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Contents
Volume 176 Number 33
AVIATION WEEK
Winner 2013
Digital Extras Tap this icon in articles

in the digital edition of AW&ST for exclusive
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ow.ly/AkXJo
10
12
14-16
18
19
20
21
22
23
55
56
57
Feedback
Whos Where
The World
Up Front
Leading Edge
Reality Check
Airline Intel
In Orbit
Washington Outlook
Classied
Contact Us
Aerospace Calendar
THE WORLD
14 Embraer mates the wing and

fuselage of the rst prototype
KC-390 tanker/transport
16 U.S. Navys rst Triton MQ-4C unmanned intelligence aircraft ies

cross-country to begin ight-testing
SPACE
50
For the 130-seater being studied under the Green Regional Aircraft
program, wind-tunnel tests were used to assess the effectiveness of the
airframe in shielding the noise from twin counter-rotating open rotors.
40 Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko poses unexpected challenge for Rosetta lander mission
AIR TRANSPORT
28 Industry ight-testing of prototype

LED approach lighting system
unleashes pilot discontent
33 Philippines two major airlines seiz-
24 Boeing and SpaceX to shape human

spaceight for decades as they fulll
contracts for ISS crew transport
26 Blue Origin tapped to complete development of a rocket engine that

could replace RD-180 in the Atlas V
ing opportunities offered by eet

changes and government rulings
35 Thales can devote its global sales

team to expanding the customer
base for new-acquisition LiveTV
DEFENSE
27 SpaceX to continue with engine

work regardless of whether it
meets a certication deadline
36 Airbus Defense & Space to focus on

military aircraft, space and guided
missiles, divest non-core assets
ON THE COVER
Attracting little attention because of their remote locations,
the Jindalee over-the-horizon radars peer far to the north
and west of the Australian continent, into the tropics of
Southeast Asia from the arid Outback. Operating in the highfrequency band, they transmit and receive with enormous
arrays, including this one at Alice Springs, photographed by
Leading Aircraftwoman Sonja Canty of the Royal Australian
Air Force. As detailed in our report beginning on page 42, the
three radars have been upgraded to detect targets with greater
sensitivity, precision and speed.
37 Poorly designed wiring bundles for

KC-46 refueler forcing further slip
in rst ight of Boeing platform
38 Retrotting of x for F135 propulsion systems in the F-35 test eet

could be completed early next year
39 USAF targets winglets, lift control,

fuel capacity and drag cuts for
better C-130 airlifter efficiency
42 Major upgrade enhances Australias

continent-wide Jindalee over-thehorizon radar monitoring system
44 Proliferating low-frequency
radars challenging stealthy
aircraft such as F-22 and F-35
TECHNOLOGIES FOR GROWTH
46 Condent that unconventional

designs can reduce aircraft noise,
NASA eyes less radical approaches
28 Airline industry blasts

FAA for lack of ight-testing on
LED airport lights
36 Airbus will be even more

reliant on the success of core programs now that is selling many of
its other businesses
The 787 has allowed us to bring Japan Airlines

to more customers in more places
thanks to its long-range capability.
The 787s comfortable cabin provides passengers

with a more relaxing experience during every journey.
Yoshiharu Ueki
President
JAL
THE DREAMLINER EFFECT.

JAL SUCCESS.
www.newairplane.com/787/dreamliner-effect
September 22, 20
Volume 176 Number
39
48 NASA forced to become inventive in
validating airframe noise reduction,
after loss of industry backer
50 Clean Sky noise project demonstrating noise-reducing technologies

for regional-turboprop landing gear
52 Embedding aircraft noise simulation into conceptual design tools

could lead to quieter aviation
53 Flight tests on NASA Gulfstream

will focus on verifying structural
strength of bird-like morphing ap
VIEWPOINT
58 Owners of U.S. defense companies

need to develop strategies that
will counterbalance budget cuts
40
24
On the Web
A roundup of what youre reading on AviationWeek.com
Watch in-cockpit F-16 video footage from the Royal Danish Air Forces rst deployment to Greenland
and read London Bureau Chief Tony Osbornes Ares blog post about the strategic value of Greenland
and the challenges of operating in a remote environment: ow.ly/BDVqT AviationWeek.com/Ares
2015 LAUREATE NOMINATIONS

Aviation Weeks Laureate Awards recognize
the extraordinary achievements of individuals
and teams in the global aviation, aerospace and
defense industries. Learn more and submit
your nominations: ow.ly/BDT60
READER
COMMENT
Two Swedish delegations recently visited the Brazilian aircraft carrier

Sao Paulo in support of plans to develop a naval version of the JAS
39E/F Gripen ghter (shown in a concept). Read Senior International
Military Editor Bill Sweetmans take on the talks: ow.ly/BE0aN
Responding to last weeks Viewpoint The Pilot Shortage Myth,

Heliocentric wrote: I happen to be one of those
highly experienced former airline captains whove
flown all over the world and cant get a job in the
USA for much over $20K per year Basically I retired with 20 years left on a career and profession
that literally is not worth my time. ow.ly/BDPFi
SAAB CONCEPT
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SAFER AIRWAYS FOR ALL
DRIVING ENGINE ALTERNATIVES
Because I work at a civil airport,

I was particularly intrigued by the
Managing Wildlife Hazards coverage (AW&ST Sept. 1, pp. 34-43). The
increased FAA attention seems deeply
involved in data/statistical analysis,
and the effort is certainly moving in
the proper direction.
High-temperature climates and highaltitude operations are not new. Clearly,

turbine engines in todays aircraft must
be capable, so the U.S. Navy-commissioned alternate V-2 engine study must
ensure that single-sourcing is tabled
(AW&ST Sept. 8, p. 24).
We Marines are not known for
throwing away working equipment,
nor for excessive pampering of
weapons systems. Multiple sources
for components is good. If one manufacturer nds a defect, the whole eet
or weapons class need not be crippled.
It also helps gird sole-source contracts
from ination.
Single-source components have
taken their toll on the F-35. The lack
of incentive to excel is absent in such
arrangements and price controls are
also weakened. Politics in weapons
procurement is not new. Waiting
until the V-22 was halfway through its
scheduled service life was politics falling to reality of heavy wear and tear in
combat, not congressional pandering.
Peter J. Peirano
RIDGEWOOD, NEW JERSEY
But for such a data-driven process, a

lot of information seems to be missing.
The military communicates with the
FAA regarding various aeronautical
standards and regulations, so why not
include bird-strike events, especially at
units that co-locate with civil airports?
I recall a week in July 1999 when
I was waist-deep in an Okeechobee,
Florida, swamp helping to recover the
remains of a downed F-16 pilot. The
nal accident investigation found that
a canopy-shattering impact with a 5-lb.
turkey vulture at low-level was the
cause of the crash.
This and other military events
should be included to obtain a full
spectrum of the problem.
USAF Capt. (ret.) Ray Ondrejech
PASO ROBLES, CALIFORNIA
LEGITIMATE FISH TALE

The articles about mitigating the
wildlife threat to the aviation sector
reminded me of a fellow pilots experience.
He reports that his Alaska Airlines
aircraft, on approach into Juneau,
spooked an eagle carrying a salmon.
The bird dropped its prey, which
struck the windshield, inducing the
rst known report of a salmon strike!
Roy Steele
GEORGETOWN, TEXAS
RESTRICT TFRS
Regarding William Garveys VIP
Treatment (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 14),
please note that travel warriors and
pilots are not the only ones affected
by the ight restrictions when certain
government VIPs take their bubble
with them. Also forbidden are model
aircraft operations within a radius of
30 nm from said VIPs, which encompasses an area of about 3,700 sq. mi.
I once called the FAA when our
model aircraft ying eld was at the
29-mi. radius of a Temporary Flight
Restriction (TFR) for a political fundraiser, and I asked if it applied to handlaunched gliders (yes), a balsa plane
powered by rubber bands (yes), cheap
little helicopter toys (yes). With that, I
vowed to vote for the other guy.
Jack Feir
DOYLESTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
TFRS IMPEDE THE WRONG PEOPLE

When it comes to the Temporary
Flight Restriction (TFR) edict, I doubt
if the president or vice president are
aware of the inconvenience it poses to
General Aviation.
Common sense dictates that legitimate pilots will avoid the TFR zone, if
only because the repercussions of unwittingly crossing into it are extreme
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,
1911 Fort Myer Drive, Suite 600, Arlington, Va.
22209. Fax to (202) 383-2346 or send via e-mail
to: awstletters@aviationweek.com
Letters should be shorter than 200 words, and
you must give a genuine identification, address
and daytime telephone number. We will not
print anonymous letters, but names will be
withheld. We reserve the right to edit letters.
and will incur the wrath of the FAA.

On the other hand, terrorists and
others bent on lesser criminal mischief
will ignore an TFR. It is not a safeguard, but an inconvenience to all nonairline ights. It is time for a review of
the efficacy of TFRs.
Raymond Hoche-Mong
MONTARA, CALIFORNIA
AIRING MORE AIRPOWER VIEWS

Reader Art Hartley (AW&ST
Sept. 8, p. 8) espouses an old antiairpower, pro-infantry argument long
since disproved by objective historians.
Arguing the Serbs came to the
Dayton Peace Accords because they
feared potential attack by helicopters
and infantry is to ignore that Serb
aggression was in fact arrested by an
effective air campaign.
By Hartleys awed logic, a Serb
tank commander was more worried
about an Apache helicopter that might
shoot at him next month than the ghter jet that just took out his buddy.
This is similar to the revisionist version of the rst Persian Gulf War: The
U.S. Armys cheering section would
have you believe they won it with their
days-long overland push, conveniently
ignoring that the weeks-long air-only
campaign had already pounded Iraqi
ground and air forces into impotence.
Airpower is not the answer to every
threat, but neither are ground or naval
forces.
Stephen D. Vining
DAYTON, OHIO
SELFIE-EVALUATION
I see that a sele category has
been added to Aviation Weeks annual
photo contest (AviationWeek.com/photocontest) (AW&ST Sept. 8, p. 6).
From an aviation operational safety
perspective, one wonders about the
prudence of doing so. A variety of risky
scenarios could result from this particular pursuit. Lets be (even more)
careful out there!
Keith Darrow
HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA
The power within.

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Whos Where
arvey Ticlo (see photos) has

been appointed senior vice president-corporate strategy, business development and integration of
Advent Aerospace Inc., Rye, New Hampshire. He was vice president/general
manager of its Cabin Innovations Div.,
Lewisville, Texas. Steve Jourdenais
has become senior vice president for
the Interiors Group, which comprises
Cabin Innovations and Jormac Aerospace. He was president of Jormac
Aerospace, Largo, Florida. Succeeding
Ticlo is Shawn Bucher, who was vice
president-engineering at B/E Aerospace in Tucson, Arizona. Following
Jourdenais is Frank Nelson, who was
promoted from vice president-program
management at Jormac. And succeeding Nelson is Colt Mehler, who was
vice president-project engineering.
Tracy Gallo has been promoted to
vice president-ight operations from
director of ight training for SkyWest
Airlines. He succeeds Klen Brooks,
who will be retiring.
Scott Henry has become Novi, Michigan-based Eastern U.S. sales manager
for Diversied Technical Systems.
Michael Cassel has been appointed
director of global corporate citizenship
for Boeings corporate offices in Chicago
plus the Great Lakes region. He was
chief of staff for the companys state
and local government operations team.
Calvin Martin has been named general manager of Cutter Aviations Colorado Springs location. Russell Buck
Myers has become the companys
avionics supervisor.
USAF Brig. Gen. (ret.) John R.
Bob Ranck has been appointed to
succeed Buddy Sams as Washingtonbased senior vice president-government
programs and sales of the Gulfstream
Aerospace Corp., Savannah, Georgia.
Sams plans to retire at year-end.
Chari Kinney (see photo) has
become Seattle-based vice presidentsales for Plexus Planning of the U.K.
She was an executive with BDM Enterprise Solutions & Consulting Services.
Brad Busse has been named to the
board of directors of Denver-based Bye
Aerospace Inc. He is president of Busse
Ventures and was an executive with
RBC Capital Markets.
Moreno Aguiari has been appointed head of the East Coast U.S. divi-
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.
Harvey Ticlo
sion of Mesotis Jets at Atlanta
Dekalb-Peachtree Airport.
Naveen C. Rao has become
counsel to the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He has been in private law
rent operations for the Joint
practice with Squire Patton
Boggs and previously Jones Day. Steve Jourdenais Staff at the Pentagon. Davis
succeeds Brig. Gen. James C.
Dante Lauretta has been
Dawkins, Jr., who has been
named a science adviser to
named director of strategic
Planetary Resources Inc., Redcapabilities policy for the
mond, Washington. He is a
White House National Secuprofessor of planetary science
rity Council.
at the University of Arizona and
Tom Eaton has become
principal investigator of OsirisWashington-based vice
REx, NASAs rst asteroid
Shawn Bucher
president-international sales
sample return mission.
for Telesat. He succeeds Nigel
Angelia Keene (see photo)
Gibson, who will be leaving
has been appointed director
the company. Eaton has been
of safety for Aloha Air Cargo.
president of Harris CapRock
She was director of ground and
Communications and was
ight safety for Island Air.
executive vice presidentUSAF Lt. Gen. Tod D. Woltglobal sales and marketing of
ers has been named deputy
PanAmSat and vice president
chief of staff for operations,
Frank Nelson
of global sales and customer
plans and requirements at
support at Intelsat.
USAF Headquarters at the
U.S. Navy Rear Adm. (lower
Pentagon. He has been comhalf) Robert V. Hoppa has
mander of the Twelfth Air
been named director of U.S. AfForce (Air Forces Southern) of
rica Command, based in StuttAir Combat Command (ACC),
gart, Germany. He has been
Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona.
deputy chief of staff for intelliBrig. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson
Colt Mehler
gence at International Security
has been nominated for promoAssistance Force Headquarters
tion to major general and has
and deputy director for operabeen director of intelligence at
tions and support for United
ACC Headquarters, Joint Base
States Forces-Afghanistan.
Langley-Eustis, Virginia. Brig.
Jeremy Bennett has been
Gen. Paul H. Guemmer has
named Huntsville, Alabamabeen appointed commander of
based manager of business
the Jeanne M. Holm Center for
development for Summit AviaOfficer Accessions and Citizen
Chari Kinney
tion. He was director of ight
Development of the Air Univeroperations for Wyle at the U.S.
sity of Air Education and TrainArmy Redstone Test Center
ing Command, Maxwell AFB,
in Huntsville.
Alabama. He was deputy direcPatrick Mills has been
tor for strategy, capabilities,
appointed chief mechanical
policy and logistics at Headengineer within the Airborne
quarters U.S. Transportation
Power and Control Div. of AsCommand, Scott AFB, Illinois.
tronics Advanced Electronic SysBrig. Gen. Stephen L. Davis has Angelia Keene
tems, Kirkland, Washington. He
been named principal assistant
was an engineer for the Eaton Corp.
deputy administrator for military apGreg Johnson has been appointed
plication in the Office of Defense ProHayward, California-based director
grams for the Energy Department's
National Nuclear Security Administra- of business development for Meridian.
He was an executive with TWC Aviation. He was assistant deputy director
for nuclear, homeland defense and cur- tion, San Jose, California. c
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The World
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AIR TRANSPORT
FAA Moves on Backlog
FAA, under re by industry and
lawmakers alike for lengthy delays and
uncertainty surrounding its approach
to certifying new products, is rolling out
a process that is designed to eliminate
what was once a lengthy backlog of
projects. To manage its resources, FAA
nearly a decade ago adopted a sequencing approach that would permit new
projects to go forward only when the
agency was certain it could line up all
its resources for certication. That processoriginally designed to be temporaryoften resulted in long project
delays until resources became available,
the agency concedes. Under the new
process, announced Sept. 17, FAA now
will permit complex projects to move
forward even if the agency has to delay
certain aspects of the certication process until resources become available.
Under the new process, FAA also weighs
availability of designees as it sequences
projects. The agency, however, still considers the safety benet and complexity
of a project as it sequences it.
737 Rate to 52 Per Month?

After several months of speculation,
Boeing has given the strongest indication yet that it is considering a further
increase in production of the 737 to 52
aircraft a month. The manufacturer
has so far committed to hit a rate of
47 per month in 2017 and is currently
at 42 aircraft. Speaking at a Morgan
Stanley investor conference, Boeing
Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner said the companys focus today
would be around a 52-a-month rate in
[737 production] somewhere in that
2018 time frame. Conner added that
. . . the demand is there for those
airplanes, signicant demand.
787 Target in Sight

Boeing says it remains on track to meet
its planned target for 787 deliveries in
2014 despite a production hiatus at its
Everett, Washington, facility during the
second half of August. The company,
which has delivered 73 of the roughly 110
787s it hopes to hand over to customers
in 2014, says the slowdown was a deliberate recalibration of its production system as part of the gradual consolidation
to two single assembly lines, at Everett
and Charleston, South Carolina. Boeing,
which is closing on its 200th overall 787
EMBRAER
KC-390 Tanker/Transport Taking Shape at Embraer

Embraer has mated the wing and fuselage of the first prototype KC-390 tanker/transport. First
flight is planned by year-end. Powered by two International Aero Engines V2500-E5 turbofans,
the KC-390 is scheduled to enter service in 2016 with the Brazilian air force, which is funding
development and placed a $3 billion order for 28 aircraft in May. Final assembly is underway at
Embraers Gaviao Peixoto plant in south-central Brazil. Suppliers of aerostructures include Aero
Vodochody of the Czech Republic (rear fuselage and cargo ramp), Ogma of Portugal (fuselage
panels and fairings), Fabrica Argentina de Aviones (ramp door and tail cone), Aernnova of Spain
(composite flaps, ailerons and rudder) and U.S. company LMI (leading-edge slats).
delivery, denies reports that the break
was forced on the production system
because of pressure from continuing
problems of out-of-sequence, or traveled
work. While Boeing acknowledges that
such issues continue to occur, the company says the recent production break
was a scheduled event connected with
the introduction of process and production ow improvements to its main 787
assembly line. Boeing also continues to
transfer work from the temporary surge
line, which was established to avoid
disruption of the main production ow
during the introduction of the 787-9. The
current 787 production rate is now stabilizing at 10 per month, seven of which
are built at the Everett site.
Hayes Named JetBlue CEO

JetBlue Airways on Sept. 18 said
company President Robin Hayes will
succeed Dave Bargerwho has been
with the carrier since its foundingas
CEO in mid-February, making him
the third leader in the airlines short
history. Hayes, a former senior executive at British Airways, was named
president last year and had been chief
commercial officer.
PROPULSION
GKN Signs for E2 Engine
GKN Aerospace will deliver parts for the
development version of Pratt & Whitneys rst PW1900G geared turbofan
for the Embraer E190-E2 regional jet in
2015 following the signing of a risk-andrevenue-sharing agreement worth up
to $2.5 billion between the two manufacturers. The deal gives GKN a 7%
share in the PW1900G and builds on a
relationship about the geared turbofan
extending back to 2006 when Pratt
enrolled what was then Volvo Aero in
the development of the rst technology demonstrator. GKN acquired Volvo
Aero in 2012. The latest extension, which
also includes the smaller PW1700G for
Embraers E175-E2 airliner, covers the
design and manufacture of the turbine
exhaust case, intermediate compressor
case, low pressure turbine shaft and fan
case mount rings. GKN has agreements
with Pratt for production of similar parts
for the PW1100G, which is due to power
the Airbus A320neo on its rst ight
within weeks, as well as the PW1500G
for Bombardiers CSeries, the PW1400G
for Irkuts MC-21 and PW1200G for the
Mitsubishi Regional Jet.
DEFENSE
Countries Line Up Vs. ISIS
Australia and France are preparing
to join the U.S. in an international air
campaign designed to disrupt and
degrade Islamic State forces in Iraq.
Australia is sending F/A-18E/F Super
Hornets, KC-30 aerial refueling tankers and its new E-7 Wedgetail airborne
early warning aircraft to the United
Arab Emirates in preparation for military operations while France completed reconnaissance ights in northern
Iraq on Sept. 15 using Dassault Rafales
equipped with Thales Reco NG pods.
Subsequent ights have been carAviationWeek.com/awst
AIP Aerospace Introduces Ascent Aerospace

