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The End of U.S. Airline Consolidation?

Comac’s C919Headaches

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Russia’s Aerospace Reset

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Norris, Bradley Perrett, Jessica Salerno, Adrian Schofeld,

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Air

bu

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uc

t n

am

es a

re r

eg

iste

red

tra

de

ma

rks.

Own the sky

With the A380, the sky is yours. It’s the quietest,

most spacious cabin in the sky. And with the widest

seats and aisles, even in economy, it’s no wonder

passengers opt for the comfort of the A380 when

given the choice. That means higher market share,

higher load factors and higher revenues.

Departments

12 Feedback

14 Who’s Where

16-17 The World

18 Up Front

19 Commander’s Intent

20 Inside Business Aviation

21 Airline Intel

22 In Orbit

23 Washington Outlook

55 Classifed

56 Aerospace Calendar

57 Contact Us

theWorlD

16 ntsBprobesfery crash landing

of UPS A300 freighter at Alabama

airport that killed the two pilots

17 spacecraftmanufacturers in Europe

and U.S. fnding new business in

Brazil’s emerging satellite market

aIrlInes

24 Governmentlawsuit to signifcantly

delay planned American-US Air-

ways merger even in best scenario

26 etihadairwaysagrees to invest

in Air Serbia, will soon add a stake

in Jet Airways, eyes shares in LOT

DeFense

28 pentagontoweighreadiness of

tailhook, helmet improvements in

advance of F-35 production review

33 Deck-mounted ski-jump assembly

marks key step toward U.K.

carrier-based JSF operations

34 Israeli-launched drone strike

against suspected terrorists

strains longtime ties with Egypt

UnmanneDsYstems

36 U.s.armywants to take the next

step with unmanned cargo helos,

to autonomous operations

space

37 small,low-cost satellites coming into

their own as niche industry serving

civil and government markets

aIrtransport

39 seconddelaymakes 2016 frst-

delivery date untenable for

China’s C919 narrowbody airliner

40 Bigthreelondon airports in war

of words over options for

future runway capacity growth

42 arincpurchase to allow Rockwell

Collins to increase connectivity

between aircraft and the ground

aerospaceInrUssIa

43 sukhoit-50fghter and its fight-

control innovations will likely be

highlighted at MAKS air show

45 areturntosoviet-era strength

in domestic and international

A&D markets is sought

47 russiasetssightson international

market for its ‘new and improved’

attack helicopters

Russia is re-arming a feet of modern new helicopters,

including the fearsome-looking Mil Mi-28 Night Hunter,

seen here in a photo taken by Chris Lofting at a celebration

of the Russian air force’s 100th anniversary in 2012.

Russia’s aerospace industry is hoping such hardware will

revive the sector (see page 45). Elsewhere in this issue are

reports on cybersecurity, beginning on page 48, and on

delays in China’s C919 transport program (see page 39).

High-profle U.S. government lawsuit to focus on proposed airline merger’s efect on consumers.

Increasingly capable, small, low-cost satellites are attracting commercial and government inter-est for new applications.

coVerstorY

U.S

. Na

vy

24

37

AVIATION WEEK& S P A C E T E C H N O L O G Y

8 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/AuguSt 19, 2013 aviationWeek.com/awst

Digital Extras Tap this icon in articles in the digital edition of AW&ST for exclusive features. If you have not signed up to receive your digital subscription, go to

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Winner 2013

ContentsAugust 19, 2013 Volume 175 Number 28

28Lockheed Martin F-35B conducts the frst-ever night landing on a ship

on the USS Wasp Aug. 15, during the second round of developmental

testing trials for the Joint Strike Fighter o� the Atlantic coast.

KEEPING YOU FLYING IS OUR BUSINESSWheels Up to Wheels Down Maintenance- Engine Controls- Flight Controls- Aircraft Electronics- Cabin Systems and Modifications

www.baesystems.com/commercialsupport

42

43

36cYBer

48 ascybercentricactivities increase worldwide, the Pentagon begins organizing cyber warriors

51 Darpa’sambitiousNational Cyber Range has morphed into a quietly efective entity

52 airlineopsinformation are becoming increasingly vulnerable to third-party software intrusions

53 publicopinionabout mass surveillance could impact private companies’ work in aerospace

54 Quantumcryptography will likely prove valuable in shielding cyber weaknesses

VIeWpoInt

58 a&Dmarket leaders should con -sider broader investments and partnerships with small businesses

Bo

mB

ar

die

rAugust 19, 2013 Volume 175 Number 28


A round-up of what you’re reading on AviationWeek.com

The U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) competition

was a major point of discussion at last week’s Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International

conference in Washington. Catch up with our coverage of the event at AviationWeek.com/auvsi

In 1995, holding just a 30% share of the air trans-

port market, Airbus was beginning to form a

military subsidiary as it developed the Future

Large Aircraft (which became the A400M).

Read about our interview with Airbus’s then-

managing director, Jean Pierson, in our things

With Wings blog (ow.ly/nWQ1M) and see which

of his predictions came true.

Latitude Engineering’s new varia-

tion of the quadcopter—a 60-lb.

vehicle with four engines and eight

lift rotors installed in pairs —is one

of several new unmanned aircraft

system concepts being studied. Read

more in Ares, our defense technol-

ogy blog ow.ly/nWQFg Use AWIN to fnd suppliers in thou-

sands of product categories and

subcategories. Its powerful search

function allows you to fnd suppliers

by location, company size, minority-owned/disadvan-

taged status and more. AviationWeek.com/awin

On last week’s surprise developments

on the proposed merger of American

and US Airways (see page 24), reader

Carnot writes: “Very ironic that a government that

deregulated the airline industry now wants to selec-

tively regulate it. Let mergers/consolidations continue

if the industry is truly deregulated.” ow.ly/nWQDI

reaDer

comment

premIUm

content

Keep up with all the news and blogs from

Aviation Week’s editors.

Follow @AviationWeek or ‘like’ us at Facebook.com/AvWeek

Follow

On the Web

Bill Sw

eetm

aN/aw

&St

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Not Mutually ExclusivE

The question, “Has Automation Trumped Airmanship?” (AW&ST July 15, p. 22) seems to presuppose that the two are in some way distinct skill sets. This is a dangerous and false point of view. Separating the two is to deny a training and operational reality that dates back at least to the introduction of Sperry’s “Gyro Stabilizer” in the frst part of the last century. Automa-tion on the advanced-technology fight deck should be treated the same as a multitude of other past technological advances, with its impact on fight-deck processes blended smoothly into the overall demands on the pilot and crew.

After much research on how the best are already performing in fully integrat-ed, advanced-technology aircraft, we suggest that contemporary airmanship recognize the increased level of human-machine integration required by 21st-century aviation. Our book Automation Airmanship: Nine Principles for Operating Glass Cockpit Aircraft outlines founda-tional principles that apply to organiza-tions as well as individual pilots, leading to “the understanding and application of automation to airmanship, to ensure balanced situational and mode aware-ness and crew workload through the full realm of automation . . . to provide for the safest and most efcient fight.” It sounds simple, though we know it is not.

The complexity of the computer-ized fight deck is daunting, but the reality is that advances in technology have always been a part of a holistic airmanship discipline. Keeping the conversation centered on how to im-prove the reliability and integration of the human-machine relationship—and not on how to isolate the strengths and frailties of each—will bring us all toward a safer aviation future. Com-prehending how the best are already doing it is a solid frst step.Christopher J. Lutat and S. Ryan SwahMeMpHIS, Tenn.

look BEyoNd cockpit vidEo

In reference to “Fired Up” (AW&ST July 29, p. 46), which deals with the September 2010 crash of UpS Flight 6 from Dubai to Cologne, Germany, what makes anyone think a video recording would have done any good in a cockpit flled with “continuous toxic smoke”? The nTSB, european Aviation Safety Agency and United Arab emirates’ General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) (and fight crews) would be bet-

ter served if smoke- and fre-detection/suppression systems for cargo aircraft were developed so if combustible materials ignite, pilots would be warned early on and be able to deal efectively with the emergency.

The only recommendation the safety agencies need to make is mandatory installation of these fre-detection/sup-pression systems. Capt. (ret.) Elliot M. CannonUnited Parcel ServicepASO ROBleS, CAlIF.

cockpit vidEo oN-dEMaNd

It seems everybody is all “Fired Up” and moving in opposite directions: the UAe’s GCAA urges installation of cockpit video recorders (CVR) in its fnal report on the 2010 crash of UpS Flight 6, and for 13 years the nTSB has pushed the FAA to require just that. But the FAA has declined to act, and pilot unions “are frmly against the idea.” So what else is new?

GCAA investigators spent hundreds of hours trying to determine “the cock-pit environment” of the UpS Boeing

747-400F in the 28 min. before fre and smoke from the cargo compartment damaged the elevator control cables and incapacitated both pilots.

As for Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic in June 2009, French investigators stated that a CVR in the doomed Airbus A330 would have provided crucial information.

pilots may not want “Big Brother” looking over their shoulders, but a simple solution exists that would ease their anxiety, placate the unions and still provide vital evidence for accident investigations. Install digital video recorders that incorporate a scrambler, recording the data in coded form. The

recorders would reset after each fight and record over the previous fight’s digitized images. Only in the event of a crash or severe and unusual mid-air event would the recorder have its scrambled contents downloaded—and only safety agency investigators would have the digital decoder that would enable the recording to be viewed in standard video format.Lee GaillardSARAnAC lAKe, n.Y.

GlaNciNG Backward aNd Forward

Thank you for two powerful back-to-back issues. “Timeless Turbine” (AW&ST July 22, p. 40) and “Show of Arms” (AW&ST July 29, p. 12) covered pratt & Whitney Canada’s pT6 and Honeywell HTF7000, respectively. It is inspiring to read how some companies and engineers did everything right in creating a product.

I have always wondered what became of those who helped create the Avro Ar-row and BAC TSR-2. I’m glad to learn that some found a home at pWC.

“energy equation” (AW&ST July 29, p. 40) gave me more confdence in the future, although it was probably too optimistic about the U.S. obtaining energy independence. Sharon Burke’s quote: “If we become self-sufcient in energy in the U.S., what does it mean for the exporting countries?” begs the question, “Are any Americans con-cerned about that?”Charlee SmithTeMpleTOn, CAlIF.

thE ‘wayBack’ MachiNE

Did a ghost TWA fight drop in to Terminal A at Reagan Washington na-tional Airport just in time to be caught by a photographer for Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in “Dark Skies” (AW&ST July 29, p. 17)? Or was it merely photoshop and an active sense of nostalgia? Joseph L. SchoferWIlMeTTe, Ill.

(The reader is correct—Ed.)

Feedback Aviation Week & Space Technology welcomes the opinions of its readers on issues raised in the magazine. Address letters to the Executive Editor, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1200 G St., Suite 922, Washington, D.C. 20005. Fax to (202) 383-2346 or send via e-mail to: [email protected]

Letters should be shorter than 200 words, and you must give a genuine identification, ad-dress and daytime telephone number. We will not print anonymous letters, but names will be withheld. We reserve the right to edit letters.

12 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/AuguSt 19, 2013 aviationweek.com/awst

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representatives, all for STS Com-ponent Solutions, Palm City, Fla.

Gregory Gicca has become director of marketing for Vero-cel, Westford, Mass. He has been director of safety and security product marketing at AdaCore and Green Hills Software.

Mark Cleary (see photo) has been appointed vice president-supply chain management for the Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Linthicum, Md.-based Elec-tronic Systems. He was director of business management for the company’s Land and Self Pro-tection Systems Div.

Earl Diamond has become CEO of Avianor Inc., Mirabel, Quebec. He is a co-owner of the company along with Sylvain Sa-vard, who will continue as chair-man and become executive vice president-operations. CFO Paul Costanzo also will be executive vice president-administration.

John H. Schmidt (see photo) has been appointed Chicago-based managing director of Ac-centure’s North American aero-space and defense practice. He was a senior executive with the company’s communications, me-dia and high-tech industry clients.

Leslie Chen has been named Singapore-based vice president-marketing for Northern Asia for CIT Aerospace. He was vice president-Asia for the Aviation Capital Group and had been a regional sales manager at Tha-les Aerospace Asia.

Chip White and Andy John-son (see photos) have traded jobs at FlightSafety Interna-tional. White has been named manager of the Learning Center in Orlando, Fla., succeeding Johnson, who is now manager of the Gulfstream Learning Center in Savannah, Ga.

USAF Maj. Gen. Margaret H. Woodward has been appointed direc-tor of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Ofce in the Ofce of the Vice Chief of Staf at USAF Head-quarters at the Pentagon. She has been Air Force chief of safety/commander of the Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland

Who’s Where

Graeme Burnett

Mark Cleary

S. Minarsky-Bstandig

John H. Schmidt

Michel Abella

Chip White

Andy Johnson

Rob Weiss has been named ex-ecutive vice president/general manager of Aeronautics Ad-

vanced Development Programs (ADP), also known as the Skunk Works, for the Lockheed Martin Corp. He was execu-tive vice president/general manager of the Aeronautics Operations Div. Three other ADP executives were appointed: Al Romig, vice president-ADP Engi-neering and Advanced Systems; John Larson, vice president-ADP Operations and Production Programs; and Ron Bessire, vice president-Program and Technology Integration.

Graeme Burnett (see photo) has be-come senior vice president-fuel optimi-zation for Delta Air Lines and chairman of subsidiary Monroe Energy. He was president of Total Petrochemicals and CEO of the Petrochemicals and Refn-ing Div. for the U.S.

Phillip Spector has joined the satellite/space practice at law frm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in its Washington ofce. He was general counsel and head of business develop-ment at Intelsat.

Sabine Minarsky-Bstandig (see pho-to) has been appointed vice president/manager of the Human Resources Div. of the Austrian Airlines Group, efective Nov. 1. She succeeds Michael Ruplitsch, who has left the company. She has been head of human resources for Erste Bank.

Christine Kelly Singley has become managing director of corporate com-munications for US Airways. She was head of executive, international, opera-tional and internal communications for Delta Air Lines.

Michel Abella (see photo) has been named president of GE Aviation-Aircelle joint venture Nexcelle. He was director of programs at Nexcelle and had been A380 nacelle program direc-tor at Aircelle. Abella succeeds Hunt-ley Myrie, who is now head of nacelle products at GE Aviation.

Dan McNamara has been promoted to lead repair administrator, Luis Gar-cia to director of sales for the Americas, Karina Cedano sales director for South America and the Caribbean, Tony Perdisatt to sales director for North America, Fio Ormeno to project admin-istrator and senior customer support representative, and Tammie Lock and Collin Saint to senior customer support

AFB, N.M. Brig. Gen. Lee K. Levy, 2nd, has been selected for promotion to major gen-eral and appointment as vice director of logistics for the Joint Staf at the Pentagon. He has been director of logistics at Headquarters Air Mobil-ity Command, Scott AFB, Ill. Levy will be succeeded by Brig. Gen. Warren D. Berry, who has been director of lo-gistics, installations and mis-sion support at Headquarters U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein AB, Germany. Brig. Gen. Casey D. Blake has be-come commander of the Air Force Installation Contracting Agency in the Ofce of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He was deputy director of the Army and Air Force Exchange Ser-vice in Dallas.

Honors and ElEctions

Eileen Arnold, a systems engineer at UTC Aerospace Systems, Charlotte, N.C., has been named an International Council on Systems Engineering (Incose) fellow for her contri-butions to systems engineer-ing. She was cited for leader-ship in establishing Incose’s Expert Systems Engineering Professional credential and for industry promotion of sys-tems engineering.

Phil Lynch has been ap-pointed chairman of the board of the Louisville (Ky.) Regional Airport Authority. Jim Welch

was reelected vice chairman and Jon Meyer secretary-treasurer. Lynch is vice president and director of corpo-rate communications and Welch vice chairman of Brown-Forman. Meyer is partner and chairman of accounting frm of Jones, Nale & Mattingly. c

To submit information for the

Who’s Where column, send Word

or attached text files (no PDFs) and

photos to: [email protected]

For additional information on

companies and individuals listed in

this column, please refer to the

Aviation Week Intelligence Network

at AviationWeek.com/awin For

information on ordering, telephone

U.S.: +1 (866) 857-0148 or

+1 (515) 237-3682 outside the U.S.

14 AviATiON WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGy/AuGuST 19, 2013 AviationWeek.com/awst

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Air TrAnsporT

FAA To Test BatteriesThe FAA’s fre safety branch is order-ing 45,800 lithium-chemistry batteries for “large-scale” fre tests in a Boeing 727 testbed at its William J. Hughes Technical Center this fall. According to a request for quote issued on Aug. 13, the batteries are to be used as part of ongoing research “in support of a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and FAA rulemaking on the shipment of lithium-ion batteries by air. “These cells are to be used for large-scale fre tests that will provide data in support of the rulemaking,” says the FAA. PHMSA, in consultation with the FAA, issued a proposed rulemaking in 2010 to change the rules for air transportation of lithium cells and batteries, includ-ing those “packed with or contained in equipment.” The rules could harmonize U.S. regulations with new International Civil Aviation Organization technical instructions for shipping batteries.

DEFEnsE

Contracts for Uclass reviewsThe U.S. Navy has issued separate, $15 million contracts to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Gen-eral Atomics to conduct preliminary design reviews of their bids for the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Air-borne Surveillance and Strike System (Uclass) program. Nearly $5 million of the awards has been obligated to each of the companies, based on the Pentagon’s Aug. 14 announcement. In parallel with this work, slated to wrap

up next June, each of these contractors is working to mature its air vehicle con-cepts. The Navy intends to issue a draft request for proposals for a winner-take-all air vehicle competition next month. Through Uclass, the Navy intends to feld two, 24-hr. orbits’ worth of air vehicles on an aircraft carrier within six years of a contract award.

spACE

proton returning To Flight International Launch Services (ILS) plans to resume commercial launches of Russia’s Proton rocket Sept. 15 following the conclusion of an investigation into a July 2 mishap that sent one of the heavy-lift vehicles crashing to the ground seconds after liftof from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The com-pany says its own review squares with the fndings of a Russian government investigation into the root cause of the failure, which was attributed to faulty

installation of three yaw angular-rate sensors on the frst stage of the Pro-ton M/Block DM3 launch vehicle. The mishap was the rocket’s ffth within the past 30 months and follows a spate of Russian launch vehicle failures in recent years. Reston, Va.-based ILS and its majority shareholder, Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center of Moscow, have launched 81 commercial Proton missions since 1996, six of which have been failures. But the majority of Proton mishaps have occurred on Rus-sian federal missions, including the July 2 failure, which destroyed three Glonass M navigation satellites. ILS says the return-to-fight mission will loft an Astra 2E satellite for SES of Luxembourg.

CCiCap Milestone paymentsNASA says it will spend $55 million in fscal 2014 to fund new milestone pay-ments to the three companies develop-ing commercial crew vehicles under the Commercial Crew Integrated

nTsB probes second Fatal Ups CrashUPS suffered the second fatal accident in its 25-year

air package service history Aug. 14 when Flight 1354

went down on fnal approach to Alabama’s Birming-

ham Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM)

following a fight from the carrier’s Louisville, Ky., hub,

killing the two pilots.

The Airbus A300-600F hit the ground about one-half

mile short of BHM’s 7,099-ft. Runway 18 on its initial

approach. BHM’s primary runway, the 11,998-ft. 6/24,

was closed for routine maintenance at the time.

The freighter clipped some trees before striking the

ground at the foot of a hill and sliding up the terrain.

The aircraft’s forward fuselage came to rest about

200 yd. from the initial impact point, while other large

pieces, including the wings and tail section, continued

another 80 yd.

