).
Playing Nice
The U.S. Strategic Command has nally
signed a data-sharing agreement with
key allies that is designed to streamline
the process of gathering information
from orbiting satellites and providing
space situational awareness to foreign
operators. Such information is crucial
for launch support, satellite maneuver
planning, support for on-orbit anomalies,
electromagnetic interference reporting
and investigation, satellite decommis-
sioning activities and on-orbit conjunc-
tion assessments, command ofcials
say. The agreement was signed Sept. 23.
DEFENSE
South Korea Orders F-35s
South Korea and the U.S. government
have completed negotiations on South
Koreas order for 40 Lockheed Martin
F-35A Joint Strike Fighters, accord-
ing to the South Korean government.
The negotiations covered price, of-
sets and technical details, and opened
the way for South Korea to sign a
letter of ofer and acceptance for the
new aircraft. Deliveries are expected
between 2018 and 2021.
AIR TRANSPORT
Comac Assembling First C919
Final assembly of the rst Comac C919
narrowbody airliner has begun, with
the joining of the forward and center
fuselage sections at the Chinese state
manufacturers new plant at Shanghai.
While assembling the aircraft, due to y
next year, Comac says it is also working
on the development of onboard systems.
The exact time planned for next years
rst ight has not been disclosed, but it
is probably late in the year.
Embraer Rolls Out
First USAF Super Tucano
After years of bitter competitions,
Embraer has fnally established a U.S.
foothold for production of defense
systems stateside with the rollout of its
frst A-29 Super Tucano for sale to the
U.S. Air Force.
Embraer is teamed with Sierra Nevada
Corp. to deliver 20 Super Tucanos to the service, which then plans to transfer them to
Afghan forces. The team also is training U.S. instructor pilots and maintainers, who will
train Afghan forces to use the system. Training in Afghanistan is slated for early next
year. This was the companys frst successful venture into the U.S. defense market. Embraer
previously won a contract with Lockheed Martin to supply ERJ 145s for intelligence aircraft;
the deal cratered once it became evident the platforms were too small to contain the
equipment required for the service.
First Flight for A320neo
Four years after its launch, the Airbus
A320neo has completed its frst fight.
The aircraft landed back at Toulouses
Blagnac airport at 2:22 p.m. local time
on Sept. 25 after 2-hr. and 22-min.
During the fight, the aircraft stayed
near Toulouse and started opening the fight envelope at a medium
speed and altitude range initially.
The aircraft was fown by Philippe Pellerin and Etienne Miche
de Malleray, both experimental test pilots. Also on board were
Test Flight Engineer Jean-Paul Lambert and Flight Test Engineers
Manfred Birnfeld and Sandra Bour-
Schaeffer.
Airbus will use eight new-engine-op-
tion aircraft for the fight-test campaign:
four A320s, two A319s and two A321s.
Around 3,000 fight-test hours are
planned. The initial fight-test aircraft is
powered by Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engines and will be joined by
a second Pratt-equipped airliner later this fall. The two CFM Interna-
tional Leap-1A-powered A320neos are to follow in the late spring and
summer of 2015. The A320neo with PW1100G engines is scheduled to
enter revenue service in the fourth quarter of 2015 while delivery of the
The World
ATK Develops Solid-Fuel
RD-180 Replacement
Concepts for replacing the Russian-built
RD-180 rocket engine presented to the
U.S. Air Force last week include a solid-
fuel concept developed by ATK, drawing on
heritage from the companys space shuttle
and national security product lines.
ATK is stressing its experience in building
solid-fuel motors for the U.S. strategic forces
and NASAs space shuttle feet as a fast way
A
I
R
B
U
S
/
P
.
P
I
G
E
Y
R
E
to replace the RD-180 to power the United
Launch Alliance Atlas V to orbit. Because
these motors are kind of synergistic with
motors that weve developed or are in
development today, the timeline on them is
three years to have them developed, tested,
test-fred and to the customer, says former
shuttle commander Kent Rominger, vice
president of business development for ATKs
Space Launch Div.
In lieu of the Atlas V frst stage, which car-
ries a single RD-180 generating 860,000 lb.
E
M
B
R
A
E
R
frst CFM-equipped aircraft is planned for the second quarter of 2016.
With few modifcations made to the aircraft itself, Airbuss main
challenge beyond the fight tests will be to succeed with an un-
precedented ramp-up of NEO production, from zero to 46 aircraft
per month within three years. The transition from the current A320
version to the NEO is to be completed in 2018. The manufacturer has
gone to great lengths to prepare companies in its supply chain for the
ramp-up and plans to implement the new production capacity in the
frst quarter of 2017.
Airbus has a total of 3,257 frm orders for the A320neo family,
which is equivalent to a market share of around 60%. Airbus is
preparing for a major shift in demand among the different versions
and plans to allocate almost half of the production to the A321neo.
It also has raised maximum passenger capacity to allow for lower
unit costs. The A319neo will hold 160 passengers (up from 156),
the A320neo will go to 189 from 180 and the A321neo will carry
240 passengers, 20 more than the current A321.
For more breaking news, go to AviationWeek.com
Check 6 Aviation Week editors discuss the rst ight of the
A320neo and whats next for Airbus in the latest Check 6.
AviationWeek.com/podcast
Photo Gallery Follow an illustrated timeline of the A320neo
family developmenttap here in the digital edition or go to
AviationWeek.com/A320neoTimeline
thrust and the necessary tankage to carry its
kerosene fuel and liquid-oxygen oxidizer, ATK
would use two solid-fuel stages, one twice as
long as the other, plus as many as fve strap-
on solid-fuel boosters.
The Atlas V stack would remain at the
same height191 ft.to allow use of the
existing space launch complexes at Cape
Canaveral and Vandenberg AFB, California.
ATK would develop a separate mobile launch
platform and integration facilities, which
would allow the variant using its concept to
OBITUARY:
Oleg Ivanovsky, a Soviet space-technology
pioneer who helped design Sputnik 1 and
bolted Yuri Gagarin into the Vostok capsule
he also helped to design before the historic
frst human spacefight, has died, accord-
ing to the Russian space agency, Roscos-
mos. He was 92. The time and place of his
death were not announced.
Ivanovsky was recruited for the Soviet
space program by Sergei Korolev, the legendary general de-
signer who oversaw his nations entries in the Cold War space
race. A 1953 graduate of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute,
Ivanovsky became a chief designer of space vehicles at Korolevs
design bureau, known as OKB-1, where he had worked since return-
ing from combat with the Red Army during World War II. Ivanovsky
helped Gagarin mount the gantry and get
settled in the Vostok 1, and later as-
sisted in rebolting the hatch after Korolev
signaled that there was an indicationul-
timately found to be falsethat it had not
sealed properly. Roscosmos says Ivanovsky,
at right in the photo, was the last person to
shake Gagarins hand before the launch.
After Gagarins fight, Ivanovsky was
transferred to the staff of the Council of
Ministers organization that oversaw the Soviet military industrial
base, and in 1965 became deputy chief designer at the Lavoch-
kin organization. In that role, he oversaw the design of the Soviet
Unions robotic lunar rovers and other major spacecraft. The author
of seven books on space, Ivanovskys offcial honors included the
Soviet Unions Lenin and State prizes.
AP/WIDE WORLD FILE PHOTO
be phased in without shutting down a pad for
modifcations. Were assuming that is unac-
ceptable to the Air Force, says Rominger.
The two new stages would use com-
posite cases instead of steel for greater
performance, and solid-propellant grain
designs tailored to provide a comparable
launch environment to the Atlas V. Thrust
oscillation from the vibrations generated by
solid-fuel motors as they burn out caused
design problems with NASAs Ares I crew
launch vehicle, which had a frst stage
based on ATKs shuttle solid-fuel boosters.
That should not be a problem with the Atlas
V, Rominger says, because the two-stage,
solid-fuel stack will not tune with the
vehicles cryogenic upper stage to produce
unacceptable loads on the payload.
ATK believes its concept also will bring
cheaper operations than the use of the liquid-
fuel engines proposed by Aerojet Rocketdyne
and others (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 27). We feel
we can be very competitive in both develop-
ment and recurring costs, says Rominger.
Collins Cockpit for MA700
Avic expects to wrap up supplier selec-
tion for the MA700 by the middle of Oc-
tober, following its choice of the Rockwell
Collins Pro Line Fusion avionics suite
for the cockpit of the 78-seat turboprop.
Pratt & Whitney Canada and GEs
Dowty will supply the MA700s engines
and propellers, respectively.
BUSINESS
More Money
Financial analysts at RBC Capital
Markets expect Lockheed Martin to
soon announce a 15% increase in its
planned dividend payment to share-
holders to $6.12 a share, as well as in-
creased stock buyback plans. Share
buybacks and dividend payouts are
at record highs for aerospace and
defense companies, as well as across
Western stock markets.
BUSINESS AVIATION
NetJets To Charter in China
NetJets is to begin providing char-
ter services within China following
receipt of an air operators certificate
from the Civil Aviation Administra-
tion of China. The Chinese equivalent
of FAA Part 135 approval allows
NetJets Business Aviation Ltd. to
provide ad-hoc charter service with
its initial fleet of two Hawker 800s
based in Zhuhai. NetJets Chinese
arm plans to offer aircraft manage-
ment and block charter as the next
steps. Ultimately, NetJets plans to
offer fractional aircraft ownership
in China, but because of the lack of
airspace flexibility the timeframe is
a bit premature, says Chairman and
CEO Jordan Hansell.
Up Front
COMMENTARY
The Conservatives, during
their tenure, have kept a tight
rein on nances in an efort to
keep the Canadian economy
moving forward during dif-
cult years and to balance the
books, eliminate the decit
and have a surplus heading
into next years election. You
might think that would be
cause enough to win reelec-
tion. Think again.
Canadians have a tendency
to develop government
fatigue. And while the of-
cial opposition is the New
Democrat Party, for the rst
time in Canadian history it
is the current third party,
the Liberals, who lead in the
polls. They have been rejuvenated by
their young leader, Justin Trudeau,
son of the late iconic Prime Minister
Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
The reason for the discontent is a
secretive government that rules with
an iron st, from the prime minister
down. It has cut tens of thousands of
public-sector jobs and slashed spend-
ing, and seems to have lost touch with
everyday Canadians.
For Canadas space sector, a new
government, especially one led by the
Liberals, would boost the program.
While some stimulus money was
injected into Canadas space program
during the nancial crisis, only one
major project has been given the green
C
anadas next federal election isnt until Oct. 19, 2015, but
the unofcial campaign is already underway as parliamen-
tarians returned to Ottawa this month for the start of the fall
session. The Conservative Party currently holds a majority in
Parliament and has seen the number of its seats increase in the
past three elections. The party will have been in power for nine
consecutive years, its longest uninterrupted period since the
late 19th century.
Weighty Decisions
Canadas next election could help boost
the space program
When MacLean became CSA
president in September 2008, he was
rst tasked with creating a Long-Term
Space Plan for Canada. What he sub-
mitted was not endorsed by the govern-
ment or ever released. The government
then commissioned an independent
Aerospace Review in 2011 that led to
eight recommendations, of which only
one could arguably be said to have been
enacted. The government then appoint-
ed Walter Natynczyk as CSA president
last August. One of his rst tasks: cre-
ate a Long-Term Space Plan. No plan
has been approved or released yet.
This brings us to today and the
upcoming election. The government
has set itself up to show a surplus next
spring. But will the Canadian space
program see any of it? Thats unlikely,
as the government has already set the
civil space budget base for the next
several years at the current C$259 mil-
lion. Canadas space program just isnt a
priority with the current government.
What happens, though, if the
Conservatives lose the election? Well,
thats where it gets interesting.
Garneau, the rst Canadian in space
and a former navy captain, has been
working his way up the ranks of the Lib-
eral Party so is now a senior member.
He also ran for leadership of the party
and ultimately withdrew and threw his
support behind Justin Trudeau.
Garneau is seen as a highly intelli-
gent and capable member of Parlia-
ment and currently is Liberal critic
for foreign affairs, international
trade and la Francophonie. He previ-
ously was House leader and critic for
natural resources.
Aside from Garneau, there are a
couple of other Liberal candidates
running who have experience in
Canadas space program including
Alain Berinstain, who was CSA direc-
tor of planetary exploration and space
astronomy. With his experience, Ber-
instain might be in line for minister of
state, science and technology.
If the Liberals win, and Garneau is
reelected, then the stage is set for him
to garner a senior cabinet position with
the experience and knowledge to inu-
ence its decisions. For the space pro-
gram, and Canadians, this bodes well as
Garneau understands its importance to
the everyday lives of Canadians. c
By Marc Boucher
Marc Boucher is the CEO and co-
founder of SpaceRef and president
of the Canadian Space Commerce
Association.
light during the Conservatives reign,
the Radarsat Constellation Mission, a
three-satellite Earth-observation con-
stellation follow-on to Radarsat-1 and -2.
Of note, Canadas civil space budget has
seen its stable base funding decrease
from C$300 million in 1999 to C$259
million (U.S. $234 million) this year.
There is also dissatisfaction across
the board in Canadas space sector re-
garding the governments commitment.
Since former astronaut Marc Garneau
left as president of the Canadian Space
Agency in 2005 to pursue politics,
only one president has lasted more
than two years. Another ex-astronaut,
Steve MacLean, left in frustration for
academia earlier this year.
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Commanders Intent
COMMENTARY
By Bill Sweetman
Read Sweetmans posts on
our weblog ARES, updated daily:
AviationWeek.com/ares
bill.sweetman@aviationweek.com
Control Sqdn. opera-
tions ofcer.
It seemed like a good
idea at the time, but
lessons learned from
Vigilant Eagle likely
aided in the execution
of a more-recent exer-
cise, its name unknown.
Russian Mikoyan MiG-31
Foxhound long-range
ghters (photo)a type
that Russian forces ew in
Vigilant Eagleaccompa-
nied two Tupolev Tu-95MS bombers to
a point 55 nm from the Alaskan coast
on Sept. 17. Two Ilyushin Il-78 tankers
supported the formation, which turned
back when it was intercepted by a pair
of Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors.
The nuclear-attack drill was part
of an escalation in long-range Russian
operations worldwide, and showed a
developing tactic in which MiG-31s
escorted Tu-95s and Tu-142 recon-
naissance aircraft. The change follows
the introduction of the modernized
MiG-31BM, now due to be ying
until 2029. Also entering service is
the Tu-95MSM, armed with the new
Kh-101/102 cruise missile that has
a reported range of up to 2,700 nm
(AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 47). This weapons
mix ofers the attacker new tactical
optionsincluding a reconnaissance-
strike complex with the MiGs as
shootersand poses corresponding
challenges for the defender.
Along with Russias persistence in
the development of the Bulava sea-
launched ballistic missile, the replace-
ment of older intercontinental ballistic
F
our years ago, a North American Aerospace Defense Com-
mand ofcer sang the praises of a joint exercise with Russian
forces, named Vigilant Eagle. This exercise is one milestone
in working together. Our folks are proud to be a part of such an
important event and are passionate about partaking in eforts
to protect our borders, said Lt. Col. John Oberst, the 176th Air
Goodbye Global Zero
Nuclear investments will be a hard sell
missiles by the road-mobile RS-26 and
the apparent breach of the Intermedi-
ate-range Nuclear Forces treaty by the
testing of the Iskander-K truck-mobile
cruise missile, these developments
have (to put it mildly) weakened the
argument that if the U.S. led the way
in cutting its nuclear forces, the rest of
the world would follow.
A U.S. administration that started
out showing sympathy with the Global
Zero movement has quietly made
decisions that point in a very diferent
direction. Notably, the future of the
nuclear-deterrence triad seems more
assured than it has for many years.
Between Barack Obamas rst elec-
tion and inauguration, the rst signi-
cant contract for what is now the Ohio
Replacement Program submarine proj-
ect was signed, and the administration
has continued to support it. The contro-
versial issue of whether, when and how
the Long-Range Strike Bomber will be
nuclear-capable has been put to bed:
Every LRS-B will be nuclear-capable
and will be nuclear-certied two years
after it enters service.
The LRS Family of Systems deni-
tively includes a new cruise missile and
at a symposium in Washington earlier
this month, Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson,
commander of U.S. Air Force Global
Strike Command, said the nuclear-
tipped version will take priority over a
conventionally armed missile.
The new submarine and the LRS-
B are uploadable systems that can
carry more warheads if strategic
requirements change. A senior air force
ofcial last week said the LRS-B would
be designed with hardpointssuggest-
ing it could be a cruise-missile carrier.
Also recently revealed is a new
ICBM to replace the Minuteman III,
the rst such weapon since the short-
lived Peacekeeper. Many analysts had
expected the Minuteman to soldier on
like Washingtons hatchet, with every
piece being replaced from time to time,
if the land-based ICBM survived at
all. Now, the Ground-Based Strategic
Deterrent missile will replace the Min-
uteman in existing silos after 2030.
But these plans are scally and po-
litically difcult. The nuclear establish-
ment is returning from a long procure-
ment holiday, and nding what you
usually nd: leaky faucets, blown fuses,
weed-ridden yards and a pile of bills.
The Ohio replacement will eat one-
third of the U.S. Navys shipbuilding
budget (strained by the well-above-ex-
pectations cost of Ford-class carriers
and Littoral Combat Ships) and the
service is calling for top-line relief
the technical term for some of the Air
Force or Armys money.
While it now seems accepted that the
National Nuclear Security Administra-
tion can do a Washingtons-hatchet trick
on the nuclear stockpile, its infrastruc-
ture is heavy with Cold War and even
World War II hardware; not only will this
not last forever, but it is not an environ-
ment that attracts the best talent.
But the longest holiday of all has
been philosophical: Most people, even
in the armed forces, have been able to
spend a long time not thinking about
deterrence, and the world in which
such matters are discussed remains
small and somewhat isolated. As the
world moves into an era of multiple,
sometimes unstable nuclear players
and as the bills come due, that is a
luxury we cant aford. c
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Inside Business Aviation
By William Garvey
COMMENTARY
Business & Commercial
Aviation Editor-in-Chief
William Garvey blogs at:
AviationWeek.com
william.garvey@aviationweek.com
This signal airplane is among the
worlds most prosaic, a Cessna 172, the
single-engine, four-place, high-winger
that populates major airports and
grass strips throughout the world.
With 48,000 delivered since produc-
tion began in Wichita in 1955, the Sky-
hawk is the most populous
airplane ever.
What caused the smiling
crowd to gather round
when this one rolled out
the door in late August was
its birth order: the 10,000th
single-engine aircraft pro-
duced at Cessnas facility
in Independence, Kansas
(photo). Its birth, a manu-
facturing mini-miracle.
In the mid-1980s, Cessna
and other light-plane build-
ers were in big trouble. By
then their 17,000-airplane years of the
supercharged 1970s seemed imagined;
in 1986, they shipped fewer than 1,500.
Wichita was awash in pink slips. Cess-
nas employee count had cratered from
18,000 in 1981 to less than 3,000 ve
years later. Turbine airplanes were still
selling, but the market for new piston-
powered aircraft had evaporated.
