Galileo and Brexit

My previous post outlined why access to a Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as the American GPS or European Galileo systems are vital for a country's commercial and military well-being.

Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom the EU have decided that a post-Brexit UK:

• will not be allowed to continue being involved with the system's development;
• that UK companies will not be able to bid to construct hardware; 
• that they would restrict the UK's access to sensitive data. 

This means that whilst the UK will be able to continue using the public signals, they will not have trusted access to the system's encrypted military codes (PRS) and its national security elements.

Trust matters. As non-EU members, the UK might be able to negotiate passive access to the encrypted PRS signals - but without direct knowledge of how the system has been designed at the broadcast end, and without people in the control rooms, the UK cannot guarantee that such access would be maintained. If the UK were ever in a conflict or war that EU members did not agree with, they could cut off or degrade the service. Such passive access is essentially pointless - if they do not trust the UK enough to give full access, then the UK cannot trust them to maintain access.

The Falklands Conflict is an example scenario. If such a small-scale conflict was to occur again, with the UK standing alone against another country, it can be assumed that both sides will be using GNSS - in fact, it is likely that our high-tech military would rely on them more. If one of the Galileo EU members was against the conflict, they could decide to degrade Galileo coverage over the relevant conflict zone, restricting the UK's ability to use it. The UK would have no voice or power to prevent it.

In the immediate future, this disrupts the MOD's plans to integrate secure global positioning, timing and navigation into their systems, which requires access to Galileo's PRS or GPS's M-Code. In addition, UK governmental agencies cannot use it to support critical national infrastructure.

It also means that UK companies that have been building parts of the satellites will not be able to continue doing so. Airbus has said that its bids for further work on the Galileo system is being moved out of the UK to Germany and France, along with 80 jobs.

Access to the enhanced capabilities of the MEOSAR search and rescue system may also have to be stopped.

So far, the UK has given £1.5 billion for our part in the project; in return UK companies have received back £1.15 billion in work. Teresa May has announced that we will not try to claim back the payments we have made to the project. Allegedly officials have been going around UK companies involved with the system to tell them to stop sharing propriety information with other Galileo parties.

So what can the UK do - assuming the EU is unwilling to change its mind?

The UK government has put aside £92 million to study the effects withdrawn access to the Galileo PRS codes would have. Much of the technology was developed in the UK; the first prototype satellite (GIOVE-A) was designed and built by SSTL in the UK, so the technical know-how exists. Some estimate that a replacement UK system could cost anything from £3 billion to £10 billion. Airbus claims £5 billion and five years of work.

There are problems: many of the people required to make such a system are EU nationals resident in the UK - would they want to remain to work on the project, and would the UK want them working on what would be a national security asset?

Perhaps the biggest problem is not monetary, but legislative. Any new system would need frequencies allocated to it internationally. This would need to be negotiated through the International Telecom Union, and this may be a slow process. Back in 2003, the US and the EU had a big argument over the frequencies used by Galileo, and it is going to be difficult to negotiate access to frequencies that will not interfere with other systems.

The radio frequency spectrum, especially in the frequency ranges required by this sort of system, is getting very crowded. It will also require us to use political capital that will desperately be needed elsewhere. To make matters worse, many cellular providers want to use these parts of the spectrum for 5G services.

The UK cannot start designing the system in detail until the frequencies are known, as it is the key factor in determining the design - and even the satellites' orbits.

Creating a UK GNSS constellation to replace Galileo is almost certainly a non-starter, if only because the cost is probably far too great for only military use. For that reason, the UK might want to cooperate with another player. Russia is rather unlikely, as is China. Japan's system is local and designed for their specific needs. Australia is a possibility, but do they really require such a system?

So how about India? They have the technology, and launchers - but their system is currently only regional. It might be tempting for them to have someone else pay for the system to be deployed globally.

A better approach may be to create a capability that the EU does not currently have - for example some form of secure global communications - and swap trusted access of that for trusted access to Galileo. Even this would be very expensive, although it might prove easier and quicker than the UK  developing its own GNSS.

The Galileo debacle does not bode well for the rest of Brexit. It should have been easy to sort out, but it appears to have become an impossibility. The EU may gain slightly from the decision in the short term: work that was going to be done in the UK will now be done elsewhere in the EU, whilst the UK has already paid in more than they have got back in work. But the chances of the successor project to Galileo - already in planning - going ahead is reduced, and the running costs of the Galileo system will fall upon the other countries.

There will be second-order effects as well: for instance, the Galileo system was initially developed by ESA, before it was taken over by the EU. The UK is remaining part of ESA, which continues to administer and operate the system. It is possible that such disagreements will infect the UK's relationship with ESA, especially when many ESA projects involve EU funding.

But there are always silver linings: perhaps the UK government will decide to go ahead with their own satellite constellation (perhaps calling it 'Boudica' or 'Waterloo') and dust off their road pricing ideas to pay for it ...

Book review: "Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer", by Nevil hute

Many books immerse you in a bygone world. Sherlock Holmes plunges you into a mid- and late-Victorian London, whilst Philippa Gregory drowns you in Tudor intrigue. "Slide Rule" takes you soaring through the aeronautical world of the 1930s.

Nevil Shute was one of the best-selling authors of the 1950s, with books such as 'On the Beach' or 'A Town like Alice', and he is most famed for his writing.

However Shute was also an engineer, and 'Slide Rule' covers that portion of his life, before the Second World War and literary fame intervened. His early life is mentioned, including a fascinating portion about his time in Dublin during the Easter Rising (his father was head of the Post Office in the city at the time, although he was fortunately outside the building when it was taken over). To get him  away from the troubles, his parents sent him to Oxford.

