Aviation Week & Space Technology - January 13 2014

$7.
95 JANUARY 13, 2014

A Penton
Publication
10 More Years
For Space Station
What Next for
Beechcraft?
Radar for
Ramp Rash
PERSON OF
THE YEAR
Emirates President Tim Clark
OUTSIZED
INFLUENCE
AviationWeek.com/awst
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EXCLUSIVE

Editor-In-Chief Joseph C. Anselmo
Executive Editor James R. Asker
Managing Editors Jen DiMascio, Jens Flottau, Graham Warwick
Assistant Managing Editor Michael Stearns
Art Director Lisa Caputo
Executive Editor, Data and Analytics Jim Mathews
DEFENSE, SPACE AND SECURITY
Editors Jen DiMascio (Managing Editor), Jeferson
Morris (Associate Managing Editor), Michael Bruno,
Amy Butler, Michael Fabey, Sean Meade, Frank Morring, Jr.,
Bill Sweetman (Chief Editor, Defense Technology Edition)
CIVIL AVIATION/MAINTENANCE, REPAIR AND OVERHAUL
Editors Jens Flottau (Managing Editor), Sean Broderick,
John Croft, William Garvey, Fred George, Rupa Haria, Kerry
Lynch, Guy Norris, Bradley Perrett, Jessica Salerno, Adrian
Schoeld, Lee Ann Tegtmeier (Chief Editor, MRO Edition)
Chief Aircraft Evaluation Editor Fred George
For individual e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and more,
go to www.AviationWeek.com/editors
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DEPARTMENTS
8 Feedback
9 Whos Where
10-11 The World
12 Leading Edge
13 Reality Check
14 Up Front
15 Airline Intel
16 In Orbit
17 Washington Outlook
47 Classied
48 Contact Us
49 Aerospace Calendar
THE WORLD
10 First of two C-17s destined for the
Kuwait Air Force emerges
from the Boeing production line
11 Embraer begins ight-testing its
Legacy 450 mid-light bizjet, a
smaller version of the new 500
11 Obituary for former Northrop CEO
Jones, who led the company with
the T-38, F-5, B-2 and others
SPACE
18 White House adds to space station
service life, hoping for more users
over the additional several years
18 Launch of the Antares/Cygnus
combo underscores the growing
commercialization of the ISS
20 European launch sector braces
for new competition after success
of new rockets in India and U.S.
44 Voyager I and twin y a grand tour
through outer planets, backed
by views from newer spacecraft
DEFENSE
22 Weapons developers looking to fast
pace of trials to prepare for the rst
operational use of the F-35 in 2015
22 Indian VIP helicopter scandal
continues to have far-reaching
implications for AgustaWestland
25 Airbus Group making leadership
changes in American arm less than
month after reducing headcount
26 Appearance of full-scale specimen
reveals details of eforts to make
the F/A-18E/F more stealthy
27 BAE begins ight trials of 3-D
printed metallic components on
Panavia Tornado combat aircraft
43 Part of new era of defense acqui-
sition reform is to keep track of
managers and their performance
BUSINESS AVIATION
28 Textron sees Beechcraft purchase
as providing a good complement
for its Cessna line of aircraft
28 Pent-up demand for new medium-
sized helos is pressuring manu-
facturers to complete certications
AIR TRANSPORT
30 Boeing tight-lipped on composite-
site plans as razor-slim vote
secures 777X work at Everett
Emirates President Tim Clark, Aviation Week &
Space Technologys Person of the Year, was selected for
his outsized inuence on the airline industry and aircraft
manufacturing. Clark has played a major role in building
Emirates from a tiny startup to the worlds fourth-largest
airline, in the process buying a lot of airplanes. On a
single day in 2013, Emirates shored up the Airbus A380
program and helped launch the Boeing 777X. The airline
has also leveraged its clout to inuence the designs of next-
generation airliners such as the 777X.
Honeywell eyes automobile
radar to address ramp collisions
between aircraft and with other
obstacles such as buildings.
Downsized Beechcraft sees
stability under new ownership by
a Textron committed to the general
aviation market.
ON THE COVER
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4 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 13, 2014 AviationWeek.com/awst
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Winner 2013
January 13, 2014 Volume 176 Number 1
Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares launcher lifts of with the Cygnus
cargo-carrier on its rst commercial mission to the International Space
Station, following a day-long delay after a massive solar are
raised the space radiation level to the point that engineers feared it
might afect the rockets avionics.
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ENGINEERING
46 Human factors and technology will
be key to Solar Impulses
planned around-the-world ight
VIEWPOINT
50 Launching C919 has been an
important step in strengthening
China, but the rst ight should wait
12 44
22
31 India accelerating plans to develop
a regional transport that could
help launch large turboprop engine
33 With economic boom potential,
FAAs chosen UAS test sites must
rst nd funds to begin operations
34 Honeywell successfully tests a radar
technology for low-cost solutions to
the costly problem of ramp rash
35 Pushback collision reveals the
complexities involved in solving
the ramp damage problem
PERSON OF THE YEAR
36 Emirates Tim Clark shored up
the A380 and helped launch the
777X. And that was just in one day
40 Lori Garver has been instrumental
in moving NASA toward a true
public-private partnership
41 Sequestration, Washington grid-
lock wallop aviation and A&D
on purpose, but not by design
January 13, 2014 Volume 176 Number 1
A round-up of what youre reading on AviationWeek.com
Delta Air Lines plans to pump $770 million into upgrading 225 mid-life narrowbody cabins by
2017. Read our Things With Wings blog to nd out why it could be more than just another step in one
airlines strategic makeover (ow.ly/sqkAh). AviationWeek.com/ThingsWithWings
Get social with the Aviation Week team and the
MRO community at this years MRO Americas
event in Phoenix. Online registration is open
for the rst-ever MRO TweetUp. Find out more
on our Things With Wings blog (ow.ly/sqbst).
MRO AMERICAS TWEETUP
Airbus A350XWB development aircraft MSN3 is in Bolivia
for a series of high-altitude tests at Cochabamba (8,300 ft.
above sea level) and La Paz (13,300 ft.). Check out Things
With Wings for more photos (ow.ly/sqluJ).
MyAWIN allows subscribers to set
up customized email news alerts for
delivery daily or weekly.
AviationWeek.com/awin
Readers had a lot to say about
Richard Aboulafas opinion piece
U.S. Military Aircraft Fly Toward A
Waterfall. Hunter3203 asks rhetorically, So how
many aircraft types are we supposed to simultane-
ously produce? ow.ly/sqmgx
READER
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F-35 BY THE NUMBERS
In Fight and Train you say the
F-35 remains the worlds leading com-
bat aircraft (AW&ST Dec. 30, 2013/
Jan. 6, 2014, p. 58). This is a bit of a
stretch for an aircraft that has not yet
reached squadron service, much less
own in combat.
In the table of data Combat
Aircraft to Watch, within the same
article, the F-35 is certainly the slow-
est. Previous editions of Aviation Week
have already told us that the accel-
eration and range of the F-35 are also
decient when compared with current
models. There is, however, one area in
which the F-35 has no peercost.
These are not normally the traits
air forces seek when looking to replace
rst-line machines, especially in light of
decreasing military budgets.
Guy Wroble
DENVER, COLO.
RIGHT-SIZING DEFENSE ACQUISITION
Your editorial The Right Kind of
Acquisition Reform (AW&ST Dec. 2,
2013, p. 54) asks what else is left to be
tried when it comes to defense acquisi-
tion. Actually, many things.
The age-old argument: We cant
hurt our men and women in uniform
overlooks the fact that bureaucratic
bloat encompassed the hordes of
people required to ensure that the
military11 million enlisted in 1943
be processed and monitored correctly.
The record-keeping in that time of
national crisis required manual type-
writers, calculators, etc., and other
processing of the blizzard of paper-
work that was generated.
Today the military comprises about
1.1 million people, and record-keeping
is done by computer. Therefore, the
Pentagon should be more efcient.
No private company would retain the
same level of staf for 95% less work-
load without going bankrupt.
The Pentagons civilian bloat is also
related to the Federal General Sched-
ule (GS) pay systems. In 1943 there
were eight assistant secretary posi-
tions (Army, Navy, etc.). However, pay
increases under the GS system require
that a manager have subordinate per-
sonnel. Essentially, the ofce of deputy
assistant secretary was created so the
assistant secretary could get a raise.
Today, 570 deputy assistant secretarys
draw six-gure civilian salaries.
True right-sizing acquisition reform
should be implemented.
Gerald D. Barrett
COOS BAY, ORE.
GREAT LEAPS FOR GRASSHOPPER?
Considering the potential impact of
the SpaceX Grasshopper test aircraft,
Aviation Week should be devoting
more coverage to the companys eforts
and its plans to land and reuse the rst
stage of its Falcon 9 rocket. If success-
ful, SpaceX will have accomplished
what science-ction writers have por-
trayed: Landing a rocket on its tail.
With the possibility of no longer hav-
ing to throw away the most expensive
piece of hardware needed to reach
orbit, SpaceXs competitors may have
their ngers crossed that they fail. We
will soon know whether the you cant
get there from here crowd has been
right these many decades, or if they
simply lacked the vision of Elon Musk.
David Boyle
FOX RIVER GROVE, ILL.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
As a retired UPS DC-8 captain,
I agree strongly with the startle
and surprise approach to simulator
training discussed in Safety Shut-
Up (AW&ST Dec. 16, 2013, p. 18), but
disagree with Wayne Martins proper
[recommended] response to the cargo-
re-warning scenario. I always treated
an IFR/IMC (instrument ight rules/
instrument meteorological conditions)
go-around as an emergency procedure,
and in my approach brieng I directed
that in the eventuality of a go-around
the non-ying pilot was to read the
procedure in sequence as it was being
executedjust as one would do for a
non-precision approach.
I also treated a non-engine re sce-
nario as a get on the ground, NOW
emergency. (Engine res are serious,
but are usually self-contained and can
be handled with relative simplicity.)
In contrast, for a cargo-re-warning
alert nearing DH (decision height),
my procedure would be silence the
bell, continue the approach. Weather
should be as expected and legal for the
approach, or you would not be ying it.
Id rather bust minimums than have
to deal with the synergy of two emer-
gencies at once. UPS lost two aircraft
to cargo res (one fatal), and in each
accident the aircraft was destroyed less
than 20 min. from initial warning. An
IFR go-around and return for landing
could easily last that long, accompanied
by the stress from air trafc control
communication, etc. What a diference
in workload reduction to just land!
Those few [who] continued to try to
land made the best decision.
Allan Sweeny
LOUISVILLE, KY.
KEEP HANDS OFF HANDS-ON FLYING
Again and Again on the importance
of the Northrop Grumman unmanned
X-47Bs recent repeated carrier land-
ings (AW&ST Aug. 5/12, 2013, p. 50)
states: unmanned technology advo-
cates say autonomous landing systems
such as that used for the X-47B could be
retrotted onto other manned aircraft,
reducing the cost of hours of training
for pilots, while increasing safety.
Well, that is all well and good in
normal conditions, but it does not take
into account what will happen when
onboard systems go haywire in ight, or
environmental conditions and inter-
ference are far worse than predicted,
or, worse, combat damage is inicted.
Stealthy or not, the vehicles will be
found and hit. You are then left with a
must be manned aircraft whose pilot
who has done nothing for the past year
or more but sit back looking at displays
while HAL (computer in the lm 2001:
A Space Odyssey) is at the controls
now has to land the craft.
The end result will be a lost aircraft,
a dead pilot, and God knows how
many more of each if the compromised
vehicle crashes into the ship.
Lawrence J. De Meo, Jr.
NORTH POTOMAC, MD.
Feedback
Aviation Week & Space Technology welcomes
the opinions of its readers on issues raised in
the magazine. Address letters to the Executive
Editor, Aviation Week & Space Technology,
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Fax to (202) 383-2346 or send via e-mail to:
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withheld. We reserve the right to edit letters.

that groups Marine Systems
Directorate. Avital Schrift (see
photo) has been named general
manager of the Missiles Div. She
succeeds Ariel Malchi, who is
now associate vice president-
business development in the
Systems, Missiles and Space
Group. Schrift has been deputy
general manager of Eltas Land
and Naval Radars and Systems
Div. Eliana Fishler (see photo)
has become spokesperson for
IAI. She succeeds Doron
Suslik, deputy corporate vice
president-communications, who
has retired. Fishler was head of
corporate communications for
the Bank of Jerusalem and has
been spokesperson for the Tel
Aviv Stock Exchange and vice
president-marketing and com-
munications for Poalim Capital
Markets.
USAF Maj. Gen. John W.
Raymond has been nominated
for promotion to lieutenant
general and assignment as
commander of the 14th Air
Force (Air Forces Strategic)
of Air Force Space Command/
commander of the Joint Func-
tional Component Command
for Space of U.S. Strategic
Command, Vandenberg AFB,
Calif. He has been director of
plans and policy for U.S. Strate-
gic Command, Ofutt AFB, Neb.
Kuky Salazar, who is presi-
dent for Latin America, Europe
and Asia of Private Jet Services,
will head its new international
division in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla. He has been senior vice
president-sales at NetJets for
Florida, the Caribbean and
Latin America.
Lawrence Harting has been
appointed general manager/vice
president-ight operations at
Elliott Aviations Flying Cloud,
Minn., facility.
Andrew Ruszkowski has been
named chief commercial ofcer at
XTAR, Herndon, Va. He was vice presi-
dent-global sales and marketing.
USAF Lt. Gen. (ret.) Michael A.
Hamel has been appointed president
of the Newtown, Pa.-based commercial
Marillyn A. Hewson
Jacob Galifat
Kevin Dutton
Avital Schrift
Walid Abukhaled
Eliana Fishler
Craig Lee
M
arillyn A. Hewson (see photo)
has become chairman of the
Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethes-
da, Md. She continues as president/
CEO. As chairman, Hewson succeeds
Robert J. Stevens, who plans to retire.
Joel H. Benkie has been named
president of Los Angeles-based Ducom-
mun Inc. He has been executive vice
president and will remain chief operat-
ing ofcer. As president, Benkie suc-
ceeds Anthony J. Reardon, who will
continue as chairman/CEO.
Kevin Dutton (see photo) has been
appointed vice president-operations
nance for the Gulfstream Aerospace
Corp., Savannah, Ga. He has been
director of materials and production
nance. Scott Clarey has been named
sales director for the Southwest U.S.
and Kevin Brink for the Northwest
U.S. Clarey was Western U.S. and
Western Canada sales director for
Piaggio America; Brink was sales di-
rector in that same area for Dassault
Falcon Jet.
Michael Ryschkewitsch has been
selected to lead the Space Sector
at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Md. He has been
chief engineer at NASA and had been
deputy director for NASAs Goddard
Space Flight Center and director of its
Applied Engineering and Technology
Directorate.
Walid Abukhaled (see photo) has
become Riyadh-based chief execu-
tive for Saudi Arabia for the Northrop
Grumman Corp. He was his countrys
deputy minister for industrial afairs
and was president/CEO of General
Electric Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Tom McCabe has been named
senior vice president/general coun-
sel/secretary of the Orbital Sciences
Corp., Dulles, Va. He was senior vice
president/general counsel of the Alion
Sciences and Technology Corp. of
Washington and previously vice presi-
dent/deputy general counsel at XM
Satellite Radio.
Col. (ret.) Jacob Galifat (see photo)
has been appointed general manager
of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Air
and Missile Defense Systems Div. He
succeeds Boaz Levi, who has been
named corporate vice president/gen-
eral manager of the Systems, Missiles
and Space Group. Galifat was head of
ventures unit of the Lockheed
Martin Space Systems Co. He
succeeds Linda Reiners, who
has become vice president-
corporate ventures. Hamel
was senior vice president-cor-
porate strategy and relations
for the Orbital Sciences Corp.
David Falloure has become
a senior account manager
with the Houston-based Grifn
Communications Group.
HONORS AND ELECTIONS
Michael T. Strianese, who
is chairman/president/CEO
of L-3 Communications, has
been elected chairman of the
board of governors of the Ar-
lington, Va.-based Aerospace
Industries Association for 2014.
He succeeds Wes Bush, who
is chairman/CEO/president
of the Northrop Grumman
Corp. The new vice chairman
is David L. Joyce, president/
CEO of GE Aviation. The
board reelected Marion C.
Blakey as AIA president/
CEO and Ginette C. Colot as
secretary-treasurer.
Craig Lee (see photo), an
electronic warfare systems
architect for the Northrop
Grumman Corp., has received
the 2013 Joseph W. Kearney
Pioneer Award from the As-
sociation of Old Crows. He
was honored for his notable
pioneering activities in, and
long service to, the discipline
of electronic warfare. Lee
has been a lead systems
engineer/architect for more
than 25 years. He has been
the technical lead on a number of
programs, including the AN/ALQ-218
for the Boeing EA-18G Growler, which
resulted in a newly developed digital
receiver and enhanced capabilities
that improved the U.S. Navys elec-
tronic attack efectiveness. c
To submit information for the
Whos Where column, send Word
or attached text files (no PDFs) and
photos to: stearns@aviationweek.com
For additional information on
companies and individuals listed in
this column, please refer to the
Aviation Week Intelligence Network
at AviationWeek.com/awin For
information on ordering, telephone
U.S.: +1 (866) 857-0148 or
+1 (515) 237-3682 outside the U.S.
Whos Where

AIR TRANSPORT
A350 High-Altitude Testing
Airbus has started the high-altitude
ight-test campaign for the A350. The
manufacturer has sent MSN003, the
second of an eventual ve ight-test
aircraft to Bolivia where it will perform
tests at airports in Cochabamba and
La Paz. The two airports were chosen
because of their diferent altitudes: At
an elevation of 13,300 ft., La Paz has
one of the worlds highest airports.
Cochabamba is at 8,300 ft. Airbus says
MSN003 will perform takeofs, landings
and go-arounds at the two airports in
various congurations, including simu-
lated engine failures. Airbus also wants
to validate engine operating character-
istics and takeof performance under
the demanding conditions.
Second CSeries Flies
Bombardiers second CSeries airliner
joined the ight-test program on Jan. 3.
The ight from Mirabel, near Montreal,
lasted 2.15 hr., the aircraft reaching
13,000-ft. altitude and 180-kt. airspeed.
In addition to validating data collected
by ight-test vehicle FTV1, which has
been ying since September, the crew
of FTV2 will be responsible for testing
aircraft systems and avionics. FTV1 is
being used to expand the ight enve-
lope. Bombardier has said it needs to
have two or three CSeries ying before
it will announce a revised in-service tar-
get date for the initial 110-seat CS100.
Officials Told: Fly Economy
Worsening the plight of airlines sufer-
ing unexpectedly weak demand, the
Chinese government has limited most
of its employees to ying economy class.
Air China is likely to sufer the most
from the new rules, which are part of
President Xi Jinpings campaign against
the eforts of millions of Chinese bureau-
crats to divert public funds to their own
benet. The limits took efect on Jan. 1
and apply to the vast majority of Chinese
ofcials. Further detracting from airline
business, higher-level ofcials using high-
speed trains may still ride in rst class,
which is more comfortable than the
economy cabin of an aircraft. Although
most Chinese ofcial travel is domestic,
the efect of the new rules on interna-
tional business will be disproportionately
large, because government ofces at all
levels tend to require the use of Chinese
airlines. The new rules also limit spend-
ing on accommodations and meals.
Cebu Buys Tigerair Unit
Singapores Tigerair will sell its strug-
gling Philippine afliate to competitor
Cebu Pacic, which will replace Tiger-
airs direct presence in the Philippine
market. Tigerairs retreat follows the
expansion into the Philippine market by
the largest of the franchising low-cost
groups, AirAsia, which bought Zest Air
last year and rebranded it as AirAsia
Zest. Cebu Pacic will buy 40% of the eq-
uity of SEairwhich also uses the brand
Tigerair Philippinesfrom Tigerair of
Singapore, and the remaining 60% from
local shareholders. The total price is $15
million. Tigerairs failure in the Philip-
pines is evident from the write-down
of a SG$84.5 million (U.S. $67 million)
shareholders loan made to SEair. A
long-term partnership between Cebu
Pacic and Tigerair, which is subject to
regulatory approval, includes collabora-
tion and code-sharing on air routes from
the country.
Farewell, DC-9
The nal scheduled U.S. passenger ight
of a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 twinjet
was made by a Delta Air Lines Series
50 model on Jan. 6 from Minneapolis/
St. Paul to Atlanta. Although the ight
marked the end of a 48-year mainline ca-
reer for the DC-9 in the U.S., according
to Aviation Week Intelligence Networks
Fleet Database approximately 74 remain
in service worldwide out of 972 deliv-
ered from 1965-82. Delta, which was the
launch customer for the original 65-seat
model, used the T-tail jet to replace
propeller airliners on regional and short-
haul routes and eventually operated 305
of all versions. Although Delta retired its
last DC-9-30 in 1993, the type returned
to the eet following the merger with
Northwest Airlines in 2008.
BUSINESS
Arinc Interrupted
Rockwell Collins has completed its $1.4
billion acquisition of airport information
systems provider Arinc from the Carlyle
Group, with integration activities to be
completed in 6-9 months. Not joining the
combined company are Arincs industry
standards organization, which it sold
to SAE International to avoid any per-
ceived conicts of interest, and Arincs
Aerospace Systems Engineering and
Support business, for which Rockwell
Collins has initiated preparatory eforts
to divest as it does not t with the com-
panys long-term strategy.
DEFENSE
Pave Hawk Crash Probed
Investigators have begun seeking clues
into the cause of a crash of U.S. Air
Force HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter
during a night-time low-level training
mission on the North Norfolk coast of
the U.K. Four airmen from the 48th
Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath died in
the accident on Jan. 7. Air Force ofcials
First Kuwaiti C-17 Debuts at Boeing Plant
The frst of two Boeing C-17 Globemasters destined for the Kuwait Air Force has emerged
from the production line at Long Beach, Calif. Boeing has not yet formally announced Kuwait
as a customer for the airlifter, but the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency detailed a
request from Kuwait for a single C-17 in September 2010. The country registered interest in
a second aircraft in April 2013. The aircraft, KAF342, is yet to make its initial fight and frst
appeared outside on Jan. 6. Kuwait becomes the second customer to adopt a high-visibility
glossy color scheme for the aircraft after Qatar, which painted one of its four C-17s in the
colors of national airline, Qatar Airways. Kuwait is also buying the Lockheed Martin KC-130J
Hercules, with deliveries expected to begin in the second quarter of this year.
The World
GUY NORRIS/AW&ST