Meanwhile, light planes were attract-
ing the unwelcome attention of trial
lawyers who were steadily ling product
liability suits against airframers and
their vendors, often involving equipment
that was decades old. The expense of de-
fending sometimes frivolous suitsand
of settlements, judgments and increased
insurance rateshad the manufacturers
howling for relief.
Russ Meyer, the Harvard lawyer
who then headed Cessna, became so
concerned about the sufocating situ-
ation and the seemingly innite liability
D
rumroll, please, for little N708LU. It was frustratingly slow
in arriving, but still the fantastic result of bold posturing,
hard politicking and delivery on a decade-old promise.
Crossing the Line
Legislative grenade and a signature
nally put things in motion
attendant to the tens of thousands of
Cessnas already in the eld, that he shut
down piston-engine plane production.
He said Cessna, whose light planes had
taught the world to y, would not build
one more until the liability problem was
xed. The year was 1986.
The solution eventually was a bill
to limit the period of product liability,
formally a statute of repose, to 18
years from the date of manufacture.
The legislation was sponsored by U.S.
Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.) and
U.S. Rep. Dan Glickman (D) of Wichita.
Both worked the Capitol and signed up
hundreds of co-sponsors. Meanwhile,
Meyer, with Ed Stimpson, then-pres-
ident of the General Aviation Manu-
facturers Association, promoted the
legislation to anyone who would listen.
There was one who would not
The worst congressman in history,
the nearly always gentlemanly Meyer
recalled recently. He was Jack Brooks,
the stogie-chomping, gruf-talking,
Marine who represented East Texas
and chaired the House Judiciary Com-
mittee. A trial lawyers champion, the
brusque Brooks clearly viewed Glick-
mans bill as a threat to fellow solici-
tors income streams and refused to
release it from committee. For years.
Finally, Glickman, a Democrat like
Brooks, pulled the pin from a legislative
grenade, authoring a discharge peti-
tion that lawmakers could sign to force
the bill to the oor. When the signatures
exceeded the minimum required for
action, Brooks nally relented and
released the bill. It passed quickly.
President Bill Clinton signed the Gen-
eral Aviation Revitalization Act (GARA)
into law on Aug. 17, 1994, telling Glick-
man, Kassebaum, Stimpson, Meyer and
others in the Oval Ofce, I know its go-
ing to create jobs. As it turned out, one
job went to Glickman, who, after losing
his reelection bid later that year, became
Clintons agriculture secretary.
Having repeatedly pledged to restart
light-plane production once the liability
matter was resolved, Meyer proved good
to his word. But since the previous facili-
ties had been fully repurposed, he had to
nd another location. Every governor
wanted us, Meyer recalls, but Kansas
was our heritage, our roots.
The winning site was a 213-acre plot
on a former U.S. Navy training eld in
Independence, a small town 100 mi.
southeast of Wichita that, having recent-
ly lost some key industries, welcomed
Cessna hungrily. The Independence
Bulldogs marching band greeted Meyer
and entourage on a freezing ramp that
December. Eighteen months later, Sky-
hawks were coming down the brand-new
assembly line. The year was 1996.
Cessna was prepared to deliver
1,500-2,000 single-engine 172s, 182s,
and 206s annually by 1998, and thus
would have passed the 10,000 mark
by the early 2000s. But GARA did not
protect sales projections from ter-
rorisms fallout and global economic
collapse. So, to help absorb some of the
capacity at the 528,500-sq.-ft. facility,
the company moved assembly of the
single-engine TTx there (along with
the Mustang and M2 jets). That helped
to nally push N708LU across the line,
a decade later than expected.
Reecting on it all, Meyer says hes
particularly proud of GARA, without
question the most important piece of leg-
islation in the history of the light aircraft
industry. The Independence plant, its
500 employees, and one celebrated Sky-
hawk are prima facie evidence. c
TEXTRON AVIATION
COMMENTARY
T
hrough the ups and downs of its 30-year history, Virgin Atlan-
tic Airways has been amazingly successful at establishing
its brand, Chief Executive Craig Kreeger recently pointed out,
although less successful at making money. The carriers highest
prot was a pretax gain of 99 million ($162 million, at todays
rate) in 1999, Kreeger told The Wall Street Journal this month.
Finding Its Way
Virgin Atlantic looks to nd prots in
transatlantic routes and cooperation with Delta
Airline Intel
By Cathy Buyck
Brussels Bureau Chief
Cathy Buyck blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/wings
cathy.buyck@aviationweek.co.uk
Kreeger, a former American Air-
lines executive , was appointed CEO of
the U.K. carrier in February 2013 with
a clear mandate: to turn around the
groups nancials, without tarnishing
the brand, and grow the customer
experience. The 55-year-old U.S.
national is condent Virgin Atlantic is
on the right track and will be prot-
able by year-end, stanching years of
red ink.
But the prospective turnaround
comes with a deep restructuring of the
airlines network and the realization
that much of its heritage and game
plan needed adjusting. The indepen-
dent streak and lone ranger attitude
are being dropped for a closer relation-
ship with its joint-venture partner and
shareholder, Delta Air Lines, which
purchased Singapore Airlines 49%
stake last year for $360 million.
Virgin Atlantic is also ditching its
longtime love for four-engine widebod-
ies, replacing its Boeing 747-400s and
inef cient Airbus A340s with A330s
and 787-9s to reduce fuel costs. It has
taken delivery of 10 A330-300s, and its
787-9s will start commercial service
next month. The airline is the 787-9
European launch customer and has
rm orders for 21 of the type.
Virgin Atlantic will cease year-round
ights from London to Tokyo Narita
and Mumbai and cancel seasonal
services to Vancouver and Cape Town,
South Africa, between now and early
2015. The aircraft used for these routes
will be redeployed on the transatlantic
market, including: a new daily service
from Heathrow Airport to Detroit, a
key Delta hub; additional daily services
to New York John F. Kennedy Airport
and Los Angeles; as well as seasonal
daily ights to Atlanta and San Fran-
cisco in summer and Miami in winter.
The network changes also involve a
route swap with Delta. A daily Heath-
row-Newark, New Jersey, service will
be taken over by Delta, while Virgin At-
lantic will y the Manchester-Atlanta
route. Delta will also launch a new daily
service between Manchester and New
York-JFK next summer.
The network revamp amounts to 500
more ights between the U.K. and U.S.
in the summer of 2015. Once all network
changes are implemented, Virgin At-
lantic will put more than two-thirds of
its capacity on the transatlantic routes
while trimming its global footprint. No
new non-U.S. long-haul routes are being
considered for the moment.
The heavy dependence on the North
Atlantic is not novel for the airline. In
fact, it was the reason for its near-
downfall after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror-
ist attacks, and its consequent decision
to reduce capacity to North America.
This strategy is now being reversed.
Kreeger insists it was not a strate-
gic objective to refocus on the North
Atlantic, but simply a matter of a route
analysis. Is the route protable? If
not, do we think it could be prot-
able if we put a diferent airplane on
the route? he says. Four that were a
signicant drain on the nancials were
discontinued, but Virgin Atlantics ser-
vices to the U.S. are its most nancially
successful.
The airline is adding capacity on
routes with the most nancial upswing
and those into Delta hubs, such as
Detroit, New York-JFK, Atlanta and
Los Angeles. The performance of the
carriers transatlantic services has
improved due to the partnership with
Delta, which ofers one-stop connec-
tions in the U.S. for Virgin Atlantics
U.K.-based customers and provides the
airline efective distribution and access
to corporate accounts in the U.S.
The Virgin Atlantic-Delta transat-
lantic joint venture is still in its infancy
and, while it has not yet received
anti-trust immunity status, it presents
other transatlantic alliances a stronger
competitor. It is especially unwelcome
news for Air France-KLM. Following
the deal with Virgin Atlantic, Delta
has pulled its U.S.-U.K. traf c out of
its long-established three-way transat-
lantic joint business with Air France-
KLM and Alitalia. c J
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In Orbit
COMMENTARY
By Frank Morring, Jr.
Senior Editor Frank
Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
morring@aviationweek.com
Jef Bezos, the billionaire entre-
preneur behind Amazon.com, has
denitely placed his mark on the
planet. His retail genius is embodied
in the convenience of online shopping
for just about everything (thats where
I bought my camera), and in the sad
decline of bookstores and record shops
that once aforded pleasant respite
from the hustle-bustle of modern life.
For the past 14 years, Bezos has
been working to put his mark of the
planet as wellquietly, as is his wont.
Blue Origin, the startup space com-
pany Bezos endowed, has generated
a fair amount of smoke and re at its
West Texas test site, but very little
publicity. The Seattle-based company
employs a PR rm, and maintains
a website that afords snippets of
information about its suborbital- and
orbital-spacecraft developments. But
in general, the companys work takes
place behind a veil of secrecy.
Some of that work has been quite
impressive, as Blue works toward un-
manned ight tests in 2018 of a biconic
orbital vehicle aimed at human space-
ight (AW&ST Dec. 9, 2013, p. 29). Now
T
hey dont call it the bullet train for nothing. Hurtling through
Japans industrial heartland last April en route to a space so-
lar power conference in Kobe, I realized Mount Fuji was looming
majestically above the clouds of to the right. But at 200 mph, the
Shinkansen moves so fast that
I couldnt really see the blurred
foreground in the viewnder of
my point-and-shoot camera as
I snapped a keepsake image. It
was only when I downloaded
my shot that I realized it was
dominated by a huge Amazon
fulllment center. The blank
gray structure literally blotted
out Japans 12,000-ft. special
place of scenic beauty (photo).
Space Cadet
Bezos has a vision for commercial space
the companyand its founderhave
taken a major step into the limelight
with the Sept. 17 announcement that
it is developing a 550,000-lb.-thrust
rocket engine for United Launch Alli-
ance (AW&ST Sept. 22, p. 26).
Coming as it did when the U.S.
is rethinking its decision to launch
national security payloads with the
Russian RD-180 engine that powers
ULAs Atlas V, the announcement drew
a standing-room-only crowd to hear
Bezos explain why space interests him,
and what he wants to do there.
First, the why: You dont choose
your passions, Bezos says. Your
passions choose you. For me, space is
something that I have been in love with
since I was ve years old. I watched
Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of
the Moon, and I guess it imprinted me.
Given his career, Bezoss early fascina-
tion is a ringing endorsement for the
inspirational value of space exploration
as an engine for the economy. He is said
to spend a day a week on Blue Origin
away from his day job at Amazon.com.
Im very, very lucky, he says. I
get to live and work in the future. Its
fantastic, and thats where I spend the
vast majority of my time.
During the Washington press confer-
ence announcing the engine deal, ULA
President and CEO Tory Bruno said he
wasnt accustomed to sharing the stage
with another rocket scientist. It is clear
that Bezostrained in computer science
and electrical engineeringhas picked
up some propulsion expertise in choos-
ing technology for the new BE-4 engine.
We evaluated all the usual suspects
in terms of operating cycles, he says.
We looked at gas generator, we looked
at tap-of, and we chose ox-rich staged
combustion as the right cycle for this
engine. Its been a very good choice.
Its 550,000-lb.-thrust. It uses liqueed
natural gas [LNG] as a fuel, liquid oxy-
gen as an oxidizer. As you can see from
the model, it uses a single turbopump,
one shaft, so its as simple as it can be
while still being high-performing and
highly reliable.
The Blue/ULA deal is entirely private,
with the launch company making what
Bruno calls a major investment in the
new engine. Using LNG also will require
a redesign of the Atlas V or whatever
launch vehicle ULA intends as a follow-
on, including larger tanks able to handle
the low-temperature, high-pressure fuel.
Lockheed Martin, which contrib-
uted the Atlas design as its half of
the ULA joint venture, already is set
up to manufacture LNG tanks at the
Michoud Assembly Facility in New
Orleans, where it once built external
tanks for the space shuttle. And while
he has used government funds at Blue
in the past, Bezos makes it clear he
prefers the private approach.
What I dont like to do is start some-
thing that isnt fully funded, because
one of the things that slows down de-
velopment is start-and-stop cycles, he
says. So its important to me to know
that Blue Origin is on a path that it can
fund this engine on its own.
Ultimately, Bezos says, Blue hopes to
y the BE-4 in a reusable vertical-take-
of/vertical-landing launch-vehicle stage
to cut the cost of access to space dramat-
ically. That could mean a new customer
base for the Bezos enterprise. What we
want to have happen is millions of people
living and working in space. c
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Washington Outlook
S
ierra Nevada Corp. is not happy about its loss to Boeing and
SpaceX in the competition for federal funds to complete
commercial human vehicles to take crews to the International
Space Station (ISS), but it plans to keep building its reusable
lifting-body spaceplane and use it to compete for the next round
of ISS commercial cargo-delivery contracts NASA awards. Loss
of the bidding war to two capsule designsBoeings CST-100
and the crew variant of the Space X Dragon (AW&ST Sept. 22,
p. 24)didnt sit well with Sierra Nevadas managers. They
were contemplating a formal protest of NASAs decision with
the Government Accountability Of ce on technical and nancial
grounds, according to Mark Sirangelo, head of the companys
Space Systems unit in Louisville, Colorado.
More than 90 surge
workers, who had been
hired there as the company
geared up for a contract win
were laid of on Sept. 24, but
Sirangelo says the company
retains a very signicant
core team to keep the
Dream Chaser project
moving. The company is
preparing for more glide
tests of its atmospheric test
article, following a landing
gear mishap that marred the
otherwise-successful rst ight (AW&ST
Nov. 4, 2013, p. 28). Lockheed Martin has
built ight-hardware composite struc-
ture for the rst orbital Dream Chaser .
Anticipating a growing market for hu-
man transportation to low Earth orbit,
Sierra Nevada has an international team
of industrial partners and potential cus-
tomers, including the European Space
Agency, German Aerospace Center and
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It
retains suf cient resources to continue
the work, Sirangelo says. c
BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
arrives for his rst state visit to the
U.S. at a time when he is trying to
build Indias manufacturing base to
wean the country of foreign defense
imports. But that intake will continue
for quite awhile. Among Modis many
meetings is one with executives from
11 multinational companies, including
General Electric and Boeing. India re-
cently OKd the purchase of $2.5 billion
worth of CH-47F Chinook and AH-64D
Apache helicopters, but this has yet to
be nalized. Additional defense deals
could be announced during his visit.
To allow for still more deals cur-
rently blocked by export regulations,
including one for Raytheons Javelin
anti-tank missile, Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.), a senior member of the
Senate Armed Services Commit-
tee, recommends the U.S. allow the
transfer of sensitive U.S. technology
to India, which needs to develop the
wherewithal to protect it. It should
mean joint development and produc-
tion of leading-edge military systems,
McCain says. Anti-tank missiles, as
envisioned by the Defense Trade and
Technology Initiative, would be a good
start. But when the prime minister and
president meet this month, I hope they
lay out more ambitious joint ventures,
like shipbuilding and maritime capa-
bilities, even aircraft carriers. c
SHOW TIME
The FAA has granted six aerial photo
and video operators permission to use
small unmanned aircraft for lming
on closed sets. E xemptions to a ban on
ying commercial UAVs in civil airspace
were via petitions coordinated by the
Motion Picture Association of America.
A seventh operator is being considered ,
says Administrator Michael Huerta.
The exemptions allow operators to
y a UAV within the sterile airspace
of a closed set, keeping the
vehicle within line of sight of
the operator, and require a
certied pilot with a private
pilots license. Also, the
FAA requires the UAV to
be inspected before each
ight and any accidents or
incidents to be reported
to the agency. T he FAA is
reviewing 40 more requests
for exemptions, including
from agricultural, survey and
pipeline inspection indus-
tries. Guidelines have been
posted for a preparing a petition and
other operators, particularly groups
representing industry sectors, are be-
ing encouraged to apply . c
STAYING POWER
S ometimes just hanging in can work
at least when it comes to the F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter. The recent eet-wide
grounding due to engine problems has
not impinged on congressional support
for the jet. And that is likely to remain
the case provided there is no major
disruption, says Senate Armed Ser-
vices Committee Chairman Carl Levin
(D-Mich.), who will retire at the end of
this term. The further along it gets
even though its limping alongthe
stronger it gets. c
Dream On
Sierra Nevada to keep chasing NASA contract
COMMENTARY
Edited by Jen DiMascio
Managing Editor-Defense,
Space & Security Jen DiMascio blogs
at: AviationWeek.com/ares
jennifer.dimascio@aviationweek.com
Lockheed Martin has

built fight-hardware composite
structure for the frst orbital Dream Chaser.
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hen it was formed in 2002, Aerion had a technology and
a vision, but not the resources or skills needed to turn
its idea for an ef cient supersonic transport into a real-
ity. As it worked to validate its supersonic natural laminar-ow
design, the small company looked for a manufacturer to develop
and produce its supersonic business jet concept.
Now Airbus Defense & Space has
agreed to a technology collaboration
that Aerion says will give it access to
engineering skills in the disciplines
required to move the program ahead
toward certication and production.
Both companies say they are com-
mitting significant resources to the
partnership.
For Airbus Group, supporting
Aerion in design of its AS2 business jet
will provide valuable work for senior
engineers from its military aircraft
division, which has been negatively af-
fected by declining defense spending.
Longer term, the European giants
presence at the high end of the busi-
ness jet market through Airbus Cor-
porate Jets could conceivably come
into play.
Reno, Nevada-based Aerion says the
engineering collaboration with Airbus
Defense & Space marks a huge leap
forward to being a program that will
result in an aircraft that will be on the
market in the not too distant future.
The schedule calls for a rst ight in
2019 and certification in 2021. The
three-engine AS2 will sell for more
than $100 million, but a third market
study completed early this year con-
rmed a projected market of 600 air-
craft over 20 years, Aerion says.
Aerion CEO Doug Nichols conrms
significant commitments have been
made on both sides, while declining to
provide details . Airbus will locate se-
nior engineering staf with the design
team in Reno to provide expertise in
aerodynamics, structures, y-by-wire
ight controls and certication plan-
ning. They will cover the full spec-
trum of technical and industrial disci-
plines needed, says Nichols.
The size of the Airbus team has
yet to be dened , says the European
manufacturer. Nichols says Aerions
engineering workload will ramp up
beginning in 2016. Aerions technology
is of interest to Airbus, and this agree-
Graham Warwick Washington
Full Speed Ahead
Airbus engineering expertise will help accelerate
supersonic business jet design toward production
BUSINESS AVIATION
ment provides Aerion with access to
Airbus Group skills in disciplines that
will move the program solidly toward
commercialization, he says.
The U.S. companys supersonic
natural laminar ow technology, de-
veloped by its chief technology offi-
cer, Richard Tracy, allows the AS2 to
cruise more ef ciently at high speed
while enabling a configuration that
minimizes the drag penalty of ying
at subsonic speed. The aircraft has
two cruise design points where range
and ef ciency are at a maximum: Mach
1.4 for ight over water, and over land
where supersonic ight is permitted;
and Mach 0.95 where civil supersonic
ight over land is prohibited, including
the U.S.