After Oxford, he went to work for De Havilland at the start of that distinguished company, and learned to fly - a skill he loved, and one that proved very useful in his later work. It was a time of rapid change in the aeronautical industry, and he soon moved on to Vickers for the start of the massive R100 airship project. Much of the book covers his work on this ship, and its rivalry with the ill-fated government-run R101 airship. He became the project's Deputy Chief Engineer by the age of 30 - something that perhaps could only happen in what was a 'young' industry.

One theme of this book is socialism versus capitalism, especially when it comes to engineering. In his view, the excess money (unfairly) thrown at the R101 project hindered it, whilst the fixed-cost contract Vickers had for the R100 forced them to be efficient. I got the impression that he was too involved with the project to be truly impartial, and besides, the costs of such projects are now so great that any lessons are probably irrelevant: even SpaceX relied on government money via NASA to develop their Falcon 9 rocket.

An interesting section of the book details how stress calculations for the R100 were completed. Two men ('calculators') would work for weeks calculating the stresses on the ring of girders forming a section of the ship, finding mistakes or problems and recalculating, until eventually the calculations done by different means agreed. These would just have been a small part of the calculations the ship required, and it highlights how much time and effort was required to do something that nowadays might only take a few seconds on a computer.

The R101 disaster caused the government to turn its back on airships - a move Shute admits was probably for the best given the rapid increase in aeroplane performance throughout the 1930s. Out of a job, he decided to start his own company with a fellow R100 engineer, Alfred Tiltman. They named their company 'Airspeed', and the second half of the book highlights the problems of starting a new company in a rapidly - and  radically - changing industry. Shute is disarmingly honest about some of the financial techniques he used to keep the company afloat and how, if the dice had rolled differently, he could have ended up in jail!

He eventually left Airspeed in 1938, his capabilities as Managing Director being more suited to running a young company than a relatively mature one with a bulging order book. He does not give the impression he minded leaving, nor does he appear to object when, during the war, de Havilland took over Airspeed.

This is very much the autobiography of an engineer, and his personal life is scarcely mentioned. His wife only graces the pages on a few occasions - mostly in how her job allowed him a little financial security. It would have been nice to have heard more about her, and his two children only get a short mention at the end of the book. It would also have been nice to hear more about Shute's work during the Second World War, when he worked on special projects and weapons. Perhaps that was because this book was published in 1953, when the events of the war were still raw and many special projects were still secret. It feels as though the book ends too soon.

I'm slightly surprised I had never read this book before, but I shall be reading it again in the future. Shute may have got fame from his writing, but his other work probably had more of an impact on the world.

4 out of 5.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 - blaming the pilots

It seems that blame for the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is starting to turn towards the pilots.

This is as expected as it is sad. Whilst all parties undoubtedly want the plane found, they will not necessarily want the blame.

So what do all sides want?

1. For Boeing, weather, a hijacking or crew error would be their 'best' outcome. They will not want the crash to have been caused - or even initiated or compounded by - a technical failure. It looks as though the 'weather' cause can more or less be rejected, CAT aside.
2. For Rolls Royce, they will not want a technical failure in their engines or associated systems. To be fair to them, that seems the one thing we can currently discount.
3. Malaysian Airlines will not want a technical failure caused by bad maintenance, or poor crew training.
4. The Malaysian government will not want it to be anything that reflects badly on them, for instance terrorists being able to board the plane due to lax security.

The one cause that would least dissatisfy all parties is the lone crazy pilot idea. It's not a technical failure on the plane or engines; it is not a security breach, and not a training error. People can just shrug and ask how they can screen out one man who might go crazy?

Accidents are rarely, if ever, caused by one factor alone. Even in acts of terrorism, there will be failures that allowed or even unwittingly aided the terrorists in their acts. People involved will always try to downgrade the minor causative factors that were their responsibility, and concentrate on the big headline 'cause'. For instance the Air France 447 crash is now seen as pilot error, and rightly so. But the failed pitot tubes that initiated the chain of events are slowly being forgotten.

The 'lone crazy pilot' theory allows everyone to escape with the most face saved.

In the absence of information, the organisations will veer towards blaming the pilots. This has happened in the past, only for a technical failure to be uncovered after other crashes and fatalities. For instance, the Boeing 737 rudder issues.

Remember this when you read about the story, and ask if this story is going the way the various organisations want it to go.

(For clarity, I do not reject any one hyposthesis - aside from the alien kidnapping one! But my money is on a cockpit electrical fire that slowly knocked out various systems and made the plane increasingly unflyable. But even this does not seem to fit all the 'facts' that appear to have become known).

A350 news

The new Airbus A350 is appearing at the Singapore Air Show, six months after its first flight. The BBC have a video of it at the show, although sadly it is stationary on the ground rather than in the air.

The A350's test flight program appears to be going well; there has been little of the noise that the 787 tests caused, or indeed, no in-flight fires. The two test-flight planes are each getting 100 flight hours per month, with over 1,000 flight test hours completed in total. The main 'hot' and 'cold' tests have also been successfully completed in Bolivia and Canada respectively.

Let's hope the rest of the program goes well, and that Airbus have a competitive challenger to Boeing. And indeed, that Boeing sorts out its problems with their 787.

Another 787 problem

It has been reported that another JAL 787 has suffered a battery-related problem whilst on the ground. This follows a number of incidents since the plane was introduced.