The World

16 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/AuguSt 19, 2013 AviationWeek.com/awst

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

-10%

8/15 9/12 10/10 11/7 12/5 1/2 1/30 2/27 3/27 4/24 5/22 6/19 7/17 8/14

2012 2013

AW&ST/S&P Market Indices as of 8/14/2013

AW Aerospace 25

AW Airline 25

S&P 500

2058.7

1017.1

1685.4

INDEX VALUE 8/14MARKET

-1.1%

-1.7%

-0.3%

WEEK AGO*

32.9%

12.6%

18.2%

YEAR-TO-DATE*

▼

▼

▼

▼

▼

▼

40.9%

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Capability (CCiCap) phase of the seed-money efort. The companies will also add unspecifed investments to meet the additional milestones, which were listed as optional under their 2012 Space Act agreements, and will extend the CCiCap phase from May to August 2014. “These additional milestones are specifcally targeted by NASA and our partners to reduce risk and improve development eforts,” says William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations.

nAsA seeks Kepler MissionsScience managers have conceded failure in attempting to restore the Kepler Space Telescope to full functionality, and will focus on what the telescope can do with only two of its four reaction wheels working. Designed to fnd extra-solar planets by detecting the faint ficker in light from distant stars when a planet passes in front of it, Kepler lost its point-ing accuracy when a second wheel failed in May. A system-level performance test Aug. 8 concluded the situation cannot be fxed, and mission managers are now evaluating responses to an Aug. 2 call for proposals to use the spacecraft with its two surviving wheels and thruster system for attitude control. The mission science team will continue evaluating data from its prime mission and a follow-on that started in November 2012 to confrm planets in the “Goldilocks” zone where temperatures permit liquid water.

ATK Tapped For stratolaunchATK plans to develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever fown, for the planned Stra-tolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle

(ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. Scott Lehr, vice presi-dent of ATK’s Defense and Commercial Div., says the frst- and second-stage motors that ATK will build for Orbital Sciences Corp. will be larger than the 92-in.-dia. cases it currently makes for its GEM 30 line of commercial solid-rocket motors, and larger than the 10.5-ft. cases it built for the upgraded Titan IV segmented solid rocket motors.

Garver Leaving nAsADeputy NASA Administrator Lori Garv-er, who has been a policy lightning rod at agency headquarters as the Obama administration worked to shift U.S. hu-

man spacefight from a government-run operation to a commercial venture, has resigned to become general manager of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). A former aerospace consultant, Garver joined President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign after initially supporting Hill-ary Clinton. She helped run the space-policy transition team after Obama was elected, forming a close alliance with John Holdren, Obama’s science adviser, and other newcomers at the White House Ofce of Science and Technology Policy. Since then she has been at the forefront of the administration’s “New Space” initiatives, including an accelera-tion of eforts to commercialize human transport to low Earth orbit initiated under the administration of President George W. Bush, and emphasis on open-ended technology development for deep-space exploration.

senior Astronaut retiresMichael Foale, long NASA’s most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spacefights. One of them—a 145-day mission to Russia’s Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 com-mand of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale be-came the frst American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.

For more breaking news, go to AviationWeek.com

AviationWeek.com/awst AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/AuguSt 19, 2013 17

The NTSB had a 26-member team on the ground within hours of the early morning accident. Details released by late Aug. 15—and there were few—said investigators found no indication of an uncontained engine failure or pre-impact engine fre.

The plane’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders were recovered on Aug. 15 and sent to NTSB headquarters in Washington. If NTSB gleaned any facts in the initial stages of the investigation that might explain what happened, it did not share them. “We’re not here in Bir-mingham to conduct any analysis,” said Robert Sumwalt, the NTSB board member on the scene. “We are just here to collect

the perishable information.”The A300 involved was tail number

N155UP, manufacturer serial number 841, delivered in 2003. The Pratt & Whitney PW4158-powered aircraft had accumulated 11,000 hr. and 6,800 cycles, Airbus said.

The Aviation Week Intelligence Network’s Commercial Fleets database shows that the aircraft was the 34th of 53 A300-600Fs delivered to UPS from Airbus. The last one was handed over on Aug. 3, 2006.

UPS, which has been operating its own aircraft since 1988, has a solid operational safety record. Two of its previous three hull losses—including the fatal accident—were caused by cargo fres.

new orders Accelerate Brazil’s satellite Market GrowthSpacecraft manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. are fnding new business in Brazil’s emerg-ing satellite market, with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Space Systems/Loral (SSL) tapped in recent weeks to build new commercial spacecraft.

Brazil, the world’s seventh-largest economy, is expected to spend roughly $2 billion between 2012-15 on new civil and military space initiatives.

This month, Brazil-based Visiona Tecnologia Espacial S.A. chose Thales Alenia Space and launch services provider Arianespace of France to build and launch by 2015 a civil and military broadband communications satellite for the Brazilian government’s Geostationary Satellite Defense and Strategic Communications (SGDC) system. A joint venture between Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer and state-owned telecommunications company Telebras, Visiona is expected to become a satellite integrator for Brazilian space agency AEB. In the near-term, the company has been tasked with integrating SGDC under Brazil’s national broadband initiative.

Also this month, SSL announced it will build a second commercial communications satel-lite for Latin American feet operator Star One, a subsidiary of Brazilian telecom company Embratel. Dubbed Star One D1, the satellite is to be equipped with C-, Ku- and Ka-band payloads and will be used for telecommunications, television broadcast, broadband, Inter-net access and other services. Based on the SSL 1300 platform, Star One D1 is scheduled for launch in early 2016 and will be located at 84 deg. W. SSL says the spacecraft will sup-port the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. As the largest commercial feet operator in Latin America, Star One operates seven satellites, a feet that will grow to eight by late 2014, when the company expects to loft the SSL-built Star One C4 satellite atop an Ariane 5 ECA heavy lift rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

Up Front

commentary

That stuck with me as the years went on and I watched modern-tech-nology turboprops—remember the Saab 2000?—fall by the wayside while marketplace wisdom declared modern travelers would reject turboprops as uncomfortable and old-fashioned. The regional-jet era had dawned, complete with new airframes, new pilot con-tracts and a whole new economics for running airlines.

As my colleague Brad Perrett ob-served from Beijing a few weeks ago, “What a diference an eightfold rise in fuel prices makes” (AW&ST Aug. 5/12, p. 38).

Today fve manufacturers, including

As a young reporter in the late 1980s, I covered the then-

pending contest for the Joint Primary Aircraft Training

System (JPATS), an historic joint-service efort to fnd a cheap-

er and more efcient way to create the next generation of mili-

tary pilots. Among the seven eventual entrants when the RFP

was released in 1994 were two turboprops: Embraer’s EMB-

312H Super Tucano ofered in partnership with Northrop, and

the Beech-Pilatus PC-9 Mk. 2. We know the Pilatus today as the

T-6 Texan II because program managers, defying conventional

wisdom that the U.S. would never train next-generation pilots in

a turboprop, instead found they could meet the entire training

syllabus at turboprop costs.

Revisiting TurbopropsRising fuel prices and better technology

are seen shoving RJs aside in a decade or so

moving RJ economics in the right direc-tion with innovative new powerplants and clever aerodynamics. But Kiran Rao, Airbus executive vice president for strategy and future programs, recently told reporters in Toulouse the new jets’ efciency—despite all that invest-ment—still can’t beat the economics of turboprop airliners whose basic design concept is some three decades old.

Rao was recently named chairman of ATR, the 50/50 turboprop venture between EADS and Alenia, so this is a future program that probably holds particular interest for him.

Small jets “have a difcult time in a high fuel-cost environment, and so the turboprop starts to become a better proposition than even the 110- or 120-seat jet,” Rao says. “I think . . . what we will see now is the turboprops looking to evolve into larger airplanes, quieter airplanes, [with] lower vibration . . . bigger overhead bins, under-foor stor-age for the baggage, and we will see the turboprop industry taking its next step probably toward the end of this decade.”

The Aviation Week Fleet and Fore-cast team is just fnishing its prelimi-nary look at the turboprop market, and although the near-term 10-year outlook is for slow feet growth—perhaps a 0.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2022—just over the horizon it does look to be anybody’s game. While 1,260 turboprops will be delivered dur-ing the period, Aviation Week estimates that around 871 will be retired, as demand begins to grow for larger, more fuel-efcient replacements.

At this stage what’s missing is the investment commitment, and the two leaders—Bombardier and ATR—have other calls on their wallets right now. Bombardier is wrestling with the CSeries, and ATR, while asking its two big shareholders for the go-ahead, is getting signals from EADS that they may want to wait a bit. That’s not sur-prising, given spending on A320NEO and A350. But with about two-thirds of the market for the next 10 years, ATR’s moves will signal the rest of the indus-try about how real the large-turboprop opportunity is after 2020 or so. Rivals, engine-makers and airlines are listen-ing closely. c

market leader ATR (see photo), are clamoring to design the next genera-tion of turboprops. During the next decade, overall turboprop feet growth is expected to be slow, but by the end of that 10-year span, many turboprop manufacturers see a new and competi-tive age dawning. With relatively new RJs heading to the desert for moth-balling in substantial numbers, it is clear airlines are beginning to see the value of saving as much as 30% fuel burn per seat with a turboprop versus a 50- or 70-seat RJ.

Aircraft such as Bombardier’s CSeries, the Embraer E-Jets, and new entrants from Japan and China are all


ATR

By Jim Mathews

Aviation Week Intelligence Network Executive Editor Jim Mathews blogs at aviationWeek.com

[email protected]

Commander’s Intent

commentary

By Bill Sweetman

Read Sweetman’s posts on our weblog ARES, updated daily:

AviationWeek.com/ares

[email protected]

The biggest factor in that fnan-cial pinch was and is compensation, although two decades of miserable performance in major acquisition programs did not help. Today, acquisi-tion programs are between the anvil of compensation and the hammer of sequester. Pretending that they can continue as planned, or that the treasure that Smaug is sitting on can be replaced by laying of a few civilian goblins, is a fantasy that Tolkein would not admit in his plots. And you can’t touch procurement without touch-ing the Joint Strike Fighter, because it is bigger than the next 10 biggest programs combined.

The question is not whether the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be trimmed, but how to do it without entering the death spiral that—in the last, disastrous acquisition cycle—sucked down the F-22, B-2 and Zumwalt-class destroyer.

Postulate that the procurement budget is capped at 20% less than the budget of record for fscal 2018 (2020 delivery). Let’s also assume that the unit costs are at fscal 2017 levels because of smaller quantities. (The supporting numbers all come from the fscal 2014 budget.)

If such a cut is applied equally, the U.S. Air Force gets about 40 aircraft

Long before the sequester blew in from the north like Smaug

the dragon and stole their gold, the Pentagon’s bosses had put

themselves in a place where they steadily needed more money

year-by-year to do business as usual.

Save the JSF. Really? Surgery hurts, but beats a death spiral

per year and the Navy and Marines 15 each, until the national fscal picture improves—far fewer than you need to replace aging aircraft. Even in the ear-ly 2030s, more than half the USAF’s fghters would be 40 years old.

There is an alternative: to suspend work after 2014 on the Marines’ F-35B and the Navy’s F-35C. This saves more money because they are the most expensive variants, and causes less damage to capability because there is an in-production alternative in the shape of the Super Hornet.

Each F-35B/C bought in 2017 will cost as much as two F/A-18E/F Super Hornets today, in terms of gross weapon system unit cost. In 2018, the Navy and Marines could be getting 40 F/A-18E/Fs per year and the Pentagon would be saving $2.6 billion each year, relative to today’s program of record.

Hardware already under contract would be stored, so either or both ver-sions could be restarted when budgets permit it or the threat demands it.

The Navy’s fghter force will be stron-ger in the near term because it will re-place more of its Classic Hornets before 2020. If the Navy can use some of the savings to protect the Next Generation Jammer, build an unmanned combat air system, and improve the Super Hornet (with features retrofttable to existing

Block II F/A-18s), the force’s net capabil-ity will be greater well into the 2020s if it takes the Hornet road.

Without a short-takeof, vertical-land-ing (Stovl) capability, are the Marines high and dry, doomed to be left defense-less by the Navy, as the Corps fervently but inaccurately believes happened at Guadalcanal? Not at least until the early- to mid-2020s. With access to a pile of spares from the U.K.’s AV-8 Harrier feet, the Marines expect to have half their Harriers in service in 2027. The frst F-35Bs will replace aging Hornets.

Any threat to the F-35B gives the U.K. palpitations—they were warned that they were taking a risk in revert-ing to Stovl after an 18-month fing with the F-35C. But if the F-35B continues through 2014, most of the F-35B-unique development will be completed (or so the program’s advocates assure us). The U.K. and Italy could fnish the job and build their aircraft in Italy’s fnal-assem-bly facility. Italy would get the assembly work, and many of the expensive bits on the F-35B are labeled Rolls-Royce.

Continuing the F-35C through 2014 covers its delayed initial carrier trials. If they go well, the program could be put on hold with confidence. If they don’t, it’s probably time for a behind-the-barn consultation with Dr. Winchester, as they say in farm-ing country.

Eliminating the Navy/Marine buy—40 per year planned, more likely 30—could increase F-35A costs, but not as much as some people might fear. Managing a supply chain to support three diferent airframes and two propulsion systems, each changing as development continues, has been and remains a challenge. An F-35A-only line would be simpler, and maybe even amenable to cost reductions.

The development program becomes simpler. The need to produce a service-ready Block 2B software package, for just one Marine unit for a few years, goes away. The program can be recentered around Edwards and Nellis AFBs and focus on the Air Force’s initial need—a self-defending, night-and-adverse-weath-er stealth aircraft capable of engaging moving ground targets. Absent a magic ring or a burglar in search of a good job, that might be the best plan for outwit-ting Smaug that we have. c

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By William Garvey

commentary

Business & Commercial

Aviation Editor-in-Chief William Garvey blogs at:

AviationWeek.com

[email protected]

Recalculating, the Stans, Switzerland, designers settled on something unprec-edented. They conjured up a large-cabin, executive/utility aircraft with a big cargo door, a single PT6 turboprop, short- and rough-feld capability, pres-surization to cruise over the weather and enough horses to do so at 280 kt.

They called it the PC-12. Others called it a miscalculation. I well recall one savvy wag predicting sales would end at 100 because, “You can sell 100 of anything to the general aviation mar-ket, but it will end there.” As things turned out, it was he who miscalcu-lated. I was on hand to see the 1,200th PC-12 delivered two weeks ago.

Part of the unique aircraft’s endur-ing popularity is its special appeal to those with a vision—such as the handsome young man who came to the Stans factory back in October 1994. At the time, only a handful of PC-12s had been delivered, and none to the U.S. The visitor, a recent Harvard Business School graduate named George Anto-niadis, planned to change that.

Long enamored with aviation, the McKinsey & Co. management consul-tant—who earned his pilot’s license while working on his MBA—was

When Pilatus Aircraft began contemplating a successor to

its iconic PC-6 Porter, it initially considered an unpressur-

ized, turboprop-powered utility aircraft. But Cessna preempted

that concept with its Model 208 Caravan.

Quiet SuccessA unique aircraft fulflls an unprecedented role

determined to dis-prove what he said was “the belief that aviation destroyed billions of dollars of value every year.” He had begun a small, light aircraft management com-pany two years earlier to gain practical experience, but had something unprec-edented in mind.

He told a group of Pilatus execu-tives that their aircraft would be ideal for a regional fractional ownership operation—heretofore exclusively a twin-engine activity—he intended to launch in the Boston area. Although the Swiss planemakers were skeptical, they delivered the frst PlaneSense PC-12 the following year.

It turns out the native of Greece’s vision, vessel, customer focus and pricing plan made for a compelling package. PlaneSense grew steadily and even though it took a hit in the economic collapse of 2008, Antoniadis says the decline was single-digit and that the PC-12s held value far better than most fractional models.

The PC-12 with No. 1200 embla-

zoned on its fanks alighted at Ports-mouth (N.H.) International Airport, homeport of PlaneSense and many of its 270 employees. It is the 49th Pilatus acquired by the operation and the 30th now in its active feet, the largest in civilian service.

Antoniadis attributes his company’s success to “our philosophy of controlled growth, not biting of more than we can swallow, focusing on doing some things very well and not trying to do many things not so well.” In addition they’ve made “a huge mental and actual invest-ment in customer service.”

Then, too, there’s the matter of money. A 1/16th share, good for 50-70 hr. of fying annually, costs $318,000. Upon exiting the program and calculat-ing all hourly and management fees plus aircraft depreciation, Antoniadis estimates an owner will have averaged about $2,600 per occupied hour. Those numbers sustain a base of owners “in the hundreds” and spread throughout the eastern U.S., plus Texas.

Antoniadis believes there’s room for growth in the East, and all signs indi-cate a part of the expansion will likely involve increased capability. Plane-Sense was to be the launch customer for the Grob SPn twinjet, whose large cabin and rough-feld capability mir-rored that of the PC-12.

The Grob program collapsed early on, but now Pilatus is developing its own twin, the PC-24, and Antoniadis is keenly interested. He says the aircraft is “signifcantly better than the SPn” and “we’re big fans” of the people behind it.

Antoniadis describes PlaneSense as “a quiet company” that eschews fan-fare or boast, a clear refection of its ownership’s manner. But an early PC-24 buy will certainly garner attention.

And that, knows Wade Eyerly, an Antoniadis admirer and another non-conformist PC-12 operator, can be a very good thing. More on him later. c

PlaneSenSe PHOTOS


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September 9-11, 2013

Washington, DC

Inside Business Aviation

commentary

Guessing the location of the eventual fourth hub is not easy, but it should be in the west, and Chengdu may be the prime candidate. The timing is also un-certain—except that the appearance of another hub, while inevitable, is certain-ly not imminent. Obstacles are huge, be-ginning with the opposition of the Civil Aviation Administration of China. In its master plan, secondary hubs are for regional Asian services.

Moreover, comparison with Hong Kong, a smaller albeit richer city, shows how the big mainland carriers’ home bases are not yet performing as well their sizes and economic importance would suggest—and still less when one considers that each has the ad-vantage of a mighty domestic network. Last year Hong Kong had direct connec-tions to 120 international destinations, not counting those in mainland China, says analyst K. Ajith of Singapore-based UOB Kay Hian. Beijing, the home of Air China, was closest to that fgure, with 106 international destinations—but it should be much more successful, given that it is the capital and second-largest city of the world’s No. 2 economy. China Eastern’s home, Shanghai, had 77 in-ternational destinations last year, while Guangzhou, China Southern’s main base, had 40, he adds.

The implication is that the Big Three airlines must build up their current hubs before considering any more—although each is also trying to strengthen its ser-

At some point, mainland China will need more than three

international hub airports. Funneling the international

trafc of a country of 1.3 billion people through Beijing, Shanghai

and Guangzhou will not make sense forever, and even now the

geographical distribution of the three is awkward. The hubs,

each the base of one of China’s three biggest airlines, are on the

eastern and southern periphery of China’s main population zone,

so the country lacks a central or western gateway.

Future GatewayOne day, China will need a western gateway hub.

It may be at Chengdu, but it will not come soon.

vices at at least one of the others’ home bases (AW&ST July 8, p. 42).

Finding enough skilled people willing to move to smaller cities will also be a challenge, says Guo Yufeng of consultan-cy ICF SH&E. Other factors are at play as well. Most obviously, no other cities in mainland China have the business trafc of Shanghai and Beijing, although many,

KLM, Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways to Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shenyang and other secondary cities.

But for the Chinese carriers, there seem to be four main candidates for secondary international hubs: Chengdu for Air China, Chongqing and Urumqi for China Southern, and Xian for China Eastern. Guo is betting on Chengdu, which is prominent as the main second base of Air China, the Chinese carrier with the largest international network. And Chengdu, uniquely, has attracted services from two European airlines, KLM and British Airways.

Eventually, Air China may fnd itself under the greatest pressure to fnd an-other gateway. Beijing Capital Interna-tional Airport is just about full, although Guo points out that the carrier can de-fer the problem by using bigger aircraft and trying to persuade the authorities to give it more access to the airport.

Trafc is growing faster at secondary cities than at the main hubs, points out Ajith, who expects the secondary bases to take a progressively larger role. An-other factor is the Boeing 787, ofering the per-seat costs of large aircraft with a smaller cabin that is easier to fill.

Airline Intel By Bradley Perrett

Asia-Pacifc Bureau Chief Bradley Perrett blogs at:

AviationWeek.com/thingswithwings

[email protected]


Chinese Airline Hubs MAIn HuB SecondAry HuBS MArketS For SecondAry HuBS

China Southern Guangzhou Chongqing WesternChina,NortheastAsia,SoutheastAsia

Urumqi WesternChina,CentralAsia,EasternEurope,MiddleEast

Air China Beijing Chengdu NorthernChina,SouthAsia,MiddleEast,Mongolia,Russia

China Eastern Shanghai Kunming SouthernChina,SouthAsia,SoutheastAsia

Xian CentralChina

Source: UOB Kay Hian

notably well-developed Shenzhen, may rival Guangzhou. Others, for all their size and rapidly rising wealth, are also too close to one of the major hubs. Tian-jin is within easy driving distance from Beijing, as are Hangzhou and Nanjing from Shanghai. Shenzhen is not only close to Guangzhou; it actually borders Hong Kong.