In countries where supersonic ight
over land is permitted as long as there
are no adverse sonic-boom effects,
the AS2 will be able to cruise at up to
Mach 1.15-1.2 without the boom reach-
ing the ground, because of atmo-
spheric dissipation, Nichols says. This
means the aircraft does not require a
relaxation of the regulatory ban on
supersonic ight over land to be com-
mercially viable, he notes.
Aerion last year completed flight
tests with NASA to validate its design
codes for supersonic natural laminar
AERION CONCEPT
Now with three engines, the 160-ft.-long, Mach 1.6
Aerion AS2 has reached the advanced design stage.
ow and establish its robustness. The
tests showed that drag-reducing lami-
nar ow could be maintained across
the wing to the control-surface hinge
line, he says.
In March, Aerion switched to a
larger three-engine design provid-
ing a range of at least 4,750 nm at
Mach 1.6. and enabling the aircraft
to meet lower Stage 5/Chapter 14
noise limits that are scheduled to
take effect in 2018 for new designs.
Three engines, versus the two Pratt
& Whitney JT8Ds in the original de-
sign, mean each will operate at less
than full thrust for takeof, for lower
noise, while providing longer overhaul
life and greater hot-and-high perfor-
mance margin.
Nichols points out that Aerion is
now in the advanced design phase and
focused on working with engine manu-
facturers to identify a core on which
to develop an optimized low-bypass
turbofan able to meet the supersonic
life requirements. That is the major
piece that is taking all of our atten-
tionselecting a propulsion system
that meets the needs of the aircraft,
he says. After that, the next steps will
be choosing Tier 1 suppliers for sys-
tems and structures.
Since its formation, the company
has been looking for an original equip-
ment manufacturer to help develop
and build, market and support its de-
sign. Now, Nichols says, the plan is that
this will be an Aerion program, with
the substantial involvement of major
industrial partners.
Airbus Group brings all the neces-
sary ingredients to move the aircraft
out of development and into full-up
commercialization, he adds. There
will be other participants, including
the engine manufacturer and some
major Tier 1s. We view this as the be-
ginning of a broad industrial partner-
ship, clearly led by Aerion, but with a
deep commitment from Airbus and
others.
Aerion has secured nancing for the
overall development program, Nichols
says, adding We are at the point in
the program where we have, or will
have shortly, all the essential pieces to
close the equation. The orderbook is
expected to be reopened shortly to of-
fer customers early delivery positions.
We have a fairly large carry-over of
letters of intent for the two-engine air-
craft, even though the AS2 is a larger
model. c
Jens Flottau Istanbul
Too Good To Be True
The steep rise in aircraft demand may be over
sooner than anticipated
A
irline demand for civil air-
craft is strong, nancing is
readily available for almost
any kind of operator, and manu-
facturers are asking themselves
whether they have to build even
more aircraft. All is well. Or is it?
In spite of many good signs, air-
craft nanciers and other industry
leaders are voicing concern that
the industry could be in for a rude
awakening. While the civil aerospace
boom is unlikely to suddenly go bust,
a number of industry executives at-
tending last weeks International So-
ciety of Transport Aircraft Trading
(Istat) Europe conference here ex-
pect some kind of downward correc-
tion to demand with a correspond-
ing rise in aircraft cancellations or
postponements.
Somehow the stars are aligned;
something has to happen, says
Gordon Welsh, director of aerospace
at U.K. Export Finance.
Christian McCormick, managing
director and global head of aviation
finance at Natixis, says he is a little
bit concerned. He notes that we still
have to really gure out whether this
is double-countingseveral airlines
ordering aircraft for the same markets.
Airbus and Boeing have been re-
markably adept at buffering them-
selves from downturns by overbooking
orders. But even John Leahy, Airbuss
chief salesman and normally one of the
industrys cheerleaders, is sounding a
note of caution.
Three airlines tell us theyre go-
ing to improve their market share
by 10-15%, he says. But someone is
going to be very successful, someone
very unsuccessful and someone in the
middle. So two or three dont need all
the planes they ordered.
And Leahy would not be Leahy if he
did not take a poke at Boeing and its
plan to raise production rates for the
737 eventually to 52 aircraft per month,
up from 42 now and a planned rate of
47 in 2017. What worries me is this
whole Field of Dreams concept: Build
it and they will come, he says.
Randy Tinseth, Boeing vice presi-
dent for marketing, counters that his
company takes a very thoughtful and
measured approach to aircraft out-
put. We have worked very hard to
ensure that demand for these planes
is real, he says. And we make rate
decisions on the assumption that well
continue producing at those rates for
a substantial period of time.
Forecasting future demand remains
tricky because there are still no con-
crete indications that increasing ca-
pacity is the wrong decision. In fact,
Airbus is considering boosting A320
rates to 50 per month, up from 42
currently. Leahy says Airbus has the
orders to support such a robust rate,
but he concedes that delivery positions
7-8 years out are less certain.
Boeing is ramping up production
rates for the 787 to a planned 14 air-
craft per month and Airbus is bringing
the A350 into service, with rst deliv-
ery due by year-end. And the planned
A320 and 737 narrowbody rate in-
creases come in spite of the fact that
both are transitioning to reengined
models during the next few years. That
should, in theory, have an impact on
demand for the old versions. At around
UBS Aircraft Delivery Forecast
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Airbus
A320 family 483 483 523 529 529
A330/A340 110 100 70 55 40
A350 2 20 50 70 100
A380
30 30 30 30 30
Total Airbus 625 633 673 684 699
Boeing
737 484 490 490 490 490
747 14
16 12 12
12
767 11
12 12 12
12
777 96 96 72 60 60
787 108 120 120 140 140
Total Boeing 713 734 706 714 714
Total Large 1,338 1,367 1,379 1,412 1,481
Widebodies 371 394 366 379 394
Narrowbodies 967 973 1,013 1,033 1,087
Total Regional 263 264 280 282 263
Regional Jets 153 159 175 182 163
Turboprops 110 105 105 100 100
Total All 1,601 1,631 1,659 1,694 1,744
Sources: Company reports and UBS estimates
AIR TRANSPORT
the turn of the decade, Boeing will be
shifting from the 777 to the 777X.
The debate about optimal produc-
tion rates gained momentum after
UBS published a study signaling cau-
tion just days before the Istat event.
While its sees a rough balance of sup-
ply and demand in the narrowbody
market until 2018, production rates for
long-haul aircraft need to be cut by up
to 30%, it says.
The disconnect: While current wide-
body production plans suggest that de-
mand will increase 6% a year until 2018,
UBS is forecasting a more modest 4%
rise. If UBS is correct, Boeing and Air-
bus would be producing 200-250 more
aircraft per year than the market could
absorb. The banks analysts suggest
cutting A330 output to four per month
from 10, decreasing the 777 rate to four
from 8.3 per month, and freezing the
787 rate at 10 per month rather than
raising it to 14. But UBS makes the
most radical recommendation for the
largest jets: Airbus should cut produc-
tion of the A380 to one a monthfrom
30 per yearand Boeing should stop
building the 747-8 altogether.
That, of course, is unlikely to hap-
pen, at least in the short term. Both
manufacturers have pledged to keep
production as stable as possible, al-
though Airbus has conceded that A330
rates are likely to come down some-
what. UBS believes Airbus will build
only 40 A330s in 2018, down from this
years high of 110. But introduction of
the A350 should more than compen-
sate for that 70-aircraft reduction.
In fact, Leahy is more concerned
that Airbus may not deliver as many
A350s as would be in demand be-
cause of its conservative production
ramp-up. We are being prudent, but
it bothers me, he says. Airbus might
soon decide to go for higher produc-
tion rates, though: I believe this will
be decided sometime next year, he
adds. By year-end, the aircraft maker
plans to be building three A350s per
month, up from two now; by the end
of 2015, it targets producing ve A350s
per month; and by 2018, 10 per month.
The UBS analysts forecast that Boe-
ing 777 production will decline to 60 per
year in 2018 from 96 now, and 747 and
767 rates will settle to one per month
in 2016. By 2018, 140 787s will be built
per year, they project, up from 108 this
year. Airbus will deliver 529 narrowbod-
ies in 2018 (up from 483 this year), the
analysts expect, and Boeing deliveries
will increase by six aircraft to reach 490
over four years, UBS estimates.
UBS is not alone in its concerns. Ear-
lier this year, Bank of America Merrill
Lynch analysts issued similar warnings
(AW&ST July 14, p. 24). And Thomas
Hollahan, managing director at Citi,
says that this industry is still subject
to event risk and it is always good to as-
sume another one is around the corner.
Welsh says that the U.K. Export
Finance program is now typically re-
ceiving around 80 bids by banks for its
business per transaction, compared to
2-3 only a few years ago. He says that
some of the banks coming in with -
nancing proposals for aircraft transac-
tions are hardly known.
The availability of cheap nancing is
a key ingredient of the marked changes
the aircraft business has undergone in
the last several years. It is a function
of the proliferation of new nanciers
in the market, including private equity,
and it raises questions for banks es-
tablished in aircraft nancing and les-
sors. However, Air Lease Corp. (ALC)
Chairman/CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy
thinks many of the new entrants will
AIR TRANSPORT
disappear when the next crisis hits.
Adam Pilarski, senior vice president
at Avitas, has been warning for some
time that airlines are overordering. If
Middle East and low-cost airlines suc-
ceed, someone else has to fail, he says.
Boeing and Airbus have to assume a
huge number of retirements in order
not to end up in an overcapacity situ-
ation, he says. On the other hand, he
concedes that both manufacturers have
become sophisticated in overbooking
narrowbody production, which is mak-
ing shifts in delivery schedules easier
to handle.
Pilarski also notes the unique set
of conditions the industry has been
operating in for some years: High fuel
prices have led to the development of
new aircraft such as the A320neo and
the Boeing 737 MAX, which airlines
can aford to buy in large quantities be-
cause nancing is so cheap and easily
available. But, he asks, what if one or
two of the underlying parameters such
as high fuel prices or cheap nancing
change over time?
Udvar-Hazy has concerns of a difer-
ent nature. There is a good symmetry
between the backlog and production
rates, he says. But our deeper con-
cern is about how the very complex
supply chain will deal with production.
While Airbus and Boeing are increas-
ing output, other players such as Bom-
bardier (with its CSeries), Comac and
Mitsubishi are entering the market,
and Udvar-Hazy worries that some
suppliers will have difficulties. He
adds that galleys and seats have the
longest lead times I have ever seen in
my career. . . . We are reaching a point
of saturation. Therefore, ALC is urg-
ing manufacturers to not overbuild, he
says, because they may not be able to
meet their contractual obligations.
In terms of airline demand, Udvar-
Hazy is less concerned. We will see
a massive shortage of certain types,
and in other cases we will see a steady
degradation of values, he says. Over-
all, Airbus and Boeing have sold more
aircraft than they can build, he notes.
The ALC portfolio of orders, at least, is
allocated to a large extent to replacing
older aircraft rather than growing eets.
Philip Scruggs, president and chief
commercial ofcer of AerCap, says he
is primarily concerned about careful
management of production. If Airbus
and Boeing are not vigilant, they could
run into lead time and supply issues,
he argues. c
In spite of planned hikes in production, analysts
say an oversupply of narrowbodies such as the
Boeing 737 is unlikely.
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Cathy Buyck Brussels and Jens Flottau Frankfurt
A
lthough Air France-KLM was
late in entering the potentially
lucrative low-cost arena, the
legacy carrier had ambitious plans.
Now, however, reeling from another
pilot strike over the matter, the low-
cost endeavor has been abandoned
and the future of the airline could be
in jeopardy.
The decision to drop the low-cost
pursuit is a catastrophic defeat for Air
France-KLM Chairman/CEO Alex-
andre de Juniac and Air France CEO
Frederic Gagey, who had been planning
for months to expand low-fare af liate
Transavia in what they have described
as a cornerstone of the strategy to make
the group competitive again.
Giving in to pilot demands on such a
crucial decision has pundits question-
ing whether management will be able
to implement other policies in the fu-
ture if unions are contrary .
But what exacerbates the matter
is that the pull-back was initially an-
nounced by French Transport Min-
ister Alain Vidalies, not by airline
management. The government, a
minority shareholder in Air France-
KLM, considered the strike to be in-
creasingly unpalatable because of its
harsh impact on the French economy.
It had pressured both sides to come
to an agreement, and appears to have
opted for sacricing the Transavia Eu-
rope plans for short-term peace.
De Juniac later conrmed the pro-
posal to drop the pan-European expan-
sion of Air France-KLMs low-fare unit
and instead focus on Transavia France
faster. This in itself is likely to prove
tricky and could lead to new conicts,
because one of the unions demands
calls for a single pay scale and identi-
cal work conditions for Air France and
Transavia pilots. De Juniac has said
previously that this sort of measure
would kill Transavia.
But even after the concession, it
was not immediately clear whether
the strikeextended until Sept. 30
would end soon or if further disagree-
ments over working conditions at
Transavia France and regional af li-
ate Hop will keep the walk-outs active.
The overall situation underscores
the extreme difficulties European
legacy carriers face when it comes to
restructuring and to convincing work-
forces that they must realign their ben-
ets to coincide with the realities of a
new marketplace.
Lufthansa also has plans to set up
new low-cost carrier (LCC) units and
is in a bitter conict with its own pilots
over the revision of a retirement plan ,
but the strikes have not been as severe
as at Air France. At SAS Scandinavian
Airlines and Alitalia, concessions were
reached only when the airlines were
on the brink of collapse. Following a
round-the-clock bout of intense nego-
tiations, SAS experienced an 11th-hour
rescue on the day it was going to le for
bankruptcy.
International Airlines Group CEO
Willie Walsh managed to achieve mas-
sive cost savings at IAG-subsidiary
Iberia by staying rm through a con-
ict with pilots and ight attendants
last year. IAG also bought low-fare car-
rier Vueling.
In hindsight, it might have been
easier for the Franco-Dutch group to
acquire an established LCC to gain a
foothold in that booming segment of
the market. It denied rumors earlier
this year it was negotiating to purchase
Central Europes largest LCC Wizz Air,
but industry insiders say talks did take
place and Air France-KLM ofered 1.2
billion ($1.5 billion) for Wizz Air. That
companys core shareholder Indigo
Partners is seeking to of oad its invest-
ment in the airline and reportedly has
valued Wizz Air at 1.5 billion. Appar-
ently negotiations also took place with
Lufthansa.
A successful low-cost operation
needs scale, bases across Europe and
productivity of aircraft and staf higher
than at mainline hub operations. That
setup is working for Ryanair, Easyjet,
Vueling, Norwegian Air Shuttle and
Wizz Air. All are growing their traf c,
their eets and are protable.
The severity of the situation has -
nally been recognized by Air France-
KLM management. No airline is im-
mortal, de Juniac pointed out as the
strike entered its second week, with
more than half of the French airlines
eet grounded and nearly 65,000 pas-
sengers per day enduring ight cancel-
lation or delays.
De Juniac and Gagey had board ap-
proval to invest 1 billion in the growth
of Transavia, which currently consists
of two airlinesTransavia France and
Transavia Netherlands. The airlines
have a joint eet of 47 aircraft, of which
14 are operated by Transavia France.
Prior to the pull-back of its plan,
Air France-KLM wanted to double the
Transavia eet to more than 100 air-
craft carrying 20 million passengers by
2017 and establish bases for Transavia
Europe outside of France.
SNPL Air France Air Line Pilots
Association and seven other unions at
Air France still call for the immedi-
ate and unconditional dismantling and
withdrawal of the Transavia Europe
project, which is synonymous with
ofshoring of our jobs. c
Air France pilots are concerned
that short- and medium-haul
ying could move from their own
aircraft to low-cost af liates.
Bad Example
Air Frances acquiescing to key demands of the
striking pilots could seal the carriers fate
ANDRZEJ MALINOWSKI
W
hen the JetBlue Airways
Board of Directors decided
not to renew CEO Dave
Bargers contract but instead elevate
airline President Robin Hayes to the
top spot, it implicitly endorsed a view
held by many on Wall Street that the
carrier, while protable, lags too far
behind its rivals.
Barger, an original JetBlue execu-
tive, took over in 2007 after the board
determined the carriers visionary
founder, David Neeleman, struggled at
running day-to-day operations. Barger
quickly xed the operation, helping it
recover from a devastating valentine
that was delivered on Feb. 14, 2007,
when the airline failed to properly pre-
pare for and react to an ice storm that
hit the New York area. But like Nee-
leman, who insisted JetBlue be more
rened than its competitors, Barger
kept the focus on the customer, pre-
ferring not to add baggage fees or seats
to aircraft even when most other U.S.
carriers adopted both
practices.
His resistance to some
revenue-generating ideas
may have been Bargers
downfall. Despite signal-
ing in recent months he
might remain at JetBlue,
Barger will be replaced
on Feb. 16 by Hayes, a
former British Airways
executive vice president
for the Americas. Hayes
is not talking revenue
he has not been saying
much at allbut Wall
Street analysts say they are hopeful
JetBlue will start acting more like
competitors. In arguing this summer
for a CEO change, Cowen & Co. analyst
Helane Becker wrote: JetBlue is an
overly brand-conscious and customer-
focused airline, which has resulted in
lagging fundamentals.
JetBlue made money in the second
quarter, although its $230 million prof-
it mostly came from the sale of subsid-
iary LiveTV to Frances Thales Group.
Excluding special items, earnings were
Brian Sumers Los Angeles
Prot Vs. Brand
In a move cheered by Wall Street,
JetBlue appoints new CEO
19 cents per share, roughly
in line with analysts esti-
mates. Last year, JetBlue
had its most nancially re-
warding year in its 15-year
history, reporting a prot
of $168 million, or 52 cents per share.
It also had a strong 2012, with $128 mil-
lion in prot, or 40 cents per share.
What I see Dave Barger doing is
leading the company through difcult
times and not going into bankruptcy,
says George Hamlin of Hamlin Trans-
portation Consulting. If theres some-
thing wrong with that, I am living in a
strange world.
But Wall Street analysts, who have
watched American Airlines and Delta
Air Lines report massive prots while
making relatively minor business mod-
el changes, expect Hayes to be more
aggressive in adding revenue. Under
Hayess leadership, JetBlue likely
will soon charge for the rst checked
bagBarger was also leaning in that
directionand may de-
cide to add as many as
12 seats to the airlines
Airbus A320s. For now,
JetBlues standard pitch
on its 150-seat A320s is
34 in., three more than
United Airlines regular
economy pitch on the
same aircraft. Hayes
could also start monetiz-
ing JetBlues onboard In-
ternet, as analyst Becker
recommended in a recent
note.
Travel industry ana-
lyst Henry Harteveldt of Atmosphere
Research Group says he expects Hayes
will act more forcefully to drive rev-
enue, while retaining touches that
make JetBlue unique. Will the airline
add a hub somewhere in the middle of
the country to capture more custom-
ers and be more useful and improve
the utility of the airline? Harteveldt
asks. If they were to have a hub in
the center part of the country it would
help the airline capture more corpo-
rate customers. I think Robin is going
to be very focused
on how to capture
more HVC, or high-
value customers. To
further attract those
customers, Hayes
could unveil premi-
um-cabin markets
beyond New York,
San Francisco and
Los Angel esthe
only cities that now
have JetBlues Mint
servicepushing the
airline beyond its
single-cabin comfort zone.
