Quotulatiousness

August 31, 2011

Far north transportation solution: heavy-lift dirigibles?

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:11

It’s like the airborne equivalent of the monorail: the wonderful solution to various air transportation problems. Unfortunately, they usually fail to live up to expectations. A joint British-Canadian effort to introduce heavy-lift airships for transportation in Canada’s far north hit the news today:

Last week, Yellowknife-based Discovery Air signed a preliminary agreement with British aviation startup Hybrid Air Vehicles to buy a fleet of futuristic dirigibles to haul cargo and supplies across the Canadian North

Costing $40-million each, the massive vehicles will be able to haul 50 tonnes of cargo, stay in the air for several weeks at a time and use a fraction of the fuel consumed by standard fixed-wing airliners.

By comparison, the largest aircraft in the current Discovery fleet can only carry 7,000 pounds and stay aloft for a matter of hours before refuelling.

The new vehicles, which are still in the early testing phase, may look like little more than sleek reboots of Depression-era dirigibles, but actually are a unique marriage of four different aviation technologies, say designers.

“It actually works more like an airplane than an airship,” said Gordon Taylor, marketing officer for Hybrid Air Vehicles.

The aircraft fly using a combination of aerodynamic lift and helium buoyancy, manoeuver by using a helicopter-style thrusters and they land on a curtain of air like a hovercraft.

It’ll be great if they can work as designed, and also survive the extreme weather conditions of Canada’s far north, but the smart money isn’t likely to bet that way.

August 8, 2011

Subsidized flights from remote locations

Filed under: Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:57

Steve Chapman knows where to get the “best” deal in government subsidy of domestic flights:

As a resident of Illinois, I’d never had any particular desire to fly from McCook, Nebraska, to Denver. But lately, I’ve been looking for an opportunity. Turns out the federal government is willing to pay me a handsome fee to do it.

Oh, I wouldn’t get the cash directly. But the Department of Transportation provides more than $2 million to subsidize that particular route, which works out to about $1,000 for every passenger. My fare, meanwhile, would be less than $150.

I could get an even bigger hand on the hop from Lewistown, Montana, to Billings—$1,343. But if I’m feeling the need for indulgence, there is nothing to beat the flight from Ely, Nevada, to Denver, for which Washington will kick in $3,720. For that sum, of course, it could buy me a perfectly functional used car.

These extravagances are part of the Essential Air Service initiative, which is part of the reason for the recent congressional impasse over a bill to keep the Federal Aviation Administration operating.

July 28, 2011

F-22 fleet still grounded due to pilot oxygen supply problems

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Earlier this month, I linked to an article about the F-22 oxygen problems. According to Strategy Page, the problem still has not been resolved:

The U.S. Air Force is making some progress in finding out what is wrong with their F-22s. It appears that some toxins are somehow getting into the pilot’s air supply. This has kept all 168 F-22s grounded for three months, so far. Despite the new findings, the air force still has not nailed down the exact cause of the problem, much less fixed it. The U.S. Navy had a similar problem with its F-18s (there were 64 incidents between 2002-9, resulting in two dead pilots). The navy found that the problem was carbon monoxide getting sucked into the aircraft air system (which the navy modified, eliminating the problem). The air force is looking into the navy experience with these similar problems, to see if there is anything similar going on with the F-22s.

First F-35C catapult launch

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

Lewis Page has more:

The test launch took place on the landbased steam catapult at US Naval Air Station Lakehurst (also the location of a prototype electromagnetic one of the type the Royal Navy will be compelled to use).

The F-35C is intended to operate from the catapult-equipped fleet carriers of the US Navy and will equip the Royal Navy and the RAF too. The jumpjet F-35B (formerly the chosen British model) will now be delivered only to the US Marines to begin with. The F-35A version, intended for ordinary landbased runway operations, will serve with the US Air Force and many allied nations.

July 24, 2011

Farewell Space Shuttle . . . you massive boondoggle

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Space, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

I’ve been ambivalent about the space shuttle program for decades — not because I’m anti-space, but because I think the shuttle was government methadone to replace a real space program. At that, I hadn’t connected all the dots the way Scott Locklin has here:

The Space Shuttle, an object lesson in the Sunk Cost Fallacy, has been with us since my early youth. This preposterous boondoggle was originally supposed to make manned space flight cheaper: to the point where getting a pound of matter into space would be as cheap as sending it to Australia. That was the only purpose for building the damn thing in the first place. The idea was, if your spaceship was reusable, it would be cheaper to send people and heavy things into space. If using the same thing multiple times isn’t cheaper, well, what’s the point? Conspicuous consumption, perhaps?