High Rate Production, Accuracy, Enhanced Flexibility, and Lower Costs
Technology that pays for your investment
AIP Aerospace (AIPA) announces the creation of Ascent Aerospace, a wholly owned unit of AIPA, which will
leverage the leadership positions the business has as one of the largest aerospace tooling companies in the
world. Linking full-line integration and factory automation with our tooling technology allows us to provide unique
solutions that greatly streamline aircraft manufacturing. Ascent Aerospace will be organized into two groups:
Ascent Tooling Group (including Coast Composites, Odyssey Industries, and Global Tooling Systems). These
recognized industry leaders represent the largest tooling businesses serving the aerospace industry, and they
have experienced strong growth over the last decade as composite aircraft have entered the market.
Ascent Integration & Automation Group (including Ascent Integration, Brown Aerospace, and Flow
Aerospace). The formation of this group allows Ascent Integration & Automation to focus on customers
requirements and technology developments, consolidating their design, controls, and automation expertise.
Ascent Aerospace, designed to support the industry with flexible, efficient and cost effective, tooling, assembly,
and automated rate manufacturing solutions. Visit our website to learn how Ascent Aerospace can help with your
manufacturing processes.
ascentaerospace.com
The World
ried out by Dassault Atlantique 2s
tted for the intelligence-gathering
role. Several other nations are due to
announce their intention to take part
in airstrikes, with reports suggesting
several Arab nations may do so.
LCS To Fire Naval Missile

The U.S. Navy has contracted with
Kongsberg Defense to test-re its
Naval Strike Missile from a Littoral
Combat Ship. The tests have been requested by the Navy to show whether
the weapon can engage a surface target at ranges of 100 nm. Tests will be
conducted before the end of September from the USS Coronado.
Slip Slidin Away

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendalls review of the much-delayed U.S.
Navy Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass)
system is now slated for early October
after having been shifted numerous
times. The program has drawn scrutiny
for its requirements prioritized around
continuous intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance, and limited strike
capabilities to the eet. Some believe
the Navy should focus more on penetratingor stealthystrike.
Spaceflight Scheduling
The airport in Midland, Texas, is likely
to become the rst facility serving both
scheduled airline ights and commercial human spaceight under an FAA
spaceport license announced Sept.
17. XCOR Aerospace plans to use the
facility as the initial runway launch
and landing site for its two-seat Lynx
suborbital rocketplane. The license
type is the rst for a commercialservice airport.
with other geopolitical criseslikely

will inuence the debate about defense
spending levels and could effectively
raise the oor for U.S. defense budgets
in scal 2016 and beyond. The sentiment
adds to a growing consensus among
many analysts and consultants that no
engagement in only one hot spot can
bring relief from so-called sequestration
spending caps, but that together they
could convince lawmakers to lift limits.
S&P Lowers Sequa Rating
BUSINESS
Improved A&D Predicted
Aerospace and defense analysts at
Standard & Poors Ratings Services do
not expect the recent announcement
of increased U.S. military efforts to
defeat the Islamic State to result in a
spike in demand for defense contractors
during the next 6-12 months. Still, those
movescombined with others involved
Standard & Poors Ratings Services cut

its overall grade on U.S.-based Sequas
debt a notch to B-, citing deteriorating
protability and several quarters of
weakness in the commercial aerospace
aftermarket. But S&P said the debts
outlook was stable, as credit metrics
should start to improve in 2015 based on
increasing revenue from improving contracts with OEMs. Sales for Chromalloy,
the company's largest segment, fell 13%.
U.S. NAVY
SPACE
Secret Mission
A classied U.S. government mission
dubbed CLIO reached its target orbit
Sept. 16 in a mission from Cape Canaveral that forced a delay of the rst ight
test of NASAs planned Orion crew
exploration vehicle. Liftoff of the Atlas
V 401 from Space Launch Complex 41
came at 8:10 p.m. EDT. United Launch
Alliance says the spacecraftreportedly
built by Lockheed Martin on an A2100
bus for an undisclosed federal agency
achieved accurate delivery to orbit.
The CLIO launch forced NASA to push
its Exploration Flight Test (EFT-1) mission back from this month to December
(AW&ST March 10, p. 12). EFT-1, on a
Delta IV, will take a heavily instrumented
Orion test article through two highly
elliptical orbits designed to send it back
into the atmosphere at more than 80%
of the reentry velocity that it would encounter on a return from the Moon. The
test is designed to validate heat-shield
models, and possibly allow engineers to
trim weight from the capsule.
Triton Finally at Pax River for Flight-Testing

The U.S. Navys first Triton MQ-4C unmanned intelligence aircraft has arrived at NAS
Patuxent River, Maryland, to begin flight-testing after its first cross-country flight.
Northrop Grumman manufactured the systemwhich will be used alongside the Boeing 737-800-based P-8 to provide maritime surveillance for the Navy fleetat its Palmdale, California, facility. During an 11-hr. night flight, the aircraft, based on the Global
Hawk Block 40, was ferried from Palmdale along the southern U.S. border and across
Florida using an approved instrument route. The aircraft then turned north and flew along
the Atlantic Coast at over 50,000 ft. to ensure there were no conflicts with civilian air
traffic, according to Navy officials.
Set to provide an initial operational capability for the Navy in fiscal 2018, Triton is
designed to fly high for surveillance and dive low to get specific intelligence on surface
targets. It will use the new Northrop Grumman Multifunction Active Sensor radar. Navy
officials hope to field the first three Tritons as an early operational capability to support
hefty surveillance requirements in the Persian Gulf.
The start of flight-testing is a major milestone for Triton, which was delayed by issues
with its integrated mission management computer and flight-control surfaces. The design
also was amended to include a counterbalance to the V-tail ruddervaters to address a
potential flutter issue that could occur in a specific part of the flight envelope.
The Navy plans to buy 70 Tritons; total program cost is roughly $13 billion.
BACK TO SPACE,
THE AMERICAN WAY.
Boeings Commercial Crew Transportation System will provide NASA with safe, reliable crew and cargo transportation
to the International Space Station. The CST-100 is an American spacecraft that will launch from American soil. Boeing
is proud to partner with NASA in restoring a U.S. capability critical to a robust exploration program.
Up Front
Edited by Michael Bruno

Senior Policy Editor
Michael Bruno blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/ares
michael.bruno@aviationweek.com
COMMENTARY
Slice and Dice

Big M&A may lurk, but divestitures remain
industrys go-to portfolio shaper
arting is such sweet sorrow, William Shakespeare once

wrote, but not so in the U.S. aerospace and defense industry.
This was the year that strategic

merger and acquisition (M&A) activity
was supposed to pick up in earnest
after being pushed off by the 2008 nancial crisis, slow economic recovery
and drawdown of U.S. wars abroad.
Catalysts included the record airliner
backlog at Airbus and Boeing, a stabilizing and clarifying defense spending
environment and the general improvement in the worlds economy, including
ongoing historically low interest rates.
Key drivers seem to be in place for
strong M&A rebound in 2014, driven
by commercial aerospace, echoed a
late-July study by advisory rm AlixPartners. Beyond airliners and defense
budgets, Alix cited record A&D prots
and large cash reserves at companiestwo key enablers of M&A, alongside high stock prices that are another
monetary proxy for purchases.
Indeed, with a $5 billion union of
Orbital Sciences and roughly half of
Alliant Techsystems, B/E Aerospaces
surprising breakup into two companieswith some observers assuming
imminent M&A of one of the partsand
Cobhams proposed $1.5 billion purchase
of Aeroex Holding, expectations built
in the spring that 2014 would mark the
long-awaited beginning of a strategic
A&D wave (AW&ST May 12, p. 20).
But with the end of 2014 looming,
those big M&A deals remain stand-out
examples when it comes to building
businesses. By contrast, A&D companies in recent months seemingly have
ramped up divestitures or consolidation
of business units, not strategic M&A.
In July, Rockwell Collins said it was
selling DataPath, a satellite communications services unit. General Dynamics
advised it was selling AxleTech, a maker
of vehicle brakes, axles and suspensions.
U.S. AIR FORCE
Esterline Technologies will divest

Wallop Defense Systems, maker
of ares like those being dispersed
from a C-17.
This month GD further announced a
combination of its Advanced Information Systems and C4 Systems to create
General Dynamics Mission Systems.
Italys Finmeccanica, meanwhile, is
mulling a major review in which reportedly every corporate asset is under consideration for sale, including U.S.-based
DRS Technologies (AW&ST Aug. 11/18, p.
29). Exelis said its Vectrus mission systems spinoff will be complete Sept. 27.
Meanwhile, Timken said it will close
its engine overhaul business in Mesa,
Arizona, by year-end, as well as its
bearing facility in Wolverhampton,
England. Timken also is considering
divesting its MRO parts business. And
specialized manufacturer Esterline
Technologies plans to divest Eclipse
Electronic Systems, Pacic Aerospace
& Electronics and Wallop Defense
Systems, as well as a small distribution operation.
While many analysts and consultants suggested signicantly more
M&A could happen this year versus
previous periods, others were more
cautious and have appeared prescient.
In a June outlook on the rest of 2014,
Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron

Callan said he saw steady M&A activity, but no big deals among primes.
Portfolio shaping, focus are drivers.
Moreover, Callan thinks the trend of
portfolio-shaping could accelerate into
2015. First, the Pentagon will decide on
a few, large weapons contractsand
the losers may exit the business. We
would watch outcomes of combat
aircraft competitions, the Joint Light
Tactical Vehicle and possibly naval
vessel programs as catalysts that could
get managements to rethink involvement in specic defense sectors.
Next are rising competitive pressures in niches. Space satellites and
launchers are facing greater competition from private, commercial rms,
Callan said. Services, particularly at
the lower value-add portions of the
market, is another.
Finally, in the end, is the question of
corporate focus. General Dynamics
noted that AxleTechs defense sales
had fallen to the point where commercial was more importantand that
a commercial-focused management
would be better to run this, Callan
observed. Rockwell Collins mentioned
the DataPath divestiture as part of a
plan to focus on core products.
Of course, an M&A rollup in commercial aerostructures continues, as
exemplied by Precision Castparts bid
to collect Tier 2 suppliers. And B/E,
despite its halving, was on a buying
spree of sorts with suppliers and adjacent players such as energy companies, although no more are planned,
executives said during the summer.
But such bolt-on acquisitions seem
far more the norm, compared with
strategic M&A. At RBC Capital Markets Global Industrial Conference this
month, executives from several large
and midsize A&D companies such
as Textron and CACI International
claimed to have actively engaged M&A
shops looking for prospects, but they
demurred on near-term possibilities.
In a nutshell, if your company is
healthy enough to do some buying, most
candidates are too healthy to produce a
great deal, executives suggested. Also,
doubts remain over longer-term defense
spending, let alone Pentagon approval.
Regardless, divestitures and tack-on
deals seem the near future. c
Leading Edge
By Graham Warwick
Managing Editor-Technology
Graham Warwick blogs at:
AviationWeek.com
warwick@aviationweek.com
COMMENTARY
Skin Care
Can applique technologies reduce fuel burn
across the U.S. Air Force transport eet?
ow do you improve the fuel economy of aircraft that have
been in service for years, or decades? Reengining is expensive and unlikely to pay off within the lifetime of older airframes.
Modications to t winglets can be costly and the return on investment may not come quickly enough.
The U.S. Air

Force Research
Laboratory
(AFRL) is looking
for other, less
invasive solutions
to reducing the
fuel burned by the
services current
and future transports and tankers.
Specically, the
lab is looking for
engineered surfaces, materials
and coatings that
can be applied to
aircraft without substantive changes
to the outer mold line that would
require lengthy and expensive retrot
and recertication. AFRL wants a fast
breakeven and warns that replacing
aircraft skins will be too expensive.
The focus is on reducing skin-friction
drag, which makes up half the total
drag of a conventional tube-and-wing
aircraft. Wave and interference drag
are other targets. Friction drag can be
reduced by increasing the amount of
smooth laminar ow over an aircraft,
but the dumpy, bumpy shapes of
airlifters such as the Boeing C-17 and
Lockheed C-130 are not conducive to
laminarity, so the lab is looking for ways
to reduce friction on surfaces where the
boundary-layer ow closest to the skin
is turbulent.
One way to reduce turbulent friction
is ribletsstream-wise microscopic
grooves that reduce drag by constraining the development of large eddies.
Adhesive riblet lm was applied to 70%
U.S. AIR FORCE
of the surface of an Airbus A320 and

own in 1989, reducing drag by almost
2%, but concerns over maintenance
and durability deterred adoption. Now
Germanys Fraunhofer Institute has
developed a way to imprint the microgrooves into the aircrafts paint using a
durable top coat.
AFRLs solicitation for the $8.75 million Aircraft Drag Reduction program
suggests other potential approaches,
including dynamic roughness, chemical
ow control, smart vortex generators
and plasma heating. Bidders are asked
to look at the potential for commercial
applications that would reduce unit
costs, which could result in technologies
becoming available for civil aircraft.
Dynamic roughness involves a
morphing surface that is actively
controlled to produce a varying pattern
of humps or ridges that manipulates
the boundary layer to delay transition
to turbulent ow. Research for AFRL
by Physical Sciences Inc. suggests the
power and weight impact is manageable. Chemical ow control involves

using hydrophilic and hydrophobic
surfaces to make the aircrafts skin
more slippery.
Using shape memory alloys, smart
vortex generators can deploy in one
ight regime to reenergize ow and
improve aerodynamic performance,
then retract at against the surface to
minimize the drag penalty. The deployment mechanism could be the difference in ambient temperature between
takeoff/landing and cruise, or the
vortex generators could pop up when
ow separation is sensed.
Plasma heating can be used to
mitigate the drag rise caused by the
formation of local shock waves on the
airframe in transonic ight. Heating
the ow so it remains locally subsonic
can reduce the intensity or modify
the location of a shock to reduce drag.
Lightweight plasma-heating elements
would be integrated into the aircrafts
surface near known transonic shock
sites and would be fast-responding and
adaptable to ight conditions, requiring on a few kilowatts of power, according to a Lockheed Martin patent.
Lockheed has looked at the fuelsaving potential of plasma-heating drag
reduction on the C-5M (see photo), its
study indicating the cruise lift-to-drag
ratio could be improved by 0.5-1%. Drag
reduction depends on how many shock
zones around the airframe are treated.
A reduction of four counts increases
range by 10 nm, while a more comprehensive application of plasma devices
yields eight counts and a range increase
of up to 60 nm. This would save around
3,000 lb. of fuel on current missions,
says the study.
An array of plasma devices along
the wingspan to reduce ow separation
would weigh 310 lb., cost $25,500 and
consume 200 kw of DC power. The nonrecurring cost of installing a plasma
system on the C-5M eet is estimated
at around $16.5 million, equivalent to
the cost of tting laser missile-jamming
systems. Assuming a drag reduction
of six counts, the study concludes the
plasma approach could save more than
10 million gallons of jet fuel worth $540
million over 30 years. c
With Guy Norris in Los Angeles.
AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 22, 2014 19
Reality Check
By Pierre Sparaco
Former Paris Bureau Chief
Pierre Sparaco has covered
aviation and aerospace
since the 1960s.
COMMENTARY
Are Pilots Running

the Show?
Union action may harm pilots and Air France alike
nce again, Air France-KLMs management nds itself
blocked from implementing a change in strategy. And once
again, it is the cockpit crews who are balking. Crews and their
unions have not yet come to terms with the increasingly dominant role of low-cost carriers in the European airline industry, so
they routinely reject the urgent need to restructure Frances air
transport sector.
AIR FRANCE/GUILLAUME GRANDIN
However, the Air

France-KLM group is
nearly equally culpable for the disconnect
between management
and personnel and has
contributed its own
share of missteps. Long
before the FrancoDutch consolidation
move became a reality,
Air France turned a
blind eye to the growing
threat from the low-cost
sector. Fifteen years
Air France pilots went on strike on Sept. 15 in
ago, a top airline execuprotest against the carriers low-cost strategy.
tive told me the low-cost
business model would
not succeed and claimed that startups
canceled if pilots refuse to ratify it.
such as Ryanair would never acquire a
One of the many issues that has pilots
signicant market share. Today, Euroupset is managements plan to implepean low-cost airlines carry a combined
ment a two-scale salary policy.
200 million passengers per year with a
Transavia pilots, whose ranks
eet of nearly 1,000 aircraft. Moreover,
include former Air France pilots, are
Ryanair is now the biggest intra-Euroexpected to be paid at a slightly lower
pean carrier and is planning to operate
rate than they now receive, to help the
520 Boeing 737s in the next 10 years, up
airline achieve competitive direct opfrom 320, CEO Michael OLeary says.
erating costs, a prerequisite to a sucAir France now acknowledges the
cessful counterattack in the European
need to launch a robust counteratroute system. SNPL, Frances domitack; it plans to expand its low-cost
nant cockpit crew union, rmly rejects
subsidiary, Transavia, which has two
such a plan and claims all Air Francebranchesone in France, the other
KLM group pilots should benet from
in the Netherlands. Air France-KLM
unied salary scales. In the last few
Chairman/CEO Alexandre de Juniac
weeks, the dispute has become even
says Transavia will operate up to 100
more heated and resulted in a walkout
aircraft by 2018. But the long-overdue
plan that could jeopardize the comgrowth plan could be delayed or even
panys efforts to restore protability.
Given the decades-old acrimony

between the union and management,
many analysts are skeptical of an early
resolution. SNPL-member pilots have
a long tradition of vindictive reactions
that extend well beyond operational
matters. For example, the SNPL long
rejected the implementation of twoperson cockpit crews, which forced Air
France to cancel an order for Boeing
737s. Today, union representatives are
claiming they should have been canvassed, giving them a chance to reject
or at least debate a plan to establish a
new salary policy.
But there is a key difference this
time around. Air France is no longer
a state-controlled company and no
arbitration can be expected from the
government of Prime Minister Manuel
Valls. The outgoing transport minister,
Frederic Cuvillier, showed little interest in the French airlines difficulties
and his successor, Alain Vidalies,
seems ready to follow his predecessors
route. In other words, Air France is
now paying for being so slow to react
to low-cost competition and for not
convincing its pilots (as well as the
court of public opinion) that a former
ag carriernow operating in a fully
deregulated environmentcould be so
seriously endangered by new competition forces. Recently, a political leader
warned: Even airlines die.
Adopting the broad view, it is key to
understand why and how pilots succeeded in extending their perimeter of
inuence. This conduct began to materialize in the 1960s and has never been
studied as it should, by psychologists,
not aviation experts. French pilots are
extremely proud of their prestigious
past; they take pride in referring to
famous pioneers and the Aeropostales
glory days. However, this adulation of
the past is interfering with the course
correction needed to adapt to modern
times. This balking is detrimental to
the airline and its personnel alike.
Today, U.K.-headquartered EasyJet
is the second-largest French domestic operator and Ryanair is Europes
biggest carrier in terms of passengers
own (more than 81 million this year).
Air France, however, continues its
drastic decline. French airline pilots could be accused of writing Air
Frances epitaph. c
Airline Intel
By John Croft
Senior Avionics and Safety Editor
John Croft tweets @AVweekJC
john.croft@aviationweek.com
COMMENTARY
Mind Games
Training procedures aim to keep pilots
mentally engaged in automated cockpits
f an idle mind is trouble waiting to happen, long-haul airline
pilots could be in need of some brain food being developed by
NASA. Researchers there are coming up with methods to counter task-unrelated thought,
an unintended consequence of automation in the modern cockpit.