However, nei ther Haml i n nor
Harteveldt believes Hayes will greatly
shift the airlines culture, at least not
quickly. Evolution tends to work bet-
ter than trying to boil the ocean and
make massive changes, Harteveldt
says. I dont think there will be any
massive changes announced at once,
in part because of the complexity of
this industry.
Barger was particularly concerned
about anything that might dilute the
airlines brand. He often argued that
more comfortable ights helped drive
customer preferenceand with that,
revenue. Even if Wall Street did not un-
derstand it, he defended the practice
of ofering more legroom, free Internet
and free snacks. What about some-
one who is going to pay you a premium
to y to from Hartford, Connecticut,
to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, he said
in August. All of a sudden its not a
commodity business. Theyll pay you a
premium for it. . . . Not a whole lot, but
enough that over time we can improve
upon our nancial markers.
For all the revenue knocks against
Barger, however, he has left Hayes
with an operationally sound airline
with strength in three important mar-
ketsNew York, Boston and Fort Lau-
derdaleas well as a successful focus
city in Long Beach, California. New
York was always JetBlues home, but
Barger pushed the airline to expand in
Boston and South Florida, both prot-
able markets. He also expanded Jet-
Blue into the Caribbean and Central
and South America and created a new
premium transcontinental product
called Mint, which ofers at-bed seats
between New York and Los Angeles
and San Francisco. The product was
designed because JetBlue calculated it
was leaking otherwise loyal customers
on these key routes. c
AIR TRANSPORT
Z
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S
S
/
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S
C
O
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F
I
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P
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David Barger will be step-
ping down as JetBlue CEO.
Robin Hayes has been ap-
pointed CEO of JetBlue.
J
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John Croft Washington
Trouble-Free Tracking
Companies pursue designs for
tamper-proof surveillance and tracking
S
kip Nelson could be on the verge
of another rst in the eld of
automatic dependent surveil-
lance broadcast (ADS-B) technol-
ogytamper-proof ADS-B. Nelsons
company, Anchorage, Alaska-based
ADS-B Technologies, is one of a grow-
ing number of avionics providers that
are envisioning or implementing de-
signs and methods to keep data owing
to air trafc control or airline opera-
tions centers despite attempts by pas-
sengers or crew to cut the connection.
No stranger to ADS-B, he was the
rst pilot to y with ADS-B for criti-
cal air traffic control surveillance
purposes as part of the FAAs Capstone
project in Alaska in 2001. More re-
cently, he conducted in a Piper Navajo
what he calls the rst demonstration of
a dual-link space-based ADS-B system
in all environments for extended peri-
ods of time on a ight from Anchorage
to Florida and back. Dual-link means
the system works with either 978-MHz
universal access transceivers (UATs),
an ADS-B solution primarily for air-
craft ying at 18,000 ft. or below, and
with 1,090-MHz extended squitter ra-
dios, a surveillance solution generally
for airlines.
Nelson is partnering with satellite
network provider Globalstar to ofer
the space-based ADS-B Link Aug-
mentation System (ALAS), which
sends ADS-B information from an
aircraft at 1-sec. intervalsa service
that competitor Aireon also plans to
offer for the North Atlantic oceanic
region beginning in 2018. The base-
line ALAS taps into the coaxial cable
antenna feed from an existing ADS-B
receiver to its antenna. The passive
coupler sends a copy of the payload
through an ADS-B Technologies low-
power modem that embeds the mes-
sage in L-band code. The signal is sent
out via a skyward-facing L-band and
S-band antenna (the S-band portion is
for receiving UAT information) up to
the Globalstar constellation of 24 low-
Earth orbiting satellites and down to
Globalstar-built ground stations.
The architecture, however, has the
same Achilles heel as ground-based
ADS-Bthe system could be disabled
by someone in the cockpit who either
turns the system to standby or pulls
the circuit breaker. In the disappear-
ance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
in March, the aircrafts transponder
stopped working as did its Aircraft
Communications Addressing and Re-
porting System (Acars) unit, anoma-
lies that may have been caused by
electrical issues or perhaps sabotage
in the cockpit.
While some have suggested replac-
ing the circuit breaker for the ADS-B
with a fuseable link, the problem re-
mains that the unit can also be disabled
by setting the controls to standby
mode. New designs emerging leave
the transponder as is, and secure the
system elsewhere.
From a certification standpoint,
Jef Brunner, vice president of certi-
cation engineering for Calgary-based
Flyht Aerospace, says there is no re-
quirement that pilots have access to
circuit breakers, which protect power
wires from carrying current levels that
could start a re. For certain essential
avionics and systems, designers put the
circuit breaker in the cockpit so that
pilots can have the option of resetting a
breaker in cases of a spurious electrical
surge and other related instances. But
if you put a thicker circuit breaker in
an inaccessible position, then theres no
option to reset that breaker, he says.
You live with that limitation.
Flyht builds automated ight infor-
mation reporting system (Ars) avi-
onics that send routine performance
and burst-mode streaming data to
airline operations centers using the
Iridium satellite network. In use by 30
customers on 350 aircraft, the com-
pany ofers a FlyhtSafe option with a
visual and audible alert to dispatch-
ers that is automatically triggered by
conditions such as excessive pitch and
bank angles, high speeds below 10,000
ft. or excessive descent rates. In alert
mode, it sends selected ight recorder
parameters every 20 sec. or less, lead-
ing to position reports roughly every
2.5 nm traveled at cruise speed. The
tracking and alerting system can
be disabled with the pull of a circuit
breaker however.
Although no airline customers
have asked for a tamper-proof option,
Flyht has come up with a designan
alternate power source that kicks in
if the circuit breaker in the cockpit is
pulled. Ars already has an alternate
power source the company installed so
airlines can track when the auxiliary
power unit is running while cleaning
crews work on an otherwise unpow-
ered aircraft. A tamper-proof system
would involve connecting that backup
power directly to the aircraft battery
or a dedicated emergency battery with
a remote circuit breaker.
Nelsons design would use a fuse-
able link backup battery with a 10-hr.
life. When we detect there has been
an interruption in the signal, other
than being on the ground, then the
small ADS-B transmitter embedded in
ALAS would take over and broadcast
the ships position for as long as the
backup battery lasts, he says. Nelson
would need guidance from the FAA
or international community to deter-
mine what emergency code the system
would send in that situation. c
JOHN CROFT/AW&ST
Pilots or others have multiple ways
to disable transponders, including
enacting a standby mode or pulling
a circuit breaker in the cockpit.
Amy Butler Washington
Raptor Released
Designed for Cold War threats, the F-22
makes its rst strikeat a terrorist facility
A
fter $79 billion dollars of work
and nearly 10 years of operation-
al use without a kill, the stealthy,
twin-engine F-22 has nally destroyed
its rst target in a conict.
Ironically, however, its initial shot did
not guard against an airborne threat,
the rationale behind so many of the
F-22s dazzling and expensive features.
Instead, a Raptor pilot destroyed a
fixed ground target, thought to be a
command-and-control facility for Is-
lamic State (IS) extremists that have
gained footholds in Syria and Iraq. The
pilot, using a GBU-32, a 1,000-lb. Joint
Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), con-
ducted the attack early Sept. 23 against
a facility in Raqqah, Syria, ISs self-pro-
claimed capital. The F-22 was included
in the second wave of strikes in Syria.
The rst included a volley of 47 Toma-
hawk missiles launched from two U.S.
Navy ships in the Red Sea and northern
Persian Gulf largely targeting areas oc-
cupied by the previously little-known Al
Qaeda splinter group Khorasan.
The second surge of strikes, the rst
to include aircraft, featured the F-22
alongside F-15Es, F-16s, B-1s and un-
manned aircraft. A third included F/A-
18s from the USS George H.W. Bush,
also sailing in the northern Persian Gulf.
Of the roughly 200 weapons delivered,
96% were precision-guided. Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emir-
ates, Bahrain and Qatar also provided
assistance, including some ghter jets.
This is not necessarily the debut
airpower advocates envisioned for the
F-22, which was criticized for decades
as a costly boondoggle in air-to-air
dominance technology. Many would
like to have seen footage of a smol-
dering MiG fighter shot down by the
Raptor. Though originally included in
the requirements, the ground-attack
capability came late in the aircrafts
protracted development, and some say
it was an afterthought. In testing, the
F-22 dropped its first 1,000-lb. bomb
in 2004 and its rst 250-lb. Small-Di-
ameter Bomb (SDB) three years later.
The entire eet can drop the 1,000-lb.
weapon, but eetwide SDB operations
are slated to start in October 2017.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) David
Deptula, a strategist and former cam-
paign planner in the service, argues that
a ground attack is a tting debut for the
ghter for which he spent so much time
advocating. This engagement addresses
misnomers that have been applied to
the airplane, that it is incapable of
ground attack, he says. That is what
[then-Defense Secretary] Bob Gates
didnt understand. It was not just an
air-to-air airplane, Deptula adds, voic-
ing a common refrain among F-22 advo-
cates that Gatess decision to end F-22
production at 187 jets was premature.
Gates, however, justied that by citing
the ghters high development cost and
per-unit price of more than $130 million.
The fact remains that the F-22s
stealthy qualities appear not to have
been tested. Army Lt. Gen. Mayville,
director of operations for the Joint
Staf, characterized Syrias integrated
air defense system as passive. If it
had been active, it would have been for-
midable, a factor driving war planners
to employ the F-22.
You have a set of signicant air de-
fenses, and there is a degree of uncer-
tainty regarding how the integrated air
defense system is going to respond and
react, Deptula says. The inclusion of
the F-22 allows a set of responses that
may not all have been used relative to
how the adversary reacted.
Designed for hostile engagements
against hearty defenses, this debut was
set against a unique diplomatic back-
drop. Washington informed the Syr-
ian government about the strikes, and
Syrian President Bashar al-Assadan-
noyed by IS himselfallowed coalition
forces to conduct their raids.
The stealthiest aircraft in operation,
the F-22 is designed to enter enemy air-
space undetected and has onboard sen-
sors capable of collecting intelligence
on the battlespace. Any of the other
fighters used, however, could deliver
a 1,000-lb. JDAM to a target, raising
the question of what other capabilities
the aircraft brought to the ght. When
asked why the F-22 was tapped for the
mission, Mayville was vague. What
we were looking at was the effect we
wanted to see on the target areas and
what platforms in the region would be
best suited to do that, he said during a
Sept. 23 brieng. We had a large menu
of targets to strike, and then we chose
from there. So its less the platform than
it is the effects we seek, and then its
what platform can deliver those efects.
Thats really the job of the [combined
air operations center].
Im sure it wasnt just used to throw
a couple of bombs at a couple of facili-
ties, Deptula says. It has too many
other capabilities that it could use in
that strike evolution. c
DEFENSE
The Lockheed Martin F-22 struck a
suspected Islamic State facility (far
left, before; near left, after), deliver-
ing a 1,000-lb. JDAM for its rst kill.
U
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Tony Osborne London
NATO nations have invested in
some costly precision-guided
munitions, but probably need more
D
espite the high price tag , air-launched cruise missiles
have become a luxury few European nations can live
without.
While nations with a history of expeditionary warfare such
as France, Germany and the U.K. began investing in these
capabilities long ago, the recent crisis in Ukraine and the re-
arming of Russia has stirred other countries to consider how
to deal with the new generation of long-range ground-based
air defense systems.
Poland is on the perceived front line of these new threats .
Prompted by Russias belligerence, the uneasy neighbor has
pushed for an urgent purchase of cruise missiles to equip its
F-16 Fighting Falcons.
The U.S. State Department gave the green light to the
$500 million Foreign Military Sale on Sept. 17; the purchase
includes approximately 40 Lockheed Martin AGM-158A Joint
Air-to-Surface Standof Missiles (Jassm) and F-16C/D up-
grades to handle the munitions.
The eyebrow -raising cost of the deal also appears to in-
clude the aircraft and weapon-integration program. The
missiles could be ready in 18 months.
The purchase is just a small part of a planned moderniza-
tion of the countrys armed forcesalthough probably one
it would rather have dealt with in the future . Polish of cials
estimate that 130 billion zlotys ($40 billion) will be spent on
new equipment between 2013-22. The stealthy cruise missile
has a published range of 230 nm, almost three times that of
Polands current long-range munition, the Raytheon AGM-154
Joint Stand-Of Weapon (JSOW), keeping the valuable F-16s
the country has 48safely out of reach of advanced Russian
surface-to-air missile systems such as the S-300 or S-400.
And Poland is not alone in girding up . When Finland wanted
to join the cruise-missile-owners club back in 2007 by equip-
ping Jassm on its F-18 Hornets, commentators said the U.S.
was reluctant to sell the weapon to a nation bordering Rus-
sia. But recently established closer ties with NATO means the
project has been given the go-ahead and Finlands F-18s, which
were previously intended for air defense of that neutral coun-
try as well as close air support of ground troops, looks set to
take on a more strategic role when needed. Work on equipping
the Finnish F-18s with Jassm is due for completion in 2016.
Reassuringly
Expensive
Poland intends to arm its eet of Block
52 F-16s with the Jassm cruise missile.
T
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European countries are purchasing a
range of weapons . . . but even though the
weapons are diferent, the nations can still
achieve a high level of interoperability be-
tween member states, says Douglas Barrie,
senior fellow for military aerospace at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies
in London.
Cruise missiles are an efective means
of retaining control of the air-to-air domain
. . . for a country like Finland, a weapon like Jassm will allow
you to target the airelds of the country that is threatening
you, Barrie notes.
Sweden too is looking again at the integration of a cruise
missile for its JAS-39 Gripens, particularly as it is introduc-
ing an upgraded model of the aircraft into service toward
the end of this decade. Speaking ahead of the Farnborough
International Airshow last July, the Swedish Air Force chief,
Maj. Gen. Micael Byden, said that the Taurus missile was
likely to be a front-runner because it was already largely in-
tegrated on the Gripen.
This is a game changer for Sweden, said Byden. The
earlier you can inuence in the war ght the better.
NATO commanders actually want more nations to invest
in precision-guided munitions, and cruise missiles in particu-
lar. The alliance wants to prevent the shortages in weapons
that have dogged air operations, such as in recent conicts
in Libya when several nations were forced to look for extra
weapons as stores began to run dry.
We do not have enough precision-strike munitions to car-
ry on a concentrated campaign at length and for our allies
to participate in the long-haul , explained NATO Supreme
Allied Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove.
W e have to rethink where we are with precision munitions.
At the NATO Summit in Newport, Wales, earlier this month ,
six nations signed a framework pact to study options that
would avert the issue of reduced weapons stocks in a pro-
longed conict. The Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Portu-
gal and Spain, led by Denmark, are studying options like loan
agreements, common warehousing, multinational procure-
ment and the establishing of multinational weapon stocks. c
European Nations Cruise Missiles
NATION WEAPON LAUNCH PLATFORM
Finland AGM-158 Jassm F/A-18 Hornet
France MBDA Scalp-EG Rafale B/C/M
Germany KEPD 350 Taurus Tornado IDS
Greece MBDA Scalp-EG Mirage 2000
Italy MBDA Scalp-EG Tornado
Norway (planned) Joint Strike Missile F-35
Poland AGM-158 Jassm F-16C/D
Spain KEPD 350 Taurus F/A-18 Hornet
Sweden Undecided JAS 39 Gripen
Turkey (planned) Roketsan SOM F-4/F-16
U.K. MBDA Storm Shadow Tornado GR4/Typhoon
Sources: National defense departments
Amy Butler Washington
Pentagon envisions combat cloud
as force multiplier for shrinking eet
T
he Pentagon has been bitten by the Steve Jobs bug.
The latest vision for data-sharing across ships, aircraft
and satellitesa perpetually chased but unrealized planis
now being dubbed the combat cloud. And a retired U.S. Air
Force ofcer is leading a rst-of-a-kind charge to bring stakehold-
ers from each of the services, industry and academia together to
shape the cloud and attain buy-in, despite the Pentagons spotty
track record of gaining traction on similar eforts.
Today the Air Forces very expen-
sive, stealthy aircraft cannot talk to
its legacy systems, and without that
crosstalk the efectiveness of those in-
vestments will be marginalized. While
Gathering Storm
DEFENSE
?
LRS-B
Satellite Intelligence
RQ-180
Integrated Air
Defense Systems
Legacy
Fighters
F-15/Talon Hate
F
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C
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B
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C
L
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H
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A
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B
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B
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F-22
IFDL
F-35
MADL
Pentagon Plan: From Networks to the Combat Cloud
IFDL
MIDS
Link16
AWACS Link16
Link16
Source: Aviation Week graphic based on industry sources
Aegis
Ships
Aircraft
Carriers
Link16
Future 2015
IFDL: Intra-fight Datalink
MADL: Multifunction Advanced Datalink
MIDS: Multifunction Information Distribution Systems
will this dialogue produce an execut-
able program to buy the technology
that can make the visioneventually,
the cloudreal?
The goal, likely to take a decade or
more to realize, is to form an overarch-
ing network of data, each platform a
node contributing information to the
cloud and downloading from it, even in
the heat of battle (see graphic). It would
include ghters, intelligence aircraft,
satellites, ships and helicopters.
Getting there will take baby steps.
The U.S. Navy is moving to connect
its forces via the Naval Integrated
Fire Control Counter Air (Nifca) plan
networking its ships and aircraft to
protect assets at sea from attack.
Meanwhile, the Marine Corps aviation
team is pushing advanced networking
for its Marine Air Ground Task Forces
(AW&ST Oct. 14, 2013, p. 41).
The Air Force, largely responsible for
establishing air superiority in a cam-
paign, is in a quandary, however, as its
officers are scrambling to solve the
so-called fifth-to-fourth problem, a
larger dialogue has blossomed about
the objective beyond simply connecting
F-22s, B-2s and F-35s to the eet. But
SCOTT MARSHALL/AVIATION WEEK
eet is expected to conduct a breadth
of missions but was not designed to
interconnect. Funding constraints and
programmatic delays mean F-22s and
F-35s will be ghting alongside fourth-
generation F-15s and F-16s well beyond
2030, far longer than planned. In the
meantime, the service is struggling with
how to link todays eet with the F-22,
in service since 2005 but still unable to
connect to any other fighter without
compromising its stealth.
Outgoing Air Combat Command
chief Gen. Michael Hostage says he
was professionally appalled to dis-
cover that fifth-generation platforms
(F-22s and F-35s) couldnt talk to each
other. At the annual Air Force Asso-
ciation conference this month, he said,
Nobody has the money to buy an all-
fifth-gen fleet. Nobody realized how
powerful fusion would be. It drives me
to a fourth-to-fifth/fifth-to-fifth solu-
tion. Its my highest priority because
it makes fourth-gen more survivable.
The services Electronic Systems
Center at Hanscom AFB, Massachu-
setts, is planning to release a request
for information for industry for a Fifth-
to-Fourth Gen Gateway by the end of
October, according to David Desforges,
manager for the program. A draft re-
quest for proposals is expected in the
second quarter of scal 2015.