In one of its original incarnations, the Shuttle was supposed to launch like an ordinary aircraft. A jet + rocket powered “first stage” heavy lifter would propel the craft into the upper atmosphere, and the rocket propelled second stage would send the thing into space. Seems like a good idea to me. Jets are pretty easy to fly and maintain cheaply. Jets also don’t have to carry vast quantities of oxidizer. Plus; you get to reuse the whole mess.

Unfortunately, the politicians decided that building the first stage heavy lifter would cost “too much.” Instead they changed the design, and strapped a couple of solid rockets to a beefed up “orbiter” and giant non-reusable fuel tank. That wasn’t the worst of it: those pieces should have still in principle provided for a cheap launch vehicle. In practice, the silica tiles and engines turned out to have very high maintenance costs involving substantial labor, and turn around times were 1/6 of what they should have been, making the thing 6 (though more like 10) times as expensive as it was designed to be.

The goal of the space shuttle program was to have safe, re-usable spacecraft that could lift heavy loads to low earth orbit at a cost of about $50 per pound. What they ended up with was a dangerous fleet of hangar queens that took loads to orbit at an estimated cost of $50,000 per pound. That’s quite a missed set of goals.

July 15, 2011

The continuing problems of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

The Economist titles this piece “The last manned fighter”:

The latest cost estimates from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), published in May to coincide with a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the F-35 programme, were shocking. The average price of each plane in “then-year” dollars had risen from $69m in 2001 to $133m today. Adding in $56.4 billion of development costs, the price rises from $81m to $156m. The GAO report concluded that since 2007 development costs had risen by 26% and the timetable had slipped by five years. Mr Gates’s 2010 restructuring helped. But still, “after more than nine years in development and four in production, the JSF programme has not fully demonstrated that the aircraft design is stable, manufacturing processes are mature and the system is reliable”. Apart from the STOVL version’s problems, the biggest issue was integrating and testing the software that runs the aircraft’s electronics and sensors. At the hearing, Senator John McCain described it as “a train wreck” and accused Lockheed Martin of doing “an abysmal job”.

What horrified the senators most was not the cost of buying F-35s but the cost of operating and supporting them: $1 trillion over the plane’s lifetime. Mr McCain described that estimate as “jaw-dropping”. The Pentagon guesses that it will cost a third more to run the F-35 than the aircraft it is replacing. Ashton Carter, the defence-acquisition chief, calls this “unacceptable and unaffordable”, and vows to trim it. A sceptical Mr McCain says he wants the Pentagon to examine alternatives to the F-35, should Mr Carter not succeed.

How worried should Lockheed Martin be? The F-35 is the biggest biscuit in its barrel, by far. And it is not only Mr McCain who is seeking to knock a few chocolate chips out of it. The bipartisan fiscal responsibility and reform commission appointed by Mr Obama last year said that not all military aircraft need to be stealthy. It suggested cancelling the STOVL version of the F-35 and cutting the rest of its order by half, while buying cheaper F-16s and F-18s to keep numbers up. If America decided it could live with such a “high-low” mix, foreign customers might follow suit.

July 5, 2011

F-22 still grounded

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:53

What initially seemed like an urgent, but relatively trivial problem with the F-22 may involve more time out of service:

What appeared as a simple problem with the U.S. F-22 fighter, has kept 168 of them grounded for over two months, so far. It all began when it appeared that the F-22 fighter might be having a problem with its OBOG (OnBoard Oxygen Generating) system, causing pilots to get drowsy, or even black out, from lack of oxygen. There have been five reports of potential problems in this area lately. As a result, on May 3rd, all F-22s were grounded. But the U.S. Air Force is also checking the OBOGs in F-16, F-15E, A-10, F-35 and T-6 aircraft as well. The problem may just be with the F-22 OBOG, or a general problem with all air force OBOGs. The air force also believes the F-22 problem may not just involve the OBOG. As a result, the grounding is “indefinite” and will continue until the source of the breathing problem is found, and definitely fixed.

