paris airshow news 6-22-11

Vol. 43 No. 15

6•22•2011

PUBLICATIONS

WEDNESDAY

Single Sky Rotorcraft True Grit Engines UAVs

Air traffic rebound drives SESThe massive, multi-national Single European Sky program appears to be making progress, but huge challenges remain unsolved. Page 6

AgustaWestland Takes Over BA609Bell Helicopter finally agrees to sell its share of the languishing civil tiltrotor program to its eager Italian partner. 6

Typhoons take the fight to GaddafiOperation Unified Protector is giving the Eurofighter Typhoon an opportunity to make its combat debut, flown by RAF pilots. Pages 27

PW1000G Consortium in the WorksPratt & Whitney plans to create a consortium with its IAE partners to advance the geared turbofan, but Rolls-Royce may not join. Page 38

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Airbus and IAI team for low-cost AEW on C295 by Chris Pocock

Airbus Military’s partner on the C295 AEW program was revealed here yes-terday as IAI Elta Systems. The pair has been working on the airborne-early-warning project for nearly a year.

The Israeli company is designing a new, fast-rotating active-scan antenna that can also do high-resolution sector scans when halted. The partners said that the acquisition and operating cost will be “a fraction of previous AEW systems.”

“Together we will open a new market in affordable AEW for law enforcement, border patrol and event protection,” said Airbus Military CEO Domingo Urena. He added that early flight tests have

already validated the aerodynamics of the rotodome.

The prototype is flying without the Elta mission sensors, which also include signals intelligence (SIGINT) and an optional, belly-mounted, multimode radar for surface surveillance. These com-ponents will be integrated only when a customer is identified. (There were hints that one could emerge from current oper-ators of the Casa CN235/C295 series, perhaps in Latin America.)

Flying at 20,000 to 24,000 feet, a C295 AEW could offer an unrefueled endur-ance of up to eight hours time on station

Big jet deals soon dispel recovery doubtsby Charles Alcock

Another day, and plenty more dol-lars. The second day of the 2011 Paris Air Show saw yet more major orders for airliners and the engines that power them.

According to pricing analysis by AIN, the sales tally at Le Bourget on Tuesday reached almost $25 billion–not counting associated support contracts. This means that in the first two days of the show, the industry has already generated at least $60 billion in new business. By way of comparison, the 2008 Farnborough International airshow–the last major

aerospace fair ahead of the global finan-cial crisis–raised around $52 billion in a whole week.

Airbus feathered its nest with a string of commitments and orders worth around $10.8 billion. As widely predicted ahead of this week’s show, it was the burgeoning backlog for its new A320neo narrowbody that has domi-nated transactions at Le Bourget.

The CIT leasing group signed a memorandum of understanding for 50 A320neos in a deal worth up to $4.5 billion. JetBlue Airways inked a $3.6 billion MOU for up to 40 of the re-engined twinjets.

Garuda Indonesia sealed another MOU covering 10 A320neos and 15 of the existing A320 model, at a prospec-tive combined value of some $2.1 billion. TransAsia Airways of Taiwan provided Airbus with its only firm contract

BOEING’S DREAMS COME TRUENot content with bringing one Paris show debutante here to Le Bourget this week–the 747-8 Intercontinental–Boeing yesterday deployed its 787 Dreamliner, which arrived from Seattle in the late afternoon. The U.S. airframer, which has historically eschewed ostentatious displays on the airshow circuit, has seriously upstaged its rival Airbus on the latter’s European home turf.

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IAI Panther and ETOP. Page 16Schiebel Camcopter. Page 19Thales Watchkeeper. Page 24Northrop Grumman Global Hawk. Page 27Boeing Phantom Eye. Page 28

Continued on page 37 u Continued on page 37 u

Embraer is mulling a KC-390 civil freighterby David Donald

Embraer is looking at the possibility of a stretched civil version of its KC-390 tanker/transport, but not until the current task of developing the military version has been com-pleted. A freighter version would most likely have fuselage plugs added fore and aft of the center section, not only increas-ing internal capacity, but also providing sufficient fuselage length for a side cargo door.

Orlando Jose Ferreira Neto, senior v-p of the newly created Embraer Defense and Security business, commented that a commercial version would probably employ the

same engines as the military KC-390.

“The [stretched] aircraft would be heavier,” Neto said, “but the military performance requirements regarding take-off lengths are very stringent. In the commercial world you have a lot more margin.” He also noted that the commer-cial sector was “more about volume. In the military world it’s mostly about weight.”

A commercial variant would not be available before 2018, while the company focuses on fulfilling its Brazilian air force development contract for the tanker/transport. Currently,

that program is entering a 12-month joint-definition phase, and a number of sup-pliers have been announced. Further major equipment sup-pliers will be revealed in the coming weeks, including the engine provider.

Discussions between the air force and Embraer con-cerning the engines are report-edly finalized, although Neto would not be drawn on a selec-tion, or even if a selection had been made. CFM and IAE are being considered to supply the 28,000-pound-thrust engines.

Overall, the KC-390 pro-gram is on track to deliver two prototypes in 2014, with Part 25 certification completed in 2015 and military qualification in 2016. Brazil has commit-ted to buying an initial batch of 28 aircraft, and Embraer expects the contract for them to be signed in the second half of 2013. Altogether the com-pany already has commitments for 60 aircraft, and significant additional interest.

Regarding cost, Neto said, “We have to be competitive with the C-130J.” o

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Embraer wants to complete the military KC-390 tanker/transport first, and may then offer a commercial freighter version.

PROBABLEMENT The GreaTesT (air)show on earThDespite the wildly vacillating weather and the usual maddening traffic backups, the world’s aviation industry once again set up its biennnial shop at Le Bourget airport to peruse the latest innovations in the civil and military arenas of flight.

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Europe’s traffic rebound drives SES developmentby Julian Moxon & Ian Sheppard

The global economic reces-sion gave pause to the relentless growth in air traffic over recent years, not least in Europe. But according to Eurocontrol air transport activity, traffic is on the move again, with last summer’s 5-percent increase confirming the recovery of the industry.

Current predictions are for a doubling of 2009 levels by 2030, amounting to around 16.9 million movements per year. “Everyone knows that the cur-rent air traffic management sys-tem cannot cope with such an increase,” said Patrick Ky, exec-utive director of the €2.1 billion ($2.9 billion) SESAR program, which is the research arm of the huge Single European Sky (SES) development effort.

So this is a timely moment, perhaps, for the latest move by the multi-national SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU) running the program. In March the JU revealed that SESAR is set to begin producing its first concrete “deliverables” this year (see box).

Fabulous FABsWhile the SES effort appears

to be making good progress, with no perceived technical or finan-cial issues, it remains subject to institutional and organizational challenges so typical of many such large-scale European pro-grams. Later this year a report is due on the all-important estab-lishment of functional airspace blocks (FABs), the multi-national

chunks of airspace designed to minimize the fragmentation that has always plagued efforts to rationalize European ATM.

FABs are seen as a critical ele-ment of an efficient European air traffic system, but according to Bo Redeborn, Eurocontrol’s principal director of ATM, “sig-nificant issues” remain. “It’s not going very well. We put a lot of effort into creating the nine func-tional airspace areas, but when it comes to the crunch, national service providers and govern-ments are not prepared to give up their national airspace to cre-ate them,” he commented.

As a result, the most basic requirement of FABs–the need for countries to yield sovereignty over their airspace–remains stuck in bureaucratic mire and threat-ens to delay the entire SES proj-ect. “The philosophy is great,” said Redeborn, “but at com-mittee level we don’t see much progress. I can’t see delivery on FABs being on time to meet the December 2011 deadline.”

Under pressure to move things forward, the European Commis-sion appointed a special FAB coordinator in July 2010 charged with banging heads together to get states to agree on the neces-sary measures. “We have to have FABs, but we need to make a final push,” added Redeborn.

Managing the SystemMeanwhile, on another front,

a major SES milestone is finally

in the cards. Member states have agreed to give Eurocontrol over-all responsibility for network management of the SES system. This vital task, which Redeborn said will “introduce a new chap-ter in European aviation,” will effectively give the agency legal powers to manage the ATM net-work, and even to “name, shame and blame” underperforming service providers. The system will work on the basis of key per-formance indicators in the areas of safety, environment, capacity and cost efficiency and will work through the existing Eurocon-trol Performance Review Com-mission, which will have the right to make changes to improve the network without having to seek member states’ approval.

In practice, Eurocontrol will have to be sensitive as to how it carries out the network man-agement job, but there is no doubt that it is the only organi-zation anywhere near capable of doing so. Redeborn applauds the move, but pointed out that it also places the agency on the firing

line if things go wrong. “The really difficult issues we will face are not technical but social,” he said. In the future, SES air traffic controller strikes, for example, will be less effective because the system will be easily able to re-route aircraft around the strike area, but this could serve only to inflame the strike situation.

In some ways, elements of the SES are already arriv-ing, almost by default. “There has been a lot of progress with shortening routes, harmonizing frequencies and combining sup-port functions,” said Redeborn. “All service providers are safety-certified and there is a common European position in interna-tional forums.”

On the air traffic manage-ment (ATM) navigation side, pilots are now given continu-ous descent approaches into many airport terminal areas and continuous climb departures to upper airspace, helping to ease delays due to overcrowding.

At a May 25 hearing of the European Parliament’s transport

committee, SESAR executive director Ky reported that the European Commission is cur-rently working on a proposal for the deployment phase of SESAR. In this regard, he told the politicians that it is essen-tial to have “one single author-ity that is fully accountable for the program and can make deci-sions where individual stake-holders groups are unable to reach agreement.” He added that it is equally important from an international standpoint that the U.S., China, Brazil and other leading states have a sin-gle interlocutor in front of them to discuss and negotiate on stan-dards and timelines.

In Ky’s opinion, another requirement for successful deploy-ment is to make the new “aviation intranet”–SWIM (system-wide information management)–work. “In practice, this integration is extremely complex because it cre-ates dependencies between invest-ments of stakeholders groups that can have diverging interests,”


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SESAR Skeptics Have Their Say

Not everybody is convinced that SESAR is on track. At the March 2011 ATC Global conference in Amsterdam speakers called for states to do far more to con-solidate and cut costs by combining ATC centers and working closely together.

“The air navigation services system has reached the end of its lifecycle and there are various visible symptoms–there is national protection everywhere…[and] user charges are still defined by cost rather than the value of services ren-dered,” complained Danny Weder, CEO of Swiss air navigation service provid-er SkyGuide. “There is only one solution and it involves a fundamental shift of mindset. I’m not convinced there is enough will yet [among politicians], but we must find the courage to change.”

Irish Aviation Authority chief executive Eamonn Brennon said that Wed-er’s comments reflected a consensus that there is something wrong with Eu-rope’s ATM business model. “Everyone says that SESAR is a good thing, but it’s years away…the EC says SES II [the EC legislative package designed to make SESAR happen] solves everything…and everyone says that the future will be cheaper–only it’s more expensive now,” he stated. “Yet often when you cash in the benefits, you’ve forgotten what the cost was.”

Brennon accepted that European airspace capacity could be increased through SESAR, that safety could be increased tenfold and that there could be a 10 percent reduction in emissions through more efficient routings. But as for the fourth stated aim of SESAR–ATM costs being cut–his response was firm: “Not a chance.” –I.S.

Under the SES program, controllers will no longer concern themselves with national airspace but will instead handle traffic in functional airspace blocks.

Continued on page 8 u

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he told the committee.An example of this dilemma

is the need to replace VHF radio (essentially 1950s’ technology) with digital communication. In this respect, said Ky, VHF cannot be put to one side until all flying aircraft are digitally equipped. “The airlines are therefore look-ing at each other, waiting for the other to invest because the more aircraft that are equipped, the cheaper it becomes,” he explained. “On the ground, air navigation service providers do not want to equip until a minimum number

of aircraft are equipped. The result is a stalemate.”

Ky supports incentives to early movers, which he said can be available through operational benefits or financial benefits. “On the operational benefits, we are currently working on the notion of ‘Best equipped, Best served,’ which will help, but this faces a lot of resistance in particular from operators,” he explained. “On the financial incentives, we are cur-rently looking at different types of financial instruments, such as project bonds and airlines equi-page funds, that could be used to at least initiate the change process.

“The vast majority of SESAR investments are going to be made by industry, but I believe public

money can serve as a seed that will leverage private invest-ments into the successful and timely deployment of new tech-nologies,” he concluded. “This

leverage power will be even stron-ger if it is consistent with public policies and can be backed by public guarantees.”

There is still a long way to go before the full benefits of the SES become apparent. Some of the obstacles seem insurmount-able–shortages of European run-ways, difficulties with releasing airspace reserved for the military

and strike action by air traffic controllers being only a few. In the end, however, the same pres-sures that gave rise to the original need for the SES–accommo-dating a huge growth in traffic without creating unacceptable delays–likely will force politicians to see through the necessary measures. The SES will come; it is just a matter of when. o


First Egnos touchdown reveals satnav promise by Julian Moxon

On May 10 a giant Airbus Beluga transport aircraft landed at Pau Pyrénées airport in southern France. On the face of it this was a perfectly normal event, yet it her-alded a new era in European nav-igation: the first touchdown of an aircraft using the new Egnos sat-ellite-based augmentation system.

The arrival of Egnos (Euro-pean geostationary navigation overlay service) is an impor-tant milestone toward the long-awaited deployment of the European Galileo satellite navi-gation system. This year and 2012 will see the first four operational

satellites orbited by Soyuz rocket. By 2014, the hope is that 18

satellites will be in their geo-stationary locations and have achieved initial operational capa-bility. The full 30-satellite constel-lation is planned for deployment by 2019, although the neces-sary €1.9 billion ($2.7 billion) of funding remains subject to Euro-pean Parliament approval.

The Beluga landing followed the European Commission’s announcement on March 2 that Egnos, which consists of transpon-ders on three geostationary satel-lites linked to a network of more

than 40 ground stations and four control centers, had become avail-able for commercial exploitation.

Egnos procedures here at Paris Le Bourget Airport were published in time for the airshow, and today (3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in auditorium room 3) the Euro-pean Space Agency, Eurocon-trol, the European Commission and French space agency CNES, will hold a workshop aimed at explaining the Egnos system and how it will benefit aviation users.

For the aviation community the arrival of Egnos is “a major milestone for satellite technol-ogies in aviation as it will allow the use of satellite systems for both horizontal and vertical positioning,” said Eurocontrol principal director of air traffic management Bo Redeborn.

Egnos is expected to provide significant reductions in decision

minimums compared to conventional nonprecision approaches–without the need for an instrument land-ing system and irrespective of barometric altimeter lim-itations. “This will provide real benefits to all airspace users in terms of airport accessibility, reduction of delays and cancel-lations while maintaining high safety levels,” added Redeborn.

The plan is for all European airports to be Egnos-equipped, but this will not happen overnight as in order to use it for approaches air navigation service provid-ers must first publish procedures and aircraft must be equipped with certified receivers and be approved for operations. France

is currently taking the initiative: “We aim to publish as many

procedures as we can,” said the DGAC’s Benoit Roturier. “By 2020 all of France’s 100 air-ports should be Egnos-capable. We see many benefits, notably improving safety on smaller run-ways where no vertically guided approach is available.”

Egnos is interoperable with the U.S. satellite-based wide angle augmentation system (WAAS),

Traffic rebound drives SESuContinued from page 6

Natnav Coming of AgeIt is only in the past few of years that GPS approaches, pioneered in Alas-

ka in the 1990s, have started to become available. These form another ele-ment of a future, efficient system where aircraft are managed in time as well as space, take efficient paths and don’t waste burning fuel in unnecessary holds. Also, ADS-B has been rolled out as an alternative surveillance system to radar, based on digital information rather than crude, pulse-firing technol-ogy where aircraft identification can take up precious time.