Those big cities in the shadow of cur-rent hubs and most others, such as Xia-men, Shenyang and the big metropolises of central China, have another problem: They are not already major secondary bases for major airlines.

European airlines have been prob-ing these markets for several years. Transcontinental services, not always sustained, have been introduced by

Since it entered Chinese service only this year, the 787 has so far had little opportunity locally to show its ability to open up long, thin routes. With time, it should do so.

Still, independent airline manage-ment consultant David Li is pessimis-tic. “Hubs require a network carrier to grow, so either one of the Big Three Chinese airlines actively builds up a second hub or we see a new, fast-grow-ing carrier come out of the woodwork,” he says. “The latter requires liberal-ization from [state] authorities. The former is a very expensive endeavor and I’m not sure trafc from Europe or even domestic travel between western and eastern parts of China would war-rant the costs involved.” c

In Orbit

commentary

By Frank Morring, Jr.

Senior Editor Frank Morring, Jr., blogs at:

AviationWeek.com/onspace

[email protected]

When cubesats were getting started as relatively inexpensive teaching tools for engineering professors canny enough to see the lure for prospective students of hands-on experience with real spacecraft, communication with the ground was almost secondary. Typically, each student mission devised its own communications link, usually with a one-of transmitter designed to work on an amateur-radio frequency. That held the cost down at both ends, and it met the relatively simple needs of the day.

Now many see small satellites as the wave of the future for science and military applications, with cubesats at the crest. There seems to be no limit to the applications the undergraduates are dreaming up, after cutting their teeth on simple 1-U cubesats, and the ham-radio links are no longer adequate. One solu-tion proposed at the annual small-satel-lite conference at Utah State University in Logan looks back to when satellites were small—the beginning of the Space Age—for the infrastructure needed to handle the growing bandwidth needs of cubesats and their slightly larger kin.

“It was built in 1960 like a battleship;

The groundswell of cubesat projects underway at universities,

government labs and private companies worldwide promises

to generate more data than the ad hoc communications systems

originally devised for the tiny birds can handle. But just as the

former graduate students who pioneered cubesats a couple of de-

cades ago are fnding ways

to advance their small-space

technology as entrepre-

neurs, teachers and corpo-

rate engineers (see p. 37),

the community is starting to

grapple with the fow of data

expected to be generated

as short-lived cubesats give

way to swarms of tiny spacecraft carrying cameras, telescopes

and other high-data sensors.

Nano Com Old dishes for the newest satellites

in fact, I think the gears came of a battleship,” says NASA’s Scott Schaire of an 18-meter (59-ft.) tracking dish at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The old antenna has been com-municating with the DICE (Direct Interestablishment Communications Experiment) mission—a trailblazing two-cubesat science mission measur-ing ionospheric plasma densities, electric felds and magnetic felds—in the UHF frequency, and Schaire believes it is ready for more and bigger things. Unlike amateur-radio frequen-cies, which are theoretically of limits for government-backed missions, transmissions through wide-diameter ground stations like the one at Wallops dramatically increase bandwidth—from 9.6 kbps in amateur UHF bands to 1.5 mbps, according to the abstract of Schaire’s conference presentation.

NASA, which is making wide use of smallsat capability in its open-ended space technology development efort, plans to refurbish the Wallops dish “in the next few months,” says Schaire.

Interference proved a problem at Wal-lops, which is home to civil and military

government radio emitters, and the dish there works with cubesats only because engineers were able to fnd a clear band. A backup 21-meter tracking dish at Morehead State University in Kentucky (photo) does not have the same inter-ference problem, and there are dishes in Boulder, Colo., that may also ofer cubesat utility. Ultimately, though, the solution for cubesat connectivity will be dedicated frequencies that can carry high-bandwidth links to constel-lations of the tiny spacecraft.

“There should be a band where we can say a few years from now, ‘that’s where we’re going to go with cube-sats,’” Schaire says, noting that he and his colleagues at Wallops and Goddard Space Flight Center already are work-ing with NASA headquarters on stan-dardizing cubesat communications.

Given the contentious nature of spec-trum allocation, that work could take some time. The Wallops group believes X-band is the way to go for government-backed smallsat com, in part because a lot of the infrastructure is in place.

But while the ground end is ready for X-band, cubesat designers would have some spacecraft development to complete before an operational network can be established.

“People have stayed away from X-band for whatever reason—its high power need, accurate pointing,” the Wallops engineer says. “But if you could get an X-band cubesat radio, you could get hundreds of megabits per second with a large aperture dish, and you can get megabits per second with a small aperture dish.”

The Wallops group has also studied communications with cubesats orbit-ing the Moon. Schaire says with a large tracking dish, the data rate could be bits or kilobits per second “depending on the antenna on the cubesat.”

A ground network of old tracking dishes could greatly enhance cubesat utility for government-backed mis-sions, and be available for commercial missions at “very reasonable” rates, Schaire says. And with applicable dishes like the ones in Boulder scat-tered around the world, using them to expand the ground network makes sense, because “if swarms get large and start to use this network, we could get overwhelmed very shortly.” c

Morehead State UniverSity


Washington Outlook

The U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveil-

lance and Strike (Uclass) efort has garnered lots of headlines

for the innovations it represents, but the service is trying to use

the program to prod the acquisition world into new thinking. And

while seemingly bureaucratic, the new approach might just help

the Navy land its desired Uclass feet even as the military and in-

telligence sectors enter a long-term austere budget environment.

“What we’re going forward with in our budget documents is talking about the number of orbits that we will procure,” Rear Adm. Mat Winter told the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Internation-al’s (AUVSI) annual confer-ence here last week. In the end, aircraft numbers “will depend upon the air vehicle maker strategy,” explained Winter, program executive ofcer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons. “So, as we go forward through the solicitation, we’ll be able to understand how many air vehicle subsystems when we select the fnal air vehicle vendor for a single orbit.”

The two-star admiral did not hint at anything nefarious in explaining the “paradigm-shifting nomenclature.” But left unspoken was the fact it could help the Navy protect Uclass, in that future spending requests would be more closely tied to stated military require-ments, versus more esoteric unit- acquisition numbers. In turn, arbitrary cuts to requests by lawmakers or oth-ers could be more difcult to justify.

According to Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan, each orbit could require a total of fve aircraft, while the Navy is expected to be targeting $150 million per orbit. That would mean $30 million per vehicle. “That unit price is well below the unit price of a manned strike aircraft,” Callan pointed out to Wall Street. “This program is important for investors to watch. Clearly it has to

survive potential budget cuts and the pricing needs to be realized, but the tim-ing suggests that it could conceivably impact F-35 demand later this decade and F/A-18s in Navy inventory.” c

Cool Playground

Meanwhile, the Transportation Depart-ment is working to designate perma-nent areas of the Arctic where small UAVs can operate 24/7 for research and commercial purposes, with the frst ap-proved operations coming this summer. The Arctic airspace comes on top of six congressionally mandated domestic test centers the FAA is racing to identify in a closely watched announcement ex-pected by the end of this year. So far, 25 potential centers in 24 states have sub-mitted proposals for the sites, Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari told the AUVSI conference. “What we’re trying to do eventually with the Arctic, which is a great place for small UAVS, [is] to begin operations in a fully integrated way,” Porcari said. c

double the Pain

Speaking of austerity, the full efect of the 2011 Budget Control Act and its annual sequestration limits is likely to force the Pentagon to take a major near-term hit in its research, development and procurement accounts for the fscal year starting Oct. 1. Frank Kendall, the Defense Department’s acquisition czar, told the annual space and missile defense conference in Huntsville, Ala., last week that “if the overall sequestra-tion cut is 10%, we can look at numbers about twice that for R&D and procure-ment.” Eventually, pressure on those ac-counts should ease once slower-moving force structure reductions and—as hoped by ofcials—base closures and personnel beneft reductions are al-lowed by Congress and put into place. But Kendall said he remains worried about a hollow force that has equipment but no spare parts or inadequate train-ing, due to Congress’s inability to avert sequestration. “I am more concerned about that than ever,” he said. “We squeezed through 2013; 2014 is going to be very tight.” c

SuCking air

Finally, NASA is rolling out a new “stra-tegic vision” for aeronautics that focus-es civil aviation research on six themes. But with no new money, work that does not align with the main thrusts will be reduced. The strategy is based on understanding emerging global trends, including new competitors for U.S. manufacturers, and focuses research on underlying trend drivers such as grow-ing worldwide demand for mobility and concerns over climate change, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ conference in Los Ange-les last week. The themes are safe and efcient growth in airspace operations, low-boom supersonic and ultra-quiet subsonic commercial transports, low-carbon propulsion, system-wide safety assurance and autonomy. Research could be cut unless it aligns with these, although the themes are deliberately defned broadly to encompass a wide range of technology. NASA already has reduced research in hypersonics and rotorcraft, relying on the Pentagon to take the lead there. c

Stealthy, Savvy ShiftA subtle change in how the U.S. Navy explains

UCAVs could help shield its acquisition from cuts

Commentary


By Michael Bruno

Senior Policy Editor Michael Bruno blogs at:AviationWeek.com/ares

[email protected]

No

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‘This program is important for

investors to watch.’—ByRON CALLAN

Financial analyst


U.S. airlines have always argued that consolidation is not

only good for them, but is also good for the consumer—

and now that theory will be tested in court.Regardless of the outcome in what

now becomes a very public fght with the federal government over the pro-posed merger of US Airways and American Airlines, the antitrust suit that the Justice Department fled last week represents a tectonic shift. No longer, the government signaled, will it analyze the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on prices and competition mainly on nonstop routes between cities. Now, the full panoply of connections will be examined, with routes through third cities getting much more emphasis.

Firing a cannonball though the two carriers’ oft-cited datum of overlap-ping on a mere 12 routes, Justice said it found 1,044 city pairs in which a com-bined US-AA would be bad news for ticket buyers.

“They have finally figured out that this is a network business,” airline reg-ulation scholar Michael Levine says of the government’s lawyers. Levine, an architect of deregulation under Civil Aeronautics Board Chairman Alfred Kahn in the 1970s, adds, “Competition policy in this area should balance the public benefts of expanding networks against the cost of tightening the oligop-oly, and the balance in this case from the consumer perspective comes out strongly against approving the merger.”

But US Airways and American say they will fght back vigorously. They will argue that the combination would allow them to compete against the other two big domestic network car-riers—United Airlines and Delta Air Lines—to force prices lower.

And they have some influential al-lies in making the case that the gov-ernment is ignoring the benefits of a healthy airline industry. The Air Line

Pilots Association says Justice has “in-terfered with the steady progress that the airline industry has made to achieve an economically rational yet vigorously competitive industry. . . . By fling this lawsuit, the department has completely ignored decades of instability in the air-line business that has caused many car-riers to go out of business.”

The Justice action initially sent stockprices plummeting.

“I don’t know of anyone who had seen this coming,” says George Ham-lin, president of Hamlin Transportation Consulting, although some argue the carriers must have suspected trouble by the nature of the questions from the Justice Department.

The planned merger was supported by all of the constituents in the indus-try and even American’s large competi-tors—Delta and United—were ofcial-ly in favor of it for the same reasons that Justice is now opposing it: The industry argued that the combination would help with continued capacity discipline leading to sustainable “pric-ing power” (higher fares).

“They [Justice] got this wrong . . . very wrong,” says Rich Parker, partner at Washington law frm O’Melveny & Myers and a noted antitrust specialist.

Jens Flottau Frankfurt and Darren Shannon Washington

U.S. Justice Department emphasizes

competition in connecting markets, not routes

Airlines

“We intend to have our day in court, and look forward to it.”

The defense strategy, according to three leading antitrust lawyers em-ployed by the airlines, will center on proving how the merger will create benefts for consumers via cost syn-ergies that will, in part, be passed to passengers. The defense also will show that the “new American” will increase services and create a competitive net-work for corporate travelers (including on connecting services) that currently have to rely on United and Delta. Park-er, along with Dechert partner Paul Denis and Jones Day’s Joe Sims, says the airlines’ defense also will dispel the department’s claim that U.S. airlines collude to set ticket prices, and notes that the burden of proof is on the regu-lator, not them, to show the merger is anti-competitive. “No one should as-sume the merger is over,” Sims, who represents American, insists.

Levine points out that “the incre-mental network benefts to the public of this transaction are minimal and the costs to the public of the diference be-tween a three-frm network oligopoly in which all the participants have aligned incentives and a four-firm oligopoly that leaves them misaligned and hence willing to defect from the tacit joint mo-

In 1998, the U.S. Justice Department signaled that consolidation of the U.S. defense industry had gone far

enough by moving to block Lockheed Martin’s planned acquisition of Northrop Grumman. Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST to read Aviation Week’s report on that suit, or go to AviationWeek.com/antitrust

Connecting Fight


nopoly equilibrium are considerable.” He quips that “[US Airways CEO

Doug] Parker and his crew and the Wall Street guys have been telling us for a year at least that a tighter oligop-oly will perfect the industry’s “pricing power.” I don’t know why we shouldn’t believe them!” And: “I understand why tightening the oligopoly should be good for shareholders, managers and orga-nized labor, but I don’t understand why anyone should believe that it will be good for the public.”

While the deal is not dead and its fate now lies in the hands of U.S. District Court in Washington, a signifcant delay beyond the planned third-quarter clos-ing is all but unavoidable. Last week’s American Bankruptcy Court hearing in New York became almost a side note in the new process. Judge Sean Lane said he had “lingering doubts” about whether it was appropriate to confrm the plan under the circumstances. And the industry now has reason to review the various scenarios that would result if the merger is ultimately blocked. The conclusions are not comforting, many argue, but here’s the thing: The U.S. airline industry has managed to great-

ly improve its fnances. In the second quarter, Delta, US Airways, United, American and Southwest Airlines earned a combined $1.9 billion proft, up from $1.4 billion a year earlier. And most insiders believe that all four legacy car-riers will continue to be viable in the fu-ture. “Call of the funeral,” says Levine.

Looking at the situation from a global perspective, the U.S. would be the only major market in which four big legacies compete. Low-cost carrier Southwest is another major factor. Latin America has consolidated around three opera-tors, as have Europe, China, the Middle East and Africa (see table). There are also three global alliances. If the Justice Department has its way, the U.S. will be the exception.

“We believe this represents a seminal negative event for the U.S. airline indus-try and signifcantly jeopardizes indus-try capacity discipline,” Jamie Baker, airline analyst at JP Morgan says. “A potential independent [American] will signifcantly diminish longer-term investor confidence in the sector.” In Baker’s view, Justice has “signifcantly altered its usual M&A analysis to intro-duce connecting markets and baggage

fees into its calculus. As such, it is dif-fcult for us to imagine how both parties could ofer any meaningful regulatory appeasement.”

That Justice has approved the Del-ta/Northwest and United/Continental mergers, but not this one, is because “circumstances are diferent, the facts changed, they came too late,” Levine says. The government could live with having four network carriers with dif-fering interests, but not with three that are so closely aligned.

That an administration changes its view is not without precedent. In 1998, after years of encouraging major de-fense contractors to consolidate, the

largest legacy Carriers

in Key Markets(by 2012 revenue passenger kilometers)

If the Justice Department succeeds in blocking the US-AA merger, the U.S. would be the only major market in which four major legacy carriers compete.

north AMeriCA

United 288.3 billion

Delta 271.5 billion

American 203.3 billion

US Airways 100,4 billion

europe

Lufthansa 192.7 billion

(Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian)

Air France-KLM 222.7 billion

International Airlines Group (IAG) 186 billion

(British Airways, Iberia and Vueling)

Middle eAst

Emirates 180 billion

Qatar Airways 71.9 billion

Etihad 47.7 billion

(excludes affliates such as Air Berlin

and Air Seychelles)

ChinA

China Southern 135 billion

China Eastern 101.5 billion

Air China 95.7 billion

lAtin AMeriCA

LATAM Group 101.6 billion

(LAN Airlines and TAM Brazil)

Gol Airlines 33.9 billion

Avianca 29.9 billion

AfriCA

South African Airways 22.3 billion

Egyptair 18.2 billion

Ethiopian Airlines 16.9 billion

Source: International Air Transport Association


Jens Flottau Frankfurt

Growing ConcernAs Etihad’s group of carriers expands,

Air Berlin may soon request more funding

Etihad Airways has just agreed to invest in Air Serbia and will soon add a stake in Jet Airways to its

portfolio. Now it is looking at another investment—in LOT Polish Airlines— but the fate of Etihad afliate Air Ber-lin shows that the road to financial success can be very long.

The Abu Dhabi-based carrier has been following a strategy of growing quickly through acquisitions to catch up with its older and larger rival, Emirates. In addition to its European partners Air Berlin and Aer Lingus, it has stakes in Virgin Australia (which it plans to in-crease) and Air Seychelles. Etihad is also waiting for regulatory approval to complete its purchase of a 25% stake in Jet Airways of India.

The strategy is controversial; many of the additions to Etihad’s portfolio are in need of deep restructuring and net-work benefts appear limited. Etihad ar-gues it can realize signifcant synergies on the cost side through joint purchas-ing and in other areas. Aer Lingus says its code-sharing deal with Etihad has

and that “is a new aspect and an op-portunity for efective completion of the process.” The treasury also hints that “the involvement of a non-EU in-vestor in LOT is also possible in the current legal status. Parties to the transaction, however, are bound to develop legal mechanisms to ensure that LOT preserves the status as a community (EU) carrier.”

Given its previous investment pat-tern, it is unlikely that Etihad would seek a majority stake in LOT, which would complicate matters further. According to industry sources, the Abu Dhabi-based airline is looking at acquiring a large minority stake. Cur-

Airlines

Clinton administration’s Justice De-partment, backed by the Pentagon, successfully fled a suit to block a pro-posed merger of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, arguing that the combination of the Defense Depart-ment’s largest and third-largest sup-pliers would create “unprecedented anti-competitive concerns.” The suit came just a year after the government had OK’d Boeing’s acquisition of Mc-Donnell Douglas.

The future of American is indeed the wild card in the industry. Obvious-ly, if Justice is successful in its opposi-tion, that “would not lead to immediate elimination,” says Hamlin, of American or US Airways, but “it will be increas-ingly difcult for American to compete with giants [Delta and United].”

Baker points out a key difference: Having merged with US Airways, the new American would not be forced to make any risky capacity moves in or-

der to be on a par with the other two big players. But without it, American “would have to grow (rather than merge) its way to competitive network parity with post-merger Delta and United.” Therefore, “we expect industry capacity to accelerate and longer-term earnings prospects to be diminished.”

In the longer term, according to Morgan Stanley’s John Godyn, Delta and United would beneft if the merger did not happen because of “structural advantages that would generate out-size relative returns across cycles.” And US Airways? The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline would be by far the smallest of the Big Four. It currently has one key advantage over the others in that its stage-length-adjusted unit costs are much lower, so it can still make money at fare levels where its competitors cannot. But on the global stage, it would remain a niche player with major gaps in its domestic net-

work, subscale transatlantic presence and no transpacifc services.

Justice argues that the proposed merger could be illegal on more than 1,000 city pairs and must be disman-tled to stop a clique of national carriers from manipulating services and ticket prices. It cites numerous public com-ments and internal communications by senior US Airways executives—some dating to 2006—that the regu-lator says prove competition between U.S. airlines would be weakened if the merger goes forth.

The Justice Department was ex-pected to demand some conditions for the merger, with concessions at US Airways’ Reagan Washington National Airport hub the most likely target. But the argument goes far beyond any re-quest for a deal, instead demanding “that [the] defendants [the airlines] be permanently enjoined from and re-strained from carrying out the planned

been more successful than anticipated.According to industry sources, Eti-

had is looking at the next step. It is understood to be in negotiations with the Polish treasury about an equity investment in LOT. The negotiations are already at an advanced stage, they say, but could still take several months to be fnalized. There have also been rumors about talks with Alitalia, with which Etihad has just expanded a code-sharing agreement.

Poland has unsuccessfully tried to dispose of LOT in several privatiza-tion campaigns over many years. Last year’s unexpected €38 million ($50 million) loss (against a proft forecast) triggered the latest initiative, which could fnally succeed.

