The first Boeing CH-​​47, a 33,000lb machine pow­ered by two 1,640shp Lycoming (now Honeywell) T55 engines, achieved first flight on Sept. 21, 1961. 

Nearly 47 years and seven major upgrades later, the CH-​​47F and MH-​​47G has dou­bled in weight to 50,000lb, while the engine shaft horse­power rat­ing has tripled with intro­duc­tion of the 4,868shp T55-​​GA-​​714 powerplant. 

With only 10% of the CH-​​47F deliv­ered, how­ever, Boeing is again propos­ing to rad­i­cally increase the size of the air­frame. The “growth Chinook” would be stretched and widened to accom­mo­date and up-​​armored HMMWV (Humvee) inside the cabin. This would increase max­i­mum take­off weight to around 70,000lbs and demand a much larger engine. Honeywell has already pro­posed a roughly 6,000shp T55-​​GA-​​715.

It’s still unclear what the army thinks about all this. After all, the army is plan­ning to buy another 400 CH-​​47Fs. It’s also still debat­ing how much it needs a Joint Heavy Lift rotor­craft that would be more than twice the size of the CH-​​47F.

On top of all this, the army has also started a pro­gram to replace the ven­er­a­ble T55 with an all new engine in the 6,000shp to 7,000shp range after 2018. Last week, I con­firmed that Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric are each par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ear­li­est stages of the Future Affordable Turbine Engine (FATE) program.

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The US Army has Constant Hawk. The US Marine Corps has Angel Fire. Somebody has some­thing called Highlighter. 

What the heck are they? 

Constant Hawk, Angel Fire and Highlighter are the names of manned, light air­craft that have been invented since the Iraqi occu­pa­tion began to fight against the scourge of impro­vised explo­sive devices. 

Public details vary greatly for each of these semi-​​classified air­craft pro­grams. Thanks to fund­ing and turf wars, we know quite a bit about Constant Hawk (a mod­i­fied Shorts C-​​23B Sherpa) and Angel Fire. [USA Today arti­cle is here. Great analy­sis by StrategyPage​.com is here.]

The US Army Material Command was even gen­er­ous enough to post a photo of Constant Hawk on their Flickr page.

All I know about Highlighter is that it was invented by the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), and it is an air­craft. (Dear Maj Gen Montgomery Meigs, Thank you for dis­clos­ing Highlighter’s exis­tence in a com­men­tary you wrote to “cor­rect” a crit­i­cal Marine Corps Times edi­to­r­ial on April 16, 2007.)

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I believe I have seen the future replace­ment for the E-​​8C Joint STARS fleet (shown pic­tured), and it’s not going to be a US Air Force aircraft. 

The US Navy is prepar­ing to replace the EP-​​3E ARIES II, an elec­tronic intel­li­gence air­craft, with a new-​​start acqui­si­tion pro­gram called EPX. 

But the navy’s require­ments for EPX call for an air­craft that would not only spy on enemy elec­tronic sig­nals, like the EP-​​3E, but also find and track mov­ing tar­gets, like the E-​​8C.

Interestingly, the EPX pro­gram of record will acquire 19 to 26 air­craft to replace only 11 EP-​​3Es fly­ing today. At the high end of that range, 26 air­craft would nicely replace all 11 EP-​​3Es and all 17 E-​​8Cs in ser­vice. (One E-​​8C is a test­bed, and doesn’t count.) 

If the air force can’t pay for an E-​​8C replace­ment to appear after 2015, or even to mod­ern­ize the radar on the cur­rent fleet, watch for the navy to steal this mis­sion with the EPX. It’s the roles and mis­sions equiv­a­lent of a pick-​​pocketing.

And it’s hap­pened before. In 1998, the air force lost the EC-​​135 Looking Glass mis­sion to the navy’s E-​​6 take-​​charge-​​and-​​move-​​out (TACAMO) air­craft. Now, it’s hap­pen­ing again, unless the air force acts very quickly. 