Designed to free pilots from lowerlevel tasks to spend more time
concentrating on the big picture,
automation can also lead to taskunrelated thought, better known
as zoning out. Studies of airline
pilots show that those who succumb
to this state can manually y an
aircraft when the automation fails,
but may have trouble with more cognitive tasks like identifying instrument
anomalies or determining geographic
positions without the aid of a navigation display.
Help could be coming in the form of
new monitoring or training procedures
being pursued by NASA and others.
These activities are designed to keep
pilots focused on the task at hand as a
ight proceeds, although nothing concrete has yet been introduced yet.
We found that when high levels of
automation are in use and everything
is going to plan, pilots start thinking
about unrelated tasks, says Stephen
Casner, a research psychologist at the
NASA Ames Research Center, commenting on the results of a new study.
It is not the rst scientic analysis to
come up with those results. Our ndings are consistent with other studies
that demonstrate that when more
automation is used, measures of pilot
awareness show that less, not more,
higher-level ight-related thinking has
taken place, explains Casner.
He initially set out to determine
whether pilots manual-ying skills
have been erodinga common notion
stated by many in the public and the
industry following high-prole crashes
such as Colgan Air Flight 3407 and
JOHN CROFT/AW&ST
Air France Flight 447 in 2009, both of

which involved ight-handling errors
by pilots. We had the safest accident
record weve ever had, says Casner.
It seemed like an odd statement to
make. Casner, a ight instructor who
holds an Airline Transport Pilot certicate, says the crashes seemed less
about handling the controls and more
about what the automation was doing
and to what extent the pilots were paying attention to it.
He and his colleagues called on 16
Boeing 747 pilots to help determine
thought patterns and reactions. A fullmotion Level D ight simulator at Ames
was used as the test platform. The pilotsseven captains and nine rst officershad average ight times of almost
18,000 hr. and 13 hr. in the seven days
before the simulations. Long-haul pilots
were chosen because they use more automation and have fewer opportunities
for hand-ying than narrowbody pilots
ying multiple legs per day.
The pilots were asked to y the arrival, approach and missed-approach
phases of a simulated ight into Memphis, Tennessee, using the aircrafts
autoight system (coupled autopilot
and autothrottles) or a combination
of ight director and autothrottle
with manual control, or raw data and
manual control, which require pilots

to y the old-fashioned wayactively
scanning instrument indications and
ying with one hand on the yoke, the
other on the throttles.
We found that hand-yingthe
very thing everyone was worried
aboutwasnt really that bad, notes
Casner. [The subject pilots] were a
little rusty, but we didnt see anything
frightening or of operational concern.
After they ew by hand for a few minutes, they were back in shape, just like
riding a bike.
What was of concern, however, was
the atrophy in cognitive abilities. When
we started looking at situational awareness tools, that is where the problems
were. In particular, the Ames group
determined that retention of the cognitive skills needed to manually y the
aircraft in a degraded ight modefor
instance visualizing the position of the
aircraft without the aid of a navigation
displaycould depend on the degree to
which pilots remain actively engaged in
supervising the automation.
In a separate study, Ames researchers found that when everything is going
to plan in a highly automated cockpit,
pilots start zoning out. They were
most likely to be highly engaged when
faced with some complications with the
automation.
The ideal solution from a research
standpointa clean-sheet design of
the entire cockpit to be more pilotcenteredis a nonstarter not only due
to development costs but also because
changing a well-oiled training machine
has its own inherent problems. Casner
says the basic aw in the modern cockpit is that humans are being used as a
safety net for computers, rather than
the other way around. Its a bizarre
role to put the human in, he says.
Studies show we can do it well for 2030 min. then we start to zone out. The
problem is compounded in some ways
as engineers make aircraft increasingly reliable, hence fewer alerts occur
to keep pilots engaged. People nd it
extremely difficult to watch a system
that does so well for such long periods
of time, he adds. Pilots will [probably] bear the responsibility for xing
this.
Theyll have to do it with procedures. c
In Orbit
By Frank Morring, Jr.

Senior Editor Frank
Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
morring@aviationweek.com
COMMENTARY
Earthquake Eyes
Terrain deformation monitored from above
t is a shibboleth in space circles that we take the benets of
our orbiting infrastructure for granted. Satellites enable everything from better weather forecasts to smartphones; we would
literally be lost without them. There are some space-based apps
that are not appreciated because they are used only intermittently, and then only by a relatively small community of specialists. The earthquake last month in Californias Napa Valley
provides an opportunity to revisit one highly sophisticated but
usually overlooked benet from space.
The Aug. 24 temblor tipped

the Richter Scale at magnitude 6, said to have been the
strongest quake in 25 years for
the area north of San Francisco. It caused more than 100
injuries, including at least one
that ultimately proved fatal,
and inicted what officials
termed signicant damage
to buildings in the town of
Napa proper. The earthquake
also left the region changed
in more subtle ways that affect everything from ground
stability for damage repairs
to ensuring water continues
to ow where needed in the
drought-stricken state.
Fortunately, NASA and
space agencies in other nations serving regions afflicted
with destructive seismic
activity have been working
for years on nding ways to
monitor the visible effects of
earthquakes from above. One
techniquesynthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR)
detects minute changes in the distance
from radar satellites to the ground,
and can be used to map changes before
and after an earthquake.
In the U.S., NASAs Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is
a center of the research for obvious
reasons, given its earthquake-prone
location. In the example shown above,
NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
JPL worked with data from the Italian

Space Agencys Cosmo-SkyMed radar
satellites to map surface deformation
between images of the Napa region
collected on July 26 and Aug. 27. In
the map, superimposed on a Google
Earth image, each color cycle (purple
to purple) represents a shift of 0.8 in.
in the surface. The inset and arrow
highlight a discontinuity in the
color cycle where the subsurface fault

broke the surface, in a rupture that
cut through the Napa County Airport.
The change later was conrmed by a
ground-survey crew.
JPL also used GPS data from the
National Science Foundations Plate
Boundary Observatory to track surface deformation after the earthquake.
The observatory includes a network
of GPS stations on the ground that are
always on. Many provide real-time updates of their positions, allowing rapid
measurement when seismic activity
changes them.
Of course, radar satellites are relatively rare, and then rarely in position
to provide real-timeor even timely
data when an earthquake occurs.
JPL has tackled that problem with an
airborne L-band SAR pod that can be
dispatched quickly after an earthquake.
Five days after the Napa event,
researchers used the deviceoriginally developed for UAVs but own
on a NASA C-20A (military version of
the Gulfstream III) operating out of
Armstrong Flight Research Center on
nearby Edwards AFB, Californiato
remap the quake zone. That InSAR
imagery was compared with data
collected by the same sensor on May
29, giving state agencies such as the
California Earthquake Clearinghouse
a precise picture of how the ground
shifted, to use as they conduct
a damage assessment.
Of particular interest is
the earthquakes effect on the
North Bay Aqueduct, a critical
water source in the San Francisco Bay Area. Californias
Water Resources Department
is also evaluating soft-soil
movement in delta regions on
the east side of the bay.
The Napa earthquake is not the rst
for which NASA has used InSAR to aid
in recovery. The SAR pod happened to
be scheduled for overights in Central
America when Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
was hit with a devastating earthquake
on Jan. 12, 2010. NASA quickly adjusted
its ight plan to generate baseline data
on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault
and other major fault lines in Haiti
and its Hispaniola Island neighbor, the
Dominican Republic (AW&ST Feb. 1,
2010, p. 26). c
Washington Outlook
Edited by Jen DiMascio

Managing Editor-Defense,
Space & Security Jen DiMascio blogs
at: AviationWeek.com/ares
jennifer.dimascio@aviationweek.com
COMMENTARY
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Rocket Rejection
Lawmakers skeptical of ULA-Blue Origin effort
pparently the all-private venture to build a new U.S. rocket
engine does not meet the needs of some members of Congress. In a letter to President Barack Obama sent the same day
that the United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin announced
plans to build a replacement for the Russian RD-180 (see page
26), a ock of House members note that their legislative chamber wants to appropriate $220 million to do the same thing with
government funds.
Although ULA and Blue say they

are willing to use government funds
to accelerate development, the letters
authors are skeptical of public-private
partnerships. Such ventures, they say,
should be auditable and ensure that
the U.S. government retains intellectual property rights enabling the engine
to be available to multiple launch companies. Blue says it intends to keep the
IP but make the engine
available by selling it commercially, starting with
ULA, which is making
a major investment in
the engine development,
according to Tory Bruno,
president and CEO of the
launch services provider.
What I dont like to
do is start something
GETTY IMAGES
that isnt fully funded,
because one of the things that slows
down development is the start-andstop cycles, says Blue Origin founder
Jeff Bezos, of Amazon.com fame.
Probably because of work at the
National Institute for Rocket Propulsion Systems in Alabamaalso aimed
at replacing the Russian enginethe
state was well-represented among
lawmakers who signed the letter
(AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 27). The institute
is headquartered at NASAs Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, and
the letter-writers urge Obama to set
up an Air Force program office that
should cooperate with the NASA
institute to ensure national security
space launch competition. c
CYBER INSECURITY
The Senate Armed Services Committee is raising concerns that the Pentagons Transportation Command is
not being told by its contractors about
cyberattacks. A committee inquiry
identied 50 cyberevents targeting the
command over one year. Twenty were
attributed to China, some of which
were directed at Civil Reserve Air Fleet
Lawmakers are leaving Washington in

the run-up to the November congressional elections after voting to keep
the government functioning through
December and continue operating the
Export-Import Bank through June.
Congress also agreed to train and equip
Syrian rebels, while skirting the broader
question of whether to authorize the use
of military force in Iraq and Syria, and
allowing a growing debate over deployment of ground forces to fester. Such
stop-gap solutions show just enough
action for lawmakers to maintain their
seats in the hopes that the election
will improve their parties chances of
swaying controversial matters in their
direction when they return. The House
is likely to remain in Republican hands,
and the Senate could swing away from
Democratic control for the rst time
since 2009. News and poll-data aggregator Real Clear Politics shows Republicans as likely to hold 47 seats, but lists
eight states up for grabs. c
STAYING COOL
In 2012, the CEOs of Lockheed Martin

and United Technologies
Corp. warned about the
chilling effect sequestraOne of the things that slows
tion would have on their
companies. But once the
down development is the
new Congress takes office,
start-and-stop cycles.
the Pentagon may not be
able to count on the defense
JEFF BEZOS
industrys lobbying clout
Founder of Blue Origin
when the issue of acrossthe-board budget cuts
returns, says Jim McAleese
of McAleese and Associates.
(CRAF) airlines, which the military
Heres why: While nancial anauses to transport more than 90% of
lysts predict 2015 will see a trough in
its personnel and more than 30% of its
gear. The command was made aware of defense sales, ination adjustments to
sequestration in 2016, along with anticonly two of those 20 intrusions.
In one 2013 incident, a Chinese gov- ipated pension-fund reimbursements,
could buffer defense companies
ernment phishing email is suspected
bottom linesand keep executives
to have led to a malware download of
quiet about sequestrations ill effects.
the CRAF airlines network. In 2010,
Industry is beginning to diverge from
the Chinese military hacked the comwhere [the Defense Department]
puter network of a CRAF contractor,
wants to go, McAleese says. The
stealing documents, ight details,
departure would hurt at a time when
credentials and pins and passwords
modernization accounts are supposed
for encrypted email, the report
to grow. Several Air Force and Navy
states. Some experts fear that China
programs will have a signicant
could be testing the cyberwaters to
amount of breakage if we slide into a
potentially scuttle the mobilization of
2016 sequester, he warns. c
U.S. troops. c
SPACE
Capsules,
Take
Two
Big-ticket commercial-vehicle
development plan kicks off
new way to space for humans
Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
ork Boeing and SpaceX will do over the next ve years

to fulll their new combined $6.8 billion contracts for
commercial crew transport to the International Space
Station (ISS) will shape human spaceight for decades, just as
the space shuttle design choices did in the 1970s.
For starters, NASAs choice of two

capsule designsBoeings CST-100
and the SpaceX Dragonover the lifting-body approach proposed by Sierra
Nevada Corp. will add cost to human
spaceflight operations while slowing
spaceight frequency. All three vehicles
were designed to lift off on expendable
launchers, but the Sierra Nevada Dream
Chaser was being developed with NASA
seed money to return to a horizontal
runway landing like the shuttle.
Recovering crews at sea, in the case
of Dragon, or in remote dry-land touchdown zones for the CST-100, will add
complexity to recovery operations at
the end of missions that harken back
to the capsules developed in the 1960s,
and are still used with the Russian
Soyuz crew vehicle the new U.S. capsules are designed to supplant.
Additionally, NASA safety hurdles
the companies must meet for their
CST-100 and Dragon capsules will be
the gold standard for future human
spaceflight in the U.S., informing the
processes industry and the FAA put in
place to certicate future human vehicles for safe ight. The FAAs commercial space office, which licenses private
spaceight in the U.S., has already used
the NASA safety approach in preparing
a best practices manual for commercial human spacecraft designers.
Any space transportation system
that complies with NASA commercial
crew requirements would almost certainly be consistent with FAAs recommended practices, says George Nield,
associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA.
NASAs requirements are much more

exhaustive and address mission assurance and other mission needs in addition to occupant safety.
Boeing garnered the lions share of
the $6.8 billion NASA wants to spend
to return human space launch to U.S.
soil on U.S. spacecraft, drawing $4.2
billion for its CST-100 vehicle. SpaceX
will receive $2.6 billion to nish developing and start ying the crew version
of its Dragon cargo vehicle with crews
on board.
The award amounts were based
on what the companies said would be
needed to get their vehicles certicated to y four-member crews to the ISS,
according to Kathy Lueders, NASAs
commercial crew program manager.
The CST-100 is an aluminum capsule with an ablative heat shield, designed to return to Earth on dry land
under parachutes, with airbags deploying to soften the nal touchdown (see
photo). It is intended to lift off on the
United Launch Alliance Atlas V.
The crew-version Dragon is an upgrade of the Dragon already delivering cargo to the space station under
a 12-ight, $1.6 billion commercial resupply services contract with NASA.
SpaceX scarred its cargo-carrying
Dragon for human spaceight, and already is returning scientific samples
and other cargo under parachute to a
splashdown in the Pacic off the coast
of California. Both Dragon variants are
designed to be launched on the companys Falcon 9 rocket.
Our specialist teams have watched
the development of these new space-
Boeings CST-100 will use airbags

to cushion its dry-land touchdown.
The company has drop-tested the
concept.
craft during earlier development phases, and are condent they will meet the
demands of these important missions,
says Administrator Charles Bolden, who
announced the selections at a Kennedy
Space Center press conference Sept. 16.
We are also condent they will be safe
for NASA astronauts. To achieve NASA
certication in 2017, they must meet the
same rigorous safety standards we had
for the space shuttle program.
Under their contracts, Boeing and
SpaceX each must meet five milestones, including a demonstration
flight to the ISS with at least one
NASA astronaut on board, to qualify
for between two and six operational
missions. According to Phil McAlister,
a special assistant in NASAs Office of
Program Analysis and Evaluation who
has shepherded the commercial crew
SpaceX Dragon
Location
NASA award
Launch vehicle
Dimensions
Height
Diameter
Orbital duration
Landing
Will carry
Hawthorne, California
$2.6 billion
Falcon 9
7.2 meters (23.6 ft.)
3.7 meters (12 ft.)
Up to 2 years
Ocean
Seven astronauts
and cargo
Sources: SpaceX, NASA
SPACEX
24 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER22, 2014
Boeing CST-100
Location
NASA award
Launch vehicle
Dimensions
Diameter
Height
Length
Orbital duration
Houston
$4.2 billion
Atlas V
BOEING
work with the agency to complete the Certication Baseline

Review within 90 days of the
contracts start dates. The goal
4.54 meters (14.9 ft.)
is to complete certication, in5.16 meters (16.9 ft.)
cluding the test ights, by the
end of 2017, and to award task
5.13 meters (16.8 ft.)
orders for post-certification
60 hr. of free flight
missions for as long as five
210 days docked
years after the effective dates
Landing
Dry surface
of the contracts.
Will carry
Seven astronauts and cargo
Lueders says the contracts
also have extension provisions,
Sources: Boeing, NASA
and on ramps to allow other
companies to transport station crews.
development effort since its beginThe agency is willing to continue to
nings, when the two companies are
work with Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin
certicated, they will be assigned opand other commercial crew Space Act
erational crew-transport ights to the
Agreement partners for possible future
ISS as needed during the contracts
missions, she says.
ve-year performance periods.
Sierra Nevada, based in Louisville,
The vehicles also must be able to
Colorado, told reporters it would wait
remain docked to the station as rescue
until after its out-brieng to comment
vehicles for the crewmembers who used
on the decision, and then would conthem to reach space. NASA plans to
duct a thorough evaluation of its opy four station crewmembers on each
tions once its remaining NASA money
mission, adding a crew member to the
is gone.
three who arrive on Soyuz capsules for
Blue Origin, which received some
greater research productivity. Both veNASA seed money early in the comhicles can carry seven passengers; the
mercial crew development effort for
contracts may allow the companies to
component-level work and continues
use the extra seats for other purposes.
to work with the agency under an
Most contractual details will remain
unfunded Space Act agreement, will
under wraps until NASA can debrief all
pursue its plans to develop an orbital
of the companies that submitted prohuman-launch capability using funds
posals, and some proprietary details
supplied by founder Jeff Bezos, who
may never be released, according to
also founded Amazon.com.
McAlister. The space agency plans to
Discussing a new engine-developrelease its formal source-selection docment partnership with United Launch
uments outlining the reasons for choosAlliance the day after the commercial
ing the two companies at a later date.
crew announcement (see p. 26), Bezos
NASA says Boeing and SpaceX will
Check 6 Aviation Week editors

discuss the NASA commercial crew
transport contract winners and ULA/Blue
Origin RD-180 replacement engine in the
latest Check 6. AviationWeek.com/podcast
said his space company could still take
humans to the ISS someday.
Were still continuing to build our
own Orbital Vehicle, and well have our
own space vehicle, Bezos says. The
timeline for that is late this decade.
Our motto is gradatim ferociter, which
means step by step, ferociously, and we
continue on that path.
Bolden and other NASA human
spaceflight officials have been vociferous proponents of a two-vehicle
approach, both for redundancy and
to hold down costs via competition.
However, Congress is skeptical of that
approach, largely related to the extra
development expense.
McAlister says the commercial crew
contract totals are maximum amounts
to be paid each company, depending on
how many operational missions they y
over the next ve years. Each contract
has set pricesnot yet disclosedfor
each mission, he says, arguing that the
agency already has received benets
from the competition as a result.
The competition exists today, and
competition is going to go forward
down the road, since we selected two,
he says. We hope [to see] additional
competition from industry participants outside of the [Commercial Crew
Transportation Capability] contract if
they want to continue the development
The cargo version of SpaceXs Dragon splashed

down off California after reentry, and the crew
vehicle will do the same.
SPACE
and potentially come in later.
The $6.8 billion far exceeds the
$3.415 billion NASA has requested for
commercial spaceight through scal
2019. The agency has requested $848.3
million in fiscal 2015 for commercial
spaceflight, plus $250 million from a
presidential wish list. It is more likely
to receive funding at the $646 million
fiscal 2014 level under the stopgap
spending measure lawmakers are expected to approve before recessing for
the November elections.
The years beyond are more problematic, and McAlister declines to
say whether the extra fundingif requiredwould come from separate
operational budget lines or elsewhere.
Obviously, were going to be in a
constrained budget environment, he
says. Thats going to be a challenge.
[Of the many great missions] on NASAs plate, weve got to somehow gure
out a way to fully fund and prioritize
[them] with all of our countrys needs.
Although it will shape human spaceight in the years ahead, at least in the
U.S., and could mean big business advantages for the winners, the commercial crew announcement did not exactly
move markets. SpaceX, Sierra Nevada
and Blue Origin are privately held, and
Boeings many other interests diluted
the impact of the NASA decision.
While the revenue impact on 201415 is limited, the contract covers an
uncrewed ight in early 2017, followed
by the rst crewed ight to the space
station in 2017, says Canaccord Genuity
analyst Ken Herbert. We believe the
primary revenue impact will be in the
2016-18 timeframe. While we view this
contract win as a clear positive, [Boeing] stock will continue to trade on [favorable] commercial sentiment.
Ultimately, the impact of the commercial crew decision on the winning
companies and on the space-exploration effort at large will depend on
whether Congress agrees to meet
NASAs funding requests for what
McAlister termed its anchor tenancy
in the larger effort to expand human
economic activity in low Earth orbit.
We are condent that given where
we are right now with the 2014 budget
and its out-run, we can make the 2017
launch date, Bolden says. But that
again depends on Congress fully funding the budget. c
With Michael Bruno in Washington,
Mark Carreau in Houston and
Amy Svitak in Paris.
Blue Origin is well along in development