LOT will not comment and an Eti-had ofcial says that “we never com-ment on rumors and speculation.” The Polish treasury states that “seeking an investor for LOT is in progress.” The ministry points out that a change in Polish law now allows the government to sell a majority stake in the airline

LOT has introduced the Boeing 787 to renew its long-haul feet.


rently, the Polish treasury holds 68% of the shares, the government- owned TFS Silesia Regional Economic Fund has 25%, and employees control 7%. In the case of Air Serbia, Etihad went for 49%. It settled for 29% of Air Berlin to avoid total foreign ownership in the airline exceeding 50%.

Last year, Turkish Airlines was close to buying a stake in LOT, but backed out at the last minute.

Complicating the matter is the gov-ernment’s recent support for LOT. The airline received a €100 million short-term bailout package from the Polish treasury late last year to avoid bank-ruptcy. This has since been approved by

the European Commission. LOT asked for another €88 million in June, with the conditional support of Poland’s new f-nance minister, Wlodzimierz Karpinski, who also said “this is the last attempt to rescue LOT.” Approval of the second bailout is still pending.

However, an Etihad investment in the airline could actually make that approv-al easier because the Polish government could argue they needed the investment to prepare LOT for the sale, and acted as a private investor would under nor-mal market conditions. The European Commission generally does not con-sider such an investment as state aid.

Meanwhile, Air Berlin is still in deep-restructuring mode, 18 months after Etihad rescued it from what looked like imminent demise. However, its equity remained a negative €116 million at the end of June. Air Berlin is trying to ad-dress this problem by selling of more assets and has signed a letter of intent with Minsheng Commercial Aviation, a new Chinese lessor, for a sale-and-lease-back deal for a mix of up to 11 Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s. It hopes this deal will reduce its net debt from €706 million to €540 million, although it will also increase future lease payments. Of Air Berlin’s current feet of 147 aircraft, only 28 are owned; that number would go down to 17.

According to CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, Air Berlin also will not rule

out further capital measures once the airline’s Turbine restructuring pro-gram shows results. Etihad would have to participate as the largest sharehold-er and pump in even more money if it does not want to see its stake diluted.

Turbine aims at cutting €200 mil-lion in costs this year, and Prock-Schauer says that target is likely to be achieved. Substantial improvements are expected from the third quarter onward. However, with slower-than- expected bookings in July and August because of unusually good weather in Europe this summer, Prock-Schauer cautions that it will be more challeng-ing to reach a breakeven result on the operating proft level for the full year.

Separately, Etihad has confirmed plans to buy a 49% stake in Serbian national carrier, Jat Airways: the air-line will be rebranded Air Serbia. As part of the agreement, Etihad plans to inject a total of $100 million to recapi-talize Air Serbia. The Serbian govern-ment will match that investment.

Following the expected regulatory approval, Etihad plans to convert a $40 million loan into equity on January 1, 2014, giving it 49% of Air Serbia. While the Serbian government will continue to own a majority stake, the airline will be run under a fve-year management contract given to Etihad, which plans sweeping changes to the company’s structure and network. c

merger of US Airways and American or any other transaction that would combine the two companies,” as the deal violates U.S. antitrust law.

The lawsuit’s list of 1,044 city pairs “where the merger is presumptively illegal,” stands in stark contrast to the 12 overlapping routes cited by the airlines.

Justice’s lawsuit regularly refers to comments made by US Airways man-agement, and uses statements by CEO Parker and President Scott Kirby to il-lustrate the anti-competitive nature of the merger. The department puts par-ticular weight on Parker’s comments that consolidation—which he has cham-pioned for years—fnancially benefts the airline industry. The CEO has said mergers have allowed the U.S. airline industry to control capacity, and that there is an “inextricable link” between reduced supply and higher prices.

William Baer, the assistant attorney

general in charge of Justice’s antitrust division, says his concern stems in part from the result of earlier mergers that have closed hub operations or focus cities.

Baer acknowledges that this opposi-tion is due, in part, to the limited compe-tition that resulted. He notes, however, that this lawsuit “is fully consistent with what we have done in the past.” In 2000, a proposed merger between US Airways and United was rejected by the regulator, he says, noting that simi-lar rejections were considered by the department in 2007 when US Airways made an unsolicited bid for Delta and in 1998 when Northwest Airlines sought a controlling stake in Continental Airlines.

Since then, however, Justice has approved three substantial mergers (Delta/Northwest, United/Continen-tal and Southwest/AirTran Airways), two of which at the time created the world’s largest operator.

Justice would still consider a con-cessions package, but “the degree of competitive overlap” between US Air-ways and American leaves little option but to seek a full dismissal of the merg-er agreement, Baer argues. He says if either airline can prove its future is in jeopardy, the objection could be lifted. But he notes that the two airlines are posting record profts, proof alone that both are viable entities and necessary to maintain competition.

Baer also targets US Airways’ ap-parent fervor for ancillary fees—a major contributor to U.S. airline rev-enues—and that “post-merger, the new American would likely lead to new fee increases.” He also criticizes US Air-ways’ “tendency” to signal price and fee increases to its competitors, and argues that a “tacit coordination” be-tween the few remaining legacy carri-ers would only increase if US Airways and American merged. c

Andrles MAlinowski


As the F-35B conducts a second round of developmental tests on the USS Wasp amphibious

assault ship, program officials say progress is being made with technical problems that have beleaguered the single-engine fighter program. But, Pentagon procurement czar Frank Kendall says he remains “cautiously optimistic”—though not yet confi-dent—that enough progress will be made in the testing program for him to approve a ramp-up in production this fall for the $400 billion Lockheed Martin program, as planned.

“We will increase production based on progress,” he told Aviation Week at the 16th Annual Space and Missile De-fense Symposium last week in Hunts-ville, Ala. “I am looking at progress on software and on some of the design is-sues that we have been following, like the tailhook and the helmet.”

Two F-35Bs are on the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship for the second round of developmental testing (DT) trials associated with the aircraft’s unique ability to conduct vertical land-ings and short takeofs in support of the U.S. Marine Corps. The Wasp trials, slated for three weeks, began Aug. 12.

The objective of these trials is to fo-cus on night fying around, on and of the ship. Night fying from the ship is one of the capabilities needed for the U.S. Marine Corps to declare initial op-erational capability (IOC) as planned by the end of December 2015.

Also on the agenda is fying, land-ing and taking of in heavier and more taxing wind conditions and more se-vere sea states than was experienced during the October 2011 DT trials onboard the Wasp. During tests this month, the Pentagon will check re-finements to the F-35B’s integrated propulsion and fight control systems. The initial trials in 2011 were “a testa-ment to how well it works on a real deck,” says Steven Wurth, technical lead for F-35 propulsion at Lockheed Martin. “The next deployment, with its higher sea states, will stress the system,” he said during the Ameri-can Institute of Aeronautics and As-tronautics’ Aviation 2013 conference in Los Angeles last week. Lockheed refned the integrated propulsion and fight control system based on the re-sults of the 2011 sea trials.

Pilots will also test for the frst time the aircraft’s behavior on ship ap-

proaches, landings and takeofs while it is loaded with various weapons.

Four pilots have been selected for the DT trials: two are from the U.S. Marine Corps; one is from the United Kingdom, which—along with Italy—is buying the F-35B; and one works for BAE, which produces the aft fuselage and empennage for the aircraft. The U.K. pilot will be the frst from that nation to land an F-35B at sea.

During the 2011 DT trials for the F-35B on the Wasp in 2011, ofcials con-ducted the frst-ever vertical landing of the aircraft on a ship at sea.

Back on land, Lockheed Martin is working on various software releases needed frst for the U.S. Marine Corps IOC in December 2015, and a year later for the U.S. Air Force’s IOC.

As of Aug. 6, 64% of the Block 2B “onboard” software integration test-ing is complete, says Laura Siebert, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman. The latest delivery related to 2B was finished in the last week of July and this software package is being tested on fight-test aircraft in the feet. The

Defense

Marine Lt. Col. C. Russell Clift approaches the USS Wasp for the initial ship-based landing of the second round of developmental test trials for the F-35B.

Amy Butler Washington and Huntsville, Ala., and Graham Warwick Los Angeles

Feast of FixesPentagon to weigh readiness

of tailhook, helmet improvements

in advance of F-35

production review

U.S. NAVY

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These advantages strategically position Mississippi for testing

opportunities and growth in the UAS industry. Mississippi is ready to test

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Guy Norris Los Angeles

Ramp UpDeck-mounted ski-jump assembly marks key

step toward U.K. carrier-based JSF operations

As a new phase of ship-borne testing of the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter gets underway on the

amphibious assault vessel USS Wasp, British shipbuilders are assembling the ski-jump launch ramp on HMS Queen Elizabeth—the frst of two new JSF-dedicated aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy.

The 200-ft.-long ramp is the longest ever fitted to a carrier and, like the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers (QEC) themselves, is the frst of its type to be purpose-designed from the outset for F-35 operations. Angled at 12.5 deg., the ramp will be 20-ft. high and is de-signed to reduce the required deck roll

on takeof by up to 50%, or allow an in-creased payload of up to 20%. The ramp achieves this by boosting vertical veloc-ity, giving the aircraft a ballistic launch profle that provides it with additional time to accelerate to fying speed.

However, the ski ramp imparts added loads on the landing gear during launch and, because these can be increased by even small variations in the surface of the ramp or by the interface with the deck, developers are paying special at-tention to the build tolerances. David Atkinson, who leads JSF/QEC integra-tion activities for BAE Systems, says the requirement for build accuracy is even greater than for previous ski jump

Defense

final 2B release is slated for March 2014 with integration of the software into the feet in mid-2015, she says. The Marine Corps plans to declare initial operational capability with the 2B soft-ware, while the Air Force is holding out for the Block 3i.

Roughly 65% of the overall devel-opment work is complete on Block 3, Siebert says. Initially, engineers are porting the code from earlier software blocks into the Block 3 hardware base-line; this is slated to go out to fight-test aircraft starting in the third quarter of this year. Actual fight-testing is ex-pected to start by year-end.

A second phase of the Block 3 work will include an additional 840,000 source lines of code that will add “new weapons and expand the robustness of the overall weapon system,” Siebert says. This new code has been operated on the new Block 3 hardware.

However, more progress has been made on the 3i release—which in-cludes new hardware suitable for release to the F-35’s international customers—than on the 3F. Sixty-one percent of the “prime” software devel-opment for Block 3i is complete while only 34% is fnished for the 3F, which will include a larger flight envelope and internal weapons. (Block 2B only includes external weapons storage.) The 3i software is set to be released to the flight-test fleet by the end of the third quarter of this year and will begin being added to Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) 6 aircraft by year-end. The 3F is slated for release to the flight-test fleet in September 2014, and will begin to be added to produc-tion aircraft in LRIP 9. It is slated for release to the rest of the feet in the third quarter of 2017.

The F-35 Joint Program Office is planning at the end of this month to brief Kendall on the status of work to overcome technical issues with the F-35 helmet-mounted display system. A downselect between the original advanced helmet design, built by Vi-sion Systems International (VSI, a joint venture between Rockwell Col-lins and Elbit), and a more rudimen-tary backup made by BAE Systems was slated for 2014. “If we can get the baseline to where we need to be, then we can downselect,” he said. “If not, then we are going to delay downselect for a while.”

The VSI helmet now in use—the Gen 2 helmet—incorporates an ICIE-

10 night-vision camera, which was creating problems with the acuity of imagery projected onto the helmet at night. Flight-testing of the solution, the so-called ICIE-11 camera, and im-proved image-processing software in the helmet, took place in a Cessna last month. “The testing proved success-ful, with pilots reporting a substan-tial improvement in camera capability over the existing ISIE-10 night cam-era in the Gen 2 helmet,” said Kyra Hawn, a spokeswoman for the F-35 Joint Program Ofce.

The ISIE-11 camera is not being used for the DT trials on the Wasp; the “Gen 3” helmet (which will include the ISIE-11 and other improvements) is not slated to be ready until the sec-ond quarter of next year, Hawn says. All three F-35 variants will be used for the Gen 3 helmet-testing for two months. For the Wasp trials, pilots will use the ISIE-10 camera in the Gen 2 helmet and the digital night-vision ca-pability provided by the Distributed Aperture System, a series of six sen-sors outside the aircraft designed to give the pilot a 360-deg. view of the surrounding airspace.

Finally, a fx for jitter that occurred for symbiology displayed on the helmet visor during stressing scenarios, such

as high-bufet fight, is being fown on an F-35A at Edwards AFB, Calif. The fx is the use of a software “flter” for the inertial measurement unit em-bedded in the helmet. Flight-testing is underway this month to validate this fx and determine whether additional work is needed.

This fx will have to be tracked as the fight envelope continues to open for the F-35 and as more taxing tasks, such as gun tracking, are undertaken in fight-testing.

Finally, Kendall will review the status of work to correct a poorly designed tailhook for the F-35C. The point of the hook, coupled with its distance from the landing gear, made it susceptible to bouncing and pre-vented it from scooping under the arresting wire.

Qualifcation testing for the new de-sign began Aug. 8, and roll-in tests are slated for the frst F-35C to receive the hook in December at Naval Air Engi-neering Station Lakehurst, N.J. Flight tests with the new hook are slated for early next year as preparations for the initial sea trials for the F-35C are completed late next summer, Siebert says. Aircraft built in LRIP 7 will be the frst to include the new arresting hook. c


Tense TimesIsraeli drone strike in Egypt rattles

key Middle East relationship

In what appears to be a major chal-lenge to the Israel-Egypt peace trea-ty, a recent Israeli-launched drone

strike against suspected terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula breached Egyptian sovereignty for the frst time since the 1979 accord.

The strike occurred in the midst of a sensitive time for the Egyptian army; it is still clashing with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood movement—more than a month after Egyptian top brass deposed the movement from power. The two nations have tried to deny that the Aug. 9 strike took place.

According to reports from Egypt and the Gaza Strip, an Israeli UAV launched

strike. On the following day, Col. Ahmad Ali, a spokesperson for the Egyptian Army, tweeted that “there is no truth in form and substance to the presence of any attacks from the Israeli side inside Egyptian territory.” Egypt’s ofcial Mid-dle East News Agency followed with a report that two Egyptian Apache attack helicopters conducted the strike.

In response, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon released a state-ment: “Israel respects Egyptian sover-eignty. We will not allow rumors and speculations to jeopardize the peace between the two nations.”

Despite political animosity, the Is-raeli and Egyptian armies maintain good working relations, especially in coordinating counter-terrorism activ-ity in the Sinai. Yet, in this case it is highly unlikely that Israel coordinated the strike with Egypt, a country that is extremely vigilant about national sov-ereignty. Moreover, the Egyptian army could have not consciously condoned an Israeli strike, as it would have supplied potent political ammunition to the resi-dent Islamic opposition.

It is more likely that the Egyptians were informed of the strike only after the fact and chose to deny it ever took place. Still, the Muslim Brotherhood called the strike proof of “collaboration

Defense

designs because the F-35 has a wide tricycle gear. This makes it more ex-posed to variability than the narrower footprint of the tandem main gear of the Harrier, for which the concept was originally conceived in the 1970s. In ad-dition, the center section of the carrier deck is cambered to prevent pooling of water, further complicating the inter-face with the ramp.

“You have to allow for the efect of deck-plate bumps and sags, and when the ship is foated up we will go over it with laser mapping to measure the actual tolerances achieved in build,” says Atkinson, who was speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aviation 2013 confer-ence in Los Angeles.

The ramp has been designed by BAE and Lockheed Martin, rather than the shipbuilders, and is configured with two curves. The initial entry or “cubic” curve leads to a let-down or “ellipse” section that provides the launch point for the aircraft. The ramp’s makeup provides a positive climb rate and no

more than a zero sink rate if wind-over-deck conditions are less than expected.

Design work is also close to comple-tion on the ship-borne rolling-vertical-landing (SRVL) system, which is being developed for the U.K. by Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman. The SRVL technique, which will also be used by the U.S. Marine Corps while operating F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variants from U.S. Navy carriers, enables the aircraft to land at heavier weights than possible when making a vertical land-ing. Initial fight trials of the F-35B, in-cluding SRVLs, are expected in 2018.

Under this technique, the aircraft will follow a conventional 2.5-3-deg. glideslope from 1,000-ft. toward the car-rier until leveling of at 200 ft., where it will stabilize for a fnal approach at 7 deg. Flying at around 60 kt., compared to 120 kt. for a conventional carrier ap-proach, up to 5-10% of the overall lift will be generated by forward fight.

“This increases the recovery weight above vertical landing and enhances

a missile against a group of suspected terrorists who were placing a rocket launcher near Al-Agra in northeastern Sinai. Later, a local group, Ansar Beit Al-

Makdas (supporters of Jerusalem), re-leased a statement saying four of their operatives were killed in the strike as they were preparing to launch a rocket toward Israel.

The group, which subscribes to Al-Qaeda ideology, consists mostly of local Bedouins and some international volun-teers. It has assumed responsibility for several attacks launched against Israel in recent years.

Officials in Israel and Egypt re-mained quiet immediately after the

the bring-back load by an extra 2,000-4,000 lb.,” says Atkinson. “The intention is always to stop with brakes and engine at idle, compared to the carrier landing where the intent is always to bolter (aka touch-and-go). The SRVL touchdown point is variable with ship motion, while

Israel denies it was the source of the Aug. 9 drone strike into Egyptian territory.

Elb

it

Alon Ben David Tel Aviv


Assembly of the ski-jump ramp follows basic structural completion of the 932-ft.-long vessel, which is set for launch in 2014.

by a radicalizing local population of Bedouins. The Egyptian army was hardly exercising its rule in Sinai, and more radical ideologies and operatives migrated to the peninsula, establish-ing militias that openly declared their desire to proclaim the Sinai as an in-dependent Muslim caliphate.

Israel, which absorbed numerous attacks from those organizations, refrained from response and urged the Egyptian army to act against the terror groups. The turning point oc-curred in August 2012 when a local group murdered 15 Egyptian soldiers during a Ramadan feast and crossed the border into Israel. At that juncture, the IDF killed most of the intruders.

Egypt’s then-President Mohammed Morsi ordered a massive military op-eration against terror cells in Sinai. Without receiving the required Is-raeli approval, according to the peace treaty, Morsi dispatched armored units and attack helicopters into the Sinai to hunt terrorists. The operation achieved partial success in the form of several months of calm.

After the Egyptian army deposed Morsi in July, the army launched an-other operation in the Sinai—this time with Israeli approval—deploying a tank battalion and four attack helicop-

the carrier landing point is always on the arresting wires.

Pilots will fy the approach using a stabilized and illuminated aim point on the ship’s deck and a ship-referenced velocity vector on their helmet-mount-ed displays. The technique is being de-

veloped using a modifed fight simula-tor at BAE’s Warton, England, facility.

The company has also been running tests at its hot-gas test rig at the same site to replicate the aero-thermal envi-ronment caused by the F-35’s exhaust. “The F-35 has a much more powerful

PA PhotoS/lANdoV FilE Photo

ters to the demilitarized zone. Appear-ing more determined than ever, the Egyptian troops fought hard against several known Al-Qaeda strongholds, and sustained numerous casualties. The Egyptian operation was also di-rected against a sister movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which now is perceived as an enemy of Egypt.

But the Egyptian military sufers an inferiority complex when compared with the local Sinai groups, which are far more familiar with the terrain and better equipped, possessing anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, as well as long-range rockets. “The Sinai has turned into a no man’s land,” a senior Is-raeli defense source told Aviation Week. “In the best case, it is going to turn into Lebanon of the 1970s, but it also could turn into a new Afghanistan.”

While coordination between the Is-raeli and Egyptian militaries has only tightened since Gen. Abd Al-Fatah Al-Sisi took over Egypt, the recent strike has most likely further frayed rela-tions. With Israel setting a precedent of launching a preemptive strike into Egypt, and with the growing threat of terrorism from Sinai, the Israeli-Egyp-tian peace agreement is soon likely to face more signifcant challenges. c

between the Egyptian military coup and the Zionist enemy.”

“What is greater treason than the Egyptian Army allowing the Zionist UAVs to violate Egyptian airspace now and then,” added a statement by Ansar Beit AlMakdas.