Building on the success of the urgent-
ly developed Battleeld Airborne Com-
munications Node payload used on the
Bombardier Global Express and Global
Hawk connecting assets in Afghanistan,
the services interim step is to pursue
such gateways to connect stealthy air-
craft with the legacy eet. The gateways
are described by some as not entirely
elegant solutionsthey would be pay-
loads stufed with boxes of radios that
can talk to F-22s Intra-Flight Datalink
(IFDL), Link 16 and F-35s Multifunc-
tion Advanced Datalink (MADL), for
example. But the operational concept
requires that a platform carry this pay-
load within range of the users, a pos-
sible drawback in fuel cost and wear
and tear on the payload carrier.
The first pod designed for fifth-to-
fourth connectivity is Boeings Talon
Hate, intended to y on an F-15C in re-
sponse to an urgent need for Pacic Air
Forces. The Air Force plans to eld four
by mid-year. The pods are designed to
act as both a gateway and fusion node
for a limited Air Force network.
Primarily, the pod will take in F-22
data transmitted via its unique, stealthy
IFDL and allow for data transmission to
other forces (ghters and intelligence
aircraft) via Link 16 or the Multifunc-
tional Information Distribution System
(MIDS). A Wideband Global Satcom
link will also be added to the Talon
Hate pods F-15C host to bring in other
sources of classied data as well, Davis
says. The pod will also have an infrared
search-and-track capability.
The goal is that, in the event of a
campaign where allied forces counter
air defense, the F-22 can penetrate de-
fenses, soften them and simultaneously
provide airborne target data for legacy
fighters in the rear. This effectively
would expand the F-22s magazine, lim-
ited by its small internal bay, by draw-
ing on weapons carried by F-15s.
Talon Hate can carry only four
pods, however. And Hanscoms Fifth-
to-Fourth Gen Gateway is slated to
pick up where it leaves off. In con-
trast, the objective, dubbed the Multi-
Domain Adaptable Processing System
(MAPS), is geared to be more inclu-
sive, beyond gateways.
These systems would eventually feed
into the cross-service, multinational
cloud concept suggested by USAF
Lt. Gen. (ret) David Deptula, a former
air campaign planner in the service.
Now at the Air Force Associations
Mitchell Institute for Airpower Stud-
ies, Deptula says he is in a position to
bring together technologists, academia,
industry and the military. This hasnt
Graham Warwick Washington
Past mistakes raise credibility hurdles
for future military rotorcraft program
History Lessons
O
nce bitten, twice shy; but after
the second or third painful les-
son reserve turns to risk aver-
sion. And that is the challenge facing
industry as the U.S. Army prepares to
decide whether to develop an all-new
advanced rotorcraft or put its work-
horse Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk
helicopter through yet another major
upgrade.
The Future Vertical Lift (FVL) ef-
fort is entering the Pentagon decision-
making process with a huge stigma,
been done before in the context of a ho-
listic approach involving all elements in
government and outside government,
he says. The reason that this had to
happen is because you have an institu-
tional mind-set that has built individual
systems to operate as individual pieces
that contribute to a larger whole, absent
a concept that has a vision for bringing
all the parts and pieces together.
Such a concept builds on the idea
of commercial clouds that are ubiqui-
tous for iPhone users. But questions
remain: How should such a cloud be
protected? And how can it be operated
if it is compromised? This is driving Air
Force general ofcers, Space Command
chief Gen. John Hyten and Hostage to
focus on ghting through jamming of
links critical to operating rst with lim-
ited networks, and eventually within a
cloud.
I need certainty of information. The
adversary is going to blunt it, to try to
knock it down, but [I dont want] the
adversary to change the information
[in the cloud]. Thats worse than turn-
ing it of, Hostage said. The adversary
thinks that if they turn the network
of, well turn around and go home. But
today we reverse the paradigmwe go
out on a daily basis and we deal with
GPS going out, or something else being
degraded every day. We train people to
react to degradation instantaneously. c
With Bill Sweetman in Washington.
because of past failed Army rotorcraft
procurement programs such as the
Boeing Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche
armed scout helicopter, says program
director Dan Bailey. We have got to
build a case [for FVL] and it will take
the community to do that.
We have not started a program in
a while, and the ones we did start did
not go well, Bailey says. In addition
to the RAH-66, the Bell ARH-70 Arap-
aho armed scout was canceled, while
the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor
program took 24 years from contract
award to service entry. Bailey is the
Armys program director for both FVL
and the Joint Multi Role (JMR) tech-
nology demonstration under which it
is funding both air-vehicle and mission-
system demonstrators as precursors
to FVL.
Program officials from the Army
and other services have begun to con-
struct a formal business case for de-
veloping and procuring an advanced
medium-lift rotorcraft rather than
upgrading the H-60 series again. The
work is intended to support an analysis
of alternatives (AOA) next year leading
to a materiel-development decision in
scal 2017 on launch of the FVL Me-
dium program.
The business case analysis is under-
way as the Army completes negotia-
tions with contractors to y two high-
speed rotorcraft demonstrators in
2017 under the JMR program. Building
the business case while demonstrating
key air-vehicle and mission-system
technologies under JMR is part of an
efort to show that a new-design FVL
Medium rotorcraft can be afordable.
We need to make the case that FVL
is a viable option, says Bailey, speak-
ing at an American Helicopter Society
International dinner in Washington in
mid-September. FVL is intended to
close gaps in U.S. military rotorcraft
capability underlined by shortfalls in
performance and survivability brought
to light by helicopter operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan. We need to show
why we can implement capability on
the FVL, but likely not on a legacy plat-
form, he says.
The FVL Medium program is
planned to take 12 years from a Mile-
stone A decision to launch technology
development to a Milestone C decision
to begin production. This compares
with nine years for the original UH-
60A Black Hawk. Initial operational
capability is projected for 2034, but
this criterion is dened by the service.
I prefer to talk production, he says.
If we get money to start in 2019, add
12 years and you get an output. If we
get money earlier, we can start earlier.
Expected to be completed by early
2016, the AOA will look at four main
options facing the Army, Bailey says:
leaving the UH-60 fleet as is; imple-
menting an upgrade or major upgrade;
or building a new-design FVL Medium.
An all-new rotorcraft is expected to
be larger and more complex than the
Black Hawk, raising concerns about
its cost. The JMR demonstrators
are representative of rotorcraft with
maximum weights exceeding 30,000
lb., compared with 22,000 lb. for the
in-production UH-60M.
The technology demonstration is
all about the truck. There are other
parts of the truck, such as the archi-
tecture backbone, that are important
to afordability. It is about picking the
right conguration and backbone for
the truck, says Bailey. How to get
an affordable complex system is a
real challenge, he adds, identifying
an open systems architecture, model-
based design and the business-case
analysis as key afordability initiatives
being pursued for the FVL program.
In a bid to contain development and
sustainment costs, the Joint Common
DEFENSE
The shadow of cancellation of the Armys
RAH-66 Comanche still weighs on the U.S.
rotorcraft industry.
Architecture (JCA) backbone will be
based on the Future Airborne Capa-
bility Environment (FACE) standard
for reusable and portable software.
Boeing and Honeywell are providing
situational-awareness modules that
the government will test in its JCA
laboratory, to assess whether the soft-
ware works with multiple hardware
platforms and operating systems.
More modules will be added each year,
and by the end of JMR in scal 2019
the Army hopes to have two complete
instantiations of the FACE-based ar-
chitecture under test.
Technology demonstration for the
FVL mission equipment package
(MEP) is running about two years
behind the air vehicle in recognition
of the faster development cycles for
electronics. Bailey hopes by year-end
to have two teams under contract to
develop conceptual functional designs
for the objective MEP. FVL will be a
fully coupled y-by-wire aircraft with
the pilot as mission manager and an
inherent optionally manned capability,
he says.
Bailey is encouraging the rotorcraft
industry to embrace the standards-
based system architecture virtual
integration (SAVI) process under de-
velopment by the Aerospace Vehicle
Systems Institute (AVSI). Late dis-
covery of system-level problems drives
up cost, he says. The new tools allow
integration to be modeled early in
design so errors can be fixed before
any code is written. A $10,000 archi-
tecture correction in the conceptual
phase can save $3 million in the system
engineering test phase, he says. But
tool development is focused on com-
mercial aircraft and the timeline does
not support FVL, says Bailey. He urges
the rotorcraft industry to get engaged
with AVSI and SAVI.
Although not yet formally an-
nounced by the Army, Bell Helicop-
ter and a Sikorsky/Boeing team have
been selected to build the two JMR
air-vehicle demonstrators. Bell will
build the 280-kt. V-280 Valor tiltrotor
and Sikorsky/Boeing the 230-kt.-plus
rigid coaxial-rotor compound SB.1
Deant. Bailey says the Army hopes
to complete negotiations with all four
teams by Oct. 1 and announce then
whether losing bidders AVX Aircraft
and Karem Aircraft will be funded to
continue certain technology work on
their designs under the cost-sharing
demonstration program. c
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Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
Best Practices
FAA manual tells industry
how to build a spaceship
S
tartup space companies eager to get in on the ground
oor if the terrestrial economy begins to move into
low Earth orbit have a new set of guidelines on build-
ing passenger spacecraft that will keep their customers alive
in the harsh environment they hope to exploit.
While the U.S. Congress has blocked the commercial-space
arm of the FAA from issuing spacecraft-safety regulations,
out of fear overzealous bureaucrats will stie innovation, the
agencys Ofce of Commercial Space Transportation has
published a new set of recommended practices for human
spaceight occupant safety on its website, ofering strong
suggestions based on a century of aviation-safety lessons that
often were learned the hard way.
Since the U.S. government is likely to be the largest cus-
tomer for commercial human spaceight services in the fore-
seeable future, spaceight entrepreneurs probably would be
well-advised to follow the FAA suggestions.
Although the industry is not required to follow the identi-
ed practices, the document provides a framework that space
vehicle developers and operators may nd useful in preparing
industry consensus standards, says George Nield, associate
administrator for commercial space transportation. It can
also serve as a starting point should there be a need at some
point for the government to issue regulations in the future.
Based on three years of research by FAA staffers, the
56-page document is a handy compendium of how to make
spacecraft as safe as possible for passengers and crew. Some
recommendations seem obvious, as in the warning against
such mechanical hazards as moving parts, stored poten-
tial energy, burrs, pinch points, sharp edges, sharp items and
temperature. Others are less so. In cases where the risk
remains high after applying single-failure tolerance, additional
redundancy may be appropriate, the document states. Ad-
ditionally, the overall system reliability is a signicant element
used in the determination of the level of redundancy. Redun-
dancy alone without sufcient reliability does not improve the
overall system safety.
In retrospect, it probably would have been better for
NASA managers to have streamed that message on computer
screens in the Mission Operations Directorate at Johnson
Space Center instead of the projected assembly-complete
date for the International Space Station (ISS), which the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board found added dan-
gerous schedule pressure to space shuttle operations before
the 2003 disaster (AW&ST Sept. 1, 2003, p. 27).
Such lessons were incorporated into the FAA document,
but Nield stresses that his agencys safety guidance is not
intended to make commercial-passenger spacecraft meet
NASAs post-Columbia standards.
Our purpose was not to copy NASAs requirements, but
to use them as a means to capture established safety prac-
tices, and then to evaluate each one based on whether it
would in general be appropriate for the commercial human
spaceight industry, he told the FAAs Commercial Space
Transportation Advisory Committee (Comstac) on Sept. 17.
The Comstac meeting came a day after NASA picked Boe-
ing and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) to
build the commercial crew vehicles it hopes to use to y NASA
crews to the ISS (AW&ST Sept. 22, p. 24). But Nield was careful
to point out that any future commercial vehicle meeting NASA
standards for crew vehicles rendezvousing and docking with
the ISS also would almost certainly meet FAA best practices,
since the U.S. space agencys requirements are much more
exhaustive than the FAA recommendations.
Among topics not covered in the FAA document are medi-
cal limits on spaceight passengers, even though the FAA
says it realizes that ying members of the public outside the
relatively healthy government astronaut population is new,
and that commercial operators will be challenged to control
hazards to spaceight participants with medical conditions.
Also omitted from the FAA best practices are limits on
exposure to space radiation because of the expected short du-
ration of commercial suborbital and orbital spaceights, and
the public-safety aspects of human spaceight, which were
left for future editions. However, the FAA document stresses
the need for training to ensure the safety of crew and pas-
sengers, a commercial need already being addressed by the
Nastar Center near Philadelphia (AW&ST Oct. 3, 2011, p. 54).
Safety-critical personnel can be sources of or controls to
hazards, the FAA document states in a passage it applies
to ight crew, ground controllers and safety-critical ground
operations personnel. Improperly completed safety-critical
operations could lead to serious injury to occupants.
The congressional moratorium on FAA regulations afect-
ing the nascent human spaceight industry expires next year,
and Nield noted that some in industry would like to see it
extended indenitely.
We have tried to capture, at a very top level, all of the
factors that should be considered in designing, developing
and operating commercial human space vehicles, he says.
Going forward, we would like to work with industry on how
best to implement those practices in order to improve human
spaceight safety, while at the same time ensuring that we do
not constrain industrys ability to incorporate new technolo-
gies and new ways of doing business. c
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Computational
uid dynamics view
of Blue Origins orbital
Space Vehicle, which
probably will use FAA best
practices for safety.
Video Watch Senior Avionics & Safety
Editor John Croft sampling UPRT at
APS and Flight Researchtap here in the digi-
tal edition or go to AviationWeek.com/UPRT
John Croft Mojave, California, and Mesa, Arizona
Upset Alternatives
Props, simulators and jets battle for customers at
worlds largest upset recovery training providers
T
o be a test pilot, or not to be a
test pilot? That is one question
airlines will face when deciding
which of the two key providers of up-
set recovery trainingAviation Perfor-
mance Solutions or Flight Research
to choose for specialized training for
their instructors or pilots.
That question is taking on new im-
portance within ight departments as
more comprehensive flight-training
rules worldwide come into force fol-
platform. Both training providers are
producing pilots who are no longer
surprised by an aircraft upset and can
respond appropriately.
Whichever company garners the
most business in the long run could
be decided by a combination of mar-
keting prowess, gut feeling and price.
To this end, each company is evolving
its business model to incorporate the
best features of its competitor.
For marketing perks, Flight Re-
and rotary-wing aircraft the company
leases back to the National Test Pilot
School (NTPS) next door.
The emergence from intentional
obscurity occurred when Bill Korner,
along with two partners, purchased
the company in May 2013. The deal was
somewhat of an anomaly. Kornera
former military helicopter and ghter
pilot, and current businessman and
aviation consultantwas initially hired
by Flight Research founders Sean and
Nadia Robertsrenowned aerospace
engineers and ight-test pilotsto plot
their exit strategy from the business,
which included Flight Research and
NTPS. The move may have been
necessitated to resolve a financial
situation with the Internal Revenue
Service.
Sean Roberts launched the test pilot
school in 1981 to provide a civilian ana-
log to the Air Force Test Pilots School,
where he previously worked. NTPS of-
fers ight-test engineer courses where
students assess the design and ight
characteristics of a wide variety of ro-
tary- and xed-wing aircraft.
The Robertses created a second
company, Flight Research, to handle
the logistics of the schoolowning
the buildings and the aircraft, and
performing the maintenancebut the
business evolved to take on military
ight testing, civilian upset recovery
training and certication work.
Korner became enamored on his
rst tour in September 2011. Id been
all over the world and Id never seen
anything quite like this, he recounts.
He later bought the company, split-
ting off from NTPS but maintaining
long-term contracts to provide aircraft,
facilities and maintenance. The Rob-
ertses,, who developed the ground school
portion of the training, continue on as
instructors, ensuring a strong focus on
engineering and ight-test principles.
Korners mission was to correct
what he saw as marginal training
taking place in civil aviation. Today
Flight Research provides upset re-
covery training to hundreds of pilots
yearly, mostly from business aviation
and governmental agencies, in two-,
three- and four-day course packages
that cost $12,900-24,000.
AIR TRANSPORT
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lowing several high-prole commercial
crashes within the last decade.
I recently visited and flew with
both companies, noting the unique
approaches they ofer. Flight Research
begins with the engineering funda-
mentals more familiar to engineers
and test pilots, and uses jet aircraft;
Aviation Performance Solutions (APS)
starts with applied aviation knowl-
edge and uses light aircraft as their
My ight in Flight Researchs tan-
dem-seat Aermacchi MB-326M Im-
pala included recoveries from inverted
upsets using the UTAP process.
search has the edge. Housed in a clus-
ter of hangars on the eastern end of
California-based Mojave Air and Space
Port, a stones throw from Scaled Com-
posites and Richard Bransons Virgin
Galactic enterprise, Flight Research
has been in existence since the early
1980s, but is only recently becoming
more well-known. Inside the hangars
are the tools of Flight Researchs
upset trainingNorth American
NA-265-60 Sabreliner business jets
and Aermacchi MB-326M Impala
single-engine jet trainersas well as
a stable of other subsonic, supersonic
His heightened emphasis on up-
set prevention and recovery training
(UPRT) required hiring new instruc-
tor pilots, including ex-space shuttle
commander, F-111 pilot and aeronau-
tical engineer Rick Searfoss; former
ghter pilot, airline captain, warbird
pilot and aircraft nancier Doug Mat-
thews; and warbird pilot and human
factors researcher Scott Glaser. I ew
with Matthews in the Sabreliner 60 on
July 1 and with Glaser in the Impala on
July 2 when I visited Mojave to attend a
chief pilots course, a $5,000 condensed
version of the four-day curriculum.
The idea behind the course, launched
in June, is to provide a synopsis of the
program to help airline operators un-
derstand the type of training available.
For airline pilots, Korner says, a two-
day course would likely be ideal, and
the company could scale its operation
to handle a surge. There are no con-
rmed airline customers yet, but Kor-
ner says he is talking to nine major
U.S. and international carriers.
More broadly, the rather sudden in-
terest in UPRT has emerged as airlines
gear up to meet new training rules and
standards both in the U.S. and interna-
tionally, driven in part by the Colgan
Air, Air France and Turkish Airlines
crashes in 2009. All three accidents
had a component of pilot error related
to handling stalls and upsets. The U.S.
is requiring that, by 2018, all airlines
teach pilots, via upgraded full-motion
simulators, how to recover from full
stalls, stick-pusher activations and
other anomalies. Future International
Civil Aviation Organization standards
will make UPRT mandatory for multi-
crew pilot licenses and in-aircraft
UPRT a recommended practice for
the commercial pilots certicate, a pre-
requisite for earning an airline trans-
port pilot license.
Guidance for UPRT providers in-
cludes the industry-developed Airplane
Upset Recovery Training Aid (AURTA),
a compilation of best practices for han-
dling upsets in swept-wing turbofan air-
craft, and an upcoming FAA Advisory
Circular on how to train pilots, which
includes sample upset scenarios.