I daresay Boeing will say that the redesigned batteries performed as desired. If they say that, they are wrong. There is a problem. It needs fixing, and this time fixing properly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25737515
http://nyc787.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/breaking-jal-787-experience-battery.html

Even if it was just 'venting of a single battery cell', and things 'appear to have worked as designed', it is not good enough.

The root cause needs to be understood, and it needs fixing. If the planes need grounding - again - in the meantime, then so be it.

Boeing's woes.

Further to my last post,  the FAA in America have grounded all the Boeing 787s currently flying after two battery-related incidents this year (1). This includes an in-flight fire (2) that took fire crew forty minutes to extinguish whilst the plane was on the ground.

The 787 is revolutionary in several ways - most prominently the extensive use of carbon-fibre, but also for it's 'all-electric' architecture. Amongst other things, this means that pressurisation is not performed by bleed-air off the engines, but by using compressors.

A desire to reduce weight led to lithium-ion batteries being used, which allow the batteries to be smaller and lighter than those used in other planes. This technology is relatively new in aerospace, and lithium-ion batteries carried as freight are suspected to have caused at least one crash already and numerous other problems. (3)

The administration building of the firm who created the charging system for the 787's batteries burnt to the ground in 2006 after a battery caught fire. Additionally, a 787's Power-Control Panel caught fire during flight testing in November 2010 (4), causing further large delays in its entry into service. Whilst such problems are to be expected in flight test, it does look worrying with hindsight, and asks serious questions about Boeing's knowledge of the 787's electrical systems.

So what does this mean for Boeing? it is unlikely that the flight ban will be lifted until the reason for the battery fires are understood and fixes developed. These fixes (they can be fairly simple or massively complex - we should not prejudge) then need applying to each airframe. This will certainly take time and be costly.

Initial suspicions are that the batteries are overcharging. If this is the case (and it may take some time to know for certain and to reproduce), then there are issues of why such problems were not experienced or anticipated before. Boeing will not want to replace the lithium-ion batteries with alternative batteries that are heavier and bulkier.

Worse, the FAA certified the use of Lithium-Ion batteries on the 787, a first for civil aircraft. If the certification process has been proved wrong, their burden of proof for safety will be much higher this time around. As well as alterations to prevent the batteries from catching fire, they may well insist on systems to negate the effects of any fire.

In the meantime, the uncertainty means it will be hard for prospective purchasers to arrange funding for 787s. And this gives an advantage on Airbus, who were massively behind with their competing A350, but who are catching up due to Boeing's woes. Although they have plenty of time to develop their own problems with the A350...

(1): http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-grounding-orders-moves-787-into-uncharted-territory-381148/
(2): http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2013/01/15/burned-787-battery-underlines-seriousness-of-incident/
(3): http://gigaom.com/2011/04/04/lithium-ion-batteries-faulted-for-jet-crash/
(4): http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2010/11/a-closer-look-787-fire-investi.html

Further 787 problems

Previously I have written about the problems that Boeing had in getting their new passenger aeroplane, the 787, into service. The pane eventually made it into service over three years late, and at massive expense to Boeing.

The introduction of any new aeroplane will be subject to issues; their complexity is such that there will always be teething problems. Part of the aim of any design process is to try to anticipate and reduce these problems before they happen.

Sadly, the introduction of the 787 has been far from problem-free. Firstly there was a serious in-flight fire during the testing phase that contributed to the in-service delay. And since then there have been a series of other problems, several of which have occurred in the last week. There has been another fire, although fortunately when the plane was on the ground, a significant oil leak and a cracked windscreen. There have also been reports of incorrect wiring in some planes. There must have been a few sleepless nights in Seattle.

All of which are perhaps understandable problems - after all, the Airbus A380 has had problem of its own, from a grenading engine to structural wing cracks. But there appears to be more danger in Boeing's current woes. The problems appear to be much wider spread than the A380, and potentially much harder and expensive to fix. 

Today, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a review into the design and manufacture of the plane.Whilst this is unlikely to lead to a grounding, it cannot be helping Boeing's bottom line or order book.

The risks of technology

A couple of weeks ago the US announced that they had lost contact with one of their exceptionally high-tech and modern RQ-170 Sentinel drones. Later the Iranians said that an electronic warfare unit had captured the drone.

The Iranians later showed detailed video of what appears to be an RQ-170. It seemed remarkably intact - although the underside and undercarriage could not be seen, the top seemed nowhere near as damaged as would be expected from a shoot-down or even a crash landing. However the video and pictures are far clearer than would be expected if they were trying to fake the images.

Naturally, some people have been in denial about this. One theory has it that the Iranians had a mock-up ready made, and when the US lost contact with their drone the Iranians used the mock-up to pretend they had captured it. Whilst it is likely that nations may construct mock-ups of aggressor craft - for identification training if nothing else - it would be an embarrassing strategy if the real wreckage was discovered.

Another is that a rogue Iranian agent in the US military had deliberately crashed the plane within Iran. This seems rather unrealistic.

Today it is alleged that the Iranians forced the craft to land. The control protocols for the aircraft are certainly encrypted (although embarrassingly some of the data such as the video may not be) and I doubted that they had actually taken control of it. However today's claim does make sense, at least to an armchair (in)expert such as myself.

The drones are controlled from stations that can be anywhere in the world; for instance Britain's Predator and Reaper drones are flown from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada (*). Control signals are encrypted and sent over to the drones, presumably by satellite. If the radio signal is lost then the drones are programmed to fly automatically to a friendly base for landing, using GPS for positional information (**).