of the BE-4 liquid natural gas-fueled
rocket engine, left, and has hot-red its
pre-burner and main injector assembly
(above) at its BE-4 engine facility near
Van Horn, Texas.
BLUE ORIGIN
True Blue
Bezos startup developing hydrocarbon engine
for United Launch Alliance to replace RD-180
Frank Morring, Jr. Washington
nited Launch Alliance (ULA)
and Blue Origin, the secretive
Seattle-based space-vehicle
company founded and funded by Amazon.com chief Jeff Bezos, believe they
can complete development and start
ying a 550,000-lb.-thrust rocket engine to replace the Russian-built RD180 as the Atlas V power plant as early
as 2017, without government money.
ULA will pay Blue Origin an unspecied but signicant sum to help defray
the cost of developing its BE-4 engine
(see illustration), which has been in the
works under wraps for the past three
years near Seattle and at the Blue Origin test facility near Van Horn, Texas.
The launch services company selected
the BE-4 after kicking off a search for
an RD-180 replacement when political
tensions threatened continued supply
of the big Russian engine.
To develop a liquid rocket engine
takes a solid seven years, sometimes
longer, says Tory Bruno, ULA president and CEO. Blue is already several
years into that cycle. So by partnering
with them we have the opportunity
to cut that cycle in half, which means

that, say, about four years from now we
would be in a position to begin ying
rockets with this engine technology.
Developed for Blue Origins planned
human Orbital Vehicle, the BE-4 (designating the fourth Blue engine) is an
oxygen-rich staged-combustion singleshaft rocket engine designed to burn
liqueed natural gas.
Liquefied natural gas is almost
100% methane; it has a few other
hydrocarbons in it, says Bezos, who
appeared with Bruno at a Washington press conference to announce the
deal. Were designing the engine to
run on liqueed natural gas or methane. Theyre both roughly the same
density, but methane is considerably
more expensive because to remove the
last little bit of other kinds of hydrocarbons is costly. Cost/operability is what
drives us designing the engine.
Development has benefited from
modern computer modeling techniques, additive manufacturing and
other new approaches to design, the
two executives say. Staged-combustion
testing of the pre-burner and main injector assembly has been conducted
(inset photo), and turbopump and main
valve tests are in preparation. Full-scale
testing of the BE-4 is scheduled to begin
in 2016, according to Blue Origin.
Bezos has been using his own deep
pockets to endow development of the
new engine and everything else Blue
Origin is doing, and he stressed that
the engine-development effort is fully
funded to avoid a costly start-andstop workow. The company plans to
offer the BE-4 engine commercially
once it is ready, and to make it reusable
for eventual vertical-takeoff-and-landing operations with its own vehicle,
drawing on the self-cleaning properties of liqueed hydrocarbon fuel to
avoid soot and other by-products.
That application is in the future,
however. Near-term plans call for
feathering the BE-4 into the Atlas V
vehicle set as needed.
The BE-4 is not a one-for-one replacement for the RD-180, which is a
kerosene-burning engine, says Bruno.
We intend to pair these in our baseline Atlas vehicle, and provide actually
higher-performance, higher-thrust
levels together than we have now. The
RD-180 is a great engine; it is a real
workhorse, it is high-performance, but
this is an opportunity to really jump
into the 21st century with modern
technology so we can achieve more
performance and a lower cost.
The two-bell RD-180, built by NPO
Energomash, generates 860,000 lb.
thrust. The BE-4 thrust level is comparable to the AR-1 engine under development by Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJR) as
a possible RD-180 replacement, which
would also be twinned for the Atlas
V application. AJR is responding to a
U.S. Air Force request for information
(RFI) on what it would take to replace
the Russian engine by arguing that
risk-reduction work done with NASA
funding will dramatically cut the time
to get a prototype of that enginealso a
hydrocarbon-fueled oxygen-rich stagedcombustion congurationon the test
stand (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 27).
Bezos, who is said to spend one day
a week at the Blue Origin engineering facility in Kent, Washington, says
his company, too, has completed riskreduction work on the BE-4. The company has nished developing and soon
will flight-test the 110,000-lb.-thrust
BE-3 liquid-hydrogen fueled engine,
and may offer it for boost, upper-stage
and in-space applications.

The Air Force RFI plays into a
groundswell of interest in Congress
and at the Pentagon in developing an
engine to replace the RD-180, which is
frequently used to launch classied national security payloads on the Atlas V.
In the fallout over Russias annexation
of the Crimean Peninsula, Russian officials have threatened to prohibit use of
the engine for military purposes, raising concerns that worsening relations
could ground crucial spacecraft.
Bruno says his companys supply of
the engines has been steady, and he expects it to continue. Despite movement
in Congress that could make as much as
$220 million available in the coming scal year toward an RD-180 replacement,
ULA will continue to fund its separate
development deal with Blue Origin, he
says. However, the partnership would
be open to using U.S. government funds
to meet particular government needs.
Bruno says hes getting positive
feedback from stakeholders, and
those stakeholders include many
members of Congress. c
FINAL COUNTDOWN
Amy Butler Washington
t seems increasingly unlikely that launch startup Space Exploration Technologies

(SpaceX) could be certied in time to challenge the United Launch Alliance for the upcoming NROL-79 mission, for which the U.S. Air Force hoped it would compete this year.
SpaceX is undergoing reviews to have its Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket certied to compete
against the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V and Delta IV families for national security launches; company officials have been cautiously optimistic the reviews would be
nished by year-end in time to compete for the forthcoming NROL-79 mission.
But Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the new head of Air Force Space Command, appears
to be preparing for an alternate outcome. If they are not ready on Dec. 1, we are going to have to stand up and say that, he said in a Sept. 16 speech at the 2014 Air and
Space Conference hosted by the Air Force Association.
Certication is a requirement to win an Air Force launch competition, although a
company may bid while the certication process is underway. It involves three successful Falcon 9 v1.1 missions, all of which have been completed. But what is ongoing
now is the arduous process of the Air Force reviewing data from those missions and
thoroughly vetting the companys engineering and business practices. Developed under
an entrepreneurial model, SpaceXs internal processes are a far cry from those of ULA,
which grew out of defense monoliths Boeing and Lockheed Martin. SpaceX officials remain upbeat, at least publicly, about their chances to become certied by Dec. 1.
So far, only ULA has been certied to launch large national security payloads; the
monopoly was formed in 2006 in an attempt to consolidate operations and reduce cost
for the legacy Lockheed Martin Atlas and Boeing Delta launch vehicles.
Meanwhile, SpaceX and the Air Force remain locked in a legal dispute about the
propriety of the services conduct in issuing a 36-rocket launch contract to ULA for
years worth of work. The company led suit claiming it was inappropriately cut out of
competing for some of the work, especially in the latter years of the work period, when
the Falcon 9 v1.1 is expected to be certied.
Meanwhile, House authorizers are approving a $26.8 million reprogramming for new
engine work as part of a larger $4.4 billion reprogramming action for scal 2014, according to a Sept. 8 letter from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck
McKeon (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) to Pentagon
Comptroller Michael McCord. The committee, however, requests more information on
the procurement strategy to introduce more competition into this sector.
Momentum for a new engine has built since tensions have mounted with Russia,
which builds the Atlas Vs RD-180, over its activities in Ukraine. c
AIR TRANSPORT
potential effect of the lights on pilots

at night and in different weather conditions, including rain, fog, smoke, haze
and break out effects when a pilot
descends below low cloud bases on an
instrument approach.
Pilots describe the LED-based

medium-intensity approach lights
at the FAAs Technical Center at the
Atlantic City International Airport
as piercing.
ROBERT MOREAU
LED Astray
Industry blasts FAA for lack of
ight-testing on LED lights
John Croft Washington
ndustry ight-testing on a prototype LED approach lighting

system at the Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey has unleashed a wave of discontent over the FAAs handling of the energy-efficient technology as a replacement for
incandescent lights at airports.
The problems are not related to the

test at handan FAA evaluation of how
LED approach lights with an extra infrared element register in the head-up
display (HUD) of an enhanced vision
systembut rather what is happening
when the pilots look out the windscreen.
Its obnoxious as hell, says Bob
Moreau, an experimental test pilot who
observed the lights on a clear, cool night
from an enhanced ight vision system
(EFVS)-equipped Boeing 767 in April.
The lights are overpowering, blotting
out visibility. Moreaus assessment
has been confirmed by several other
test pilots who have flown separate
evaluations at Atlantic City, including
Gulfstream, Bombardier and Dassault
pilots. One joked that he needed suntan
lotion to y the approach.
Moreau sent a letter to the FAA and
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in August complaining
about the lights, setting off a surge of

industry support and prompting the
FAA to set up a two-day public review
of the technologies in early October.
Airports today can change out
legacy incandescent lights with LEDs
of comparable candelas, a measure
of brightness, for all uses except obstruction lighting, approach lights
and high-intensity runway lights. The
latter two uses are not yet approved
due to potential issues with EFVS and
night-vision imaging systems, hence
the Atlantic City testing.
Critics of the LEDs say that while
the candela values may be the same,
the brightness can be much different to the human eye, an issue that
could require changes to the three- or
ve-level brightness controls that are
commonly used for airport lighting.
Either way, they say the FAA has not
conducted testing to determine the
In his letter, Moreau, who is also a

ight test pilot Designated Engineering Representative for the FAA, accuses the agency of a serious abrogation
of regulatory responsibility to the traveling public for not putting LED lights
through the types of rigorous ight and
human-factors testing that have been
conducted with incandescent lights
for decades. In the U.S. and abroad, a
growing number of airports are installing white and colored LED lights for
taxiways, taxiway centerlines, runway
centerlines, touchdown zones, runway
end identifiers and other uses. The
fundamental problem is that these
lights have been elded with no testing done, says Moreau.
Recent reports in NASAs Aviation
Safety Reporting System are revealing some of the issues airline pilots
are having with the lights, including
an Embraer ERJ-135 captain who says
the green LED taxiway centerline lights
at Richmond, Virginia, are exceptionally bright, making it difficult to taxi
at night, and an airline pilot at Denver
who says the same lights are far too
bright, blinding the crew and making
it impossible to see beyond the lights
right in front of you.
The FAA agreed in part with
Moreaus assessment in a Sept. 11
response, stating that LED lighting, particularly white LED approach
lighting, has not undergone thorough
operational ight-testing. The agency
notes, however, that the LED approach
lighting only has been installed at Atlantic City, home of the FAAs William
J. Hughes Technical Center. No mention was made of LED lights already
being used at commercial service airports for taxi, runway and other nonapproach lighting. An FAA cost-benet
analysis for replacing all medium-intensity approach lighting systems at
U.S. airports with LEDs showed a
considerable benet with a two-year
return on investment.
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AIR TRANSPORT
The agency tells Aviation Week it

plans to develop a ight-test plan which
will include appropriate FAA technical
service organizations as well as industry
operators, aircraft and avionics manufacturers and will gather input at the
two-day review in October.
The FAA says many airports have
expressed interest in LEDs to save
money, but that it would ensure safety is in no way compromised solely for
economic reasons.
Officially, the change to LEDs is being driven by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), a bill
designed to boost energy independence,
but the FAA says airports are primarily doing it for cost savings. The rule
does allow for exemptions, which the
maritime industry has received, but for
which the FAA has not applied. Due to
the congressional mandate, incandescent light bulbs are being replaced with
LED lights at various airport locations
throughout the National Airspace System, the agency said in 2011.
FAA research on LEDs has been
ongoing since at least 2005, with FAA
engineers and contractors studying a
variety of topics including the useful
life of LED xtures, how to model the
technology in simulators and replicate
the infrared (IR) signature for EFVS
systems, and developing animations to
determine the suitability of the lights
for use at airports.
All of the companies ying the approaches to Atlantic City either build
or use aircraft with certified EFVS
systems, which use a cooled IR sensor
to pick up incandescent approach and
runway lights in the 1-2-micron wavelength range, allowing for pilots to descend lower than for legacy approaches
if they see the lights in the HUD. To account for the lack of heat signature in
LED lights, the FAA installed customized white lights with IR heaters on the
Runway 4 medium-intensity approach
lighting system at the airport. The approach lights, a combination of threshold lamps, light bars and ashers, are
designed to help pilots align with the
runway, and provide for height perception and roll guidance for Category 1
instrument approaches.
One concern is that if the approach
lights are too bright, the pilot may
not be able to correctly identify the
runway, leading to either a go-around
or, more problematic, a continued approach without the necessary situational awareness.
The LED replacement effort to

date has involved a one-for-one swap
of the two technologies, although the
U.S. Transportation Department has
requested that ICAO make changes
to legacy aviation white SAE International color standards to prevent
hardship and expense in adopting
new energy- and maintenance-saving LED products. That request is
based in part on research performed
by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institutes
(RPI) lighting research center, which
is part of the FAAs Center of Excellence for Airport Technology program. The research looked at the
broader issue of how LEDs might help
reduce the potential for pilots to mistake the colors of incandescent lights.
RPI in a different study contacted

22 U.S. airports with LED lights, nding that in general the devices, which
have a higher initial cost, do reduce
energy use and maintenance requirements compared to incandescent
lights, despite requiring less power
than delivered by existing electrical
infrastructures. RPI says the initial
investment can be recouped over a
period of several years.
Comments from pilots at those airports were always related to brightnessthey either liked it or they did
not. At one airport, pilot complaints
changed to approval after LED fixtures were adjusted downward in intensity one or two steps, the report
states. c
Growth Phase
Philippine carriers move to exploit
improved international access
Adrian Schoeld Auckland
he two major airlines in the Philippines are seizing new opportunities offered by eet changes
and government rulings to expand
their long-haul reach and tap into key
overseas markets.
The Philippines has a growing domestic populationwhich officially
topped 100 million in Julyand huge
expatriate communities in other
countries, creating an attractive formula for long-haul service. Foreign
airlines have been in the box seat in
many important markets, but now the
local carriers are looking for a larger
piece of the action.
Low-cost carrier (LCC) Cebu Pacic
is increasingly challenging Philippine
Airlines (PAL) and the overseas airlines on medium- and long-haul sectors, thanks to its growing Airbus
A330 fleet. At the same time, PAL
is ramping up its services to North
American markets in response to a
U.S. government decision to remove
restrictions on Philippine carriers.
Cebu has established a dominant
position in the Philippines domestic
network, using its Airbus narrowbody
eet of about 40 aircraft. Like many
other Asian LCCs, it is now looking to
the long-haul arena. The airline has re-
cently accelerated this move by adding four routes to destinations beyond

Asia during a ve-week span through
early October.
The carriers initial long-haul destination was Dubai, introduced last October using one of its rst A330s. After a
gap of nearly a year, it launched a route
to Kuwait on Sept. 2, as well as one to
Sydney on Sept. 9, and it plans to begin
ying to Saudi Arabian cities Riyadh on
Oct. 1 and Dammam on Oct. 4. These
destinations all have large concentrations of Filipinosthere are estimated
to be more than a million in Saudi Arabia alone.
Cebu uses new A330-300s, operated under lease, for each of these
routes. It has taken delivery of ve so
far, three of which arrived this year.
Some of the A330s were temporarily
deployed on the short-haul network
before the additional long-haul ights
were added. One more A330 is due in
the first quarter of 2015, says Alex
Reyes, general manager of Cebus
long-haul division.
The carrier has indicated that it
wants to fly to U.S. destinations, and
Reyes confirms Cebu is interested in
Honolulu and Guam, initially. However,
it cannot serve these routes until it re-
AIR TRANSPORT
Cebu Pacic is using its eet of Airbus A330s

to open new long-haul routes.
EUROSPOT/AIRLINERSGALLERY.COM
ceives permission from U.S. authorities.

All Philippine carriers were prohibited from launching or increasing
service to the U.S. in 2008 after the
FAA downgraded the countrys safety
rating. The safety rating was restored
in April this year, but carriers must
still apply to begin new service. Reyes
says Cebu has applied to the FAA for
our operating permit to y to the U.S.,
[and] we are awaiting feedback.
Clues about further international
plans come from Cebus application
to Philippine officials for route authorizations. Last month. Cebu was
granted permission by the countrys
Civil Aeronautics Board to begin ying to New Zealand and Myanmar,
in addition to adding frequencies on
other Asian routes.
The airline has not yet said when
it will exercise the new route awards.
It is still in the process of reviewing
network plans and our [operational]
options regarding these routes, Reyes
says.
Cebu is also interested in signicantly expanding its presence in Australia, says Reyes. Among the alternatives it is considering are increasing
the frequency of its Sydney flights,
serving other cities or partnering
with Australian airlines on domestic
routes. The airline has previously said
that it is interested in working with
LCC Tigerair Australia in this market.
One obstacle to further long-haul
growth could be a shortage of suitable
aircraft after the last A330 is delivered
next year. Regarding the possibility of

leasing additional A330s, Reyes notes
that Cebu is constantly looking for
opportunities for growth. . . . Should
additions to the eet be required, then
we may do that.
The airline is also believed to be considering ordering either Airbus A350s
or Boeing 787s for longer-range routes,
which would open up the possibility of
direct flights to the U.S. West Coast
or Europe. While not commenting on
these types specifically, Reyes says
Cebu is always evaluating aircraft,
since we are in constant touch with
airframe manufacturers. He notes
that the A330s can operate ights of
less than 11 hr., and anything beyond
that requires different aircraft.
PAL, meanwhile, is using the removal of operational restrictions by foreign
governments as a spur to increase longhaul service. The European Commission took PAL off its list of prohibited
airlines last year, and the carrier introduced ights to London in November.
When the FAA restored the Philippines to a Category 1 safety rating in
April, PAL executives immediately revealed their intention to implement
an expansion plan in the U.S. market.
The lifting of this restriction nally
enabled PAL to phase out the Boeing
747-400s it was using on its flights
from Manila to San Francisco and Los
Angeles, replacing them with more-efcient 777-300ERs. PAL is expected to
increase frequencies on existing U.S.
routes, including those to Honolulu
and Guam. The carrier has also stated it will introduce new routes, with
Chicago and East Coast cities among
those under consideration.
PAL looks likely to add New York as
its rst new U.S. destination. It plans to
begin four weekly ights to New Yorks
John F. Kennedy International Airport
via Vancouver in March 2015, using
Airbus A340-300s. The airline cut its
previous New York service in 1997.
While New York also has a large
expatriate Filipino population, this
route will face challenges. The A340s
are less efficient than the 777-300ERs,
and many other carriers already offer one-stop Manila-New York service.
Airline analyst Craig Jenks, of New
York-based Airline/Aircraft Projects
Inc., notes that at least ve major U.S.
or Asian airlines offer a more frequent
one-stop service on this route with
good connections.
PAL intends to increase its ights
to Canada, thanks to a new air services agreement between the two nations that doubles the seven weekly
frequencies that PAL is allotted now.
The carrier currently flies to Vancouver daily, with onward service to
Toronto three times a week.
Some of PALs expansion plans may
be affected by the airlines recent ownership changes. Business magnate Lucio Tan has bought out the minority
stake held by San Miguel Corp., giving
Tan control of the airline once again. It
remains to be seen what changes this
means for the carriers strategy. c
Complementary Connectivity
After acquiring LiveTV from JetBlue,
Thales looks to broaden the companys reach
Brian Sumers Anaheim, California
carriers still want to install embedded
among other major U.S. carriers. And it
or most of the more than a decade
systems. LiveTV offers a product that
was also slow to grow outside the U.S.,
JetBlue Airways owned LiveTV,
allows passengers to stream television
with only a handful of key customers,
whose core business is beamon their own devices, such as iPads, but
including Azul Airlines, Virgin Austraing television to aircraft, the company
Latta and Giannoni say passengers prelia and WestJet Airlines. Slightly more
employed just one salesman. But now
fer seatback screens. Its more comthan 600 aircraft are outfitted with
LiveTV is owned by French giant the
fortable, Giannoni says. But it really
LiveTV systems.
Thales Group, which can devote its
depends on the airlines approach. The
Now more than 60 people sell
global sales team to selling the product.
content delivery inside the aircraft is a
LiveTVs connectivity products. We
This should allow LiveTV to grow
strategy decision for the airlines.
can leverage their sales team to get
and move beyond its relatively small
The embedded screens, of course, do
into all these markets we didnt have
customer base. When it was owned by
not prevent passengers from watching
access to before, says Latta, who reJetBlue, LiveTV pitched its products to
television as many do at home, with an
mains LiveTV president. In addition
airlines only about 6-10 times per year,
iPad or other tablet on their lap. Travelto television, LiveTV offers other sysaccording to President and co-founder
ers may watch on one screen and surf
tems, including Internet it developed
Glenn Latta. Making matters more difthe Internet on the other.
cult, JetBlue did not alUltimately, thats what
ways want its subsidiary
we want, Latta says. If
to sell to competitors,
we can get the weight of
nor did some competitors
the screens down and
want to buy from JetBlue.
drive down costs [of emWe were owned by an
bedded systems], all airairline that wasnt always
lines would put them in.
excited about our selling
Thaless LiveTV acoutside of that airline,
quisition, which closed
Latta tells Aviation Week.
in June, worked well for
JetBlue was a good ownJetBlue, too. The airline
er, but JetBlue wanted to
bought LiveTV for $41
make investments that
million in 2002, agreehelped their company.
ing to assume about $40
Enter Thales, whose
million of the companys
$400 million purchase
debt. And while other carof LiveTV from JetBlue JetBlue sold its LiveTV subsidiary to Thales earlier this year, but
closed in June. Synergy the airline will continue to use the companys products on its eet. riers installed the same
product, JetBlue used
is now the buzzword at
LiveTV to strengthen its brand, adverwith partner ViaSat, and movies.
corporate headquarters in Melbourne,
tising itself as the airline that allowed
But it is best known for television, a
Florida, with Latta and Thales execupassengers to watch live television in
product Thales executives believe they
tives confident they can find more
flight. JetBlue has offered television
can sell internationally, likely in South
buyers, especially for the television
since 2000, and once it owned the comAmerican and China. What makes
product. Before the acquisition, Thales
pany, it was able to tweak the product
sense for TV basically is a market
could produce just about every part
to its specications.
where you have quite a number of peoof an aircrafts inight entertainment
The airline will remain a key cusple who speak the same language and
(IFE) system, but it had no live televitomer for LiveTVas part of the sale,
the ight duration is quite long, says
sion offering.
JetBlue entered into a long-term agreeGiannoni. Thales is also optimistic it
The TV business was not our tarment with Thales to continue providing
can sell LiveTVs offering for widebody
get, says Dominique Giannoni, Thales
television and inight connectivity. But
eets; under JetBlue, the company genCEO of IFE and connectivity. There
the deal allows JetBlue to concentrate
erally equipped narrowbodies.
was a good player in that market and
on its core business.
Giannoni says Thales is in talks with
that was LiveTV. This is one of the reaRunning an airline is very capitalsome Chinese carriers but is not yet
sons we acquired them. They compleintensive, Latta says, noting that Jetready to name them. LiveTV will be
ment us.
Blue probably will prefer using its cash
more difficult to sell in Europe, he says,
There is probably room for LiveTV
to buy aircraft rather than investing in a
because of shorter ights and greater
to grow. It sold a system to Continental
subsidiary. JetBlue was not in the busilanguage diversity there.
Airlines and later one to United Airness of IFE. c
There is also the issue of whether
lines, but it never gained much traction
JETBLUE
DEFENSE
Airbus will be even more reliant on