A day before the strike, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered closure of the civilian airport at Eilat, a resort city bordering the Red Sea. Fearing an imminent rocket strike on the city, air trafc was stopped for 2 hr. Earlier this summer, Israel had deployed the counter-rocket Iron Dome System in Eilat, out of concern that instability in Egypt would result in more terror at-tacks against Israel, especially during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which just ended.

That warning was realized on Aug. 13, when a Grad-type rocket was launched toward Eilat by a different Jihadi organization, Aknaf Beit AlMak-das (Jerusalem Surroundings). It was intercepted by the Iron Dome battery, marking the frst such interception of a rocket fred from Egypt.

Egypt’s grasp of the Sinai Peninsula has started to weaken under the reign of Hosni Mubarak. For the last decade, the Egyptian military as well as tour-ist sites were under repeated attacks

propulsion system so we have to take account of the high-energy, hot-cold fow. We looked in the simulator at the repeatability of approaches and at how much of the catwalks we would have to sterilize (heat treat). We also looked at hover transition corridors for aircraft to land. We used computational fluid dynamics and subscale model tests to protect areas from heat transfer, along with full-scale testing,” says Atkinson.

BAE built a 15.7%-scale model of a QEC catwalk with containers, fuel systems, life rafts and sections of the ship’s deck. It then used the hot-gas test rig at Warton to expose the model to the full-scale pressure of a F-35 gas stream. “We’ve been testing things like life rafts without and with all sorts of covers. We want to protect for a single pass in areas that would not normally be overfown,” he adds. c

Graham Warwick Washington

Automated ResupplyUnmanned cargo delivery and return takes

next steps in Army demonstrations

Unmanned cargo helicopters have proved their worth in Af-ghanistan, resupplying remote

forward bases and taking convoys of dangerous roads. But the U.S. Army wants to take the next step, beyond carefully planned missions to autono-mous operations, including obstacle avoidance and dynamic replanning.

Advanced capabilities are being de-veloped by Lockheed Martin using an unmanned Kaman K-Max external-lift helicopter as the testbed for the Army Aviation Applied Technology Director-ate’s Autonomous Technologies for Un-manned Air Systems (ATUAS) demon-stration program. The initial demo, in April 2012, involved a ground beacon that enables loads to be delivered to within 3 meters (10 ft.) of a drop point.

The beacon was deployed to Af-ghanistan, where two K-Max unmanned helicopters were be-ing used to resupply remote U.S. Marine Corps forward op-erating bases until operations were sus-pended in early June after one of the aircraft crashed.

The crash has not affected the ATUAS program, and in July Lockheed Martin conducted the second series of demonstrations at Fort Pickett, Va. These included passing high-defnition video over high-bandwidth satellite communications to provide improved situational awareness for the operator.

“We swapped out the low-resolution EO/IR [electro-optical/infrared sen-sor] and put on a high-defnition EO/IR, but that needed a much higher- bandwidth signal,” says Jon McMillen, business development manager for K-Max. “We wanted to do beyond line-of-sight, and still wanted to use satcom. So we integrated a high-bandwidth, Ku-band satcom dish under the ro-tors, and created a waveform to pipe the high-def video through the rotors,” he says.

McMil len says real-time video via satcom through the rotors is an “indus-try first.” To avoid blockage by the ro-tating blades, the waveform allows the

signal “to shoot between rotor cycles, to go between the blades,” he says.

Real-time video via satcom allows the remote operator to use a gimbaled EO/IR sensor—a Wescam MX-10 was used for the demo—to get a downward view from the helicopter and look around the drop zone, he says, reducing the need for personnel on site.

The latest demo also includes dy-namic mission replanning. “In fight, we uploaded a no-fly zone direct to the air vehicle. The aircraft sensed the obstacle directly ahead, and au-tomatically replanned around it,” McMillen says. The no-fy zone could represent a threat or airspace to be avoided. Replanning was performed on the aircraft, with the revised route displayed in the control station to alert the operator and provide the option to intervene.

Also demonstrated was obstacle avoidance and landing-zone selection using a three-dimensional laser radar. The K-Max used a Fairchild Controls Hellas lidar to autonomously check the landing zone slope, detect obsta-cles and select a safe area to drop the cargo.

The ATUAS demonstration is fo-cused on long-line delivery of external loads—both single and multiple drops per flight—the method used by the K-Max to deliver cargo in Afghani-stan. “We did both static and dynamic obstacle-detection,” says McMillen. “There was an SUV in the middle of the drop zone. The system tracked the vehicle, selected a safe area nearby and delivered the load.”

A final demonstration is planned for November. This operational utility assessment will include multi-vehicle control from the K-Max ground sta-tion, representing a team of cargo UAS. The demo will also include autonomous retrograde capability—bringing cargo back. This has been accomplished man-ually in Afghanistan with Marine Corps personnel making “hot hook-ups” to the hovering helicopter.

In the November demo, McMillen says, the unmanned helicopter will fy in, identify the load, autonomous-ly attach its hook and fly away. “We are looking at a device on the load to identify it, and a couple of differ-ent hook technologies,” he says. This is an extension of the beacon, which allows the long-line load to be placed precisely, says McMillen, adding that automated damping of the long line on the unmanned K-Max already provides cargo-hook stability that is better than for the piloted aircraft. c

UNMANNED SYSTEMS


The U.S. Army autonomous resupply work is focused on long-line delivery of external loads.

Lockheed Martin

AviationWeek.com/awst� AviAtion�Week�&�SpAce�technology/AuguSt�19,�2013 37

Frank Morring, Jr. Logan, Utah

Growing SmallMore-capable cubesats are attracting

commercial and government interest

Small, low-cost satellites are com-ing into their own as a niche in-dustry serving commercial and

government markets, building on the free development work provided by a generation of engineering students at places like California Polytechnic State University and Morehead State University in Kentucky.

It is now clear that smallsat technol-ogy is leapfrogging beyond the class-room. No longer just a hands-on teach-ing tool, miniature spacecraft are in serious development as weather moni-tors, Earth- and space-observation tele-scopes and a host of scientifc probes.

“The genesis for a lot of the work has been in the universities, but we’re now coming to a kind of a cusp, or a knee in the curve,” says Charles S.

(Scott) MacGillivray, president of Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, a two-year-old startup that is gaining serious traction in the market for cubesat components, engineering services and launch inte-gration. “We can start saying ‘hey, we can do real missions with these.’”

Presentations at the 27th annual Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University here last week un-derscore MacGillivray’s point.

During last year’s conference Ty-vak signed a $13.5 million NASA tech-nology-development contract for the Cubesat Proximity Operations Demon-stration (CPOD) mission, which will fy two 3U cubesats (each one compris-ing three 10-cm “cubes” that are each counted as one “U”) to orbit. Once there, the two tiny spacecraft will use a multi-thruster cold-gas propulsion system to fy a choreographed pattern around each other before docking, ac-complishing the task with imagery, a cross-linked GPS signal and sophisti-cated software running on high-perfor-mance onboard processors.

Although most of the small-satellite and miniature instruments covered at this year’s conference are still in devel-opment, the range of topics suggests the next few years will see a dramatic increase in “real missions” conducted with small spacecraft. Among them are “High-performance Spectroscopic Observation from a Smallsat;” “Star Tracker on a Chip;” “Simultaneous

Multi-Point Space Weather Measure-ments using the Low-Cost EDSN CubeSat Constellation;” “Cicero—A Distributed Small Satellite Radio Oc-cultation Pathfinder Mission,” and “TacSat-4: Military Utility in a Small Communication Satellite.”

Until recently, smallsats were consid-ered too limited for meaningful work in space. Designers have been spending a lot of time working on ways to enhance the capabilities, and the payof is start-ing to appear. Presenters from the Space Dynamics Laboratory here and NASA Ames Research Center in Moun-tain View, Calif., displayed dramatically different ways to fold a useful Earth-

observation or astronomical telescope into cubesats for deployment on orbit. Miniature atmospheric sounders and other weather instruments were hot, as were propulsion systems.

The cold-gas thrusters on Tyvak’s CPOD cubesats may not be the propul-sion of choice for future smallsat ma-neuvering. While last year’s conference included a hybrid rocket test banished to an abandoned runway outside of town due to safety concerns (AW&ST Aug. 20, 2012, p. 31), tiny electric and “green” propulsion systems using inert and non-toxic propellants such as Tef-lon were on display this year.

Those kinder, gentler characteris-tics, highlighted by specialty houses like Busek Space Propulsion and Sys-

tems of Natick, Mass., and Digital Solid State Propulsion (DSSP) of Reno, Nev., should allay the fears of satellite opera-tors hoping to defray their launch costs a little by allowing smallsats to fy with them as secondary payloads.

A case in point is Spinsat, which is set for “soft stowage” launch in the pressurized portion of the SpaceX Dragon headed to the International Space Station (ISS) next April. A sta-tion crewmember will carry the 22-in. sphere, essentially packed in a fabric bag, from the Dragon into the station and leave it there until its scheduled deployment through the Japanese module’s airlock. NASA safety ex-

SPACE

Three of the fve cubesats launched Oct. 4, 2012, with the Small

Satellite Orbital Deployer outside Japan’s Kibo module, pass one of

the ISS’s solar arrays.

NASA/JSC

perts approved the mission because the satellite’s 12 thruster-clusters burn an inert solid fuel called Hipep, and only when an electric charge is passed across it.

In space, the Naval Research Labo-ratory satellite will demonstrate the DSSP thruster technology in a series of maneuvers, and also serve as a re-fector for ground-based laser ranging to study atmospheric drag. It is one of two very diferent spacecraft that will be passed through the Japanese air-lock and released from the end of one of the station’s robotic arms to test a new NASA deployer known as Cyclops.

Engineers at Johnson Space Center designed Cyclops to handle as many diferent spacecraft shapes as possible, grappling them with a special fxture, squeezing through the airlock tunnel and attaching to the end of the Cana-dian or Japanese-built arms to release them down and away from the back of the station to avoid recontact. In ad-dition to the U.S. Navy’s Spinsat, the Cyclops test in April will deploy a rect-angular satellite—Lonestar-2—built by Texas college students.

Neither of the frst two spacecraft to be deployed with Cyclops is a cube-sat, but Japan and the U.S. company Nanoracks have launched cubesats from the ISS with special spring-load-ed dispensers that essentially work like a jack-in-the-box, squiring the tiny spacecraft out in stacks (see photo).

Dispensers have gone a long way be-yond the standard cubesat deployer de-veloped at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) called the P-Pod. Planetary Systems of Silver Spring, Md., drew attention in the exhibit hall with noisy demonstrations of its 6U cubesat deployer, and paper presenta-tions covered a variety of dispensing methods for smallsat packages rang-ing from multiple cubesats to as many as six satellites in the 180-kg (400-lb.) range riding on Moog CSA Engineer-ing’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) rings.

In the middle is an “Express” adapter for secondary payloads in the 20-50-kg class—under development at the Johns Hopkins University Ap-plied Physics Laboratory in Columbia, Md.—to fll an unmet need.

“In talks with the community over the past few years we’ve noticed that a need exists for an intermediary-sized mission between cubesats and ESPA-sized vehi-

cles,” says Clint Apland, who presented a paper on the “Express” work. “We’ve designed, fabricated and will begin to test this hardware next month.”

While the number of ways to get secondary payloads of their launch ve-hicles is growing, Tyvak’s MacGillivray notes a trend to dedicated launch ve-hicles for small satellites. One of them is a follow-on to the reusable suborbital human spacefight business Virgin Ga-lactic hopes to kick of next year with its eight-seat SpaceShipTwo. The company has started developing a two-stage, kerosene-fueled “LauncherOne” rocket that it will drop from the same WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft that will air-launch its human payloads.

“Secondary opportunities are great for technology demonstrators, they’re

great for educational missions, but as we’ve been speaking to you and throughout the community [for a little more than a year], you’ve told us it is hard to build a business case around secondary launch opportunities,” says William Pomerantz, Virgin Galactic’s special projects director. “When you can’t specify where you are launch-ing from, where you are launching to, when you are launching . . . that is a constraint.”

Virgin hopes to begin fying 200-kg payloads to low Earth orbit in 2016, dropping the LauncherOne vehicle at an altitude of 50,000 ft. from anywhere that has a 9,000-10,000-ft. runway for WhiteKnightTwo. Pomerantz says the company is developing the rocket in-house, including engines and its “sim-ple, low-cost composites structure.” The price of a mission, he says, will be “less than $10 million.”

That could play well with NASA’s open-ended spacefight-technology de-velopment program. With $600 million to invest this year, the space technol-ogy mission director is a significant potential customer for the smallsat community, and the associate admin-

istrator in charge of the program was invited to deliver the keynote address at this year’s smallsat conference.

“We’re trying to accelerate and in-vest where we can to push the whole area forward,” said Mike Gazarik. “. . . [T]here are power limitations, but what we’re seeing, just like our fight-opportunities program, is a number of technology payloads that can be fown very inexpensively on a suborbital ve-hicle, which can be flown on a small spacecraft. We’re looking at whatever we can fnd to be able to get to space.”

Most experts at the conference be-lieve that, ultimately, cubesats and other small satellites will find their greatest utility in constellations that combine the capabilities of “swarms” of the relatively inexpensive spacecraft

to do more, in some cases, than a single expensive satellite can accomplish. Weather constellations, to cite one example presented this year, can place sen-sors over a developing hurricane more fre-quently than today’s polar-orbiting weath-ersats, and can provide higher-resolution data

on rapidly changing conditions than the geostationary environmental platforms.

Jordi Puig-Suari, the Cal Poly pro-fessor who, with Bob Twigg of More-head State, pioneered the cubesat standard, continues to push the enve-lope as an educator even as he works with Tyvak—founded and staffed by Cal Poly graduates like MacGillivray—on commercial projects. This year he presented an analysis of what it would take to launch a constellation of eight 3U cubesats from an Atlas V. It turns out that even a cold-gas propulsion system would be up to the task of sta-bilizing the constellation around the planet in a single plane after 40 days, with fairly straightforward deploy-ment from the launch vehicle.

“Forty days is not that long,” Puig-Suari says. “It is kind of a commission-ing time. So our conclusion is we are ready to deploy constellations today. We don’t have to do anything differ-ent—or very little different—than what we have right now. The technol-ogy, the infrastructure, the systems are in place where we could have a cubesat constellation, at least a single plane, on the next Atlas V.” c

SPACE

38��AviAtion�Week�&�SpAce�technology/AuguSt�19,�2013� AviationWeek.com/awst

“The technology, infrastructure

and systems are in place

where we could have a cubesat

constellation, at least a single

plane, on the next Atlas V”


Comac’s managers must be pretty embarrassed by the an-

nouncement that their fagship program, the 158-seat C919

airliner, will make a delayed frst fight at the end of 2015.

Face is important in China, and there is a lot of it to lose if one is

running a priority program intended to make the country proud.

But maybe they should recall that not only is commercial aircraft develop-ment difcult even for an experienced organization; it is all the harder for them because China has been in such a rush. And no one in the program is to blame for Comac inevitably being a Chinese state agency with burdensome bureaucratic culture.

Under the circumstances, they are not doing too badly, say some industry executives with good insight into the program. The delay announced this month means the C919, scheduled at program launch in 2008 to go into service in 2016, will not reach custom-ers before 2017, and quite likely not until 2018. Admittedly, 10 years is a long time from launch to entry into service. But Boeing took nearly eight years to get the 787 into service, and it had been through the process sev-en times before. Meanwhile, Comac’s ARJ21 regional jet, launched in 2002, is fnally looking stable, on track for

entry into service in mid-2014.The C919 delay is the second for that

program. The first, shifting the first flight from June 2014 to the second quarter of 2015, was reported by Avia-tion Week in June but not announced (AW&ST June 17, p. 96). The 2016 frst-delivery target, not publicly revised, is unachievable. While an experienced Western manufacturer might allow just a year for fight-testing and related certifcation work, industry executives believe Comac will need its originally scheduled two years, even with ex-pected help from Bombardier. So entry into service in late 2017 looks likely if all goes well, and in 2018 if unexpected problems crop up, as they often do.

The new schedule reflects the re-alistic attitude of the current head of Comac, Jin Zhuanglong. “The goal is not to fy an aircraft that is not certi-fable,” one industry executive quotes Jin as saying. The ofcial adds: “This [the delay] is good news, because fying

Bradley Perrett Beijing

Not Just InexperienceA second delay makes the C919’s

2016 delivery target untenable

AIR TRANSPORT

an aircraft that is not representative of the production version is a big mis-take.” Comac is making faster progress with its structure suppliers, all Avic units, than it is in systems. The C919 has entered the manufacturing stage, with 95% of its parts designed, says Zhang Yanzhong, who announced the delay and is the director of an expert committee that is advising the cabinet on the program. Assembly will begin next year, he says.

Rollout of the frst prototype must also have been delayed a second time. After the first postponement it was supposed to happen in December 2014, but Comac cannot plan to have the aircraft sitting on the ground for a year before fying. A sixth aircraft was added to the fight-test program.

The C919 iron bird, a ground rig on which systems are tested, is fnally be-ing ftted, at frst to trial mechanical and hydraulic systems; by mid-2014 it will be fully operational with all sys-tems, says an ofcial. As recently as a month ago nothing was mounted, a strong sign of slow development.

Zhang attributed the delay to Co-mac’s “present level of technological expertise and experience in building commercial aircraft,” an assessment that squares with the long-standing view of industry ofcials familiar with the program.

But that is not the whole story. For a start, Comac should not be so inexperienced, because it was sup-posed to have gained knowledge and experience with the ARJ21. The shaky C919 progress bolsters arguments of Chinese industry executives that the country has been moving too fast. In their view, China should have launched a turboprop airliner early last decade, instead of the ARJ21, then a regional

The frst C919 is now due to fy at the end of

2015, about 18 months later than planned.

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jet followed by something like the C919. Compounding the error, the C919 was launched when the ARJ21 was years from certifcation.

Some people with insight into the C919 program say Comac has a remark-able amount of money and talented engineers that it liberally throws at problems. Others say that not enough trained personnel are available. “For each major system, they have a few relatively good people,” says an industry ofcial. “But many more are needed.” Also, the ARJ21’s struggles have drawn away key people.

Perhaps comparable with inexperi-ence and the engineering shortage is the problem of Comac’s governmental culture. Delegation is not well prac-ticed in the Chinese state, and Comac managers often prefer to push deci-sions to their superiors. Groups work-ing on disparate C919 systems are not always interacting as well as they should be with each other. Last year Comac acted on that problem by ap-pointing managers with responsibility across several systems. Avic, an older organization, suffers from the same culture, but Comac was supposed to be more modern. Insiders say it is worse, because the C919 is a national and therefore political project.

The program was late in supplier selection and then very slow in con-tracting with the suppliers, though they generally moved ahead without agreements. Detail design and fixing the structural layout of the aircraft have been delayed. As late as the frst half of this year the center wingbox was changed from composite to convention-al aerospace aluminum construction, and Comac had still not chosen a ma-terial for the fuselage. The new metal wing box was ready, however.

Some C919 suppliers have been quite late in meeting targets. In some cases that was because they underes-timated the time they would take to form required joint companies with divisions of Avic; that held up the sys-tems the joint companies would pro-duce. The program has also been slow to defne the system interfaces, which suppliers need to fnalize designs.

As a Chinese state agency, Comac has been declaring milestones passed and targets achieved even though not all work has been performed. The pre-liminary design review of the C919 was declared complete in December 2011 when important issues still remained

to be sorted out; some aspects of the approved design were later changed. Suppliers’ work has been reassigned.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has been slow at times. For example, it must perform conformi-ty inspections, ensuring that parts and systems meet specifcations and match drawings. The FAA will not yet routine-ly endorse the Chinese certifcation, so the CAAC must take the time to notify the U.S. safety agency of conformity inspections. Also, Chinese documents need translation for the FAA.

Comac is aiming at completing ARJ21 fight-testing by the end of the year, leaving six months for further certifcation work. “There seem to be no major problems,” says an industry ofcial. Another, agreeing, says the de-

velopment schedule has been realistic since last year, when the 2014 target was set. The third volume-production ARJ21 is now under assembly and should be completed by the end of the year. Comac has ordered equipment for 20 production aircraft.

The third prototype, AC103, com-pleted ground and fight tests for hot and humid conditions last month at Changsha. AC102 demonstrated high-altitude feld performance at Golmud, Qinghai, in June. Comac quotes FAA ofcials as saying May trials of mini-mum takeof speeds were outstanding.