The Iranians are claiming that they jammed the 'proper' control signals coming from the US. This is important; they are not claiming to have hacked and decrypted the control signals, just to have blocked them. Without the signals, the drones would have automatically flown back to a base. This is where the Iranians got clever. It is possible to block and alter ('spoof') GPS signals; this is believed to be what is going on when GPS and SatNav users are warned that their devices will not work. The Iranians are claimed to have spoofed the drone's GPS signals so that it thought it was flying back to a friendly base.

Damage possibly occurred to the drone's underside on landing as the strip in Iran had a slightly different altitude to the base the drone believed it was landing at.

This claim is more plausible than the other alternatives. No real 'hacking' in the traditional senses was needed; instead gaping holes in the security logic were exploited. As much as I dislike the Iranian regime, the engineers must be congratulated for a very clever coup. My only question is why they have shown their hand so early; it gives the west time to understand the problems and close the exploits.

Unfortunately this will have serious implications. The obvious one - that the Americans have lost some of their top-secret military technology - might not be the most important. It it alleged that, although new, the RQ-170 does not use cutting-edge technology as they expected to lose one over enemy territory eventually, either through accident or combat. Far worse is the fact that American (and indeed western) commanders will have large doubts about the chances of their drones reaching a target in battle. And that may mean more manned aircraft are needed, and more friendly lives put at risk.

I am less bothered about the Iranian's claims that they will be able to reverse-engineer the aircraft. Although they have very capable engineers - they have allegedly been keeping some F14's in the air despite US sanctions and lack of spares - it would be a major task and money better spent on more useful platforms. It would be much more likely they would learn important lessons about how the drones work and how they can be combated. The Russians or Chinese would be in a much better position to take advantage of the aircraft.

(*) There is a valid debate to be had about how much we really control these drones. We have purchased them; would the US allow us to use them in a campaign that was against US interests? I am amazed that we have not paid to have the control stations here in the UK for a truly independent system.

(**) I would be surprised if they only used GPS for positional information, but it is possible. If so it was a major lack of foresight.

A great response...

Airbus and Boeing have been having an ongoing spat about direct and indirect subsidies. Late last year the World Trade Organisation gave a ruling on Boeing's claims against Airbus, and found that Airbus did benefit from launch aid granted to it by European governments.

Now the WTO has ruled on Airbus's complaint against Boeing. Although not yet official, it looks as though it has found Boeing guilty of unfair pracitices with the US government, mainly through receiving R&D and other development benefits (for instance, by NASA sharing fundamental research with them).

This page on FlightGlobal shows an advert run by Boeing in light of the latest findings, and Airbus's hilarious response.Take a look at them and see the way that a responsive advertising and publicity department can win the day (*).

Well done, Airbus. You not only responded to Boeing's claims, but you managed to make them look childish as well. A brilliant example of reactive advertising.

(*) A couple of decades ago there was an article in the Daily Telegraph about some Coastguards who had driven off high cliffs in fog. Their Land Rover had been wrecked, but they escaped with cuts and bruises. The next day, the newspaper carried a full-page advert by Land Rover, with the original article in the middle. Above, in a large font, were the words: "We apologise for the cuts and bruises".

Genius.

When I'm wrong, I'm very wrong.

Only a few weeks after I say that there will be no major new plane designs from Boeing or Airbus in the foreseeable future, Boeing announces one.

I think my crystal ball needs a wipe.

Scare story of the day...

I awoke yesterday to Scottish MP, Angus Robertson, saying that security at the Olympics would be put at risk because of the government's cancellation of the Nimrod MR4A aircraft. Apparently the nine aircraft were due to play a key role in counter-terrorism for the event. The media have made a big deal out of his comments.

This sparked a few questions in my mind. The Olympics are going to be in July and August 2012. Yet the Nimrod was only going to be reaching Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in October 2012. Which is, I think you will agree, after the Olympics. (IOC is the time when a system can be used in a minimally useful deployable form).

Therefore he is worried that a system that would not have been ready in time will not be available for use.

There is always the possibility that the planes could have been used before IOC was reached, but would the Government really have wanted planes that they knew were acknowledged as not being ready flying over and around London at any time, yet alone during such a major event? Then again, given the delays that the project had suffered already (it was originally called Nimrod 2000), and other problems, we cannot be sure of the 2012 IOC date either. Only two planes had been delivered to the RAF before the cancellation.

The Nimrod MR4A debacle has been painful for so many reasons, and not just the cost. Yet the loss of the Nimrods means that there are operational requirements that we will not be able to fill. The government will have to look into this as a matter of urgency. This will not be easy; the American's project to fill similar requirements, the Boeing P8 Poseidon, is allegedly facing significant problems.

Of course, this stupid fear story might have more to do with the fact that Angus Robertson's constituency includes RAF Kinloss, the Nimrod's base, which is due for closure.

The media should have seen through in an instant and asked Robertson some pertinent questions. Instead they just went for the quick sensationalist headlines. It could be that he is right, although I doubt it; he should say *what* roles he says the (non-operations) Nimrods were going to be used for.

Another 787 delay and cigar tubes

It has just been announced that the first deliveries of the Boeing 787 plane will occur in the third quarter of this year, an extra delay of at least seven months from the last announced date. This brings the delay in first deliveries to well over three years (see timeline), and is reducing the advantage they had over Airbus's competitor, the A350, which is now due for delivery to customers sometime after the middle of 2013.