the success of core programs like its
A400M military aircraft now that is
selling many of its other businesses.
Airbus Group plans to sell

non-core assets, including
its stake in Dassault Aviation
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
Tony Osborne London
and Amy Svitak Paris
wo years ago the Airbus Group
was called EADS and its defense
division was Cassidian. Stefan Zoller was Cassidians CEO and
EADS was in merger talks with BAE
Systems. The new group was poised to
take off big time. Since then everything
has changed.
In fact, last weeks announcement by
Europes largest aerospace company
about the sale of signicant parts of its
defense or defense-related businesses
illustrates a dramatic 180-deg.-turn by
CEO Tom Enders, driven by a dismal
business climate. Airbus Defense &
Space plans to focus on military aircraft,
space and guided missiles while divesting assets it now considers non-core.
The strategy is consequent, but has
inherent risks. By disposing of protable shareholdings that are generating
approximately 3 billion ($3.8 billion)
of the 14 billion in annual revenues
held by the division, Airbus Defense
& Space becomes far more reliant
on what is left. And not all of what
remains can be considered to have
great prospects. If the unit wants to
avoid another restructuring in a few
years, it must secure export orders for
its two most important military programsthe Euroghter Typhoon and
the Airbus A400M.
But that is not very likely, given the
archaic industrial setup of the two
programsthe Euroghter in particularand the high costs they engender.
As for the A400M, export marketing
has not even started in earnest.
To an extent, Airbuss decision to
downsize its defense business is related to the merger attempt with BAE
Systems in late 2012, which

the German government
blocked. In a major restructuring decided last year, Airbus
instead merged Cassidian and
Astrium, creating the new Defense &
Space division. It is also in the process
of eliminating more than 5,000 jobs
across the entire unit.
But the strategy shift marks the
formal end of a longer process and
an even longer dispute between key
(former) executives about an overall
direction . Zoller, Cassidians longtime CEO, believed that EADS should
combat the decline in Europes defense
spending by investing in related parapublic or communications technology
businesses that would broaden the
portfolio and make the company less
dependent on the weak home markets.
He dened Cassidians role as offering
security to clients in more than the
strict military sense.
However, Enders strongly disagreed. He had headed the unit before
becoming Airbus Commercial CEO
andin 2012Airbus Group CEO. A
strong proponent of strengthening the
military core, he believed that diversifying would make it increasingly difcult to integrate the various defense
programs that were still spread across
several units at that time. Zoller was
subsequently fired nearly two years
ago and replaced by his former deputy,
Bernhard Gerwert.
And sure enough, once Airbus Defense & Space was established the
A400M was added to its portfolio,
moving from Airbus Commercial.
We have come to the conclusion
AIRBUS GROUP
About-Face
that our division must focus on the following core businesses: space, military
aircraft, guided missiles and associated
systems and services, Gerwert wrote
Sept. 16, in a letter to employees. We
will invest in these core businesses to
be able to expand our leading position.
The group has identied areas that
are currently profitable, but would
need considerable investment to bring
them up to a No. 1 or No. 2 position in their respective market
segmentsa target dened in
the groups We Make It Fly
strategy. Gerwert says he is not
prepared to invest in the following sectors: secure land communications, commercial satellite
communications services, a
long list of minority or majority shareholdings and,
most likely, security and
defense electronics, for
which further industrial alternatives
will be explored.
As part of its asset disposal efforts,
Airbus also looks set to nally unload
its unwanted 46% stake in Dassault
Aviation. Under a French political
arrangement, Airbus held on to the
shareholding for years in spite of the
fact that Dassault builds the Rafale, a
direct competitor of the Euroghter.
Dassault has called for a Sept. 24 extraordinary shareholder meeting to
approve the buyback of 10% of its capital. While Airbus did not comment on
the matter officially, industry sources
say negotiations have been ongoing
for months and that Airbus could in
fact sell an initial 10% of Dassault now,
while retaining 36% until the complete
exit procedure has been dened. Last
July, Enders was clear that it was not
a question of if, but when Airbus
would separate from Dassault.
But the vast majority of divestments
are happening in Germany, where the
government is in the midst of defense
spending reviews. It has been reluctant
to make any signicant spending decisions, and may not do so until 2015 or
beyond.
Rostock Systems Technik, wholly
owned by Airbus Group, is best known
for its involvement in commercial aircraft programs that produce a range
of systems found in most Airbus com-
mercial airliner cabins. Munich-based

ESG or Elektroniksystem and Logistik-GmbH is an electronics and software company specializing in aviation
and naval applications. Airbus holds
a 30% stake in the company, along
with Rhode & Schwarz and Thales;
Northrop Grumman holds the remaining 10%. Atlas Elektronik, based in
Bremen, specializes in naval systems
for submarines and surface combatants, as well as the production of torpedoes and mine-warfare systems.
Atlas is jointly owned by Airbus and
steel producer ThyssenKrupp AG following its purchase from BAE Systems
in late 2005. Airbus holds a minority
stake of 49%. ThyssenKrupp holds the
right of rst refusal and has said it will
enter talks with Airbus. Many expect
it will take over full control of Atlas.
Nimes, France-based Aviation Defense Servicesknown as AvDefis
an aviation service provider estab-
lished in 1989 with a eet of business

jets used for military training contracts. Airbus holds 80% of AvDef s
parent company, Pentastar, which
owns 55% of AvDef; U.K. rm Cobham
has the other 45%.
And then there is Maryland-Fairchild
Controls, one of the last vestiges of the
larger Fairchild which, following its purchase by Jean-Luc Lagardere during
the late 1980s, gave the formative EADS
groupthen-comprising Matra and
Deutsche Aerospaceits early foothold in the U.S. Today the rm, which
is wholly owned by Airbus, produces
fluid control systems, auxiliary drive
units and other electronic systems. It is
a signicant supplier to Boeing, providing components for the AH-64 Apache
helicopter, as well as for the 747-8, 767
and KC-46A tanker aircraft.
The commercial and para-public
communications businesses that Airbus Group is putting on the market
Bungled
Bundles
Boeing under pressure as rst
tanker platform ight slips
Amy Butler Washington
oeings aggressively low biddingwhich allowed the
company to buy into the U.S. Air Forces KC-135 replacement program and denitively defeat rival Airbuswas always considered a gamble.
And the pressure is on as the company has been forced to
throw millions more at the KC-46 aerial refueler project to
keep it on schedule.
Poorly designed wiring bundles have driven program officials to further slip first flight of the new Boeing 767-2C
baseline platform from June to no earlier than the middle of
November.
Despite the delay, Air Force Maj. Gen. John Thompson,
program executive officer for the KC-46 initiative, says he is
condent the Boeing-led team can deliver the rst 18 tankers
by August 2017, as required in the contract. We dont see anything of great concern there that would really worry us about
the ability to get to required assets available [RAA] . . . in the
August 17 timeframe, Thompson says, noting the program
includes a schedule margin. However, schedule performance
must improve. During last weeks annual Air Force Association conference near Washington, he added that: A lot of . . .
include what the company calls Professional Mobile Radios, such as the Tetra secure radio systems used by law
enforcement and emergency service
agencies. The product line was purchased from Finnish communications
firm Nokia in 2005, when Cassidian
was building up its security business.
While Airbus expects to sell its
commercial mobile satellite services
unitformerly Vizadait will retain its
government satellite activities, which
include co-developing the European
Data Relay System with the European
Space Agency, and providing secure
X-band communications to the British
defense ministry and NATO through its
Skynet 5 network through 2022.
EADS Astrium acquired Vizada in
fall 2011. The unit, a major distributor
of Inmarsat L-band mobile satellite
services, was purchased from Apax of
France for $960 million, when its annual
revenue was forecast at $660 million. c
schedule margin has been chewed up at this point due to the

poorly designed bundles.
Boeing won the $4.4 billion development contract on Feb.
24, 2011; the xed-price terms limit the governments outlay to
$4.9 billion, but a 2013 cost-and-risk assessment put total cost
of the development at $5.9 billion, Thompson says. Boeing is
responsible for overage charges to meet the 2017 milestone.
Ultimately, the Air Force plans to buy 179 of the tankers as
the rst of three potential tranches of KC-135 replacements.
Despite the high cost to Boeing of maintaining the schedule,
Thompson says he still expects it to be a protable venture for
the company. South Korea and Japan have already expressed
interest in a possible buy of KC-46s.
The company announced a $272 million charge this summer
to keep the program on track. At issue was insufficient separation in some of the wiring bundles on the 767-2C baseline platform. Wiring bundles were one of the items that needed a new
design for the tanker variant because USAF requires doubleor even triple-redundant wiring for some mission systems.
The baseline 767 has about 70 mi. of wiring in the design;
First ight for the rst KC-46 is necessary by April in order

to preserve the production schedule, Air Force officials say.
BOEING/JOHN D. PARKER
DEFENSE
the 2C adds about 50 mi. to that, Thompson says. Along with

redundancy, some of the wiring for specic systems must be
separated by a certain distance for safety. Boeing realized
earlier this year while preparing for FAA testing that in 5-10%
of the bundles, either safe-separation of the wiring systems
fell short or wires were not properly shielded.
The poor design was due to discrepancies traced to a transition of design tools, Boeing spokeswoman Caroline Hutcheson
says. While it in no way mitigates our disappointment in taking a charge, the issues here are well-dened and understood.
There is no new technology involved, just additional work that
has to be accomplished.
Some of the wiring had already been installed in the rst
of four test aircraft, driving program officials to remove some
equipment. The other three test aircraft have been produced
and are parked at Boeings Everett, Washington, facility awaiting the newly designed wiring bundles. However, production of
these jets was meant to be fairly concurrent; the redesign issue
has shifted this work into a serial process, creating a possible choke point for executing ight testing for the program.
The 767-2C was specically designed for the tanker role. It
is a 767-200ER modied with a strengthened main-deck cargo
oor, cargo door and freighter features as well as a 787-based
cockpit, auxiliary fuel tanks, plumbing and wiring to support
the refueling boom and mission systems. These features are
being built into the 767-2C on the commercial production line
to minimize the time needed to tear down and add mission
systems at its nishing facility.
First ight for the initial KC-46, which will be the second developmental aircraft (the rst will be used in the 2C conguration for the amended and supplemental type FAA certication)
is slated for April 2015, and Thompson says that schedule is
holding now, although it is roughly six months behind plan. But
if we dont get the KC-46 variant in the air that rst week of
April, then we really start pushing almost a day-for-day slip
of the Milestone C [Pentagon production decision], which is
currently scheduled for next September.
He notes that if the Milestone C decision from Pentagon procurement chief Frank Kendall slips a little bit to the right, that
is not a death knell for the August 17 RAA. However, the slippage in 2C production heavily underscores the development
and production concurrency built into the KC-46 program.
At the outset, officials said this strategy carried little risk in
light of Boeings experience overseeing commercial-to-military
conversions. However, ight testing will have just begun on the
2C when the Pentagon must decide whether to produce the
rst 13 operational aircraft.
Also, the program is embracing a new Test Once concept
designed to maximize the number of test points accomplished
for different agencies in each test sortie. The delay could add
another level of urgency to this new system.
Thompson says he is exploring options to mitigate schedule pressure as a result of the wiring bundle issue, although
he notes it is too early to identify specic measures under
review. There is more than one path through the forest. . . .
Just because we have established a schedule . . . doesnt mean
we could not better optimize that sequence of events.
Before disclosure of the wiring bundle problems, Boeing was
adamant that at completion its estimate would undercut the
governments. Hutcheson did not refute Thompsons estimate,
but notes the companys charge is increased spending by Boeing to maintain the overall program schedule with no additional
costs to customer or taxpayer, per the contract design. c
38 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 22 , 2014
SCHEDULE FRICTION
R
etrotting a x to the F135 propulsion systems in the 21-aircraft-strong F-35 test eet could begin in November and be
complete by early next year, says Bennett Croswell, president of
Pratt & Whitney military engines, which manufactures the engine.
This would nally put the program back on track for a solid pace
of ight testing, which has been interrupted since the June 23 re
caused by a catastrophic engine failure in an A model of the Lockheed Martin aircraft at Eglin AFB, Florida. Aside from six ight-test
aircraft for which the envelope has been expanded owing to the
status of their engines, the remainder of the eet is being handled
somewhat gently, with low-g ights, limited rolls and engine borescope inspections every 3 hr. of ight.
The probable retrot schedule appears to be far later than hoped
for by U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 program
executive officer. He said two weeks ago that if he is unable to get
the testing eet back into full-envelope operation by the end of this
month, we will start seeing some delays in future milestones that
we talked about that we havent pushed up against yet.
He was referring to events such as the rst arrested landing and
catapult trials on the USS Nimitz planned for November, and possibly
items leading to the U.S. Marine Corps initial operational capability
(IOC) date of July 1, 2015. He affirms that Nimitz tests are still on the
table, and a program source notes that of the two aircraft slated for
those tests, CF-3 is cleared to get to the deck. CF-5 is still undergoing validation ights for deck work, but these are not impeded by the
ight-envelope restrictions, the source adds.
Bogdan says the Marines IOC is fundamentally on track,
although mods needed for the F-35Bs and the delivery of mission
data packages could be late; this is his strongest indication so far
that an official in-service declaration could be late.
Testing of a x is slated for October and retrots could begin as
early as November, with emphasis on the test eet, the source says.
Roughly 150 engines are elded, and Pratt has agreed to pay for the
retrots.
The company is conducting testing on a rub rig, a piece of
equipment in its West Palm Beach, Florida, facility designed to
test different densities of the polyimide foam used to form a plate
seal between the stators and the integrally bladed rotor in the third
stage of the F135 compressor section; this is where microcracking
eventually led to a catastrophic failure in AF-27.
Once validated, Pratt intends to retrot the x onto F-35A
engine FX638 for ground testing and eventual ight trials. Three
other engines found to have suspect rubbing during inspections following the AF-27 incident are likely to be retrotted, Croswell says.
Retrots should be straightforward, he says, and should involve
opening up the third stage and replacing the stators.
Meanwhile, Pratt and airframe prime Lockheed Martin are studying whether a series of ying maneuvers can be used to safely burn
in the trench needed for already elded engines so they can return
to full envelope ight. Croswell says a date has not been set to start
those ights; Bogdan had hoped the process could be used on the
remainder of the test eet to get it ying this month. c
F135 Engine For more details on the root-cause investigation

of the F135 failure, go to ow.ly/BBeXO
Fuel Savers
U.S. Air Force targets winglets,
lift control, fuel capacity and
drag cuts for airlifter efficiency
Guy Norris Los Angeles
educing fuel consumption is one of the U.S. Air Forces
most immediate priorities and, 18 months after issuing the Air Force Energy Strategic Plan, the service
is awarding demonstration contracts for efficiency improvements where it hopes to get the biggest bang for the buckthe
fuel-hungry transport eet.
The Air Force accounts for almost half of the Defense Departments total energy consumption, and 81% of that, roughly
2.5 billion gal., is spent on aviation fuel. In 2012, the yearly energy cost for the Air Force was $9 billion, of which more than
a third was consumed by the airlifter eet. To combat this, the
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been tasked with
accelerating the transition to fuel-efficiency and alternativeenergy technologies to meet Air Force goals.
Contracts for demonstrations of four promising near-term
technologies have been awarded to Lockheed Martin for fuelburn improvements to the C-130 and the Boeing C-17. Three of
the enhancements apply to the C-130, which this year marks
the 60th anniversary of its rst ight. They are winglets, a
lift-distribution control system (LDCS), and a reduction in
ullage, or unused space in the aircrafts fuel tanks. The C-17
upgrade will test Lockheed-developed microvanes, or small
fuselage strakes, that create mini-vortices to help keep airow
attached under the airlifters upswept aft fuselage, reducing
drag. Microvanes are also offered as an upgrade for the C-130.
With the winglets, we have been looking at 3% fuel savings
across the eet, and thats not including the LDCS, which is
another 1%. So when you look at them together, the Air Force
eet could be looking at as much as 8 million gal. per year in
total fuel savings, says Chuck Hybart, product development
senior manager for C-130/C-5 improvements and derivatives
at Lockheed Martins Skunk Works. Demonstration of the 5-ft.tall winglets and the LDCS will be conducted over the next
Lockheed Martin evaluated over 400