If it goes on too long, the air force may consider fitting some F-22s with the older air supplies, just so some of their newest combat aircraft will be available for combat. In the meantime, pilots and ground crews are using simulators and (for the ground crews) and maintenance exercises on the grounded aircraft (in addition to checking a growing list of aircraft components in support of the search for the breathing problem) to retain their skills. The 168 F-22s, costing over $200 million each, have become the most expensive hanger queens (aircraft that spend a lot of time sitting in a hanger getting repaired or worked on) ever.

June 16, 2011

Horwitz: Yes, it is a police state

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:18

It’s been a long time since 9/11, and the biggest losses have been in civil liberties:

As regular readers know, I’m not one for hyperbole, so perhaps some are thinking that my title is ironic. Nope, I mean it. An accumulation of events in recent months leads me to no other conclusion than that we are in fact living in a police state in the good old US of A.

The list of reasons is fairly long, but we can certainly start with our favorite gropers at the TSA. In my ideal world, airline safety would be the responsibility of those with the most directly to lose financially from doing it poorly: the airlines and the airports. But even in a world where government has taken on that responsibility, we should be protected by the Fourth Amendment against “unreasonable” searches. It’s one thing to walk through the standard metal detector, which seems reasonable, but when we are expected to pose virtually nude in a submissive position for government agents, and when refusing to do so earns you a feel-up that would count as sexual battery in most states, that is something else entirely.

If I had told you 20 years ago that in 2011 this is what would happen every day to thousands of travelers — including toddlers and the handicapped — at U.S. airports, you would not have believed me. And on top of everything else, it doesn’t work! It’s mere “security theatre.” When residents of the United States have a legitimate fear of being sexually abused by agents of the State when engaging in peaceful air travel, we live in a police state.

April 9, 2011

Rare WW2 German bomber discovered off British coast

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:32

What may be the only intact example of the German Dornier 17 bomber has been discovered in the Goodwin Sands off the coast of Kent:

The plane came to rest upside-down in 50 feet of water and has become partially visible from time to time as the sands retreated before being buried again.


Image from Reuters

Now a high-tech sonar survey undertaken by the Port of London Authority (PLA) has revealed the aircraft to be in a startling state of preservation.

[. . .]

Known as “the flying pencil,” the Dornier 17 was designed as a passenger plane in 1934 and was later converted for military use as a fast bomber, difficult to hit and theoretically able to outpace enemy fighter aircraft.

In all, some 1,700 were produced but they struggled in the war with a limited range and bomb load capability and many were scrapped afterwards.

Striking high-resolution images appear to show that the Goodwin Sands plane suffered only minor damage, to its forward cockpit and observation windows, on impact.

“The bomb bay doors were open, suggesting the crew jettisoned their cargo,” said PLA spokesman Martin Garside.

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

April 2, 2011

The high cost of modern combat aircraft

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

Many claims have been made about the actual cost to Canada for the small tranche of F-35 aircraft the Conservative government has agreed to buy. The opposition claimed that there were potentially huge savings from having a competition instead of ordering F-35’s. This may or may not be true, especially as the Department of National Defence still hasn’t made a clear statement about what role the new aircraft will be expected to fill (that is, we’re told the F-35 is the answer, but the question still hasn’t been specified).

Back when we bought the F-18, for example, one of the stated criteria was that the plane we bought had to have two engines, due to the potential risk of engine failure in the far north (where airfields are very few and very far apart). This ruled out the F-16, a single-engine plane. This time around, we’re buying a single-engine plane, but the reasons have not been spelled out. It may well be that the F-35 really is everything we need, but it does feel like we’re buying it because we were part of the original “team” during the early design phases.

Combat aircraft are not cheap, and the currently available crop show that well:

Despite the high expense all the electronic gear, the F-18G is not the most expensive combat aircraft out there. The F-22 costs $355 million each. The low budget F-18E costs $94 million each, while the F-18G goes for $105 million. The F-35 costs over $130 million (and growing). Even unmanned aircraft are pricy, with the Global Hawk costing $182 million each (with high end sensors). Older fighters, like the F-16, cost $60 million, and an F-15E goes for about $100 million. The price of the export EA-18G hasn’t been set yet, but it will probably be under $100 million.