Add to this the strong rumours that Boeing has been selling the planes at under cost price, and you can see that the company has some major problems. The missteps the company has made will be studied for many years and will undoubtedly fuel many engineering and business PhD theses.

Airbus is still smarting with the problems that it had with the A380 launch a few years ago; delivery delays are still propagating downwards, and they have only recently got the planes' production in order. Boeing's problems with the 787 are far worse and varied in cause, the latest being an electrical fire that occurred just before Christmas, necessitating a redesign of some of the electrical subsystems.

The downside of these problems is that I doubt that either Airbus or Boeing will want to start another brand-new passenger plane development once the A350/787 are in service; the development process is just too expensive. Instead, we will see existing planes evolving, in the way Boeing has kept the 747 going for over 40 years Just this week Airbus have launched the A320neo project to update their popular A320 design with new engines and other minor alterations. There were strong rumours that they would announce the development of a replacement for the A320, but that has now been kicked into the long grass.

Boeing in particular are keen to show pictures and videos of futuristic designs such as the Blended Wing Body (BWB). Unfortunately it looks as though such designs do not promise enough of an advantage over our current cigar tube-fuselages to make them worth developing for passenger use alone. These two massive companies have well and truly had their fingers burnt.

Boeing and Airbus will only launch a new plane development in the next fifteen years if a military requirement appears, or if other aerospace firms start threatening their markets. Several companies are producing competitive passenger planes; the Russians have just launched the Sukhoi Superjet 100, the Chinese are developing the COMAC C919 and Bombardier have the C-Series. All of these new planes, however, are relatively small when compared to the 787 or A350, yet alone the 747 or A380.

It took Airbus from 1967 to 1972 to build the A300, and another few decades to be in a position to build the A380. Planes have become ever more complex, especially with the modern In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems, and the barrier to entry in the market are ever steeper.

We will be flying in our cigar tubes for a few decades yet.

Pushing the limits of the possible

Rolls-Royce powered Airbus A380's have been in the news over the last week after a suspected fire caused an uncontained engine failure during a Quantas flight.

However, Boeing have also suffered a significant setback. On Tuesday, one of their flight-test 787s had to make an emergency landing when smoke entered the main cabin. The fire caused the primary flight instruments and auto-throttle to fail. Emergency chutes were deployed after landing to allow the 42 engineers on board to evacuate. Fortunately, no-one was injured during the incident.

This can only be seen as a significant setback to Boeing. Rumours had already been circulating about a further delay to the 787 entering service, and a fire that causes the primary flight instruments to fail can only add pressure to the schedule. Whilst this plane was probably highly instrumented, and therefore non-standard, any fire will have to be thoroughly investigated before flight tests can continue.

Both Rolls Royce and Boeing are pushing the limits of the possible with their products. The reliability of a modern jet engine is amazing given the conditions under which they have to perform. When failures happen (as they do very infrequently), most of the time they do not put the aircraft at risk.

Boeing are facing equivalent technological challenges with the 787. The 787 is a fairly aggressive design, using new materials and techniques to create a passenger plane that is a generational jump from any other flying. This has been the cause of most of the nearly three-year delay that they have already faced.

I wish both Rolls Royce and Boeing the best of luck in finding - and fixing - the problems they are facing.

BAe Taranis and the independent nuclear deterrent.

Yesterday the British aerospace company BAE released further information on their unmanned stealth aircraft, Taranis (see right). One of the aims of the project is to "explore and demonstrate how emerging technologies and systems can deliver battle-winning capabilities for the UK armed forces."
 
As such, all of the demonstrator has been built utilising only UK technology - unusual in these days of multinational, multi-billion projects. This prototype has cost £143 million to develop, but it is a long way from a production vehicle - it is purely a prototype. Yet that is remarkably cheap when compared to the billions the US has spent on their X45 experimental aircraft. (It should be noted that the aims and planned missions of the X45 and Taranis are not the same).

Many countries have developed unmanned aircraft (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) over the years, but Taranis offers a step-up in terms of capability. For one thing, current UAVs require a base-station where they are flown from, whilst  the Taranis can fly autonomously without user input. This is an exceptionally tricky thing to achieve, and poses many technical and ethical questions. This is also one of the first stealthy UAVs, although the term 'stealth' covers a multitude of sins, and is not the battle-winner that many people suppose.


This news has got me thinking. One of the biggest problems for our coalition Government has been the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent. The Liberal Democrat's manifesto said they were against a "like-for-like" replacement for the submarine-based system, which will cost many tens of billions over its thirty-year lifespan. The Conservatives, however, are vehement that the nuclear deterrent should remain.

The Liberal Democrat position is interesting. Obviously, they are not in favour of replacing Trident with submarines of similar capabilities, yet they are also not saying that they want to scrap the independent nuclear deterrent. But what could that non-like-for-like replacement be? Most commentators have suggested it could be as simple as having two submarines instead of the three we currently have (something the last Labour Government was already considering). I cannot help but wonder if there is a better alternative.

Trident's predecessor was Polaris, which itself replaced Britain's first nuclear deterrent, the V-Bomber fleet of Victor, Valiant and the infamous Vulcan. The reasons for this change were complex, but could perhaps be summed up as follows:

1. Polaris was cheaper
2. Polaris was safer (no planes flying overhead with nuclear warheads), and less risk of lost weapons (so-called broken arrows)
3. Polaris was more strategically secure; the enemy knew where the V-Bomber bases were, whilst ballistic submarines can remain hidden until needed
4. The V-Bombers had been made largely redundant by anti-aircraft systems.