Some European carriers are ahead
of the curve. British Airways and KLM,
in partnership with CAE Oxford Acad-
emy in Mesa, Arizona, send their ab in-
itio students to APS for upset training
in the single-engine Extra EA-300L, its
primary training aircraft. South Afri-
can Airlines plans to send 10 simulator
instructors to APSs satellite location
in Amsterdam for a 5-day, $19,000
train-the-trainer program that in-
cludes 12 hr. of ground school, 8.5 hr.
of ight upset training in two Slingsby
T-67 Firey single-engine propeller-
driven aerobatic aircraft, and two 2-hr.
full-motion simulator sessions in large
transport aircraft. Those instructors
will then teach South Africans 800
line pilots in UPRT in the simulator.
APS vice president of training, Ran-
dall Brooks, says he is in discussions
with three U.S. airlines and one Middle
Eastern-based carrier about UPRT for
their ab initio students. When com-
bined with corporate pilots, govern-
ment customers and Bombardiers
Leading Edge safety training pack-
age for owners, APS instructs approxi-
mately 1,000 pilots per year, between
its Mesa headquarters and its Dallas
and Amsterdam satellite locations.
Both APS and Flight Research are
seeing more customers being aided by
insurance companies via grants or dis-
counts in rates. At Flight Research, two
insurance companies ofer discounts for
pilots who undergo a simulator review
one year and UPRT the next. Currently,
however, there are no means for the
FAA to certify the in-aircraft review.
APSs Mesa and Dallas operations
use the Extra EA-300L for training. In
addition to starting up a franchise lo-
cation with one Extra EA300 in Saudi
Arabia by year-end, the company is
looking to augment its light aircraft
with heavier single-engine turbine
equipment by acquiring an Aero Vo-
dochody L-39 or Aermacchi M-311 for
recurrent UPRT in Mesa. I sampled
APSs UPRT program at a ground
school session with President Paul BJ
Ransbury, a former Canadian Air Force
F/A-18 pilot and professional air show
aerobatic pilot. I also ew a 1-hr. mis-
sion with director of ight operations,
Karl Schlimm, a former F-16 and busi-
ness jet pilot with a mechanical engi-
neering degree. Including Ransbury,
APS has eight full- and six part-time
instructors, one of whom is a former
space shuttle pilot. The three-day pro-
gram, which includes full-motion simu-
lator and UPRT, is about $7,000.
When Ransbury established the com-
pany in 1996 as Air Canada Combat, air
combat tactics were in the forefront;
upset training was an option. In 2000,
he launched a sister company in Mesa
called Fighter Pilot International, but
an emerging focus on business aviation
clients who wanted UPRT prompted a
name change to APS and the shutter-
ing of the Canadian side of the business,
although Fighter Combat International
remains. We still ofer some of the oth-
er fun stuf, but mostly to make the job
fun for the instructors, says Ransbury.
APS opened with on-aircraft train-
ing only, followed by the academics
from AURTA, then the addition of full-
motion simulator training. A major cur-
riculum change took place in 2006. He
says one thing quickly became appar-
ent: You cant train civilian pilots like
theyre military or test pilotsthey just
dont do it. We made it too complex.
The program was reorganized to fo-
cus on a primary demographicthe
regular guy in the industry ying a Ci-
tation, Boeing 737 or twin Piper Coman-
che [and] we took them from a known
knowledge base and built up skills that
were beyond their experience, says
Flight Research uses the Sabreliner 60, a business jet that emulates the
heavier feel of large jets, to demonstrate g-sensitivity and stall recoveries.
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Ransbury. That change reaped a huge
diference in the interest in the program
and the retention of the information.
The ground school briefing I re-
ceived was as describedbasic re-
views of aircraft systems, aerody-
namics and stability and control,
augmented with special considerations
such as high-altitude operations and a
focus on upsets and recoveries.
Key to recovering from stalls or up-
sets (stalls often cause an upset) is APSs
trademarked all-attitude upset recovery
process: Push, Power, Roll, Stabilize.
Push refers to unloading the pitch axis
to break the stall; Power to adjust the
throttle for more thrust or less, depend-
ing on speed; Roll to level the wings;
thews at Flight Research, flying the
Sabreliner from the left seat through a
series of departure and arrival stalls at
20,000-ft. alt., in part comparing UTAP
to the legacy recovery method of using
full power while trying to maintain al-
titudea technique that fell out favor
after the 2009 crashes. The diference
between the heavy-handling Sabreliner
compared with the Extra was stark, al-
though recoveries were generally the
same, albeit with a difering number of
control movements required.
The next day brought an even more
dynamic experience with Scott Glaser,
in large part due to suiting up with
ight gear Im not used to wearing: my
own customized Flight Research jump-
aircraft ops down and begins to y
again as speed builds); and an upright
spin with standard recovery. Again,
control feel was much like a larger
aircraft compared with the EA300,
and required signicantly more efort
and control-stick movement to efect
a recovery.
For my ight with APSs Schlimm,
I wore my comfortable street clothes;
the only change to my normal ying at-
tire was the canvas aviators hat with
headphones built in, and parachute. We
started with g-sensitivity training (get-
ting to know what 2g feels like to help
prevent exceeding an aircrafts design
loads when recovering), training I also
performed in both the Sabreliner and
Impala at Flight Research. I found the
Push-Power-Roll-Stabilize technique
to be straightforward and helpful in all
manner of upsets, including recovering
from the falling leaf (showing lateral in-
stability in a stall), and the zoom maneu-
ver (showing stall speed relationship to
load factor). I also practiced lift-vector
control using ailerons in nose-high up-
sets, and recovered from inverted ight
after cross-controlled stalls.
I was not able to complete the next
logical step in APSs training method
transferring the Extra skills to
an air transport aircraft in the
simulator. While a simulator
cannot replicate g forces, wind
noise and other unnerving fac-
tors, Brooks says it is valuable
in terms of transferring UPRT
knowledge into a pilots actual
aircraft, and for practicing crew
coordination in an upset. When
they havent done it, theyre get-
ting in each others way, he says.
Flight Research also is consid-
ering adding full-motion simulators to
its training options. Korner says talks
are ongoing with two big simulator
companies. For now, the company uses
only on-aircraft training preceded by a
deep dive into aircraft design, stability
and control courses. The material was
familiar to me, but I had not contem-
plated the equations and relationships
for some time in relation to piloting an
aircraft. Over the two days I, along with
a business aviation pilot from a corpo-
rate flight department, sat through
five of the 10 education modules in
Flight Researchs programinforma-
tion similar to APSs, but with higher
levels of detail and background. Korner
says pilots, regardless of their previous
training, appreciate the depth. c
AIR TRANSPORT
and Stabilize to return to a desired
ight statelevel ight, descending, and
so forth. Pilots are expected to say and
do the actions. To align with the FAAs
pending UPRT Advisory Circular, the
company has a second process that puts
Roll before Power, a recovery the FAA
favors for stalls and nose-low recoveries.
Like APS, many in the industry, includ-
ing Flight Research, are lukewarm to
the priority of putting Power over Roll
in the process. Flight Research has its
own say-do processUTAP (Unload,
Throttle, Ailerons and Pitch).
I used the latter process with Mat-
suit, a perk for all participants; a full
helmet with oxygen mask; and a 1-hr.
introduction to the rocket-powered
Martin Baker ejection seat I would be
riding on in the Impala. Flying from the
front seat of the Impala, Glaser depart-
ed Mojave and climbed to 20,000 ft. so
I could put UTAP to the test from the
backseat. After a series of accelerated
stalls, nose-high and nose-low upsets,
Glaser had me perform a split-S (roll
inverted then pull through the verti-
cal) to show how much altitude is lost
(about 4,500 ft.) compared with the
optimal responseusing UTAPand
roll to wings-level (about 1,500 ft. lost);
a tail-slide to show the stability charac-
teristics of the aircraft, as highlighted
by Nadia Roberts in the classroom (the
JOHN CROFT/AW&ST
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My ight in APSs tandem-seat Extra
EA-300L included recoveries from
common upset conditions, using
the companys trademarked Push-
Power-Roll-Stabilize process.
Ransbury. That change reaped a huge
diference in the interest in the program
and the retention of the information.
The ground school briefing I re-
ceived was as describedbasic re-
views of aircraft systems, aerody-
namics and stability and control,
augmented with special considerations
such as high-altitude operations and a
focus on upsets and recoveries.
Key to recovering from stalls or up-
sets (stalls often cause an upset) is APSs
trademarked all-attitude upset recovery
process: Push, Power, Roll, Stabilize.
Push refers to unloading the pitch axis
to break the stall; Power to adjust the
throttle for more thrust or less, depend-
ing on speed; Roll to level the wings;
thews at Flight Research, flying the
Sabreliner from the left seat through a
series of departure and arrival stalls at
20,000-ft. alt., in part comparing UTAP
to the legacy recovery method of using
full power while trying to maintain al-
titudea technique that fell out favor
after the 2009 crashes. The diference
between the heavy-handling Sabreliner
compared with the Extra was stark, al-
though recoveries were generally the
same, albeit with a difering number of
control movements required.
The next day brought an even more
dynamic experience with Scott Glaser,
in large part due to suiting up with
ight gear Im not used to wearing: my
own customized Flight Research jump-
aircraft ops down and begins to y
again as speed builds); and an upright
spin with standard recovery. Again,
control feel was much like a larger
aircraft compared with the EA300,
and required signicantly more efort
and control-stick movement to efect
a recovery.
For my ight with APSs Schlimm,
I wore my comfortable street clothes;
the only change to my normal ying at-
tire was the canvas aviators hat with
headphones built in, and parachute. We
started with g-sensitivity training (get-
ting to know what 2g feels like to help
prevent exceeding an aircrafts design
loads when recovering), training I also
performed in both the Sabreliner and
Impala at Flight Research. I found the
Push-Power-Roll-Stabilize technique
to be straightforward and helpful in all
manner of upsets, including recovering
from the falling leaf (showing lateral in-
stability in a stall), and the zoom maneu-
ver (showing stall speed relationship to
load factor). I also practiced lift-vector
control using ailerons in nose-high up-
sets, and recovered from inverted ight
after cross-controlled stalls.
I was not able to complete the next
logical step in APSs training method
transferring the Extra skills to
an air transport aircraft in the
simulator. While a simulator
cannot replicate g forces, wind
noise and other unnerving fac-
tors, Brooks says it is valuable
in terms of transferring UPRT
knowledge into a pilots actual
aircraft, and for practicing crew
coordination in an upset. When
they havent done it, theyre get-
ting in each others way, he says.
Flight Research also is consid-
ering adding full-motion simulators to
its training options. Korner says talks
are ongoing with two big simulator
companies. For now, the company uses
only on-aircraft training preceded by a
deep dive into aircraft design, stability
and control courses. The material was
familiar to me, but I had not contem-
plated the equations and relationships
for some time in relation to piloting an
aircraft. Over the two days I, along with
a business aviation pilot from a corpo-
rate flight department, sat through
five of the 10 education modules in
Flight Researchs programinforma-
tion similar to APSs, but with higher
levels of detail and background. Korner
says pilots, regardless of their previous
training, appreciate the depth. c
AIR TRANSPORT
and Stabilize to return to a desired
ight statelevel ight, descending, and
so forth. Pilots are expected to say and
do the actions. To align with the FAAs
pending UPRT Advisory Circular, the
company has a second process that puts
Roll before Power, a recovery the FAA
favors for stalls and nose-low recoveries.
Like APS, many in the industry, includ-
ing Flight Research, are lukewarm to
the priority of putting Power over Roll
in the process. Flight Research has its
own say-do processUTAP (Unload,
Throttle, Ailerons and Pitch).
I used the latter process with Mat-
suit, a perk for all participants; a full
helmet with oxygen mask; and a 1-hr.
introduction to the rocket-powered
Martin Baker ejection seat I would be
riding on in the Impala. Flying from the
front seat of the Impala, Glaser depart-
ed Mojave and climbed to 20,000 ft. so
I could put UTAP to the test from the
backseat. After a series of accelerated
stalls, nose-high and nose-low upsets,
Glaser had me perform a split-S (roll
inverted then pull through the verti-
cal) to show how much altitude is lost
(about 4,500 ft.) compared with the
optimal responseusing UTAPand
roll to wings-level (about 1,500 ft. lost);
a tail-slide to show the stability charac-
teristics of the aircraft, as highlighted
by Nadia Roberts in the classroom (the
JOHN CROFT/AW&ST
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My ight in APSs tandem-seat Extra
EA-300L included recoveries from
common upset conditions, using
the companys trademarked Push-
Power-Roll-Stabilize process.
BACK TO SPACE,
THE AMERICAN WAY.
Boeings Commercial Crew Transportation System will provide NASA with safe, reliable crew and cargo transportation
to the International Space Station. The CST-100 is an American spacecraft that will launch from American soil. Boeing
is proud to partner with NASA in restoring a U.S. capability critical to a robust exploration program.
O
n Oct. 1, 2001, the global space-exploration community
convened in Toulouse, France, for the 52nd International
Astronautical Congress (IAC), an annual gathering where
spaceight professionals compare notes and work deals aimed
ideallyat expanding human knowledge of the universe through
cooperation.
The U.S. was reeling in the after-
math of the deadly airliner attacks
in New York and Washington three
weeks earlier, and IAC organizers were
scrambling because NASA had de-
cided not to attend. Technical papers
went undelivered, and top U.S. civil-
space ofcials were not available for
the bi- and multilateral discussions on
cooperative exploration that form the
of-stage subtext at IACs every year.
The International Space Station
(ISS) project was foundering in the
face of U.S. funding shortfalls that
preceded the terrorist attacks, and
the prospect of an expensive U.S. mili-
tary response did nothing to encourage
NASAs anxious space station partners
(AW&ST Oct. 15, 2001, p. 81).
This week delegates will gather in
Toronto for the 65th IAC. Since 2001
everything has changed, and nothing
has changed, in international space
cooperation. Space station assembly is
nished, and the orbiting lab is up and
running. The U.S. continues to be the
biggest spender in government space-
flight, by far. But NASAs partners
still worry about the agencys ability
to deliver on its promises, and some
see U.S. leadership in space slipping as
the endless war in the Middle East ap-
pears headed into a new chapter.
In Europe, planetary scientists are
still scrambling to recover from NASAs
withdrawal from the joint ExoMars se-
ries of red planet orbiters and landers,
although their fallback partnership with
Russia is also running into the troubles
that are typical with any complex
technical partnership (see page 38).
Upcoming changes in the U.S. Con-
gress may make it easier for China to
enter the mix, with its ambitions for
human spaceight and potentially sig-
nicant resources. But the likely legis-
lative heir to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.),
the retiring lawmaker who has blocked
U.S.-China space cooperation, is seen
as a clone on the subject. And it is not
clear that China, which is forming
its own partnerships independent of
NASA, wants to go beyond the small-
scale cooperative science projects al-
ready underway (see page 42).
China aside, space agencies world-
wide are feeling the pinch of tight
budgets. More and more often, they
are turning to public/private partner-
ships with the aerospace industry to
stretch their funds, offering greater
independence to companies willing to
seek profits outside the atmosphere
(see page 40).
Perhaps the biggest threat to in-
ternational space cooperation this
year is the ongoing confrontation be-
tween Russia and much of the rest of
the worldincluding its ISS-partner
nationsover Crimea and Ukraine.
Given Russias deep space-industry
heritage and the web of cooperative
ventures it has entered since the So-
viet Union disintegrated, the charges,
countercharges and sanctions over its
annexation of the Crimean Peninsula
and support for separatist Ukrainian
rebels has roiled the global space en-
deavor (AW&ST May 6, p. 26).
Concern over the continued avail-
Frank Morring, Jr. Washington, Amy Svitak Paris
and Bradley Perrett Beijing
Cooperation
Changes
Cold Wars end and 9/11 continue
to shape international space
FUTURE OF SPACE COOPERATION
Eventual human missions to Mars
are shaping international explora-
tion planning eforts.
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ability of the powerful Russian RD-180
rocket engine that powers the United
Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V ve-
hicle has injected urgency into U.S.
planning for a domestic replacement.
Congress has reallocated funds for the
work and is considering new engine-
development appropriations. Mean-
while, ULA has entered a partnership
with Blue Origin to develop a new hy-
drocarbon rocket engine designated
the BE-4 as a replacement/follow-on
to the RD-180 (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 27;
Sept. 22, p. 26).
Despite the sanctions and saber-
rattling, work on the ISS has con-
tinued without obvious upset even
though tensions between the two
primary station partner nations still
loom large. NASA and the Russian
federal space agency Roscosmos
continue to provide primary ground
support for the station through their
mission control centers in Houston
and Moscow, and Russia continues
to transport astronauts from NASA
and other partner nations to and from
the station alongside its cosmonauts
(AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 10).
Weve had these issues before
where space has been able to rise
above the politics of the moment, says
Michael F. OBrien, longtime NASA as-
sociate administrator for international
and interagency relations. This is
more serious than the ones in the past,
thats for sure, but its nice to know
there is something we can cooperate
on even when there are signicant is-
sues between governments.
The space station is the model its in-
ternational partners and other space-
faring nations are using in preparing
long-range exploration plans ultimately
aimed at human missions to the surface
of Mars. There is a clear understand-
ing that, just as the $100 billion ISS
was beyond the means of any one na-
tion, preparing for and executing what
NASA managers now call pioneering
on Mars will require many players.
Documented in the global explora-
tion road map that calls out potential
contributions from the 14 nations par-
ticipating in its preparation, and any
others who may join later, the plans
recognize that no single power can
retain control over the critical path to
Mars. Just as present plans envision
the U.S. providing heavy-lift launch,
while Europe and perhaps others build
human landers for a return to the lu-
nar surface (at a minimum), the long-
term goals will require shared assets.
The road-mapping process has
clearly demonstrated the comple-
mentary interests of the participants
and the potential benets that can be
gained through cooperation among
nations to achieve a common goal,
write William Gerstenmaier, associ-
ate NASA administrator for human
exploration and operations (HEO), and
Kathleen Laurini, the HEO stafer who
has shepherded the U.S. agencys con-
tribution to the exploration road map,
in a recent paper on the subject. c
This close-up of the ISS shows hardware from the U.S.,
Russia, Japan, the European Space Agency and Canada.
Future cooperation will follow the station model.
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Frank Morring, Jr. Washington and Amy Svitak Paris
Tight Money
Competition for public funds worldwide
complicates needed space cooperation
I
t was easy to cooperate in space
across national borders during
the Cold War, provided the border
wasnt the Iron Curtain. The super-
powers signed up their allies and went
to work.
Today the former superpowers
maintain a sometimes uneasy joint
operation in orbit on the International
Space Station (ISS). While the vestiges
of a space race remain in the form of
export controls on dual-use space hard-
warein the U.S. primarily aimed at
China for nowthe inability of would-
be partners to keep their nancial com-
mitments is becoming at least as big a
problem in setting up space-coopera-
tion deals.
In a sense, that is nothing new. When
the ISS was in development, Japanese
human-spaceight ofcials joked that
they started out with the smallest pres-
surized module on the drawing board
and wound up with the largest be-
cause the others kept shrinking while
Kibo remained the same size. But tight
budgets forced by competing priorities
have made unpleasant surprises more
common.