With approaches, the WAAS system in the U.S. has allowed differential correction of GPS position errors and with Egnos (European geostationary navigation overlay system) coming online this year the first approaches are coming on line at locations such as Pau is southern France, for initial testing. Also under development is Europe’s own GPS system, Galileo, although that is bogged down in funding issues.

Nevertheless, the true potential of GPS technology will soon start to be seen and even the smallest, most remote airfields could benefit from ILS-like approaches (in fact, what pilots see will be no different with cur-rent ILS systems).

Larger airfields can look forward to Category III precision approach-es to a decision height of 50 feet or less, with ground-based augmentation systems (GBAS), although to date GBAS has entered general use only for so-called special Category I (SCAT I) approaches (for example, Wideroe Dash 8s can use this at six airports already). The ability to support multiple approach paths is a big advance on current ILS systems.

GBAS is just one technology being advanced through SESAR–and, for example, through the program Park Air Systems is developing a Cat II/III-capable GPS-only GBAS for first installation at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport in 2013. Egnos provides wide coverage (eventually extending from west-ern Europe to Africa, eastern Europe and Russia) but less accuracy–down to from 10 meters to two meters or less. This means it will also support RNP 0.3, which is good enough for LPV approaches. It opens up possibilities for curved approaches, ideal for airfields where ILS is not ideal or was never an option–or just for fitting in with noise abatement and more fuel-efficient approaches at any airport. In fact, with the support of the ACCEPTA project, more than 50 LPV approaches using Egnos are lined up for completion this year–and it is just the start. –I.S.

SESAR Achieves First TargetsThe SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU) has recently carried

out an extensive review to see whether there are any early results that could benefit the aviation community. The out-come has been the first of five planned annual “releases,” which will concentrate on 29 validation exercises covering “efficient and green terminal airspace operations, the initial four-dimensional trajectory, end-to-end traffic synchroni-zation and integrated and collaborative network manage-ment.” Following are some examples of those releases:

French ATM service provider DSNA, together with Airbus, Eurocontrol and the UK’s NATS, will work on upgraded midair collision tools.

A SESAR consortium consisting of eight service provid-ers will carry out air traffic control exercises using a remote tower prototype. Eventually, remote towers will allow traffic at medium-sized airports to be controlled remotely from a single, large, air traffic services center.

NATS will carry out new approach procedures using satellite technology at the UK’s Southampton Airport, aiming to reduce disruptions due to poor weather while increasing the cost-effectiveness of approach operations.

Eurocontrol, Swedish service provider LFV and Airbus will carry out flight trials for controlled-time-of-arrival using four-dimensional capabilities. The aim is to enable pilots and air traffic controllers to share the same flight information during descents and departures.

“The staff involved in the SESAR project are keen to deliv-er results,” said Patrick Ky, executive director of the SESAR JU. He explained that the next release will concentrate more on four-dimensional ATM features, while data exchange technology will continue to be developed and activities will be performed at airports to improve surface management and runway throughput. In the terminal airspace area, efforts will concentrate on advanced continuous descent approach-es and continuous climb departures to further increase effi-ciency and lower the environmental impact.

SESAR consists of no fewer than 300 projects and 16 work packages, involving 110 companies and 2,200 experts work-ing in 23 countries. Program participants include 200 airline representatives and a 60-strong international validation team.

Recently, 13 new industrial partners have been added to link with other countries, such as Canada, and to include more of the industry from outside the European Union “to guarantee that SESAR technologies will be interoperable with other regions of the world.” EU industrial partners are encouraged to enter reciprocal arrangements across the At-lantic, especially with U.S. companies working on NextGen.

Earlier this year, the EU and the U.S. signed a mem-orandum of cooperation to coordinate activities on their respective SESAR and NextGen programs. The SES-AR JU also is working with ICAO to ensure that global uniformity of ATM standards. –J.M.

A Single European Sky will equip controllers to handle the growing traffic volume–expected to double by 2030.

Continued on page 12 u

The launch of the first two satellites of Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system is scheduled for October.

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which is widely available. Egnos/WAAS compatibility

means that satellite-based aug-mentation system (SBAS) receiv-ers already developed by the major avionics manufacturers

can be fitted to European air-craft. This, along with the fact that there are no charges asso-ciated with Egnos usage, will keep costs down while speeding European deployment.

The Galileo system has expe-rienced major delays, having originally targeted a 2008 in-ser-vice date. However, the deploy-ment phase begun in that year

has been successful, the two development satellites–Giova A and Giove B–having been oper-ating very satisfactorily, vali-dating the technology for the subsequent satellites and ensur-ing the use of the frequencies allocated to the program by international authorities.

According to Paco Salabert, Eurocontrol’s focal point for

global navigation satellite sys-tems (GNSS), the delays are the result of “the technical com-plexity of the satellites along with funding issues typical of such large European programs.” With only 18 satellites currently funded and deployment of the planned 30 still uncertain, the aviation community is asking what advantages a potentially

limited system might provide. Salabert is adamant that

there would still be benefits. He pointed to Galileo’s total com-patibility with the 20-satellite U.S. global positioning system, the resulting 38-satellite con-stellation providing “a much more robust system than GPS only.” In the forthcoming world of performance-based naviga-tion (PBN), in which navigation accuracy is defined by perfor-mance rather than by the qual-ity of the navigation sensors, he said it will provide a “step-change” in quality.

Gradual DeploymentThinking is now moving

toward a possible two-stage approach to deployment of the full Galileo constellation. Under plans now being discussed, the first 18-satellite constellation would reach full availability in 2018, with the full 30 satellites joining the 24 GPS satellites around 2025.

Under this scheme, three initial services would be pro-vided: open service, public regu-lated and search and rescue. The planned safety of life and com-mercial services would be tested from 2014 and come on line as the 30-satellite system reaches full operational capability.

Aviation will use the open service in combination with GPS. According to the Euro-pean Union/U.S. satellite nav-igation working group, tests already carried out under dif-ferent environmental conditions have demonstrated that the combined GPS-Galileo system will provide “noteworthy per-formance improvements” com-pared to a single satellite system.

Eurocontrol’s strategy for the introduction of GNSS is based on a “gradual reliance on satel-lite navigation that has as its final goal its use as a sole service.” The agency added, however, that the system must demonstrate that it is “the most cost-beneficial solu-tion to the aviation community.” This is a likely outcome as the actual use of the satellites will be free, the only cost to the airlines being the purchase and installa-tion of receivers, and certifica-tion of the installation for each aircraft type.

It will clearly be a long time before aviation receives the full benefits of a full dual-constel-lation GNSS, but meanwhile, satellite-based augmentation systems, such as Egnos, will yield significant benefits, in particular to the general aviation commu-nity, by offering a cost-effective option to meeting PBN-based navigation requirements. o


Egnos touchdown shows satnav valueuContinued from page 8

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IAI’s VTOL Panther prowls skies electrically by David Donald

On display in the IAI cor-ral outside the Israeli Pavilion are two of the company’s latest concepts for providing observa-tion capability. Developed by the Malat division, both can take off and land vertically, and use electric power for ultra-quiet operations.

Panther is a 143-pound UAV that combines the advantages of both fixed- and rotary-wing flight. Although shaped like a fixed-wing aircraft, it takes off vertically under the power of three lifting propellers. Under automatic control, it can then transition to forward flight by tilting the wing-mounted pro-pellers, with the rear fuselage propeller shut down when the vehicle has reached sufficient airspeed for wingborne flight.

Mission endurance is six hours, and the Panther can fly at 40 knots loiter speed at a typi-cal operational altitude of 3,000 feet, out to a range of 38 miles. Payload is 22 pounds, and is fea-tured here with IAI’s Mini Pop EO/IR(electro-optical/infrared) /laser-pointer turret.

Panther has been flight-tested and has aroused considerable

interest. Its autonomous verti-cal takeoff and landing (VTOL) capability lends it to a variety of tasks, including shipborne oper-ations, where the launch versa-tility of a traditional VTOL UAV is needed, but also offers the better endurance charac-teristics provided by fixed-wing vehicles.

IAI Malat has applied the same concept to a smaller UAV known as Mini Panther. This is a 26-pound machine with a 4.4-pound IAI Micro Pop pay-load. It has an endurance of 1.5 hours and operational altitude of 1,500 feet.

For immediate observation capability from either a station-ary position or moving vehicle, Malat has conceived the ETOP (electrical tethered observation platform). This uses four elec-trically driven rotors to lift a 44-pound payload into the air. It can be deployed very rapidly with a single click, and hover at a predetermined height up to a maximum of 330 feet, an alti-tude it can reach in 30 seconds.

As its name suggests, ETOP is tethered to the launch plat-form by a cable through which

communications and sensor data is transmitted. The cable also allows power to be fed to the aerial platform from a ground source, providing unlimited endurance as long as a power supply can be maintained. o

AgustaWestland takes full control of BA609 tiltrotor with Bell buyoutby Mark Huber

AgustaWestland is buying out Bell’s stake in the BA609 civil tiltrotor program from Bell Heli-copters. Financial terms of the deal, announced by AgustaWest-land’s new CEO Bruno Spagno-lini and Bell CEO John Garrison here at the Paris Air Show yester-day, were not disclosed.

Under the proposed agree-ment, subject to regulatory approval, Bell will continue to provide engineering, program management services and key component manufacture on what will now be known as the AW609.

Garrison stressed that the agreement does not include any technology transfer from the mil-itary Bell/Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor. He said Bell will continue to invest in that technology with the goal of entering the V-22 in the Pentagon’s anticipated joint multi-role (JMR) helicopter program.

Announced 15 years ago in 1996, the 609 program was orig-inally a partnership between Boeing and Bell. At that time, the six- to nine-passenger 609 was priced at $8 million; how-ever, the current unit cost is believed to be approaching $30 million. After Boeing withdrew from the program, Bell and Agusta formed the Bell/Agusta Aircraft Co. in 1998 to develop the 609 as a joint venture.

The first 609 prototype flew in 2003 and a second joined the program in 2007. Through the first quarter of this year, the pair had accumulated nearly 600 flight test hours. At one point in the protracted program, the air-craft had attracted 80 orders but it is unclear how many of these are still in effect.

Talking to AIN, Garrison hinted that the resource demands

of Bell’s other programs drove it to divest itself of the BA609. “This decision,” he said, “is going to allow Bell to increase our investment on the revolution-ary V-22 and to develop the next-generation tiltrotor technologies for U.S. Department of Defense programs and other applications, as well as to increase our invest-ment in our innovative commer-cial product line.”

The twin P&WC PT6-67A-powered 609 has a maxi-mum takeoff weight of 16,800 pounds, and preliminary flight test data indicates the aircraft has an unrefueled range of 700 nm (boosted to 950 nm with auxil-iary fuel tanks), a cruise speed of 275 knots (maximum forward speed 310 knots) and a service ceiling of 25,000 feet. In utility configuration it could carry up to 12 passengers and crew. o

IAI’s ETOP (above) can be deployed in seconds to lift a surveillance payload up

to 100 meters above the ground.

The Panther UAV (right) uses tilting-wing propellers, allied to a rear fuselage lift rotor, to provide vertical takeoff

flexibility with long endurance.

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Twin Otters join Peruvian air forceby David Donald

The government of Peru is due to accept the first of a 12-aircraft order for the Viking Twin Otter Series 400 next week. This represents the biggest sale to date of the rejuvenated utility transport, which was put back into production by Viking (Hall 3 Stand E79) at Victoria, British Columbia, in 2007.

The sale to Peru, and another order announced here in Paris, increases the estimated order backlog to more than $300 million, with production guaranteed thru 2014.

Peru’s new-build Twin Otters will join five legacy air-craft that remain in service, for which Viking also provides OEM support, as indeed it does for the entire range of de Havilland Canada heritage air-craft (DHC-1 to DHC-7). The new aircraft will be configured

with both wheel and float undercarriage for a variety of tasks in remote regions. Worth almost $100 million, the Peru-vian deal also includes spares, equipment and training.

Viking has also received an order for four Series 400 air-craft with wheeled undercar-riage from Airfast Indonesia. To be delivered in 2012 and 2014, the quartet will join three legacy Twin Otters on charter work for the mining industry.

In the process of re-launch-ing Twin Otter production, Viking modernized the aircraft significantly, while retaining its legendary rough-field capabil-ity. The Series 400 features a Honeywell Primus Apex avi-onics suite, upgraded PT6A-34 engines, greater use of com-posites and simplified electri-cal and lighting systems. o

www.ainonline.com • June 22, 2011 • Paris Air Show News 17

MBDA lifts wraps on Perseus ramjet maritime strike missileby David Donald

Multinational missile developer and manufacturer MBDA showed off the results of its second concept-visions initia-tive–the CVS 401 Perseus maritime strike missile–yesterday at the Paris Air Show.

The company launched the initiative to “inspire engineers, customers and suppliers to shape the missile systems market for 2030 and beyond,” according to Steve Wadey, MBDA’s executive group technical director and UK managing director. The first cam-paign looked at dismounted soldiers oper-ating in urban environments, which resulted in the Sniper and Enforcer missile concepts.

This year’s program studied maritime strike challenges. Perseus is the result.

It is a concept for the kind of missile that would be required in maritime sce-

narios, including anti-ship attacks and a variety of likely overland/coastal targets. It is seen as a potential replacement for Exocet-class anti-ship missiles, and also for stand-off land-attack weapons, such as the Scalp/Storm Shadow.

Developed after consultation with the Royal Navy and Marine Nationale, Perseus is a stealthy, high-speed weapon with high agility to defeat the projected air defenses of the future. It is sized at less than five meters (16.5 feet) in length and under 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) in weight, and is envisaged for vertical launch from surface combatants, tube launch from submarines and, of course, air launch from aircraft.

Perseus also is envisaged as a 300-kilo-meter (160-nm) range weapon, with a speed of around Mach 3 for high-alti-tude transit and high-angle maneuvering attacks against targets in their vulnera-ble cone. Alternatively, the missile can fly a low-level sea-skimming profile at Mach 2-plus. Providing that level of performance will be a revolutionary new continuous detonation wave engine (CDWE) ramjet.

Sensors will be built around a multi-mode active e-scan radar with synthetic aperture and Doppler beam sharpening, and a laser radar (ladar) for terminal phase imaging and target recognition. The missile will also include a semi-active laser guid-ance capability that MBDA believes will remain important for time-sensitive target-

ing. A satellite datalink will be incorporated, using thin-pro-file active antenna arrays.

One innovative area of the concept is the warhead design. The missile will have a single main warhead of around 200 kilograms (440 pounds), but can also release two 40-kilogram (88-pound) inertially guided effectors from lateral bays, each of which will be provided with

individual target coordinates by the main missile as it nears impact. The three sep-arate warheads allow a wide spread to be achieved for some targets, but if a unitary blast is required, then the effectors remain on board the missile to add their blast effect to the central warhead.

Perseus has reached an advanced concept stage thanks to the work of a nine-person team within various MBDA design offices. The company suggests a likely develop-ment time of 15 to 20 years for Perseus, with the CDWE motor being one of the critical technologies. Nevertheless, Wadey believes strongly that “there are emerging markets for this type of weapon.” o

A Lot of Mouths to feed. At first blush, these heavy lifters could be a pod of hungry whales responding to the dinner bell. While the Boeing 747-8 freighter on top at least looks to be happily fed, the Lockheed C-5M Galaxy seems to be waiting to devour whatever comes its way. Perhaps the beast is eyeing the security patrol as its next multi-course meal.

The ramjet-powered Perseus concept envisions the use of laterally released effector submunitons to increase the effect of a single missile attack.

Hamilton Sundstrand partners on new auxiliary power units

Hamilton Sundstrand has formed a pair of partnerships to develop new aux-iliary power units. With China’s Avic Engine Holding it is going to launch a new APU for the commercial airliner market. Separately, it has allied itself with France’s Microturbo to produce APUs for business jets.

The U.S. group has started design and development work on a new-generation, common-core family of APUs for sin-gle-aisle airliners. Avic is responsible for non-hot-section components. The part-ners have yet to specify particular aircraft applications for the new units, but Avic is

involved in the development of the new ARJ-21 regional airliner.