The situation has changed since the Trident system was envisaged. The delivery system (the ballistic missiles and the submarines) are now far more expensive than the actual warheads.Additionally, the risks of an all-out nuclear war has receded significantly, slightly negating the third point. Stealth technology goes some way to negating the fourth point (especially when combined with cruise missiles).

The current Vanguard submarines will need replacing within the next decade, and work will need to start on that replacement soon. The Trident missiles are hired from Lockheed Martin, and the warheads themselves are now essentially American. The independent nuclear deterrent is far from independent. The British Government retired the WE.177 free-fall nuclear weapon in 1998, meaning that the nuclear deterrent could only be delivered by Trident. All our eggs are firmly in the ballistic-submarine basket.

Could Taranis' successor be used to replace Trident? This would meet both the Conservatives' and Liberal Democrats' aims: to maintain the nuclear deterrent, but not replace the submarines. I wonder if this is where this is all heading. We have time: Trident does not need to be replaced until the 2020's, giving us some breathing space to develop a successor system.

Of course, there is no obvious use for the nuclear deterrent at the moment (except for its use as a deterrent). The chances of all-out nuclear war are currently remote. Yet it is not something that you can develop easily once it is lost, and the lifespan of the systems can be over thirty years. Put simply: we have to develop a system that meets not only today's strategic requirements, but those that we will have in thirty years time. Can we guarantee that the world will be such a friendly place in 2040 or 2050?

Taranis is only a prototype, and much information is not known: maximum load, range without refuelling, speed at low and high altitude, maximum altitude, and aspects of the low-observability amongst many more. These questions will remain secret for many years; as the prototype plane has not flown then many will not be currently known.

So, what shape would the system take? I envisage a series of Taranis planes heading towards enemy territory, their stealth technology helping them evade the enemy's air defenses. Stand-off weapons such as cruise missiles could be used to penetrate further into enemy territory. Use of multiple planes and decoys could help overwhelm defences. Effective range for an attack can be doubled, as there would be no need to get the airframe back after an attack (unlike manned aircraft, although strategic air bombing of Russia was often seen as being a suicide mission - the crews knew that they were unlikely to return).

Such planes would also be multi-use; they could be nuclear-capable but also be used for attacks with conventional munitions as well. Indeed, this would probably (and hopefully) be what they are only ever used for. This would make them far more cost-effective and useful than ballistic missile submarines, which generally have only one use. The capabilities of the planes would make them useful to both the air force and the army, giving those forces buy-in to the scheme. The Navy would, of course, complain.

This is, of course, a simplistic pipe dream. Yet I wonder if the coalition's thinking lies in this direction. It would require a massive change in strategic thinking, but perhaps that is what is needed at this time. Ballistic missile submarines are fascinating, complex beasts, but I cannot help but think that they are not the best fit for a future nuclear deterrent that is more likely to be used against single rogue states than in an all-out nuclear exchange.

Two well-deserved congratulations

I have written on a couple of occasions about Airbus's and Boeing's inability to get a couple of major projects into the air - Airbus's military freightlifter the A400M and Boeing's next-generation passenger airliner the 787.

Well, on the morning of the 1th the A400M made its first flight. Then, five days later, I set up my laptop to watch the first flight of the 787 unfold in front of me live.

So Airbus beat Boeing by a few days in this particular battle. Both projects are in trouble - the 787 is reportedly overweight, and the long delays in the A400M project is causing countries to pull out - but I send heartfelt congratulations to all the teams involved.

There is a long way to go before they can go into full production, and as the A380 projects showed, first flight is not a guarantee that the project will not hit other hurdles. Yet it is an important milestone. Well done to Boeing and Airbus.

More 787 delays.

Back in November, I wrote a blog post about delays with Boeing's latest passenger plane, the 787 Dreamliner. It was, I feel, a balanced and sympathetic piece on how incorporating a step-change in technology can be a painful experience.

The 787 will be a beautiful aeroplane, and has a number of firsts - most notably, it is the first large-scale airliner made mostly from carbon-fibre. There has been some disquiet about this, with concerns ranging from the behaviour in lightning strikes to the effects of carbon-fibre dust in the event of a fire.

This afternoon Boeing announced the fifth delay to the aeroplane. It was due to take to the skies before the end of the month and now, with a week to go, they have suddenly announced that it is being delayed once more. The reason, apparently, is that they found a weakness during testing of the static airframe. A static airframe is a plane, representative of the plane that will fly, which is put through a series of stress tests. For instance, they loaded the wings of the 787 test airframe to 150% of the maximum stresses they will encounter during flight, and they did not fail. Static testing is vital to ensure that the real aeroplane matches the design and is strong enough to fly.

Yet it appears that the area where the wing joins the fuselage is weaker than expected. Some are putting two and two together and noting that this area was redesigned a while back to reduce weight; it could be that the weight was reduced too much, weakening the plane. It is already alleged that the plane is 8% overweight, and this will not help matters. Being overweight reduces the range and/or the amount of passengers and cargo that can be carried, meaning the plane is less economic to run.

Whatever the details of the problem are, this is an absolute disaster for Boeing. The plane was rolled out back in July '07 in a stunt that gave a false impression of the rate of progress. Yet it will not have made a single flight two years after that date. There are already rumours of customers cancelling orders for the plane, and the new delays will hardly instil confidence. Worse, it will cast doubt on both the performance and safety of the plane.

This is a design problem that should have been spotted and fixed earlier on in the process. There is a truism in engineering; the earlier a defect is spotted, the cheaper it is to fix. All of the problems with the 787 shows that there is something seriously wrong within both Boeing's engineering and management.