said no warning or mayday calls had
been made prior to the accident, which
happened near Cley-next-the-Sea.
Rafaels Spike to S. Korea
South Korea has selected Rafaels
Spike NLOS (Non-Line Of Sight)
missile as the primary weapon for its
new eet of AgustaWestland AW159
Wildcat helicopters. AgustaWestland
will be responsible for the integration,
testing and clearances for the Spike
and is expected to work with Rafael
on the program. Flight trials with the
weapon will be undertaken in 2015.
UAVs Throttled Forward
The Pentagon is speeding UAV missile
deliveries to Iraq under an existing for-
eign military sale, according to a Defense
Department spokesman. Were expedit-
ing delivery of 10 operational ScanEagles
for part of the original purchase, as well
as an additional four non-operational
ScanEagles, which will be sent to help
facilitate maintenance of the original 10,
Army Col. Steven Warren said Jan. 7.
According to Warren, ofcials anticipate
an additional 48 Raven surveillance
UAVs will be delivered in the spring.
SPACE
Webb Looking Good
U.S. congressional investigators agree
NASAs James Webb Space Telescope,
one of the agencys most complex and
costly science projects, is proceeding
well along its restructured plan. But
the Hubble successor has little scal
room for error or surprise difculties
leading up to its expected October 2018
launch (AW&ST Dec. 16, 2013, p. 24).
The program is maintaining 14 months
of schedule bufer, and prime contrac-
tor Northrop Grummans performance
data indicates generally, work is being
accomplished on schedule and at the
cost expected, according to a Govern-
ment Accountability Ofce report last
week. Still, development issuessuch
as with the cryocooler, which has seen
a cumulative 120% increase in contract
costshave required ofcials to allocate
a signicant portion of managements
near-term cost reserves this scal year.
GAO says Northrop also sees a high
burn rate of related reserves that could
force program ofcials to postpone work
or demur on risk-avoidance activity.
Embraer Flies Mid-Light Legacy 450
Embraer has begun fight-testing its Legacy 450 mid-light business
jet, a smaller version of the all-new mid-size Legacy 500 that is
scheduled for certifcation in the frst half of this year. Making its
1-hr., 35-min. frst fight from Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, on
Dec.28, the Legacy 450 has the same 6-ft. cabin height, Honey-
well HTF7500E turbofans, Rockwell Collins Fusion avionics, fy-by-
wire and side-stick fight controls as the 500, but with a shorter
cabin. Late last year, Embraer announced the 450s cabin has been
extended to provide more space and its range increased by 200nm
to 2,500nm with four passengers. Development of the 450 is
about a year behind the 500, which frst few in November 2012
after delays in developing the fy-by-wire system. Both aircraft
have a high-speed cruise of Mach 0.82 and 45,000-ft. maximum
ceiling. Embraer now offers a Rockwell Collins head-up display and
enhanced vision system as options on the 450 and 500.
For more breaking news, go to AviationWeek.com
EMBRAER
Obituary: Thomas V. Jones, who led the Northrop
Corp. for almost 30 years, died Jan. 7 of pulmo-
nary fbrosis. He was 93.
Jones became CEO of Northrop in 1960. When
he was 33, he joined the company from the Rand
Corp., where he had studied the balance of cost
and effectiveness in military aircraft. Northrop had
recently suffered the catastrophic loss of its fying-
wing YB-49 bomber program and had been shut
out of the U.S. Air Forces Century Series super-
sonic fghter. Plus, the companys proposed N-102
Fang, a low-cost fghter, was attracting little atten-
tion. With Joness infuence, the Fang program was disbanded in
favor of a smaller fghter-trainer, the N-156, which became the
basis of the T-38 and F-5 and put Northrop back into the military
aircraft business. F-5s are still being refurbished and modernized
today, long after most 1950s-era designs have been retired.
Jones repeatedly hired and nurtured creative engineers such as
Lee Begin, who designed the P-530 Cobra, a follow-on interna-
tional fghter that led directly to the Boeing Hornet and Super
Hornet. When the U.S. Navy selected the design, it insisted that
the program be led by a company with carrier-
fghter experience.
An even bigger impact on the company was Joness
early investment in stealth in the 1970s. His team
lost the contract to build the Have Blue demonstra-
tor, which led to the F-117, but rebounded to pioneer
all-aspect, wideband stealth technology and decisively
beat Lockheed in the contest to build the B-2 bomber.
Joness career also involved some miscalcula-
tions that in some cases resulted in program
losses. Northrops belief that it could continue
to sell its own land-based version of the F-18
proved optimistic. The F-20 Tigershark, based on the F-5 and
designed to compete with the F-16, was a quixotic venture that
helped end Joness career with Northrop in 1990. Problems with
delivering on the B-2s promises helped consign the YF-23 Ad-
vanced Tactical Fighter to also-ran status, defeated by the more
conservative YF-22. Even so, the Jones-era culture can be seen
today in Northrop Grummans advanced programs, such as the
classifed RQ-180 unmanned air system and the carrier-capable
X-47B.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN

COMMENTARY
The success of its unmanned-vehicle
Grand Challenges in 2004 and 2005
and Urban Challenge in 2007 prompted
Darpa to launch the Robotics Challenge,
to set a similar, seemingly unreach-
able target for the developers of mobile
robots. But after the rst round of trials
last month, the vision of using robots
to perform human tasks in hazardous
disaster zones does not look far-fetched.
And just as Google played a pivotal
role in taking driverless cars of the
test tracks and onto public roads,
so the search-engine giant looks set
to take a lead in roboticssix of the
top eight teams in the rst Robotics
Challenge trials used humanoid robots
developed by companies now owned by
Google. In all, 16 teams took part in the
trials on Dec. 21-22 in Homestead, Fla.
The teams faced eight tasks de-
signed to test a robots ability to enter
and work inside a disaster zone while
its operator remains at a safe distance.
Schaft, a University of Tokyo spin-of
now owned by Google, scored 27 of a
possible 32 points with a bipedal robot
based on the HRP-2 design, developed
in the early 2000s under Japans Hu-
manoid Robot Project.
Second, with 20 points, was the
Florida Institute of Human & Machine
B
arely a decade ago, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (Darpa) demonstrated that driverless ve-
hicles could navigate desert roads and negotiate city streets.
Now car manufacturers from Audi to Toyota are promising that
autonomous driving technology will make their vehicles safer by
the middle of this decade.
Now, Robot
Google involvement certain to accelerate
robot development
Cognitions IHMC Robotics, a soft-
ware-only team that competed using
the Darpa-supplied Atlas humanoid
robot developed by Boston Dynamics,
which was acquired by Google in De-
cember. Another four teams in the top
eight used the Atlas robot to demon-
strate their software.
Rounding out the top eight teams,
which qualify for up to $1 million in
Darpa funding to prepare for the Ro-
botic Challenge nals, were Carnegie
Mellons Tartan Rescue team with the
track-equipped Chimp robot (pictured)
and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
with the ape-inspired RoboSimian.
These and other non-funded teams will
compete for the $2 million prize.
While far from the agile and elegant
robots of science ctioncontestants
took 3-4 hr. to complete the eight
tasks, ranging from driving a vehicle
and climbing a ladder to opening a
door and connecting a re hosetheir
performance surprised the organizer
and enthralled the audience. Darpa
program manager Gill Pratt says the
event exceeded expectations multiple
times over, raising the bar for the
nals in 12-18 months time.
The trials were also an early valida-
tion for Googles moonshot venture
into robotics, and a strong signal the
eld is heading toward machines that
mimic the capabilities of humans and
animals. The eighth robotics company
to be acquired in recent months, Bos-
ton Dynamics has built several legged
robots for Darpa. These include the
humanoid Atlas and the Legged Squad
Support System (LS3), a robotic pack
mule designed to follow soldiers over
rugged terrain like a trained animal,
carrying their equipment and follow-
ing verbal or visual commands.
Developed from the BigDog four-
legged robot, the LS3 can walk, trot
or run at speeds up to 10 mph. The
company also has developed the fastest
legged robot, the Cheetah, which has
exceeded 28 mph in tethered treadmill
tests. Inspired by the cheetah, the
robot has an articulated spine that
exes to extend its stride and increase
speed. Developed from the Cheetah,
the WildCat recently reached 16 mph in
untethered testing outdoors.
These prototype robots may be noisy
and power-hungry, just as the Robotics
Challenge contestants were hesitant
and slow-moving, but when Audis
autonomous A7 drove itself onto the
stage at the CES 2014 technology show
in Las Vegas on Jan. 7, it looked light
years beyond the driverless vehicles of
Darpas Grand and Urban Challenges.
Thats what a decade of Google-paced
development can achieve. c
Leading Edge
By Graham Warwick
Managing Editor-Technology
Graham Warwick blogs at:
AviationWeek.com
warwick@aviationweek.com
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March 4-5, 2014 Hilton Arlington Arlington, VA
Discover where priorities and opportunities exist beyond the FY2015 budget
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Learn what policy changes may lie ahead
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By Pierre Sparaco
Former Paris Bureau Chief
Pierre Sparaco has covered
aviation and aerospace
since the 1960s.
N
ow it will be called Airbus Group, instead of European Aero-
space, Defense and Space Co. (EADS), a name it used proudly
for the last 13 years. This is a formidable rebranding initiative for
a global 144,000-employee group headquartered in the Nether-
lands (for scal reasons only). The new title, which is scheduled
to be ratied in May by the shareholders, has been in use since
Jan. 1. Although easily understood, the new name is misleading
and barely hides its goal: identifying the group with its strongest
brand, its commercial aircraft unit, although the company has no
intention of restricting its business to airliners. In other words,
EADS admits that it will remain largely dominated in the foresee-
able future by Airbuss portofolio.
To some extent, by doing so, company
executives merely are ratifying facts of
life: They have been unable to establish
a balanced civil/military business and, in
reality, dont control their fate. Airbus is
doing well, maintaining a 50%-plus mar-
ket share in the commercial transport
market. It has no known reasons to fear
the end of the protable Airbus-Boeing
duopoly (since airframers from Canada,
China and Russia pose no real threat),
while budget constraints seriously cur-
tail defense spending in most countries.
EADS lost a unique opportunity to
launch a major consolidation initiative
(and strengthen its defense businesses)
when Germany vetoed the acquisition
of BAE Systems. Moreover, Chancel-
lor Angela Merkels unforgivable error
conrmed the strong reality of political
interference in the groups governance.
Merkels decision was not based on
business-related criteria (she would
have been unable to do that), but rather
on the fear of losing inuence in the
multinational responsibility-sharing
arrangement. This proved to be a
narrow-minded attitude, with EADSs
raison dtre having no real link with
outdated psychology. EADS is an
industrial group and, although proud of
showing Europes ag around the world,
doesnt pretend to serve national inter-
ests or economic patriotism. Today, its
sole priority is superior protability.
Of course, EADS could aford to
acquire a similar company. But there is
none to buy, exclusive of U.S. businesses
that are out of reach. For obvious
security reasonsreal or imaginary
Washington would never ratify the
acquisition of sensitive defense-related
businesses by a non-U.S. predator. After
all, in defense-related matters, sover-
eignty concerns are never far away.
Today, the ultimate question is
whether Airbus Group was the best
possible rebranding solution. And, al-
though no one can answer that question
denitively, was such rebranding even
needed? Highly respected company
namessuch as Eurocopter, the worlds
biggest helicopter producerwill van-
ish into the name of a commercial air-
craft manufacturer. The same goes for
MBDA, an obscure acronym as well as a
recognized missile brand; and Astrium,
the Ariane heavy space launchers
prime contractor, soon to change its
corporate identity. But perhaps there
is no room for such sentimentality in
EADSs corporate governance. c
CAN SCORPIONS FLY?
Textrons Scorpion two-seat advanced
trainer is now in the ight-test phase.
The companys public relations eforts
remain minimal, although this is a
valuable initiative, company-funded
programs of such magnitude being a
rare occurrence. But can an all-new
military aircraft expect export success
in the absence of domestic orders? Can
Textron overcome such a handicap ?
On the opposite side of the Atlantic,
Dassault Aviation has not developed
the Alpha Jets long-overdue successor:
Perhaps they should talk and jointly
create a global product. c
The Art of Rebranding
Changing the name EADS to Airbus Group
will not change underlying business realities
COMMENTARY
Reality Check
The Airbus Group seeks export
customers for the A400 airlifter.
AIRBUS/SYLVAIN RAMADIER
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Up Front
COMMENTARY
Yet there is mounting evidence that
consistently high oil prices may not
be a certainty after all. Consider the
following:
Oil demand in the 34 developed

OECD (Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development) countries
is declining and, at 44 million barrels
per day, is 10% lower than in 2005.
New energy-efciency standards

in everything from buildings to new
car models and continued growth in
renewable energy sources promise to
ameliorate oil demand.
New oil-production technologies

including horizontal drilling and hy-
draulic fracturing could add 3 million
barrels a day of supply in the U.S., and
are just now being deployed in other
countries.
Current geopolitical trends, from

a potential U.S. rapprochement with
Iran to a signicant change in the
Mexican constitution allowing foreign
investment in the energy sector, will
likely boost global oil supply.
The Economist magazine recently
cited the possibility that demand for
oil could peak in the not-too-distant
future. What a change from the peak
oil supply fears of several years ago.
Whether or not this outcome is rosy-
eyed optimism, it behooves industry
executives and stakeholders to at least
consider a lower-fuel cost environ-
ment as a plausible scenario for capital
allocation planning. Financial markets
are leaning this way, with the 2019
T
he most fundamental change in the aviation industry in re-
cent years is the rise in the price of fuel. A decade ago, the
worlds airlines spent $44 billion on jet fuel, accounting for 14%
of operating costs. Today, the collective fuel tab is $211 billion, a
whopping 31% of operating costs. Most industry executives as-
sume that oil prices will remain at or around $100 per barrel for
years to comea driving force behind the record backlog for
new, fuel-efcient aircraft.
What Goes Up . . .
What lower fuel costs would mean for aviation
would be major beneciaries, as would
passengers if ticket prices are reduced.
This might also provide the means for
wage adjustments for long-sufering
airline employees.
Airfare reductions also could
stimulate air travel demand, provid-
ing a much-needed kick-start to the
stagnant North American and Euro-
pean markets while further bolstering
emerging market demand. We could
also see a new wave of airline start-
ups. All of this would be good news for
airports and aviation service suppliers.
The losers in this scenario would be
aircraft manufacturers, which have
built up record backlogs on a cocktail
of high fuel prices, low cost of capital,
and new technology. Lower oil prices
mean new aircraft models promising
15-20% fuel consumption reduction
are not as attractive from a nancial
perspective. Coupled with the current
trend of increasing cost of capital, this
could mean a wave of cancellations of
sexy new aircraft models. Or it could
mean manufacturers need to revisit
pricing assumptions. What is a fair
price for a new widebody like the Boe-
ing 777X, for example, in an $85/barrel
world where its annual fuel cost falls
by $3-4 million?
An interesting twist in this scenario
is renewed life for aircraft models that
are slated for early retirement. This
could slow the current retirement
tsunami that is harming operator and
lessor balance sheets, as well as reduc-
ing MRO activity and aftermarket
revenues.
In the late 1960s, Royal Dutch Shell
popularized the modern strategic plan-
ning function by presciently planning
for a future with geopolitical unrest
and sharply higher oil prices, which hit
a few years later with the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil
embargo and 1973 oil shock. While the
price of oil is by denition unpredict-
able, and the global economy is just
one exogenous event away from anoth-
er oil price spike, todays industry lead-
ers and stakeholders would be wise to
include a lower oil-price scenario in
their strategic thinking. c
futures price of Brent Crude Oil at $85
a barrel. This begs the question: What
would $85 oil mean for aviation?
The answer: Airlines could reap
a bonanza. A 15-20% decline in fuel
costs could mean about $35 billion in
lower annual operating costs. This
would have a major impact on airline
protability, particularly compared
to todays paltry aggregate prot of
just $12 billion. Airline shareholders
By Kevin Michaels
Contributing columnist
Kevin Michaels is a vice president
in ICF SH&Es Ann Arbor, Mich.,
ofce, where he leads its Aerospace
& MRO practice.
Aviation Industry Fuel Costs
Average
Price per
Barrel of
Crude
(U.S. dollars)
Percent of
Operating
Cost
2003 $28.8 14%
2004 38.3 17
2005 54.5 22
2006 65.1 26
2007 73 27
2008 99 33
2009 62 26
2010 79.4 25
2011 111.2 28
2012 111.8 32
2013* 108.2 31
2014* 104.5 30
Source: International Air Transport Association
* Estimated

For further information, please visit:
platts.com/ElectricPower/Resources/News Features/emission/index.xml
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
8.0
7.0
6.0
5.0
4.0
3.0
2.0
Daily Emissions Price Assessments
September December 2013 EUA, CER Prices
9
/
2
9
/
9
9
/
1
6
9
/
2
3
9
/
3
0
1
0
/
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1
4
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2
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PD = Price Differential, euros per metric ton
EUA = European Union Emissions Allowances for December 2014 delivery
CER = U.N. Certifed Emission Reductions for December 2014 delivery
Source: Platts
EUA PD CER
The price of EU carbon dioxide allowances (EUAs) under
the EU Emissions Trading System rallied in early Decem-
ber, as the European Parliament and Council approved the
European Commissions (EC) market intervention proposal,
but fell back later in the month on recognition of a well-
supplied market.
The price of EUAs for delivery in December 2014 climbed
to a six-week high of 5.15 per metric ton ($7) on Dec. 10 as the
EP voted with a 101-seat majority in favor of the ECs back-
loading proposal.
That compares with 4.49 at the close on Nov. 29, according
to Platts assessments.
The systems regulator, the EC, wants to delay or backload
900 million EUAs from auctions starting in 2014 to help curb
a supply glut that has sent carbon prices crashing.
The EC wants to delay future supply to help curtail the
volume of new allowances entering the market.
The EPs plenary vote was seen as the last regulatory
step that carried significant risk to the proposal, which
then gained formal agreement by the EU Council of min-
isters on Dec. 16.
However, prices slipped lower to 4.76 by Jan. 7, as the EC
began to clear EU member states to allocate free EUAs to
their industrial companies for 2013.
The resumption of almost daily EUA auctions by EU gov-
ernments on Jan. 7, after a break for the Christmas and
New Years vacation, also added a bearish element in early
January.
The EU climate change committee was set to meet Jan. 8 to
vote on the backloading proposal, which is then expected to
undergo three months of scrutiny by the EP and Council before
becoming law.
The EC said it had requested a fast-track scrutiny period
Jan. 8, although the timing depends on the EP and Council.
The start date is key, because it will determine whether
the amount to be backloaded from 2014s auction schedule is
400 million EUAs, as originally planned, or 300 million, with
the remaining 100 million removed equally from 2015 and
2016 schedules. c
Frank Watson/Platts/London
Australias new leadership faces some
major aviation policy challenges this
year. In each case, the government can-
not avoid playing a key rolebecause
even inaction or delay would have sig-
nicant ramications for the industry.
However, the Liberal-National coali-
tion elected in September has signaled
that it will attempt to resolve these
issues in 2014. Chief among them are
the vexed question of a second major
airport for Sydney, the elimination of a
costly carbon tax and whether to give
some form of aid to struggling Qantas.
The second Sydney airport is by
far the oldest of these policy debates,
although it may actually turn out to
be the least troublesome to settle. The
decision of where and when to build a
new airport has been a political hot po-
tato for decades, but over the past year
the airline industrys calls for a resolu-
tion have reached a crescendo. Also,
support for the presumptive favorite
siteBadgerys Creek, to the west of
the cityhas steadily increased.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott previ-
ously pledged that a site decision would
come sometime in the new govern-
ments rst term. In December, he
stated that an announcement will be
made early this year, and every signal
from the government is that Badgerys
Creek will be the location.
Political opposition is more of a fac-
tor on the carbon tax issue. This tax
was introduced in 2012 by the Labor
government, and the Liberal-National
coalition made its elimination one of
its central campaign promises. This
would be a signicant relief to all
sectors of the airline industry, as the
taxes have been costing some carriers
hundreds of millions a year.
The government has introduced
legislation that would remove the tax,
but so far it has been blocked in the
senate. The impasse likely will remain
until July, when the composition of the
senate is set to change.
It is less clear what the coalition
government will do regarding Qantas.
The airline is asking for some form of
government assistance, although it has
been vague about exactly what it wants.
While it is unlikely the govern-
ment will have the appetite for direct
investment in Qantas, speculation
mounted last month that it was
considering a limited debt guarantee
facility, with strings attached for the
airline. And Abbott has been publicly
sympathetic to the idea of relaxing
foreign ownership restrictions that
apply only to Qantas.
It appears the government will take
some kind of measures to help Qantas.
However, its actions will be limited by a
fear of altering the industrys competi-
tive balance, and Virgin Australia will
demand equal treatment regarding any
form of relief. c
COMMENTARY
Australian Agenda
EUAs Rise, Then Dip
Airline Intel
By Adrian Schoeld
Senior Air Transport
Editor Adrian Schoeld blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/thingswithwings
Adrian.Schoeld@aviationweek.com