The first applications for the new APU being prepared with Microturbo will be Bombardier’s Global 7000 and 8000 busi-ness jets. Safran subsidiary Microturbo will design, certify and supply modules and components for the APU and instal-lation system.

Separately, Hamilton Sundstrand has extended its repair and exchange agree-ment with Air New Zealand to provide repair and asset management services for the airline’s expanded fleet of Boeing 777s. –J.M.

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z CTT Wins New Humidification ContractsCTT Systems’s Cair cabin humidification system has been picked

for installation in an Airbus ACJ319 being outfitted by Lufthansa Technik-subsidiary Bizjet International in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Cair System is designed to provide humidification of extremely dry aircraft cabins without causing condensation. At the same time, it produces a relative humidity of about 20 percent, compared with the 3- to 5-percent humidity typical in an aircraft cabin. It is based on evaporative-cooling technology and uses a method that also precludes the transfer of bacteria with the aircraft.

CTT Systems, sharing an exhibit here with Copenhagen-based Satair (Hall 3 B30), continues to improve cabin environments, and the airline and private jet industries appear to be gaining an appreciation of the environmental and health advantages of CTT’s cabin technology.

Last month, the Swedish company received an order from Flydubai for 31 zonal drying systems to be installed in the United Arab Emirates-based airline’s fleet of Boeing 737-800s. According to Flydubai CEO Gaith Al Gaith, for one aircraft in service for a year, the zonal drying system is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 69 tons, nitrogen oxide emissions by 440 pounds, hydrocarbon particle emissions by 77 pounds and carbon monoxide emissions by 1,056 pounds.

z Ktech Acquisition Boosts Raytheon’s Capability Raytheon last week completed the acquisition of the key

business assets of Ktech, an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based company that specializes in pulsed power and directed energy. Raytheon Ktech is now part of Raytheon’s missile systems business area. It will enhance the company’s development efforts in the field of non-kinetic weapons, such as high-power microwave (HPM). Non-kinetic weapons aim to incapacitate or destroy the electronic heart of a target without the need for total destruction.

Mike Booen, Raytheon’s v-p advanced security and directed energy systems, explained that the company is looking at a variety of platforms and applications but recognized that UAVs are “an obvious area to look at. Warfighters may well want a reusable asset.”

Booen would not be drawn on any timescale, but said, “There’s an appetite for this capability right now.”

z Bombardier Inks Global 8000 Order with VistaJetBombardier Aerospace (Chalet A256) announced the sale of

10 of its new Global 8000 business aircraft to charter provider VistaJet, which becomes launch customer for the type. The firm order is valued at around $650 million, bringing the European operator’s order backlog of Bombardier aircraft to $2 billion. The long-range 8000 is due to enter service in 2017.

Last month VistaJet placed an order at the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE) for six

Global 6000 and two Challenger 605 jets. The company is expanding rapidly across developing markets, such as Asia, the Middle East, West Africa and Russia/CIS, where there are more requests for longer range aircraft.

“We are seeing unprecedented demand in fast-growth regions, which account for over 75 percent of all our flights,” said VistaJet chairman Thomas Flohr. He added that the customers in those locations frequently fly sector legs of typically ranging from five to ten hours.

The Canadian airframer has also enjoyed success with Australia’s AVWest, which placed firm orders for four Global 7000 and two Global 8000 types, two of which were placed earlier this year. The total value of this order is approximately $400 million U.S.

news clips Reliability, maintainability will make F-35 affordableby Bill Carey and Chris Pocock

The deputy program officer of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program office said Tuesday that predictions over escalating costs of the next-generation multi-role fighter will be proven wrong because of built-in reliability and main-tainability aspects. With the pro-gram facing renewed scrutiny by the U.S. Congress and Depart-ment of Defense (DOD), Air Force Maj. Gen. C.D. Moore described long-term cost projec-tions as uncertain, and said the program is making progress in its tenth year of development.

Moore was followed on stage during a Paris Air Show press briefing by a representative of the defense ministry of Norway, the latest partner nation to order F-35s, who said the ministry “expects the [F-35] price will be close to the price we anticipated and forwarded to Parliament.”

Rear Adm. Arne Roksund, head of the department for defense policy and long-term planning, linked further procure-ment of F-35s by Norway to sup-port of that nation’s Joint Strike Missile (JSM) development.

Looking to stem cost and schedule overruns, the U.S. DOD earlier this year restructured the F-35 production timeline, adding 13 months and $4.6 billion to the development phase. Yet another restructuring is planned this year, reportedly this fall, after the Pen-tagon projected a near doubling of

the F-35 unit cost to $133 million, a cost trajectory called “unaccept-able” by Ashton Carter, undersec-retary of defense for acquisition.

And most recently on Friday last week, the Senate Armed Ser-vices Committee approved lan-guage in the fiscal 2012 Defense Authorization Bill requiring that low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot 5 aircraft funded in FY2011 be procured by fixed-price contract, and that the contractor, Lockheed Martin, “absorb 100 percent of costs above the target cost.”

The Norwegian parliament on June 16 authorized the acqui-sition of four F-35s for training purposes, with delivery in 2016. Roksund said the restructur-ing of the F-35 program under U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year convinced the Norwegian defense minis-try the program has stabilized, although he expressed hope of “no more surprises.”

But Roksund also linked fur-ther F-35 procurement–the defense ministry has expressed a require-ment for 56 aircraft–on selection of the precision-guided, high sub-sonic JSM, under development by Kongsberg of Norway, as well as on next-generation “armor-pierc-ing explosive” ammunition.

The JSM is designed to fit into the internal weapons bay of the F-35A and C versions, and can also be carried on external stations. The missile passed pre-liminary design review last year

and further development has begun since the parliamentary decision last week.

“The Norwegian political objective is to achieve an indus-trial return of value equal to the purchase” of F-35s, Roksund said. “The size and complexity of the process to complete development and integration of the weapon on the F-35 is a major undertak-ing for a small nation. Active sup-port from relevant F-35 partner nations in this matter is therefore vital.”

Moore said the F-35 program is conducting a technical evaluation of missile candidates and “JSM will be one of those candidates.”

The F-35 is the Pentagon’s larg-est international cooperative pro-gram. Eight partner countries are collectively contributing $4.9 bil-lion to the system design and development phase (SDD). They have projected a total buy of 705 aircraft as follows: Australia 100, Canada 65, Denmark 30, Italy 131, the Netherlands 85, Norway 56, Turkey 100 and the UK 138.

Only Denmark has yet to con-firm its choice of the F-35. It will decide next year, after hold-ing a competition in which the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hor-net is the main challenger. In Aus-tralia, the Netherlands, Norway and especially Canada, there has been political controversy over the choice of the F-35, especially while the final acquisition cost is still uncertain.

In theory, the international partners will pay the same price for their aircraft as negotiated by the U.S. services for each lot, whether it is in low-rate initial production or in the subsequently planned multi-year procurement. o

if it’s june in an odd-numbered year, it must be parisWhile the weather has been nothing that the Paris visitors bureau would boast, the crowds come to Le Bourget anyway.

VistaJet’s Thomas Flohr and Bombardier’s Steve Ridolfi

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Sukhoi Superjet has to go on a dietby Gregory Polek

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 will eventually welcome a new, larger sibling, possibly one as large as 130 seats in capacity, but not until the original SSJ100-9–on display here at Le Bourget–loses some weight for Aeroflot and gains some range for Latin

American launch customer Interjet of Mexico.

Specifically, the SSJ100 needs to shed some 1,750 pounds, a United Aircraft Corp. official said following a roundtable lun-cheon hosted by UAC president Mikhail Pogosyan.

Meanwhile, Interjet’s planned hot-and-high operations will require somewhat more than the standard range of 1,645 nm the airplane now offers. The Paris Air Show SSJ100 debutante will fly directly to Toulouse after the show for EASA trials. Following

the trials, it will go to Dubai for hot-weather testing and then to Mexico for high-altitude work.

The company hopes to gain EASA certification by the end of the year and deliver the Inter-jet’s first of 15 airplanes on firm order some time next year. Sukhoi reports holding firm orders for a total of 170 Superjets.

Now proving itself in revenue operations under Russian certi-fication standards for Aeroflot and Armavia, the SSJ100 boasts 98-percent dispatch reliability during its two months in service. To date, the SSJ100 has flown more than 270 hours during some 120 flights.

Aeroflot flew the airplane for the first time on June 16

from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The Russian flagcarrier expects delivery of its second airplane some time in August.

By the end of the year, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft ex pects to deliver

nine more airplanes to Aero flot and one more to Armavia.

Despite the air-plane’s weight chal-lenges, Pogosyan expressed satisfaction with the airplane’s early operational per-formance and con-fidence that its sales figures would mark-edly improve, once it

proves itself in service over an extended time period.

“We understand a lot is ahead,” Pogosyan said. “But the project is a success. The [SSJ100] is the best regional airplane on the market today.” o

Mikhail Pogosyan

Superjet needs to shed weight to satisfy customers in Russia and Latin America.

Characterized by soft blue LCD lighting overhead, sculpted sidewalls and window reveals designed to draw passengers’ eyes to the airplane’s windows, the Sky Interior in Air Berlin’s 737-700 also includes larger, overhead bins that add to the openness of the cabin.

Pratt plans consortium for Pure Power turbofans by Julian Moxon

A consortium along the lines of International Aero Engines (IAE) will be created for the Pratt & Whitney PW1000G geared turbofans (GTF) later this year, according to Dave Hess, Pratt & Whitney president.

At present comprising Pratt & Whitney and two of its three IAE part-ners–MTU and Japanese Aero Engines Corp. (JAEC)–the new consortium will be responsible for development, marketing and after-sales support of the PW1000G Pure Power turbofans, currently chosen to power the Air-bus A320neo, Bombardier CSeries, Mitsubishi MRJ and Irkut MC-21.

The shares each partner will hold has not yet been decided, but a source at MTU said the German manufacturer, which is responsible for the low-pres-sure turbine and the first four stages of the high-pressure turbine, “would have at least 15 percent” of the engine. JAEC, which builds the fan of the IAE V2500, will have a smaller share, he added.

Other significant contributors to the program include Avio and Volvo, who will function as risk-sharing partners, said Hess.

What about Rolls-Royce, the “miss-ing” IAE partner?

When Airbus was considering the PW1100G for the A320neo, according to sources, the airframer had put consider-able pressure on the Rolls-Royce to join the program so that Airbus could offer supplier continuity under the IAE banner to customer airlines. Rolls-Royce never agreed on the geared turbofan concept, however. Nor did it believe there was a business case for re-engining the existing

single-aisle aircraft, and preferred instead to focus on developing an all-new powerplant for an all-new aircraft.

Hess told AIN that while P&W’s pref-erence to power a Boeing competitor to the A320neo was for a “clean-sheet design to optimize the GTF’s excellent performance,” a downsized version of the PW1100G could still offer “double digit” fuel-burn improvements. While attractive to Boeing, the idea would certainly run up against the contractual deal that gives CFM exclusivity on all New Generation 737s, however.

CSeries Engine FliesOn Monday, the PW1000G flight-test

program took to the skies with the first flight of the PW1524G engine (destined for the Bombardier CSeries) mounted on the inner pylon of a P&W Boeing 747SP flying testbed. The test program will involve eight engines over the next 18 months, with engine certification set for 2012 and entry into service the year after.

Bob Saia, Pratt & Whitney, executive vice president, next-generation product family, said the flight-test engine “per-formed even better than we expected. To date we have accumulated more than 400 hours of full engine ground testing and we are delighted with the initial results, which have demonstrated the geared architec-ture’s benefits of low fuel consumption, low noise and robust design.” o

Air FrAnce industries KLM AwAiting Big engine test ceLLs

Air France Industries KLM Engineering and Maintenance (AFI KLM E&M) is to set up a new $64 million engine test cell facility at Paris Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport. The very big engine maintenance offering will be operational in 2012 and complements the company’s recent investments in the Constellation building at Paris Orly Airport, and an electron-beam welding machine at Amsterdam Schipol Airport in Holland. The first produc-tion test cells are set to arrive in Roissy in June 2012.

“AFI KLM E&M’s substantial investment in VBEs, with the new Constellation engine shop and now this new engine test cell, puts us in an excellent position to provide a strong alternative to OEM’s services,” said senior v-p engines Anne Brachet. “This ETC will have capability for engine run-ups on the Engine Alliance GP7200 [installed on the Airbus A380], GE90-94 [Boeing 777] and GE90-115 [Boeing 777] families of powerplants. It will allow us to shorten turnaround times.”

EPCOR, an AFI KLM E&M subsidiary, has signed a contract covering auxiliary power unit (APU) component maintenance with Transavia, for Dutch low-cost carrier’s Boeing 737 fleet. Transavia is also part of the Air France KLM Group. EPCOR is approved to perform mainte-nance and overhaul of Honeywell and Hamilton Sundstrand APUs. –L.M.

DAVID McINTOSH

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Bombardier, CSeries and CS100 are Trademark(s) of Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries.

* 4 times quieter, 20% fuel burn advantage and 20% less CO2 emissions vs. average in-production aircraft of 110-seat & 130-seat categories @ 500 nm.

The CSeries aircraft program is currently in development phase and as such is subject to changes in family strategy, branding, capacity, performance, design and / or systems. All specifications and data are approximate, may change without notice and are subject to certain operating rules, assumptions and other conditions. The actual aircraft and configuration may differ from the image shown.

4 times quieter than its competitors, the CSeries family of aircraft

is surpassing the industry noise restriction standards. Its advanced

structural materials, optimized design and new engines make it light

and efficient, leading to a 20% fuel burn advantage and 20% less

CO2 emissions* — the greenest aircraft in its class. Which all makes the

CSeries aircraft as responsible as it is profitable.

Azul converts options for 10 ATR 72-600sby Ian Sheppard

ATR revealed yesterday that Brazilian carrier Azul Lanhas Aéreas had signed up for another 10 ATR 72-600s, and that the European turbo-prop manufacturer, in a gradual “strip tease” of show orders, will have announced customers for a total of 78 additional aircraft–worth $2.4 billion at list prices–by the time the trade days are over. ATR chief executive Fil-lipo Bagnato indicated that he liked the strip-tease approach.

ATR will end up with its high-est backlog ever, said Bagnato: 223 aircraft worth a total of $5 billion, representing three years of

production. It has delivered 929 of 1,152 aircraft ordered, some 40 percent of which have been placed since 2005. It intends to reveal two more -600 customers before the show is over.

The Azul order converts 10 of the 20 options the airline already held into firm orders (the carrier had ordered 20 ATR 72-600s, plus the 20 options, at last year’s Farnborough airshow). Ger-ald Lee, Azul vice president and co-founder, said that the airline has been impressed by the six ATRs it has leased since March. “They have made a real differ-ence,” he said.

Due to its recent success, Bag-nato admitted that ATR needs to do “a second ramp-up,” hav-ing already boosted production rates in 2006 and 2007.

“Next year we will have to increase our volume by 35 per-cent as we move from 53 deliv-eries in 2011 to 72 in 2012,” he said. “As a consequence, we will jump from $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion next year.”

ATR predicts a market for 3,000 turboprop airliners over the next 20 years, said Bagnato. In response to a question about a new 90-seat ATR, he said, “Around a third of that [3,000] could be for a larger turboprop.”

Bagnato also announced that ATR had been accredited to the ISO 14001 environmental stan-dard, which he said proved that, “We are not only a producer of green airplanes, we are produc-ing [them] in a green way.” o


DAVID McINTOSH

z Boeing and Avic Plan To Build Training CenterBoeing and China’s Avic have signed an agreement to set up

a joint-training center specifically aimed at improving the quality of products made in China for Boeing aircraft. Avic has also been awarded a contract to build 1,000 Boeing 737 rudders by the U.S. company.