Comac is compensating its suppliers for the lateness of ARJ21 certifcation. More supplier compensation will be due if, as is likely, the ARJ21 misses its pro-duction targets. c

AIR TRANSPORT


Tony Osborne London

London CallingLondon’s airports in war of words over options

for future capacity growth

London’s airports urgently need extra capacity, but finding the best locations for new runways—

and deciding if the city needs a single, main hub airport—are likely to be ma-jor subjects for debate in the coming years.

All three of London’s major airports, Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, are

making a determined push for expan-sion in their submissions to the U.K. Airports Commission. The commission, set up by the coalition government in 2012, has begun examining proposals

Heathrow is suggesting options for runways northwest and southwest of the airport, outlined in purple.

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for expansion from airport operators, consultants, environmental groups and airlines and is due to report its fndings on short-term improvements in airport capacity later this year.

But while it has a U.K.-wide mandate, the commission’s focus is likely to be on the future of Heathrow.

In their submissions, Heathrow Air-port Holdings, which runs the airport, says it has whittled down options from consultants and think tanks, eliminat-

ing ideas to move to new sites and in-stead focusing on making the best use of the land close to the airport.

Submissions from the operator unveiled on July 17 revealed three op-tions for the creation of a three-run-way Heathrow, with others potentially allowing for a fourth runway beyond 2040. The plans are radical and would likely have major impacts on the sur-rounding infrastructure and communi-ties. But the operators argue that the costs of their proposals are a fraction of the expense of building a new airport in the Thames estuary, and could be com-pleted in just over a decade, relieving pressure on the two-runway airport which is already close to capacity.

The most familiar of the options is a new runway between Heathrow and the M4 motorway. This option, while the quickest to deliver and the least ex-pensive at roughly £14.3 billion ($22.2 billion), only allows for the construc-tion of a short 2,500-meter (8,200-ft.) runway, limiting capacity growth to 123 million passengers and 702,000 movements a year. The airport ar-gues growth would be better served with two new options —the creation

of a 3,500-meter runway in the north-west or southwest corner of the air-port. With costs estimated at £16.9 and £17.6 billion, respectively, these options are more “technically challenging,” but Heathrow’s operator argues they would be preferable, accommodating 740,000 movements per year and up to 130 million passengers.

Heathrow’s proposal points out that the northwest and southwest runway growth options “perform better on

noise” than the third option because they are farther west than existing runways, so aircraft on approach to these new runways would be higher over London during the airport’s “westerly” mode of operation.

The southwest option is more com-plex, requiring demolition of the vil-lage of Stanwell Moor and the reduc-tion in size of two nearby reservoirs. The northwest runway option would see the elimination of two villages, Harmondsworth and Colnbrook and interestingly, Waterside, the headquar-ters of British Airways. Both solutions would also require burying parts of the U.K.’s busiest motorway, the M25 Or-bital, so runways and taxiways could be built on top.

Heathrow’s management also says the options could be mixed to allow a fourth runway; one would put two runways at the northwest site. All op-tions include the development of new terminals and satellite buildings in line with the company’s plan of giving the airport a more efcient “toast rack”

layout, but the design could result in lengthy taxi times, similar to those seen at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

Nonetheless, Heathrow continues to argue that an airport in the Thames Estuary would be a poor value for the money, and an inferior substitute with a smaller catchment area than Heathrow, resulting in increased travel times for passengers even with a major invest-ment in transport infrastructure.

Heathrow officials argue that a Thames Estuary airport probably wouldn’t be opera-tional “before 2034,” and “cou ld cost £70–80 billion, of which at least £25 billion would need to be funded by the taxpayer.”

“Adding capacity at Heathrow avoids the transition costs of moving to a new airport,” says the airport’s owner. “The developers of a new hub airport would need to compensate the owners of Heath-row and airlines and

airport companies as well as build new towns, schools, and hospitals to service the new airport’s workforce.”

The company also claims the con-struction of the runway would provide economic benefts to the U.K. worth up to £100 billion.

But Gatwick officials have similar ideas for expansion. In proposals deliv-ered to the commission on July 19, they say the U.K. doesn’t need a hub airport and that capacity should be delivered across the “constellation” of London airports, not just Heathrow. In its fling, Gatwick Airport argues: “The U.K. does not have, and does not need, a so-called ‘mega-hub’ airport to maintain its glob-al connectivity and status as one of the best-connected countries in the world.”

“Proponents of mega-hubs overstate the importance of transfer passengers in supporting London and the U.K.’s connectivity . . . Gatwick’s further expansion will provide a feeder base that will, in turn, attract additional long-haul operations,” Gatwick ofcials contend. Airport studies indicate that transfer passengers represent only 13% of those using London’s airports.

Gatwick has an advantage; it already

Gatwick proposes a new runway on land set aside south of the airport.

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“There is no doubt the digital

information exchange will

continue to expand at a rapid

rate,” says Ortberg

John Croft Washington

Package DealArinc purchase gives Rockwell Collins

end-to-end solutions

Rockwell Collins CEO Kelly Ort-berg uses a telecommunications analogy to sum up the compa-

ny’s Aug. 11 purchase of communica-tions provider Arinc: If Rockwell Col-lins is the iPhone, then Arinc is the cell phone network.

Though simple, the metaphor is notionally correct—an iPhone is rela-tively useless without connectivity. The same is true of an information-enabled next-generation fight deck.

From data communications, navi-gation databases, to health and usage monitoring, to fight operations quality-assurance data, avionics and operations are increasingly dependent on databas-es and mass storage that require fre-quent updates or downloads. Databases and mass-storage devices today are largely updated via a time-consuming and expensive process most often done by hand (aka, the “sneaker net”). With next-generation cockpits powered by Rockwell Collins Fusion integrated avionics, the needs will only increase.

By having its own dedicated net-work, Rockwell Collins is positioning itself not only as a provider of Arinc’s legacy services to airlines and busi-ness jet operators, but as a third-party source for subscription-based cockpit and cabin connectivity for the increas-ing digital content to and from inte-grated avionics systems that require nearly continuous updates. As part of the FAA’s next generation transporta-tion system (NextGen), data commu-nications in the U.S. will fow through the Arinc or SITA networks to replace most voice communications, and later will transfer trajectory data to and from air trafc controllers.

SITA provides similar services to Arinc, a factor that equity analyst How-ard Rubel of Jefries sees as a concern in a note to clients. “SITA seems will-ing to install competing networks in the U.S. and other regions,” says Rubel. He also estimates that the high sales price will reduce projected earnings per share next year, with increases to follow.

The $1.39 billion “defnitive agree-ment” with Arinc’s owner, the Carlyle Group, is expected to be fnalized with-

in 90 days. The deal will add $600 mil-lion “immediately” to Rockwell Collins’ revenues, which before the acquisition were expected to total $4.65 billion for fscal 2013, an increase of 13%. If ap-proved, the deal will increase its com-mercial-to-military revenue mix from less than 50% commercial this year to 54% commercial next year.

While Arinc is best known as a pro-vider of a dedicated air-ground digital VHF communications network for airliners and business jets, accessed through the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system (Acars), the company also is involved in many other aspects of commercial aviation. Those include fight support services for business aviation; airport communications and information

services; maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capabilities, and the development of aviation standards. Arinc’s GlobaLink Acars services and other products are subscription-based, which Ortberg says also represent a consistent, stable revenue stream not tied to aircraft production rates. He says Rockwell Collins will have to take provisions to deal with Arinc’s standards development business “so there is no conflict of interest going forward.”

More important for Rockwell Collins are future opportunities for revenue growth with the expected dramatic in-crease in connectivity between aircraft cabins and cockpits with the ground. “There is no doubt the digital informa-tion exchange will continue to expand at a rapid rate,” says Ortberg, adding

that the acquisition “sub-stantially expands Rockwell Collins’ position in the grow-ing aviation information-management space.”

Ortberg says Arinc’s “trusted network” for fight-critical information will com-plement Rockwell Collins’ hardware and avionics plat-forms, leading to a “broader

range of solutions.” “Once we have connectivity from the

aircraft to the ground, new applications will not be a large investment,” says Ort-berg. For the cabin, he says he can en-vision a “lot of opportunities, including passenger information, fight manifest and secure credit card transmissions.”

He says cockpit applications that use Arinc’s network to update on-board databases wirelessly will be available “very soon.” The application will likely merge Rockwell Collins’ As-cend database management tools for business jet operators with Arinc’s GateFusion system, which is designed to allow airlines to wirelessly update infight entertainment and electronic fight bags and other equipment at the gates of participating airports. c

AIR TRANSPORT

has an area south of the airport set aside for runway development. It can also argue that its movements afect fewer urban areas because of the air-port’s position south of London.

Stansted’s new owner, the Manches-ter Airport Group, is also proposing capacity growth through the creation

of a second runway, as well as a four-runway hub airport growing from the current airport site.

The Airport Commission now faces a minefeld of conficting ideas and poli-cies, the nub of which remains whether the U.K. needs to have a single hub air-port, or whether the burden of trafc

should be more equally shared among a constellation of airports. Later this year, the commission will report its fndings and recommendations to improve ca-pacity over the next fve years, but its longer-term recommendations won’t be announced until the summer of 2015, af-ter the next general election. c


Bill Sweetman Washington

T-50 design rationale unveiled

A highlight of the MAKS air show, which opens at Zhu-kovsky Airport near Moscow next week, is likely to be the demonstration of the Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA (Pers-

pektivny Aviatsionny Kompleks Frontovoy Aviatsii—Future Tactical Air System) fghter.

The T-50 appeared at MAKS two years ago, but is now fying with updated control laws that expand its fight en-velope. (The program had fown fewer than 100 test sorties between its January 2010 maiden fight and its MAKS debut.) Recent videos show the aircraft performing what appear to be sustained-altitude fat rotation maneuvers and high-angle-of-attack turns similar to those demonstrated at the Paris air show by the Su-35S. Four T-50 prototypes have now fown and a ffth is expected to fy by the end of the year. The frst state acceptance trials are due to start in 2014, United Air-craft Corporation President Mikhail Pogosyan said earlier this year, and production should start in 2015.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that production aircraft will enter service in 2016. However, since the aircraft has yet to fy with its defnitive engine, this most likely indicates that the Russian air force is reverting to Soviet-era practice by equipping an operational test unit with interim-standard air-craft while development of the objective system is completed.

Many details of the fghter’s equipment and armament re-main classifed or unpublished. However, in recent months the Sukhoi design bureau has obtained several patents re-lating to the T-50, including the rationale behind the stealth fghter’s confguration.

One Sukhoi patent opens by outlining a reference design similar to the Lockheed Martin F-22, but notes perceived shortcomings and areas where the Russian designers, start-ing a decade later after work on the Su-27 and its descendants, tried to do better. The F-22’s thrust-vector control (TVC) sys-tem cannot provide roll or yaw control because the engines are too close together. The engine installation leaves no place for weapon bays in the same plane as the engines—they have to be installed around and below the inlet ducts. The serpentine

inlet ducts add length and weight. Post-stall recovery is prob-lematic if TVC fails, and the fxed fns and rudders are large.

The T-50 is a blended wing-body design, resembling the Su-27 in one key respect: the core of the structure is the “cen-troplane,” a long-chord, deep-section inner wing to which the rest of the airframe components—the forward fuselage and widely separated engine nacelles, wings and tail surfaces—are attached. Compared to the Su-27, however, the centroplane is deeper between the engines, to accommodate weapon bays.

The fight control system has 14 efectors—12 moving fight control surfaces and the engine nozzles. The wing leading-edge faps are used symmetrically to maintain lift at high angles of attack and adjust the wing profle to the Mach number. The ailerons are used only at low speed and takeof and landing, when the faperons are used to increase lift. At higher speeds, roll control comes from the faperons and horizontal tails.

The all-moving vertical tails sit on short fxed pylons that contain the actuators, and air intakes for engine compart-ment cooling and heat exchangers. One purpose of the pylons is to make room for a longer bearing arm for the vertical tail pivot, between the top of the pylon and the lower surface of the blended wing. This reduces loads and allows the bearings and structure to be lighter. At supersonic speeds, the T-50 is directionally unstable and uses active control via the verti-cal tails. That is why the all-moving surfaces can be much smaller than the F-22’s fxed fns and movable rudders. The vertical tails replace the airbrake, moving symmetrically to increase drag with minimal pitch moment.

The large and unique moving leading edges on the centro-plane help optimize the lift generated by that section in cruis-ing fight, but their most important function is to recover the aircraft in the event of a TVC failure at post-stall angles of attack. They do this by defecting sharply downward, reduc-ing the plan-projected area of the wing-body section in front of the center of gravity.

The engines are widely separated, to make room for weapon bays and provide roll and yaw vector control. The engine cen-

AEROSPACE IN RUSSIA

New Moves

Sooner or later, Russia’s aerospace and defense industry will have to leave the post-Soviet era behind. It’s not easy. Russia still has some enviable technol-ogy: combat aircraft fight control, missile systems and rotorcraft, to name three. But it takes more than technology to compete in markets around the world. The upcoming MAKS 2013 air show should yield a few answers to the questions raised in the following pages. How good is the T-50 fghter, and when will it be fully operational? Can Russia’s industry become a player in the world’s commercial markets? And will the best-performing sector—

Russia’s helicopter business—be able to expand beyond its dependence on a single product, the sturdy Mi-8/17?

of AW&ST to see the T-50 performing sustained-altitude, fat-rotation maneuvers and

Widely separated engines give the T-50 e�ective thrust- vectoring in three axes —pitch, roll and yaw—and small all-moving tails provide directional stability and control.

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Tap the icon in the digital edition

high-angle-of-attack turns, or go to AviationWeek.com/video

terlines are splayed outward to reduce efects of asymmetric thrust with one engine inoperative, placing the thrust vector of the good engine closer to the center of mass of the aircraft.

As on the TVC-equipped versions of the Su-27/30/35 family, the individual engine nozzles vector only in one plane, but the vector axes are rotated outward. Consequently, symmetrical movement of the nozzles creates a pitch force (each nozzle creates an equal and opposite yaw moment) and asymmetrical movement creates both roll and yaw moments. If yaw only is required (for example, in the Su-35’s “bell” maneuver, a high-alpha deceleration followed by a 180-deg. change of direction) the roll moment can be counteracted by faperons and ailerons.

The T-50’s inlets are a compromise design. They are ser-pentine but the curvature is insufcient to obscure the entire engine face (as on the F-22, F-35 and Eurofghter Typhoon), so they also feature a radial blocker similar in principal to that used on the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Unlike the F-22 inlets, however, they feature a variable throat section and spill doors on the inboard, outboard and lower surfaces of the ducts. The result is a complex multiple-shock pattern at supersonic speed, which the Russians consider essential for efcient operation at Mach 2. The inlets also feature clam-shell-like mesh screens and diverter slots to keep foreign objects out of the engine, as used on the Su-27 family.

The main challenge in the structural design was to provide space for tandem weapon bays running the entire length of the center section. This ruled out the structural concept used on the Lockheed Martin F-35 and F-22, which have multiple full-depth bulkheads carrying the wing loads, because this forces all the weapon bays to be ahead of the wing. The cen-

terline structure on the T-50 has to be quite shallow, so that designing it to resist peak wing bending loads will be a very difcult challenge. The solution on the T-50 is to design the “centroplane” section as a stif, integrated structure with two sets of full-depth longitudinal booms, located at the outer edges of the nacelles and at the wing-to-centroplane junc-

tion. These are connected by multiple (the patent drawing shows eight) spanwise spars that also

carry the wing attachment fttings. The result is a struc-ture that spreads the bending loads over the centroplane

and reduces the peak loads at the centerline. It is believed that the target maximum speed of the T-50 is

around Mach 2. The goal was originally Mach 2.35, but this was reduced to Mach 2.1 and then to the current fgure, compared to Mach 2.25 for the Su-35S. The main reason for the diference is that the T-50 uses more composite materials in its primary structure than the Su-35S, which makes heavy use of titanium.

The T-50 aircraft fying today are equipped with the izdeli-ye (Type) 117 engine, described by its designer in a 2011 in-terview as being more advanced than the 117S used on the Su-35S. The 117S appears to be an evolution of the AL-31 engine series with some technology from the 117. The 117 is claimed to have a thrust/weight ratio of 10:1.

However, Saturn Managing Director Ilya Fyodorov con-frmed at a press conference last month that the company is designing a follow-on engine (referred to by the 117 designer as izdeliye 30) for the T-50, which is expected to ofer higher performance than the 117 from 2020 onward.

More details of the fghter’s weapons may be revealed at MAKS, but it appears that the T-50 is designed to carry vari-ants of in-service missiles initially. Tactical Missiles Corpora-tion General Director Boris Obnosov identifed several T-50 weapons in an interview early in 2012, including the existing Kh-35UE anti-ship missile, Kh-38ME air-to-surface weapon and the RVV-MD, an improved version of the R-73E short-range air-to-air missile with an enlarged seeker feld of view and a claimed 30% range increase. A signifcant development is the new Kh-58UShKE, a long-range (up to 245 km), Mach 4-capable anti-radar missile originally produced for the MiG-25BM Foxbat-E, ftted with folding wings for internal carriage.

However, Obnosov identifed these specifcally as being weapons at service entry, which he projected in 2014. There is still no defnitive information about the T-50’s internal weap-ons capability, but it seems likely that there are four separate weapon bays. Two bays outboard of the inlets each accom-modate a single RVV-MD. Tandem bays between the engines each hold two missiles, but it is likely that the forward bay is deeper to house weapons such as the Kh-58UShKE, with the aft bay dedicated to air-to-air missiles in the R-77 family. c


AEROSPACE IN RUSSIA

The T-50’s sharply swept delta wings and high fneness ratio

mean it will have no difculty in cruising at supersonic speed without

afterburning, up to the temperature limits of its engines.

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Maxim Pyadushkin Moscow

Flightpath To RecoveryRussia’s aerospace industry still needs subsidies

The Russian aerospace industry’s ambitious strategic goal is to re-turn to its Soviet-era position in

domestic and international markets. But achieving that goal is not easy.

The defense sector, which survived the 1990s and early 2000s thanks to export contracts, is consolidating its gains with the help of big orders from the Russian air force. The civil segment, backed by massive government subsi-dies, is trying desperately to win back a market lost to foreign manufacturers.

United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), product of a merger of Russian fxed-wing aircraft designers and manufac-turers, rolled out about 100 aircraft in 2012, close to the same number as a year before. Although defense con-tinued to dominate production—about 80 aircraft of the 2012 total—the civil output doubled to 23 aircraft compared to 11 airliners in 2011. Total consolidated revenues amounted to 170 billion rubles (about $5.2 billion), 6% higher than a year ago. The net loss stood at 5.6 bil-lion rubles, 2.4 times less than in 2011.

The company plans to increase civil production, both in terms of revenue and its share of UAC sales, according to UAC President Mikhail Pogosyan. He expects that the revenues will grow to $10 billion by 2015 and reach $20 billion by the end of the decade, with company sales reaching a 50:50 civil-to-military balance by 2025.

UAC’s commercial focus is squarely on the Sukhoi Superjet 100 program. This 98-seat regional jet has been cer-tifed by the Russian and European avi-ation authorities and entered service in 2011. Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company (SCAC), a UAC subsidiary, delivered 17 aircraft in 2011-12, and expects to com-

plete 26 jets this year and 40 in 2014. SSJ100s are operated by several

carriers in Russia as well as in Indone-sia and Laos. An important milestone was passed this summer with the start of deliveries to the frst Western cus-tomer—Interjet of Mexico. It has al-ready received two aircraft customized by the Venice, Italy-based SuperJet International, a joint venture between Sukhoi and Alenia Aermacchi.

SCAC is working to expand the SSJ100 family with long-range and VIP versions. The LR variant is expected to be certifed this summer before delivery to Gazpromavia, the launch customer. The frst aircraft with a VIP passenger cabin will be unveiled at MAKS 2013, according to Andrey Kalinovsky, SCAC president. This will be a refurbished air-frame from the frst 10 aircraft deliv-ered to Aerofot. This Russian carrier has now started to replace its first-batch aircraft with later examples with additional features that it requested.