In Orbit
COMMENTARY
By Frank Morring, Jr.
Senior Editor Frank
Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
morring@aviationweek.com
The Mars missionsincluding the
rst for Indiawere launched in the
November planetary window to con-
tinue the robotic exploration of the red
planet. Orbital mechanics dictate that
they will at least arrive in the vicinity
of Mars as scheduled.
The Orion ight, and perhaps other
planned U.S. space excursions as well,
could falter if the necessary funding
fails to emerge from the logjam that
passes for the U.S. government these
days. As always, in the words of a char-
acter in The Right Stuf, Tom Wolfes
classic portrait of the Mercury Seven,
it comes down to funding. Thats what
makes your ships go up. . . . No bucks,
no Buck Rogers.
If the lawmakers can keep the
space-program purse strings open
wide enough after the current appro-
priations resolution expires on Jan. 15,
a Delta IV Heavy will lift of in mid-
September with a highly instrumented
but unmanned version of Orion that is
in the nal stages of assembly in the
same Kennedy Space Center high bay
that NASA used to prepare the Apollo
vehicles for their Moon shots in the
1960s and 70s. The Orion test article is
designed to collect data in ight to help
engineers pare every possible ounce of
excess weight from the capsule.
That will be particularly important
for the heat shield designed to protect
future crews from the friction heat of
planetary reentry. Textron built the
head shield using Avcoat, the same ma-
W
hat promises to be another busy year in space is set to
peak in September, when two orbital missions arrive at
Mars and NASA launches the Orion crew capsule it hopes to
send back to the Moon into an
orbit designed to test how well
it will withstand high-speed
reentry from deep space.
No Buck Rogers?
Maven and Mangalyaan will highlight 2014,
along with Orions rst ight, bucks allowing
terial that protected the Apollo com-
mand module on its returns from the
Moon. NASA describes it as an epoxy
novolac resin with special additives in
a berglass honeycomb matrix that is
built up piecemeal in a process called
gunning to ll the honeycomb with
the ablative material.
To simulate a lunar return, the Delta
IV Heavy and its cryogenic upper
stage will take the Orion test article
through two Earth orbits, out to an
altitude of 3,600 mi. From there, it will
hurtle back into the atmosphere at a
speed of more than 20,000 mph, which
will generate temperatures on the heat
shield as high as 4,000F.
Data collected by onboard thermo-
couples, accelerometers and other
sensors will let engineers know how
much they have overbuilt the heat shield
and other structure and calculate how
much of that shielding and structure
it will be safe to remove. The Explo-
ration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) will also
generate valuable data about ground
operations, staging and separation of the
European-built service module (see illus-
tration), parachute function and, once it
splashes down of the coast of Southern
California, capsule recovery at sea.
If the test goes well and the funding
is maintained, Orions next scheduled
trip will take it into a distant retrograde
orbit around the Moon atop an early
version of NASAs planned heavy-lift
Space Launch System in 2017. Some of
the companies developing commercial
vehicles to take crew to the Internation-
al Space Station (ISS) with NASA seed
money also are hoping to begin opera-
tions that year, provided their ight-test
programs proceed as planned this year
and the agency receives enough funding
from Congress to keep the commercial
crew vehicles on schedule.
Suborbital human spaceight may
also resume in 2014. Virgin Galactic
had hoped to y human tests of its
SpaceShipTwo last year, and Xcor
while very reticent about its exact
ight-test schedulemay be getting
ready to y its two-seat Lynx subor-
bital vehicle.
SeptemberSept. 21, to be exact
also will be a busy time at Mars. On that
date, NASAs Mars Atmosphere and
Volatile Evolution (Maven) probe and
Indias Mars Orbiter Mission, dubbed
Mangalyaan, are both scheduled to
enter orbit around the red planet.
Mavens job will be to study the
interface between the planets upper
atmosphere and the solar wind, in an
efort to nd out where all the water
that once ran on the surface went
(AW&ST Aug. 26, 2013, p. 40). Man-
galyaan, which cost only $80 million
to develop and launch (versus the $671
million total cost for Maven) is de-
signed to look for methane, a signature
of life (AW&ST Nov. 11, 2013, p. 34).
Reaching Mars orbit is extremely
difcult. Of the 43 attempts to send
missions there, 23 have failed, and an-
otherthe European Space Agencys
2003 Mars Expressis judged only a
partial success because its Beagle 2
lander was lost on arrival. But if the
U.S. and Indian spacecraft both make
it into orbit, there is a chance that
they will be able to work together with
simultaneous measurements.
September should be spectacular in
space, but there will be plenty more ac-
tion before then, including commercial
cargo deliveries to the ISS and at least
two Soyuz crew ights. China, India,
Europe, Russia and NASA all have
missions scheduled, so there should be
plenty of Buck Rogers, even if the U.S.
Congress doesnt want to play. c
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Washington Outlook
L
awmakers and regulators in the U.S. capital are spitting out
new laws and regulations afecting aviation, aerospace and
defense in rapid-re fashion these days. After a year of seeming-
ly nothing to show for their salaries but the bad efects of their
inactionthink air trafc controller furloughs and the October
2013 federal shutdownlegislators this week could pass a $1.01
trillion, so-called omnibus
appropriations bill for scal
2014 that keeps the govern-
ment open and reintroduces
some stability to Pentagon,
NASA and FAA budget-
making.
Ostensibly, lawmakers face a
Jan. 15 deadline to pass fresh appro-
priations for scal 2014, or at least
another short-term stopgap funding
measure of more 2013 appropria-
tions. But the real deadline for a con-
gressional compromise is Jan. 17, the
last day before lawmakers evacuate
Washington for the Martin Luther
King, Jr., holiday weekend.
To help build an agreement that can
simply pass the deeply divided Con-
gress and avoid another shutdown, top
House and Senate appropriators have
kept spending details secret. In turn,
once the deal is unveiled, each cham-
bers leaders will hurriedly push oor
votes before signicant political opposi-
tion can reach critical mass. While that
epitomizes what the public hates about
Washington these days, the back-room
process amounts to progress for an
otherwise sclerotic Capitol Hill, and
it should help all agencies avoid the
worst of the 2011 Budget Control Acts
sequestration cuts (see page 41). c
NEW CAPS
Timing is everything, and the chronol-
ogy of signatures President Barack
Obama provided Dec. 26, 2013, to a
couple of A&D-related laws has low-
ered and reformed a key tax benet
that federal contractors received.
Under the Bipartisan Budget Actthe
so-called Ryan-Murray budget deal
that helps avoid another shutdown
and allows fresh appropriations
federal reimbursement of certain
contractor compensation packages ap-
plied to cost-type contracts has been
capped at $487,000. That is down from
more than $952,000 under an auto-
matically adjusted regulatory formula.
The new cap, signicantly below a
compromise of $625,000 that leading
defense authorizers in Congress had
worked out under their scal 2014
policy bill, also was signed into law
Dec. 26. But because the National
Defense Authorization Act was signed
before the Budget Act, its contractor
cap provision was immediately over-
ridden. c
EXPORTS UNDER CONTROL
The Obama administration has an-
nounced nal revisions to ve U.S.
Munitions List (USML) categories as
part of its export-control reform initia-
tive. The efort aims to streamline re-
strictions and boost licensing for less
contentious exports by moving toward
a more positive approach to regula-
tory controlsinstead of defaulting to
noand cutting catch-all restric-
tions. The ve categories changed
were: launch vehicles, guided missiles,
ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes,
bombs and mines (IV); explosives and
energetic materials, propellants, in-
cendiary agents and their constituents
(V); military training equipment (IX);
personal protective equipment (X);
and nuclear weapons-related equip-
ment (XVI). Once the rules take efect
in July, the State Department will
have published proposed revisions to
13 USML categories and touched 15 of
21, total. More revisions are expected
this year, including nal changes for
spacecraft systems and associated
equipment (XV). c
CHILLY ROLLOUT
Were thousands of commercial airline
ights in the U.S. canceled last week
due to 1) the polar vortex that
plunged most of the countryespe-
cially the eastern halfinto a deep
freeze, 2) the long-awaited imple-
mentation of a new FAA ight-time/
duty-time regulation for air carriers
operating under Part 117 or 3) both?
Regardless, at least one regional car-
rier was quick to blame the new pilot
rest rule. On Jan. 6, Northeast-focused
JetBlue Airways imposed a 17-hr.
shutdown, canceling more ights than
any other carrier. JetBlue representa-
tives said the timing of the new rule,
in the wake of the holiday travel spike,
helped problems to snowball. But the
Air Line Pilots Association Interna-
tional (ALPA), which lobbied for the
rule, scofed and used the rollout to
push application of the rule to pilots
under Part 121. Airline companies
have had two years advance notice
and the proactive safety culture that
ALPA pilots have helped to develop at
many airlines, the group said. Where
the safety achievement does fall short
is that the new regulations do not
apply to pilots who y cargo. Con-
sequently, ALPA wants Congress to
pass the Safe Skies bill that has been
introduced in both chambers. c
Ringing in the Old
To function, Congress returns to back-room deals
COMMENTARY
The latest round of lawmaking
appears ugly and myopic, but
also represents progress.
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Edited by Michael Bruno
Senior Policy Editor
Michael Bruno blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/ares
michael.bruno@aviationweek.com

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ISS Over the Years
Todays International Space Station has roots extending back
more than 30 years, to the Cold War competition when the
Soviet Union orbited Mir, and NASA, Canada, Europe and Japan
planned a bigger outpost dubbed Space Station Freedom.
1987 concept for Space
Station Freedom.
Mir-2 concept from 1993.
Some elements of the follow-on
Soviet station found their way
into the ISS.
After the Berlin Wall
fell, and with it the
Soviet Union, the space
shuttle visited Mir 11
times, and seven
astronauts lived there.
The ISS started with
the U.S. Unity Node
docked to Russias Zarya
control module by
the crew of Endeavour
on Dec. 6, 1998.
E
xtending International Space Station operations will give
partners in the orbiting outpost a better chance to recover
their massive investments, and perhaps add momentum to
the White House push to commercialize low Earth orbit (LEO).
Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
Buying Time
White House adds to space station
service life, hoping for more users
SPACE
ing logistics, communications and life
support, the spinof benets on Earth
promise to be a major administration
selling point for the longer service life.
ISS extension will extend the
broader ow of societal benets from
research on the Station, Administra-
tor Charles Bolden and John Holdren,
Obamas science adviser, wrote in a
joint blog.
It also will allow more time for im-
provements in the station itself. John
Shannon, the former NASA space
shuttle program manager who is now
ISS program manager for station prime
contractor Boeing, says the recent re-
L
aunch of Orbital Sciences Corp.s Antares/Cygnus combo
loaded with cargo for the International Space Station under-
scores the growing commercialization of the orbiting outpost.
The Jan. 9 launch was the rst under Orbitals $1.9 billion,
eight-ight Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with
NASA, which will deliver 20 tons of supplies and scientic gear
to the ISS. Among the transported freight was a commercial eet
of tiny Earth-observation satellites built by a well-funded Silicon
UPPING LOGISTICS
Valley startup with deep roots in the next-generation idealism of
the New Space movement.
Planet Labs paid NanoRacksa pioneer in commercial use of
the station (AW&ST July 22, 2013, p. 28)to distribute its 28
Dove nanosats into orbit from the porch of Japans Kibo labo-
ratory module with the cubesat dispenser it has there. The two
companies represent the vanguard of a growing commercial pres-
ence that NASA hopes will help defray the cost of operations as
the private sector becomes aware of the unique benets aforded
by a manned laboratory in space.
That, at least, was the stated hope as
President Barack Obamas top space
ofcials announced his intent to keep
the space station ying until 2024
four years short of the spacecrafts
estimated structural lifetimeat an
estimated cost of $3 billion a year.
The four-year extension is far from
a done deal, coming as it did with only
a one-day notice to Congress and a lot
of uncertainty about whether NASAs
international partners will be able
to follow suit. Money previously pro-
grammed to deorbit the station will
go for extended operations instead,
and initial congressional response
was positive. But long-term federal
funding is uncertain at best, and the
international partnership is feeling
the strain, as some member nations
look for a faster return on their space
spending (see page 20).
Ultimately, it may well be the private
sector that determines if the estimated
$100 billion spent worldwide on the
ISS was worth it. Longer term, the ex-
tended service life will give the grow-
ing international space-exploration
movement more time to test the hard-
ware it needs to move beyond LEO.
It is allowing us to have a planning
horizon that is really 10 years long,
says William Gerstenmaier, NASAs
human-spaceight chief. That really
changes the way folks see their invest-
ment, especially the commercial side.
With a 2020 deadline, he says, re-
searchers may gain only a year or so of
on-orbit operation after spending three
or four years getting a microgravity
experiment ready. The life extension
opens up a large avenue of research
on board the space station, he said in a
brief Jan. 8 telephone press conference.
That research is already starting to
bear fruit, with advances in drug re-
search, robotics technology and the life
sciences needed to mitigate the health
efects of long-term human exploration
in deep space (AW&ST July 29, 2013,
p. 14). While NASA also is using the
station to expand its skills and technol-
ogy for deep-space operations, includ-
pair of a cooling system malfunction
demonstrates the station is robust
and ready to accommodate more users.
The company conducted engineering
and logistics analyses that supported
the decision to extend ISS service life,
he says. The structure, instrumented
with wireless accelerometers that mea-
sure how it reacts to arriving vehicles,
thruster firings and solar-array mo-
tion, is t to operate until at least 2028.
The twin 10-ft.-dia. solar alpha rotary
jointstoo large to replace now that
the space shuttle eet is retiredhave
been working well since a lubrication
problem was resolved in 2008, he says.
The joints move the stations huge solar-
array wings to track the Sun.
Launch and orbital vehicles avail-

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By April 2002 the station was taking
shape, with a crew of three aboard and
the frst of four large U.S. solar array
wings in place. The Soyuz at one end of
ISS served as its lifeboat.
In June 2007 Atlantis delivered
two truss segments and more solar
arrays. In all, station assembly
required 31 U.S. and Russian space
launches to complete.
Launched in September 2011,
Chinas Tiangong-1 docking
target is preparation for a separate
Mir-class station in the 2020s.
The space station could continue fying
until 2024 under a new White House
policy. Other plans include three small
Russian modules, a U.S. infatable and
increasing the crew to seven from six.
able or expected to deliver cargo and
crew to the station can support extend-
ed operations, Shannon says. However,
bandwidth for research data already
is in short supply, despite a doubling
since assembly was completed, and is
one potential shortfall as station utili-
zation increases. Power is another.
Managers are considering an up-
grade to K
a
-band links to increase
data throughput, Shannon says, and
are studying ways to take advantage of
improvements in solar-cell efciency.
One possibility may be to fold more ef-
cient solar cell blankets to t in the
unpressurized trunk on the SpaceX
the rst ight of at least one targeted
for 2017. However, that may slip, so
NASA and Russia are gearing up for an-
other buy of Soyuz-capsule seats to stay
within the three-year lead-time window
for the Russian spacecraft. Overall,
Gerstenmaier says, knowing now that
were going beyond 2020 puts NASA
planners in a better posture to get bet-
ter prices for crew and cargo services.
The White House announcement
came as the heads of more than 30 in-
ternational space agencies gathered in
Washington for a private summit orga-
nized by the U.S. State Dept., in parallel
with an International Academy of As-
companys Dream Chaser reusable
space plane, and Sierra Nevadas in-
corporation into future Dream Chaser
upgrades of thermal protection, avion-
ics, air trafc management and other
technology developed in Europe, par-
ticularly during the Hermes and Crew
Return Vehicle spaceplane programs.
It looks like it is really a synergetic
approach of different competencies
which we can put together, Woerner
says, calling for a broad mix-and-
match framework that allows the use
of diferent space systems, regardless
of origin, to achieve redundancy.
In the Sierra Nevada/European col-
NASA believes that extending ISSs service life will give the
private sector more time to nd prots in low Earth orbit. When
the NanoRacks unit begins deploying the Planet Labs spacecraft,
it will be visible conrmation that the movement to expand Earths
economy of the planet is achieving that goal.
Planet Labs foundersChris Boshuizen of Australia, Robbie
Schingler of the U.S. and Will Marshall of the U.K.have been
working on space projects, including stints at NASA, since they
joined the international space generation movement in the late
1990s. Their business model has attracted serious nancing
from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including a new $52 mil-
lion round of funding led by billionaire Yuri Milner.
They hope to use revenue-generating applications with the
terabyte of rapidly renewed Earth-observation data they expect
to generate daily to underwrite satellite support for disaster man-
agement, developing-nation agriculture and other apps in keep-
ing with their do-good ethos .
By democratizing this data [it could] become a new global
good that will allow people to understand the state of the world as
it is now, and therefore make better decisions, says Schingler. c
Dragon cargo vehicle, and send station
crewmembers on spacewalks to mount
them over the existing arrays.
The Dragon and Orbital Sciences
Corp.s Cygnus are easing into regu-
lar commercial cargo deliveries to the
ISS (see sidebar), and NASAs inter-
national partners continue to provide
logistics support as well. The Euro-
pean Space Agency (ESA) will launch
one more Automated Transfer Vehicle
with a load of supplies, and early talks
are underway with Japan to arrange
three more H-II Transfer Vehicle cargo
missions after 2015. Russian Progress
cargo-carriers also will remain in the
logistics mix.
Final proposals for U.S. commercial
crew vehicles are due this week, with
tronautics symposium on space explo-
ration. The ISS extension was expected
to be a key topic of discussion.
Jan Woerner, who heads the Ger-
man space agency DLR, lists himself as
a long-time supporter of extending ISS
operations beyond 2020, and Germany
is the largest supporter of station fund-
ing within ESA. Although ESAs future
course in station funding will not be
set until a ministerial meeting early in
December, both agencies have entered
a preliminary agreement with one of
the private U.S. companies developing
a commercial crew vehicle for NASA.
Woerner joined Mark Sirangelo,
head of Sierra Nevada Space Sys-
tems, in announcing a collaboration
that could lead to European use of the
laboration, this could include a use of
Ariane launchers to carry the Dream
Chaser, which is baselined for the Atlas
V. It would also provide Germany with
additional leverage in its scuffle with
France over future European launcher
developments.
Redundancy is one of the most im-
portant aspects in space, Woerner em-
phasizes. We all know if a system fails
that we have a long time to investigate
the cause. Therefore I would say there
is not only the use of some technology
for the future of the Dream Chaser, but
why not also use the launching system
from Europethe Ariane 5 MEas
a launcher, not only Atlas V, to have
a combination in that eld across the
Atlantic. c

Amy Svitak Paris
European launch sector braces for
new competition from SpaceX, India
T
he success of new rockets in India and the U.S. is for-
tifying a French argument for developing a more af-
fordable three-stage rocket, rather than a two-stage
solid-fueled one.
The urgency of beginning work on the next-generation
rocket hit home Jan. 5 with the awless rst ight of Indias
Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), which loft-
ed a small national communications satellite to geosynchro-
nous transfer orbit (GTO) from the Satish Dhawan Space
Center on the countrys eastern coast.
In development for the past two decades, the GSLV is
equipped with an indigenous cryogenic upper-stage engine
capable of sending small and medium-sized spacecraft to
GTO. Its success likely signals the loss of a reliable customer
for European launch services provider Arianespace, which
has own many of Indias communications spacecraft as sec-
ondary payloads on the Ariane 5 ECA.
The Indian rockets debut was sandwiched between the
rst two successful launches of a new version of the Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9, proving the
two-stage, liquid-fueled launcher has the power to lift small
and mid-sized satellites to GTO. The Dec. 3 and Jan. 6 mis-
sions hailed SpaceXs entry into the commercial launch mar-
ket, dominated by European and Russian rockets, that gen-
erates $2.5 billion in annual revenue.
SpaceX is something well have to
contend with, Arianespace Chairman
and CEO Stephane Israel said during
an annual media breakfast here Jan. 7,
recalling that his company has adapted
to new entrants in the past, notably the
arrival of Russian Proton launchers to
the commercial market in the 1990s.
Israel congratulated SpaceX but
questioned whether the U.S. startup
can maintain the advertised low price
of $56.5 million for a commercial Fal-
con 9 launch when the charge for U.S.
government launches runs closer to
$130 million.
In the meantime, Israel says Ari-
anespace expects to report a modest
loss for 2013 due to fewer launches
than planned. The roughly 25% drop
in revenue is ofset by reduced expen-
ditures resulting from less launch ac-
tivity, he says, as well as 100 million
($136 million) in already negotiated
2013 support payments from the Eu-
ropean Space Agency (ESA).
Israel touts the companys order-
book, which brought in 1.4 billion last year, increasing the
total backlog to 4.3 billion. Of the 18 large satellites openly
competed in 2013, Arianespace won contracts for 11, he says.
Although the company did not bid on satellite launches in the
mid-sized range, it won all four contracts for satellites weigh-
ing less than 4,000 kg (8,800 lb.), a class of spacecraft that
is able to t below larger satellites riding under the Ariane
5 ECA fairing.
Arianespace ordered enough Ariane 5 hardware from prime
contractor Airbus Defense & Space in December for 18 Ari-
ane 5 launches, bringing to 38 the total number of rockets in
development. The company also ordered 10 Vega light launch-
ers from contractor ELV in November and is negotiating for
a batch of 5-10 Soyuz launchers with Russian space agency
Roscosmos for missions beyond 2016.
This year, Arianespace expects to conduct up to 14 launches,
including two Vega, four Soyuz and six Ariane 5 missions. Even
if the company does not meet this target, it will no doubt ex-
ceed the 2012 record of 10 launches in a single year, Israel says.
The company also is using a portion of French public bond
money to co-develop a more spacious Ariane 5 rocket fairing
that can accommodate launches of new electric-propulsion
satellites by the second half of 2015. The trend in all-electric
spacecraftdesigned to weigh up to 45% less than chemi-
cally propelled satellitesbodes well for Arianespace, Israel
says. It expects to begin operating a midlife upgrade of the
Ariane 5 ECA, known as Ariane 5 ME, in mid-2018.
With more payload on the electric-propulsion satellite, it
means there will be a class of medium-sized spacecraft that
will develop, he says, adding that the Ariane 5 MEs 11,000-kg
lift capacity will allow Arianespace to target more satellites
in the 4,000-5,000-kg range.
But ESA governments have yet to decide how to continue
funding the Ariane 5 ME while at the same time beginning
development of the next-generation Ariane 6, which Ariane-
space expects to enter service in 2021. Investments in the re-
ignitable Vinci engine that will power
the Ariane 5 MEs upper stage have
reached 1.4 billion over the past 10
years. To nalize its development for
entry into service by mid-2018, ESA
governments, chiey France and Ger-
many, must approve an additional 1
billion at a ministerial-level meeting
next December.
The German share of this amount
is expected to be about 350 million,
but financing depends on Frances
agreement on outstanding ESA pro-
gram and policy issues, including
the development cost and industrial
makeup of the Ariane 6, continued
participation in the International
Space Station (ISS) and ESAs rela-
tionship with the European Union,
says Jean-Yves Le Gall, head of
French space agency CNES and for-
mer chairman/CEO of Arianespace.
On Ariane, there is still a lot of work
to be done with Germany, he says. c
SPACE
Turning Up
the Heat
SpaceXs Falcon 09 v1.1 lofted
Thaicom 6 to GTO Jan. 6.
SPACEX