This all became clear to me dur­ing my week­long tour of Boeing’s defense sites based in the Pacific Northwest. Paul Summers, Boeing’s cap­ture lead for EPX, briefed reporters about the navy’s require­ments, explain­ing that the size of the future EPX fleet had grown from 14–19 air­craft to 19–26 air­craft since last year. 

The obvi­ous ques­tion later occurred to me: Why does the navy need 26 EPX air­craft to replace 11 EP-​​3Es. Clearly, the navy has big­ger ideas for this fleet. 

Paul also dis­cussed the new radar for the EPX. This in itself is note­wor­thy. The EP-​​3E does not have a radar. The air­craft inter­cepts and maps enemy com­mu­ni­ca­tions and other elec­tronic transmissions. 

We’ve known for about a year that Boeing and Raytheon have installed the new lit­toral sur­veil­lance radar sys­tems (LSRS) on a sub­set of the P-​​3C fleet, giv­ing the navy its own mini-​​Joint STARS capability. 

It is now clear that the LSRS is the prover­bial tro­jan horse, inject­ing the navy into the Joint STARS busi­ness for the long-​​term.

Paul also explained that Boeing will con­sider the LSRS or another radar for EPX. The only pos­si­ble alter­na­tive is a new vari­ant of Northrop Grumman’s wide area sur­veil­lance sen­sor devel­oped under the multi-​​platform radar tech­nol­ogy inser­tion pro­gram (MP-​​RTIP).

This will force Northrop to make a tough choice. Northrop, you see, is the prime con­trac­tor the E-​​8C, so it has every­thing to lose if the navy takes over the mis­sion. However, if the com­pany decides to join Boeing’s EPX bid, that could be a sig­nal that it believes the air force will never get around to replac­ing the E-​​8C.

The navy has money in the bud­get begin­ning next year to launch EPX. The air force has no funds to replace E-​​8Cs for the fore­see­able future, and now faces a poten­tially dis­rup­tive lead­er­ship transition. 

I’m not a bet­ting man, but, if I was in Northrop’s posi­tion, I know where I’d place my bet. 

The air force has only itself to blame. The folly of the E-​​10 pro­gram, which spec­tac­u­larly failed to com­bine an E-​​8C, and E-​​3A AWACS and an air­borne oper­a­tions cen­ter onto the same plat­form, has left the air force with­out a dis­cernible plan to replace its aging fleets of 707-​​based aircraft. 

The air force’s only hope to stay in the E-​​8C busi­ness may be to observe the adage: if you can’t beat them, join them. 

Establishing a true “joint” part­ner­ship to acquire and oper­ate a new fleet of narrowbody-​​class air­craft to serve all of the spe­cial­ized mis­sions per­formed today by 707s looks like the only way back in. (This idea also has the charm of mak­ing sense.) 

Indeed, it has been pro­posed sev­eral times in the past. The only dif­fer­ence now is that the air force won’t be call­ing the shots.

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In a driz­zly cer­e­mony today, we will wit­ness Secretary of the Navy Don Winter accept the deliv­ery of the first EA-​​18G Growler to the USN’s fleet readi­ness squadron. 

This would be a fairly rou­tine affair except for a cou­ple of very dis­tin­guish­ing facts: first, the event is occur­ring exactly accord­ing to the orig­i­nal sched­ule and, sec­ond, Boeing’s five-​​year-​​old devel­op­ment pro­gram is not over-​​budget.

It’d be nice to think those two facts weren’t so extra­or­di­nary, but, in the world of mil­i­tary acqui­si­tion, it is. 

To be sure, there remain a few caveats. The oper­a­tional test phase begins in September, which will expose any unre­solved design or tech­nol­ogy glitches. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that a few soft­ware issues need to be fixed before oper­a­tional tests can be per­formed. We’ll see how that pans out, but none of the issues sound like show-​​stoppers.

Some of the more cyn­i­cal observers (blush) might also say that Boeing and the Navy cheated with the EA-​​18G.