Perhaps the best recent example is
NASAs 2012 decision to pull the plug on
its 50% share of Europes long-planned
ExoMars program, which envisioned a
methane-detecting orbiter and landing
demonstrator at the red planet in 2016,
followed two years later by a pair of ter-
restrial rovers capable of drilling into
the surface and caching soil samples
(AW&ST Feb. 20, 2012, p. 33).
With NASA no longer a partner, the
European Space Agency (ESA) turned
to Moscow, hastily forging a coopera-
tive agreement that has so far kept the
1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) campaign large-
ly on track. The two-pronged mission
will still send the ExoMars Trace Gas
Orbiter (TGO) and an Entry, Descent
and Landing Demonstrator Module
(EDM) to Mars in January 2016, though
the 2018 leg has been scaled back to de-
liver a single terrestrial rover equipped
with a drill.
Both missions are to launch on Rus-
sian Proton heavy-lift rockets, with
NPO Lavochkin leading development of
a descent module with ExoMars prime
contractor Thales Alenia Space of Italy.
That module is to carry the European
A
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rover to the Martian surface in 2018.
We were lucky that the Russians
were interested in taking over the very
signicant role NASA had in this coop-
eration and deciding to do so in a rela-
tively short timeframe, says Rolf de
Groot, head of ESAs coordination ofce
for the robotic exploration program at
its Estec facility in the Netherlands.
De Groot says one of the biggest
challenges has been the development
of the 2018 lander, a NASA responsi-
bility under the original partnership
agreement.
With the Russians, we have a mixed
lander, with key components coming
from the 2016 mission, he says. It
makes management of that part more
difcult, because its an integrated de-
scent module, rather than having very
clean interfaces like we had
with NASA.
De Groot says the 2016
mission is on schedule at
Thales Alenia Space, with
the launch campaign ex-
pected to begin in October
next year. But delays in
completing the design of
the Russian descent mod-
ule have put a preliminary
design review of the 2018
mission three months be-
hind schedule.
The Russians finalized
the descent module design
review in July, and there
are still some actions ongo-
ingit was not completely successful,
de Groot says. But these actions are
taken up now in our system prelimi-
nary design review process, and there
is no reason to assume we will not be
ready for the 2018 launch date.
De Groot says ESA and its industrial
partners are working closely with their
Russian counterparts to bring the 2018
descent module to completion on time.
We are doing the parachutes, the ra-
dar and the onboard computer, and all
of those will have had heritage from
the hopefully successful landing dem-
onstrator in 2016, he says.
The 2018 rover is also a challenge,
according to de Groot, although lead
contractor Airbus Defense and Space
The 2018 ExoMars rover
engineering unit works
out in ESAs new Mars
yard, after a late shift in
program partners.
U.K. has had ample time to rene the
development, which he says is in the
advanced C/D stage.
We have condence that the rover
will work because we have had so much
time to work on it due to the diferent
cooperation schedules that kept chang-
ing, he says.
Of course, funding shortfalls like the
one that drove NASA out of the project
are endemic in the space-science eld,
where researchers must convince poli-
ticians to allocate scarce public funds
to pay for the expensive hardware nec-
essary for most missions. While Ros-
cosmos recently secured its share of
ExoMars funding, including money for
both Proton launch vehicles and Rus-
sian work on the 2018 descent module,
Europe is still short by 200 million to
complete its contributions to the latter
half of the mission.
Managers like de Groot understand
that in the long run, it usually is less
expensive to stick to the original plan,
if at all possible. Tight funding for one
partner can add expense to the others.
The reformation of the ExoMars
program made it more expensive
than the original cooperation with the
U.S., because NASA was supposed to
do the full landing system, de Groot
says. He adds that the 20-nation ESA
will be asked to provide the additional
ExoMars funding during a key budget
ministerial meeting in early December.
All the member states are fully aware of
the programs need, and it will denitely
mean we miss our launch date of 2018 if
we dont get the money in time, he says.
De Groot says ExoMars is currently
nanced through the end of 2015, but
that the program needs to make com-
mitments for the C/D/E phase of the
whole mission early next year, and for
that we dont have full coverage.
The need for additional ExoMars
funding comes at a difficult time for
ESA, which is faced with hard choices
over how and when to nance around
4 billion for Europes existing and fu-
ture launchers while continuing sup-
port for the ISS through 2020.
The ISS and ExoMars are really the
pillars of ESAs exploration strategy,
de Groot says.
The same could have been said of
NASA before it bailed out of ExoMars,
an event that reects the changes in
the way the U.S. has executed its space
policy over the past two decades, ac-
cording to Lennard Fisk, a solar phys-
icist and former NASA associate ad-
ministrator who recently became the
rst U.S. citizen to serve as president
of the International Council of Sci-
ences Committee on Space Research
(Cospar).
I wasnt up close and personal on
that one, but I believe its probably a
classic example of the inability of the
U.S. to make any kind of a commitment
when your partners wanted to do so,
and yet it was a priority in the U.S. pro-
gram as well, says Fisk, who is now
the University of Michigans Thomas
M. Donohue Distinguished University
Professor of Space Science.
Despite its setbacks on ExoMars,
ESA is in better shape than NASA
when it comes to consistent space-
science funding, according to Fisk. He
notes that ESAs mandatory-program
structure allows its managers to es-
sentially have an expectation of what
their budgets will always be when they
commit to something, whereas in the
case of the U.S. we get appropriations
every year.
Fisk was NASAs associate admin-
istrator for space science and applica-
tions in 1987-93. Among the missions
launched during his tenure were the
Hubble Space Telescope and the Ulyss-
es solar orbiter, both NASA/ESA col-
laborations. Fisk credits his personal
relationships with counterparts at
ESA and other space agencies, and the
relatively steady funding line at NASA,
with making it easier to set up coopera-
tive missions in those days.
There was an enormous authority
given to the [associate administrator]
late 80s early 90s, so my word on
what we were going to do carried some
weight, he says. Today there are many,
many players in that process[the Of-
ce of Management and Budget] at all
sorts of levels, Congress at all sorts of
levels, and there are fewer degrees of
freedom to the associate administrator
to make commitments that his partner
thinks he will honor. That really is a se-
rious impediment in being able to enter
into agreements, particularly since the
U.S. cannot commit to anything more
than a year at a time because of the ap-
propriations process.
At roughly $5 billion a year, NASAs
science budget alone is larger than most
other space agencies total funding, and
comparable to the total budgets of Rus-
sia and ESA. Despite the uncertainty
over the U.S. agencys long-term plans,
NASAs list of its cooperative programs
lls a 150-page book. According to that
NASA-published tomeGlobal Reach:
A View of NASAs International Coop-
erationnoteworthy international
missions and collaborations underway
today include the James Webb Space
Telescope (with ESA and the Canadian
Space Agency); the Global Precipita-
tion Measurement Mission (with the
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency);
and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
(AMS) on the ISS.
Despite the congressional prohibi-
tion on NASA collaboration with China
(see page 42), China is among the 16 na-
tions participating in the AMS, which
is basically a particle physics detector
that collects natural particles arriving
from celestial sources instead of being
generated in large linear accelerators.
Designed to help science better under-
stand the origin and structure of the
Universe by studying mysterious dark
matter and dark energy, among other
phenomena, it is led by the U.S. Energy
Department.
The magnet at the core of AMS was
built in China, in collaboration with
experts from the U.S., Germany and
Switzerland. And while NASA is not
allowed to cooperate with China in
space (unlike the Energy Department,
as well as the U.S. military and other
U.S. government organizations), the
space agencies of NASAs traditional
partners are increasingly looking to
China for access to space. The U.S. In-
ternational Trafc in Arms Regulations
(ITAR) impede the process when dual-
use hardware with U.S. provenance is
involved, but Chinas planned space
station and unmanned spacecraft of-
fer an attractive alternative to the ISS
(AW&ST Sept. 30, 2013, p. 24; Sept. 16,
2013, p. 50).
For scientists like Fisk, who have
taught generations of Chinese students
at U.S. universities, a pivot to China in
space science would make more sense
than the current restrictions, particu-
larly as NASA takes on new and expen-
sive human-spaceight projects with a
at future-budget prole.
You have a space program in the
case of the Chinese which has money,
he says. Its kind of like the height
of the Apollo program. They cant do
things technically as well as we can, but
they certainly have the resources to do
so, and the Europeans are collaborat-
ing with them, the Russians are collab-
orating with them, and the Americans
arent allowed to. That works to our
detriment. c
N
ASAs selection of Boeing and
Space Exploration Technologies
(SpaceX) to develop its next hu-
man-spaceight vehicle is but the most
dramatic example of a worldwide hand-
of of routine space operationsif there
is such a thingto the private sector.
NASA already uses privately owned
vehicles to deliver cargo to the Inter-
national Space Station (ISS), and
Boeing and SpaceX will continue the
trend with the Commercial Crew
Transportation Capability (CCtCap)
development efort announced Sept.
16 (AW&ST Sept. 22, p. 24).
The U.S. agency pioneered the push
to nd new commercial markets in or-
bit with a seed-money efort to develop
ISS cargo services in 2006. Today it is
expanding the approach across its port-
folio to stretch its inadequate budget.
In Europe, space agencies have es-
tablished partnerships with industry
through initiatives that seed commer-
cial technology development while
stimulating new markets. Among the
more visible of these cooperations is
the Alphabus project, a commercial
Built by Airbus Defense and Space
(then Astrium) and launched in 2013,
Alphasats core mission for Inmarsat is
carrying an advanced geo-mobile com-
munications payload to provide access
to the extended L-band spectrum and
enable a range of high-data-rate ser-
vices for aeronautical, land and mari-
time users.
The largest and most sophisticated
commercial communications satellite
built in Europe, Alphasat is expected to
handle more than 750 mobile channels
in this band, improving signal quality
in particular for satellite phone users.
The program included development
of an advanced digital integrated pro-
cessor by Airbus Defense and Space to
allow more exible allocation of capac-
ity through digital channelization and
beam-forming.
At the same time, Alphasat is host-
ing four ESA demonstration payloads
weighing a combined 140 kg, aimed
at advancing Europes position in the
global space-based telecommunica-
tions industry, an approach that saves
the agency the cost of ying separate
or dedicated missions.
ESA could have contributed indi-
satellite platform developed among the
European Space Agency (ESA), French
space agency CNES and rival manufac-
turers Airbus Defense and Space and
Thales Alenia Space at a time when
large, high-power satellite programs
were a growing trend.
Although that is no longer the case,
London-based mobile satellite services
provider Inmarsat is operating the rst
Alphabus platform, known as Alphasat,
through a public-private partnership
with the 20-nation ESA under its Ad-
vanced Research in Telecommunica-
tions Systems (Artes) program.
Of the 598 million ($770 million)
needed to develop and launch the
6,600-kg (14,550-lb.) spacecraft, In-
marsat nanced 225 million through
a loan from the European Investment
Bank, while ESA contributed around
230 million by supplying the Alpha-
bus platform.
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Inmarsat and ESA joined forces
and funding to develop Alphasat,
Europes largest and most sophisti-
cated commercial telecom satellite.
Video For more on the European
Data Relay Systemtap here
in the digital edition or go to
AviationWeek.com/EDRS
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Amy Svitak Paris and Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
Prot Motive
Following the ISS model, civil agencies tap
private partners for spaceight development
The geostationary European
Data Relay System will speed
delivery of Earth-observation
data by relaying information from
spacecraft in other orbits to
ground stations, as illustrated.
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Bradley Perrett Beijing
and Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
Outside
Looking In
China is forging partnerships
in spite of U.S. restrictions
D
espite restrictions on bilateral civil space cooperation
with China imposed by the U.S. Congress, NASA is qui-
etly working a few small space science projects with
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, including potential joint
analysis of open-source lunar data from the Chinese rover and
U.S. orbiters.
The upcoming retirement of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who
has used his chairmanship on the House Appropriations sub-
committee that funds NASA to block space cooperation on
human-rights and national security grounds, may ease the
restrictionsalthough Wolfs legislative heir apparent, Rep.
John Culbertson (R-Texas), shares his views on China.
That could mean NASA will continue to be the only U.S.
government agency explicitly barred from cooperating with
Chinese counterparts. But it remains to be seen whether, and
why, Chinese space organizations would want to work with
NASA anyway.
From 2018, under current planning, the International Space
Station (ISS) will have company in orbit: The planned Chinese
space station, sometimes called Tiangong 3, will be built over
the next three years. And by 2024, when U.S. funding for the
ISS is scheduled to end, the Chinese facility could be alone in
space. If a space experiment needs to be done with human
hands, it could be done on the Chinese station or not at all.
It is more than likely that much foreign work will be done
on the Chinese orbiting facility (AW&ST Sept. 30, 2013,
p. 24). China says it will be available to other countries.
Wed like to actively carry out international exchange and
cooperation with other countries, Yang Liwei, deputy direc-
tor of the China Manned Space Agency and Chinas rst tai-
konaut in space, told fellow space travelers at a conference
of the Association of Space Explorers in Beijing this month.
That includes constructing the station itself. Among four
areas in which other countries could work with China on the
station, the agency lists cooperation in platform technology
[including] individual facility or assemblies [and] subsystems
or modules.
The station is apparently being designed with expansion by
a foreign partner in mind, since the agency told the meeting
of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in June
that in its basic form, with three modules, the facility would
have a mass of about 70 metric tons but could be expanded to
160-180 metric tons. The ISS has a mass of 419 metric tons.
The agency is also making the facility available for research
and onboard experiments and suggests astronauts from other
countries, which it could train, could use the station. Exchang-
ing astronauts and cooperating in their selection and train-
ing methods, is a possibility, says Ji Qiming of the agencys
planning division.
More generally, China sees the station as an opportunity to
promote the technology transfer, [beneting] other countries,
especially the developing countries and regions, Ji says.
In addition to collaboration in applied experiments, we also
designed adapters that can dock with other nations space-
craft, says Yang, according to the China Daily newspaper.
Ji told the June meeting that construction would begin in
2018 and would be completed around 2022. That is two years
later than has been previously stated, but the delay is unlikely
to be seen as important: Chinas civil space program, generally
aiming at targets that the U.S. and Soviet Union hit decades
ago, rarely seems to be in a rush.
An orbital laboratory/docking target, the 8.5-ton Tian-
gong 1, was launched in 2011 and will be followed by another,
Tiangong 2, in 2016; last year, the target for that mission
was 2015. The protracted development of the Long March 5
launcher may explain the delay in the station construction
schedule, but Tiangong 2 will presumably be launched by
vidually to all the bits and pieces and
then pushed the technology out, says
Philippe Sivac, Alphasat project man-
ager at ESA. But doing it within a
commercially minded, operator-driv-
en project is something that forces us
to deliver the technologies in a xed
timeframe, and with clear goals. It is
an approach that will drive other pub-
lic-private partnerships.
Although the Alphabus platform has
yet to gain traction in the commercial
market, Sivac says the companies lega-
cy platformsEurostar and Spacebus,
respectivelybeneted from the devel-
opment. On the government side, ESAs
technology demonstrators include a
payload designed by Space Engineer-
ing and Thales Alenia Space of Italy to
compare the atmospheric attenuation
of K
a
-band transmissions with those of
new Q/V-band signals.
Alphasat also is testing a new star-
tracker built by Jena-Optronik of Ger-
many with an active pixel detector that
is providing early ight heritage for a
new product. Its much easier to sell on
the worldwide market when they have a
demonstration ight booked and ready
to go, Sivac says.
Also among the payloads is a laser
communications terminal that will be
used to test what ESA hopes will even-
tually be a commercial data relay ser-
vice using satellites in geosynchronous
orbit to transmit Earth-observation
satellite data to users more quickly.
The payload is part of another public-
private partnership, the European Data
Relay System (EDRS), being managed
by Airbus Defense and Space, which
has bought two EDRS laser commu-
nications payloads. One is to fly as a
hosted terminal on a satellite being
built for Eutelsat, and the other is a
terminal on a dedicated satellite Airbus
ordered from OHB System of Germany
under the partnership. The satellite will
also carry a hosted payload, being pur-
chased by commercial satcom provider
Avanti of London that will operate it as
a separate commercial service.
In development since 2011, EDRS
is an example of where public-private
initiatives can sometimes experience
complications. Financed with 300
million from ESA member states and
more than 100 million by Airbus De-
fense and Space, EDRS is running at
least six months behind due to the
the well-established Long March 2F.
Foreign use of the Chinese station
will mark a great step forward for
the country in global space explora-
tion and science, with China playing a
clearly leading role. But it will hardly
be new for Chinese engineers and
scientists to work with foreign space
agencies. The China National Space
Agency has, for example, shared data
collected by its Change lunar explora-
tion missions. For the latest, Change
3, launched in December, the Euro-
pean Space Agency helped track the
spacecraft on its voyage to the Moon,
received signals from it and relayed
commands from the Beijing opera-
tions center.
We have had very good cooperation with other countries
and international organizations in previous missions, says Wu
Zhijian, spokesman for the State Administration of Science,
Technology and Industry for National Defense. In the next
stage of the lunar program, there will be more international
cooperation.
Change 3 made Chinas rst soft landing on the Moon Dec. 4,
2013, in the Mare Imbrium and deployed the Yutu (Jade Rab-
bit) rover (see photo). NASA ofcials say they are working
with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to set up joint analysis
of ground-truth data from the Chinese rover to correlate it
with data from the U.S. agencys Lunar Reconnaissance Or-
biter and other U.S. orbiters that have circled the Moon.
Meanwhile, Chinas prospects for cooperation with Russia
appeared to expand in May, when a meeting between min-
isters resulted in an agreement to set up a joint, high-level
working group for strategic Russian-Chinese space coopera-
tion projects.
Russia announced it was uninterested in helping to extend
the life of the ISS beyond 2020, and Russian Deputy Prime
Minister Dmitri Rogozin says the countrys space agency
wants to let China participate in replacement projects. China
and Russia would discuss projects
including cooperation in the eld of
rocket engine development, the Mos-
cow Times quoted Rogozin as saying.
Despite congressionally approved
bilateral talks about U.S./China co-
operation at the Moon, in using space
assets to monitor water supplies in
the Himalayas and to revitalize an
old geodetics collaboration, NASA
remains blocked from signicant joint
activity by legislation that originated
with Wolf.
Meanwhile, Culbertson, Wolf s
likely replacement as subcommittee
chair, says Chinas Yutu rover landed
in one of the richest concentrations
of rare-Earth metals on the surface of the Moon, suggesting
that China wants to claim the mineral rights there. We need
to keep them out of our space program, and we need to keep
NASA out of China, Culbertson told the Houston Chronicle
when asked if he supports Wolfs position. They are not our
friends.
Despite the congressional prohibition, NASA ofcials have
been supportive of closer ties with their Chinese counterparts.
Administrator Charles Bolden and NASA Astronaut Peggy
Whitson, a former ISS commander, have visited the China
Manned Space Engineering Ofce facilities in Beijing and the
human-spaceight launch site at Jiuquan. Until Wolfs legis-
lation went into efect, Bolden was conducting back-channel
talks with Chinese ofcials to explore expanded cooperation.
