The DEW Line

The DEW Line Has Moved!

I am very happy to announce that TDL has a new and better home. Go to the new link here at http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/.

FlightGlobal is the web site of my employer, who is generous (and brave) enough to support my musings, ramblings and bloggings on all matters about aersopace and defense.

The content of the new blog will be mostly the same, with defense sharing the stage a bit more with items about the large airliner market and aircraft engines. But defense is still what I'm all about.

I hope you'll all join me at the new location.

Conflicts of Interest in France? I'm shocked! Shocked!

With the Paris Air Show right around the corner, it's a good time for a French arms-media-political scandal -- or at least complaints that there should be a scandal.

This week's The Economist says:

"More troubling are links between politics, the media and missiles. The Lagardere Group, which owns Le Journal du Dimanche, Paris Match and a radio station, Europe 1, still has a stake in the aerospace group EADS. Arnaud Lagardere is another friend of Mr Sarkozy's; journalists at Le Journal du Dimanche are embroiled in a row over interference in a censored story about the president's wife, Cecilia. The Dassault Group, whose aviation division makes Rafale and Mirage fighters, owns 87% of Socpresse, which includes Le Figaro and many regional titles; Serge Dassault is a senator from Mr Sarkozy's party. With defence firms so depednent on government contracts, these conflicts of interest ought to generate more censure in France than they do."

Paul Richfield's Big Scoop on BAMS

Props to my competitor Paul Richfield, editor of C4ISR Journal, for scooping us on BAMS in this month's issue. Richfield got Boeing to publicly acknowledge that it will partner with Gulfstream to offer the G550 business jet as optionally manned/unmanned aircraft for the US Navy's BAMS program. (BAMS=Broad Area Maritime Surveillance).

In Seattle last month, I directly asked Boeing's people if they were ready yet to publicly confirm that they would offer the G550 for BAMS, which has been speculated ever since Boeing and Gulfstream each received study contracts from the navy in 2005. Alas, Boeing refused to answer me. Maybe my buddy Paul has pictures of them cavorting with sheep? Who knows. But here's a good excerpt of his interview with Boeing's Tim Norgart:

“When you look at the load-carrying requirements optimized for BAMS, the G550 became the obvious choice,” Norgart said. “We did the same thing when we chose the 737 for the P-8A program. We looked at all the available air vehicles and determined that for BAMS, we need a regional jet-sized airplane. The G550 is just superb in every way.

“With it, we have the flexibility of being optionally manned but we’re pitching this as an [unmanned aerial system]. We have commercial aircraft reliability and can fly all day, every day. And we have speed; we can get to where we need to be very quickly.

“Our payload capacity is another huge discriminator. When we’re on station, we have all the possible tools in the tool belt; all the sensors all the time, and we get there first. The other, small unmanned systems can only carry so much.”

Boeing declined to go into detail regarding just how the G550 will be configured for BAMS. Norgart did say, however, that the aircraft would include “two basic FAA-certified modifications” that Gulfstream has delivered on other special mission G550s.

Two key technologies still in development for the G550, however, are the aircraft’s unmanned flight control and collision avoidance systems.

“Those are the easy part,” he said. “We have a tremendous amount of experience, as do our teammates, and we plan to leverage all that capability as we have in the past on other programs.”

My Wildly Irresponsible Prediction on Joint Cargo Aircraft

The C-27J will be announced the winner of the Joint Cargo Aircraft competition later this week. Put it in the bag.

Keep in mind that this is a blog and not a news story. I have no information that confirms the sentence above. If I did, you can trust that I'd save it for my employer: Flight International magazine.

This is purely informed speculation, akin to a sports analyst predicting who wins a game between two teams in which he or she has no personal stake. In other words, I'm guessing.

I also bear no grudges against the Raytheon/EADS CASA North America C295 team. Indeed, until a few days ago, I would have put my money on the pride of Spain's aerospace industry. Them's the breaks.

Some of you I'm sure will think I'm full of crap. But before you press the "send comment" button, please read why I'm predicting the C-27J has won. Here goes:

When the Senate Armed Services Committee marked up the Fiscal Year 2008 authorization bill a few weeks ago, it inserted language to make the US Air Force the purchasing authority for the Joint Cargo Aircraft program.

I interpret this move as the air force taking insurance. If the army selects the aircraft that the air force doesn't like, the latter can ensure the former doesn't get to buy it.

The air force participated -- but did not get the decisive vote -- in the source selection process. The process concluded in March, meaning the air force likely knows which aircraft won the competition. Following this logic, the SASC's mark is an indication that the air force disapproves of the selected aircraft.

The question then becomes: which aircraft does the air force oppose?

For various reasons, I think the air force is opposed to the C-27J as too near a competitor in performance and mission to the prize of its entrenched tactical airlifter community: the C-130J. The C295, while an effective, proven aircraft, is not as likely to be confused as a rival to the venerable Hercules family, and therefore the aircraft the air force could support.

I admit: This is a prediction based purely on speculation. It's more like a conversation over a beer or two than a professional observation. But, well, that's kind of the point of having a blog. I might be completely wrong, and I hope Raytheon and EADS CASA North America will continue to return my phone calls. But this is my best guess.

Honey, I Shrunk the Defense Budget

Baker Spring at the Heritage Foundation makes the case that the defense budget should be pegged to 4% of the Gross Domestic Product. He warns that if no action is taken soon, defense spending as a percetange of national economic output will decline to 3.2% by 2012.