I was willing to give Boeing the benefit of the doubt before; not now. They are in serious trouble,

Operation Paperclip

BBC New on-line has an interesting article on Operation Paperclip, the US plan towards the end of the Second World War to obtain as many German scientists as possible.

It has always been a controversial plan - some of the Germans taken to the US have since been accused (with varying degrees of credibility) of performing war crimes.

However, the article is ridiculous in many ways. Take this quote, about a pioneering German flying-wing aircraft:

With its radar-absorbing carbon impregnated plywood skin and swept-back single wing, the 1944 Horten Ho 229 was arguably the first stealth aircraft. The US military made one available to Northrop Aviation, the company which would produce the $2bn B-2 Stealth bomber - to all intents and purposes a modern clone of the Horten - a generation later.

Saying that the B2-bomber was a modern clone of the Ho 229 is, frankly, ridiculous. During the war (well before Operation Paperclip), Northrop made several flying-wing designs, including the prop-driven YB-35. After the war, some of these were converted into the jet-powered YB-49. The Germans themselves did not put much faith in the Ho 229 - they only made three.

I very much doubt that evading radar was in the design spec for the Ho 229; producing a fast, long-range aircraft was. The alleged radar-evasion was just an unintended side effect. Radar itself was very new, and poorly understood.

As for the claim that 'Cruise missiles are still based on the design of the V-1 missile'; you might as well say that the F-22 fighter 'is based on' the Wright Flyer.

The article also fails to mention that Britain had such a plan (Operation Surgeon and others), and so did Russia. Indeed, at the end of the war many German scientists were scurrying around trying to position themselves to be captured by the side they favoured. Most chose the US, but some chose the British, and others, strangely with hindsight, the Russians. In the process they also had to avoid the SS who wanted to prevent them from leaving.Therefore you had the odd situation where some of Von Braun's team went west to the Americans, some went east to the Russians, whilst others stayed behind to be captured by whichever side reached them first.

This all meant that the Allies had a very un-allied race to capture as many scientists, engineers and resources as possible before the war ended. In one case, the American troops advanced to capture a V2 assembly site that was behind the agreed Russian lines. By the time they handed it over to the Russians, virtually everything of use had been removed. On other occasions, American soldiers destroyed prototypes and tooling to avoid them falling into Russian hands. Even as the curtain was falling on the last act of the Second World War, the new Cold War was beginning.

Perceptions of heroism

There has been a lot of justified praise for Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot of Flight 1549 that crashed into the Hudson in New York. He did a good job in crash-landing the plane; depending on how you define it, this was the first successful splash-landing of a large passenger jet.

On the other hand, he did exactly what he should have done. There were also others on board the plane; are the media saying that the co-pilot did nothing? Focussing on one man may give the media good stories (epecially if they can build him up only to bring him down later), but tells far from the whole story.

Then there is the strength of the Airbus A320 plane, which did not break apart as it hit the water, or the weakness of the General Electric engines for failing under bird strikes - or their strength for still giving power despite the bird strikes. That is an important point, the engines continued giving a little power. This meant that the crew had full electric power (and not the reduced power given by the Ram-Air Turbine under the plane), and the power gave them a little extra help.

The truth is, being a pilot is usually a routine job, yet we rely on them to treat a routine job as a critical job. When they get it wrong (flightglobal.com), they get suitable admonished. Let's not just praise Captain Sullenberger, but all the crew on the planes that we fly on.

Book review: "The $5 billion dollar misunderstanding", by Stevenson

This book has been on my to-be-read shelf for nearly a year. The reason is not the topic, but rather the fact that one glance shows that the wealth of contractual detail contained within is dense. Despite this, I completed it fairly quickly; in its way, it is a riveting read.

It details one of the most troubled procurements in the history of the US military - the A12 Avenger-II naval stealth plane. The development of this plane started in the mid-eighties, but was cancelled in January 1991 after a spend of nearly $5 billion dollars. After all of that time and money, not even the wooden mock-up had been completed. The cancellation led to a series of court cases that are still being appealed, 18 years after the cancellation!

The A12 was supposed to be everything that the US Navy and Marines wanted in a combat aircraft; it would be stealthy and capable of fulfilling many roles (deep strike, interdiction, fighter escort and others). The stealth aspect was highly important, and resulted in the plane's distinctive design - a tailless isosceles triangle, which looked somewhat like a smaller version of the contemporary B2 bomber. It could also be said to have led to the vast majority of the problems that befell the project.

First, let me say that this book is not an easy read. The acronym count is very high, and the wealth of contractual detail is sometimes overwhelming. However, it is also fascinating. If you want to know the way large projects are poorly run by the US Government and contractors, then this book will give you a good idea.

To say I was well and truly flabbergasted is an understatement. The entire project was illegal from the start, with (so the author contends) the Navy consistently lying to the US Government and the contractors. The Navy wanted this aircraft so badly that they were willing to subvert the procurement process repeatedly. From my reading, it appears that at no time was the project even legally funded! The Navy was spending money it did not have...

As time went on, the unit cost of each aircraft rose considerably. Initially each plane was meant to cost around $45 million; in the end the cost was $91 million, and some say as high as $136, $165 or $200 million dollars (a large part of this difference is whether development costs are included in the per-unit costs). In the end it was estimated that, had it continued, the A-12 would have consumed up 70 percent of the Navy's aircraft budget within three years.