These prices constantly fluctuate because of the need to incorporate a share of the development cost for each aircraft built. While most development expense occurs before mass production begins, there is sometimes considerable additional development expense, or major refurbishment, later in the lifetime of an aircraft. Many modern warplanes cost more than most warships, and have the same high maintenance (periodic refurbishment and development of new components) expenses.

Update: There’s another Strategy Page article of interest, this one talking about the decline of Canadian air power:

When the Canadian government decided to send some warplanes to assist in establishing the no-fly zone over Libya, they found out that sending six of their CF-18 fighters would amount to 20 percent of flyable Canadian fighters. That was a bit shocking to most Canadians. But not to those who run the Canadian Air Force, as they know quite well that the CF-18 is on the way out. For example, late last year, Canada awarded $700 million in contracts to two commercial firms (Harris and L3) to provide maintenance for its F-18 fleet of jet fighters over the next nine years. This type of contract is increasingly popular, as they provide a cheaper way to provide all the more complex maintenance, other than what the ground crews do on a daily basis. This involves major overhauls, management of spare parts and upgrades of equipment. This includes the airframe, engines and electronics. Canada expects to retire its remaining 79 CF-18s by 2020, and replace them with 65 F-35s. Meanwhile, only about 30 CF-18s are flyable, because so many aircraft are undergoing upgrades and extended maintenance.

[. . .] Canada plans to replace its CF-18s with the new 65 F-35s. The trend towards fewer, but more capable and expensive aircraft is a common one. Half a century ago, Canada had a fleet of nearly 600 fighters, including license built U.S. F-86s, and what would eventually amount to over 600 CF-100 fighters, the only Canadian designed fighter to enter mass production. The CF-100s were gradually retired over the next three decades. The last ones left service as the CF-18 entered service. But in between, Canada built, under license, several other U.S. fighter designs. Canada had become a major aircraft manufacturer during World War II (over 16,000 aircraft produced), and that provided the foundation for an aircraft industry that remains a major supplier of commercial aircraft to this day.

Why the F-22 was not deployed to Libya

Filed under: Africa, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:12

I thought the answer to that question was simple: the F-22 is a pure fighter, and there’s no crying need for pure fighters to enforce the no-fly zone that can’t be met with older aircraft. Apparently, it’s a bit more complicated:

Conspicuously absent in the skies over Libya is the new American F-22. Despite modifying the F-22 to operate as a fighter-bomber, the F-22 was uniquely unsuited to operate as part of the international force assigned to stop Libya from attacking its own people. That job requires aircraft that can carry lots of smart bombs. Defeating the Libyan Air Force was not a major chore, and was easily handled by less capable (and cheaper to operate) air superiority fighters. Another problem was communications. The F-22 is not equipped to operate as part of an international aerial armada. The F-22 is a stealthy lone-wolf. Most of the time, the F-22 does not use its radio. To communicate with other F-22s, a special, short-range system is used. The F-22 does not have the full suite of communications equipment most NATO warplanes carry.

[. . .]

The 36 ton F-22 has internal bomb bays, like the F-117, to enhance stealthiness. Thus it can carry two half ton smart bombs, or eight 250 pound SDBs (ground penetrating Small Diameter Bombs) internally, in addition to a pair of air-to-air missiles. However, the F-22 is not yet modified to carry the SDB. The internal bays were originally designed to carry six air-to-air missiles, not bombs. Using the external hard points, which makes the aircraft more visible on radar, an F-22 can carry about four tons of bombs and missiles.

The F-22 has the most advanced radar and electronic warfare gear of any jet fighter. When you include the cost of research and development, each F-22 ends up costing nearly $400 million. But for pilots in certain types of combat, it’s money well spent. But not for what was needed over Libya, where most non-stealthy fighters can carry four or more tons of bombs and missiles.

March 26, 2011

Cheap flights (with subtitles)

Filed under: Britain, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

March 17, 2011

AWACS in Libyan airspace

Filed under: Africa, France, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

Strategy Page reports on the use of AWACS resources over the north African country:

A week after NATO began sending its AWACS aircraft to monitor aircraft activity over northern Libya, it’s been decided to have these radar aircraft monitor that airspace 24/7. The AWACS can fly over international waters and still monitor air activity several hundred kilometers into Libya. This may become crucial if a no-fly zone is established over the Libyan coastal area (where most of the population lives). AWACS can spot Libyan aircraft taking off, and call in fighters to deal with that problem before the Libyan warplanes can get very far.