C-130 winglet designs before selecting
a 5-ft.-tall conguration that will extend
overall wingspan to about 137 ft.
two years under the $3.7 million AFRL contract, with ight
tests likely to take place in 2015 at Edwards AFB, California.
Lockheed estimates the winglets alone could save 4-7 million
gal. per year across the Air Force eet. The company acknowledges that the structural load imposed on the outboard wing
by the winglet will have an impact on overall wing life, but it
also calculates that some of this would be offset by the LDCS,
which deects the C-130s ailerons upward to unload the outer
wing structure, reducing the need to use fuel for wing-bending
relief. This would result in the aircraft trimming out at cruise
with a more nose-up attitude, decreasing drag around the aft
fuselage. Lockheed says the LDCS could reduce fuel burn by
10 gal. per hour, increase payload by up to 10% and boost range
with heavy loads by up to 1,400 nm. To further counteract the
full wing loads, the manufacturer also is partnering with AFRL
to develop a morphing winglet that would adapt its shape in
ight to reduce critical aerodynamic loads.
We will complete development of the winglet and LDCS in
the near term, and we will be ight-testing both of them on the
same aircraft, says Hybart. The LDCS ight-test modication is fairly simple, and it can be disengaged and reengaged.
The ight-test campaign is expected to be wrapped up by the
end of the third quarter of 2015, before Lockheed begins datareduction and fuel-savings assessments. Lockheed estimates
potential combined savings across the legacy USAF and C130J eets of around 4% compared to current fuel-burn levels.
Under a separate $3.5 million contract, Lockheed will demonstrate revisions to improve the C-130 fuel system, which is
currently designed for levels of just more than 80% of the volume in the wing tanks. The remainder is given over to ullage,
which allows the fuel to expand with heat or be accommodated
as the wing structure exes. We have more ullage in the wing
than we need, says Hybart. We estimate 17% of the space in
the tank is air space, and we only need 3-5%.
By providing 12-14% additional internal volume, which Lockheed conservatively estimates will hold 5,000 lb. of extra fuel,
most C-130 users would not require external drop tanks. Dispensing with the wing-mounted external tanks, which together
hold 18,000 lb. of fuel, will reduce drag signicantly.
Under the demonstration contract, Lockheed will determine
exactly how much additional fuel volume is available using the
fuel systems test laboratory it developed for the C-130J program at Marietta, Georgia. The fuel system changes include
raised vent vales and fuel level control valves. c
LOCKHEED MARTIN
SPACE
State of
Suspense
Comets odd shape poses
new challenges to Europes
Rosetta lander
Amy Svitak Paris
ith its unusual, duck-like shape, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko poses an unexpected challenge
to Europes 1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) Rosetta mission
and its small Philae robotic lander, which on Nov. 11 will descend to the surface and alight at a recently selected location
on the head of the comet, known as Site J.
Led by the European Space Agency (ESA), Rosetta and its
100-kg (220-lb.) Philae probe were designed to rendezvous
with and land on a smoother, rounder comet, 46P/Wirtanen.
But Rosettas initial target was scrapped in favor of 67P after
75%. But Jansen says the agency has not had time to conduct a detailed risk analysis of Philaes chances with 67P.
If Philae is successfully deployed, it will perform in-depth
measurements to characterize the comets nucleus in situ, offering unparalleled insight into the bodys composition, structure and evolution, according to Jean-Pierre Bibring, a lead
lander scientist and principal investigator of the Rosetta missions CIVA instrument at the IAS (Institut dAstrophysique
Spatiale) in Orsay, France.
The rush to identify a landing site began when Rosetta
arrived at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Aug. 6, and the
comet was seen close-up for the rst time following Rosettas
decade-long journey through deep space. By Aug. 24, using
data collected while Rosetta was still about 100 km from the
comet, ve candidate areas had been identied as potential
landing sites.
Since then, the spacecraft has moved to within 30 km of
the comet, giving mission scientists more detailed measurements of the candidate sites and suggesting Philaes landing
may be more treacherous than previously thought.
In parallel, operations and ight-dynamics teams have been
exploring options for delivering the lander to all ve candidate
landing sites. Factors considered include Philaes safe trajectory, a minimum density of visible hazards
in the landing zone, the balance of daylight
and nighttime hours on the comets surface
and frequency of communications passes
with the Rosetta orbiter.
Launched in 2004, Europes Rosetta

mission could perform the rst landing
on a comet, at 67Ps Site J, chosen for
its relative atness and Sun exposure.
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
a 14-month launch delay atop an Ariane 5 ruled out the 46P

rendezvous.
ESA says Site J is situated along 67Ps widest point at 4 km
(2.5 mi.) across, offering slopes of less than 30 deg. relative to
the local vertical, with few boulders and sufficient daily Sun
exposure to recharge Philae and continue science operations
beyond its initial battery-powered phase. There is no better
landing place on the comet; this is what we have to live with,
says Andrea Accomazzo, Rosetta ight director at ESA.
A backup location, Site C, is situated on the body of the
comet. The agency says it could take up to 28 days to recongure the mission should they decide to switch to the
alternative site.
No one has ever attempted to land on a comet before, so it
is a real challenge, says Fred Jansen, ESAs Rosetta mission
manager. The complicated double structure of the comet
has had a considerable impact on the overall risks related to
landing, but they are risks worth taking, to have the chance
of making the rst ever soft landing on a comet.
In 1993, when Rosetta was approved as a cornerstone
mission under ESAs Horizons 2000 program, the agency
pegged Philaes success in landing on 46P/Wirtanen at 7040 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 22, 2014
A detailed operational timeline will now

be prepared to determine the precise approach trajectory of Rosetta in order to deliver Philae to Site J. The landing must take
place before mid-November, as the comet is
predicted to grow more active as it moves
closer to the Sun.
The landing date should be conrmed Sept. 26, after further trajectory analysis. A nal decision is to follow with a
comprehensive readiness review, led by ESA, Oct. 14.
Once deployed from Rosetta, Philaes 7-hr. descentsufficient to preserve battery power ahead of landingwill be autonomous, with commands already prepared by the Lander
Control Center of German space agency DLR to be uploaded
via Rosetta mission control before separation.
Both the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander will collect images during the descent, and ESA says other observations of
the comets environment will be made. One hour after separation, the agency should start to collect visual data from
Rosetta. In addition, the lander has a mass memory and can
store data in the event that it loses visibility with the orbiter.
Of course, we cannot predict the activity of the comet
between now and landing, and on landing day itself, says
Accomazzo, referring to the potential for the Suns heat to
activate frozen gases on or below the surface of the comet,
leading to a greater dust hazard. A sudden increase in activity
could affect the position of Rosetta in its orbit at the moment
of deployment and in turn the exact location where Philae will
land, and thats what makes this a risky operation. c
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DEFENSE
Long View
The Jindalee over-the-horizon
radars are substantially improved
Bradley Perrett Canberra
ustralia has to choose its defense technology programs carefully. While the
country expects to eld advanced armed
forces, with a population of 24 million it lacks
the money and depth of engineering expertise
for much domestic development.
But for decades Australia has tirelessly pursued one particularly difficult program: Jindalee, an over-the-horizon radar
system that answers the national problem of how to economically monitor the vast maritime approaches of a continent.
With little publicity, the defense department and its contractors have completed a major upgrade of Jindalee, whose
three enormous antenna installations, ranged across the Outback, bounce high-frequency radio beams off the ionosphere
to observe aircraft and ships at least 3,000 km (1,900 mi.)
away, perhaps as far as the South China Sea. The upgrade has
increased the speed, sensitivity and precision of the sensors,
and knitted them into the national command and control
system of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
The department plans to seek preliminary approval for
further enhancements by June 2015, although the focus of
development effort is now moving to ensuring that the RAAF
can operate the system, formally known as the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, until around 2040.
Australia does not disclose much about Jindalee, usually
describing little more than its operating principles. But in
an interview with Aviation Week the departments acquisition agency, the Defense Material Organization (DMO), has
detailed the achievements of the latest upgrade and the aims
of the next, while still withholding most numerical measures
of performance.
The upgrade was Phase 5 of the Jindalee program, Joint
Project 2025. Defense Minister David Johnston revealed
completion of Phase 5 on May 28, saying it had reached nal
operational capability. That level was in fact attained late last
year, says Air Commo. Mike Walkington of the DMO.
The upgrade was delivered two years late, partly because of a skills shortage, but achieved almost all the
specifications and came in under budget, says Walkington. The work was performed by the Australian operations
of Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, with support and
advice from the Defense Science & Technology Organiza-
Australia has three Jindalee radars,

each emplaced in the Outback. The
official range of the Jindalee system
(see inset) did not change in the
upgrade completed last year. The
actual range may be much greater.
AUSTRALIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY
We didnt necessarily get a big improvement in the size of

the target that can be detected, says Walkington. Detectable
target size has decreased, but the gain was nothing like an
order of magnitude. The department is not changing its guidance that the system can detect targets as small as jet trainers or 300-ton patrol boats. The actual performance may be
somewhat better, but the RAAF has long been adamant that
these radars cannot detect, for example, a slow wooden boat,
even one with the metal of its engine exposed.
Such sensors detect targets by Doppler, the slight shift in
frequency of the reected radio waves caused by a targets
motion toward or away from the radar. They are challenged
not only by the vagaries of the ionosphere, which acts as a
blurry, unstable mirror for bouncing the beam, but also by
the colossal ranges at which they are operating: The returned
energy from a target thousands of kilometers away is minuscule. The arrays are necessarily huge. The transmitter
at Alice Springs is 2.8 km (1.7 mi.) long.
A key advance in Phase 5 is processing speed. Radars such
as Jindalee do not smoothly sweep their elds of view but,
rather, dwell on patches, called tiles. Following the upgrade,
the three Jindalee installations can look at larger tiles in less
time, says Walkington. He will not say whether the dwell time
is tens of seconds, minutes or tens of minutes for each tile,
but it is clear that faster radars can better scan large areas
by shifting from tile to tile. Phase 5 has made Jindalee more
digital but not fully so, says Walkington. Analog-to-digital
conversion of the signal is not done imJindalee Radar Locations and Coverage mediately at the array. The antennas are
phased arrays, so the beam is steered
electronically in azimuth, but each radar can apparently dwell on only one tile
at a time. Asked whether more than one
could be observed simultaneously, Walkington says: We have three radars.
Solar ares and coronal mass ejections disrupt the ionosphere, and this
Longreach
remains a problem. But the radars can
Alice
Springs
better handle changing ionosphere conLaverton
ditions. Altogether, Phase 5 implemented every intended improvement except
RAAF
one based on articial intelligence.
Edinburgh
Walkington will not specify Jindalees performance, except to say
Source: Royal Australian Air Force
that the range of the system has not
changed from a minimum of 1,000 km to a maximum of 3,000
km, the gures that the department and RAAF have previously stated. Australian defense analysts believe that under
suitable ionospheric conditions it can see much farther.
There are signs that improvements in sensitivity and
precision in Phase 5 have been considerable. One indication
is that the department does not expect the next phase to
achieve as much. Progress is increasingly difficult, although
Walkington adds: We will constantly work on detection accuracy. We will constantly work on monitoring the ionosphere,
a key issue in extracting sharper data.
Another sign of a hefty gain in performance is that the
sensitivity has improved enough to meaningfully cut costs.
Depending on the conditions, the radars now operate at reduced power, accounting for much of an expected saving of
AUS$100 million ($93 million) over 10 years. Unsurprisingly,
then, Phase 5 did not replace the high-frequency power ampliers; the original output is clearly sufficient.
tion. The budget has not been disclosed.

Thanks to Phase 5, the radars at Laverton, Western Australia, and Longreach, Queensland, have been bought up to
the standard of the original installation in the center of the
continent, at Alice Springs, Northern Territory. As a developmental system beneting from constant tinkering, the Alice
Springs radar was more advanced. Now they are the same
and the Alice Springs radar is integrated as an operational
installation. It no longer has a special status; any of the three
can be used for further development work, says Walkington.
As is usual with major improvements to defense systems,
Phase 5 relied on faster electronics. The arrays now collect
much more data, which are sent in basically raw form to
RAAF Edinburgh, a base near Adelaide, South Australia,
where the radars are controlled. Bandwidth between the
arrays and the base had to be greatly enlarged.
Edinburgh processes the raw information to extract track
data that go to RAAF Williamtown at Newcastle, New South
Wales. There it is fed into Vigilare, a Boeing command-andcontrol system that integrates tracks from various sources to
create the national tactical air picture. Jindalee was linked to
Vigilare before Phase 5 was completed. It is now well integrated with the command-and-control system, says Walkington.
The data going into Vigilare are also improved. Jindalee is
now more sensitive, better able to extract targets from noise
and to classify them by size. The system also determines their
locations, and presumably speeds and headings, more precisely.
DEFENSE
The RAAF does not operate Jindalee continuously, because of cost and the lack of a peacetime need to do so. But
the low-power modes now available clearly raise the possibility of using the radars more often.
A few days after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370 early on the morning of March 8, Aviation Week
asked whether Jindalee had tracked it. The chance was never
high, because reections from the ionosphere are weak at
night, discouraging over-the-horizon radar operation then,
and because the Boeing 777 would have had to have own
through a tile that a Jindalee radar had for some reason been
cued to observe. The aircraft also would have needed to follow a course that created a detectable Doppler shift. Typifying its reluctance to discuss Jindalee, the department replied
by saying it was passing any information it had to Malaysia;
it did not refer to the over-the-horizon radars.
The Phase 5 upgrade followed the much-delayed delivery in
2003 of the operational Jindalee system, including the Laverton and Longreach installations. The rst contractors for the
operational systems, including the telecoms company Telstra,
failed to deliver on time, so Canberra called in a joint venture

that included Lockheed Martin.
So potentially valuable was the system that the government never seems to have considered giving up. Jindalees
key advantage is that it allows Australia to better deploy its
limited number of aircraft and ships, says Andrew Davies of
the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The systems data
are too imprecise for targeting, but it can cue other surveillance systems, such as the Boeing Wedgetail radar aircraft
and Lockheed P-3 Orions. It is itself presumably cued by
other data sources, including information from allies.
An important but unanswered question is whether Jindalee is precise enough to direct ghters relying on their
own radars to nd an air target; 24 years ago, very early in
its development, it was far from being able to do so, a U.S.
Air Force statement at the time suggested.
Over-the-horizon radars have the key advantage of defeating stealth. Igor Sutyagin, Russian studies fellow at Britains
Royal United Services Institute, pointed to such capabilities
of very-long-wave radars in a paper released this month. Lon-
Plane Spotting
Better long-wave radars challenge stealth
Dave Majumdar Washington
he Pentagon has poured billions of
dollars into the Lockheed Martin
F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning
stealth ghters, but details are emerging of how low-frequency radarsincluding discount models based on
Cold War hardwareare proliferating
worldwide.
Pentagon and industry officials concede that radars operating in the veryhigh-frequency (VHF) band can detect
and even track most low-observable
aircraft, but conventional wisdom has
always held that such systems cannot
generate a weapons quality track
they are unable to guide a missile onto
a target. Is it OK if the threat sees it
but cant do anything about it? asks
one Navy official rhetorically.
The issue was recognized in principle
years ago: The Northrop Grumman B-2
was designed to extend stealth into the
VHF band, with its ying-wing shape
and deep radar-absorbent structural
edges; its shape is reected in many unmanned vehicles. Agile and supersonic
designs with tails and other small physical features remain vulnerable.
Today, technology may have alleviated VHFs weaknesses. Since the
only two countries where we might
need stealth design their own radars
and are well aware of our capabilities,
pursuit of stealth at any cost is nancially and strategically questionable,

says Mike Pietrucha, an electronic warfare officer who ew on the McDonnell
Douglas F-4G Wild Weasel and Boeing
F-15E Strike Eagle.
Signal-processing enhancements
combined with a missile with a large
warhead and its own terminal guidance
system could allow VHF radars to engage a tactical ghter-sized stealth aircraft, Pietrucha says. Low-frequency
radars dont kill people. Missiles guided
by low-frequency radars kill you. Factors limiting accuracy include the width
of both the radar beam and the radar
pulse. These can be overcome with signal processing, he says.
The width of the beam is directly related to the size of the antenna. Early
low-frequency radars, such as the Soviet-built P-14 Tall King, used enormous
semi-parabolic antennas to generate
a narrow beam. The later P-18 Spoon
Rest used a compact, folding Yagi-Uda
array, a bedstead-like framework carrying multiple antennas. Still, early
low-frequency radars had limitations
in determining the altitude, range and
precise direction of a contact.
The beams produced by these radars are several degrees wide in azimuth and tens of degrees wide in eleva-
tion, Pietrucha said. This on its own

makes it impossible to localize a contact
in elevation, [so] a height-nding radar
was required to determine altitude.
Another limitation of VHF radars is
that their pulse width is long and they
have a low pulse-repetition frequency,
resulting in poor range resolution. A
pulse width of 20 microseconds yields
a pulse that is roughly 19,600 ft. long.
Range resolution is half the length of
the pulse, Pietrucha says. In this case,
the range cannot be determined accurately within 10,000 ft., and two targets
with that separation or less cannot be
distinguished as separate contacts.
As early as in the 1970s, signal processing helped with range resolution.
The key is a process called frequency
modulation on pulse, which is used to
compress a radar pulse. [It] takes a
pulse and modulates the frequency as
it goes out, Pietrucha says. It is called
a chirp, because thats what it sounds
like acoustically. When the pulse is received back, it is run through a special
chip, which decompresses it.
The advantage of using pulse compression is that with a 20-microsecond
pulse, the range resolution is reduced to
about 180 ft. Several other techniques
can be used to compress a radar pulse,
such as phase shift keying, Pietrucha
says. The technology required for
pulse compression is decades old [and]
the processing power required is negligible by current standards.
Phased-array antennas can provide
better azimuth resolution, and active,
electronically scanned arrays are better
ger wavelength, decameter-band radars such as the Russian

Rezonans-NE could be effective against the Northrop Grumman B-2 and other targets designed to evade detection by
very-high-frequency (meter-band) radars, Sutyagin says.
Jindalee operates in a similar band. According to one U.S.
technical paper, at very long wavelengths that are close to the
physical size of the target, conventional radar cross-section
measurement and reduction techniques do not apply, and the
targets detectability is a matter of its physical size.
The just-completed upgrade of Jindalee got off to a slow
start. About two years was lost at the beginning, leading to
the two-year delay in delivery, largely because of the departure of people who had worked on building the operational
system. This is emblematic of Australias challenges in developing advanced defense systems alone: It lacks a deep
pool of skills. And, although various countries have built such
radars since the 1950s, the Australians believe they are on the
leading edge of the technology, so they cannot turn to allies,
such as the U.S., for help.
The next upgrade, Phase 6, was also in danger of an exodus
of essential workers. As we were coming to the end of Phase 5

we could see the same thing happening, says Walkington. So
the department is implementing an interim effort, Phase 7,
with the main objective of keeping 60 or so key people engaged.
Their tasks will include improving or developing radar
performance-analysis tools, working on wave-form generator
and receiver technology for Phase 6, developing multichannel
digital receivers that will reduce component count, improving ionosphere sounders and developing software tools suitable for long-term sustainment.
Phase 6 will be aimed mainly at dealing with obsolescence.
The department hopes to gain government approval in the
rst half of 2015 to begin soliciting contractor bids. Two years
later it will seek approval to issue contracts, subject to intervening reviews of defense policy.
Apart from general performance improvements, Phase 6
will give operators the ability to vary tile sizes, which are
currently xed. Networking may be improved as well. c
With Bill Sweetman in Washington.
Modernized
versions of the
Cold War-era
P-18 Spoon Rest
radar can provide a
low-cost counterstealth capability.
still, because of more precise and exible beam shaping, The physics limits
still applythe lower the frequency of
the radar array, the larger the spacing
between the [transmit/receive] modules
and the fewer that go into an antenna
array, Pietrucha explains.
With a missile warhead large enough,
range resolution does not have to be
precise, he says. The command-guided
S-75 Dvina, with a 440-lb. warhead,
remains in service worldwide, including much improved Chinese variants.
Assuming I have a large, big-warhead
missile like the SA-2, I can get lethal effects from over 100 ft., Pietrucha says.
So our notional 20-microsecond pulse,
compressed, with a range resolution of
150 ft., has the range resolution to get
the warhead close enough.
A more modern missile equipped
with its own seeker would be a more
dangerous foe. Then

the radar only has to
determine if the contact is within the uncertainty volume of
the missile seeker,
Pietrucha notes. If
I can locate a target to within a cubic
WIKIMEDIA
kilometer and my
missile can effectively search a cubic
kilometer, then Im in there.
Pietruchas critique is echoed by
Igor Sutyagin, Russian studies fellow
at the U.K.s Royal United Services
Institute, in a recently released paper.
Sutyagin concludes that modern Russian low-band radars have an error box
small enough to enable missiles with
active or infrared seekers to be own
near enough to low-observable targets
to initiate terminal homing.
One way to exploit the counter-stealth
capability of low-band radars while providing accurate tracking is to fuze the
signals of low-band, decimetric and microwave radars, as in the 55Zh6ME radar complex unveiled last year (AW&ST
Sept. 2, 2013, p. 28) and the single-vehicle, dual-band 55Zh6UME, codenamed Track Tall, which is said to have
a 60-meter (198.5-ft.) resolution. But
Sutyagin notes that these new, pricey

and still scarce radars are not the only
threats to stealth platforms. There are
about 500 operational Spoon Rest D/E
(P-18)s that can be digitally upgraded.
A fully modernized, digitized P-18
is relatively cheap (and) provides customers with good survivability along
with an error box of just 250 meters,
Sutyagin says. He rates Belaruss P-18T
and Czech Republic contractor Retias
upgrades as superior to Russias. Hungarys Arzenal has unveiled a digitized
Spoon Rest, the P-18H, claiming a resolution of 8 deg. in azimuth and 500 meters in range. China is also developing
the HK-JM and -JM2 all-digital, mobile
VHF radars.
A recently retired senior U.S. Navy ofcial notes that the newest Chinese air
warfare destroyers such as the Type 52C
Luyang II and Type 52D Luyang III are
fitted with VHF radars (the Beijing
Leiyin Electronic Technology Development Co.s Type 517M) that cue microwave-tracking radars. [When] dealing
with these systems [you have to] have
the lower frequency coverage, he adds.
Completing the kill chain against a
stealth aircraft could still be a challenge.
Good luck tting a VHF antenna in a
missile body, one U.S. Air Force source
says. While tactical fighter stealth is
optimized for high frequencies, so too
are most enemy SAM systems. At the
end of the day, almost all of the current
shooters are targeted by our current
stealth, the official adds.Electronic
warfare is another game, and there are
systems tailored there as well. c
Quiet Shapes
Condent that unconventional designs can
reduce noise, NASA eyes less radical approaches
Graham Warwick Washington
ore than a decade ago, NASA calculated that it should be

possible to reduce an airliners noise footprint 80% by 2025,
but only by abandoning the traditional tube-and-wing conguration. Today the agency has conrmed such a dramatic noise
reduction is feasible with a radically different design, but
says the same technologies can signicantly reduce the
noise of more conventional aircraft.
Noise is one of the toughest challenges to aviations growth. Building new

airports, or expanding existing ones,
is close to impossible because of public
opposition to increased aircraft noise.
Regulators continue to set lower noise
limits, but they reect only what industry can already achieve. International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
Chapter 14 noise rules that take effect
for new designs in 2018 will reduce the
limits by a cumulative 7 EPNdb (Effective Perceived Noise Level), but the
Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 already
undercut that by substantial margins.
To achieve a signicant enough noise
reduction to ease or lift constraints that
prevent airports from boosting capacity
and throughput will require substantial
The N2A hybrid wing-body concept

model was mounted upside down in
NASAs 14 X 22-ft. wind tunnel to
measure airframe noise-shielding.
NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER
B27 Design Features with Acoustic Benefit