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Amy Butler Washington
The path to F-35 operational use
relies heavily on weapons testing
over the next 15 months
W
ith weapons testing becoming a more regular event
for the F-35 program, developers are looking ahead
to a fast pace of trials this year to prepare for the
rst operational use of the stealthy, single-engine ghter by
the U.S. Marine Corps in 2015.
Delivering weapons is often described as the business
end of a ghters job, and the Marines are planning to de-
clare initial operational capability (IOC) for the F-35B using
the aircrafts 2B software release as early as July 2015, and no
later than December 2015, the service hopes. Though limited
to use of three weaponsthe 1,000-lb. GBU-32 Joint Direct
Attack Munition (JDAM), GBU-12 500-lb. Laser-Guided
Bomb and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (Am-
raam) AIM-120 seriesthe F-35B will surpass the current
capability of the AV-8B Harrier jump jet and F/A-18C twin-
engine Hornets, says Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, commandant
for Marine Corps aviation.
The F-35 Joint Program Ofce plans to complete its weap-
ons ight testing for use of these systems and the 2B soft-
ware by March of 2015 to accommodate the services IOC
aspirations, says Charlie Wagner, weapons team lead for the
program.
The U.S. Air Force is planning to follow quickly with an
IOC declaration as early as August 2016 and no later than
December of that year with its F-35A, using the 3I software
release, which includes the limited 2B weapons capability,
new processing hardware and the addition of the 2,000-lb.
GBU-31 JDAM that shares the same software as its smaller,
1,000-lb. cousin. The U.S. Navy will follow later with an IOC
between August 2018-February 2019. All nine partner na-
tionsand three other conrmed buyersare eager to ramp
up weapons testing for the aircraft.
Roughly 11 shots remain to be tested with the limited 2B
software package, Wagner says. The 3F ight-test campaign
DEFENSE
Taking Aim
Jay Menon New Delhi and Tony Osborne London
Not the End of Road
Indian VIP helicopter scandal continues to have
far-reaching implications for AgustaWestland
I
ndias decision to terminate a con-
tract to buy 12 helicopters from
AgustaWestland has rekindled
hopes among rival helo-makers, but
the Anglo-Italian company is still
looking for business in the country,
despite the stain of a bribery scandal.
India made its largest defense con-
tract cancellation, terminating on
Jan. 1 its $770 million contract for the
purchase of the AW101 helicopters.
It did so on grounds of breach of the
pre-contract integrity pact, amid al-
legations that Finmeccanica-owned
AgustaWestland had paid bribes to
win the deal. The scandals reverbera-
tions continue and have been felt as far
of as Norway, the latest AW101 buyer,
which could ne the company if the al-
legations hold up in court.
Still, Finmeccanica executives can
perhaps breathe a sigh of relief know-
ing that India has stopped short of
blacklisting their company. The move
allows it to remain in the race for key
military programs.
We dont want the termination of
for weapons will be far more extensive, with more than 30
guided launches now planned. The 3F software is aligned with
far more weapons, including: the 250-lb. Small-Diameter Bomb
(SDB) I GBU-39; AGM-154 Joint Standof Weapon; 2,000-lb.
JDAM employing the BLU-109 penetrator warhead; a general
purpose 2,000-lb. Mk. 84 bomb; the Paveway IV laser-guided
bomb; and AIM-132 Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missile
(both for the U.K.), as well as the use of external stores.
By the end of last year, developers had conducted guided
tests of all three weapons for the USMC IOC, the last of which
was a guided ight for the GBU-32, a trial that sufces for
Marine Corps, as both JDAMs use the same software, Wag-
ner says.
The most challenging testing, however, is yet to come, as
overseers will run the F-35 and the Amraam against increas-
ingly complicated threats. Every shot we take is getting
more and more complex, Wagner says. The Amraams mis-
sion to destroy airborne threats is the most challenging of the
three USMC IOC weapons, and the weapons ight prole in
a chase can create highly stressing conditions for its data link
to communicate with the F-35 for targeting updates.
Now that safe separation and motor ring have been dem-
onstrated, the team is focusing on accuracy. Eventually, the
F-35 and Amraam will be pitted against increasingly complex
electronic countermeasures (ECM) to verify that they are
efective in realistic threat environments.
The F-35, which employs an unprecedented suite of elec-
tro-optical and infrared sensors as well as a premier active,
electronically scanned array (AESA), is equipped to maxi-
mize the use of the Amraam, especially the forthcoming D
model, which features an improved data link and upgraded
capabilities in a heavy ECM environment.
Wagner says the team will test with a variety of Amraam
models, including the C3, C5 and C7, which has upgraded
electronics cards. The full capability of the D will be reached
with the Block IV F-35 weapons release. We are talking to
it like it is a C7, Wagner says of the new D, which remains in
protracted development as Raytheon sorts through techni-
cal challenges.
The Block IV capability is slated to be operational in 2020-
22, Wagner says. The majority of the remaining launches in the
2B test campaign will expand the use of Amraam and experi-
ment with its various modes of employment.
Although with the bay doors open, the F-35 generates vibra-
tion levels exceeding those against which the Amraam has

been tested, right now I dont have any indication this is an
aircraft problem, Wagner says. Because the bay doors are
open for only a very limited amount of time, . . . that short
duration is signicant, but it is not something that I am too
worried about.
Close-in weapons, such as the AIM 9X Sidewinder and the
gun (externally mounted for the Marine Corps and internally
mounted for the Air Force), will require the expanded capa-
bility and ight envelope of the 3F software package used
on the aircraft.
Also included in the 3F package will be the more exotic
non-kinetic efects the AESA can have on targets, such as
electronic attack. We start turning the systems on in 2B, but
they get matured and rened as we go into 3F, Wagner says.
Along with a hearty set of weapons tests in 2014, the F-35
program also will emphasize preparations for F-35C aircraft
carrier trials.
Engineers are continuing to rene data on potential thermal
issues in the weapons bay as it carries ordnance. The data
that we have gotten so far show that the bay can get hot, Wag-
ner says. But it is only in specic parts of the ight envelope
on specic days where we start seeing temperatures that are
high enough that cause us concern.
He notes that the team is incorporating lessons from the
storage and use of weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq,
both extreme heat environments, including how
hot weapons can be before they are loaded into
the bay and called upon during a mission.
Wagner says the thermal and vibration
analysis should be complete in the next
15 months, in line with wrapping up
testing for the USMC IOC.
The use of the so-called
Gen 2 F-35 helmet, which lacks
a new night camera function
and anti-jitter equipment planned for the Gen 3 upgrade, is
not a limiting factor for testing weapons for the 2B release,
Wagner says. The integrated helmet-mounted display with
the more advanced features will, however, be needed if the
F-35 is called upon for close-in ghts that require pilots to
use Amraam or AIM 9X missiles against targets at extremely
high of-boresight angles.
Though not part of the USMC or USAF IOC plans, devel-
opers have begun t tests of the GBU-39 SDB. At 250 lb., it
is designed to allow for the use of a four-pack in place of each
store sized for a 2,000-lb. GBU-32 JDAM, maximizing the
number of ground targets a single F-35 can attack. Wagner
says that during t and pit tests, the only issue has been a
need to move some wiring bundles for safe operation.
Meanwhile, the F-35 test program is looking to trim cost
where possible. As the top aviation procurement priority for
the Defense Department, it has been largely shielded from the
cuts gutting other aircraft projects. But the pressure is on to
reduce the costs estimated at nearly $400 billion to develop
and eld the aircraft. Wagner says the weapons team is look-
ing to execute as many drops as possible in a single sortie to
save some money. Typically, weapons tests include one drop
for one sortie, but Wagner estimates as much as $250,000 can
be saved by eliminating a single ight. The team managed to
drop two weapons in a recent, single test ight, he says. c
The Amraam is mounted on the F-35s bay door,
while Joint Direct Attack Munitions are carried
on racks inside the weapons bay.
the AW101 deal to impede other de-
fense contracts which are either be-
ing executed by Finmeccanica or for
which the company or its subsidiaries
would be bidding, says an Indian de-
fense ofcial.
The decision to maintain ties with
the Italian defense conglomerate has
nancial impact. Finmeccanica is pur-
suing bids in key Indian procurement
programs that together are worth
around 600 billion rupees ($9.6 billion).
One major deal includes a 100 bil-
lion rupee contract to supply 56 Naval
Utility Helicopters (NUH) and 14 twin-
engine helicopters to the Indian coast
guard. AgustaWestland is bidding its
AW109 for the NUH, while ATR, a 50%
joint-venture company with Finmec-
canica, is ofering the ATR 72 MP for
a medium-range maritime reconnais-
sance aircraft competition.
India is also close to assigning a con-
tract for a navy program worth 35 bil-
lion rupees for 16 multirole helicopters.
One of the nalists is the NH90, devel-
oped by AgustaWestland with Euro-
copter and Fokker. AgustaWestland is
responsible for the overall integration
of the NH90 naval mission system for
all NFH variants. In addition, Finmec-
canica owns 25% of the missile sys-
tems company MBDA, which is likely
to supply the Meteor air-to-air missile
to India as a weapon for its planned
eet of 126 Rafale ghters. MBDA also
provides weapons for the countrys up-
graded Mirage eet.
Indian defense authorities say the
AgustaWestland bribery scandal does
not cast a shadow on the purchases for
the navy of Black Shark torpedoes and
RAN-40L 3D air-surveillance radars
from Finmeccanicas Whitehead Siste-
mi Subacquei (WASS) and Selex ES,
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respectively. Indias indigenous aircraft
carrier, under construction at Cochin
Shipyard, will be equipped with the
radars.
Since the country is in on a major
force modernization and weaponiza-
tion drive, [blacklisting an] interna-
tional rm may jeopardize attempts
to jointly produce armaments, says a
defense ministry ofcial.
In the past, Indias company black-
listing adversely afected several weap-
ons projects, including an artillery pur-
chase program and a deal to address
shortages in ammunition. Manufactur-
ers blacklisted include Denel of South
Africa, Singapore Technologies, Israel
Military Industries and Rheinmetall
Air Defense.
Indias investigation bureau has not
led charges in connection with the
Finmeccanica contract cancellation.
The Indian government halted the
contract last February after Giuseppe
Orsi, then-CEO of Finmeccanica, was
arrested in Italy and charged with
paying bribes to secure the Indian deal
while he was CEO of AgustaWestland.
Norway has included clauses in
the contract for 16 AW101sto meet
its All-Weather Search and Rescue
Helicopter (Nawsarh) requirement
that will give it the right to cancel the
deal or impose a one-off penalty on
the helicopter manufacturer if Orsi
or his former deputy and successor
as Agusta Westland CEO, Bruno Sp-
agnolini, are found guilty in the cor-
ruption trials, which are expected to
soon restart in Italy. The size and up-
per limit of the ne has been redacted
from the copy of the clauses sent to
Aviation Week.
As part of the contract, AgustaWest-
land signed a deal in mid-December
with Norwegian Veritas Italia (DNV
GL), a testing and inspection services
company that will review procedures,
control mechanisms and regulations
throughout AgustaWestland.
Norways selection of the AW101 was
a huge boost for AgustaWestlands pro-
duction line at Yeovil, England, which
is building a handful of the helicopters
each year. Oslo selected the AW101
against Eurocopters EC725, finaliz-
ing the deal, which includes options
for another six helos, on Dec. 19. The
AW101s, the rst of which is scheduled
to enter service in 2017, will enable
Norway to retire its aging Westland
Sea King by the end of 2020.
Finmeccanica, meanwhile, has de-
nied any wrongdoing and welcomed
the Indian governments decision to
take part in an arbitration process.
Investigations by both Italian and In-
dian authorities are continuing. Both
sides have named their arbitrators,
and the process is expected to com-
mence soon. The supply of spare parts
for the three AW101 helicopters that
have already been delivered will be
one of the key issues.
However, Finmeccanica says it still
nds that neither the termination no-
tice by the defense ministry nor the
show-cause notice, from which this
termination notice stems, ofers ade-
quate basis to take any action against
the company.
A company spokesman says Agusta-
Westland is committed to working
with the Indian government to re-
solve the issues and allow the Indian
armed forces to receive the equipment
they need and is ready to perform the
remaining obligations under the agree-
ment for the supply of the 12 VVIP/VIP
helicopters. AgustaWestland will con-
tinue to support the three helicopters
already delivered to and currently op-
erated by the Indian air force.
Finmeccanica says it has introduced
stringent ethical procedures for its
subsidiaries, the spokesman says. To
mitigate risks, AgustaWestland is
planning workforce reductions, though
these would have only a minor impact
on the Yeovil facility, according to com-
pany ofcials.
AgustaWestlands former rival in
the Indian competition, Sikorsky, is
prepared with an alternative, its up-
graded platform of VIP helicopters. If
we are called upon as a sequel to the
process, we will be more than willing to
come forward and address the require-
ments, says Arvind Jeet Singh Walia,
Sikorskys regional executive for India
and South Asia.
Sikorsky offered its S-92 Super
Hawk, which failed to meet key re-
quirements during the February 2008
user trials.
India may even consider going back
to Russia to acquire a new VVIP/
VIP fleet to replace its aging Mil
Mi-8 helicopters, defense ofcials say.
However, a new competition may not
materialize; at this point, it would be
considered a follow-on order to Indias
already-booked 139 Mi-17 V5s. c
DEFENSE
India had planned to purchase 12 AW101s
to replace its aging Mil Mi-8s for a VVIP/VIP
transport role.
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Amy Butler Washington
With few defense campaigns on
the horizon, McArtors initial focus
for the new Airbus Group in the
Americas is inward
L
ess than a month after announcing a
headcount reduction and restructur-
ing in its European operations, the
Airbus Group is also making leadership
changes in its North American arm.
Sean OKeefe, once the head of EADS
North America (renamed the Airbus
Group), is stepping down from his post.
Allan McArtor, chairman of Airbus Ameri-
cas, is assuming the role of CEO of the
Airbus Group in North America in March,
with oversight of operations in the U.S.,
Canada and Latin and South America.
McArtor says his focus in the next sev-
eral months will be consolidating the three
previous unitsseparately focused on com-
mercial, helicopter and security workinto
a single brand. A priority is to transfer the
condence and successful image that has
been created in Airbus to the noncommercial business, he
tells Aviation Week. His goals include becoming more com-
petitive for government programs and emphasizing R&D and
innovation. On the commercial side, McArtor plans to shore
up the supply chain in order to be more competitive.
His primary competitor, Boeing, also is focusing on its sup-
ply chain through a strategy called One Boeing. Ofcials
there are establishing single contracts with suppliers for
parts across an array of programscommercial and defense
rather than parsing out a plethora of deals with each supplier
geared for only one specic project.
Among other annual January corporate leadership shifts,
Jerry DeMuro will take over on Feb. 1 as president/CEO of
BAE Systems U.S. business following the retirement of Lin-
da Hudson, announced in August. A former executive with
General Dynamics, DeMuro left under a cloud following poor
performance in his nal year at the companys information
systems and technology group, although he successfully in-
tegrated a number of acquisitions during his 14 years there.
McArtor has roots in both of the Airbus Groups main sec-
tors, having run Legend Airlines, a regional that failed due to
competition from American Airlines. He also served as FAA
administrator in 1987-89 and was an F-4 pilot in the U.S. Air
Force. He will be the third CEO of the companys U.S.-based
operations, which was launched by Ralph Crosby in 2003 and
then stewarded by OKeefe since 2009.
OKeefe is stepping down to focus on recovering from com-
plications of injuries sustained in a 2010 DeHavilland DHC-3T
crash that claimed the lives of nine people, including former
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). OKeefe and his son survived.
OKeefe tells Aviation Week his 6-hr. surgery last month was
a wake-up call for me. . . . Every day is a bonus. Though re-
covering well from the procedure, he says he must follow an
aggressive rehabilitation regimen.
When OKeefe took over, what was then EADS North Amer-
ica was in the throes of a bitter loss to Boeing in a battle for
the U.S. Air Forces KC-135 replacement program.
Now the commercial sales in the Americas likely will con-
tinue to take a front seat to more defense business here, given
cutbacks to defense spending globally. The companys new
commercial aircraft assembly line in Mobile, Ala., is set to open
within the next year, providing stateside capacity for sales.
McArtor spearheaded the development of Airbuss new A320
narrowbody nal assembly line at Mobile,
from which the rst deliveries are expected
in 2016, with an annual production rate of
40-50 narrowbodies by 2018.
Like other contractors, the Airbus
Groups U.S. arm has struggled to build a
portfolio of major defense campaigns as the
Pentagon cuts back on spending. McArtor
says this side of the business probably will
get a scrub as he plots a way forward, ac-
knowledging the market challenges posed
by reduced spending and an unwillingness
to start new programs at the Pentagon.
Programs are a little too short-sighted for
what I want to set up initially, he says, not-
ing that he plans a larger strategy of postur-
ing the defense sector for future business.
The companys eforts to sell an armed
version of the UH-72A Lakota to the U.S.
Army faltered because the service failed to
carve a path for its scout helicopter mission. However, foreign
sales of the aircraft could pick up. Thailand, the rst foreign
Lakota buyer, is purchasing six in a deal worth $77 million.
Despite the loss of the tanker program in 2008, McArtor says
the Air Force may experience some buyers remorse with its
selection of the Boeing KC-46, a 767 derivative. The Air Force
will be quite impressed watching our tankers y. . . . We may be
back in the tanker business, he says. Australia, the U.K. and
the United Arab Emirates are ying A330-based tankers, he
points out. Boeings plan to deliver 18 KC-46s to the Pentagon
in 2017 is aggressive; problems, should they arise, could reopen
the door for Airbus. Additionally, the service has said it will
consider a competition for another tanker, dubbed the KC-Y,
once the rst 179 KC-46s are delivered.
Unrealized plans for a move into the U.S. are not unique to
the Airbus Group. Alenia Aermacchi has also restructured its
operations here to acknowledge its quashed hopes of selling a
new Marine One helicopter and many C-27Js to the Pentagon.
Despite the grim immediate outlook for defense work,
OKeefe sees long-term opportunities stateside, including a
potential sale of the A400M tactical airlifter to the Pentagon.
We are beginning to deliver actual operational aircraft. I
rmly believe that within a year or two years of watching that
aircraft perform, . . . that is going to change the interest level
and that is going to change the dynamic and debate in the
U.S., he says. We are going to nd ourselves in demand. c
With Tony Osborne in London.
Leadership
Shufe
Allan McArtor will become CEO
of Airbus Group in North America.
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Bill Sweetman Washington
Not Quite Invisible
Stealth Hornet test specimen surfaces
DEFENSE
D
etails of closely held eforts to
make the Boeing F/A-18E/F Su-
per Hornet more stealthy have
been revealed, perhaps inadvertently,
by the appearance of a full-scale test
specimen at the U.S. Air Force bone-
yard in Arizona. Lacking wings and
its forward fuselage, it appears to be
part of a radar cross-section (RCS)
model to measure the efects of chang-
es to the ghters structure and engine
nozzles.
Last August, Boeing flew a Super
Hornet modied with conformal fuel
tanks and a centerline weapon pod and
conducted RCS testing on the Navys
Atlantic ranges. The company indi-
cated that the Advanced Super Hornet
modication package would incorpo-
rate other changes to reduce RCS.
Boeing says the model is not directly
associated with the Advanced Super
Hornet project, and the modications
tested on the model have not been
flown on the demonstrator. In some
respects, the model changes are more
extensive than those seen on the air-
craft tested in 2013, which indicates it
might be part of an earlier efort.
The xture was used by the U.S. Na-
vys Hornet program ofce, PMA-265,
according to Boeing. It was apparently
delivered to the boneyardthe 309th
Aerospace Maintenance and Regen-
eration Group at Davis-Monthan AFB,
southeast of Tucsonin May 2013.
Visible changes on the test specimen
include chevron-edged exhaust nozzles
and skin panels with serrated edges.
Chevron nozzles have been developed
and tested by both General Electric
and Pratt & Whitney as cheaper and
lighter alternatives to two-dimensional
variable-area exhausts, as used on the
F-22 Raptor. Serrated panel joints are
also used on the F-22, to manage the
efects of radar scattering where skin
gaps create electrical discontinuities,
and can be a low-maintenance alterna-
tive to the use of conductive sealants
or topcoats. Parts of the aircraft, in-
cluding the vertical stabilizer edges,
appear to have been treated with a
coating of radar-absorbent material.
The model details are further evi-
dence that Boeing (and McDonnell
Douglas before it) has pursued a dual-
track approach to stealth since the late
1980s. On the one hand, the company
has worked on highly stealthy designs,
aimed at very low signatures across
broad bandwidths and at all aspects.
Known demonstrators have included
the X-36, representing an agile, super-
sonic tailless conguration; the Bird of
Prey, which showcased very low signa-
tures in a wing-body shape, and Boe-
ings various unmanned combat air ve-
hicle designs. This work has paved the
way for Boeings leadership role in its
Long-Range Strike Bomber partner-
ship with Lockheed Martin (AW&ST
Nov. 4, 2013, p. 22) and, a government
source says, for the companys all-new
design for the Navys Unmanned Car-
rier-Launched Surveillance and Strike
program.
On the other hand, Boeing has
worked hard on reducing the RCS of
conventional ghter designs. The basic
Super Hornet incorporates stealth prin-
ciples such as edge alignmentac-
cess door and auxiliary inlet edges, for
instance, are aligned with the engine in-
lets. A researcher with EADS estimates
the nose-on RCS of a Super Hornet
could be one-tenth that of an F-16 with
a Have Glass RCS-reduction kit.
A senior retired Boeing engineer
told Aviation Week some years ago that
the company modied an F-15, during
the late 1980s or early 1990s, to reduce
its RCS. Its stealth characteristics, he
said, were close to those of the F-22
Raptor. In an interview at the Paris
air show in June 2007, Boeings then-
vice-president for advanced programs,
George Muellner, commented that the
company had developed a powerful
new technique for evaluating both the
aerodynamic and RCS characteristics
of aircraft congurations and external
stores, using a network of PCs to pro-
vide the necessary processing power.
Boeings stealth work has been led
since the 1980s by Alan Wiechman,
currently vice-president for special
technology integration in the Phan-
tom Works; he was hired away from
the Lockheed Skunk Works in 1981.
A biography on the Iowa State Uni-
versity website says Wiechman has
built a formidable team, capable of full-
spectrum, total vehicle design and pro-
duction capability. However, his name
occurs only three times in a search of
Boeings website, two of those being
mentions of outside awards. c
Chevron nozzles and serrated panel edges appear on
a Super Hornet stealth test specimen.
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Tony Osborne London
Print Preview
BAE Systems looks to 3-D printing
to reduce production costs
B
AE Systems has begun ight tri-
als of three-dimensional printed
metallic components on the
Panavia Tornado combat aircraft, as
the company explores the potential
benets of the method.
A one-off componenta bracket
made from printed stainless steel and
designed to carry a fixed thermal-
imaging camerahas been tted to a
U.K. Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 the
made parts to protect the aircraft on
the ground and during maintenance, in
a bid to reduce repair costs.
Items produced include protective
covers for Tornado cockpit radios,
support struts on the air-intake doors
and protective guards for power take-
of shafts. Some of these parts are now
in daily use with RAF Tornado squad-
rons in the U.K. and on deployment in
Afghanistan.
ture the products at whatever base
you want, providing you can get a ma-
chine there, which means you can also
start to support other platforms such
as ships and aircraft carriers, says
Mike Murray, the companys head of
Airframe Integration.
And if it is feasible to get machines
out on the front line, it also gives im-
proved capability where we would not
traditionally have any manufacturing
support, Murray adds.
Other trials have included ying a
number of ight-cleared 3-D-printed
non-metallic parts made out of mate-
rials such as ULTEM, a thermoplastic
already used widely in aerospace, and
Polyamide 12, a nylon-based plastic.
For the moment, the company is tak-
ing small steps. Engineers are current-
ly looking to 3-D printing to create an
in-cockpit stowage container for Tor-
nado crews night-vision goggles. The
containers could be produced using a
mix of printed and polymer materials.
BAE Systems engineers believe
larger-scale metallic components ca-
pable of standing up to the stress and
temperatures faced by combat and
commercial aircraft could be produced
via 3-D printing in less than a decade.
The company is already working close-
ly with British universities on a range
of printed materials.
In a recent trial in conjunction with
Cranfield University, engineers pro-
duced a 1.2-meter (3.93-ft.)-long 3-D
generic wing spar section from tita-
nium using the Wire and Arc Additive
Manufacture process. The piece took
37 hr. to produce, from the time the
digital model was created in the com-
puter to when the part was removed
from the printing system.
At Southampton University, engi-
neering students have already pro-
duced a radio-controlled aircraft pro-
duced entirely though the 3-D printing
method. The universitys Laser Sin-
tered Aircraft was built with just ve
snap-together components without
the use of conventional fasteners.
For engineers, it is a diferent way
of thinking. Three-dimensional print-
ing ofers the ability to produce a single
piece component without the need for
fasteners, says Bosley. c
BAE Systems is using 3-D printed
parts on its ight-test Panavia Tor-
nado, including a bracket (inset) to
hold a xed thermal-imaging camera.
TONY OSBORNE/AW&ST; INSET: BAE SYSTEMS
company uses for flight testing. The
bracket was produced in a fraction of
the time and cost that similar items
would have previously taken.
The traditional methods of produc-
ing such components, designing the
molds and building the tooling and
associated waste that goes with that,
is all eliminated through 3-D printing,
says Peter Bosley, head of design for
Tornado at BAE Systems. The time
and cost saving is already signicant.
BAE Systems has been experiment-
ing with diferent forms of 3-D printing
for the last 15 years, although much of
this work has focused on the use of
polymers for rapid prototyping and
materials development. But more re-
cently, the company has been using 3-D
printing to produce a range of ready-
The company says such parts now
cost less than 100 ($164) per piece to
manufacture, resulting in savings of
more than 300,000 ($492,990). Po-
tential savings are projected to be more
than 1.2 million between now and 2017.
The 3-D printing machines are in-
stalled at the companys facility at
RAF Marham, Norfolk, where the
RAF Tornado eet undergoes mainte-
nance. BAE Systems believes the pro-
cess could be used to good advantage
at other bases. Company executives
foresee air forces taking their own 3-D
printers with them in-theater, where
critical spares could be printed on an
as-needed basis.
You are suddenly not fixed in
terms of where you have to manufac-
ture these things. You can manufac-