From the very beginning, this project was out of control, yet no-one in the Navy wanted to admit it to the Government. It was a secret 'black' project, and this added its own complexities; it was hard for anyone outside the program to see in, and it also made it easy for people within to hide the truth. There had not even been a proper requirements capture stage, where people sat down and worked out what they wanted the aircraft to be. This is important, as surely a military vehicle (plane, tank and ship) has to be created to fight a specific real or future threat? Instead of finding threats and designing requirements that could beat those threats, it seems that the Navy just came up with a random wish-list, then tried to find threats that would justify the plane.

One of the more fantastical facts is that, at the time, the US Government had three stealthy aircraft under development - the B2 bomber, the YF-22 (later F22) fighter and the A-12. A logical conclusion would have been to allow the teams to understand the technology on each others' planes, allowing 'lessons learned' to be passed on. It is claimed that the team behind the A-12 were told they would get this, but the Navy reneged on the agreement. This meant that the team building the A-12 had to re-learn many issues that had already been solved on the other planes - a massively costly way of doing things. One of the major issues in term of cost, time and weight in the A-12 project, the creation of the long wing-spars out of composites, had already been solved on the B2.

You will not get technical details on the A12 in this book. However, if you want to know how people (perhaps with the best of intentions) can illegally subvert a process, then look no further.

I would give this book 2 out of 5 stars, mainly because I would have preferred more technical than contractual details.

Asymetrical air warfare

When you mention military planes to people, they will most often think of the high-tech fighters or supersonic bombers that seem to dominate the news. However, not all nations need such high-tech kit. In the same way that insurgents with cheap and even improvised weapons have bene killing trops in Iraq and Afghanistan , so cheap and/or outdated planes can (and have) been used effectively in some areas. Some recent developments have shown this.

In the mid-fifties the RAF introduced a new jet fighter type, the Hawker Hunter. After initial problems it became a very successful plane, with nearly 2,000 built for a wide variety of air forces around the world. Unfortunately it was also designed at a time when there was rapid development of the capabilities of jet aircraft, and it soon became outdated. In 1963 it was withdrawn from an air-to-air (the classic fighter) role in the RAF, but continued on until the early 80's in the trainer role. It was a cheap yet effective plane that had been rapidly outclassed by other planes (e.g. the English Electric Lightning).

Other countries that operated the type, such as Lebanon, Switzerland and Singapore, kept the type in service for far longer, Switzerland retired it in the mid-nineties, having upgraded them instead of using more modern plane types. This is a testament to quite how cheap and flexible the plane was. However, by the late seventies the type had really had its day.

Now, as shown at http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=73400&page=1, the Lebanese Air Force is reintroducing a number (possibly more than five) Hawker Hunters back into combat service. These were withdrawn over ten years ago, and apparently will be used in a ground-attack role. In the middle of last year there was a conflict in Lebanon, and much of the fighting occured within the Nahr el-Bared camp in the north of the country. Lacking any fixed-wing resources, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) updated old Vietnam-era Huey helicopters to drop MK82 dumb bombs against militant positions. These were not ideal platforms for bombing, but it appears that the ability to bomb from the air was so useful that the more capable Hunters are being brought back into service.

Another case to point was the controversial sale by BAe of Hawk trainer jets to the Indonesian government. This highly successful trainer aircraft (a variant is even built in the US as the Goshawk) is best known for its role in the Red Arrows aerobatic display team. However, the sale to Indonesia caused widespread protests within the UK, as detailed below:

"In 1996, one Indonesia-bound Hawk was wrecked by three hammer-wielding women who infiltrated a BAE Systems plant. The raiders were acquitted for causing £1.5m of damage when a jury deemed they had used "reasonable force to prevent a crime". (source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/)

The problem was that whilst the Hawk is a very effective training aircraft, those same capabilities make it useful in the ground-attack role. This is especially the case when the opposing forces have no significant air assets to attack the fighters. The Indonesians were using the Hawks to bomb the region of East Timor.

A third case: the Tamil Tiger terrorist group in Sri Lanka formed their own air force in 2007 - the Tamil Eelam Air Force (TAF) . The prop-driven ZLIN-143 aircraft was modified to be able to drop bombs. Several attacks of varying success followed, including one attack that temporarily cut off power supplies to the capital. Many of their attacks have been against the Sri Lankan Air Force, which has capable Mig-27 and Chengdu-F7 aircraft. It is quite amazing that such a cheap, irregular air wing has been quite so effective against a much better equipped rival. Apparently the Z-143 planes are quite hard to spot when they are flying, and the Sri Lankans do not have suitable early warning systems. However, allegedly, the Sri Lankans shot down a TAF Z-143 in September this year - the first air-to-air kill by the Sri Lanka air force.

The Hawk apparently costs around £18 million per unit, compared to an alleged £69 million for the latest Eurofighter Typhoon, and £94 million for the F22 (although such costs have to be taken with a pinch of salt, particularly for the Typhoon and F22). This means you can have three or four Hawks for the price of one Typhoon (and I reckon the support costs for the Typhoon are also much higher that they are for the much simpler Hawk).

I have not been able to discover the cost of a Z-143; I would reckon you could get a handful of something equivalent for a million. An indication was that one was recently for sale for €165,000 (approximately £143,000), although I have no idea what condition that airframe was in.

If you only need air-to-ground capability (i.e. the enemy do not have any fighter aircraft), then the use of such aircraft is obviously cost-effective. Unfortunately, this asymetrical air warfare has been shown all too well by the the Lebanese, the Tamil Tigers and the Indonesians in East Timor.