This is not the same as start­ing a new weapon project from scratch. The air­frame for the EA-​​18G is based on the design of the already proven F/​A-​​18E/​F Super Hornet and the elec­tronic war­fare pack­age is based largely on the ICAP III suite already fly­ing on the EA-​​6B Prowler. The ALQ-​​99 jam­mer is merely a decade-​​old, upgraded ver­sion of a pod that first flew in 1971 (and needs to be retired as threats evolve over the next decade).

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The above is the ques­tion that the US Department of Defense is ask­ing itself, cour­tesy of a new Defense Science Board Task Force chaired by Jacques Gansler. I wrote about the issue in a news analy­sis pub­lished this week in Flight International. I’ve posted an excerpt below, and you can read the full story here.

Taking an “off-​​the-​​shelf” air­craft and adapt­ing it for a new mil­i­tary role was sup­posed to be the cheap and easy alter­na­tive to design­ing an all-​​new platform. 

So, in accord with the mantra “faster, bet­ter and cheaper”, US mil­i­tary ser­vices since 2001 have often turned to off-​​the-​​shelf deriv­a­tives of com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary air­craft to sat­isfy new and emerg­ing require­ments for a wide range of mis­sions, includ­ing scout and util­ity heli­copters, VIP trans­ports, sur­veil­lance air­craft and aer­ial tankers, to name but a few. 

The results, how­ever, have proved dis­ap­point­ing. Far from remov­ing cost and sched­ule risks, pro­cure­ments based on off-​​the-​​shelf air­craft and sim­i­lar equip­ment have led to some of the most expen­sive acqui­si­tion fias­cos for the US mil­i­tary over the last decade. 

Examples range from aborted efforts, such as the ERJ-​​145-​​based aer­ial com­mon sen­sor (ACS) or the 767-​​400ER-​​based E-​​10A, to multi-​​billion dol­lar devel­op­ment fias­cos, as endured by the EH101-​​based VH-​​71A pres­i­den­tial heli­copter and the Bell 407-​​based ARH-​​71A armed recon­nais­sance helicopter. 

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The US Air Force wants Boeing to inte­grate the GBU-​​57 bomb on the Northrop Grumman B-​​2A, or so says this solic­i­ta­tion doc­u­ment released ear­lier this week.

I find that very inter­est­ing on a num­ber of lev­els, not least because the USAF has never before dis­closed the exis­tence of a weapon called the GBU-​​57!

(Designation​-sys​tems​.net, in fact, lists weapons all the way up GBU-​​54, so that means a GBU-​​55 and GBU-​​56 could be some­where in the clas­si­fied inven­tory, too!)

But the exis­tence of the GBU-​​57 gets even more inter­est­ing after a Google search. The only direct men­tion to the weapon appeared in an arti­cle in London’s Guardian news­pa­per in 2003, and then bizarrely as a pass­ing ref­er­ence. I would love to know how the Guardian’s reporter so casu­ally came across that seem­ingly clas­si­fied fac­toid for his article.

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You can look this one up. See FY 09 bud­get request, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion mate­ri­als, US Air Force, Aircraft procurement-​​Vol. 2, page 71.

You’ll find on that page a detailed descrip­tion for not one, but two poten­tial mechan­i­cal prob­lems that could cause a B-​​2A to crash.

Here’s a sam­pling (read high­lighted text):

The prob­lem is caused by the B-2A’s dis­torted engine inlets. 

The dis­tor­tion causes exces­sive wear on the stage 1 fan blades for the F118-​​GE-​​100 engines. Take that and an unplanned “for­eign object dam­age event”, and, voila, your $1.1 bil­lion bomber may expe­ri­ence a “cat­a­strophic in-​​flight emergency”. 

But there’s another prob­lem. A loose fan blade also can spark an “uncon­tained tita­nium fire”. According to the same doc­u­ment, the tita­nium fire — what­ever that is — may cause a “Class A event”, or what nor­mal peo­ple call a “crash”.