Kerry Lynch Washington
Beechcraft Rebound
Pared down Beechcraft sees stability
under Textrons ownership
BUSINESS AVIATION
Graham Warwick Washington
Offshore Entrant
Five years after rst ight, Sikorskys
improved S-76D nally enters service
N
ew medium-sized commercial
helicopters have taken longer
than expected to arrive, but
pent-up demand is putting pressure
on manufacturers to complete certi-
cation of mission congurations and
deliver into multiple market segments
almost simultaneously.
Sikorsky handed the rst S-76Ds to
Bristow Group in December. The air-
craft are congured for ofshore oil-sup-
port services in the Gulf of Mexico, but
delivery of the rst VIP-congured heli-
W
hen Raytheon sold Beechcraft
for what its current CEO, Bill
Boisture, once called a star-
tling price of $3.3 billion in early 2007,
buyers Goldman Sachs and Onex Corp.
were banking on the continuation of the
then ourishing business jet and general
aviation market. They each put in $500
million of their own cash, but borrowed
additional funds for the acquisition. The
result was a company leveraged to the
hilt, and, when the downturn that pum-
meled the economy beginning in 2007
and impacted industry in 2008-09, its
fate was sealed, Boisture, who took the
helm of Beechcraft in 2009, said. You
simply had to do the math to know that
restructuring was needed.
Six years later, Beechcraft has reor-
ganized under Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection, pared down its employee
base and shuttered its business jet
production. And its asking price$1.4
billionis less than half of what it was
in 2007.
But the company has shed of much
of the debt that came with the Goldman
Sachs/Onex acquisition, and for the
rst time in a long time, Boisture says,
it has a prospective new owner commit-
ted to the general aviation market.
Cessna Aircraft parent Textron on
Dec. 26, 2013, announced it would ac-
quire Beechcraft by mid-2014, a move
that would bring two of the longest-run-
ning industry rivals in general aviation
(and the sectors most historic names)
together under a single owner. Beech-
crafts equity holders have signed of on
the agreement, which is subject to the
customary approvals.
Textron Chairman Scott Donnelly
has been interested in Beechcraft for a
long time. When it entered bankruptcy
in 2012, he acknowledged eyeing at least
parts of the company, and reiterated
this when rumors surfaced last fall that
Beechcraft was again for sale. We al-
ways felt it made a lot of sense, he says.
To Donnelly, Beechcraft is a per-
fect fit with Textrons existing avia-
tion holdings. Beechcrafts piston line
complements Cessnas, while its King
Air twin turboprop lls a gap between
Cessnas single-turboprop Caravan
and jet products.
The acquisition would provide Tex-
tron with a King Air twin-turboprop
family that has experienced signifi-
cant growth this year. But it also will
provide a support network that, when
combined with Cessnas, will be an ex-
tensive global support provider. Per-
haps most important, the acquisition
will bring with it an installed base of
close to 36,000 Hawker and Beechcraft
aircraft that must be serviced.
Textron is even buying the Pre-
mier and Hawker 4000 jet lines that
Beechcraft had been shopping since it
emerged from Chapter 11 a year ago.
A buyer or buyers were lined up for
those programs, but Textron request-
ed those lines be a part of the deal. We
wanted to provide consistent support
to all our customers, including the
Hawker 4000 and Premier, Donnelly
says. He acknowledges that the num-
bers of those aircraft are smaller, but
rather than parcel out those programs,
It was more important for us to unite
the customer support.
While Textron talks of the fit be-
tween the Beechcraft and Cessna
product lines, it does not mean Tex-
tron is intent on creating a large
Cessna. Nor does it mean the end of
Beechcraft. Donnelly praises both the
Hawker and Beechcraft brands as
huge values and a signicant part of
what Textron is acquiring.
Beechcraft is one of the most pow-
erful aviation brands in the world,
Boisture says, adding that the Hawk-
er brand is similarly important. The
base is a very valuable asset.
copter is imminent. Emergency medical
service (EMS) and search-and-rescue
(SAR) variants will follow this year.
AgustaWestland planned to deliver
the rst AW189 around the turn of the
year, also to Bristow Group, while Eu-
rocopter is expecting delayed certica-
tion of its EC175 early in the year, with
deliveries to ofshore operators includ-
ing Bristow to begin in the second half.
Bell Helicopter will y its Model 525 this
year, for entry into service in 2015.
The improved S-76D has more-
powerful Pratt & Whitney Canada
PW210S turboshafts and a Thales in-
tegrated ight deck, four-axis autopi-
lot, active vibration control, composite
main rotor blades and an optional ro-
tor ice-protection system.
Since receiving delayed FAA certi-
cation of the baseline S-76D in Octo-
ber 2012, Sikorsky has been working
to certify mission kits for the latest
version of its popular intermediate
twin helicopter. The 12-passenger of-
shore conguration is the rst to be
approved and delivered.
There is almost as much work in
certifying the kits and options as in
the base aircraft, says Carey Bond,
president of commercial arm Sikor-
sky Global Helicopters. We were suc-
cessful out of the gate in selling into all
four market segmentsofshore, VIP,
heavy SAR and EMSwhich meant

a huge amount of certication work.
In addition, Sikorsky has grown the
capability of the S-76D beyond the
baseline certication, increasing gross
weight to 11,875 lb. and expanding the
hot and cold operating temperature
range. The original S-76 was not a
strong performer in the Middle East
because of its installed power. Now we
have that in spades, he adds.
Demand from multiple markets re-
sulted in mission-kit certication tasks
becoming intermixed, Bond says. We
had not anticipated EMS sales, and we
thought the market would be for light
SAR, not heavy. Certication tests on
the VIP conguration were completed
in late 2013, the SAR variant is in ight
test for delivery to Japan by mid second-
quarter, and delivery of the EMS con-
guration is planned for August 2014.
Expanding the capability includes
extending the S-76Ds cold-weather
operating temperature down to -20F,
with a goal of -40F, and increasing hot-
day density altitude to 10,000 ft., with
a goal of 15,000 ft. Software updates for
the Thales cockpit are next, Bond notes.
Compared with the previous S-
76C++ model, the S-76D is 15 kt. faster
at 171 kt. in straight and level ight, he
says. The D is 5% more fuel efcient
than the C++ and the gross-weight in-
crease helps ofset increased weight
from new equipment such as crash-
attenuating stroking seats.
With a backlog exceeding $700 mil-
lion, Sikorsky had delivered almost
30 green aircraft into completion by
year-end and inducted the 51st cabin
manufactured by Aero Vodochody in
the Czech Republicon to the final-
assembly line at Coatesville, Pa. We
are in full-rate production, Bond says. c
ters and Lycoming engines are part of
Textrons domain. It also will have a
dominant position in general aviation
manufacturing, at least in terms of unit
production. It is a very competitive
marketplace, Donnelly says. The ac-
quisition is great for our customers. It
really broadens our product lines.
Boisture, noting the increased glo-
balization of the market, says compa-
nies now must be of some scale, and
the acquisition will enhance Textrons
status. Thats the strategic meaning
of this transaction, he says.
It also keeps Beechcraft in U.S.
hands. Boisture notes that not only
does it represent a commitment to U.S.
manufacturing, this move by Textron
is a major commitment to Wichita.
The acquisition provides Textron
more depth in the defense and special
mission market, where Beechcraft has
a well-established infrastructure. Tex-
tron is moving to further tap into that
market with its new Textron AirLand
twin jet, the Scorpion. It is a very dif-
ferent product from Beechcrafts tur-
boprop aircraft, which are in military
trainer and special mission uses, but
Donnelly sees a potential customer
channel. . . . There are synergies.
Analysts have viewed the acquisi-
tion favorably. Leading up to the an-
nouncement, RBC Capital Markets
reported, clearly investors are indi-
cating that they view this as a good
deal. Textron . . . has the capacity to
do a deal of this size. The remaining
Beechcraft business is a solid an-
nuity franchise that should comple-
ment what Cessna has. J.P.Morgan
had called the purchase a good t for
Textron, and said: [W]e would expect
bumps along the way . . . [but] there is
still more upside if this all works out.
Textron is gaining a company that
is expected to generate $1.8 billion this
year, has experienced a 47% increase in
deliveries through the rst three-quar-
ters of 2013, and has achieved its high-
est book rates in the past three years.
Boisture sees Beechcraft beneting
from having a home where it will re-
ceive adequate nancial backing. For
the rst time in well over a decade, the
company will enjoy a strong stable par-
ent committed to general aviation. c
From a financial reporting stand-
point, Cessna and Beechcraft likely
would be combined under a single
structure, says Textron spokesman
David Sylvestre. But from a market-
ing and operational standpoint, the
two entities likely will remain sepa-
rate with their own identities, Sylves-
tre says. He adds that, at this point, he
does not see changes in the top leader-
ship of Cessna and Beechcraft, noting
that both are such large operations
they each need strong leadership.
However, layofs are probable. Tex-
tron sees about $65 million in cost
overlaps and other synergies between
the companies and up to $85 million
over three years.
Transition teams are being formed
to determine how best to fold Beech-
craft into Textron. Boisture says he,
Cessna CEO Scott Ernest and Don-
nelly likely will meet monthly leading
up to the completion of the acquisition.
Donnelly does not anticipate any
major moves to sell off facilities or
other assets, saying Beechcraft has
already downsized and restructured
signicantly in recent years.
Textron, however, is clear about hav-
ing no desire to resume production of
the Beechcraft jet lines. Donnelly notes
that, with the Hawker jet lines closed,
it provides an opportunity for exist-
ing Beechcraft customers to opt for
Cessnas Citation line.
Once complete, Textron will have
one of the broadest ranges of aviation
products in the industry; Bell helicop-
Textron broadens its base with the acquisition
of Beechcrafts King Air (above) commercial
and special mission businesses.
B
E
E
C
H
C
R
A
F
T

C
O
R
P
.

I
n 1955, the year test pilot Alvin Tex Johnston famous-
ly rolled the pioneering Dash 80 707 prototype over Se-
attle, Boeing machinists won the right to a pension plan.
With Boeings star on the rise as the
undisputed leader of the new commer-
cial jet age, the then-20-year-old branch
of the machinists union was determined
to guarantee that its members reaped
the fruits of that success well into their
retirement. Having secured a pension
and a score of other benefits for its
members since it was formed in 1935,
the International Association of Ma-
chinists (IAM) District 751 went on to
become a powerful force within Boeing.
However, while private pensions
like the Boeing plan were typical of
the great gains made by the U.S. labor
movement after World War II, they
became increasingly onerous to the
companies that provided them. Un-
happy conuences were taking place.
As more retirees and dependents be-
came eligible for pensions, so grew
each plans total liabilitythe amount
that needed to be added to the assets to
fund additional benets into the future.
On top of escalating health-care
obligations, the soaring pension costs
became too much for many U.S. compa-
nies. In 2005, when the irksome pension
plan was again at the heart of a machin-
ists dispute that caused a 28-day shut-
down, it was estimated that an increase
of $6 per month per year of employment
would require Boeing to make a contri-
bution of around $200 million. This was
when there were 16,500 machinists in
the Puget Sound area of Washington
state, or just under half the number of
members represented today.
Small wonder, then, that the tradi-
tional pension plan has become the
focus of many of the disputes between
Boeing and the machinists in recent
years. These industrial conicts have
also become increasingly frequent,
costly and acrimonious. From 1948,
when IAM members staged a 140-day
strike, to 2008, when they laid down
their tools for more than two months,
the union has prompted work stoppag-
Guy Norris Los Angeles
Tough Love
Boeing tight-lipped on composite site plans as
razor-slim vote secures 777X work at Everett
AIR TRANSPORT
while preserving jobs and our indus-
trial base here in the region.
In return for guaranteeing assem-
bly work on the 777Xand its new,
all-composite wingremained in the
Puget Sound area, Boeing sought an
extended contract that at its core in-
cluded the eventual elimination of
the dened-benet pension plan. In
its place, all workers would pay into
defined-contribution plans such as
401(k)s. These plans, in which workers
contribute to their own accounts, often
with matching input from the employer,
are preferred by companies because
they eliminate long-term liabilities and
are cheaper.
However, fol l owing the IAMs
Nov. 13, 2013, decisive no vote on the
ofer, which was designed to extend the
workers contract from 2016 to 2024,
Boeing proclaimed it would solicit
bids to build the 777X elsewhere. Be-
yond Washington, the announcement
triggered a massive response from 21
other work-hungry states around the
U.S., as well as from Japan, which put
forward a proposal to make the 777X
wing (AW&ST Dec. 23, 2013, p. 40). As
the bids came in, Boeing profered an
11th-hour improved best and final
counterproposal that was rejected
Dec. 13 by the union leadership. On
Dec. 21, in response to calls from some
of the membership within District 751,
the unions national leaders overruled
the leadership of the local branch and
BOEING
Boeing will expand its existing
Everett site for assembling the
777X, the -9X version of which will
be approximately 8-ft. longer than
the current 777-300ER.
es that total 405 days. However, while
the rst four events spanned 41 years,
the last three strikes caused 154 lost
days of production over just 13 years.
The last strikein 2008 ran 57 days
and was estimated to have cost Boeing
around $100 million a day.
Since then, fueled in part by dis-
satisfaction over the large volume of
manufacturing outsourced on the 787,
the fractious relationship between the
company and the increasingly militant
union has been an open secret. The de-
velopment of the 777X, Boeings next
major new, long-range undertaking,
therefore, gave the company a rare op-
portunity to leverage new agreements
with the machinists that, according to
Boeing Commercial Airplanes Presi-
dent and CEO Ray Conner, would cre-
ate a competitive structure to ensure
that we continue market-leading pay,
health-care and retirement benefits