The Libyan rebels resisted calling for a no-fly zone, but recent defeats have changed their minds. The Arab League has also called on the UN to authorize a no-fly zone, and the U.S. has agreed to participate. American and French carriers, plus, possibly, Egyptian fighters, would provide the combat aircraft needed for enforcement. While Libya doesn’t have many flyable warplanes, the few they do get into the air have proved to be powerful weapons against the rebels. In at least three cases, Libyan pilots refused to bomb the rebels. The pilots of two aircraft defected and flew to Malta. The two crew in another fighter-bomber ejected and let their aircraft crash. It’s believed that Libyan dictator is now using mercenary pilots (perhaps from Syria).

March 4, 2011

Israel’s largest defence company moving toward privatization

Filed under: Economics, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:43

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is a state-owned company with a great reputation for quality and innovation. The Economist looks at their moves toward going into private control:

When Mr Shamir, an important figure in Israel’s booming high-technology business, took on the job of sorting out his country’s biggest industrial company in 2005, state-owned IAI was in a wretched condition.

For one thing, it had never quite got over the blow to its self-confidence when the Lavi, an advanced dual-role combat aircraft, was cancelled by the government headed by Mr Shamir senior in 1987. Although the Lavi was on course to meet all its performance targets, the cost of the project and American concern that it was helping to finance a rival to its F-16 and F-18 fighters killed it. For IAI, it meant that it would never again try to make a fast jet on its own.

For another, despite recovering much of its technological élan, IAI was an organisational and financial mess. Executives say it had gone three years without a formal chairman and two years without a signed financial statement. Banks had seized some of its financial assets and its chief executive of 20 years, Moshe Keret, was facing bribery allegations (he denied these and the case was dropped for lack of evidence). The firm was also in the grip of the Histadrut union federation, which fought all attempts to slim a bloated workforce and introduce merit-based remuneration.

March 3, 2011

Eurofighter Typhoon sets new standard for “bloated expense” and “limited usefulness”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:41

Lewis Page is on record as thinking the Eurofighter Typhoon was a bad bargain, but even he is shocked at just how bad a bargain the plane is:

Probably the most dismal figure we are given is that the RAF will actually put into service just 107 Typhoons. At the moment it has received 70: the last of the 160 planes ordered by the UK will be delivered in 2015. But, we are told, “by 2019” all the Tranche 1 jets (which were still being delivered to the RAF at the start of 2008) will be “retired” — that is, thrown away. We’ll pay for 160 jets (actually we’ll pay for 232), but we’ll only ever get a fleet of 107.

This shows the acquisition cost of the Eurofighter/Typhoon in an even worse light than it had previously appeared, when an RAF fleet of 160 had been expected. It is now acknowledged that the development and production cost to the UK of Eurofighter will be £23bn with planned upgrades.

This means that we UK taxpayers will have shelled out no less than £215m for each of our 107 jets — that’s $350m at today’s rates, rather more than the US taxpayers have been made to pay for each of their 185 Raptor superfighters, almost all of which will be used operationally. And the Raptor has third-generation Stealth: the Eurofighter has no stealth features at all. The Raptor has thrust vectoring for unbeatable manoeuvrability in a dogfight: the Eurofighter doesn’t.

But, for all the expense, at least the RAF has a fine, modern, fully in-service fleet? Well, almost:

The lack of planes actually fit to fly is serious — the NAO reports that of the 70 Eurofighters the RAF currently possesses, just 42 are actually available to flying squadrons. And the lack of flight hours has meant that some flyboys haven’t been able to get into the cockpit at all [. . .]

The RAF currently has eight pilots who are capable of undertaking ground attack missions on Typhoon … The Department plans to have sufficient numbers of trained pilots to conduct a small scale ground attack mission by 2014 and aims to deliver sufficient flying hours to train enough pilots to undertake the full range of planned tasks by 2016.

What a joy it is to think that we paid £119m to upgrade the Tranche 1 planes back in 2008 so that they could do ground attack. In 2016 the RAF will finally have the pilots it needs to use this capability: but by then the Tranche 1s will already be being thrown away – all of them will be gone by 2019, remember.

We paid all that money upgrading the Tranche 1s and now we’ll dispose of them without ever having pilots trained to use the upgrade! The Eurofighter story really just gets better and better.

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