The U.S. attitude toward China, to most of us it makes no
sense, says Lennard Fisk, a former science associate admin-
istrator at NASA and the rst U.S. president of president of
the International Council of Sciences Committee on Space
Research (Cospar). During the Cold War, [we had scientic
cooperation with the Soviets], with their missiles pointing at
us and our missiles pointing at them, we ew some missions
together, we talked science together. Thats where Cospar was
founded, for that whole purpose. c
delay of a key test of the laser relay
capability earlier this year.
We had to extend our period of
work, and this last part of the work,
the last six months, is not covered any-
more by ESA contracts, says Evert
Dudok, executive vice president of
communications, intelligence and se-
curity at Airbus Defense and Space.
He adds that Airbus is investing 20
million to continue the project in the
absence of ESA funding, which he says
ran out in June.
In addition, the European Commis-
sion, which owns the Copernicus Earth-
monitoring program under which Sen-
tinel-1A was launched, has yet to sign of
on a service-level agreement with ESA
for the EDRS program. Dudok, who
anticipates approval of the agreement
this year, says Airbus expects the proof-
of-concept test will occur by February.
Airbus is investing, starting now,
without having the proof of concept to
be done before February next year,
Dudok says. Were very optimistic
about the test, but also very interested
in the business case.
In the meantime, the dedicated
EDRS satellite being built at OHB is
among the rst of a new line of small
spacecraft developed under yet an-
other public-private partnership with
ESA. Known as the SmallGEO plat-
form, it is aimed at lling a gap in Eu-
ropes light-class satellite-bus ofering.
The rst SmallGEO platform, His-
pasat AG-1, is slated to launch next
year with a technology demonstrator
co-developed by ESA with Thales Ale-
nia Space and Mier Communicaciones
of Spain.
In the U.S., NASA is expanding its
commercial cargo and crew work into
other areas to stretch its at budget.
The agencys Space Technology Mis-
sion Directorate, which has become
a kind of cash cow in Congress and
among agency budgeteers because its
technology development eforts are not
linked to specic missions, has starting
a move to public-private partnerships
for advanced entry, descent and landing
research (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 18).
And on the ISS, NASA is increasing-
ly relying on private-sector partners to
provide the specialized experiment ac-
commodation it needs to expand utiliza-
tion of the $100 billion facility (AW&ST
July 22, 2013, p. 28). c
X
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A
U.S. and Chinese scientists may work
together to correlate data from the Yutu
rover, delivered to the lunar surface by
Change 3, and U.S. lunar orbiters.
Senkaku
Islands
C HI NA
E-2D Coverage
of the Senkakus
E-2D
Station
167 km
2
9
6
k
m
East China
Sea
Maritime target
detection range
359 km
TAI WAN
Okinawa
Air target detection range
at least 555 km
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Bradley Perrett Tokyo
Senkaku Watch
Tokyo wants a stronger
airborne early warning eet
F
or a country of its size, Japan
seems to have a lot of airborne
earl y warni ng and control
(AEW&C) aircraft. The air forces four
Boeing E-767s and 13 Northrop Grum-
man E-2C Hawkeyes should be enough
to continuously keep one aircraft on at
least ve patrol stations, compared with
Royal Australian Air Forces two sus-
tainable stations and South Koreas one.
Yet the Japanese government has
decided that this force is not enough,
perhaps because the E-2Cs, of 1960s
design, are no longer considered good
enough, or perhaps because the coun-
try wants the capability to maintain a
sixth patrol. The resulting requirement
for four more AEW&C aircraft is ofer-
ing the most immediate export sales
opportunity for such equipment, with
potential for larger follow-on sales.
Chasing the order, Boeing and
Northrop Grumman are promoting the
737 AEW&C and the E-2D Hawkeye,
respectively. But Kawasaki Heavy In-
dustries (KHI) is working in the back-
ground on meeting Japans long-term
requirements with a derivative of the
indigenous P-1 maritime aircraft.
The defense ministry says in its
current budget request that it is in
the process of selecting a type for the
AEW&C order. It cannot be close to
making a choice, however, because for-
mal bids have not yet been requested.
Boeing emphasizes that its ofering is
now in service. Boeings 737 AEW&C
provides proven airborne surveillance
and communications capabilities,
the company says in a brief response
to Aviation Weeks inquiries. The 737
AEW&C became initially operational in
2012 with its launch customer, Australia
(under the name Wedgetail, by which
the type is perhaps best known).
Northrop Grumman ofered no com-
ment. The E-2D is due to become op-
erational with the U.S. Navy in 2015.
The Japanese order looks more im-
portant to Boeing than to Northrop
Grumman, since the 737 AEW&C, a
purely export product, has a backlog
of just six units, while the U.S. Navy re-
quires 75 E-2Ds. Northrop Grumman
builds the 737 AEW&Cs Mesa radar
and therefore stands to gain even if
Boeing wins. Beyond this opportunity,
Boeing has hopes of using the 737-700
civil airplane, the basis of the AEW&C
version, to create a ground-surveil-
lance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force
(AW&ST, Sept. 15, p. 42).
Japan, tending to strengthen its forces
amid tension with China over disputed
islands, may be planning to use the order
to enlarge its AEW&C eet. The govern-
ments mid-term defense plan, issued in
December, sets out the requirement for
the four aircraft but makes no mention
of their replacing E-767s or E-2Cs. The
Yomiuri newspaper, however, says the E-
2Cs will be replaced partly by imports
and partly by AEW&C P-1s. The E-767s
can be expected to stay in ser-
vice longer than the E-2Cs.
The supplier of new aircraft
should be well-positioned to
replace all the E-2Cs if the P-1
AEW&C program falters. The
E-2C entered Japanese service
in 1983 and is being wholly su-
perseded in U.S. Navy carrier
air wings by the E-2D, which
is equipped with a Lockheed
Martin APY-9 radar.
The E-2Ds future as stan-
dard U.S. Navy equipment
may be seen as an attraction
to Japan, which in any conict
would expect to cooperate with
U.S. forces. Boeing seems to be
reminding Japan that the E-2D
is not yet operational, however.
The 737 AEW&C is also in-
teroperable with U.S. forces;
otherwise it would not have
been chosen by Australia,
which has six of the aircraft
and also puts high priority on
cooperation with the U.S. mil-
itary. Moreover, Japan is de-
veloping an increasingly close
military relationship with Australia.
On the other hand, South Korea, also
in a territorial dispute with Japan, has
bought four 737 AEW&Cs. Japan may
see advantages in differentiating its
equipment.
The Boeing aircraft ies higher than
the E-2D, giving its radar a more distant
horizon, and for longer. As a jet, it can
more quickly reach its patrol station and
more nimbly retire from it if threatened.
DEFENSE
E-2Ds would cover the Senkakus from a station close enough to see aircraft crossing
the Chinese coast.
That patrol station could be close
to the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu
Islands, according to a revealing
Northrop Grumman chart leaked
anonymously by someone who pho-
tographed it at a brieng. The chart
suggests the E-2Ds would operate
from Okinawa, just 167 km (90 nm.)
from a suitable patrol station, obviat-
ing the types disadvantage in deploy-
ment speed.
Northrop Grumman guarantees
that an E-2D could observe air targets
in a small patch of Chinese territory,
and implies by its description of its
radar range against aircraftat least
555 km (300 nm.)that rather more
could be observed.
The four aircraft that Japan re-
quires should guarantee one aircraft
continuously on station, allowing for
one in deep maintenance, one faulty,
and one in transit or refueling. And it
is notable that the purchase will guar-
antee keeping one station overseen by
a modern radar with an active, elec-
tronically scanned array. Meanwhile,
the four E-767s would be able to main-
tain a second highly capable station.
Japans 13 E-2Cs should be able to
maintain at least four patrol stations,
for a total of six if the new aircraft
are to be additions, not replacements..
In March, retired air force general
Toshiyuki Miyawaki argued in the
magazine Japan Military Review that
Japan, unlike Australia and South Ko-
rea, did not have a fairly predictable
threat axis, explaining why it needed
so many AEW&C aircraft. This is evi-
dent in Japans AEW&C basing: the E-
767s y from central Japan while the
E-2Cs are based at Okinawa, far to the
south, and at Misawa, at the northern
end of Honshu. The obvious threats
are Russia, North Korea and China.
The AEW&C version of KHIs P-1
maritime aircraft should be developed
by the mid 2020s, says the Yomiuri.
That raises the question of whether
Japan can wait so long to replace its
E-2Cs, or longer if the indigenous
development is delayed. Mitsubishi
Electric, Japans largest radar builder,
is probably working on the sensor for
the aircraft. P-1 deliveries began last
year against a requirement for 70.
A study for an early warning ra-
dar for a long-endurance unmanned
aircraft was done in 2007-10. In No-
vember last year, the TRDI issued a
requirement for a study for an aircraft,
presumably a manned one. In the bud-
get request of the scal year beginning
April 1, 2015, the defense ministry
asked for 80 million ($735,000) to
study the aerodynamics of an AEW&C
version of the P-1.
If it is built, the P-1 AEW&C should
have a radar with a three- or four-an-
tenna face, says Miyawaki, formerly
the commander of the air forces air
development and test wing. If so, it
would be more like the E-2D than the
737 AEW&C.
The Northrop Grumman RQ-4
Global Hawk is also heading for Japa-
nese service. The Mainichi newspaper
reported in August that Japan would
buy three of the unmanned surveil-
lance aircraft in the scal 2015 budget.
They would be operated by a tri-ser-
vice unit at Misawa airbase in northern
Japan, with the aim of entry into ser-
vice after ve years. Estimated costs,
including ground equipment, are about
100 billion. Two U.S. RQ-4s based in
Guam temporarily deployed to Misawa
in May this year. c
Cold Thoughts
Denmark bolsters its Arctic claims by
strengthening defenses in Greenland
W
hile world attention is fo-
cused on Ukraine and Iraq,
the nations surrounding the
Arctic Circle have been quietly exing
their polar muscle.
Russia has revealed plans to re-open
polar airelds and naval bases on re-
mote islands, while Canada has used
the summer light to train its troops in
the region. For those two countries, ex-
ercises in the higher latitudes are fairly
straightforward, with their signicant
air assets andif necessarylimited
land access.
But for Denmark, which is respon-
sible for the defense of the worlds sec-
ond-largest island, Greenland, Arctic
operations are considerably more chal-
lenging. However, the Danish govern-
ment is keen to exert its sovereignty
as the ice retreats and the region be-
comes more accessible.
While Greenland is mostly autono-
mous, Denmark looks after the islands
foreign and defense policy, although its
capabilities for the latter are limited
partly because of the huge distance be-
tween them. The two capitals, Copen-
hagen and Nuuk, are 1,900 nm. apart.
Currently, the Danish air force car-
ries out sovereignty patrols and shery
protection ights over Greenland for
about two weeks every month, while
Lockheed C-130J Hercules are deployed
to support the Sirius Sledge Patrol, a
Danish navy unit that works in pairs to
enforce sovereignty in the vast national
parks in the northeast of the island. The
C-130 ights air drop supplies to the pa-
trols, breaking the monotony of a lonely
existence in the high north.
But Denmark now wants to enhance
Aireld facilities for the F-16 are
few and far between on the mas-
sive island of Greenland.
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Tony Osborne
Kleine Brogel AB, Belgium, and London
for Danish ofcials, as the number of
cruise ships sailing Arctic waters in-
creases every year.
Recogizing that a Challenger isnt
always available for missions in Green-
land, officials are in the process of
modifying the Hercules with a pylon
that could carry an EO/IR camera or
targeting pod, allowing the aircraft
to conduct intelligence, surveillance
and reconaissance missions. However
Denmarks four-strong Hercules eet
is already under pressure supporting
deployments elsewhere, including in
Mali. Operations to Greenland once
represented 80% of the mission load
of the Danish Hercules eet, but in the
early 2000s this fell to as low as 20%;
this is now being re-balanced as the
focus turns back to Greenland.
Operations to Greenland are simi-
lar to distances to the southern Saha-
ra, says Col. Karsten Jensen, head of
the Danish Transport Wing, speaking
at the Military Airlift Conference in
London Sept. 16.
But this is a national mission on
a strategic scale . . . there is appetite
to do more of this and send a political
signal, he added. c
DEFENSE
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its capabilities in Greenland, to prove
it can deliver more military assets to
the island if needed, sending a signi-
cant message to other Arctic nations.
Perhaps the most challenging of these
demonstrations came in August, when
it conducted a three-day-long deploy-
ment of three Royal Danish Air Force
F-16 Fighting Falcons to Kangerlus-
suaq (Sondrestrom) airport in western
Greenlandthe rst time the air arm
had dispatched ghters to the country.
This deployment uncovered a num-
ber of issues we need to address if we
had to deploy the F-16 to Greenland,
said Maj. John Kristensen, deputy com-
mander of 730 Esk and detachment
commander for the deployment, speak-
ing to Aviation Week at the Belgian Air
Force airshow at Kleine Brogel Sept. 13.
The Danish air force already has han-
garage and facilities at Kangerlussuaq,
which have mainly supported visits
from the Hercules and Bombardier
Challenger aircraft, never ghters.
We had to deploy all the equip-
ment for F-16 operations, emergency
cables for the runways, and also bring
our own liquid oxygen, as they do not
produce that in Greenland, he added.
Kristensen and his pilots also had
to consider their survival. Extra lay-
ers of clothing were adopted, and
operationsparticularly over water,
including a 700-mi. flight between
Kangerlussuaq and the U.S. airbase
at Thulesaw the F-16s escorted by
a Challenger CL604 multi-mission
aircraft tted with satellite commu-
nications, something the F-16s did not
have. The Challenger also has the abil-
ity to drop a life raft to a downed pilot,
supporting him for up to 12 hr. until
helplikely in the form of a nearby
shipcan pick him up. Rescue by he-
licopter in the region is unlikely be-
cause of the huge distances involved.
Kristensen says there are now plans
for a larger-scale exercise, which could
see 6-8 F-16s deployed for 2-3 weeks
sometime between spring and fall 2015.
A key part of such a deployment will
be to use the Litening G4 targeting
pod to assist Danish cartographers to
produce updated shipping charts for
Greenlands eastern coastline.
The Litening pods will use their
geo-location capability to plot points
along the coast that the mapmakers
can combine with satellite imagery to
produce more accurate charts This
will improve safety for shipping along
the eastern coastline, a key concern
The extraordinary environment of Greenland makes for fantastic ying, but
survival could be a challenge in the event of an ejection.
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U
.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson once abbergasted an aide
when he read in his maverick FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover,
on some bit of strategy. Why in the world would the president
want that troublemaker in on this the aide asked. LBJ replied,
Its probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than
outside the tent pissing in.
That is not bad advice when it comes to international space co-
operation. The upsides can be signicant. The downsides can be
managed. And holding spacefaring rivals at arms length often does
nothing but engender resentment.
Unthinkable during the race to the Moon, cooperation between
the U.S. and Russia began nevertheless in the midst of the Cold
War with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. The activity has
ebbed and owed over the decades. But among space professionals
on both sides, the cooperation is universally regarded as positive
and successful. And despite serious tensions over Russias invasion
of Ukraine and some blustering about the export of rocket engines,
joint operations of Soyuz and the International Space Station con-
tinue smoothly.
As we say on the cover and explain in a special report (see
page 36), these are indeed turbulent times for space cooperation.
That is all the more reason to keep it going and expand it to China.
To say China is not a model world citizen is an understatement.
The government conducts large-scale industrial spying and coun-
tenances the widespread theft of intellectual property. In space, its
2007 shootdown of a defunct satellite is the most egregious explo-
sion of dangerous orbital debris in history, and China has continued
A
ir France-KLMs pilots have prevailed. A
strike that crippled air trafc to, from and
within France and the Netherlands for the bet-
ter part of two weeksand led to staggering
nancial losseshas forced the airline to back
down on an ambitious plan to regain competi-
tiveness by expanding its low-cost subsidiary,
Transavia (see page 23).
That has set the stage for the pilots to return
to work on Sept. 30, though even that is far from
certain, given that the strike already has been
extended twice. The retreat is a catastrophe for
Air France-KLM Chairman/CEO Alexandre de
Juniac and could ultimately prove to be the same
for the storied carrier.
The pilots, who are angry about plans to set
up a lower salary structure for Transavia em-
ployees and create new bases outside France and
Hollow Victory for
Air France Pilots
to conduct anti-satellite testing. The U.S. military
must continue its work to protect the edge it has in
space assets and capabilities.
The chief objection to cooperating with the
Chinese civil space program has been that it is
a fundamentally military operation. Yet coopera-
tion with the Chinese military is exactly what is
needed to promote good relations, and if that
cooperation is in a eld that is an intense source
of national pride like space, then all the better.
The troglodytes in the military are ones the West
needs to persuade to act more responsibly. It is
absurd that the U.S. Navy can conduct joint ex-
ercises with the Chinese navy but Congress bars
NASA from working directly with Chinese engi-
neers and scientists.
The U.S. and Russia have remained partners
in space because each knows how difcult and
expensive it is to achieve each advance. The Chi-
nese are intent on becoming a space power on
a par with them. For many reasons, it is time to
bring the Chinesecarefullyinside the tent. c
the Netherlands, are putting parochial interests ahead of reality.
Once upon a time, Air France operated as a protected and favored
national jewel. But those days are gone. Europes legacy airlines
are under a ferocious competitive assault from low-cost carriers
(LCC) such as Ryanair and EasyJet. LCCs are rapidly expanding
service beyond secondary airports and introducing services aimed
at business travelers, such as premium seating and same-day ight
changes. And EU rules strictly prohibit direct state aid to bail out
struggling national airlines.
One need only look at recent nancial results to see the inroads
that European LCCs have made. In its last quarter, Ireland-based
Ryanair reported a hefty increase in net income and 15% operating
margins, bolstered by more passengers, higher fares and improved
load factors. It has laid the foundation for continued growth, be-
ginning to take delivery of 180 new Boeing 737-800s and ordering
up to 200 737 MAXs. By contrast, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa
Group have lowered prot outlooks, and only one of Lufthansas
four airlines, Swiss, made money in the rst half of the year.
Growing Transavia, which has yet to show a prot, was always
going to be an uphill battle. Air France-KLM and Lufthansa
which plans to launch its low-cost platform, Wings, next yearare
late to the game. That is not the fault of pilots but of complacent
management teams that for too long ignored the challenge from
low-cost startups. It is encouraging that they nally recognize the
urgent need to lower costs to remain competitive, except that now
labor unions are standing in the way.
If Air France one day goes the way of Pan Am, its pilots will have
to share the blame. c
Editorials
The U.S. Navy can
conduct joint exercises, but
NASA can barely talk to the
Chinese.

Putting parochial
interests ahead of reality.

End Ban on U.S.-China
Space Cooperation
TECHNOLOGY
Whether your area of interest is open-rotor engines or human-machine interfaces, step inside technology
with the new Aviation Week & Space Technology. Featuring dedicated, in-depth technology insights every
Monday, this expanded subscription will deliver what you need to know, when and how you want to access it.
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