The multiple tasks faced by SCAC—ramp-up of the production rates, fxing the aircraft’s teething problems and development of new versions—add to the program’s technical and fnancial risks. Several incidents—including a fa-tal crash during a demonstration fight in Indonesia in May 2011, and a gear-up landing after a test fight in Iceland in July—have had a negative impact on the SSJ100’s reputation, although they are not believed to be related to perfor-mance or technical issues.

The SSJ100 has enjoyed strong gov-ernment support in the form of both subsidies and loans from state-owned banks, but its lower-than-predicted production rates are still financially crippling. SCAC recorded a 4.6 billion

ruble ($138 million) net loss in 2012 and another 5.8 billion ruble loss in the frst half of 2013. The company’s debt bur-den is 70 billion rubles; SCAC ofcials say they are considering various debt restructuring options.

The SSJ100’s size and scope over-shadow UAC’s other commercial pro-grams. The production of the 80-seat Antonov An-148 regional jet is limited to a few airframes per year by the capac-ity of the Voronezh-based VASO facility. The future of the Tupolev Tu-204/214 narrowbody family remains unclear, with no new orders despite the certi-fcation of the Tu-204SM modernized variant. The four-engine Ilyushin Il-96 is not competitive with Boeing or Air-bus designs and is being ordered only for the administration’s air detachment.

The Russian government and UAC are now negotiating a joint order for multiple aircraft types for both gov-ernment civil and military customers, to keep its manufacturing facilities in business. This is expected to cover around 100 aircraft and to be fnalized by the end of this year. The commer-cial segment is also supported directly through the government program for development of civil aviation equip-ment, which allocates 136 billion rubles for the industry through 2015.

UAC’s commercial aircraft ambitions hinge on another new product—the MS-21 airliner being developed by its Irkut subsidiary. Like the SSJ100, this 168-230-seat airliner is being developed in cooperation with leading global sup-pliers. MS-21 designers initially planned to have the aircraft ready by 2016, ahead of the Airbus A320NEO and Boe-ing 737 MAX, but Russian certifcation and frst deliveries have slipped to 2017,

Sukhoi’s Su-34 heavy strike air-craft (Su-32 for export) is the sub-ject of a major production program

for the Russian air force, having frst fown in the early 1990s.

Sukhoi

while the frst fight is planned for 2015. The program is backed by $2.8 billion in federal subsidies, plus another $1.7 bil-lion from the internal funds of Irkut and other program participants. Russia’s government Sberbank is also providing a long-term loan of more than $1 billion.

A 130-seat Sukhoi Superjet NG ver-sion is being planned to fll the capacity gap between the SSJ100 and MS-21. This program is not ofcially launched yet, but an SCAC representative told Aviation Week the company is still working on the main parameters of the future airliner. In July the deputy minister of industry and trade, Yury

Slyusar, was cited by the Russian me-dia as saying that the government had agreed to finance NG development starting in 2016.

The replacement of the Il-96 is a more distant prospect. The development of a large airliner is one of the options under the Aircraft 2020 program. In late 2012, UAC’s Pogosyan admitted the corpora-tion was in talks with China’s Comac concerning possible cooperation on a new widebody development.

The picture at MAKS 2013 is much more encouraging on the military side, with the Russian air force replac-ing China and India as the industry’s major customer. The military placed the frst order for new Su-35 fghters four years ago at MAKS 2009; since then, the number of new contracts has grown quickly. The procurement spree peaked in 2012 when the air force signed deals for 92 Sukhoi Su-34 bomb-

ers, 60 Su-30SMs (a domestic version of India’s Su-30MKI two-seat multirole fghter), 12 Su-30M2 two-seaters and 24 MiG-29K carrier-based fighters. Last year also saw the maiden flight of the Russian-assembled Ilyushin Il-76MD-90A heavy military transport (the Soviet-era production line was lo-cated in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) with a subsequent order for 39 aircraft of the type. In 2011, the air force ordered 55 Yakovlev Yak-130 advanced jet trainers.

Since some of the aircraft ordered by the Russian air force were developed for foreign customers and are already in production, it has been possible to

accelerate deliveries. The frst two Su-30SMs were delivered to the Russian military in 2012; deliveries of MiG-29Ks are slated for this year. The air force is also reported to be in talks with UAC on the purchase of MiG-35 fghters.

As with the civil segment, domestic military orders are aimed at sustaining all of UAC’s manufacturing facilities, with the result that the air force will operate a diverse feet. The orders are part of the government re-armament program through 2020, estimated at 19 trillion rubles, with the air force as one of its top priorities. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned that about one-quarter of the pro-gram’s budget—5 trillion rubles—will go toward re-equipping the air force.

Overall, the military plans to renew its fleet with 600 new fixed-wing air-craft and 1,000 helicopters. Although there are some expectations that the re-

armament program may be reviewed due to its high cost, a UAC represen-tative told Aviation Week there are no signs that already placed or planned orders will be cut or canceled.

Major development eforts in UAC’s military segment are focused on the T-50 fghter (see page 43). The Russian military is also planning a new strategic bomber to replace the current feet of Tupolev Tu-95MS and Tu-160 aircraft. The strategic feet is being gradually modernized while the new-generation aircraft, developed under the PAK DA program, is expected to go into serial production in 2020. In March the mili-

tary reportedly ap-proved a Tupolev PAK DA design, a subsonic aircraft making extensive use of stealth tech-nology.

The Russian heli-copter segment, in contrast, is healthy. Russian helicopter del iveries grew from 83 aircraft in 2006 to 290 units in 2012, and profts grew at the same time. In 2012, Rus-sian Helicopters revenues grew to 125.7 billion rubles, with a profit of 9.4 billion rubles.

The business re-lies mainly on the

robust, afordable but aging Mi-8/17. Efforts to export light and medium models like the Kamov Ka-226T or Kazan’s twin-turbine Ansat, have made little headway against competition from Eurocopter and AgustaWestland. Russian Helicopters is also benefting from Russia’s re-armament. Under the procurement program that extends through 2020 the Russian defense min-istry has inked deals for Mil Mi-28, Mi-35 and Ka-52 attack helicopters (see page 47), Mi-26T heavy transports and Ansat-U light training rotorcraft. An-other contract with the military, cov-ering 40 Mi-8AMTSh combat trans-port helicopters, was signed in early August. The growing military backlog coincided with a slump in civil produc-tion from 141 helicopters in 2009 to just 38 in 2012. MAKS 2013 will mark the debut of the latest version of the Mi-8 family, the Mi-171A2. c

AEROSPACE IN RUSSIA


The Superjet 100 is RussiaÕs most serious contender yet for interna-tional airline sales, but has yet to achieve commercial success.

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Tony Osborne London

Russia’s latest attack helicopters

are chasing export opportunities, in

familiar markets

The end of the Cold War spelled disaster for Russia’s he-licopter industry.

Fledgling programs were left stillborn and starved of development funds as the new Russia tried to slip the anchors of socialism. The small number of orders that did arise were pursued by two factories in Ulan-Ude and Kazan, building Mil Mi-8/17 transport helicopters. As both plants competed to produce aircraft, the result was cutthroat pricing which starved them of funds to carry out urgently needed research and development for new products.

But the birth of the Russian Helicopters consortium in 2007 and the Russian government’s desire to transform its military into a leaner, more agile force has given the country’s helicopter industry the shot in the arm it has long needed.

Programs that had been little more than prototypes for more than a decade are fnally beginning to see the light of day, entering production and operational service.

Both the Mil Mi-28 “Havoc” Night Hunter and the Ka-52 “Hokum” or Alligator attack helicopters were once stagnant programs, but are now maturing into service and being of-fered for export as Russia tries to win back helicopter mar-kets it once held frmly with sales of the Hip and the Hind. These markets have been hit hard by sales of Western types such as the Boeing AH-64 Apache.

Like the country’s helicopter industry, Russia’s armed forces were also in the grip of obsolescence, with aging types dominating the inventory. However, the new wave of renewal means that by 2020 the Russian military services will be equipped with around 1,000 new-build helicopters.

The Ka-52 and Mi-28 are linchpins of this modernization, but the choice to integrate both surprised many observers who thought that there would only be room for one attack helicop-ter in the future inventory. But senior commanders point out that the complex and heavily armed Mi-28 is more suited for operations west of the Urals, while the Ka-52 with its unique co-axial confguration and robustness may be more appropri-ate for the more remote regions of the country. Back in the 1990s, commanders selected the Ka-50—the Ka-52’s single-seat predecessor—as the country’s primary attack helo, but it did not enter service in signifcant numbers. A decade later ofcials reexamined this option, and the Mi-28 was revived.

With increasing numbers now joining the Russian air force, the Mi-28 is enjoying signifcant interest from export customers. Russian Helicopters, and Russian weapons export

ompany Rosoboronexport are optimistic that the type could replace some of the sizable feet of Mi-24 and Mi-35 Hinds which remain in service today.

Although trumped by the Apache to meet India’s attack helicopter requirement, the aircraft already has its frst ex-port customer. Reports from Russia suggest that Iraq will be the Mi-28’s next customer, with an order for 10 linked to a $4.3 billion arms transfer agreement signed in 2012. Reports that the type in service with the armed forces of Kenya have been denied by the manufacturer.

A conventional design, the aircraft uses the tandem seating arrangement used by Western attack helicopters, with target-ing sensors arrayed around the nose. So far the Russian air force has ordered around 100 examples of the Mi-28N, which are being fown in a basic confguration. Eventually the air-craft are expected to receive mast-mounted radar, similar in capability to the Longbow radar ftted to the Apache, although no production aircraft are ftted with this system yet. A train-ing version, dubbed the Mi-28UB recently made its frst fight and will debut at the MAKS 2013 air show.

With exports of the Mi-28 underway, Russian Helicopters is keen to achieve similar success for the co-axial Ka-52, us-

ing the Paris air show to demonstrate the type’s capabilities during its Western debut. Sergei Mikheev, chief designer at the Kamov Design Bureau said the company was willing to integrate Western weaponry. The aircraft was displayed with MBDA-made weapons including the PARS 3LR, which has been down-selected as a possible weapon for Indian attack helicopters. Typical armament for the land-based aircraft in-cludes the Russian-made 9K121 Vikhr and 9M120 Ataka-V anti-tank missiles, the Igla-S air-to-air missile and a 30-mm cannon.

Mikheev says he is confdent about export opportunities for the rotorcraft in India despite the fact that the country has already selected the AH-64. A naval version of the Ka-52—the Ka-52K—is also being produced in preparation for Russia’s purchase of the French-designed Mistral helicopter carrier. These aircraft will be given anti-corrosion treatments and a folding main rotor head to prepare for a life at sea. The Ka-52K will also carry a diferent suite of weapons, although Mikheev would not say which weapons. It is also unclear when the frst Ka-52K would fy, although at Paris Mikheev said the aircraft would be ready for the arrival of the frst Mistral, expected in 2014. The type will be embarked alongside the Kamov Ka-27 and Ka-29 naval and utility co-axial helicopter types. c

Welcome Transformation

Russia’s attack helicopter capability has been expanded with the introduction of

the Mi-28 (shown) and the Ka-52.

Chris Lofting

As it winds down its role in Afghanistan, where strategic

rivalry in another era was called “The Great Game,” the

U.S. Defense Department has been suiting up for the next

big round of confict: cyberwarfare.

The Pentagon has been racheting up the rhetoric gradually, with former De-fense Secretary Leon Panetta warning of a cyber-Pearl Harbor and more and more ofcials publicly acknowledging cyberwarfare.

This year, the Pentagon has frmed up plans to skim approximately 4,000 operational and intelligence experts from the uniformed services to field the now more than 100 teams that will play both digital ofense and defense against enemies seeking to attack the U.S. and its vital computer networks.

Some teams are already being feld-

ed, although ofcials will not say exactly how many or where they are located. A Pentagon press ofcer said a number of teams are “prioritized” to be opera-tional by the end of September. More will be added in the next few years.

In all, 13 National Mission Teams will conduct “full-spectrum cyber op-erations” to defend against threats to the nation and its critical infrastruc-ture; 27 Combat Mission Teams will provide support to the nine combatant commands, “and when authorized,” will ofer cyber options and capabili-ties to consider. Commanders then will

John M. Doyle Aspen, Colo.

Teaming UpPentagon is organizing cyberwarriors

to attack and defend against cyberintruders determine how best to integrate them into contingency plans as targets are assessed and determinations made on how to best defeat or neutralize, said Air Force Lt. Col. Damien Pickart.

Additionally, 68 Cyber Protection Teams will focus on safeguarding Defense Department information net-works, Pickart told Aviation Week in an e-mail. When directed, the Cyber Protection Teams, which ofcials had not previously discussed in public forums, may also support other U.S. government networks and the nation’s critical infrastructure, he added.

The National and Combat mission teams are now designed to have 64 personnel highly skilled in a variety of key functions, but the exact make-up of each team is not yet set, Pickart says.

Vice Adm. Michael Rogers, chief of the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command, said recently that teams, which may vary in size, will have a defned set of missions. But “within the types of teams, we do

CYBER

The Costs of CybercrimeCRIMINAL ACTION ESTIMATED COST PERCENT OF GDP SOURCE

GLOBAL (in U.S. $dollars)

Piracy $1 - 16 billion 0.008 - 0.02 IMB

Drug Traffcking 600 billion 5 UNODC

Global cyberactivity 300 billion - 1 trillion 0.4 - 1.4 Various

U.S. ONLY

Car Crashes 99 - 168 billion 0.7 - 1.2 CDC, AAA

Pilferage 70 - 280 billion 0.5 - 2 NRF

U.S. cyberactivity 24 - 120 billion 0.2 - 0.8 Various

IMB = International Maritime Bureau UNODC = United Nations Offce on Drugs and Crime

CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention AAA = American Automobile Association NRF = National Retail Federation

Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies and McAfee

20%The amount of federal information tech-nology spending that goes to cyber-security related projects, according to the Offce of Management and Budget.


Nighttime view of the National Security Agency headquarters.

CYBER

Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST for a timeline of U.S. cybersecurity strategies, or go to AviationWeek.com/cyber

have a common structure.” Pickart added that it was

important to note that as the teams are activated “and we better understand what capa-bilities are needed, we antici-pate the numbers will be fuid and may change.”

Army Gen. Keith Alexander is the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and commander of U.S. Cyber Com-mand, which will oversee the teams. Alexander revealed the new team strategy at a March Senate hearing. Both he and Deputy Defense Secretary Ash-ton Carter added details last month at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering of government and private-sector defense and homeland security experts in Colorado.

For the Pentagon’s new teams, cyber experts would come from the armed services’ existing cyber units to speed the process as quickly as possible be-cause there was not enough time to develop an organic unit of specialists. “We’ve got to get going,” Carter said, noting that U.S. government and pri-vate sector networks are constantly

being probed by ideological hackers known as hactivists, as well as foreign government spies, cyber criminals and terrorists.

“We’ve had hundreds of attacks against Wall Street, distributed denial of service attacks. It’s getting worse,” Alexander told the conference, adding: “They’re impacting our nation’s fnan-cial sectors, going after energy [sec-tors] and stealing intellectual property.”

Asked about the rules for which the U.S. would shoot first in a cyberwar scenario, Alexander said the rules

will be will be guided by policy until Congress passes autho-rizing legislation. “What we do is train, just like any other military outft. We train these folks to do what they need to do to defend our country. . . . If somebody is shooting a missile at you, you don’t say, ‘OK, I’ve got to catch this one, I wish I could shoot it down.’ You might want the capability to shoot it down,” he said, adding that his job is to set up the ability to defend U.S. networks and take out such enemy threats. “And to raise the issue to the secretary

of defense and the president and say ‘here’s the issue that we see, [now] over to you for a policy-level decision.’”

Alexander also said targeting ter-rorists has been made more difcult by the disclosures of rogue NSA con-tractor Edward Snowden, who leaked information to U.S. and British news-papers that the agency was collecting metadata on domestic phone calls and e-mail. “There is concrete proof that terrorist groups are taking action and making changes” in how they commu-nicate after the NSA collection pro-

Incidents Reported* by Federal Agencies in Fiscal 2012

0%Denial of service

7%

17%

18%

20%

37%

Scans, probes,attempted access

Unauthorized access

Underinvestigation,

other

Malicious code

Improper usage

*Reported to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT).

Source: Government Accountability Offce

$100 $165 30,000+

1,300

The estimated annual cost of malicious

cyberactivity, according to the Center for

Strategic and International Studies.

The potential size of the market for

cybersecurity solutions by 2023, accord-

ing to Strategic Defense Intelligence.

The number of users spear-phished in

the March 20 Operation Troy attack in

South Korea.

Cisco estimates that will be the annual amount of

Internet traffc by 2016. One Exabyte equals a million

terabytes, and in 2011, Internet traffc was about 300

exabytes per year.

BILLION BILLION

EXABYTES


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of cyberwarriors for the new teams could create a manpower shortage for the services, which are in the midst of downsizing due to federal budget cuts. Mark Young, the former executive di-rector for plans and policy at U.S. Cy-ber Command, said it was not a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, “because all we’re doing is re-purposing.”

With a common defensible archi-tecture, Young added, the services would need fewer people to perform tasks now requiring hundreds. Then commanders need not worry about having their people assigned to a na-tional cyberteam, because it will be de-fending the whole JIE. “This is a rising tide that is going to raise all the boats,” Young said.

“It will create a short-term strain

on the military,” says Dan Scott, the deputy assistant director for Human Capital at the Ofce of the Director of National Intelligence, “but in the long term it will improve their skill sets.”

At Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command and the U.S. 10th Fleet, “We anticipat-ed this was coming. This was a mission set we thought had value,” says Rogers. He didn’t see the personnel shift as a negative. “In the end we’re interested in trying to generate, across the Navy, a capacity to help in the joint fght. Cy-ber is just one more area.”

In Aspen, Carter said the teams’ creation was a management—not a money—problem. Cost is not an issue, even under current budgetary con-straints. “This is an area we’re protect-ing, even as other military capabilities will be cut,” he emphasized. c

grams were revealed, the general said.The Defense Department is still de-

veloping the optimum force structure of civilian and military personnel “with a range of skill sets including operational and intelligence backgrounds” to en-sure they “see the whole picture when planning operations,” Pickart said.

At the Global Intelligence Forum sponsored by the Armed Forces Com-munications and Electronics Associa-tion in Washington last month, speakers provided more details on the teams and the military’s reaction to the strategy.

“There will be prioritized placement, and so not everybody gets the same number of teams or the same number of people all at the same time,” said Navy Rear Adm. Elizabeth Train, the director of intelligence (J2) for the Joint

Chiefs of Staf. She said there will be deployment prioritization for theaters of responsibility “where we feel it is a national mission first, an operational mission, then a tactical mission.” The services will have to phase in the teams over a number of years, she said, “but there will be a surge first” to areas needing them most.

Several speakers said the issue of col-laboration and internal security would be simplifed when a Joint Information Environment (JIE) with standardized information technology operations is in place. The JIE, which is still being for-mulated, would allow the services and other departments to share encrypted information without the over-broad ac-cess to classifed material, which Carter blamed for the Snowden leaks.

There was little concern that peeling

CYBER


U.S. Cyber Command wants to use cyberexperts, like these sailors assigned to Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command, to create teams for protecting U.S. military and civilian computer networks and infrastructure.

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“They have been probing

our fnancial institutions.

We know that they have been

probing certain electric grids

and whatnot. That’s a real

problem for us because again,

there’s a cyberwar going on

now.” —Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), on the

cyberthreats facing the U.S. from Iran.

“Free, liberal democracies

live of people having a feeling

of security. And this is why

an equitable balance needs to

be struck; there needs to be

proportionality.” —German Chancellor Angela Merkel on

the need to balance security and privacy.

Perspectives


Sharon Weinberger Washington

Questions remain about Darpa’s

cyber war testing facility

It was a scientist’s nightmare: an expensive test meant to study an exotic virus ruined by contamination because someone had forgotten to sterilize the equipment. And it

didn’t just happen once, but several times.Except the setting wasn’t a medical laboratory, it was a

military cyber range in Texas. And the tests weren’t from leaving old samples of Ebola in the petri dish, but a failure to cleanse and reboot infected computers used in prior tests.

Part of the problem was that the people running the range were more familiar with testing electronics than computers. But the bigger issue was the lack of a realistic and properly instrumented range that could be used to test both offensive and defensive cyber systems. These shortfalls were part of what gave birth to National Cy-ber Range, an ambitious efort started in 2008 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to establish a premiere facility that could be used by agencies across government to test cyber defense—and ofense.