scheduled a clifhanger vote for Jan. 3.
With so much at stake, the key ques-
tion on the minds of the 24,000 union
members who cast a vote was whether
Boeing was blufng about its threat to
base the 777X assembly line away from
Everett, the home of the companys
widebody production. In the event, a
very slim majorityjust 51%voted
to accept the new deal, indicating they
believed the danger was real. Boeing
is equally adamant that its search for
alternate locations was in earnest.
Commenting to Aviation Week after
the decision, the company states: Our
plan was to make a nal 777X decision
early this year. But obviously, being able
to end the site-selection process sooner
than later is something we are pleased
about.
Beyond the baseline contract exten-
sion, the ofer includes a 4% general
wage increase over eight years, plus
cost-of-living allowances. Members
will also receive a $10,000 signing
bonus with immediate efect and an-
other $5,000 bonus in 2020. Pension-
plan accruals will end in 2016 and be
replaced with a dened-contribution
savings retirement plan. However
the contract also retains the current
401(k) mechanism and increases the
company match to 6%a 2% boostas
well as maintaining the system of wage
progression known as zoom. Under
this, new hires can move to the top of
their grades pay scale after six years.
State political leaders, who in No-
vember approved up to $8.7 billion
in tax breaks for Boeing in return for
building the 777X aircraft at or close
to its traditional locations, have also
expressed approval at the outcome of
the vote. Now that the state and union
have delivered, it is time for Boeing to
hold up its end of the bargain, says
Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.). Wash-
ington has shown that we stand behind
a strong aerospace industry. Boeing
should make the same commitment to
our state.
Despite the evident split the 777X
site debate caused between the national
union and leaders of District 751, as well
as the overall weakening of the unions
bargaining position resulting from the
vote, the outcome was also hailed as a
victory for IAM members. In mate-
rials, technology and manufacturing
skills required, the 777X represents a
quantum leap in aviation history, union
President Tom Bufenbarger said in a
written statement. IAM members have
built Boeing aircraft in Puget Sound for
more than 60 years. This agreement as-
sures theyll continue building them for
decades to come.
With the success of the new con-
tract vote, Boeing expects to start con-
struction this November on the new
1.1-million-sq.-ft. wing manufacturing
site, at a yet-to-be-announced location
in the Puget Sound area. The site is
expected to require up to $4 billion in
new investment and to employ up to
3,000, but beyond that Boeing reveals
little else. We are looking at all op-
tions across Puget Sound in regards to
where the wing facility will be located.
But right now, we arent disclosing the
factors or criteria. There is no timeline
on making that decision.
Expansion at the current Everett site
to encompass the 777X nal assembly
line is also anticipated. The original
green-field specification called for a
3.1-million-sq.-ft. facility, at a cost of $4-6
billion, that would house fuselage and
nal assembly work. However, Boeing
has yet to provide details of the cost or
space required for the 777X now that
it has opted to retain the work at the
present site. Production of major parts
is due to start in mid-2016, with nal as-
sembly beginning in 2017. First ight of
the 777-9X is expected in 2018, with rst
delivery targeted for 2020. c
W
hile western turboprop air-
liner makers edge cautiously
toward new designs, India is
accelerating long-anticipated plans to
develop a regional transport aircraft
that could help launch the next genera-
tion of large turboprop engines.
State-owned Hindustan Aeronau-
tics Ltd. (HAL) has invited engine
makers worldwide to offer data on
their engines and integrated propul-
sion systems (IPS) for a 70-100-seat
transport. The request for information
(RFI) covers turbofan and turboprop
options, but the thrust requirement
called for is viewed by powerplant
makers as the rst signicant poten-
tial launch window for a new, fuel-ef-
cient family of propeller engines. The
same engines could also power future
designs under study by established
Jay Menon New Delhi and Guy Norris Los Angeles
Eastern Promise
Engine makers look for new turboprop opening
as India seeks regional aircraft proposals
turboprop manufacturers ATR and
Bombardier.
General Electric, Pratt & Whitney
Canada and Snecma have all begun
new large turboprop projects in an-
ticipation of the development of next-
generation airliners to succeed the
mainstream ATR 42/72 and Bombar-
dier Dash 8 models. However, all the
engine manufacturers projects remain
in preparation mode pending the rm
launch of a new airframe program.
Indias regional aircraft plan has
been progressing slowly since it
emerged in 2008, but it received a
boost last July when the government
gave the go-ahead to the long-delayed
strategic project for the development
of a broad-ranging civilian aircraft
program. The plan focuses initially on
the 70-100-seat range, with design and

development expected to cost at least
43.55 billion rupees ($700 million) and
series production an additional 32 bil-
lion rupees.
HAL has completed preliminary
work and, based on the initial concept
and feasibility studies, the government
has proposed a special-purpose vehicle
to help develop the program, with HAL
and National Aerospace Laboratories
as the lead agencies. While the feasi-
bility study has been carried out earlier
to arrive at an aircraft conguration,
save a substantial amount of fuel. It
will also have space to carry 1,000 kilos
[2,425 lb.] of cargo, says G. Madhavan
Nair, chairman of the high-powered
committee overseeing the project.
Many of the engine manufacturers
came and talked to us, he adds.
Leading contenders include GE,
which is studying a new large turboprop
based on the GE38 turboshaft current-
ly in development for the U.S. Marine
Corps Sikorsky CH-53K heavy-lift heli-
copter. In its turboshaft form, the GE38
AIR TRANSPORT
as Bombardiers Q400X study and
growth versions of the ATR 72, P&WC
also has been tracking regional projects
in China, Russia and India. Assuming
the Indian program launches first,
P&WC says initial ground tests will be-
gin within 18 months of rm go-ahead,
with rst ight in 30 months and entry-
into-service in 3.5 years.
Safran group engine-maker Snec-
ma is similarly well into studies of
large turboprops in the 5,000-shp
class. According to Snecma CEO
Pierre Fabre, pressure to lower fuel
consumption [by 20-30%] should also
reinvigorate the turboprop segment
of this market. We are considering
diferent turboprop concepts for an
engine that would provide a consid-
erable reduction in fuel consumption.
As with GE and P&WC, the lack of a
rm application has prevented a for-
mal launch, although as early as 2012
the efort was far enough along to be
assigned its own team. The provision-
al timetable for the concept engine,
which combines Snecma turbine de-
sign know-how with compressor tech-
nology developed by sister company,
Turbomeca, calls for entry-into-ser-
vice in the 2018-20 timeframe.
The new aircraft has been proposed
in anticipation of a boom in the Indian
regional civil aviation market within a
decade. Air travel in the country has
been growing at a rapid rate, and fore-
casts indicate the trend will continue.
In 2000, India had only 225 commercial
aircraft, but boosted 735 by 2010. Cur-
rently, 1,187 civil aircraft are registered
to scheduled and non-scheduled opera-
tors, according to aviation regulator
Directorate-General of Civil Aviation.
India is the ninth-largest aviation mar-
ket, handling 121 million domestic and
41 million international passengers an-
nually. The country is touted to become
the third-largest civil aviation market
by 2020 and because large parts of the
country are still unconnected by air,
there are prospects for stronger growth
in the near future.
The civil aviation business in India
indicates emerging requirements for
19-, 30-, 50- and 70-seat aircraft as
the traffic builds on regional routes.
[HAL] has a strategy to address
these requirements, says Chairman
RK Tyagi. According to the consulting
agency AT Kearney, Indias regional
aircraft eet will rise to 261 by 2025
from 55 in 2011 at a compound annual
growth rate of 12-13%. c
NATIONAL AEROSPACE LABORATORIES CONCEPT
it is envisaged that this information
(from the RFI) will be important to
consider [a] family of aircraft requir-
ing a specied range of power, which
can now be tailored to the engines that
will be down-selected, according to a
statement from HAL.
The RFI requirement is for 10 IPS
sets for prototype development and
an anticipated production demand for
around 1,000 engines. However, long-
term plans call for supplying engines
at a rate of 80 sets per year during a
20-year production run, which means
the balance of engines would be pro-
vided via transfer of technology to In-
dian companies. HAL says prototype
engines should be provided around
2017, with production units expect-
ed from 2019 onward. Emphasis is
made that all information is required
not only for the engine, but also for
an IPS that includes . . . optimum na-
celles with powerplant (turbofan or
turboprop, including propellers) and
associated systems, including features
for [a] thrust-reversing mechanism,
states the HAL-issued RFI.
The aircraft will y at a speed of
700 kilometers per hour. This is a low-
er speed than other aircraft, but will
provides over 50% more power than the
T64, which powers the CH-53, while
burning 18% less fuel. Last December,
GE completed a 300-hr. cyclic durabil-
ity test to clear the way for the start of
ight testing of the CH-53K later this
year. The timetable for test and devel-
opment of the military engine, which is
set to enter squadron service in 2019,
would also dovetail with the schedule
for Indias regional transport. In its
commercial form, the GE study engine
is dubbed the CPX38.
Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC),
which currently dominates the large
civil turboprop market with the
PW100/150, is also embarked on devel-
opment of a new centerline engine
capable of up to 8,000 shpthe NGRT
(Next Generation Regional Turboprop).
Phase 1 of development work on NGRT
was completed in 2013 and included full
evaluation of a new compressor at en-
gine maker MTUs facilities to verify
performance and load limits. Additional
work this year will focus on nalizing
design requirements for aspects such
as electrical load offtake, component
sizing, engine control systems and
bleed air amounts for air management.
While keeping in mind prospects such
Indias regional transport concept
includes high-aspect ratio wings,
winglets and a T-tail.

Graham Warwick Washington
Who Pays, Wins
With economic boom potential, FAAs chosen UAS test
sites must rst nd funds to begin operations
N
ow that the FAA has selected the
six test sites that will conduct
research to integrate civil un-
manned aircraft systems into national
airspace, the question being asked is:
How will they pay for themselves? Any
way they can is the answer, as there
is no FAA budget to support the sites.
The test sites plan to raise fund-
ing from state sources, academic and
industry partners, by competing for
research contracts from federal agen-
cies and charging for use of their test
rangesall in pursuit of the signicant
economic benet forecast to come as
the civil UAS market grows.
Establishing the test sites is a key
step in a series of milestones set by
Congress in the 2012 FAA reautho-
rization legislation, which
calls for the agen-
cy to enable safe
integration of
unmanned air-
craft into civil airspace by the end of
September 2015.
Announcing on Dec. 30 the results of
a 10-month selection process involving
25 proposals from 24 states, the FAA
said it plans to have at least one of the
sites operational within 180 days. The
operators selected are based in Alas-
ka, Nevada, New York, North Dakota,
Texas and Virginia, but several involve
more than one state.
The chosen operators are the Univer-
sity of Alaska, leading a team including
Hawaii and Oregon; the state of Ne-
vada; New Yorks Grifss International
Airport, teamed with Massachusetts;
North Dakota Chamber of Commerce;
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
(Tamucc); and Virginia Tech, teamed
with New Jersey and Maryland. The
sites were selected to provide geo-
graphic and climatic diversity.
We are all asking ourselves exactly
where the revenue is going to come from
to make all this happen, says Louis
Cifuentes, vice president for research
and commercialization at Tamucc. Ba-
sically, we will go into every nook and
cranny to nd diferent agency solicita-
tions for research. Recovering range
costs, building up academic programs
and attracting start-up business are oth-
er potential revenue streams, he says.
The second question being asked is
what research the sites will perform,
as the FAA will not dictate their R&D
agendas. Each site will have a unique re-
search focus, but details of the planned
activities are still vague. We are now
working with the FAA to provide a
proper activity plan for 2014, says
Andrea Bianchi, program manager for
the Northeast UAS Airspace Integra-
tion Research Alliance, which
will help Grifss International Airport
manage test ranges in New York and
Massachusetts.
The FAAs role is to help the test-
range operators set up a safe testing en-
vironment and to provide oversight that
ensures the sites operate under strict
safety standards, the agency says.
The selected operators now have to
apply for a Certicate of Authorization
[COA]. Once thats granted, they can
begin their research. The site opera-
tors and users will provide funding for
their research activities. Congress did
not appropriate federal funds for test
site operations.
Led by the University of Alaska Fair-
banks, the Pan-Pacic UAS Test Range
Complex team will operate 13 ranges
six in Alaska, four in Oregon and three
in Hawaiiin seven climate zones pro-
viding overland, overwater, coastal, arc-
tic, tropical and arid test environments.
The research focus will be on develop-
ing standards for UAS categories, state
monitoring and navigation, and safety
standards for UAS operations.
With an initial $5.5 million in state
funding, the Nevada Institute for Au-
tonomous Systems plans to work on
UAS standards and operations as well
as operator standards and certication
requirements. Test resources include
airfields and special-use airspace in
sparsely populated areas.
Griffiss, in central New York, will
focus on ground and airborne
sense-and-avoid re-
AIR TRANSPORT
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi has performed unmanned-aircraft re-
search missions over the Gulf of Mexico, which will be one of its test ranges.
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search and integrating UAS into busy
airspace, says Bianchi. Backed by the
CenterState CEO and MassDevelop-
ment economic development agencies,
talks are underway to secure state
funding to begin operations, she says.
With an initial $5 million in state
funding, North Dakota has established
the Northern Plains Unmanned Sys-
tems Authority to operate its temper-
ate-climate test site, which will focus
on high-reliability data link technology,
human-factors research and developing
essential airworthiness data.
Texas A&Ms Lone Star UAS Cen-
ter will operate a state-wide set of
ranges focused on developing proto-
cols and procedures for airworthiness
testing of UAS. The team includes the
University of Texas at Arlington Re-
search Institute and the Southwest
Research Institute in San Antonio.
Virginia Tech leads the Mid-Atlantic
Partnership, which includes Rutgers
University and has test ranges in Virgin-
ia and New Jersey; it will focus on UAS
failure-mode testing. The University of
Maryland plans to join the team. c

John Croft Washington
Ramp Rash
Honeywell eyes automobile radar
to address aircraft ramp collision problems
H
oneywell has successfully tested
a radar technology for low-cost
solutions to the costly problem
of ramp rash, the collisions between
aircraft wings or other parts with other
aircraft, vehicles or obstacles.
While the avionics company has not
publicly divulged any new products,
details of ground anti-collision systems
have emerged in several recent patent
applications and a 2012 request the
company made to the Federal Commu-
nications Commission (FCC) to clarify
or change its rules on the use of unli-
censed radar in the 76-77-GHz band.
The FCC allows automobile manufac-
turers to use the band for front-, side-
and rear-facing eld disturbance moni-
tors, or millimeter-wave radars, for
cars, but the technology is prohibited
for use by aircraft on the ground or in
the air. The FCC also allows the tech-
nology to be used for stationary foreign
object debris (FOD) radars at airports.
In a December 2012 letter to the FCC,
Honeywell requested that the agency
review the rules to allow aircraft on
the ground to use the technology. This
followed on-aircraft tests made possible
by an experimental license from the
FCC, tests the company says conrmed
the feasibility of using automobile-type
radar co-located with wingtip naviga-
tion lights to detect obstructions and
intruders. Honeywell demonstrated
the project to airframers and airlines,
which, given the magnitude of wingtip
collision problems, are very interested
in the technology, depending on the
price. For Honeywell, the possibility of
using a mass-produced sensor would
help lower the costs for such a system
compared to other types of radar, in-
cluding pulsed and phased array.
Wingtip collisions are a priority is-
sue because of the enormous impact
they have on air trafc operations and
the frequency of such occurrences,
Honeywell wrote in the FCC letter.
The Flight Safety Foundation in 2012
quantied the extent of the problem:
Ramp accidents occur at a rate of one
per 1,000 departures and cost the glob-
al airline industry $10 billion annually,
including direct costs from damage as
well as indirect costs from aircraft be-
ing out of service, public image prob-
lems and incident investigations.
The most recent high-prole ramp
accident involved a British Airways
747-400 that ripped through the second
story of a brick building at South Afri-
cas Tambo Airport last Dec. 22. Other
recent events include an Air France
A380 clipping the tail of a Comair Bom-
bardier CRJ700 at New Yorks John F.
Kennedy International Airport in April
2011; an Airbus A380 demonstrator
striking a building while trying to park
at the Paris air show in June 2011; and
an Eva Air Boeing 747 freighters wing
hitting an American Eagle ERJ140 at
Chicago OHare International Airport
in May 2012.
Following the OHare accident, the
NTSB recommended that the FAA re-
quire manufacturers to install an anti-
collision aid such as a camera system
on all factory-built large aircraft and
other models where the wingtips are
not easily visible from the cockpit to
provide a cockpit indication that will
help pilots determine wingtip clearance
and path during taxi. The recommen-
dation noted that since 1993 the NTSB
had investigated 12 accidents that oc-
curred during taxi, when a large air-
planes wingtips collided with another
airplane or object on the taxiway.
The FAA responded that while a
camera system may provide a small
benet at very low speeds, the two-
dimensional image and limited field
of view make it unlikely that wingtip
cameras would provide a measurable
reduction in wingtip collision incidents
at normal taxi speeds. It also asserted
that the benets would not justify the
cost burden of an FAA mandate. The
NTSB, which had asked for a broader
look at technologies other than camera
systems, closed the recommendation
in July but with a status of Unaccept-
able Action.
Honeywells comprehensive approach
to solving the problem using radar is de-
tailed in part in several patent applica-
tions published Dec. 5, one by four en-
gineers, including the enhanced ground
proximity warning systems (EGPWS)
creator, Don Bateman; and another by
Honeywell Aerospaces senior chief en-
gineer for human factors, Ratan Khatwa,
and a second author. The wingtip protec-
tion system described in the FCC docu-
ments could be a simpler implementa-
tion of the system, however.
The Bateman patent describes an
airport surface collision avoidance sys-
tem that detects and tracks intruders,
evaluates and prioritizes threats to the
wing, tail, engine nacelles or other parts
of the aircraft; declares and determines
actions; and issues alerts to pilots or
ground personnel (tugs, baggage carts,
fuel trucks, wing walkers and others).
The alerts are transmitted via wireless
connection from antennas located in
the navigation light pods. The system
would help pilots steer clear of build-
ings and obstacles, including other
vehicles and aircraft, during all visual
conditions.
Detection is carried out using a
radar sensor placed in the existing
navigation light xtures in each wing-
AIR TRANSPORT
Along with causing physical dam-
age, ramp accidents such as the
A380s at the 2011 Paris air show
can be a public relations nightmare.
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tip and at the top of the vertical
stabilizer, although Honeywell
says passive optical or acoustic
sensors are also possible.
In the cockpit, the pilot would
potentially receive three types of
alerts or warning information:
visual, audible and tactile. The
visual alert would be displayed
on an electronic ight bag (EFB)
or cockpit display, perhaps show-
ing the aircraft wingtips outlined
or a highlight of the obstruction.
An aural alert could be a beeping
sound from the existing EGPWS
that increases in frequency as the
obstacle gets closer, changing into
a continuous tone for a warning,
or possibly a voice alert of Left
or Right to direct the pilots atten-
tion to an obstruction. The information
would also be sent via wireless trans-
mitter in the navigation light module
to alert ground crews to the threat, too.
The Khatwa patent relates more to
displaying such information, and in-
cludes description of a top-down im-
age of an aircraft on an EFB or ight
display, with visual range rings at se-
lectable values extending from both
wingtips. Bateman notes that the sen-
sor range will depend on time
available to detect an intruder,
evaluate and prioritize threats,
and to declare and determine
actions for the pilot or ground
crews to take.
One notional display would
show the primary targets (those
located between each wingtip
and the fuselage) as larger solid
circles, and secondary targets
(those outboard of the wingtip)
as hollow circles. The system
could also display the relative
height of the obstacle, to show
whether the aircraft wing or
other part could safely taxi over
or under it.
Honeywell tells the FCC in its
request that the prototype wing-
tip collision system would meet
all existing requirements for au-
tomobile radar and would be able
to share the band with FOD
radar. While the company continues to
work with the FCC on the request, it is
holding off on additional engineering
and human factors developmental tasks
pending the agencys approval to use the
spectrum for ground-based aircraft. c
Honeywell is testing a system
to show pilots distances from
obstructions, including vertical
clearance below or above them.
A
pushback collision between an Etihad Airways Airbus
A330-200 and Boeing 777-300 at Abu Dhabi in May 2012
reveals the complexities involved in solving the ramp damage
problem, and in its nal report on the incident, the United Arab
Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) focuses largely
on non-technical solutions.
The accident occurred at dusk when a tug driver backed the
A330 out of its parking stand, clipping the parked 777s left wingtip
with the A330s right winglet. Maintenance
crews were able to replace the A330 winglet,
limiting the delay to 3.3 hr., but the 777s
wingtips secondary structure (see image)
received signicant structural damage and
had to be replaced in a repair facility.
Complicating the non-standard push-
back was that the tug driver had to maneu-
ver the A330 so that, once its engines were
started, its jet blast would not blow over ve-
hicles on a boundary road. Ground surface
markings were not illuminated, had been
altered several times and were confus-
ing, the GCAA notes.
Assisting the driver was a headset man
connected by radio to the ight crew, but he was sitting in the tug,
not walking with the aircraft, and no wing walker was required
for the pushback, even though the co-pilots view of the right
winglet is blocked. The headset man and tug driver communicate
by hand signals only, and no pre-pushback brieng between the
two was required. The GCAA says the incident was not reported
for 10 hr., as no one involved knew who was responsible.
The reports 10 recommendations include development by
the airport and airline of prescriptive procedures for non-stan-
dard pushbacks, with ground crews demonstrating prociency
on a pushback simulator as part of the driver approval process. c
CASE STUDY
126
60 ft.
120 ft.
224
220
220
210
-5.0
+2.0
-4.0
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES GENERAL CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY

S
ix days ahead of the 2013 Dubai Air
Show, Emirates President Tim Clark
had something to talk about with one of
the airlines most important suppliers: He told
Airbus that Emirates would like to order more
A380s50 more, to be precise. Until that day, no
one at Airbus had any idea such an order might
be coming. It is the biggest order ever placed for
the slow-selling aircraft.
The only thing they knew was that I had always been
minded to take more, says Clark. They were hoping for
something like ve or eight additional aircraft. When we told
them what we wanted, you could tell there was some deep
breath-taking.
Breathtaking is certainly a word that comes to mind in
connection with Emirates. Launched in 1985 with one Airbus
A300 B4 and one Boeing 737, the Dubai-based carrier has
morphed into the worlds fourth-largest airline by revenue
passenger miles (2012), serving more than 120 destinations.
Capitalizing on the advantageous location of its home base
80% of the worlds population is within an 8-hr. ightthe
carrier, like Dubai itself, is on the rise, to the detriment of
incumbent airlines in Europe, North America and Asia.
And with its rise has come many billion dollars worth of
orders for jets from Airbus and Boeing. Emirates now accounts
for roughly half of the A380 orderbook. On the same day of its
huge A380 order, it also placed orders and commitments for
150 Boeing 777X jets, launching the program along with Qatar
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
Power
Broker
Emirates Tim Clark shored up
the A380 and helped launch the
777X. And that was just in one day.
Airways, Etihad Airways and Lufthansa. Such deep pockets
have given Emirates much say in the design of new airliners.
The 777X, for example, will feature General Electric GE9X
engines with a higher thrust specied by the airline. We have
had a lot of input, but we also buy a lot of airplanes, says Clark.
For his role in reshaping the competitive landscape in the
long-haul airline market and its outsize sway in aircraft de-
sign, Tim Clark is Aviation Weeks Person of the Year for 2013.
Clark has been the dominant executive at the airline for
many years, joining just before its launch and serving as pres-
ident since 2003. The London University-trained economist
likes to talk about the rise of low-cost carriers being a revo-
lutionary event. But on long-haul routes, it is Emirates and
its followers, Qatar and Etihad Airways, that are changing
the shape of air travel, among them ofering one-stop con-
PERSON OF THE YEAR
1984 1985 1986
Emirates is formally launched with Maurice Flanagan at the top. He has
$10 million and fve months to get the airline off the ground. Sheikh Ahmed bin Said
Al Makhtoum and Tim Clark join. On Oct. 25, EK600 takes off from Dubai to Karachi,
Emirates frst scheduled fight. The airline also fies to Mumbai and New Delhi.
Emirates adds routes to Amman, Jordan;
Colombo, Sri Lanka; Cairo; and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The airline posts its frst, and only, losses.
The Rise
of Emirates
RUPA HARIA/AW&ST
A team of 10 managers starts work on a
business plan for a new airline based in Dubai.