The Avic-Boeing Manufacturing and Innovation Center (MIC) will be based in Xi’an, in the Shaanxi province, and signals a “new phase” in the relationship between the two companies, said Geng Ruguang, Avic executive vice president. The Avic-Boeing MIC will “increase our efficiency and capacity to supply high-quality parts for Boeing airplanes,” he added.

The Center will be opened in early 2012 and will provide classroom and hands-on training for Avic employees. The training is expected to replicate Boeing’s system for achieving sustainable manufacturing quality. Currently, Avic manufactures components for the Boeing 737, 747-8 and 787.

Boeing is the largest foreign customer for China’s aviation industry, having purchased more than $1.5 billion worth of aviation hardware since the 1980s. The recently awarded contract for 737NG rudders “will establish Avic as a center of excellence for rudder manufacture,” said Ray Connor, Boeing v-p and general manager of commercial airplanes supply chain management and operations.

z Saint-Gobain Promotes Advanced PolymersFrench plastics specialist Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics is

showcasing materials made from its Meldin 7000 lightweight, high-temperature polymer on Stand E138 Hall 2B.

According to the company, the polymer produces finished components that have better dimensional stability, chemical resistance and thermal-insulation properties, are up to 50 percent lighter and last longer than their aluminum equivalents. These components are used in auxiliary power units, air-conditioning systems, actuators and landing gear systems.

Saint-Gobain has also added to its range of exterior seals and window gaskets for aircraft. The window seals are designed with static waterproofing to improve aerodynamics and reduce leakage, to better maintain cabin pressurization.

For interior applications, the company’s Lindau, Germany-based division also provides a range of silicone sealants for internal structures, such as galleys, cabin baggage compartments toilets, emergency exits, dampening plates and furnishing panel seals.

z ST Aerospace and Marubeni Lease EnginesST Aerospace of Singapore and Marubeni Corp. of Tokyo have

concluded a joint venture to form an engine-leasing company in Singapore. The company, Total Engine Asset Management (Team), will be owned equally by ST Aerospace and Marubeni (Hall 6 D4).

Team’s initial portfolio will include the CFM International CFM56-3, CFM56-5B and CFM56-7B engines that mainly power narrowbody aircraft, such as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. The joint-venture company plans to invest $100 million worth of assets in the first two years, with equity of $40 million.

Chang Cheow Teck, ST Aerospace president, said the engine-leasing business broadens ST Aerospace’s range of aftermarket services, including engine technical management and maintenance-by-the-hour.

z PPG Launches Opticor Advanced Transparency BrandAt Paris 2011, PPG Industries’ aerospace transparencies group

is launching Opticor, the brand name for its new craze-resistant, high-performance transparency material. According to PPG, it is the first transparent plastic developed in more than 50 years for aerospace applications.

“Opticor meets the aerospace industry’s needs for a lightweight transparent plastic that maintains optical clarity while offering the ability to be formed into complex shapes,” said Anthony Stone, global director for new business development and innovations for transparencies.” It is on display here at the PPG stand (Hall 2b D94) on a G650 passenger-window mockup.

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Sukhoi and Alenia launch executive version of Superjet SSJ airlinerby Gregory Polek

Sukhoi Civil Aircraft and Alenia Aeronautica yesterday announced the launch of an executive version of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100) regional jet. Dubbed the SBJ, or Sukhoi Business Jet, the project wild fall under the responsibility of Italian support and marketing arm Superjet International, the

joint venture between Alenia and Suhoi Holding.

Scheduled for certification in 2014, the SBJ will cost some $50 million, depending on con-figuration, Superjet Interna-tional CEO Carlo Logli said during a press briefing here. Logli estimated a market of between 80 and 100 airplanes

over the next 20 years, centered primarily in North America, the Middle East and the Rus-sian Federation.

Based on the SSJ100-95 platform, the SBJ will come in VIP, corporate and government configurations.

Additional fuel tanks in the cargo hold will provide the air-

craft with a range of almost 4,300 nm, com-pared with the Superjet 100’s standard 1,645 nm, allowing it to fly nonstop from Paris to New York.

The launch of the new business jet comes just two months after entry into service of the SSJ100 with Armavia. During the first two months of operation, the airplane flew for more than 268 hours during 119 missions. o

Azul is so impressed with the ATR 72-600 that it has signed up for another ten.

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From left, Jacques Desclaux, CEO of Power Jet; Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, president of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft; and Carlo Logli, CEO of Superjet International.


Singapore Airshow aspires to worldwide event leadership by Kirby J. Harrison

The Singapore Airshow (Chalet D54) is consistently among the world’s top three airshows and has aspirations of tak-ing over the top spot in 2012. According to Angelica Lim, the Singapore show’s general aerospace and defense group manger, the 2012 event expects 259 del-egations from more than 80 countries, more than 900 exhibitors and in excess of 53,000 paid visitors.

The popular aviation leadership and Asia Pacific security conferences, she said, differ from those of other shows in that the key speakers are buyers rather than sellers. The 2012 edition is also expand-ing to accommodate the changing role of defense in the face of growing terrorism, piracy and other issues.

“The Land Defense Pavilion is a new feature designed to meet the changing defense landscape,” said Lim. “This dedi-cated pavilion underlines the significance of high-tech, land-based defense prod-ucts and technologies.”

Lim also pointed out that through-out the Asia Pacific region much of the ground inventories of the various mili-taries are in the later phases of their life cycles, and most cannot be repaired or upgraded to meet new challenges in a changing world. More to the point, she added, emphasizing the importance of the Singapore Airshow on a global stage, is that “thirty percent of global land-defense spending over the next five years will come from the Asia Pacific region–

approximately $1.65 trillion.”Also new next year will be an

expanded Russian presence with a larger national pavilion, and, for the first time, a Japanese pavil-ion. There are also new corporate hospitality suites to allow firms to host clients “in comfort and style.”

Lim noted that in terms of return on investment, the Sin-gapore Airshow is consistently among the world’s top three air-shows, “and usually among the top two.” But she gave impres-sion that it will settle for noth-ing less than the top spot. o

Angelica Lim, representing the Singapore Airshow at Paris, said the 2012 event is already 85 percent sold out.

Thermal treatment goes global as Bodycote expands services by Bill Carey

Thermal-processing specialist Body-cote has signed a 10-year renewal con-tract with Rolls-Royce to provide its services in the UK and potentially other parts of the world, including North America and Asia.

The company’s Dallas, Texas-based aerospace and defense division also has announced the planned opening this year of a new vacuum, heat-treatment facil-ity in Mexico to provide outsourced ther-mal processing to major aerospace and power-generation suppliers in the area.

Bodycote’s core business involves improving the properties of metals and alloys so that parts, components and end-products are thereby stronger, safer and longer lasting. It does this with ther-mal processes that include heat treatment, metal joining, surface technology and hot isostatic pressing (HIP). The company has 170 accredited facilities in 27 countries.

Tracy Glende, president of the Body-cote Aerospace, Defense & Energy busi-ness, told AIN the company’s expansion

supports customers who are simulta-neously globalizing their supply chains while looking to reduce their overall number of suppliers. Bodycote, he said, “is well positioned to help our customers attack that problem” by enabling them to complete processing within the region without transporting parts back to their main facilities.

The contract renewal with Rolls-Royce involves direct support of the manufac-turer from Bodycote’s on-site facility within the Rolls-Royce Precision Casting facility in Derby–the foundry for turbine blades used in Trent series engines–as well as five additional UK locations. The com-pany will provide Rolls-Royce with heat treatment, HIP, thermal spray coatings and metal joining, including brazing and electron-beam welding of engine cases.

The vacuum, heat-treatment facility in northwest Mexico, scheduled to open in the third quarter of this year, is the first of its kind in the region, according to Bodycote (Hall 2B F137). o

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Modified Watchkeeper ready for future rolesby Bernard Fitzsimons

The $1.6 billion Watchkeeper program for the British Army has made Thales the biggest UAV company in Europe, and in its UAV systems laboratory, also known as the Soul battlelab near Bordeaux, the company’s engi-neers are exploring the require-ments for future ground control stations and mission systems.

Watchkeeper, on show here outside the Thales pavilion, is due to start operations in Afghanistan at the end of this year, said Jean-François Henrio, vice president, airborne mission systems, in the Soul lab earlier this month, and training is under way at Larkhill in the UK. But the task of UAVs is to provide information with varying degrees of detail to specific levels of com-mand, and the French and other armies do not have the same command structure. So the lab is used to develop mission concepts and simulate their execution.

“We can generate differ-ent flight plans, different types of threat,” he said. “And to con-vince the French army that Watchkeeper would be useful for them, we need to simulate con-nections to their real command and control tools.” Thales is also looking at sensor options and man-machine interface concepts, such as the application of Google Earth technology for the Anglo-French Telemos medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAV, expected to enter service toward the end of the decade. “We take the best technology from the Web and make sure it can provide ben-efits to users,” he commented.

Thales has been “pushed to the limit in terms of certification and airworthiness,” Henrio said, since Watchkeeper is the first UAV to be certified to civil avia-tion standards, a prerequisite to operating over European terri-tory with inhabited areas.

“One thing blocking acqui-sition by France or Spain is the question of what to do with the assets when they come back from Afghanistan. Can you use them

for internal surveillance? Often the answer is no, because unlike the southern border of the U.S. where nobody lives and you can get a permit to fly Predator drones, in Europe that is not possible.”

Watchkeeper has come through a “formidable level of testing to pass certification,” he said, and the safety case is cur-rently undergoing final vali-dation by the UK Ministry of Defence for service introduction in the second half of this year.

Thales is also turning its atten-tion to rotary-wing UAVs for

naval applications. The French navy wants to save its limited fleet of helicopters for missions, such as anti-submarine war-fare and combating piracy, Hen-rio explained. So together with the navy and armaments agency DGA the company is developing the necessary technologies.

The first prerequisite is the ability to land a one-ton UAV on the deck of a French frigate in harsh sea states, he said. “If we can’t, the system is of no use.” Thales has already demonstrated the ability of the Magic auto-matic takeoff and landing system it developed for Watchkeeper. In the U.S., Boeing’s Unmanned Lit-tle Bird modification of the MD 530F helicopter was landed on a moving truck standing in for a frigate in sea state zero. The next step is to do tests on a three-axis table, then waterborne tests up to sea state five.

Henrio said he is aware of Anglo-French government discus-sions that might result in a joint requirement for a rotary-wing UAV. “It would make sense to use the expertise that Thales has devel-oped on both sides of the English Channel,” he said. o


z Raytheon To Protect Boeing KC-46 Aerial TankersBoeing may not be saying much about the configuration of the

KC-46 aerial tanker, but Raytheon revealed that it will be protecting the next U.S. Air Force tanker. The company announced a contract from Boeing to supply ALR-69A radar-warning receivers and anti-jam GPS receivers. The ALR-69A has previously been fitted to Lockheed Martin C-130s and F-16s.

“Our advanced digital open architecture provides increased sensitivity and the ability to accurately identify threat signals much earlier in today’s dense urban environments,” noted Mark Kula, vice president of Tactical Airborne Systems for Raytheon’s Space and Airborne Systems (SAS) sector.

Raytheon’s GPS receiver “is the first to integrate high-performance digital anti-jam capabilities into a single product,” according to Joe Kiser, program manager Integrated Technology programs for Raytheon SAS.

z L-3 Provides Standby Instruments for Citation TenL-3’s Avionics Systems (Static F186) continues its success in the

field of providing electronic standby instrument systems (ESIS) with further selections of the company’s products for high-profile aircraft programs. Cessna Aircraft has selected the L-3 GH-3900 ESIS for the latest Citation Ten model, the system replacing conventional electromechanical standby instruments with a combined flight and navigation data display on a three-inch screen.

Emphasizing L-3’s capability in this arena is the selection of the company’s ESIS for the international variants of the Boeing F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Super Hornet. L-3 will provide two GH-4200 reference standby display (RSD) instruments for the F-15, and a single RSD and GH-4000 reference standby display repeater (RSDR) for the F/A-18.

Both systems provide attitude, altitude and airspeed data in a layout that matches that of the primary systems. Heading, slip/skid, vertical speed and navigation data can be added as options. The RSD/RSDR features an integrated air data sensor card and has direct connections to the pitot/static system, removing the need for a separate air data computer.

z GEnx-1B, Air India Join TruEngine ProgramGE Aviation has launched its GEnx TruEngine program on the

GEnx-1B engine and granted TruEngine designation to Air India’s GEnx-1B engine fleet. Air India has ordered GEnx-1B engines for its 27 Boeing 787-8 aircraft.

Under a 2010 GE branded services agreement (GBSA), Air India will be licensed to perform maintenance and overhaul work on the GEnx-1B engine, which means the carrier will follow GE-issued engine manuals service bulletins and other maintenance recommendations.

Qualification for TruEngine status involves a two-step process that includes the customer declaration and a submittal of maintenance records to ensure the overhaul practices, spare parts and repairs used to service an engine match GE-issued engine manuals, service bulletins and other maintenance recommendations. The TruEngine designation is available for the more than 1,300 GEnx engines on order.

According to GE, the TruEngine designation enhances marketability and asset valuation of an engine and provides operators with new benefits, such as line maintenance and aircraft-on-ground responsiveness guarantees, life-limited parts scrap-for-cause warranty option, the TRruEngine suite of digital fleet-management applications and a content-assurance guarantee.

z Liebherr and Avic To Build Comac C-919 Landing Gear Liebherr Aerospace of Germany and Avic of China are to form a

joint-venture company for the manufacture of landing gear for the Comac C919 aircraft.

The joint venture between Avic’s subsidiary Landing-gear Advanced Manufacturing Co. and Liebherr Aerospace Lindenberg became a reality when the contract was signed here at the Paris Air Show.

According to Liebherr, the joint venture includes assembly and testing activities for landing gear for the Chinese market and will potentially extend its activities to other geographical markets.

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Thales Says MoD Not Concerned about Watchkeeper

Thales officials denied at the Paris Air Show on Tuesday that the Watch-keeper development program had been formally added to a new “Projects of Concern” at the UK Ministry of Defence. This was implied in an MoD state-ment last week that spoke of “naming and shaming” failing defense projects.

Thales UK admitted a delay of some months for software integration, part-ly caused by the need to respond to some Afghan theater requirements that had changed since the contract was signed five years ago.

In the meantime, Thales has been providing an interim UAV capability to the British Army using Elbit Hermes 450s on a “fee-for-service” basis. –C.P.

As the British Army prepares to deploy Watchkeeper to Afghanistan later this year, Thales is working on mission

systems for future naval and MALE UAV platforms.

GEnx EnGinE Fan CasE HiGHliGHts VolVo stand

The GEnx fan case built by Volvo Aero (Hall 2A B197) for the Gen-eral Electric turbofan engine on Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner makes Volvo team members (left to right) David Carlsson, Elin Karlsson and Joanna Eriksson appear short. In the past five years, Volvo’s North American subsidiary has emerged as a major player in the engine fan-case market.

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Civil boom balances defense gloom in UKby Ian Sheppard

ADS, the trade organiza-tion for the UK aerospace, defense and security industries, has reported that new defense orders slumped by 29 percent in 2010 due to the stringent defense cuts by Britain’s new coalition government. Despite this, 2010 proved to be a fairly good year for total aerospace revenue, which was up by 2.1 percent to £23.1 billion ($37.8 billion).

However, the total value of civil and military orders was down 11 percent to £29.1 billion ($47.7 billion), even though civil orders were up by 3 percent on the previous year to £19 billion ($31.1 billion).

UK employment in the sector

fell by 4 percent to just over 96,000, an increase in produc-tivity per employee of 6 percent, said ADS. The data is recorded in the latest ADS annual Aero-space Industry Survey, published on June 9. The organization said the survey showed that the UK’s aerospace industry remains the largest of any European country and is “second only to the U.S. worldwide,” which has a 17-per-cent market share.

Overall spending in the UK on aerospace research and tech-nology development remained unchanged on what are already “historically low figures,” reported ADS. Research and technol-ogy spending, however, was

up by 7 percent in the civil sec-tor, while it was down 5 percent for defense.