The prob­lem is listed in the bud­get jus­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments because the USAF is buy­ing repair blades this year to fix the prob­lem. I’m sure it will be inter­est­ing for the inves­ti­ga­tors to find out whether the “Spirit of Kansas” had received the repairs before the crash, among other items of inter­est, of course.

– Steve Trimble

I started cov­er­ing the US Navy’s off-​​again/​on-​​again Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) pro­gram about five years ago. It’s been back on for two years and — last I checked — poised for a con­tract selec­tion deci­sion in five days.

This makes me sad because I just thought of an obvi­ous angle for a BAMS story that I’ve missed some­how for the last five years.

If I had the chance to re-​​interview all of the com­peti­tors and USN pro­gram offi­cials, here’s the first ques­tion I would ask: Why is this a win­ner take-​​all award instead of a split-​​buy?

The com­peti­tors for BAMs are the Northrop Grumman RQ-​​4N Global Hawk (high-​​altitude, tur­bo­fan, active elec­tron­i­cally scanned arrays), Lockheed Martin/​General Atomics Mariner (medium-​​altitude, tur­bo­prop, mechan­i­cally scanned arrays) and Boeing/​Gulfstream G-​​550 (high-​​altitude, tur­bo­fan, option­ally manned, mul­ti­ple active arrays).

Each prod­uct is basi­cally an off-​​the-​​shelf plat­form mod­i­fied to meet the USN’s require­ment. The USN is not pay­ing to design a new air­craft. It’s essen­tially buy­ing a la cart. That’s prob­a­bly why each plat­form offers vastly dif­fer­ent oper­a­tional strengths and weaknesses.

This com­pe­ti­tion isn’t a choice between two dis­creetly dif­fer­erent rivals, like the YF-​​22 ver­sus the YF-​​23. This is more like the YF-​​22 ver­sus the B-​​1. Each plat­form is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent capa­bil­ity, but both are use­ful for their intended purpose.

I agree there are down­sides to a split buy award: the upfront costs are higher than a winner-​​takes-​​all award, you lose some of the mar­ginal ben­e­fits of com­mon­al­ity and train­ing gets more complicated.

But there are other advan­tages. The USN would not be beholden to one con­trac­tor for BAMS for the next two or three decades, but could keep play­ing the two teams off each other over the life of the pro­gram. Instead of a nar­rowly focused solu­tion, the USN’s oper­a­tors could employ the plat­form that makes the most sense for each mission.

Not to men­tion the fact that Congress tends to like split buys, as it spreads the jobs more broadly and sub­jects the defense indus­try to greater competition.

I’m not say­ing a split-​​buy is the best answer for BAMS, but rather that it’s an impor­tant and seem­ingly log­i­cal ques­tion that I should have asked long before now.

(Full dis­clo­sure: my wife works for Lockheed.)

– Steve Trimble

It’s 2015. Both the long-​​lived Boeing C-​​17 and extremely long-​​lived Lockheed Martin C-​​130 pro­duc­tion lines either have just shut down or are finally about to close.

Neither Boeing’s engi­neers in Long Beach nor Lockheed’s engi­neers in Marrietta have any­thing new in the pipeline. Sure, there’s some paper draw­ings of stealthy tac­ti­cal air­lifters get­ting some buzz, but noth­ing within at least five to 10 years of com­ing to fly­ing fruition.

So, both man­u­fac­tur­ers decide to do what all US defense com­pa­nies do in this sit­u­a­tion: they go foreign!

Lockheed locks arms with the com­pany they spurned more than 15 years before on a poten­tial joint tanker bid. So the Lockheed/​Airbus axis offers the USAF the in-​​production A400M, which of course will be assem­bled in Mobile or Marrietta (or both) and fit­ted with a new 10,000shp-class General Electric tur­bo­prop or the Pratt & Whitney PW800, which was actu­ally the orig­nal A400M engine before “the Chirac affair”.