nections between most points on the globe. And according
to the Teal Group, Middle Eastern carriers now account for
one out of every three twin-aisle airliners on order.
But Emirates was not much more than an idea 28 years
ago. Dubais ruling Al Makhtoum family decided that the
emirate should have its own airline and provided $10 million
in start-up capital (plus two Boeing 727-200s a little later).
Management is adamant that this was the only time that the
airline received government support. Of course, the competi-
tion still complains that Emirates takes advantage of other
unfair benets such as low airport fees in Dubai (which are,
however, available to every airline ying there) or access to
U.S. and European export-credit nancing.
Clark, born and raised abroad as the son of a tanker ship
captain, became used to taking ights across the world at
an early age. Flying the Super Constellation from London to
Borneo was one of his favorite multiple-stop trips. While his
brother became a British Airways Boeing 747-400 captain,
Clark turned his passion for aviation into a profession on
the business side. He joined British Caledonian early in his
career, when the airline was in serious trouble. Friends who
had joined Gulf Air pushed him to come to the Middle East.
And Clark did. Born as an expat child, going abroad was no
problem, he says. I had it in me.
He spent 10 years at Gulf Air in Bahrain, which was then
the only airline in the Persian Gulf region that would have
been noticed internationally. Its Lockheed L-1011s were a
familiar sight at major airports in Europe and Asia. At Gulf
Air, Clark played roles in cost control and economics. I was
able to see everything in the company and I therefore learnt
a huge deal, he says of those formative years.
But the new project in nearby Dubai attracted him and a
group of around eight British airline executives. Clark was
in his mid-30s and ready for a new adventure. For all of us,
working at an airline was more of a hobby than a profession,
he recalls. We were all enthusiasts.
Dubai in the mid-1980s was nothing like it is today. The
city consisted more or less of only what is now the old town
district in Deira, near the creek. Iconic buildings for which
Dubai is famous today were not even in the planning stage.
The Burj Al-Arab hotel was started in 1994 and opened in
late 1999, as Dubai was becoming a destination for tourism
and trade was taking of.
The ground work for Emirates had been underway since
1978, when Maurice Flanagan, another British aviation execu-
tive and later Emirates vice chairman, moved to Dubai to run
Dnata, a general sales and ground-handling agent for foreign
airlines. The initial business plan for Emirates was drawn up
in 1984 by Flanagan and his teamClark joined a year later,
just ahead of the airlines launch. Looking back at his Emirates
career, he now says, I was at the right place at the right time.
When he joined the nascent carrier, he did what he liked
best at the time, going straight into route planning. Emirates
started with two aircraftan Airbus A300 B4 and a Boeing
737and later obtained two Boeing 727-200s that had been
operated by the Dubai air wing, and, in 1987, purchased its rst
new aircraft, an A310-300. The airline launched its rst route,
Dubai to Karachi, in late 1985, then started services to Mumbai
and New Delhi. Routes to London-Gatwick and Frankfurt were
added in 1987, and to Bangkok, Manila and Singapore in 1989.
Not until the early 1990s, however, did Clark begin to realize
that Emirates would have a chance to become as big as it is
today. I remember telling a friend in 1988 that the Berlin wall
would never come down. A year later it was gone. That was a
seminal moment for me, he says. If things were to continue to
unravel at the same speed, it would open up many opportuni-
ties for Emirates, he says. It is that awareness of global trends,
the big-picture vision, that has helped shape the airline, too. I
like to look at myself as a little bit of a globalist, Clark says.
But it was clear to him that the Emirates expansion as en-
visioned would not be possible with the aircraft technology
available. Its Airbus A300 B4s barely made it from Dubai to
London. So the lobbying for more capable aircraft began.
As Emirates continued to grow, so did Clark. Over time, it
became increasingly clear that he would succeed Flanagan as
the most senior operating executive. Emirates is chaired by
Sheikh Ahmed bin Said Al Makhtoum, a member of Dubais
ruling family, and the airline is only one partalbeit by far
the most important oneof the larger Emirates Group.
Clark sees Sheikh Ahmed two or three times a week and
makes no important decision without the sheikhs input. He
sees that short line of command as one of the major ad-
vantages at Emirates and, in fact, he enjoys having a board
Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST for a look at Emirates
eet development, or go to AviationWeek.com/emirates
Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST to see the
other leaders named Aviation Weeks Person of the Year,
or go to AviationWeek.com/person
Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST to watch a video
on Clarks inuence in the commercial air transport industry,
or go to AviationWeek.com/video
1987 1996 1989 1991 1992 1995
Emirates takes delivery
of its frst new aircraft,
an Airbus A310-300.
The carrier expands to Asia with fights
to Singapore, Manila and Bangkok.
In January, Emirates grounds its feet as the war
to liberate Kuwait begins. It gains its frst slot
at London Heathrow Airport. The airline orders
seven Boeing 777s.
Emirates becomes the frst airline to install
infight entertainment in every seat and
receives approval to fy to Paris.
After 10 years, Emirates is fying to 34 destinations. It
starts African services to Johannesburg and Nairobi and
opens a fight-training center in Dubai.
The airline introduces its frst
Boeing 777-200, followed by
six more a year later.

of directors, which it would not have, were it publicly listed.
Very often there is disagreement within boards; the non-
executive members may have their own agendas, and it can
take forever to just get approval to buy a single aircraft,
Clark says. I went to Sheikh Ahmed with my plan for 50
more A380s, and we had an immediate agreement.
Clarks in-depth airline and aircraft expertise combined with
his friendly outspokenness have made him into one of the most
inuential gures on the customer side of the industry. He
is never shy to express his opinion publicly, which does not
always make manufacturers happy. He is the most aggres-
sive [executive] toward the OEMs, says a senior manager at
a major supplier. When Airbus discovered cracks around the
rib feet in some areas of the A380 wing in the spring of 2012,
Clark detailed to the media what a huge burden the subse-
quent limitations and repair work meant for Emirates, dis-
counting concerns about possible brand damage.
[Airbus Chief Operating Ofcer Customers] John Leahy
has said there is no compensation, but we take a diferent
view, Clark told Aviation Week in a June 2012 interview. Air-
bus realized too late how complex the problem will be. The
issue has since been resolved, condentially.
Standing up and pointing out deciencies was for the
good of the people that have been involved with us, he says
in retrospect.
His achievements have not gone unnoticed. Clark is about
to receive the U.K.s second-highest order, being named a
Knight Commander; he will soon be Sir Tim Clark. But he
remains modest: In all the years that I have been doing this,
I never looked back. I just did it.
Industry leaders are praising him, too. As a Boeing cus-
tomer, he is astute, strategic and demanding, says Boeing
Vice Chairman Ray Conner. We could not be where we are
at today without Tims leadership and his ability to make the
absolute most out of our products capabilities.
Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier agrees. He knows everything
you could possibly know about an aircraft. Just give him the
key parameters of the plane and hell tell you immediately if,
in his view, its a go or a no-go, calculating ranges or empty-
weights in his head in a few seconds. And hell rapidly follow
that razor sharp analysis with recommendations on where
to push the design to make it a go.
Clarks boss, Ahmed, notes that Tim is one of those rare
executives who can see the big picture and also get down to
the technical details. What I most appreciate about Tim is
that he will tell it to you as it isgood or not so good.
Of late, Clark has been telling Airbus and Boeing what is
not so good. Along with Akbar Al Baker at Qatar Airways
PERSON OF THE YEAR
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2003 2004
Emirates orders
16 A330-200s
for $2 billion.
The carrier grows by
26%, carrying 3.7 million
passengers this year.
It takes a 43% stake in
SriLankan Airlines
The airlines frst
A330-200 is delivered.
Emirates places its frst Airbus A380 order (for seven aircraft) and buys
more 777-300s. The new Sheikh Rashid Terminal at Dubai International
Airport opens, increasing capacity to 22 million passengers, and Emirates
Skywards frequent-fier program is launched. The Dubai government
announces the construction of Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport.
Emirates orders 15 more
A380s, 25 Boeing 777s, eight
A340-600s and three A330s.
Tim Clark becomes president of Emirates. At the
Paris air show, Emirates places what was then the
biggest order in aviation history for 71 widebodies.
Emirates starts fying
to North America, intro-
ducing services to
New Yorks JFK Airport.
Emirates is the largest operator
of Boeing 777s and, together
with three other airlines, has
now launched the 777X.
and Air Lease Corp. (ALC) Chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy, he
led the drive for an Airbus A350-1000 engine upgrade, which
pushed the program back by two years. More recently, Clark
also made clear to Boeing and General Electric that the 777X
needed more thrust to meet Emirates payload and range re-
quirements. He won them over, even though other airlines have
voiced concern that Boeing is over-equipping the aircraft for
the needs of just one or two customers. Clark responds that
engines can always be de-rated if the additional thrust is not
needed, and such an arrangement will typically lead to lower
maintenance costs.
But, of course, even Airbus does not always do what Clark
wants. He has been arguing for years that a stretched A380-
900 should be built as soon as possible. But Emirates is prob-
ably the only airline that could conceivably ll such a gigantic
aircraft, and Clark likely will have to wait a lot longer for it.
And in spite of all the A380s troubles, he has been the aircrafts
biggest fan.
The A380 has provided an opportunity for Clark to pursue

another passion: aircraft interiors. He spent months creating
the product features of Emirates A380 eet, which was in-
tended to become iconic in the industry yet still prot-making.
Emirates A380s are the only ones that are ying with a real
bar in the back of the upper deck, which the airline says is
hugely popular. In spite of all the fuel-saving features elsewhere
in the cabin, the A380s also have a shower for rst-class pas-
sengers. At one press conference, Clark was the only one on
the panel who could explain the technical details of the shower
systemthe Airbus managers present listened silently.
While he does delegate, Clark is very hands-on where it mat-
ters most: network, cabin and aircraft performance. These are
an airlines core areas, determining where it can y, at what
revenue potential and cost burden, and how it will distinguish
itself from the competition. I have hardly ever seen another
airline CEO who would go into such great detail when it comes
to interiors, says an executive with a major supplier.
Clark himself jokes that some suppliers have been accus-
tomed to committees of wives of executive board members
selecting seats or inight entertain-
ment features.
While he is perceived as a trend-
setter on the manufacturing and
product side, his vision and knowl-
edge of emerging trafc ows have
been key to Emirates development.
The airline takes a diferent approach
than most in many regards: It is not a
member of a global alliance because
Clark and his colleagues see that as
detrimental to the carriers ambi-
tions. On the other hand, Emirates
has always been open to bilateral al-
liances, such as the recent tie-up with
Qantas that has shaken the alliance
world. And Emirates is not ruling
out equity investmentsit seriously
looked at buying a stake in Air Ber-
lin in 2011, but an involvement with
Sri Lankan Airlines was unsuccessful
and has not contributed to manage-
ment condence in getting closely in-
volved with operating other airlines.
Rather than going the traditional
way, Clark has opted for the unusual,
entering markets that others saw
only later. It is no coincidence that
Emirates rst route led to Karachi and not London nor that
Emirates is huge in Africa, providing vital air links for trad-
ers that use Dubai as a hub on their way to Asia (China, in
particular). While Emirates ultra-long-haul ying to the U.S.
West Coast, Latin America and Australia has garnered a lot
of public attention, most of its ights are limited to ranges
optimal in terms of aircraft efciency. The fundamentals of
the model have never really changed, he points out.
And the fundamentals are therefore rmly settled. But
with Clark, who is now 63, being such a dominant gure at
Emirates for such a long time, one inevitable question is be-
ginning to be discussed internally and with business part-
ners: Who will eventually succeed him? Clark sees one or
two internal candidates who could take his position even
now, and he makes clear that he does not plan to interfere
once he steps out. Im a believer in when you go, you go, he
says. But that discussion may well be prematureFlanagan
left the airline as vice chairman ofcially just last year, when
he was 84. c
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2013
Emirates orders
42 more 777s.
The airline orders
another 32 A380s
and 30 777-300ERs.
Sao Paulo becomes
Emirates frst Latin
American destination.
Emirates becomes the
worlds largest 777 operator.
Emirates places orders for
50 more 777-300ERs.
The carrier buys 10
Boeing 747-8Fs.
Emirates orders
150 777Xs and
50 more A380s.
Terminal 3 opens at
Dubai International
Airport.
BILL HOUGH

L
ori Garver does not inspire ambivalence. Few who worked
with her when she was deputy NASA administrator came
away from the experience with a neutral opinion.
To some, she is a ruthless powerhouse whose abrasive ego
has run roughshod over opponents, leaving in her wake lost
careers and hurt feelings as she trashed policy adversaries
among the U.S. space agencys civil servants and congres-
sional backers.
To others, she labored tirelessly to put the U.S. space pro-
gram on a more realistic footing, redirecting it from its role as
an overtasked, underfunded government pork barrel. In this
view, Garver has been key in moving NASA toward a true pub-
lic-private partnership where the government will only take
on pre-commercial projects before they generate any prot.
Garver draws inspiration from a line in the lm Money-
ball, where a baseball-team owner tells an innovative man-
ager that people go bat-shit crazy when you try to change.
I often cite Moneyball as a good description of why so
much of my blood might have been spilled over this transition
away from traditional ways of doing our business in space,
she e-mails, attaching an excerpt from one of her speeches
using the quote.
Like it or not, Garvers latest stint at NASA headquarters
at least started turning the ship of state onto a new course.
When she moved into the ninth-oor executive suite in 2009,
the agency was pursuing a Moon, Mars and Beyond strat-
egy of human exploration, following the recommendations
of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to separate
crew and cargo in the post-shuttle world with an in-house
Constellation program of vehicles based on shuttle, and
even Apollo, technology to save money.
Today, as Garver settles into her new job as general man-
ager of the Air Line Pilots Association, the Constellation pro-
gram is dead, and NASA is on track to rely entirely on the
private sector for human access to low Earth orbit. Launch
Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, where Apollo 11 set
of for the Moon, will be converted to accommodate com-
mercial launches by SpaceX. The private company founded
by Elon Musk already is delivering cargo to the International
Space Station (ISS) under a 12-ight, $1.6 billion Commercial
Resupply Services contract set up on Garvers watch.
SpaceX and other companies hope to add NASA astro-
nauts and private space travelers to their ight manifests,
using vehicles developed with partial funding under the com-
mercial crew development program that was initiated as part
of Garvers transition.
The rst person to cross swords with Garver this time
around was Michael Grifn, the George W. Bush administra-
tion NASA chief who kicked of the $500 million Commercial
Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) seed-money efort
to force the private sector to put some skin in the game on
spaceight developments. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp.
used COTS funds and their own money to develop the com-
mercial cargo vehicles now serving the ISS, and it was the
model for the ongoing commercial crew program. But Grif-
n, the Republican uber-engineer, clashed with Democratic
policy wonk Garver when she took over as the space-policy
lead on President Barack Obamas transition team, famously
telling her she was not technically qualied.
He wanted to speak to the most senior person focused
on space in the Obama administration, and I told him that
he was doing so, Garver says, citing the natural tension
between outgoing and incoming political appointees. We
worked through that, she says.
Grifn, who declined to comment for this article, left ofce
on Jan. 20, 2009, Inauguration Day, and Obama nominated
Garver to be deputy administrator. But his choice to be ad-
ministratorretired USAF Maj. Gen. Scott Grationdid not
pass muster with Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the
subcommittee that conrms candidates for the position. That
left Garver and her allies in the White House Ofce of Sci-
ence and Technology Policy (OSTP) with a fairly free rein to
decide what Obama space policy would be until an alternate
was named.
She brought an unusual skill set to the job, says space
historian John Logsdon, who taught Garver when she was
gaining her masters degree in space policy at George Wash-
ington University. Instead of rising through the ranks at the
agency itself, on a congressional committee or as an engineer,
she shifted between space-policy consulting jobs and policy
positions at NASA, after spending nine years heading the
National Space Society. In that role she often moved outside
Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
Garver turned space policy
in a new direction
Game Changer
Lori Garver stands next to Blue Origin founder Jef
Bezos, second from left, and his team members
Jef Ashby (far left) and Rob Meyerson (far right) in
front of the companys crew vehicle.
PERSON OF THE YEAR
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Michael Bruno Washington
Sequestration and Washington
gridlock wallop aviation, A&D on
purpose, but not by design
T
he truth about governing the U.S. is that while the
Founders never intended it to be easy, it is only as hard
as Americans choose to make it. And when they decide
to do it the hard way, it is easy for the unbelievable to occur.
Take sequestration, the annual, automatic cuts to federal
budget authority established by the 2011 Budget Control Act
(BCA) and its later amendments. When conceived and writ-
ten into law during the debt-ceiling crisis that summer, se-
questration was quickly embraced by both political parties as
something so disagreeable, so nightmarish, that Congress
would have to find a way to make sure the mindless cuts
never would take efect.
After all, sequestrations nearly across-the-board cuts to
non-entitlement programs was variously described as the
budgetary equivalent of playing fully loaded Russian roulette.
It was not so much that the government would be forced to
spend less, but how: automatically, incessantly, robotically
and equally, regardless of public priority or efect. Every pro-
gramand its constituents and congressional cheerleaders
would be afected and likely feel pain, so a grand bargain
of spending cuts and revenue generators that addressed
everything from taxes, Medicare and Social Security to the
Pentagon was clearly, nally the answer.
That was then, this is now. Even with the recently enacted
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, the so-called Ryan-Murray
deal in December, political bargains remain elusive and Con-
gress has been unable to agree to anything more than tem-
porarily softening cuts through scal 2015, in exchange for
more cuts later. Meanwhile, no single federal agency or con-
gressional committee has prepared actual budgets to meet
BCA spending capsalthough that could change in coming
months with the 2015 budget requestso the majority of
sequestrations efects loom as an afront to existing plans
for warghting, spaceight, air trafc control and every other
federal responsibility.
Pentagon leaders have said the national security strategy,
including the much-ballyhooed rebalancing of military forces
We the Process
the traditional aerospace com-
munity, working with people
like space-colonization activist
Gerard ONeill and others who
had been more interested in ad-
vancing a spacefaring civiliza-
tion than with staying ahead of
the rest of the world in space-
ight feats.
She also worked in presidential campaigns for John Kerry
and Hillary Clinton before joining the Obama campaign after
Clinton withdrew. One thing to think about is all the difer-
ent jobs she had, and how those translated into her attitude
toward the program, says Logsdon, who terms his former
graduate student a political animal from the get-go.
Despite Garvers political chopsand the popularity of
Administrator Charlie Bolden, an afable Marine general who
commanded the space shuttle mission that took Senator Nel-
son into orbit on a congressional ride in 1986the rollout of
the policy that emerged from the Obama White House was
botched. There were no briengs on Capitol Hill until the day
before it came out as part of the scal 2010 budget request,
and only a handful of PowerPoint charts by way of explanation
after its release. The rollout triggered uncertainty across the
U.S. space program and beyond (AW&ST Feb. 8, 2010, p. 20).
Behind the scenes, says Garver, the White House was di-
gesting the report of the human-spaceight panel chaired by
Norman Augustine, which said the Constellation Program was
not sustainable, even with an extra $3 billion a year (AW&ST
Sept. 14, 2009, p. 36). Discussions at very senior levels among
NASA, OSTP, the Ofce of Management and Budget (OMB),
and the Economic Council honed the shift from Constellation
to commercial that Garver was pushing, but not at the pace
she would have preferred today.
The way we were formulating the policy got into the budget
schedule, which is something I regret, Garver says. I would
have liked to have had a stand-
alone policy, separate from the
budget. We were working on
the national space policy at that
time; we got it out the next June,
but policiesif you can believe
ittake longer than budgets.
The way the change was in-
troduced set a lot of congres-
sional teeth on edge, and launched a nasty political ght that
left many on Capitol Hill feeling Garver and her White House
allies were using every trick in the book to avoid following
through on compromise legislation. That legislationsigned
by Obamacreated the heavy-lift Space Launch System
(SLS) as an in-house project her supporters dubbed the Sen-
ate launch system. Ultimately OMB chief Jacob Lewnow
Treasury Secretary under pressure from Nelson and Sen.
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) ordered the work to proceed
(AW&ST Sept. 19, 2011, p. 47). Despite nasty inghting, Garver
won respect from her opponents.
Lori has been a steadfast and ardent supporter of the
new vision for spaceight that includes increased reliance on
commercial capabilities, either in partnership or as an alter-
native to government capability, says Jef Bingham, a retired
Senate stafer who worked for Hutchison during the policy
battle. She has been unwavering in her commitment to that
cause, and that is a commitment in the long run shared by,
I think, the majority of folks in Congress who support space
activity. We crossed swords [on] timing and approach and
the means to implement that transition.
Now that she has left ofce, Garver is more open in her
opposition to SLS. She has publicly called for killing the big
rocket. And there is at least a chance shell be able to take
up that ght as a political appointee down the road, should
her mentor Hillary Clinton wind up back in the White House
as president. c
The way we were formulating
the policy got into
the budget schedule,
which is something I regret