The U.S. remains the UK’s largest aerospace trading part-ner, according to the report. Exports to the U.S. stood at £6.4 billion ($10.4 billion) in 2009, but the balance of trade decreased further to a £3.5 bil-lion ($5.7 billion) deficit. The UK, meanwhile, had a trad-ing surplus with the rest of the European Union of £1.8 bil-lion ($2.9 billion) in 2009.

“The good news is that the sector as a whole has come

out of a difficult year in good shape,” commented Graham Chisnall, ADS managing direc-tor of aerospace and operations. “We are now seeing substantial growth expectations on the civil side, where the industry is set for huge ramp-ups in production on programs like the A320. Plus we’re seeing new programs kick-ing in like the [Boeing] 787, the CSeries and the A350.”

One factor troubling small and medium-sized members of ADS is the struggle to raise the capital they need to invest in boosting production capacity for

the ramp-up. “Perversely, they are most at risk during the climb out from the recession because lenders have pulled up the draw-bridge and won’t make funds available,” claimed Chisnall.

Nonetheless, ADS believes its members deserve great credit for improving their annual produc-tivity by 6 percent in response to the recent downturn. “They’ve introduced better working meth-ods, improved processes and [at least in the case of larger compa-nies like Rolls-Royce] have made big investments in technology,” Chisnall concluded. o


First of Block III Apaches move on down Boeing’s lineby Bill Carey

The first three AH-64D Block III Apaches, the latest update of the attack helicopter, were advancing through production this month at the Boeing Global Strike facility in Mesa, Arizona, in advance of first deliveries to the U.S. Army this fall.

Last October Boeing was awarded a $247 million U.S. government con-tract to begin low-rate initial production (LRIP) of the Block III Apache, initially for eight Lot 1 aircraft. The LRIP phase covers 51 aircraft for the Army, and,

according to the Army’s Apache pro-gram manager, will include the start of production of 30 helicopters ordered by Taiwan, the first export customer of the Block III.

The Army plans to acquire 690 Block III Apaches through 2027, most of them remanufactured Block Is and IIs, but with 56 newly built to replace training and combat losses. New fuse-lages will be incorporated as of ship 44 to zero-time airframes, which have an operational life of 10,000 hours,

said Mike Burke, Boeing director of Rotorcraft Business Development.

Boeing counts 11 international cus-tomers, with 250 new and remanufactured Apaches on order. The Taiwan order calls for 30 AH-64D Block III Apaches fitted with the mast-mounted Longbow fire-control radar as well as Longbow Hellfire missiles, Stinger air-to-air missiles and other equipment.

Army Col. Shane Openshaw, the Apache project manager at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, con-firmed the production start for Taiwan. Other Apache international buyers are Egypt, Greece, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, The Netherlands, the UAE, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and UK.

Designed as a tank killer in the 1980s, the attack helicopter remains relevant “because of the continuous improvement that we’ve made in this aircraft, and all these block upgrades, plus the continuous improvement we’ve made in between the block upgrades,” Burke said. “Today it is the number-one weapon system in the street fights in the global war on terror. That’s why it’s rel-evant today.”

The Block III upgrade features improved GE Aviation T700-GE-701D engines with enhanced digital electronic engine control units, improved drive sys-tem and transmission, composite rotor blades and extended range fire-control radar and missiles. Pilots’ situational awareness is enhanced through a cogni-tive-decision aiding system that fuses sen-sor information. Computer processing power is increased and based on an open-system architecture enabling easy replace-ment of processors. The software-defined joint tactical radio system voice and data radio, when available, will be inserted dur-ing Block III production.

Among technology advances,

Openshaw said Block III Apaches will be capable of Level 4 operational control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including the MQ-1C Grey Eagle and RQ-7 Shadow and their sensor pay-loads. “We’ll have Level 4 interoper-ability out of the box with Block III,” he said. Asked about the possibility of workload issues associated with fly-ing an unmanned aircraft, Openshaw said the Army “had a concern” initially, but that user studies in 2009 confirmed Apache crews would not be overtaxed by UAV control.

Block IIs Still BuiltThe Boeing Mesa factory receives

torn-down Apache airframes from the Corpus Christi, Texas Army depot, and is producing three or four remanufac-tured Block IIs a month. Boeing reports 47 Block II Apaches will be delivered this year to the Army and international customers. The Army has extended the Block II program until 2013, meaning Block II and III Apaches for two years will be manufactured at the same time on parallel lines.

Helicopters for Block III Apaches are being disassembled by Science Engineer-ing Services near the Redstone Arsenal. The plan is to produce six Block III heli-copters monthly in Mesa, increasing to possibly 10 aircraft a month by 2013, said Fred Robinson, Boeing’s Apache produc-tion manager.

In addition to Block II and III Apaches, the facility produces the AH-6i light attack/reconnaissance helicopter and A160 Hum-mingbird unmanned helicopter. o

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Deliveries of Boeing’s AH-64D Block II Apaches to the U.S. Army are to begin this fall.

The UK aerospace trade organization ADS said that despite a drop in defense orders, 2010 proved to be a fairly good

year because of products such as this Eurofighter Typhoon.DAVID McINTOSH

Sikorsky looks to boost international salesby Bill Carey

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. (Hall 3 D108) is displaying two heli-copters at this year’s Paris Air Show that are key to expand-ing the company’s international footprint, executives said. The S-70i Black Hawk, exhibited outside the United Technolo-gies Corp. chalet (A344), is mak-ing its first appearance at a major international airshow. On the static line (F210) is the CH-148 Cyclone multi-mission helicopter Sikorsky is building for the Cana-dian Forces, another Paris debut.

First deliveries of the S-70i, a lower cost Black Hawk deriv-ative assembled at Sikorsky’s PZL Mielec facility in Poland, are set to begin in the next sev-eral weeks to the Saudi Ministry of the Interior. The aircraft on display is one of six assembled and flight-tested to date at PZL Mielec, which Sikorsky acquired in March 2007.

Sikorsky reports further interest in the S-70i from other agencies in Saudi Arabia as well as countries that operate older, L-model S-70A Black Hawks, including Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia and Brunei. The com-pany plans to ramp up produc-tion to two aircraft a month at PZL Mielec by late 2012.

“From an emerging country standpoint, the S-70i is a perfect airplane, and that’s really where

we’ve targeted that product,” said Carey Bond, president, Sikorsky Global Helicopters and chief marketing officer.

Complementing that effort will be the recently awarded Turkish Utility Helicopter Pro-gram. Sikorsky in May said it won the $3.5 billion program to provide 109 T-70 Black Hawks, a Turkish derivative of the S-70i, for use by several different agen-cies in that country. Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) will assemble the aircraft in Turkey, with components supplied by Sikorsky and other companies. The parties are in the process of negotiating a contract and obtaining export approvals.

“That’s big, and it’s not just a helicopter order. It’s broader than anything we’ve done in terms of co-production,” said Mick Maurer, president of Sikorsky Military Systems. “It really helps solidify the franchise of the Black Hawk in the inter-national market.”

Maurer said the long-term program with TAI eventu-ally will support international Black Hawk deliveries beyond Turkey. “That will be a 20- to 30-year program, and as part of that program, they will also be part of our supply chain on the S-70i,” he said. “So we’ll actually be delivering some S-70is out of

Turkey as well as Poland. The Turkish capacity is for Turkey and also for what we believe will be some incremental business that we wouldn’t have received without them as an ally in help-ing to market our product in some other places where we’d really have little presence.”

Under a foreign military sale approved this spring, Sikorsky will deliver 15 UH-60M Black Hawks to the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration in 2011-2012. The latest model Black Hawk, with small modifications for Sweden, including a rescue hoist, will be built in the U.S.

The company said robust orders from the U.S. military, sustaining the production line through 2020, help drive inter-national sales. Another for-eign military sale, to Australia for 24 MH-60R Seahawks, was announced earlier this month.

It also said it sees a long life for the CH-148 Cyclone, a derivative of the S-92A com-mercial search-and-rescue helicopter developed for the Canadian Forces. Sikorsky was awarded the contract for the Canadian Maritime Helicopter Program in November 2004 to replace aging CH-124 Sea Kings.

The first “fully compliant” Cyclone is scheduled for delivery in July 2012, with delivery of all 28 helicopters by December 2013, according to the Canadian Forces.

Sikorsky has already deliv-ered paramilitary configured S-92s, dubbed H-92s, to the Saudi Ministry of the Interior and other users.

New derivatives and interna-tional customers will be a hedge for the company against declin-ing overall U.S. military spend-ing. Despite the ongoing utility of the Black Hawk, as well as the

maritime Seahawk, Sikorsky is battling the downturn. The com-pany recently announced 400 lay-offs at its Military Completions Center in Horseheads, New York, citing flattening military orders and the need to stay competitive.

Jeffrey Pino, Sikorsky pres-ident, expressed confidence in the prospects of the Black Hawk line and the CH-53K Super Stallion under development for the U.S. Marine Corps. The Marines are seeking 200 vastly improved heavy lifters to replace CH-53Es and Ds. The K model passed a critical design review last summer and is expected to fly in late 2013. Pino described the “Kilo” as second in prior-ity for the Marines to the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. o

Saab’s Gripen demo shows off upgradesby David Donald

The Saab Gripen Demo, a two-seat technology demonstra-tor, is one month into its lat-est phase of a trials campaign aimed at showing off technol-ogies and modifications, which could be applied to the basic design in upgrades and new-build machines. The aircraft is on display in the Paris Air Show static area (Stand 132).

The mods include AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar, redesigned main undercarriage for greater inter-nal fuel and a more powerful GE F414 engine. The Gripen Demo is approaching 200 flights since launching Phase 1 trials in May 2008.

Having been laid up for sev-eral months for modification, the technology demonstrator flew again on May 19 to embark on the Phase 3 campaign. The latest configuration has a new open-architecture avionics suite, which allows the segregation of func-tions that are critical and non-critical to flight safety. Using an Ethernet-based architecture, new elements that are mission-critical, rather than flight-crit-ical, can be inserted and tested without having to revalidate the system as a whole.

Another change is in the rear cockpit, which now sports two large Rockwell Collins dis-plays. The Gripen Demo can be

operated with decoupled cockpits, so that the back-seater can call up different displays and perform dif-ferent tasks to the pilot in the front cockpit, which retains the original displays for the time being. This functionality is an increasingly important capability for two-seat-ers in operational scenarios.

The Gripen has recently entered service in Thailand,

and last month integration of the Denel A-Darter, an imag-ing, infrared air-to-air missile, was completed in South Africa. Another weapon shortly to join the Gripen portfolio is the small diameter bomb, with integration trials currently being undertaken for the Swedish fleet.

In the meantime, the JAS 39C Gripen has earned its

“combat-proven” tag through operations over Libya by the Swedish air force. Flying from Sigonella in Sicily since April 22, eight Swedish Gripens have undertaken air-supremacy mis-sions, and reconnaissance sorties using the Saab SPK 39 modu-lar reconnaissance pod system. Over 300 reconnaissance sorties have been flown to date. o


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A derivative of Sikorsky’s S-92A commercial search-and-rescue helicopter

is being developed for Canadian Forces as the CH-148 Cyclone.

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ERSaab’s new Gripen Demo, a two-seat technology

demonstrator, roared into Le Bourget Monday carrying dummy Meteor and Iris-T missiles.


Typhoons take the fight to Gaddafi in combat debutby David Donald

NATO’s Operation Unified Protec-tor has given the Eurofighter Typhoon the opportunity to finally make its combat debut, with both the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and Italian air force aircraft involved in the operation. RAF operations over Libya have been mounted by a six-aircraft detachment at Gioia del Colle in southern Italy, from where they are operating along-side 12 Panavia Tornado GR.Mk 4s.

The RAF Typhoons have been flying both air-supremacy and air-interdiction sorties. The latter missions are flown in mixed pairs with Italian air force Tornados, the combined formation offering flexibility in weapon options through the carriage of 1,000-pound Enhanced Paveway IIs (EPWIIs) by the Typhoons, and 500-pound Paveway IVs and Brimstone by the Tornados. The Typhoons generally operate with pairs of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAMs), advanced short-range air-to-air missiles (ASRAAMs) and EPWIIs, plus two tanks and a Lit-ening III laser designator pod.

Typhoon missions average 5.5 hours, with a number of refuelings. Owing to the large number of tanker types deployed by NATO to support Operation Unified Protector, this can be one of the most challenging aspects of the mission.

“Getting fuel is a challenge as each tanker is different, and diverting to Malta is a real possibility every time you fly,” said Squadron Leader Rupert Joel, Exec-utive Officer of No. 11 Squadron. “Every mission is like the hardest trail you’ve ever done, plus you’re dropping bombs.”

Strict rules of engagement in place to minimize the chances of civilian casual-ties place further stress on the pilots. “For every target we need to positively identify it and look at potential collateral dam-age,” explained Joel. “Because we have to do things so carefully it can take 20 or 25 minutes before we get weapons away. Even with time-sensitive targets we still need to go through the process.”

Operating the Typhoons along-side Tornados has proven beneficial to both sets of crews. The Typhoon brings

a superb air-to-air radar picture, Link 16 connectivity and a highly effective defensive aids suite to the mix, while the Tornado force has many years of experi-ence in the air-to-ground role, unlike the Typhoon community.

Squadron Leader Joel commented that most dual-mode weapons have been launched in GAINS (GPS-aided inertial navigation system) mode, and that any laser guidance that has been employed has been mostly provided by the Tornados.

The question of whether the Typhoon

has self-designated laser weapons in the Libyan operation yet was left unanswered, and no comment was made about whether previously reported cutbacks in training had left RAF pilots short of air-to-ground currency at the outbreak of operations. o

A British Eurofighter Typhoon launches for a mission over Libya from Italy’s Gioia del Colle air

base with Enhanced Paveway II bombs. Italian Typhoons have also been in action, flying air

supremacy missions from Trapani with AMRAAM and Iris-T (infrared search and track) missiles.

USAF Block 40 Global Hawk set for first flight this weekby Chris Pocock

Northrop Grumman officials, during a Paris Air Show briefing, reported that the first Block 40 Global Hawk high-alti-tude UAV for the U.S. Air Force is sched-uled to make its first flight this week equipped with the Northrop Grumman/Raytheon radar technology insertion pro-gram (RTIP) sensor.

Ed Walby, Northrop Grumman busi-ness development director, sang the praises of the state-of-the-art sensor. “The RTIP is the only radar that can do concurrent MTI and SAR. The MTI scan is faster than JSTARS and covers a 30-percent larger area,” he said. The USAF is scheduled to receive 12 RTIP-equipped Block 40s to be based at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota.

The Block 40 Global Hawk with the RTIP sensor also forms the basis for Northrop Grumman’s proposal to NATO for an alliance ground surveillance sys-tem. The company is hoping that this long-gestating requirement may firm into a contract for six air vehicles by the end of this year. The ground stations would be provided by European industry.

Northrop Grumman officials also said in Paris that the first example of the Euro Hawk, the signals intelligence (SIGINT) version of the Global Hawk for the Ger-man air force, will soon make a transat-lantic ferry flight to Manching airbase in

Germany. The flight is expected to occur next month, after the Euro Hawk’s 11th and last round-robin test sortie from Edwards Air Force Base in California this week.

Once the UAV reaches Germany, EADS Cassidian will fit the integrated signals intelligence system (ISIS) that it has developed so that the Euro Hawk can replace the German air force’s already-retired Atlantic SIGINT aircraft.

Ten test flights are scheduled from Manching in the second half of this year before the Euro Hawk moves to the German air force’s operational base at Schleswig-Jagel in northern Germany. More flights there should lead to a formal handover in mid-2012.

Only this first Euro Hawk and ISIS system are currently contracted, but Mar-cus Heller, program manager for EADS Cassidian, is hoping that the German air force will confirm four more air vehicles and a second set of ground stations next year. The development of ISIS in Ger-many “allows national access to source code,” he noted. The COMINT and ELINT subsystems of ISIS share the same antennas, in fuselage fairings and under-wing pods.