Advanced Duct Liner
Mid-Fuselage Engine Mount

Double-Deck Fuselage
Shielding at Sideline Angles
Reduced Fan Noise
Forward Fan Noise-Shielding

and No Wing Reflection
High-BypassRatio Engine
Krueger Slat
Reduces Cove Flow
Separation
Advanced High-Aspect-Ratio Wing
Reduced Jet Noise
Continuous Flap
Trailing Edge
Reduced Side Edge
Lower Approach Speed Reduces

Total Airframe Noise
Boeing/NASA
NASA has begun to apply the lessons learned to

less radical, and perhaps more acceptable, designs that still use shielding to
signicantly reduce noise.
Fifteen years ago, we concluded a
conguration change would be necessary, together with advanced technology, to achieve a step change in noise
reduction. The hybrid wing-body was
seen as the most logical candidate beAviationWeek.com/awst
cause of the airframe shielding, says

Thomas. But we have been relooking
at other congurations that are not as
radical as the HWB but are still unconventional tube-and-wing designs.
These include mid-fuselage nacelle
(MFN) and over-the-wing nacelle
(OWN) concepts. They are still tubeand-wing, but different. Both have signicant aspects of engine shielding, he
explains. Engine inlets are positioned
above the trailing edge of the wing in
the MFN and OWN concepts, shield-
and landing-gear noise. Thats a huge

number, and close to NASAs goal,
notes Thomas.
The low-speed tests in NASA Langleys 14 X 22-ft. subsonic tunnel involved a full-span, 5.8%-scale model of
a Boeing-designed HWB cargo aircraft
concept, the N2A-EXTE. The tests increased condence in several technologies applicable to other congurations,
including high-bypass-ratio engines, advanced acoustic liners and treatments
to reduce noise generated by leadingedge devices and landing gear. We see
the technologies as not being special
to the HWB but applicable to other
designs to provide incremental and
signicant noise reductions, he says.
As for shielding, its not just where
we place the engines on the airframe,
its how effective we can make it,
Thomas says. Work is underway to
increase shielding effectiveness, particularly for jet noise, which is distributed downstream in the engine efflux.
This includes research into a different
BOEING CONCEPT
changes in aircraft design. The biggest

of these is likely to involve using the airframe as a shield to reduce the engine
noise that reaches the ground. For the
past ve years, NASAs efforts have focused on validating the noise benets
of the blended, or hybrid wing-body
(HWB), conguration because its broad
fuselage promised the most shielding.
Starting with the HWB conguration
and adding technology to further lessen engine, airframe and landing-gear
source noise, NASA set the target of
a cumulative 42 EPNdb below Stage 4
limits for an aircraft that could enter
service in 2025. Compared with todays
aircraft, which are 10 db below Stage 4,
if we could achieve 42 db with an HWB,
that would be an 80% reduction in noise
footprint area, says Russ Thomas, senior research engineer at NASA Langley Research Centers aeroacoustics
branch. That is signicant.
But not everyone views the HWB as a
viable replacement for todays long-haul
twins because of passenger acceptance
and evacuation issues, so while it continues to advance its understanding
of the aerodynamic and aeroacoustic characteristics
of the concept,
The Mid-Fuselage Nozzle concept

has less engine noise-shielding
but several technologies to reduce
airframe noise.
The B27 conguration is an advanced

development of a Boeing MFN concept.
ing the ground from forward fan noise.
MFN additionally mounts the engines
mid-deck on a double-deck fuselage,
which provides sideline noise-shielding.
Work on the new configurations
builds on understanding gained through
testing of the hybrid wing-body. Three
months of wind-tunnel tests, completed in January 2013, showed the HWB
conguration achieves a total cumulative noise reduction of 38.7 db below
Stage 4, thanks to engine-shielding
combined with a package of technologies to reduce engine, high-lift system
design of nozzle chevrons, which reduce noise by improving the mixing of

engine core and bypass exhaust ows.
The new design moves jet noise upstream, closer to the exhaust, to make
aft-shielding more effective.
Initial blended wing-body designs
had their engines cantilevered off the
trailing edge of the centerbody for best
performance, but this provided little
noise benet. Moving the fuselage-top
engines forward from the trailing edge
increases noise-shielding, although
aerodynamic performance begins to
suffer beyond a certain point. The

N2As engines are mounted 2.5 fan-exit
diameters upstream of the trailing edge
to provide signicant shielding of aftradiated fan and jet noise, as well as
forward-radiated fan noise.
Analysis of a Boeing-designed MFN
concept, B27, indicates it could achieve a
cumulative noise level 28 db below Stage
4, beating the Boeing 787 at 18 db below.
Shielding alone provides a 4-db advantage over an engine-under-wing conguration, NASA calculates. In addition, the
baseline MFN has a high-aspect-ratio,
laminar-flow-control wing enabling a
landing speed 20 kt. slower for lower
airframe noise. Full-span continuous
trailing-edge aps and Kreuger leadingedge slats that are open for landing but
sealed for takeoff eliminate other noise
sources. Turbofans with a 13.5:1 bypass
ratio reduce jet velocity and noise.
Additional noise-reduction technologies could take the MFN to 36 db
below Stage 4, NASA estimates. These
include over-the-rotor and soft-vane
liner treatments to reduce fan noise,
an exhaust nozzle with 10-deg. scarf
angle to shield aft fan and core noise,
chevrons to reduce jet noise and sealed
slat gaps on approach. By using geared
turbofans with a higher bypass ratio of
about 15, the MFN could reach 40-42 db
below Stage 4, the agency calculates.
Yes, we have done a lot of work on
the HWB, which is a design that brings
up issues. But what we have done is all
applicable to other congurations such
as MFN and OWN. Even the individual
technologies can be fed back into the
engine-under-wing configuration,
Thomas says. We feel it has been a
synergistic research effort and not just
about HWB.
Before the hybrid wing-body, engines were treated separately from the
airframe. Our work on the HWB has
forced a paradigm shift in thinking on
noise, opening up all these new technologies, says Casey Burley, an aeroacoustics branch senior research engineer at
NASA Langley. We are learning now
how we can look at tube-and-wing differently and seeing there may be great
gains to be made.
MFN probably would not have gotten much attention, but it has been
brought forward as a result of our work
on hybrid wing-body, and our analysis
shows it is quite competitive, adds
Thomas, concluding that HWB has
pushed the boundary of noise-reduction
technology. c
Taming Noise
Loss of industry backer forces NASA to become
inventive in validating airframe noise reductions
An 18%-scale model in the 14 X

22-ft. subsonic tunnel validated
ap and gear noise reductions in a
near-relevant environment.
ecessity is the driver behind

NASAs plans to push the
boundaries of computational
uid dynamics (CFD) to validate airframe noise-reduction technologies
now that its industry partner has
pulled out of ight testing.
Numerical simulation of the fullscale aircraft with flap and landinggear noise treatments, following
successful testing of a high-fidelity
wind-tunnel model in 2013, should allow the agency to get close to its original objective for the airframe noise
project, part of the Environmentally
Responsible Aviation (ERA) program.
We are raising the bar with the
full-scale simulation, says Mehdi
Khorrami, senior research engineer at
NASA Langley Research Center. This
is challenging stuff, at the frontiers of
CFD.
The decision to perform a high-delity numerical simulation of the airframe
noise-reduction technologies followed
Gulfstreams 11th-hour announcement thatdue to severe budget constraintsit would not be able to co-fund
the planned flight-tests. When that
news came, they were in full-blown
design, about to send out packages to
be manufactured, says Khorrami.
The selected ap and landing-gear
noise
treatments are at
technology readiness level (TRL) 5 following
the high-delity wind-tunnel tests, but
needed to be own to achieve TRL 6
the mandated end goal for projects under the ERA program. The full-scale
numerical simulation of the modied
aircraft will recover part of the loss
of ight test, he says.
Flight tests of the modified Gulfstream were to be the culmination of
a six-year project to identify, evaluate
and downselect technologies to reduce airframe noise caused by airow
around the landing gear and lowered
aps. The effort has included isolated
component-level tests in a wind tunnel
at Virginia Tech and integrated tests
of selected concepts on an 18%-scale
model Gulfstream in the 14 X 22-ft. subsonic tunnel at NASA Langley in 2013.
Tests of the 8.7-ft.-tall semi-span
model in the Langley tunnel evaluated
seven different concepts for ap-edge
noise reduction and ve or six for gearnoise mitigation, says Khorrami. Of the
ap concepts, four produced good results in line with computational predicAviationWeek.com/awst
NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER PHOTOS
tions. But due to background noise in

the tunnel and sound from secondary
sources such as an instrumentation
wiring bundle close to the flap, the
measured reduction was less than
predicted. We expected 4.5 db and
saw 3.5-4.2 db.
Gear noise reductions were right
on the money, he says, in line with
isolated gear tests and computational
predictions. We saw a 3-3.5-db reduction by applying various concepts,
mostly fairings and a stretchable mesh
over the gear-bay cavity, which gave us
a lot of low-frequency noise reduction.
In April 2013, NASA and Gulfstream
went through a downselect to choose
the treatments that would proceed to
ight test. This constrained the choice
to concepts that could be installed with
minimum impact on the aircraft, to
stay within budget and schedule limits. One promising flap noise reduction concept, the flexible side edge
link (Flexsel), was dropped because
it required major modications to the
wing to connect it to the ap. Where
most ap noise concepts had minimum
impact on aerodynamic performance,
the Flexsel increased lift 1.5-2% and
reduced induced drag by linking the
ap to the wing.
The ap-edge concepts selected for
ight were porous surface treatment
and the reactive othrotropic
lattice diffuser (ROLD), neither of which required major
design changes. The porous
treatment involves laserdrilled holes in the upper
and lower skins of the flap
tip over a width equivalent to
about 1.5 times the maximum
thickness of the ap.
The holes allow the empty
flap to act as a resonator.
Flow seeping through has a
quenching effect on the pressure uctuations and also allows the pressure eld on the
ap to equalize. This reduces
the pressure differential between the
upper and lower surfaces and weakens the vortices shed by the ap tips,
Khorrami says.
ROLD involves a porous skin and
acoustic liner. In addition to holes in
the top, bottom and side edge of the
flap, the internal liner has passages
that run from top to bottom, leading
edge to trailing edge, and intersect orthogonally to form an elaborate lattice
structure. This forces ow through the
A simulated radiated sound eld

from a full-scale Gulfstream aircraft during landing with aps and
main landing gear deployed.
passages to be lossy, Khorrami says,
dissipating the acoustic waves.
The gear concepts mostly involve
fairings, with porosity proving particularly effective. A solid fairing can
accelerate the ow and increase the
noise over another component, says
Khorrami. With partial porosity you
can send very lossy ow to part of the
gear, which will see much slower ow,
and direct the rest of the ow so it does
not hit other components.
NASA has developed a fairing design methodology that can be applied
to any landing gear. Every gear is a
different animal. You have to make a
judicious choice of where to put the
fairing, he says, For the Goodrich
(now United Technologies Aerospace
Systems) gear on the Gulfstream, a porous knee fairing covers the upstream
A desktop model shows a shapememory alloy slat cove ller

deforming and recovering shape
during retraction and deployment.
main post and reduces noise-producing ow interaction between front and
rear struts. Several small fairings are
applied to the upper part of the gear to
reduce turbulent ow.
A partial fairing over brake components between the two main wheels
proved effective in the tunnel, but

was not selected for flight to avoid
interfering with brake cooling. The
stretchable cavity mesh, meanwhile,
proved highly effective in the tunnel,
reducing low-frequency gear noise by
2-3 db. Together the treatments were
predicted to cut ap and gear noise by
4 db, a 60% reduction, Khorrami says.
Because of the high fidelity of the
18%-scale model, wind-tunnel tests are
judged to have validated the technologies in a near-relevant environment.
Full-scale numerical simulation will
take validation close to that afforded
by ight test. The environment will
be identical. The full aircraft geometry
will include all the downselected noisereduction concepts, says Khorrami.
Even the ow through every hole in the
porous fairings will be computationally
simulated. It will be quite challenging,
and expensive, he says.
The ranking of landing gear, trailingedge aps and leading-edge slats as the
major sources of airframe noise varies
from aircraft to aircraft, Khorrami
says, with aps most prominent on a
737 and gear on a 777. To tackle slat
noise, NASA has investigated a concept
for a slat cove ller that lls the cavity
behind the deployed slat with a shape
that guides the ow and reduces ow
unsteadiness and radiated noise.
The challenge has been
nding a mechanism that can
fold into a tight space when
the slat retracts, withstand
repeated deployment cycles
and maintain its shape under the aerodynamic loads.
NASA has developed a concept using a superelastic
shape-memory-alloy cove
filler. The material changes
phase when deformed as the
slat retracts, then springs
back into shape when the slat
is deployed.
We are condent of a 4-8db noise reduction without
affecting aerodynamics, says Travis
Turner, an aerospace engineer at Langley. A 75%-scale model of the slat design
has just been mechanized, so NASA can
begin taking actuator load and material
strain measurements. We are at the
point where we have a benchtop-model
functional demonstration and computational models of the structure. We are
ready for the next step, which is to design a working system for wind-tunnel
and ight test. c
Regional Silencer
Challenge of quieting smaller aircraft draws
attention of European researchers
hen it comes to noise, regional
aircraft may be quieter than
long-haul airliners, but they
struggle to match the reductions that
have been achieved by the big jets over
the years. This is one reason smaller
aircraft have been given more time to
comply with stricter noise limits coming later this decade.
Chapter 14 noise standards, which
will take effect for new large-aircraft
designs from the end of 2017 and require a cumulative reduction of 7
EPNdb (Effective Perceived Noise
Level), will not be applied to aircraft
weighing less than 55 metric tons
(121,250 lb.) until 2020. This reects
the tougher task manufacturers face
Europes Wenemor project has

evaluated the effectiveness of a Utail in shielding open-rotor noise.
to significantly reduce airframe and

engine noise in smaller aircraft.
With the sectors most successful
manufacturer ATR, jointly owned by
Airbus and Alenia Aermacchi, Europe
is investing in research into reducing
the noise impact of future 90-130-seat
regional aircraftwhether powered by
turboprops, geared turbofans or open
rotors. In Japan, where the next commercial aircraft program to follow the
Mitsubishi Regional Jet is just beginning to take shape, research into airframe and engine noise reduction also
is gearing up.
For regional aircraft, noise from the
landing gear and high-lift system is a
major contributor to the total. Over the
last couple of decades, Europe has run
a series of research programs looking
at airframe noise reduction, but they
have focused on larger single- and
twin-aisle aircraft. Among the biggest

of these was Silencer, under which a
low-noise main landing gear was testown on an Airbus A340. The OpenAir
program, now winding up, has focused
in part on the smaller A320 main gear.
But Europes 1.6 billion ($2.1 billion)
Clean Sky public-private research program, and the 4 billion Clean Sky 2
follow-on now getting underway, has
a regional aircraft project, led by the
partners in ATR. Under the Green Regional Aircraft program within Clean
Sky, the Low Noise Conguration project is demonstrating noise-reducing
technologies for regional-turboprop
landing gear and high-lift systems. The
program is also looking at new congurations that would reduce noise.
Work on reducing airframe noise is
focused on a 90-seat twin-turboprop
with high-mounted wing and main
gear housed in fuselage sponsons, similar to todays ATR 42/72. Over several
projects, Europe has evaluated numerous noise-reducing technologies using
computational aero-acoustics. Now,
under the Allegra program, the most
promising concepts will be tested on
full-scale nose gear and half-scale main
gear mock-ups in the wind tunnel at
TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN
Altitude 60 meters, landing configuration, engine-idling condition (40% thrust), temporary level flight (120 kt.)
Main landing gear
Fuel tank pressure

regulating vent
Flap
Main
landing gear
Main
landing gear
Maximum level
58.3 db
the Pininfarina design house in Italy.

The best solution emerging from
the Allegra project will then be tested on a full-scale main landing gear
in the DNW-LLF wind tunnel in the
Netherlands, under the follow-on Artic program. Trinity College Dublin is
the coordinator for both the 2 million
Allegra and 1.4 billion Artic programs
and also leads the 2 million Wenemor
project to evaluate installation effects
on noise for an open-rotor-powered
130-seat regional aircraft.
Aero-acoustic wind-tunnel testing
under Allegra is scheduled to begin in
October with the full-scale nose landing gear, and testing of the half-scale
main gear is to begin in December,
says Gareth Bennett, Trinity College
Dublin project coordinator for all three
programs. In the Artic project, a fullscale main-landing-gear model will be
tested and the best low-noise solution
coming from Allegra main-gear testing will be compared to the baseline
to assess the noise reduction, he says.
We expect a noise reduction of
about 40% compared to the basic solution, Bennett says. This would allow
us to meet the Acare noise target for
a 90-passenger turboprop green regional aircraft. Acare, the Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics Research
and Innovation in Europe, has set noise
and emissions targets for civil aviation
to meet by 2020 and, beyond that, by
2050. Clean Skys Green Regional Aircraft program is aimed at helping meet
the 2020 targets.
Allegra is evaluating a suite of lownoise solutions for the nose landing gear
and another set for the main gear. For
the nose gear, concepts to be tested are:
hub caps on the twin wheels; a windshield between the two tires; a spoiler
0.5 KHz
Maximum level
64.9 db
JAXA uses an acoustic phased

array to identify airframe noise
sources on aircraft in ight, here a
Mitsubishi Diamond.
formed by angling the forward nosegear door; and perforated fairings. A
4-db reduction is expected from hub
caps; 3.5 db from the spoiler, which
creates a ow separation zone over the
upper part of the gear; 2 db from the
windshield preventing flow between
the wheels; and 1.5 db from fairings that
slow airow through the perforations
and deect the rest away from the gear.
(A challenge of noise reduction is that
lowering one source reveals another, so
savings are not additive.)
For the main gear, concepts to be
tested are: perforated fairings; passive
absorbers inside the gear bay; outer
hub caps and axle fairings on the twin
main wheels; and leg meshes. A single
bay absorber is calculated to reduce
noise by 1-2 db and applying sound
absorbers to both front and rear bay
walls for the Allegra tests is expected
to reduce noise further. Meshes reduce
local airow velocity and turbulence
over downstream gear components
and are expected to reduce noise by
at least 2.4 db. Outer hub caps and
axle fairings, which do not interfere
with brake cooling, should shave off
about 1 db.
For the 130-seater being studied under the Green Regional Aircraft program, the Wenemor project involved
wind-tunnel tests to assess the effectiveness of the airframe in shielding
the noise from twin counter-rotating
open rotors. The test campaign with a
1/7th-scale aircraft model in the Pininfaria low-speed tunnel was completed
in May 2013; it evaluated pusher and
1.0 KHz
Maximum level
67.0 db
JAXA
0.2 KHz
tractor open rotors in different positions, with conventional L- and T-tail

and unconventional twin-n U-tail empennage congurations.
In Japan, meanwhile, results of previous noise-reduction research have
been incorporated into the design of
the Mitsubishi Regional Jet now in
development. Mitsubishi says the 90seat MRJ90 has a noise footprint 50%
smaller than the competing Embraer
E-190 due to a combination of wing and
gear noise reduction and higher-bypass-ratio Pratt & Whitney PW1200G
geared turbofans.
Planning for a second, larger jetliner,
which would not enter service until
around 2040, is beginning, and noise reduction is one of the areas of supporting
research on which the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA) intends to
focus. JAXAs Fquroh (pronounced fukuroh, which means owl in Japanese)
program involves the ight demonstration of airframe noise-reduction technology. The program has begun with ight
tests of JAXAs Hisho flying testbed,
a Cessna Citation Sovereign, over a
phased array of microphones to identify
and measure noise sources, such as aps
and gear, on the unmodied aircraft.
JAXA has identied several technologies it plans to ight test: perforated
fairings for the landing gear that could
reduce noise by 2 db; a ap edge bulge
that reduces and relocates the tip vortices to minimize turbulent ow, promising a 2-3 db reduction; and a redesigned
leading-edge slat with serrated cusp at
the lower trailing edge to break up the
vortices causing the turbulent ow that
generates slat noise. These technologies
are planned be ight-tested in partnership with aircraft manufacturers over
the coming years. c
Perception
by Design
Video Listen to NASA auralizations of different aircraft types

powered by turbofan, open-rotor, prop and electric engines
tap here in the digital edition or go to AviationWeek.com/video
Embedding aircraft noise

simulation into conceptual design
tools could lead to quieter aviation
f aircraft were designed by ear and not by eye, would they
look any different? NASA is developing design tools that can
answer that question by enabling engineers to computationally simulate the noise characteristics of an aircraft while it is
still a concept, long before it has own.
These auralization tools are aimed particularly at the evaluation of unconventional congurations that might have sound
signatures quite different from designs with which engineers
are familiar. We are not recreating what can be measured. We
create the sound, in a validated fashion, of things that might
y in the future, says Steven Rizzi, senior researcher for aeroacoustics at NASA Langley Research Center.
50
100
SPL (db)
Frequency (KHz)
Frequency (KHz)
-50
There is no ddling of knobs to make it sound good, he says.