PERSON OF THE YEAR
to Asia-Pacic, would have to change to meet sequestrations
long-term caps; and NASA and FAA insiders have acknowl-
edged that their respective interplanetary missions and ATM
upgrades would not be achievable.
At the same time, to meet spending caps, ofcials say they
have to take deeply unpopular steps. These include retiring
whole eets of Air Force aircraft like the A-10, special mission
reconnaissance and older aerial refueling tankers; cutting
the Navys carrier strike group surge capacity to one from
three; shrinking the Army and going to tiered readiness of
combat forces; and sacricing new and better Marine Corps
weapons to pay for 100% readiness today. Whats more, past
and present defense ofcials of both parties keep calling for
closing and consolidating domestic bases, as well as curbing
compensation.
Consequently, for better and worse, sequestration and the
accompanying gridlock in Washington, as shown by summer
furloughs and the October government shutdown, have had
the greatest impact on U.S. aviation, aerospace and defense
since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The articially created bud-
getary doomsday that was never supposed to happen now
appears practically set in stone.
I would have predicted we wouldnt be here, laments re-
tired Maj. Gen. Edward Bolton, Jr., formerly the Air Forces
top ofcer for hands-on budget-crafting and now assistant
FAA administrator for the NextGen ATM overhaul. You
know, Id have bet $1,000 this wouldnt have happened, he
said when sequestration rst took hold in April.
Like any historical turn of events, the roots of sequestra-
tion and todays gridlock are many and varied. They include a
constitutional republic whose three branches of U.S. govern-
ment check each other, and at least two have to agree for pro-
active steps to occur. Moreover, one of those branches, Con-
gress, essentially is a committee of as many 535 members,
split into procedurally opposite chambers where the majority
party in the House can ram through bills while a minority in
the Senatein fact, even just one senatorcan stop them
easily. Then there are the increasingly gerrymandered and
partisan congressional districts from which lawmakers are
elected, leading to increased polarization across Capitol Hill.
All of those impediments to political agreement can and
have been overcome before due to a desire to make a deal. But
arguably, what has made this time diferent has been a desire
to disagree, and a civil war within the Republican Party pit-
ting a wave of tea party newcomers against leaders and long-
time, established legislators. On the one side were defense
and foreign policy hawks who were accustomed to bringing
home federal dollars, while the other side entailedas one
congressional worker and former industry lobbyist told Avia-
tion Weekpolitical neophytes largely unfamiliar with their
district or states federal dependency but determined and
elected solely to rein-in Washingtons perceived excesses.
The A&D sector need look no further than Alabama to see
the mismatch in action. The state is one of its strongholds
when it comes to aviation, military and space agencies and
industry. On one hand is senior Sen. Richard Shelby, the top
Republican appropriator in the upper chamber. The ve-term
senator has a solid conservative voting record, includ-
ing opposing bailouts of U.S. auto companies during
the nancial crisis of 2008 and opposing majority Dem-
ocrats overall budget plans. But his ideology shows
nuances when it comes to his constituents.
Shelby, also the top minority member on the
spending subcommittee for NASA specically, has
helped secure programs like NASAs embattled Space
Launch System (SLS) to the point it has been mocked
as the Shelby Launch System by critics. In helping
to craft the Senate Appropriations Committees s-
cal 2014 appropriations bill for NASA last July, for
instance, he publicly praised it for providing funds
to keep the heavy-lift SLS and space station going.
True to his ideology, he voted against the bill in full
committee, citing its adherence to Senate Democrats
budget blueprint. But he did so knowing the bill would move
forward under Democratic rule assuming there was no li-
buster, which neither Shelby nor anyone else provided.
By comparison, Republican Rep. Mo Brooks was first
elected in the tea party wave of 2010 to represent Alabamas
fth district, home to Rocket City USA (Huntsville), with
NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center and the nearby Army
Aviation and Missile Command at the Redstone Arsenal.
While Brooks is quick to prioritize things that are produc-
tive, like science and exploration and NASA over welfare
and giveaway programs, it all comes after cutting federal
spending and doing what it takes to make that happen, in-
cluding enduring the consequences.
No question, a government shutdown hampers the econo-
my; no question, not raising the debt ceiling poses economic
risk, Brooks said during Octobers impasse. No one knows
for sure how much risk, because America has never crossed
this threshold before. Whatever it is, it can be overcome.
On purpose or by resignation, Washington remains both
focused on and sclerotic about spending. Historys judgment
waits, but others are not hesitating. Regrettably, warns one
of the sectors most inuential voices, Aerospace Industries
Association Chief Executive Marion Blakey, at some point
the excessive pursuit of scal austerity over and above all
other national objectives will come back to haunt us. c
State of the Union 2013: President Barack
Obama, Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staf
and the rest of government are united in
disagreement and unplanned consequences.
EPA/LANDOV FILE PHOTO

Michael Bruno Washington
Getting Personal
Pentagon acquisition czar is keeping a list
of names and checking up on them
B
eware U.S. defense program
managers and contracting of-
cials: Your name is on a list.
The Pentagons acquisition czar
keeps a chart in his ofce of defense
programs and their current and past
managers; it just one of the subtle,
albeit signicant, personnel-oriented
changes that are being pursued in
what is dawning as a new era of acqui-
sition reform. While the latest efort to
rein in the sprawling defense acquisi-
tion complex is almost
certain to have new law-
making and regulations
accompanying it, some
as early as this year, what
sets this initiative apart
so far is a growing focus
on individuals.
I had an occasion
recently to go back and
look at a program that
got in trouble and say,
Id like to see who was in
charge when they came
here and said this was all
OK, says Frank Kend-
all, undersecretary of
defense for acquisition,
technology and logistics.
There were people who came and
said this program is executable, Ive
got enough money, its going to work.
Id like to know who that was, be-
cause if it gets in big trouble, Id like to
be able to talk to that person, he adds.
The follow-up, not surprisingly, also
has the potential to be reported to
the armed services or agencies that
employ those program managers
meaning it could impact assignments,
promotions and careers. The account-
ability measure comes as Kendall also
is establishing professional qualifi-
cation boards to review managers
who will handle or be asked to take on
what we call key leadership positions.
Those positions include program man-
ager, deputy program manager, chief
engineer, chief contracting ofcer and
chief logistics support personnel, all of
whom can make or break the success
of a program on the government side.
Initially, the boards will be advi-
sory and just give their imprimatur to
someones promotion. But as we get it
more in place, I think its going to be-
come a necessity for people who want
to occupy those positions to be certi-
ed or qualied by the boards were
setting up, he says.
Kendall may be able to make a dif-
ference with these efforts because
he is expected to stay in office long
enough to have an effect. That is a
change, of sorts, for high-level Pen-
tagon policymaking positions, which
regularly churn ofceholders after a
few years. Kendallan attorney, U.S.
Army veteran, former Raytheon exec-
utive and previously an aerospace and
defense consultanthas been the No.
1 or 2 acquisition policy maker since
March 2010, and could stay in his cur-
rent Pentagon ofce or a higher posi-
tion for the remainder of the Obama
administration.
His changes are part of a larger re-
view efort to look at the accumulated
body of defense acquisition laws and
regulations which have piled up since
the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986,
to see if and where mandates can be
pruned or refined (AW&ST, Dec. 2,
2013, p. 28). Kendall has tasked An-
drew Hunter, his former chief of staf
and the director of the Joint Rapid
Acquisition Ofce, to lead the review
and suggest legislation to simplify
the existing body of law and replace it
with a more coherent and user-friendly
set of requirements. Assistant Secre-
tary of Defense for Acquisition Katrina
MacFarland is leading another group
collecting input from industry.
In late November, Kendalls office
also released an interim 5000.02 in-
struction manual for contracting of-
cials, replacing the last version issued
in late 2008. It now encompasses the
Pentagons Better Buying Power initia-
tives, such as should-cost estimates
and afordability analyses that Kend-
all and his predecessor, Ashton Carter,
implemented years ago. Notably, the
interim manual is sup-
posed to provide updated
examples for contracting
ofcers. We show people
multiple models of how
you can structure an
acquisition program de-
pending upon what the
product is, Kendall says.
Overall, the Pentagon
efort will work with law-
makers like House Armed
Services Committee Vice
Chairman Mac Thorn-
berry (R-Texas), who is
leading a related review
there. Thornberry is eyed
as the next full chairman
of that panel if Rep. Buck
McKeon (R-Calif.) decides against run-
ning for reelection in November 2014,
as is expected by some aides and others
on Capitol Hill.
In the end, the nal 5000.02 docu-
ment and any legislative proposals
are expected to reect Kendalls own
philosophy to acquisition oversight:
one that stresses accountability of and
authority by contracting ofcials, ver-
sus micromanagement and shadowing
of military branch acquisition by his
headquarters office. Im a manager
and I like having a clear chain of com-
mand, Kendall says. Oversights a
very vague term to me. Either youre
in charge or youre not.
Kendall says the service acquisition
executives, program executive ofcers
and program managers are respon-
sible and accountable for the programs
they manage; everyone else has a sup-
porting or advisory role. c
DEFENSE
Frank Kendall (center), is trying to
grow a sense of accountability in a
world used to revolving managers.
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Frank Morring, Jr.
A Year Around the Sun
I
n 2013 scientists announced that, for
the first time, a man-made object
had left the Solar System. Voyager
I actually entered interstellar space
in August 2012, but its operators had
to wait until a solar storm generated
enough data at the spacecraft to con-
SPACE
EUROPA
The illustration superimposed on this compos-
ite Voyager/Galileo image of Europa shows the
region over the Jovian moons South Pole where
scientists have detected water vapor plumes
erupting from the frozen surface. Spectral analy-
sis of the moons aurora using data from the
Hubble Space Telescope found emissions from
oxygen and hydrogen, the components of water,
in plumes believed to be 20 times higher than
Mount Everest. If verifed, the discovery would
confrm Europa as the latest potential environ-
ment for life in the Solar System.
ENCELADUS
Planetary scientists and astrobiologists have
been interested in Saturns moon Enceladus
since the Cassini probe discovered geysers of wa-
ter ice spewing from a series of surface fssures,
dubbed the Tiger Stripes. In this Cassini image
collected with the narrow-angle camera, refected
light from the huge planets surface joins with
sunlight to allow a view of the moon and the
back-lit plumes at the same time. The plumes
raise the possibility that, like Europa, Enceladus
may harbor life beneath its icy surface.
firm the historic moment. Voyager I
has been traveling away from the Sun
since 1977, and is more than 11.7 billion
mi. from Earth now. In 1996 it pointed
its camera back on the Solar System it
was leaving and collected this narrow-
angle image of Earth at a distance of
more than 4 billion mi. (below left).
The pale blue dot lies at right center
in the bright band of light produced
by aiming the probes camera close to
the Sun. Measuring only 0.12 pixel at
that range, it is barely visible (circle).
Voyager I and its twin flew a grand
tour through the outer planets that
has since been supplemented by much
closer views provided by newer, more
capable spacecraft. Here are some
spectacular images of places in the
Suns system from the year gone by. c
NASA/JPL
NASA, ESA, L. ROTH/SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE/UNIVERSITY OF
COLOGNE, GERMANY
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
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Atlanta shines at the center of this night shot of the southeastern U.S., taken by an astro-
naut on the International Space Station. Also visible are the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the
lower Atlantic Seaboard and the northern half of the Florida peninsula. The dark area at the
northern end of Florida, next to the lights of Jacksonville, is the Okefenokee National Wildlife
Refuge, and the dark Appalachian Mountains stretch away to the northeast, above Atlanta.
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EARTH FROM ISS

SATURN
Cassini continues to return spectacular images
of Saturn, perhaps the most beautiful planet as
seen from space. This natural-color view was
created by stitching together 36 images from
three color flters collected when the nuclear-
powered spacecraft passed high above the
planets north pole as it continued its convo-
luted trip through the Saturn system. Saturns
main ringsC, B and A, in order of their near-
ness to the planet are visible, as is the myste-
rious cloud pattern that has been dubbed the
hexagon at the pole.
VESTA
A composite image shows
the Antonia crater on the gi-
ant asteroid Vesta, colorized
to highlight the different ma-
terials. Released on Dec. 16,
2013, the imagery was col-
lected by the framing camera
on NASAs Dawn mission as it
orbited over the Rheasilvia ba-
sin on the Main Belt asteroid in
September-October 2011. The
Antonia crater has a diameter
of 11 mi. Dawn has since left
Vesta, the frst asteroid orbit-
ed by a spacecraft, toward a
spring 2015 arrival at the as-
teroid Ceres for another orbital
observation.
MARS FROM CURIOSITY
The Curiosity Mars rover continues to
edge itself through dried-up wetlands
on the foor of Gale Crater, including
this feature known as Yellowknife Bay.
The name is apt, because planetary
scientists believe it consists of depos-
its from ancient lakebeds and streams
where liquid water once fowed, pro-
ducing conditions favorable for mi-
crobial life. The Mars Atmosphere and
Volatile Evolution Mission (Maven) was
launched Nov. 18, 2013, to study inter-
actions between the planets upper at-
mosphere and the solar wind in hopes
it will help scientists explain where the
water went. Maven is slated to arrive in
Mars orbit next September.

Thierry Dubois Zurich
Both human factors and technology
will be key in Solar Impulses
planned around-the-world ight
L
ast summer, Solar Impulse flew an entirely solar-
powered aircraft across the U.S. Now the Swiss team
is preparing to y a larger and more capable aircraft
around the world in 2015. The challenge goes well beyond the
design and construction of a pioneering aircraft that pushes
the limits of electric propulsion and lightweight materials.
The team is also entering new terrain in the human fac-
tors involved in coping with ve-day-long ights. Moreover,
Solar Impulse is establishing smart logistics, including unique
weather forecasts, on the ground.
The aircraft, to be registered as HB-SIB, is being assembled
in a hangar at Dubendorf air base, near Zurich. Construction
of the 236-ft.-span wing is well underway, with the ribs and
leading edge already tted to the massive spar. Each of its
carbon-ber plies weighs just 25 grams per square meter (0.08
oz. per sq. ft.), the typical minimum to date being 90 grams
per square meter. The upper surface is being covered with
high-performance photovoltaic cellstheir efciency is close
to 22%, while they are only 135 microns thick. The forward
fuselage appears to be close to completion, too, as the cockpit is
tted with some ight controls, instrument panels and wiring.
The assembly team is under time pressure, because the
ofcial unveiling of HB-SIB is scheduled for April 9, and rst
ight is expected in May. Although the construction facility
is located in Dubendorf, close to some German suppliers, the
company is headquartered in Lausanne and has its ight-test
base at Payerne Airport. HB-SIB will be trucked in subas-
semblies to Payerne, where trafc is limited enough to ac-
commodate such trials.
The aircraft is scheduled to take of for its around-the-
world flights in March 2015, from somewhere between
Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, says Christian Le
Liepvre, head of the Solar Impulse partnership and director
of the Altran Foundation for Innovation. After 8-10 stopovers,
Ireland is a possibility for the nal landing. It will be critical to
y over China before the summer monsoon, Le Liepvre adds.
HB-SIB is larger than its predecessor, HB-SIA. It has to
accommodate only one pilot but, as some ights will last up to
ve days, the cockpit is roomier, and more food and water will
be carried on board. Several oxygen bottles will accompany
an electric onboard oxygen generation system designed by
Air Liquide. In total, payload capability has been doubled,
according to Le Liepvre.
The aircrafts external dimensions have also changed: It
is about one third heavier and the wing span is 18% greater.
Because solar cells must cover a larger wing and additional
surfaces, the number of cells has increased to around 17,000
from 12,000. This will give extra margin to recharge the batter-
ies over a ve-day ight during which the weather may not al-
ways be sunny. The lithium-polymer batteries will have better
energy density, at 260 watt-hours per kilogram instead of 240.
To alleviate the pilots workload, and even allow him to
sleep, a stability augmentation system (SAS) has been de-
signed. It can act on all control surfaces but, as the aircraft is
already very stable on the pitch axis, most important are the
electric actuators on the ailerons and the rudder, says CEO
and pilot Andre Borschberg. The SAS can hold a heading
or an attitude but cant navigate, he explains.
The upper-level system providing higher-level control is
the monitoring and alerting system (MAS), which Borsch-
berg describes as a virtual copilot. The MAS oversees the
aircraft, SAS and pilot. Borschberg emphasizes that it uses
other sources of data than does the SAS. In case of a deviation
from usual attitudes, it warns the pilot early enough for him
to react, even if he had been taking a nap.
Sleep is a major issue, but pilot Bertrand Piccard, who is
also company chairman and founder, appears to be condent.
He was due to spend 72 hr. in a mission simulator in Dubendorf
to y virtually from New York to Seville, Spain, last month.
The idea is to take 10 naps of 20 min. each over a 24-hr. period.
Piccard is working with sleep experts on sleep lead-in and
wake-up transitions. Moreover, in case sleeping is ruled out
because of tough ight conditions, methods for keeping awake
will be tested. Cafeine pills will be used only in emergencies. I
want to surf on sleep waves when I feel them coming, Piccard
says. He was trained as a psychiatrist and thus wants to use
hypnosis techniques. The impact of fatigue on pilot reaction
time will be measured throughout the simulated ight.
On the ground, short- and mid-term weather forecasts
will be available to the team to decide when to take of and
possibly work out a diversion, if required. A notable level of
optimization, although not actually a forecast, is to statisti-
cally determine the best route between two stopovers, nd-
ing a trade-of between sunny areas and tailwinds. In this
regard, the ights across the U.S. were a rehearsal for those
around-the-world, says Christophe Beesau, an Altran simu-
lation expert. In 2003-15, the projects budget is 150 million
Swiss francs ($170 million). c
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J
ust six years after the Wright brothers made their
rst ight in 1903, Feng Ru, a 26-year-old man born
in Guangdong, designed, built and ew his own air-
craft of leading-edge design. He did that in California
and then returned to China to pursue his aeronautical
business. After seeing Feng y, Sun Yat-sen, the rst
president of post-imperial China, urged the Chinese
people to develop aviation to save the nation.
Since the 1950s, China has advanced greatly in
military aviation, but we still have not developed a
trunkliner. So our country attaches great importance
to the Comac C919 program. A Chinese trunkliner is
the dream and wish of all Chinese people, especially
those working in aviation. The postponement of the
rst ight until 2015 has puzzled many people. They
have wondered whether C919 development is in trou-
ble. They should not worry, because the C919 has not
encountered any great difculty, and its rst ight will
not be very late. This is the rst Chinese attempt at
developing a modern trunkliner, so the most impor-
tant thing is to leave enough time for design, manufac-
turing and testing to ensure success of the rst ight.
Preliminary and detailed design work for the
C919 is complete. Parts are being made. Much test-
ing on the ground will be conducted. The decision to
postpone the rst ight was sensible. We should not
blindly pursue a schedule; doing so can result in im-
portant technical issues being neglected.
Boeing and Airbus have years of experience in air-
liner design and manufacturing, but a stream of prob-
lems emerged after the rst ights of the 787 and A380.
Progress after the rst ights was greatly delayed,
annoying customers. This reminds us that high-tech
products present tremendous engineering difculties;
problems are inevitable. Special consideration should
be allowed for China as it develops its rst trunkliner.
Not all the metal and composite materials for a Chi-
nese trunkliner need to be made domestically, and a
small proportion is acceptable for ight testing, but we
hope the ratio will rise. While global sourcing is com-
mon and the Chinese supply is immature, domestic ca-
pacity to provide critical materials ought to be built as
soon as possible. Then Chinese manufacturers should
be added to the list of qualied C919 suppliers. Many
manufacturers in China are developing suitable alu-
minium and titanium alloys, plus composites and steel.
While we need to catch up to the 787 and A380 in
material technology, the C919 has a competitive advan-
tage over the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. Titanium
alloy is 10% of the C919s structural weight, compared
with 2.2% in the 737 and 4.5% in the A320. At present,
the proportion of composites used in the C919 is higher
than that for the 737 but a little lower than for the A320.
The C919 also includes an aluminium-lithium alloy.
We must do our best to develop and produce criti-
cal materials as soon as possible, to ensure the suc-
cess of the Chinese trunkliner. Otherwise, we will be
subject to the control of other countries.
In developing commercial aircraft, we will use an
advanced foreign engine at rst, but this is not a good
long-term plan. Many experts say the engine is the
heart of an aircraft; they liken problems in Chinese
aero-engine technology to heart troubles. In some
ways the engine is harder to make than the airframe.
Its materials, too, are more challenging. A Chinese
engine for the C919 should advance a new generation
in local materials technology.
Following the advice of a committee on which I
served, the C919 program is supporting development
of a Chinese demonstration engine, an important
rst step toward building a commercial powerplant.
Much of the demonstration engine has been de-
signed, drawings have been released, and some forg-
ing pieces are ready; other parts are now being ma-
chined. Some time will be needed before a Chinese
engine can power the trunkliner, however. Develop-
ing an engine will present tremendous difculties; it
should strictly conform to Chinese and international
airworthiness regulations.
Launching the C919 has been an important step
in strengthening China. Through its supply chain, it
can promote rapid development of the national econ-
omy and defense capabilities.
Since China has invested heavily in the C919 pro-
gram, the country will surely produce an indigenous
trunkliner that in the near future will use more domes-
tic materials. And it will use an independently designed
and manufactured Chinese engine. Then our dream of
making China stronger will make a giant leap. c
Cao Chunxiao is a member of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences and a professor at the Beijing Institute of Aero-
nautical Materials. He has been a member or director of
aeronautics societies and advisory committees.
We should not blindly
pursue a schedule; doing so can
result in important technical
issues being neglected.

Delaying C919
First Flight
Is Sensible
Viewpoint
BY CAO CHUNXIAO

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