Meanwhile, the first flight of the broad-area, maritime surveillance (BAMS) version of the Global Hawk for the U.S.

Navy is scheduled for next spring, according to Walt Kre-itler, Northrop Grumman busi-ness development director. Ahead of that event, the Navy is flying two development air-craft with three Block 10 Global Hawks that were declared sur-plus to Air Force requirements.

The company foresees pro-duction of as many as 68 ded-icated BAMS air vehicles to provide almost global ocean cov-erage from five worldwide bases. Kreitler explained that while the Boeing P-8 Poseidon will replace the P-3 Orion in anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare, the bulk of the P-3’s maritime surveil-lance tasking will be assumed by the BAMS system.

“Maritime surveillance is a 360-degree business,” he add-ed, by way of introduction to the BAMS sensor suite, which includes Northrop Grumman’s own multi-function active sensor, a “spinning” X-band ac-tive electronically scanned array (AESA) radar; the Raytheon MTS-B electro- optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor ball; and an elec-tronic support measures (ESM) system.

The BAMS require-ment has driven vari-ous improvements to the Global Hawk airframe that may be retrofitted to USAF versions. o

The broad-area, maritime surveillance (BAMS) version of the Global Hawk will survey large ocean

areas with its multi-sensor suite.

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The RTIP (radar technology insertion program) surveillance radar is seen here fitted to the first Block 40 Global Hawk. The first flightof this combination should take place this week.

HBC demos missionized King Air 350ER hereby David Donald

Hawker Beechcraft is dis-playing for the first time the latest addition to the compa-ny’s customer demonstration fleet, a King Air 350ER con-figured to highlight the type’s adaptability to a variety of spe-cial missions. Appropriately, the aircraft carries the registra-tion N1459, corresponding to the number of special-mission turboprops that had been sold by this spring.

“This aircraft represents our commitment to the worldwide special-mission market,” said Jay Gibson, recently appointed as HBC’s v-p special missions. “The unique configuration is designed to showcase the out-standing flexibility and versatil-ity of the King Air 350ER.”

N1459 has four specific equipment sets installed–two externally and two internally–all of which are FAA-certified and available from the factory. The external equipment includes a belly-mounted radome for dig-ital search radars, which can be optimized for either maritime or

overland use, and a lift platform for carrying electro-optical/infrared sensor turrets, such as the Star Safire HD or MX-15. This platform allows the turret to be retracted to minimize drag during transits to and from the operational area.

Internally, the demonstrator has a troop-carrying fit on the port side, with five Aviation Fabrica-tors seats to demonstrate the full 11-seat configuration. The inte-rior can be rapidly reconfigured for other uses. Among those tasks could be aeromedical evac-uation, for which the starboard side of the demonstrator’s cabin is outfitted with two Spectrum Aeromed medical sleds and a medical cabinet.

After its appearance in Paris, the demonstrator will embark on a sales tour around Europe, Africa and Latin Amer-ica. Hawker Beechcraft has achieved significant sales in the special-mission sector with the King Air 350ER, and demand continues to grow.

A number of contractors of-

fer intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) equip ment fits based on the aircraft, which itself has increased fuel that allows a California-Hawaii sec-tor to be flown. ISR-configured King Air 350ERs are in use with the Iraqi air force, and the type is the platform for the similar MC-12W Project Liberty aircraft, out-fitted by L-3 Communications for the U.S. Air Force.

L-3 is one of four contractors–along with Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Mar-tin/Sierra Nevada–vying for a major contract from the U.S. Army. The Emarss (enhanced medium-altitude reconnaissance and surveillance system) pro-gram aims to provide around 36 ISR aircraft, originally intended to enter service in Afghanistan next year. Boeing was announced as the winner last November, but the losing bidders protested and a new award will be made. Whichever systems contractor is chosen, Hawker Beechcraft will provide the King Air 350ER as the platform.

As special-mission King Airs proliferate, Hawker Beechcraft is expanding its customer-sup-port organization. The com-pany has established a service center in Baghdad to support the Iraqi air force’s six King Airs, as well as to provide a

base from which to support T-6/AT-6 Texan international customers in the future.

The company recently was awarded a follow-on contract for training as part of its con-tractor logistic support (CLS) provision role for the Iraqi air force’s Peace Dragon air-craft (five configured for ISR, plus one for light transport).

In addition to its maintenance support, HBC will provide three technicians and two instructors at New Al-Muthana air base to train Iraqi air force personnel. The Peace Dragon fleet typi-cally flies six sorties each day, and has racked up some 2,750 hours in more than 1,200 sorties since HBC’s CLS role began in July last year. o


Bright SkieS for Breitling Winner Breitling (Static AA168) recently ran a photo competition on Facebook

that had the theme of capturing the spirit of aviation. Jeremy Hampton from Overland Park, Kansas, won first prize with a picture of a child admir-ing an aircraft (above) that beat 5,000 other entries. The honor also got him an all-expenses-paid training course for a pilot’s license.

Second-prize winner Tyler Rogoway, from Portland, Oregon, didn’t do too badly either. As a reward for his shot of an airliner on final approach (below) he won a flight with the Breitling Jet Team, the larg-est civilian professional jet display team. The winners were chosen by a panel that included actor and pilot John Travolta, air-to-air photogra-pher Katsuhiko Tokunaga and Yves “Jetman” Rossy. –L.M.

Phantom Eye approaches first flight at Edwards by David Donald

Boeing’s Phantom Works has taken a number of impor-tant strides toward flying the Phantom Eye high-altitude long-endurance unmanned air-craft system (UAS). The first vehicle has just completed

12 days of ground vibration and structural mode interac-tion tests at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Cal-ifornia. It has also had its fuel tanks filled for the first time.

Phantom Eye is powered by a pair of four-cylinder, 2.3-liter engines, based on a Ford motor engine and each generating 150 hp. What is remarkable is that they are fueled by hydrogen, held in two large tanks. Nitrogen was used for the first tank-filling tests, which focused on fueling procedures and assessment of the air vehicle in its full-weight configuration.

Boeing has developed the Phantom Eye as a technology demonstrator for a UAS that can fulfill a variety of roles, includ-ing persistent ISR and commu-nications relay.

The demonstrator is designed to stay aloft for up to four days, flying at 150 knots at an altitude of 65,000 feet with a 450-pound payload, but ultimately Boeing is planning for larger vehicles with greater endurance and pay-load capacity.

Originally due to fly earlier this year, Phantom Eye is now sched-uled to make its first flight from Edwards in late summer. o

Boeing’s Phantom Eye demonstrator is at NASA Dryden, undergoing tests in preparation for a first flight later this summer.

King Air 350 displayed for the first time here by Hawker Beechcraft can be adapted to a variety of special missions. It will embark on a sales tour after the show.

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© 2011 Raytheon Company. All rights reserved. “Customer Success Is Our Mission” is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.

Every day, Raytheon customers undertake vital missions across air,

land, sea, space and cyberspace. Our mission is to provide innovative,

integrated technologies across these domains to ensure customer

success and deliver a true operational advantage, mission after mission.

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Leasing firms plot course for coming order boomby Gregory Polek

The world’s aircraft leasing industry appears to have weath-ered the proverbial storm of the global recession and now looks well positioned to exploit air-craft placement opportunities in markets such as China, in par-ticular. However, such opportu-nities won’t come without their challenges, according to some of the leasing company bosses who appeared at this spring’s Interna-tional Society of Trans-port Aircraft Traders (ISTAT) conference.

Air Lease Corp. chief Steven Udvar-Hazy, for one, cited multiple pro-jections for production of 100-seat and larger jets over the next five years of 5,000 units, 40 percent of which, he said, will involve oper-ating leases represent-ing $100 billion worth of financing. “Seven or eight of the oper-ating lessors will have to do the heavy lifting to come up with $100 billion worth of air-craft financing…That’s the magnitude we’re facing as the top-tier lessors,” he said. In summary, the next five years will present tremendous opportu-nity for those lessors, said Hazy, but also a daunting challenge in terms of management, resources and access to capital markets.

Steven Townend, the dep-uty managing director and chief commercial officer of BOC Avi-ation, the largest leasing com-pany in Asia, said although he sees new capital coming from Asian interests such as his own [the Bank of China owns BOC Aviation], the vast number of small leasing companies in the region will dwindle, leaving the market to fewer, yet larger inter-

ests. “I think there’s some huge volumes to be dealt with,” said Townend. “I do see new capi-tal coming in, from Asia, from our part of the world, and in five years time I don’t think we’ll be the only major les-sor that’s owned by Asian interests. That might be banks or that might be insur-ance companies as we’ve seen in other parts of the world.”

Hazy said that the world’s les-

sors will have to look more toward Asia and educate insti-tutions that run “hot and cold depending on the cycle we’re in.” The Air Lease boss stressed the importance of demonstrat-ing that lessors have proved themselves much more stable and able to generate consistent

profits through multiple cycles than have the airlines. “Whereas our airline customers have had tremendous volatility in their earnings, we have a much more stable, a much more predictable business model as long as we select the right assets.”

‘Tested by Fire’Townend concurred with

Hazy’s assessment of the airlines, again emphasizing the differ-ences between the model used by the leasing companies and that of the world’s air carriers. “The biggest costs to the airline indus-try have tended to be labor and fuel,” said Townend. “For any of us it’s really the cost of your air-craft and the cost of your fund-ing, and the key for anybody to be successful and come through will be do get both of those down as far as they can.”

Recently, however, the air-lines appear to have found their stride, making decent profits for

the first time in years due largely to their ability to “rightsize” and consolidate. To CIT Group president Jeffrey Knittel, that begs the question of whether or not lessors need to follow suit. “Size is important for those les-sors that are buying from the OEMs,” said Hazy, who added that scale might not prove as important to those more engaged in sale-leasebacks.

“It’s a very transparent trans-action because the lessor is buy-ing from the airline, the airline knows what the cost is; it’s simply a money-over-money type trans-action,” Hazy said of sale-lease-backs. “So scale there may not be as important…But for those of us who are massive buyers of new aircraft–and in my career it’s now pushing 2,000 new air-craft from the major manufac-turers–scale is really important, not only in terms of financial strength but in the ability to cater to lots of different customers

in different circumstances.”Leasing companies and airlines

alike certainly needed to adjust to varying, yet mostly unpleasant circumstances while weathering the last economic downturn, dur-ing which “massive” purchases of aircraft became a rarity. Still, both sectors emerged in relatively strong condition.

GECAS president and CEO Norman Liu praised the aviation business at large for its “incredi-ble” resilience following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the SARS epi-demic and the Iraq War, all events that perhaps might have helped prepare the industry for the recession. “People just know how to work through things,” he said. “It’s a testament to every-one in the business.

“After 9/11 I was surprised [by the industry’s rebound],” he said. “This time I wasn’t sur-prised as much because there’s one thing that’s going on that’s been a constant, which is emerg-ing markets growth.”

Hazy called globalization “a stabilizing force,” but also cred-ited lease management teams with learning how to navigate crises better by working on fleet solutions rather than sim-ply placing aircraft. “Overall, I think we emerged better than the airlines because we were tested by fire.”

Still, Knittel argued that the airlines, too, actually emerged from this latest recession in bet-ter shape than they had in past downturns. Townend agreed, but he pointed to the preceding fu-el price hikes as the reason. “I think that what happened this time around was because we had that huge fuel spike first, particu-larly here in the U.S., people had already reacted,” said Townend. “They already pulled capaci-ty out; they al ready cut all their costs, and they probably were therefore in much better shape to deal with the downturn.” o


French firm touts component testing by Thierry Dubois

Avnir Engineering (Hall 4 Stand AB132) is here promot-ing its skills in devising test campaigns for aerospace com-ponents, such as its recent test of a helicopter’s electric harness holder against vibration and temperature stress. The two-year-old French company, with offices in Paris and Lyon, has an 11-member workforce and is looking to recruit more people.

Avnir’s resources have been expanded through a partnership with Schneider Electric which is located in Grenoble, where it has a test laboratory. “We use their high-level facilities; in exchange, we share our expertise in aero-space, where testing methods are more robust than what they

usually do,” Christophe Ulrich, Avnir’s CEO, told AIN.

Schneider’s laboratory enables Avnir to perform “acceler-ated aging” trials. For exam-ple, the electric harness holder that it tested for Eurocopter has to be totally reliable as it is located near the main gearbox. Evaluations involved a temper-ature range of 130 degrees Cel-sius (from minus 55 C to plus 75 C). Simultaneously, the har-ness underwent random vibra-tions of an average 12.5g, with peaks at 36g.

After three hours of this test-ing on each axis, the project had effectively simulated the full life of the component (several dozen thousand flight hours). In fact,

two harness holders of different sizes, with the larger one being for the AS365 N3+ Dauphin rotorcraft, were assessed at a time.

Extensive Testing OptionsIn addition to these types of

tests, Avnir is experienced in per-forming other tests, including for lightning effects, electromagnetic interference and bird impact. It also recently conducted an explosion test for French aero-space group Intertechnique, the goal of which was to ensure that a military aircraft’s fuel system could endure an explosion with-out causing a fire.

Avnir’s other main custom-ers are Dassault, both for its civil and military aircraft, and

the French defense procure-ment agency (DGA). Aerospace accounts for about 70 percent of the company’s business, with the rest coming from the energy sector, including nuclear seg-ment players. Apart from test-ing, Avnir is involved in research and development: for example, it has developed an on-board sen-sor that measures both oil den-sity and viscosity.

Ulrich, who has had experi-ence in creating start-up compa-nies, explained that he wants to achieve sustainable growth. While customers are clamoring for him to hire more engineers quickly, he said, he has chosen “not to go too fast.” The target number of employees is 30 in 2013.

According to Ulrich, rev-enues in 2010 amounted to €225,000 ($315,000) and are predicted to hit €600,000 ($840,000) this year. o

Air Lease founder and CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy has said that leasing groups like his will provide financing for as much as 40 percent of airliners delivered over the next five years.

For leasing companies like Aviation Capital Group, which includes Airbus A320s in its portfolio, emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere now

account for a fast-growing portion of overall business.

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Rockwell Collins delivers first software-defined ARC-210 radio by Bill Carey

When Rockwell Collins officially cel-ebrated the first full-rate production delivery of its ARC-210 RT-1939(C) Generation 5 radio to PMA 209, the air combat electronics program office of the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command in late April, it marked a milestone. The hando-ver was significant in that the fifth-gen-eration ARC-210 “is the first airborne software-defined radio to hit the market,” said Troy Brunk, Rockwell Collins senior director, airborne communications prod-ucts. Just a week earlier, PMA 209 com-pleted a review that found the Gen5 radio meets requirements, making it available for procurement by fleet users under the Navair production contract.

The ARC-210 Gen5 radio is a multi-band, multimode receiver-transmitter operating in the V/UHF frequency range, providing extended coverage from 30 to 941 MHz for military and public service radio bands. Rockwell Collins has delivered more than 30,000 ARC-210 radios used on 182 platforms since the start of the product line in 1990. The radio has evolved over suc-cessive generations with new capabili-ties added through software updates.

The Gen5 radio features a soft-ware-defined communications architec-ture supporting multiple waveforms and embedded programmable cryptography, the first military airborne transceiver to do so, according to Rockwell Collins. It will support insertion of tactical secure voice, integrated waveform, combat net radio and soldier radio waveform capabilities.

“The ARC-210 Gen5 radio is the first-to-market solution capable of providing networking and modern cryptographic functionality that the U.S. military needs for its airborne platforms,” said Bruce King, Rockwell Collins general manager of communications products. “It pro-vides a clear pathway for the Department of Defense to acquire an affordable, reli-able and secure networking solution for any type of aircraft.”

Brunk said Rockwell Collins already dominates the UHF airborne market space, with the ARC-210 representing “the de-facto standard radio” of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force. The company also supplies some radios to the U.S. Army and U.S. Coast Guard.