Most acoustic predictions used by engineers are in the frequency domain and cannot readily be listened to. Predictions
are based on data that is averaged, and all interesting features
that vary over time get washed out, Rizzi says. Synthesis has
to do with capturing the variations with time and improving
on the time-averaged data. We are not just recreating steady
spectra, but something that sounds credible.
Simulations are not validated against actual ight measurements because there are too many unknowns in ight
tests. Our interest is in the relative differences between a
baseline design and a variant, so we do not need to exactly
reproduce the sound, Rizzi notes.
Development of the auralization tools has led to the concept
of perception-inuenced designways to design aircraft for
noise. Today, aircraft manufacturers design aircraft and engines to meet noise limits at the certication test points. We
know how to do that for a tube-and-wing aircraft. It gets a bit
sketchy for things with different sound characteristics, Rizzi
explains. This is particularly true for distributed propulsion,
which can produce quite different acoustic signatures. We
need to understand the human response, he says.
The bigger question to be addressed is quality of
sound, he notes. Manufacturers of automobiles and
consumer goods already consider this, so when the
customer closes a door it sounds expensive. That
Receiver
Time
(s)
(a) SOA
approach
condition
(a) SOA Approach Condition
Computational simulations of the approach

noise of a Boeing 777-class state-of-the art
airliner (far left) and hybrid wing-body freighter
(near left) show the shielding effect.
Receiver Time (s)
(d) HWB C11 approach condition
idea has not yet been adopted by aircraft manufacturers, but we are at a potential turning point, especially
when it comes to unconventional congurations for
small unmanned aircraft, personal air vehicles, the hybrid wingbody and supersonic aircraft.
The idea is to couple auralization and prediction tools to come
up with a metric that characterizes a human response, such as
annoyance or detection, and use it to bring acoustics into the
multidisciplinary optimization environment used in the conceptual design of aircraft. Rather than design, test, assess and
mitigate noise, we can take on a transformative vehicle and do
a multidisciplinary optimization [including acoustics], he says.
Auralization can be used to communicate noise impact in
a way everyone can understand, and the tools are being used
to look at noise around Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Under
its Environmentally Responsible Aviation program, NASA is
using the technique to conduct subjective tests of new aircraft
concepts to understand the noise-reduction benets from a
human standpoint.
The tools are being used in the design of a proposed distributed electric propulsion X-plane, the LEAPTech, that has 18
propellers along the wing leading edge. Auralization is helping
determine parameters such as propeller diameter and speed
and whether the props rotate at the same or different speeds
to spread the noise spectrum. The options have quite different,
and unusual, signatures and auralization is helping determine
what is acceptable to the ears of the listener. c
(d) HWB C11 Approach Condition
The tools have been used to reproduce the sound signatures

of a hybrid wing-body airliner with engine noise shielding by
the airframe and of open-rotor engines. Now auralizations
are being used to explore the potential to tailor the noise of
general-aviation aircraft with multi-propeller distributed electric propulsion to reduce annoyance and enable new types of
operation, such as on-demand personal air transport.
Aircraft noise simulation was rst attempted in the 1980s,
but capabilities were primitive and computing resources limited. The current auralization activity began about 10 years
ago. After a slow start, things picked up when people started
to see what it could do, says Rizzi. Now we are fully supported by a number of NASA projects and have capabilities
other parties are interested in, commercial and government.
Rizzi attributes the breakthrough to advances in signal
process and ingenuity coupled with improved denition of
noise sources. Auralizations are based on three types of information: computational predictions, wind-tunnel test results
and ight data.
There are three major components to the auralization tools:
synthesis of the source noise, its propagation through the atmosphere to the observer and its reproduction in a test environment to enable subjective measurement. Source noise, atmospheric propagation and ground-effect models are all validated.
Flexible Flight
Flight tests on NASA Gulfstream will focus on
verifying structural strength of morphing ap
Guy Norris Edwards AFB, California
an organic-like, fully exible structure.

To achieve the bird-like deformation
sought by aerodynamicists, a new approach is therefore under study.
NASA Armstrong Flight Research
Center and the U.S. Air Force Research
Laboratory (AFRL) are set to ight-test
an innovative variable camber, adaptive compliant trailing edge (ACTE)
NASA
rom earliest times, humans have

watched birds and been inspired
to y. Yet while aircraft designers
have emulated avian aerodynamics,
practical attempts to replicate the efcient morphing capability of a birds
anatomy are just beginning.
Birds can change the curve or camber of their wings to suit varying phases
of ight. Achieving this capability in aircraft wing shaping
would mark a step change
in lighter and more efficient
designs with reduced weight,
drag and fuel burn. Moreover,
because such a wing would
do away with the need for
dedicated aps and ailerons,
its edges would be seamless,
producing less noise.
Programs such as the U.S.
Air Forces Mission Adaptive
Wing of the 1980s, in which
an F-111 was own with wings
modied with hydraulic actuators to change camber, or the
Defense Advanced Research
Project Agencys Smart
Wing variable-camber project in 1995, proved the aerodynamic benefits. However,
performance advantages were
eclipsed by the weight and
system complexity of the extra actuators required to alter
the wing shape. More recently,
Boeing and Airbus have taken
partial steps toward the goal
by developing adjustable trailing-edge
aps to improve the long-range cruise
efficiency of their latest twin-aisle airliners. These mechanisms use the existing high-lift system to optimize the
changing load distribution on Boeing
787 and Airbus A350 wings as fuel is
burned and weight reduced.
These solutions go only part of the
way, though, as the bulk of the wing
remains rigid and inexible. Even recent experiments that tested distributed actuation concepts to deform a
wing structure using shaped memory
alloys or piezoelectric actuators could
not fully exploit the true potential of
replaces the aircrafts original spoilers/

speedbrakes and single-slotted Fowler
ap on each wing.
It does not use any joints, but it
is a flexible structure designed to be
stiff and strong, says FlexSys founder
Sridhar Kota, a University of Michigan
professor of mechanical engineering
who has been developing the technology for 20 years. Our approach is to
arrange the structure internally so it
takes the force and displacement of the
actuators and distributes that energy
throughout the wing. Details of the
structure, which the company calls a
Flexfoil, are restricted for U.S. defense
export reasons. However, Kota says
the design is made up of conventional
aerospace materials, so thats
the beauty of it in terms of risk
reduction.
The elastic properties of the
compliant ap attracted interest from the AFRL, which saw
its potential for improving the
range of the SensorCraft, a
notional high-altitude, longendurance surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle concept.
The design was based on a
high-aspect-ratio natural laminar flow wing, and adaptive
structures offered a means of
controlling the location of the
stagnation point, where turbulent ow begins, which would
vary as fuel was used up. By
making minor changes in the
position of the trailing edge,
designers believed they could
maintain laminar ow longer,
enabling the entire mission to
be completed with a high lift/
drag ratio.
To prove the aerodynamic
viability of the concept, AFRL
and FlexSys conducted ight
tests in 2006 of a scaled 30 X 50-in.
prototype version of a mission-adaptive
compliant wing on Scaled Composites
original WhiteKnight carrier aircraft.
Aerodynamic data was collected for
various ap deections and angles of attack at 25,000 and 40,000 ft. and speeds
up to Mach 0.55. We saw no drag rise
and no drag penalty, and thats what
prompted the Air Force to fly a real
aircraft, notes Kota.
To the Air Force, the technology
represents an efficient, elegant way of
achieving the shape change for the wing
tailing edge, adds AFRL ACTE program manager Peter Flick. Because
A ground spoiler, two ight spoiler/

speedbrakes and the ap were replaced by the ACTE, tests of which
will end in February.
ap design on a modied NASA Gulfstream III business jet. Developed
by Michigan-based FlexSys, the flap
comprises a lattice of compliant, exible mechanisms which, when actuated,
elastically deform the whole structure.
The unit, which is capable of movement
from -9 to 40 deg. will be limited to emulating the 0-30-deg. movement of the
Gulfstream ap. Including transition
surfaces, the section is 18.5 ft. long and
we are able to achieve high and large

deection rates, I think it will be used
as a multifunctional surface for ight
control, load alleviation and optimizing
trim drag in cruise, and even for high
lift. At the moment, each surface has
its own function but the rest of the time
it is dead weight. So, once proven, this
will make wings more efficient. It can
also allow higher-aspect-ratio wings
because of the gust load alleviation it
provides.
With aerodynamic potential verified, the focus is shifting to proving
the structural aspects of a full-scale
The aircraft was more sluggish, which

is what we would expect, but we were
putting the Gulfstream III through maneuvers it would not normally do.
The agency will take a building-block
approach to assessing the exible ap,
Rigney says. Undertaken as part of the
agencys Environmentally Responsible
Aviation program, the ights will begin
with the trailing edge set at 0 deg. After
each ight, the ap angle will be reset to
progressively greater deections until
the last ight, which will test at a setting of 30 deg. We decided not to do
actuation in ight because we wanted
air load of the standard Gulfstream III

ap. FlexSys is meanwhile conducting
life-cycle fatigue testing of a test section to conrm the long-term durability
of the structure. A typical Boeing 737
would need around 60,000 cycles, and
this should be able to do that, Rigney
says. The unit has also been thermally
tested over a wide temperature range
from -60F to 160F.
FlexSys believes ACTE will therefore
enable its technology to be introduced
into commercial and military service
both as a retrot and for new aircraft.
We are working with other companies
FLEXSYS
The compliant trailing

edge is connected to the
static wing with exible
transition surfaces that
may help reduce landing
noise by 40% in some
applications.
exible trailing edge on a real aircraft.

Until people see it y, theyre not going to believe youve worked out all
the kinks, and theres been a tremendous amount of work done to convince
people we are ready to y, Flick says.
This is a structural proof test in ight.
Weve convinced ourselves the structural design methodologies are good,
and during ACTE we will verify this is
a exible structure, get an understanding about how it exes in ight and that
it is deecting to the proper shape we
designed it to.
NASA paved the way for safe ACTE
tests in 2013 by ying the Gulfstream
with locked-out spoilers to verify that
the modied aircraft still will be controllable with fewer conventional control surfaces. We ew the airplane for
several ights with only ailerons for roll
control to nd out what it would be like
to y without spoilers, says Armstrong
ACTE project manager Thomas Rigney.
to get to ight faster and at lower cost.

Actuation is not needed to show it can
withstand aero-loads, he explains.
Fortunately, the Gulfstream is able to
land and take off with zero ap, deection which means higher-speed landings, but we already demonstrated it in
recent ight testing.
To raise the technology readiness
level [from 5 to 6, needed for full-scale
development] of the structure, we have
to go to full scale and raise the ight environment, he notes. The test envelope
will reach an altitude of 45,000 ft. and
Mach 0.7 and for higher deections will
test at more operationally representative lower altitudes and speeds. While
cruise drag is expected to be cut by up to
3%, the main goal of the ACTE is making sure the aircraft structure holds together and comes back in one piece, he
says. Its all about the structure.
Each trailing-edge test section is designed to withstand twice the 11,000-lb.
in the U.S. and elsewhere, Kota says.

Aircraft makers are very interested
and, at the end of the day, they will be
building their own structure. But I see
this for retrot where they dont have to
replace the entire ap. They take out 1520% of the chord and put in a Flex subap for cruise trim. The device would
cause a span-wise twist in the flap,
reducing induced drag and alleviating
load. Weve done analysis and we think
we could get 4-5% fuel-burn reduction,
he adds. The company estimates fuel
consumption could be reduced by 12%
for clean-build designs.
Next test steps may include actuation in ight. We are looking into that
possibility, though its not a rm program yet, Rigney says. Ultimately, the
idea is to take this trailing-edge technology and use it in the full wing, so the
aileron part of the trailing edge would
move separately from the ap. In other
words, more like a bird. c
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Viewpoint
BY ANDREW J. SCHOULDER
AND ROBERT J. BURNS
Will Private
Equity Sour On Defense?
Schoulder (left) and Burns

are partners at Bracewell &
Giuliani in New York.
BRACEWELL & GIULIANI PHOTOS
ince 2010, the U.S. military budget has declined

by approximately 17%. These cuts have taken
a signicant toll on defense industry revenues,
resulting in an industry shift toward earnings preservation. For private equity-held defense contractors acquired during the height of military spending, current
industry strategies are starting to diverge from the
traditional investor thinking. U.S. defense companies
seek to mitigate domestic losses through international
growth and new technology as well increasing market
share through mergers and acquisitions. Unfortunately, given current market dynamics and defense spending forecasts, these three focal points, in addition to
being costly, will likely require an elongated payback
Owners of U.S. defense rms need

to take a longer view, as strategies to
counterbalance budget cuts will take
time to be successful.
period. Given the conventional private-equity investment window of three to ve years, it is uncertain
whether investors will bail or continue through these
stormy times.
The situations unfolding with Cerberus-owned DynCorp and Carlyle Group-owned Sequa provide two
compelling case studies that may show how this uncertainty will play out on a broader scale.
Cerberus acquired DynCorp in 2010 during the
height of U.S. military spending. Recently, DynCorp
emphasized its focus on international expansion, which
requires two components DynCorp lacks: time and
capital. DynCorp reported a 20% decline in year-overyear revenues for scal 2013 and a 32% decline for the
second quarter of 2014. In August, the company disclosed that it may fail to satisfy certain nancial covenants in its loan agreements unless they are amended
or lenders grant waivers. Disclosures of this nature are
typically viewed as a politic way of saying we need
to restructure and are sometimes followed by an announcement that the company is exploring strategic
alternatives. As of June, DynCorps outstanding debt
was approximately $673 million.
Cerberus enjoyed a good ride. But with DynCorp
inside the customary ve-year divestiture window, the
question is whether Cerberus will hold the company
through the several more years it likely will take to

reposition its business so it is not reliant on the U.S.
military for 90% of its revenues.
IAP Worldwides recent restructuring might provide a clue. Cerberus acquired IAP in 2004 and likely
realized several multiples on its investment before
mid-July, when 80% of IAPs debt was converted into
equity. Market commentators observed that Cerberus
lost substantially all of its interest in IAP as a result of
the restructuring. The next few months of DynCorps
negotiations with its lenders will prove interesting as
to whether DynCorp will share the same fate.
While less tumultuous than the DynCorp situation,
Carlyle-owned Sequa presents another opportunity
to assess whether private-equity funds that acquired
defense companies in the good days will have the
stomach to navigate through new challenges. Carlyle
bought Sequa in 2007 and narrowed the companys
focus to Chromalloy, which manufactures and repairs
parts for the aerospace industry, and a metal coating
division. Sequas turnaround hopes have been largely
tied to Chromalloys recent entry into partnerships
that traded on the latters ability to compete with
original equipment manufacturers such as Pratt &
Whitney and Honeywell for jet engine repair work.
Those hopes are slowly being drowned by a 35% yearover-year decline in earnings before interest, taxes,
depreciation and amortization in the rst quarter of
2014 and a 22% decline in the second quarter.
Carlyle has had notable success stories with its
other defense industry investments. But many of the
deals to sell off properties were made during a different military spending environment. There continues
to be increasing interest among strategic players in
expanding within the maintenance, repair, and overhaul sector. Success in a highly competitive MRO sector is dependent on the ability to provide a one-stop
shop to reduce costs associated with outsourcing, and
maintaining internal control to ensure a higher level
of quality work. Thus Chromalloy could draw interest
from potential buyers interested in expanding their
platform. However, it is unclear whether Carlyle is
willing to walk away as Sequa enters its seventh year
as a portfolio company. Also weighing in the balance is
more than $1.6 billion of debt.
While these questions remain open, one thing is
certain: Current and future owners of U.S. defense
rms will need to take a longer view, as strategies implemented to counterbalance government budget cuts
will take time to be successful. c
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The Problem with

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Editor-In-Chief Joseph C. Anselmo

November 4-6, 2014

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Lower direct operating costs

Prepares airframe for NextGen

September 22, 2014

Volume 176 Number 33

Digital Extras Tap this icon in articles

14 Embraer mates the wing and

16 U.S. Navys rst Triton MQ-4C unmanned intelligence aircraft ies

40 Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko poses unexpected challenge for Rosetta lander mission

28 Industry ight-testing of prototype

33 Philippines two major airlines seiz-

24 Boeing and SpaceX to shape human

26 Blue Origin tapped to complete development of a rocket engine that

ing opportunities offered by eet

35 Thales can devote its global sales

27 SpaceX to continue with engine

36 Airbus Defense & Space to focus on

6 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

37 Poorly designed wiring bundles for

38 Retrotting of x for F135 propulsion systems in the F-35 test eet

39 USAF targets winglets, lift control,

42 Major upgrade enhances Australias

TECHNOLOGIES FOR GROWTH

46 Condent that unconventional

28 Airline industry blasts

36 Airbus will be even more

The 787 has allowed us to bring Japan Airlines

The 787s comfortable cabin provides passengers

THE DREAMLINER EFFECT.

Volume 176 Number

50 Clean Sky noise project demonstrating noise-reducing technologies

52 Embedding aircraft noise simulation into conceptual design tools

53 Flight tests on NASA Gulfstream

58 Owners of U.S. defense companies

2015 LAUREATE NOMINATIONS

Two Swedish delegations recently visited the Brazilian aircraft carrier

Responding to last weeks Viewpoint The Pilot Shortage Myth,

Keep up with all the news and blogs from

8 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

Information on suppliers, systems

Its easy to be green

Power People Depend On.

DRIVING ENGINE ALTERNATIVES

Because I work at a civil airport,

High-temperature climates and highaltitude operations are not new. Clearly,

But for such a data-driven process, a

LEGITIMATE FISH TALE

TFRS IMPEDE THE WRONG PEOPLE

10 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

Aviation Week & Space Technology welcomes

and will incur the wrath of the FAA.

AIRING MORE AIRPOWER VIEWS

The power within.

arvey Ticlo (see photos) has

Aviation Week & Space Technology - September 22, 2014 USA

Aviation Week & Space Technology - September 22, 2014 USA