Boeing, which will never part­ner with the likes of Airbus, has to be more clever. They decide to link up with the man­u­fac­turer they briefly con­sid­ered for a Joint Cargo Aircraft bid: Ukraine’s Antonov! The AN-​​70 is a rugged beast of an air­frame, and Boeing’s engi­neers believe they can smooth out its aero­dy­namic and mechan­i­cal quirks. Boeing parks the new AN-​​70 assem­bly line some­where in the US south­east, with Charleston (South Carolina), Jacksonville or San Antonio on the shortlist.

– Steve Trimble

AUSA hosts the Army Aviation Symposium this week, which gives me the per­fect excuse to ask one of my favorite ques­tions: What will it take to get US mil­i­tary heli­copter tech­nol­ogy out of its long and bar­ren rut?

I believe the last all-​​new air­craft designed, built and fielded for the US mil­i­tary was the UH-​​60A Black Hawk. The Army spends about $3 bil­lion a year on heli­copters, but all of that money pays for deriv­a­tives of tech­nol­ogy orig­i­nally deployed between 30 and 50 years ago, or mil­i­ta­rized ver­sions of civil helicopters.

Arguably no other sec­tor of advanced US mil­i­tary tech­nol­ogy fight­ers, air­lifters, UAVs, ships, fight­ing vehi­cles, mis­siles, satel­lites, etc has tol­er­ated a longer and deeper drought of deploy­able innovation.

Think about it: the last all-​​new air­craft designed for the army was the Sikorsky/​Boeing RAH-​​66 Comanche, and that pro­gram was can­celled in 2004 after only two pro­to­types were built.

The Comanche would have been the first heli­copter to intro­duce stealth design char­ac­ter­is­tics, but the fun­da­men­tal lim­i­ta­tions of heli­copter per­for­mance speed, range and pay­load have been stuck in a par­a­lyz­ing rut since the late-​​1960s.

Of course, there are a few pro­grams in the very early stages of con­cept design that may offer a solu­tion, but each faces an ago­niz­ing and per­ilous path to deliv­er­ing a fin­ished prod­uct some­time after 2015. Namely, they are the payload-​​limit-​​busting Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) air­craft (post-​​2015) and the speed-​​barrier-​​busting Joint Multi-​​Role (JMR) air­craft (post-​​2020).

Elements within the army want to launch an X-​​Plane fly­off for JHL start­ing in 2010, but that project will face intense com­pet­i­tive pres­sure. The alter­na­tives come from the USAF, and they range from the futur­is­tic AJACS con­cept to near-​​off-​​the-​​shelf deriv­a­tives of the C-​​17, A400M or C-​​130J.

Requirements and tech­nolo­gies for JMR will con­tinue to coa­lesce over the next five years or so. But the defense indus­try is already jock­ey­ing to be in com­pet­i­tive posi­tion. Sikorsky plans to fly the speedy X2 demon­stra­tor this year (the orig­i­nal first flight date was post­poned in December). Boeing is work­ing with Piasecki on the X-​​49 com­pound Black Hawk. Boeings real inter­est is to apply the tech­nol­ogy to the AH-​​64 Apache, either as a JMR-​​lite if the army starts pinch­ing its pen­nies, or as a test­bed for an all-​​new platform.

Another, more near-​​term, idea is to deploy the tech­nol­ogy on the H-​​1 Cobra, to serve as an armed escort for the US Marine Corps MV-​​22 fleet. Sikorskys X-​​2 will likely also bat­tle for the con­tract if this require­ment emerges over the next few years.

The ground for greater leaps in tech­ni­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion is being pre­pared by DARPA, which is sup­port­ing BellBoeings evolv­ing con­cept for a fold­ing tiltro­tor or tilt­ing stop-​​rotor. Boeing also is work­ing with DARPA to develop the con­cept for a new hybrid air­craft design called Rotor Disk.

– Stephen Trimble