It currently is supplying mainly the fourth-generation ARC-210 RT-1851(C) radio, known as “The Warrior,” to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, as well as some third-generation radios. Even-tually, production of the fourth-gener-ation radio will begin to ramp down,

Brunk said. Initial platforms expected to implement the Gen5 radio, a form-and-fit replacement for existing radios, are the MH-60 helicopter, V-22 tiltrotor and F/A-18, F-15 and F-16 fighters.

Shipboard ApplicationsThe company expects to deliver about

300 Gen5 radios this year, including 90 low-rate initial production (LRIP) models . Of those 90, 20 were delivered to PMA 209 and 70 to PMA 213, the naval air traffic management systems program office. PMA 213 is running the joint precision approach and landing sys-tem (JPALS) program. Through JPALS, which is comparable to the civilian GPS local area augmentation system, aircraft will receive differential GPS corrections from a shipboard station via datalink, providing U.S. Navy aircraft carriers with all-weather landing capability. Rockwell Collins is implementing the airborne UHF datalink for JPALS in the ARC-210 Gen5 radio.

In September 2008, Raytheon was awarded a $233 million contract for the

JPALS system development and dem-onstration phase, heading a team that included Rockwell Collins, Northrop Grumman and SAIC. Raytheon is per-forming the shipboard integration piece of JPALS.

Brunk said Rockwell Collins antic-ipates a contract from Navair for the airborne piece of JPALS. First software delivery would be in July 2012, allowing further development and testing of air-borne and shipborne links. The system tentatively would be integrated into the fleet in Fiscal Year 2014. o


Marking the first production delivery of Rockwell Collins’ ARC-210 Gen5 radio are Bruce King, senior vice president of operations (left), and Col. Chris Athearn, commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency in Minneapolis.

Le Bourget museum offers children’s sectionby Thierry Dubois

The Air and Space Museum here at Le Bourget has a new section dedicated to children–Planète Pilote. The 10,000-sq-ft area features about 40 experiments for small hands, explaining how aircraft fly and how astronauts live. The space is open to children aged 6 to 12, who may spend up to 75 minutes at a time there as they are encouraged to independently explore what’s on offer.

Aerospace basics are explained for youngsters but some older visitors will certainly enjoy the experience as a refresher course. For example, to under-stand the principle of lift on a wing pro-file, you can direct an air nozzle onto a wing structure. The experiment shows that for an aircraft to fly, airspeed must be greater on the upper surface than on the under surface. A neighboring, rotat-ing device demonstrates how a minimum speed is necessary for takeoff.

In the navigation section, an artificial horizon is linked to an aircraft model. The visitor can look at the relationship between the model’s attitude and the information displayed on the instrument. A similar experiment is available with a compass. Then at the “airclub” instal-lation, the kids have to follow air traffic control instructions in a scaled-down fly-ing pattern.

Young would-be aviators also can step into the cockpit of an Airbus A320 (EADS is a financial partner in Planète

Pilote). They can sit in a Cessna 150 and they can even try their hand at flying a simulator, in which they are at the (sim-plified) controls of an aerobatic single-seater. They are supposed to follow a “highway-in-the-sky” type flightpath, fly-ing through virtual circles.

Helicopters are not forgotten. Visitors can sit down in a “pedal helicopter,” try out the actuators and feel the downwash. In another experiment, they can differen-tiate cyclic and collective pitch controls.

As for space, visitors can use a fan to get feathers airborne. When the pressure decreases and gets close to a vacuum, the

fan still spins but the feathers drop, dem-onstrating the importance of air to fly-ing! Kids also can tour a mockup of an international space station module.

Although some parts of Planète Pilote do not seem to be sufficiently kid-proof, AIN recommends this amusing and highly educational visit. Leaflets and signs are in French, English and Ger-man. While there is no entry fee during the Paris Air Show at the museum’s main entrance, Planète Pilote has one: €6 ($8) per person.

For more information see: www.museeairespace.fr/. o

Kids can learn and have fun at the Air and Space Museum here in Le Bourget, and there is plenty for adults to enjoy too.

FLIR SyStemS ShowS

theRmaL-CameRa CoRe

FLIR Systems (Chalet C2) is introduc-ing here in Paris its new thermal-camera core, called Quark, which it says provides high-quality infrared imaging and reliabil-ity. Salient characteristics of Quark include its small volume (less than 0.5 cu in), its low mass (less than 20 grams) and a shock rating of 800 gs. Wafer-level packaging of the microbolometer sensor facilitates Quark’s compact design, according to FLIR, while Quark’s capabilities make it adaptable for a variety of applications.

Founded in 1978 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, FLIR designs, man-ufactures and supports thermal imaging systems and subsystems for industrial, scientific, government, commercial and firefighting applications. � n

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Washington seeks to become ‘Silicon Valley of composites’ by Bill Carey

Boeing’s difficulties in outsourcing sections of the 787 Dreamliner are well documented. From that troubling experi-ence, however, an opportunity was born in the U.S. state of Washington, once the undisputed home of Boeing commercial airliner programs.

With its emphasis on lighter-weight construction, achieved through the use of carbon fiber composites on the fuselage, wings and other structural components, the Dreamliner helped open the door to wider application of composites in other indus-tries, said Michael Fancher, senior pro-gram manager with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, in Bremerton, Washington. “Driven by aerospace pri-marily, the sourcing of advanced compos-ites, both the raw material and the forms that can be used to make things, has come down in cost,” Fancher said, citing the 787.

For Washington state, disad-vantaged by Boeing’s decision to outsource major sections of the 787 globally, composites rep-resent a promising new growth market and a way to retain man-ufacturing in the state, as well as to expand it beyond aerospace into automobiles, shipbuilding, alterna-tive energy and other industries. Fancher equates the future of composites to the expansion of the aluminum industry after World War II, but cautions that advanced manufacturing processes and workforce competence lag the coming demand.

“We believe the expansion of the sup-ply chain will be driven more in paral-lel with development and validation of manufacturing processes, and we don’t see any reason why that can’t be local,” Fancher said. “We think there’s going to be an explosive growth where applications of composites in new industries like elec-tric vehicles and such is upon us. There’s tremendous opportunity to capitalize on that, but we look around and we don’t see there is any Silicon Valley of composites.”

In composites, as in aerospace,

Washington state aims to claim that man-tle. The state’s leading aerospace cluster of 156 companies employing 82,000 peo-ple counts 40 or more companies involved in composites. Included within this smaller cluster are companies involved in “prepreg” materials –composite fibers infused with resin and preformed into shapes before curing–as well as research and development, nondestructive testing, tooling, fabrication and assembly.

Long History in CompositesWashington state has a legacy in com-

posites dating to the 1960s, when aircraft interiors company Heath Tecna of Bell-ingham supplied composite materials to the defense industry. Composites played an

important role in the development of the 777 in the 1990s, account-ing for 12 percent of the structural weight of that aircraft (compared to 50 percent on the 787), and are used in the empennage, floor beams and aerodynamic fairings.

Toray Composites (America), a subsidiary of Toray Industries of Japan, established a plant in Frederickson in the early 1990s to supply composites for the 777

program. The facility manufactures car-bon-fiber prepreg materials using epoxy resins and carbon fiber from Toray’s facili-ties in Japan and Alabama. In 2006, Toray Industries and Boeing signed a production agreement for $6 billion worth of carbon fiber, and Toray now is sole-source sup-plier for epoxy prepreg materials used in primary structures of the 787 Dreamliner.

C&D Zodiac, formerly Northwest Composites of Marysville, won a $400 million contract from Boeing in 2005 to provide interior linings for the 787 passen-ger cabin and cargo hold. Other companies provide composites for a range of com-mercial and military platforms. Janicki Industries of Sedro-Woolley is considered one of the world’s largest composites tool-ing companies, according to the Washing-ton State Department of Commerce.

“Boeing obviously was very inter-ested in composites, but that whole sector really emerged in the sixties when Heath Tecna began filling orders for the defense industry,” Washington governor Chris-tine Gregoire told AIN. “While it started in the airplane industry, now it’s grown well beyond that.”

Bolstering the state’s aerospace indus-try is a priority for Gregoire, now in her second term. It has been a tenure marked by the 2008 Boeing machinists’ strike and the company’s controversial selection in October 2009 of North Charleston, South Carolina, as the site of a second 787 assembly line.

“Obviously, the centerpiece of our aerospace industry is Boeing. But since I have come into office, we’ve come to understand that we ought to be empha-sizing an aerospace cluster in our state [with] a number of suppliers, focused not just solely on Boeing, but on their suppliers and, frankly, suppliers to any other manufacturer of airplanes,” Gre-goire said. “What we have done is dra-matically emphasize the growth of our supplier network across the state to the point where we are at more than 600 supplier companies.”

Boosting Composite ExpertiseIn advancing aerospace, Gregoire

has focused on workforce training and research issues. In 2009, she established the Washington Aerospace Council, a high-level board designed to identify statewide worker training needs. The council membership includes representa-tives of Boeing, supplier companies, the executive director of the state board for community and technical colleges and the presidents of Washington State Univer-sity and the University of Washington. Mobilizing the state’s community colleges and research institutions is another thrust of the governor’s aerospace strategy.

There are currently 15 graduate stu-dents enrolled across three departments in the Advanced Materials and Trans-port Structures (AMTAS) program at the University of Washington, which is focused on composites being used in transport aircraft structures.

UW-Seattle serves as the lead univer-sity of the AMTAS consortium, which includes Washington State University, Edmonds Community College, Oregon State University, the University of Utah and Florida International University along with industry partners. AMTAS, in turn, is part of the FAA Joint Advanced Materials and Structures Center of Excel-lence, a designation awarded to UW and Wichita State University in late 2003.

With support from FAA, the univer-sities and industry partners are at the leading edge of composites research and development.

Mark Tuttle, a professor of mechan-ical engineering at UW and director of AMTAS, explained where that research is pointing. “The next generation compos-ites that are being developed will be what is termed ‘multifunctional,’” he said. “For example, the current systems are not very electrically conductive, and that has meant that aircraft designers have had to worry a lot about, for example, lightning-strike protection. If we could develop a composite material system that has high stiffness-to-weight ratios and is also more electrically conductive than current sys-tems, that would simplify the design of lightning-protection systems.”

Tuttle was involved in a project with Boeing and the Hexcel Corp. facility in Kent, Washington, to develop analy-sis tools for Hexcel’s HexMC product, a carbon-fiber epoxy molding material applied in Boeing 787 window frames,

brackets, fittings, Intercostal reinforcing beams and other structures. The aim of the research is to reduce the level of test-ing necessary for the new material system.

Boeing is honing its own composites expertise. In December, Boeing Fabri-cation, part of the company’s Commer-cial Airplanes business, took over the former Boeing Defense Systems com-posites facility in Seattle and renamed it the Advanced Developmental Compos-ites Facility. Under Defense Systems, the facility supported F-22 wing and aft-sec-tion production. Commercial Airplanes reportedly is considering it for 787-9 structures, bringing in-house work that was outsourced on the 787-8.

“We’re planning to leverage that capability…so we can support air-plane development into the future,” said Boeing Fabrication spokesman Don Schmidt. “Their role will be to harden those [composites] processes so that at some point in the future, we may not have to source those.” o

Aerospace workforce by state, by quarter 2004-2010100

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Washington governor Christine Gregoire

Boeing’s Washington production lines benefit from the skills of its locally based composites suppliers.

In recent years Washington has been building an aerospace cluster, with a specialization in composites.

Toray Industries, one of several Washington firms with composites expertise, supplies epoxy prepreg materials for the 787’s primary structures.

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Le Bourget Airport looks to tap bizav’s bouncebackby Jeff Apter

Paris Le Bourget Airport is press-ing ahead with the second phase of its 20-year modernization and development plan, having had to delay it two years ago in response to the financial crisis. The first phase of the program was com-pleted in 2009, and this improved several key buildings and provided better access.

Included in the second phase are plans for a new four-star hotel on-site that would be built by Le Bourget owner Aéroports de Paris (ADP), with financing provided by the Groupe Ségur real estate venture. The hotel will be man-aged by the Marriot chain and is due to open in time for the 2013 Paris Air Show.

ADP chief executive Pierre Graff confirmed that some 258,000 square feet of space is to be made available to companies wanting to expand on this site. The air-port authority wants to further develop Le Bourget as a hub for business aviation companies, and especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Le Bourget, which was once the French capital’s main air transport gate-way before the opening of Charles de Gaulle Roissy and Orly airports, has since become the busiest business avi-ation airport in Europe. After seeing a severe drop in traffic following the finan-cial crisis of 2008, activity bounced back to grow by 3 percent in 2010. The first quarter of 2011 saw growth increasing to almost 5 percent compared with the same period last year.

According to Le Bourget manag-ing director Michel de Ronne, traffic at what remains Europe’s busiest busi-ness aviation gateway, hit a low point in 2009 when movements fell 11 percent on the previous year to 57,900. In the boom year of 2007, the total had been as high as 66,800 movements.

Le Bourget’s renewal and expansion project (due to run through 2023) is an integral part of the French government’s major strategic long-term urban develop-ment plan for the greater Paris area. Deci-sions taken in consultation with elected local authorities include the long awaited

and much needed improve-ment of public transporta-tion. This will connect Le Bourget to the 80-mile auto-mated rapid transport sys-tem planned to connect the French capital’s north and west sub-urbs from Charles de Gaulle Roissy Air-port to the La Défense business district. Two stations will serve the town of Le

Bourget–one adjoining the pres-ent regional line (RER) and the other at the airport near the Air and Space Museum.

Despite the recent downturn, Le Bourget’s existing FBOs seem to have weathered the storm. Several of the companies, which provide high-caliber ground han-dling and support to business jet operators and their passengers, have been upgrading facilities, or

plan to do so, as part of the wider effort to make the airport fit for the 21st century.

Modernizing and ImprovingAdvanced Air Support (part of the

Jet Services Group, which is owned by Groupe Ségur) last October opened a joint state-of-the-art FBO at Le Bourget with ExecuJet Europe. Jet Services invested $1.4 million in modernizing the 1923 building and now it is spending a further $13 million to improve its Uni Air Entre-prise maintenance operation at the site and add another pair of hangars.

The refurbished facility now fea-tures two passenger lounges and a pilot lounge, as well as a separate relaxation room for crew and two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, plus a snooze-room. The facility also offers a wireless Internet connection, satellite TV, catering, park-ing, meeting rooms and a complete con-cierge service. Adjoining the building are a 172,200-sq-ft hangar and 193,750 sq ft of ramp space. AAS averages 25 to 30 movements daily, up from just six before Jet Services acquired it.

Several other FBO developments are already under way at Le Bourget. Unijet, based in Le Bourget for 40 years, plans to inaugurate its new FBO early next year. The eco-friendly terminal and FBO

will adjoin Unijet’s 44,789-sq-ft half of the “K1” Jacque-line Auriol hangar. According to com-pany owner Dannys Famin, the economy, which since 2007 has led to a 28-per-cent decrease in Uni-jet flights–mostly in the charter and air ambulance sectors–is making a grad-ual recovery with a

10-percent increase in business in the first quarter of 2011.

Landmark Aviation, a newcomer to Le Bourget, is building a new VIP FBO with ultra-modern facilities that feature a very large hangar and private parking able to accommodate business jets up to the size of A340-600 widebodies. The company, which has more than 40 facilities in the U.S. and Canada, plans to update the VIP facility at the “H0” building, which is expected to be operational at the end of 2012. According to general manager Denis Bourgois, Land-mark considers the present site as the center of its expanding FBO network in Europe.

Dassault Falcon Service already has modernized its executive terminal with a lounge that directly overlooks its adjoin-ing the ramp area. The facility is about to get further upgraded with the moderniza-tion of the flight crew rest area, with new high-tech armchairs. The exterior of the building is also getting a makeover, fea-turing a new paint job in Dassault colors.