Darpa selected seven com-panies for the first phase, in-cluding General Dynamics, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, Lockheed Martin, BAE Sys-tems and Sparta Inc. That went down to just two companies in the second phase—Lockheed Martin and Johns Hopkins—and then down to just Lockheed.

As a part of the George W. Bush administration’s Com-prehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, the program received national attention, and Darpa eventually spent $115 million on the range before it was quietly transferred last year to the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center.

The range faced criticism from military customers who wanted the facility more quickly and had competing visions for what it should do, according to those familiar with the program. What Darpa touted as a world-class science labora-tory for testing and data collection didn’t necessarily match the expectations of military customers, who envisioned it as a cyber fring range.

Press reports describing the range as something akin to the cyber equivalent of the nuclear age’s Bikini Atoll only muddied the waters further. Michael VanPutte, the original Darpa program manager for the range, said that press de-scriptions of it as an attempt to recreate the entire Internet

were wrong. “The goal of the NCR was not to build a range, but to fund research and development of revolutionary tech-nology that would enable development of numerous ranges across the country, as well as incorporation of the technol-ogy into existing ranges, in order to provide our nation with a technological edge . . . ,” VanPutte says. “I left Darpa in October 2010 when it was clear that the national leadership was more interested in classifying our capabilities than in defending our nation from cyber attacks.”

The Pentagon acknowledges the earlier concerns about the range and its schedule, but says those issues have now been addressed. “The original Darpa program was signif-cantly accelerated in response to those criticisms and the transition out of Darpa and into operations was completed considerably ahead of the original schedule,” says Jennifer Elzea, a Pentagon spokesperson.

Now located in Orlando, Fla., the National Cyber Range consists of a 5,600-sq.-ft. facility, much of which can be used for classifed testing. In terms of scale, the Pentagon says it was recently used in a test that represented 15,000 high-fdelity nodes.

The range has also solved the contamination problems that have plagued other ranges. While it may in the past have taken weeks or months to en-sure that everything was sani-tized, the range has the ability to wipe clean any residual mali-cious code in just a few hours or days, according to the Pentagon.

Another question is whether the range has really become a premiere national facility. The Pentagon says it has conducted eight cyber “events,” in the past year, and plans eight more over the next fve months. But other ranges, such as another Defense Department cyber range in Staf-ford, Va., as well as in industry, are still in use.

Northrop Grumman, an early participant on the National Cy-ber Range, maintains its own

range in Millersville, Md., which ties in the company’s cy-ber laboratories across the country. The work there dem-onstrates how the very concept of what constitutes a cyber range could be changing.

Chris Valentino, the director of contract research and development at Northrop Grumman Information Systems, says that the advent of cloud computing has changed the company’s approach. “Our initial ranges all the way up to 2009 were really focused on physical emulation,” he says. “Then we had the opportunity to develop a capability for the United Kingdom and then a follow on for the Australians—in those infrastructures we leveraged virtualization.”

It turns out the real technical hurdle now for cyber ranges is not necessarily putting in more racks of computers, but fnding ways to represent the most unpredictable element of cyber systems: people. “The greatest challenge we had and still have is representing user trafc in the environment,” says Valentino. “It’s very difcult to replicate human users in a large infrastructure.” c

Home on the Range

The National Cyber Range transitioned from Darpa to the Pentagon in 2012. But it is only one of at least

several government and industry cyber ranges.

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John Croft Washington

Interconnected aircraft put

cybersecurity in spotlight

A demonstration at a computer hacking conference in Amsterdam in April 2013 brought aviation cybersecu-rity into the public eye. At the so-called “Hack in the

Box” annual conference, security consultant Hugo Teso de-scribed how an Android application for a smartphone could in theory be used to remotely control an aircraft’s fight path by exploiting weaknesses in the onboard aircraft communica-tions addressing and reporting system (Acars) data link and the fight management system.

While the industry has largely dismissed as unrealistic Teso’s experiment, which was conducted in a laboratory en-vironment using publicly available software simulations of the fight management computer, it has not discounted the growing threat from intruders as aircraft and air trafc man-agement systems become more interconnected and software grows increasingly generic. The concerns are fueling calls for global action, with experts saying information security has not kept pace with connectivity advances.

“Currently, there is no common vision, or common strat-egy, goals, standards, implementation models or internation-al policies defning cybersecurity for commercial aviation,” say the authors of an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics decision paper published Aug. 13. The authors present six recommendations, including building road maps for near-, mid-term and long-term actions and establishing a method of coordinating national aviation cybersecurity strategies, policies and plans.

While there may be gaps in the high-level plans, much of the groundwork for safeguarding information and commu-nications technology in avionics and air trafc management (ATM) systems is underway.

Rockwell Collins in the past year formed a security group within its commercial systems division, leveraging experi-ence it has gained from its government business but specif-cally for its civil aviation products.

Scott Zogg, senior director of engineering for commercial systems, says the group has an internal charter to make sure proper processes, procedures and training are in place for avionics development and certifcation eforts. In part, that means helping the product development team perform vul-nerability testing. Zogg says the group has also developed a security road map that is “complementary” with its product road map to make sure the systems “stay ahead” of potential threats. He says the security team will study the architec-tures of the systems from early development stages through the entire life cycle, including disposal.

Zogg says data security at an interface involves knowing where data is coming from; knowing who sent it; making sure it wasn’t changed (and if the system is wireless, making sure it is not overheard), and making sure that it will not cause a denial of service preventing important data from getting through. “It’s no diferent in avionics than in any other envi-ronment, just the details are changed,” says Zogg.

With a layered approach, commercial of-the-shelf (COTS) products can be used while ensuring overall product security. “To use (a COTS device) in the system, you need layers of security outside of that device to make sure what’s coming from it hasn’t been tampered with,” says Zogg.

Along with design, systems must be tested for vulnera-bilities, and work underway in an RTCA special committee will help. “We’re trying to establish how to assess the risk and when you have the right mitigation in place,” says Dan-

iel Johnson, an engineer fellow with Honeywell Aero-space and co-chairman of RTCA Special Committee 216, aeronautical systems security. RTCA is among a large number of standards groups internationally that are addressing cybersecurity concerns. Committee 216 published its frst process standard in 2010, and plans

to update the document early next year with more guid-ance for security risk assessments.

“The assessment will look at forms of connectivity, the interconnection between systems and the “popu-lation that threatens you,” Johnson says. On the topic of connected aircraft, he says wireless and broadband satellite communications systems are a “big” concern. “We now have onboard systems that are reachable

from ground systems that are not under FAA control,” says Johnson. “If you have an aircraft with a wireless system for maintenance reasons, if you don’t encrypt properly, then anyone else with a Wi-Fi might be able to talk to the aircraft itself. It’s an extra exposure we did not have previously.”

On the ATM side, Thales is making plans to bid on a request for proposals for a two-year security project under the Single European Sky program. The RFP, expected to be issued by year-end, will ask companies to defne specifc requirements, prototypes and defnitions for how to test cybersecurity re-quirements for ATM. Those requirements today are not well defned, says Lionnel Wonneberger, Thales’s strategy and marketing director for ATM activities. “Modern air trafc control concepts, including system-wide information manage-ment, connect a number of non-ATM systems,” he says. “In doing so, we may increase the risk of intrusion externally, but we may also have interference from the inside.” c

CYBER

Hack Attack

Avionics companies are developing security controls to prevent cyberattackers from entering and controlling connected cockpits.

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Angus Batey London

As governments grapple with

privacy debate, industry now

ponders how to deal with leaks

Leaks of classifed information from former Booz Allen Hamilton and U.S. National Security Agency contrac-tor Edward Snowden have given the NSA a world-class

public-relations headache. Private citizens are reeling too, having not yet grasped the extent to which digital commu-nications were potentially subject to state scrutiny.

As the U.S. continues communications surveillance as a tool to fght terrorism, it faces both in-house and interna-tional data-privacy concerns. That struggle will also present new challenges for industry.

At the same time that Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, undertook a charm ofensive with a keynote speech at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas last month, a smaller gathering of high-level information-security profes-

sionals in London were discussing a radical vision for how the NSA, the Internet and telecom industries could capitalize on recent leaks of classifed information.

Speaking at the Risk and Network Threat Forum in a City of London pub, Sarb Sembhi, a director at business security consultants Incoming Thought, suggested it made little com-mercial sense for private companies to store customer data—call logs, e-mails, SMS (short message services, aka texts)—if the NSA was doing so. Why not then just let the government cache the material, so industry can concentrate on providing better applications and services, he asked.

“I was being tongue-in-cheek—it was meant to be a light-hearted look at the issue,” Sembhi tells Aviation Week. “But applications are valued by the public. They value getting these for free, and . . . completely overlook privacy. They’re up in arms about what their government is doing, but don’t realize that the information the government is getting comes from these same organizations they willingly supply it to.”

The NSA cannot legally intercept U.S. citizens’ domestic communications without a warrant—but no protections are extended to foreign nationals whose data reside in the servers of the U.S. corporations cooperating with the NSA’s programs.

The European Union’s current data protection rules do not apply to non-European companies, but the European Commission’s proposed General Data Protection Regulation would. Non-European companies would have to ofer binding guarantees to their users about privacy of their data, includ-ing the right to inspect and delete them—or face a fne of up to 2% of annual global sales. How this would impact NSA programs that depend on access to data gathered by U.S. web service providers is unclear.

The regulations were supposed to have been agreed to in May but have still not been fnalized. Instead they have been tied up amid more scrutiny and expensive lobbying

than any other piece of comparable legislation, Sembhi says. Opposition comes from, among others, the American-

owned multinational entities that have built lucrative busi-nesses based on their users’ personal data.

“The business models and privacy policies of [U.S] corpora-tions are at loggerheads with regulation and thinking in Eu-rope,” Sembhi says. “They’re interested in getting as much data as they can about you—how you use what you use, and where and when you use it. The data-protection regulation means they will have to tell you about every piece of information they hold about you—but they don’t want you to know [what those data are], because I think most people would be shocked.”

What is lacking is an understanding of just how vulnerable one can be when it comes to digital information, says A.J. Clark, a former U.S. military data fusion analyst.

Clark is the founder and president of Thermopylae Sciences and Technology, which supplies geospatial and other intelli-gence analysis services to clients including the NSA. “People talk on their cellphones regularly, and don’t realize that, for a

couple of hundred dollars, someone—maybe an upset spouse or a competitor—could buy a device on the Internet that can intercept the phone transmissions. There’s a real security vul-nerability in digital communication, but I’m not sure people will fully grasp that because of [the NSA leaks].”

Part of the NSA’s response to the leaks will be to tighten internal security, but the government must balance minimiz-ing leaks with maximizing analysts’ access to vital data points that can help unmask criminal and terrorist plots. Addition-ally, the agency must ensure that expertise and talent resid-ing in the private sector will not be treated with a level of suspicion that slows deployment or limits efect.

“I’m very familiar with some of the technologies that can be utilized to enhance sharing of information, but also make it much, much more secure,” says Clark, whose company ofers such a service, called iHarvest. “If iHarvest had been running in Hawaii on the networks that Snowden was on, somebody would have had an alert within two seconds of him starting to download all that information, and immediately would have said, ‘Why is this systems administrator pulling this kind of information of? His behavior is so diferent to all these oth-ers around him.’ I’m optimistic [the government] will take a highly technological approach to addressing what they see as the problem, and not start building up a lot of artifcial bar-riers around the technology that would encumber solution-providers such as ourselves from helping them become more efcient and more cost-efective.” c

Mind the Gap

The physical gateway to the U.S. security bastions is located at Fort Meade, Md.

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cy

For decades, cryptography has been the domain pri-marily of binary computing, and communications via an encryption-decryption cipher key. Conventional

algorithms such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), and Pretty Good Protection still provide a high degree of cybersecurity.

But as robot dialers, metadata miners, Trojan viruses and other forms of virtual mayhem burgeon, security has become a moving target. And China’s latest penetrations, disclosed this May to the chagrin of the U.S., only add to the need for more security. But development of defensive technology is promising.

Quantum cryptography (QC) and its close kin, quantum key distribution (QKD)—subsets of quantum mechanics—have been explored by academic theoreticians and govern-ment researchers since at least the late 1970s. In 1984, when the physicists Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard trans-mitted a photon a few centimeters from one apparatus to another, the historic benchmark BB84 protocol was born.

Essentially, quantum photons—subatomic light particles that can be sent through fber-optic cable or open air to ex-traordinarily sensitive endpoint detector nodes—allow encryp-tion of plain-text messages into ciphertext for secure transmis-sion via the Internet or another normal mode.

The complexities and intersecting disciplines of QC/QKD include physics, mathematics, engineering, computer sci-ence, network assurance, orthogonal polarization, and pri-vate and public crypto keys with their respective asymmetric and symmetric cryptosystems.

Photons carry algorithmic “keys” (strings of random 1 and 0 binary digits), parts of which a sender can encode as quan-tum data to safeguard communication against eavesdroppers. Two types of transmission channels are used: quantum, to distribute the key; and classical (radio or the Internet) to send the message itself encoded via conventional algorithms like RSA or AES.

So quantum cryptography can be seen as or developed into an amalgam of traditional mathematical cryptology and quantum physics. Although the classic crypto channel can be breached undetected, chicanery in the “Q channel” will always be revealed. Credit Werner Heisenberg’s 1927 Uncer-tainty Principle, which posits that any attempt to interfere with, measure, or even observe a photon destroys it.

But Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography, says, “I don’t believe QC solves any security problem that needs solving.” Although it is “unbelievably cool in theory,” he con-siders it “nearly useless” because its prohibitive expense al-lows “only a few technophiles to buy and deploy it.”

Also, he says, although crypto keys are exchanged with pho-tons, “a conventional mathematical algorithm takes over for the actual encryption,” so QC-enabled cryptosystems “don’t magi-cally become unbreakable, because the quantum part does not

address the weak and far more serious points of the system”—such as computer and/or network security, and user interface.

But the core issue is not that quantum cryptography might be insecure: “It’s that classic cryptography is already suf-fciently secure.”

Conventional mathematical cryptography is the strongest link in most security chains, Schneier contends. “Our symmet-ric and public-key algorithms are pretty good. We already have good encryption algorithms, [user] authentication algorithms, and key-agreement [distribution] protocols.”

Experimental tests are ongoing. In February 2013, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico reported demon-strating for the frst time QC’s ability to safeguard vital “smart” electricity grid control data. Speeds were blistering—just 120 microseconds for information to traverse 25 km (15.5 mi.) of optical fber linking send-receive nodes.

Los Alamos scientist Jane Nordholt says the data were secured via a pocket-sized transmitter that she co-invented with colleague Richard Hughes. Interfacing with “a trusted authority,” the device generated random cryptographic keys enabling the encoding and decoding.

Nordholt says the little “QKarD” (Quantum Card Distribu-tor) is “five orders of magnitude” smaller than competing

devices, leveragable for vulnerable sectors and could yield a “super-secure” alternative to such debacles as the 2011 breach that compromised 40 million Defense Department and con-tractor “Secur ID” authentication tokens.

But photons weaken at distances over 200 km through fber or air, requiring intermediate stations to hopscotch signals.

“Sending a quantum key between Los Alamos and Wash-ington, D.C., we’d need a lot [of relays],” Nordholt allows. And each photon in each relay is a vulnerability gateway; security would be very expensive and technically challenging. Hence Nordholt and her colleagues have been working with the De-fense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) on “long-haul” transmission of over greater distances.

Combining classical cryptologic means (binary 1s and 0s) with quantum can strengthen the benefts of each. “By taking the best of both worlds we can change the game and make it a lot harder on the bad guys,” Nordholt says.

Champions like Nordholt believe more research is merited. And “interested party” Darpa seems to agree. Its Quantum Network, a 10-node cryptography net, has been active since 2004 in Massachusetts.

Other sources still have their doubts, saying research may eventually prove useful but now primarily adds to greater understanding of quantum physics itself.

The practical potential of QC/QKD is certainly recognized and is being looked at by Raytheon BBN Technologies, Har-vard and Boston universities, and Britain’s Qinetiq. c

CYBER


David Walsh Washington

Quantum cryptography: A leap in

science and security at a high price

Disturbance in the Force?

But the core issue is not

that quantum cryptography might

be insecure: ‘It’s that

classic cryptography is already

suffciently secure.’

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Aviation Week & Space Technology

August 19, 2013 VOL. 175, NO. 28 (ISSN 0005-2175)

Two Penn Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10121-2298

In the era of “too big to fail,” many people are sur-prised to learn that small businesses are the larg-est employers in the U.S. They are also the unher-

alded utility players of aerospace. They provide niche products, specialized services, replacement parts, low-cost commodities and unique technologies that keep this industry going. Small businesses need to succeed for aerospace to grow. But they also must raise their games. With the overwhelming challenges ahead, now is the time for small businesses to improve their plan-ning and processes—and for industry leaders to incor-porate small businesses into their strategic plans.

There are countless challenges for small business-es in this environment. The impacts of sequestration and health-care reform, the fragility of business avi-ation, access to capital and MRO pricing pressures are just a few. All this increases pressure to manage cash fow, maximize liquidity, continue innovation, acquire the right talent and partner with suppliers

prepared to meet these challenges. This is nothing new for small or large businesses.

Having been a manager in both large corporations and small businesses, I can point to one important dif-ference: small business’s margin for error is miniscule in addressing these challenges. Healthy, large corpora-tions often rely on robust balance sheets and a feet of felded platforms or systems to navigate uncertainty. The use of mergers and acquisitions is often another growth tool at their disposal. This is not usually the situation for small businesses. Most have a handful of key employees, critical contracts, customers or core products or services that drive them. They can sink with one bad hire or one poorly executed contract.

So, how can small businesses improve their chanc-es for success? Management teams might take a page from their big-business counterparts by spending more time on planning, processes and people. Now, I am not suggesting that small businesses hire an army of Six Sigma black belts. However, small busi-nesses can beneft from using some of big companies’ basic process tools, such as succession-planning,

goal-setting, supplier-development and fnancial-forecasting—all of which can be implemented with a minimal investment of time and efort.

First, small-business leaders should have succes-sion plans and incentives for key employees. They should ask themselves: Are junior employees being mentored by key employees? Is enough time dedi-cated to screening and training new hires? Are there evaluation and promotion opportunities? Are incen-tives aligned with company performance? Are goals and objectives clear to everyone?

Many small businesses do not have basic process-es for evaluating supplier performance. Manage-ment should ask itself: Is there a written record of supplier performance? Are there goals and metrics? Are parts on-time, on cost and completed to specs? Can you even reach them on the phone? If not, it may be time to look for other options.

Finally, and most importantly, every small business should perform some short- and long-term fnancial planning. Cash-fow projections for the next 12 weeks can enable the company to anticipate short-term peaks and valleys in liquidity. Ultimately, long-term fnancial projections will allow small businesses—and their fnancial partners—to have more confdence to invest in new projects and products. In this environ-ment, where payments and contracts can be unpre-dictable, investing at the wrong time can be just as devastating as investing in the wrong project.

From a strategy perspective, fnancial planning is the key to product and service diversifcation. If a business has the liquidity, this is an excellent time to invest in re-lated products or services to balance its core business and cushion the turbulence ahead. If a small business does not have the liquidity needed, it should take a clos-er look at the proftability of products and at its current debt structure. In this environment, there is no room for negative-margin oferings or high-interest loans.

Even with better planning and tools, small busi-nesses need industry partners. Aerospace and de-fense market leaders should consider broader invest-ments and partnerships with small businesses. They should establish transparent marketplaces for small businesses, extend joint development opportunities and increase access to capital. Instead of moving to low-wage regions overseas, the majors should con-sider outsourcing to small businesses at home. Small businesses must continue to improve and generate market value, but large companies also need to in-tegrate small-business concepts into their strategic plans. Ultimately, that will nurture a stronger, more competitive supply base for everyone. c

Small businesses might take a page from their big-business counterparts by spending more time on planning, processes and people.

““

Small Business

Survival Guide

Viewpoint

Scott L. Schein is president of United Equipment Corp., a small aerospace business in Richmond, Va., that sup-plies replacement windows for aircraft doors, airframe components and specialty materials for military aircraft.

By Scott L. Schein


United eqUipment Corp.

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