In response to operator demand, DFS is increasing the size of its weekend shift inside the terminal to support custom-ers and also is extending the FBOs open-ing hours on Saturdays and Sundays to 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. (from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.). Ramp staff continue to be available around the clock.

In 2010, DFS handled 5,186 move-ments, representing a modest recovery on the recent low point of 5,017 movements in 2009 (a drop of more than 2,300 from 7,392 in 2008). The first quarter of 2011 (typically a quiet period) saw 1,384 movements. DFS managing director Bernard d’Yvoire said this by no means indicates that the busi-ness aviation downturn is over, but it does appear to be a promising improvement, especially given the increased prevalence of larger jets in the movement mix.

Dubai-based JetEx Flight Support is the first Middle East executive air char-ter company to establish permanent operations in Europe with its FBO at Le Bourget. The terminal is close to the air-port’s main entrance. The layout of the facility’s four separate large VIP lounges enables privacy for different groups and within groups where this is appropriate according to Middle East cultural prac-tices. The facilities include a prayer area, conference rooms, Internet access, show-ers and crew rest rooms. The site provides parking space for up to 30 aircraft and is claimed to be the only FBO at Le Bourget able to accommodate the Airbus A380.

About 30 percent of JetEx’s client base at Le Bourget is from the Middle East, 40 percent from Europe and 10 percent from

North America, with the remaining 20 percent from other areas. According to JetEx, traffic is now recovering, with an average of 25 movements daily in January and February representing about 20 per-cent of the airport’s total traffic for those periods. About half of the movements at JetEx involve NetJets flights following an agreement concluded a year ago with the fractional ownership provider.

Apart from minor changes, Universal Aviation France has no immediate plans for further updating its FBO, which was recently refurbished. According to man-aging director Sandrine Jackson, activity is now recovering slowly from the cri-sis. The company has a new agreement with Jet Aviation to establish a line main-tenance and AOG support operation at the airport and is employing Jet Aviation personnel for the task.

Signature Flight Support continues to reinvest in its facility with new ground equipment, including de-icing units, capa-ble of servicing all types of aircraft. Signa-ture’s regional vice president for Europe and the Middle East Steve Gulvin told AIN its facilities are very modern and have seen significant investment over the past few years. “We will continue to invest where appropriate and are looking at extend-ing our current ramp footprint in 2011,” he said. Last year, Signature introduced a Flight Support Service, which coordinates handling, fuel and third-party requests at all business and general aviation airports within France. All requests are coordi-nated via its operations at Le Bourget.

All of Signature’s Le Bourget employ-ees, including management, recently underwent the company’s “Service with a Leading Edge” program, which the com-pany has organized in partnership with the Ritz Carlton. The FBO has also put in a dedicated kids area for younger customers.

Also part of the FBO pack at Le Bourget is Escadrille Mercure. This is a sister company to executive charter oper-ator Aero Jets Darta.

Finally, at the reserved zone in the northeast of the airport, U.S.-based X Jet is establishing what it says will be an exclusive VVIP “Members Only” club and hangar for a number of select aircraft owners, mirroring its venture in Denver, Colorado. The project is due for comple-tion at the end of 2012. o


Dubai-based JetEx Flight Services boasts four separate VIP lounges

to accommodate different groups.

Visitors to Dassault Falcon Service can watch the activity on the ramp from its upgraded lounge area. The FBO plans to begin a modernization of its crew rest area with high-tech armchairs.

Michel de Ronne, Le Bourget

managing director

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www.ainonline.com • April 2011 • Aviation International News 00

covering six A321neos, valued at around $635 million.

Boeing landed its own crop of new business totaling some $7.1 billion. This was headed by a deal with leasing group GE Capital Aviation Services for a pair of the new 747-8 Freighters and eight 777-300ERs.

Russia’s Aeroflot placed an order for eight 777-300ERs worth some $2.2 billion. Nor-wegian Air Shuttle announced orders for 15 737-800s costing $1.2 billion, and Malaysian Air-lines pitched in just over another $800 million with a deal for 10 of the same type.

Bombardier got yet more very welcome validation for its CSeries program, with letter of intent being signed with Korean Air for 10 options and 10 pur-chase rights for the CS300 model. If the deal is fully consummated its value could rise to just above $1.5 billion.

The Canadian airframer’s business aircraft division also got lucky. Europe-based oper-ator VistaJet–arguably the best customer in its history with an estimated $2 billion backlog–signed a deal for 10 Global 8000 jets valued at $650 million.

Commercial support for the Russian Superjet grew with Indo-nesian carrier PT Sky Aviation signing a “heads of agreement” for a dozen of the SSJ100-95s. This pending deal is valued at just over $379 million and deliv-eries are due to begin next year.

But the jet makers didn’t have the show all too themselves yes-terday. ATR is already having its best ever Paris salon and by the end of the week expects to have logged 78 firm orders here, plus 32 options. On Tuesday it was the turn of Brazil’s Azul Linhas

Aereas to order 10 of the lat-est ATR72-600 model valued at approximately $224 million.

Rotary-winged business is pick-ing up too. Sikorsky landed an order from China Southern Air-lines subsidiary Zhuhai Helicopter Branch, which is to buy a pair of S-92s and an S-76C++ rotorcraft.

In the engine stakes, CFM International was once again a big winner. Leasing group ILFC placed a $950 million order for Leap engines to power its already-selected A320neos. Saudi Arabia’s National Air Services spent $620 million on CFM56-5B turbofans to power the 20 current-production A320s it is to receive. And Tibet Airlines

gave the Safran-General Electric partnership a $60 million con-tract for the same engine type for three A319s.

Pratt & Whitney also got a significant share of powerplant business generated by the A320neo with CIT selecting the new PW1100G turbofan for its aircraft. The undisclosed “major network carrier” that on Monday placed an order for 10 of Bom-bardier’s new CSeries airliner yesterday selected the PW1500G to power them.

Finally, Air Austral signed a $240 million contract for GP7200 engines. These are for the two A380 widebodies that it has on order. o

(TOS) at 200 nm from base. In-flight refueling would extend the TOS. Network-centric datalinks

and a self-protection suite would be included.

Avishai Izhakian, IAI El-ta business development man-ager, described the new radar as a fourth-generation follow-on to the Conformal AEW sys-tem on the Gulfstream G550 for

the Israeli air force. It features a compact, tiled, one-piece array for the radar and a separate array for the IFF (identification, friend or foe) system, spinning togeth-er within the rotodome at nearly twice the speed of previous simi-lar systems, such as the APY-9 on

the E-2D Hawkeye. The radar’s weight and power consumption are much reduced, according to Izhakian.

The design enables radar tracks to be initiated “within seconds” and held despite any banking or pitching of the AEW plat-form, Izhakian continued. Detec-tion ranges will be “very similar to today’s high-end systems,” he added. Full 360-degree coverage is available in the rotating mode, while the stationary sector mode offers 120-degree ground-stabi-lized coverage at extended ranges.

As an option, the C295 AEW could also be fitted with Elta’s EL-2022 multimode radar under the forward fuselage. This pro-vides ground moving target indi-cation and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) modes, including inverse and classification SAR for maritime surveillance.

The aircraft’s sensor data can be viewed at six onboard work-stations plus an airborne com-mand post. The Airbus Military fully integrated tactical system (FITS) that is already developed and operating on maritime sur-veillance C295s, will be adapted to the AEW mission. o

Airbus teams with IAIuContinued from page 1

Airbus is tapping Israeli expertise in airborne early warning technology to develop its C295 aircraft for this role. Here at the table Airbus Military CEO Domingo Urena-Raso, left, and Nassim Hadas, right, president of IAI’s Elta Systems, seal the deal.

Korean Air signs for CSeries as P&W fliesby Ian Sheppard

Korean Air has signed a let-ter of intent for 30 Bombardier CS300s, becoming the Asian launch customer for the CSeries and helping to dispel nervousness that runaway Airbus A320neo sales could consign the new 130-seat airliner to the history books.

Announcing the deal at Bom-bardier’s impressive CSeries pavilion/auditorium at the show yesterday, Gary Scott, Bom-bardier Commercial Aircraft president, also revealed that on Monday Pratt & Whitney car-ried out the first test flight of the PW1500G geared-turbofan engine for the aircraft.

Bombardier also projected an animated film onto the side of the cabin mockup, which proclaimed a 12-percent cost advantage for the CSeries over “re-engined aircraft,” a clear swipe at the A320neo.

The Korean flagcarrier intends to place a firm order for 10 aircraft and secure options for a further 10 (sealing deliv-ery positions), plus purchase rights for another 10. Walter Cho, Korean Air senior v-p, was bullish about the prospects of

firming up the order, while Scott added, “We’ve essentially agreed to everything. It’s just subject to some approvals.”

The first aircraft will be due for delivery in the second quarter of 2015, and Cho said that the airline would also firm up the options and purchase rights “very soon”

after the order was finalized. He said that the aircraft will have eight business-class seats, the rest being economy seating.

“The CSeries is expected to complement our widebody fleet and we will be embarking on a route expansion program,” Cho explained. The carrier has evi-dently already identified 40 potential destinations for the air-craft, which has a 2,950-nm range with 130 passengers. o

Big jet deals dispel doubtsuContinued from page 1

Four EnginEs ArE BEttEr thAn two

The Colomban Cri-Cri used to be the world’s smallest twin-engine airplane. Now it is the one of the world’s smallest four-engine airplanes and the smallest four-engine elec-trically powered airplane. Designed in the 1970s, the diminutive airplane reportedly has exceptional aerobatic performance. The e-version made its official maiden flight here at Le Bourget last year. Now, where did I put my multi-engine rating?�


In demand–the Bombardier CSeries.

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Boeing says 787 widebody is everything customers dreamt of and ready for EISby Gregory Polek

With some 30 airplanes in var-ious stages of completion parked outside the 787 production line in Everett, Washington, Boeing’s goal to deliver at least a dozen of the carbon-fiber jetliners after it gains expected certification this year might seem as remote as its aim to meet each of its custom-ers’ mission requirements.

But not only does Boeing think it can deliver between 12 and 20 of the revolutionary air-planes by year-end, 787 program head Scott Fancher told reporters during a pre-Paris media briefing that the mostly composite jet-liner will execute every mission its operators call on it to perform.

“As of today there are no

customer missions that we can-not make,” he said. “And we work very closely with our cus-tomers to understand what that means. We’ve got block points that are going in at multiple loca-tions to take weight out of the airplanes. We’ve got a series of engine improvements that both Rolls-Royce and GE are plan-ning on. Over the next couple of years the combination of those two things will further improve the efficiencies of the airplane.”

Meanwhile, Boeing is count-ing on a deal to lease a hangar from Aviation Technical Ser-vices on the south end of Ever-ett’s Paine Field to alleviate much of the pressure on delivery

schedules. The hangar, which can hold up to five 787s, houses a dedicated staff and will serve as something akin to an extra assembly line to complete the airplanes still in need of vary-ing degrees of out-of-sequence work. In early June Boeing had already begun what Fancher called pre-work inside the Ever-ett factory on a pair of Royal Air Maroc 787s, the first two air-planes scheduled to undergo the process at ATS.

“When each airplane was built, there were a series of design changes still flowing through the system…or quality-driven changes,” said Fancher. “So not all of those changes were

incorporated into every airplane that was built [and now] we have to bring all those airplanes up to that delivery standard.”

Those changes fall into two categories, he explained. “One of those categories involves things a little more structural in nature. Many of you are aware that we had a quality issue with the hor-izontal stabilizers. Even though Alenia is delivering on schedule with the required quality, we still had to rework a number of air-planes that were already deliv-ered. So that’s a good example of the pre-work that we’ll do before it goes into this ATS facility at the south end of Paine Field.”

Boeing plans to reach a monthly build rate of 10 airplanes by the end of 2013–seven in Ever-ett and three at the company’s new plant in Charleston, South Carolina. To reach that rate on the schedule it has set, Boeing will need to stabilize the airplane’s configuration and, in so doing, achieve a repetitive build, increase productivity and quality and cut flow times. By Fancher’s estima-tion, the company has already made “good progress” in terms of its production system.

“As we complete the test and certification program, we’ve seen…design changes heal over quickly,” he said. “In fact, there are relatively few if any design changes at the front end of the pipeline.”

Fancher described the design changes in question as iso-lated in nature, a point he called “really important to us” because a lack of systemic or interrelated

changes means further stabil-ity, quality and flow. Much of the out-of-sequence work left to do involves the mid-body sec-tions that come from the former Global Aeronautica operation in North Charleston.

“I’m not going to get into that kind of detail, but I’ll tell you that the center body of the airplane is structurally the most complicated part of the air-plane,” said Fancher.

“It is very typical, from a change perspective, that it is the last part of the airplane to settle down.”

Meanwhile, wing trailing edges supplied by Boeing Aus-tralia were conspicuously miss-ing from airplanes Number 38 through 41 as they traveled down the line in Everett.

“We’ve had some deliv-ery issues with trailing edges on the wing,” Fancher confirmed. “We’ve got a recovery plan for those trailing edges, and actually none of those deliveries are pacing airplane deliveries at this point.”

Now some three years behind schedule, the 787 can ill afford any further threats to the so-called pacing of deliveries–or certification. Hoping to deliver 20 airplanes this year, Boeing still needs to fly its 787s some 300 hours to complete func-tion and reliability testing and ETOPS approvals.

At the time of the press tour, Boeing had produced all but about 150 of the 4,200 so-called certification products required by the regulatory authorities, and needed to send only some 35 more to the FAA. o


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The first Boeing 787 arrived here late yesterday afternoon, just as the throngs of showgoers filed out of

Le Bourget for the day. Boeing plans to keep Dreamliner ZA001 on the display line for the next two days.

Marshall is ready to fill UK maritime patrol need

Marshall Aerospace (Hall 2 E158) is bidding to fill the UK’s maritime surveillance gap by modifying some of the Royal Air Force’s Lockheed Martin C-130Js. Last year, a

cost-cutting defense review scrapped a fleet of nine soon-to-enter-service BAE Systems Nim-rod MRA.4 aircraft. Observers have since questioned official assurances that AgustaWestland

Merlin helicopters and unmod-ified C-130Js could adequately substitute in long-range anti-submarine, anti-ship and search-and-rescue roles for the UK.

The “quick change” con-version would use some of the equipment that was developed and delivered for the Nimrod MRA.4.

The Thales Searchwater radar would be installed on the C-130J’s lower rear ramp door, and be lowered in flight from a stowed position.

Sonobuoys would be deployed through chutes on the same doors, taken from a stor-age rack nearby. An electro-optic turret would be added beneath the nose, presumably for the MRA.4’s Northrop Grumman Night Hunter II EO/IR system.

ESM antennas would be fit-ted to the wingtips, forward and rear fuselage. Five tactical work-stations would be installed in the fuselage, compared with seven in the MRA.4. –C.P.

ESM

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(DEPLOYED POSITION)SONAR BUOYDEPLOYMENT

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ESMEO TURRET

FILE: PARIS 2011 ILLUSTRATOR STUFF/147-MARSHALLS.EPS

Unmanned Schiebel Camcopter is flying solo again in Paris

Austria’s Schiebel (Hall 4 A40) is flying its Camcopter S-100 drone in the daily flying display here in Paris. Imagery from its onboard cam-era is being transmitted live to the airshow’s TV station.

In 2009 the Camcop-ter became the first UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to fly at the biennial Paris event. It has also flown at IDEX in Abu Dhabi and during the G-20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, where it also assisted with secu-rity surveillance.

The company said that strin-gent safety standards have been applied with Schiebel having to obtain an EASA flight permit for the aircraft.

“The Schiebel S-100 was developed entirely in compli-ance with manned aviation stan-dards and requirements [and] the drone meets all preconditions for its participation in the Paris Air Show,” the company stated.

The Camcopter has a three-meter wingspan, maximum takeoff weight of 200 kilograms (440 pounds) and an endurance of more than six hours. –I.S.

The Schiebel Camcopter S-100 drone is flying in the aerial display. In 2009, it became the first UAV to fly at the Paris Air Show.

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