This is the calm before the storm. The US defense budget tends to rise and fall at roughly 15-year intervals. The current upward cycle since 1998 is stretching the interval beyond its normal apogee. A defense spending freefall could be around the corner, although some analysts, such as defense industry optimist Loren Thompson, believe the upward spending track may continue indefinitely. But the fear of a freefall among defense hardliners and profitmakers remains, so expect to hear many such calls for tying defense spending to economic output over the next few years.

Contracts: 6/4

(With apologies for my five-day blogging lapse, as my wedding to the world's most amazing woman proved to be quite a distraction ...)

Today, you can:

1. Learn that the Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle is now seen as a percursor to two new such vehicles called Insight and Integrator
2. Bid for a contract that transforms F-16 fighters into targets for air-to-air missile practice, now that there's only a few old F-4 Phantoms left to blow up for fun
3. Compete to build the next-generation of Global Positioning System satellites
4. Find out the bullets on board the F-16 and F-18 don't work right
5. Feel oddly sorry for the plight of Lockheed Martin, which won the Joint Common Missile contract, then lost it for no apparent reason in 2005, then kept the program on life support through the company's allies in Congress, then lost the contract again after the army decided to re-compete the resurrected program

JB Proposes the 'Infinite Wing'

Johnny Bombmaker: Ok. Suppose the US Air Force flips out and buys some counter-insurgency aircraft? What do you think they're going to do with it?

The DEW Line: Er, counter some insurgents, I guess.

JB: There happens to be a good reason for a counter-insurgency fleet, but it's not what you're thinking. It isn't just about squadrons of networked Warbirds roaming the earth in search of combined arms engagements against lightly armed opponents.

TDL: Ok, go on.

JB: Have you heard of the 1,000-ship Navy? It's the idea that the US Navy should muster the combined might of the allied navies into a relatively seamless operational force. Partly, that means their navies have to step up to play at the level of our navy. And, partly, it means that our navy has to step down to play at the level of some of their navies, which in reality are often coast guards and river patrols by another name. This is why the USN is suddenly buying high-performance fishing boats and converting them into "riverine vessels" for a new "riverine command".

TDL: So if the USN can buy fishing boats to play with less sophisticated foreign navies, the air force should buy single-engine turboprops to engage with the less sophisticated foreign air forces?

JB: Well, it's an idea anyway. Buy turbo-props so the air force can not only engage with the air forces that fly fighters, but also the air forces in some of the so-called "gap countries" that you keep hearing about these days. It at least gives the counter-insurgency fleet a reason to exist in peacetime. It's a little clumsy to call it the "1,000-aircraft air force", but maybe brand it the "Infinite Wing".

TDL: I kind of like that.

Contracts Round-up: 5/30

Today, you can:

1. Find out the Afghan National Army has commandos
2. Put in a bid for what's got to be THE WORST JOB ON THE PLANET ... hint: it involves driving trucks, riding in convoys and doing both in Iraq
3. Take a standard 120mm projectile round for a tank, add a seeker and a booster rocket and (drum roll ...) revolutionize tank warfare by allowing the tank gunner to shoot at targets he can't see. (Score for using the terms "revolutionize" and "tank warfare" in the same sentence for the first time since, oh, say, the Yom Kippur War)
4. Invent a system that can somehow detect a sniper before he can fire a shot ... and, while you're at it, help me find my keys

COIN Debate: The Cliff Notes Version

The counter-insurgency aircraft debate continues. Please join in by posting here. While you're thining it over, here's excerpts from the wonderful ongoing discussion on this blog. It's a debate based entirely on facts, reasons and good insight -- how original!

The debate all started when Johnny Bombmaker said:

There's a reason why single-engine turboprops almost disappeared after World War II. They get shot out of the sky faster than a duck flying over a South Texas shooting range. Do you realize how many A-1 Skyraiders got blown out of the sky in Vietnam? The threat in Iraq is even worse. Much better to do it the modern way: just park an F-15 or an F-16 with a targeting pod, a strafing cannon and a guided bomb up above 15,000 feet.

Joe Katzman replied:

Sometimes being slow isn't the worst thing in the world. The British got a Harrier shot out from under them in the Falklands because it was too fast, and had to keep coming back at low level to try and spot its target. If you keep throwing fastballs, folks eventually hit them.

Robot Economist followed:

Not to get too radical here, but why not consider something even lower tech/lower cost like a blimp. They can be virtually stationary over the target and achieve a pretty good altitude at a low operating cost (heck, the bomb and the spotter on the ground do all the work).

Joe Katzman went back to the original question:

If someone told you they had a system that would save 13 pilots and aircraft, but kill 300 soldiers and result in $300 million in economic dislocation due to areas not covered fully and attacked successfully... would that seem like a good deal to you? All aspects of this equation matter. It's not just about the aircraft.

Then HerkEng entered the discussion, siding with the turboprops:

I am not saying that a trainer aircraft is best for the mission but, it would be much better than an F-16 or even an A-10.

But Joe Katzman posted a new warning on tuboprops:

The Super Tucanos, AT-6Bs et. al. DO have an important issue, but it isn't speed. Rather, it's the turboprop engine up front that vents in the forward-center section of the fuselage. Wrong place to attract a missile - unlike, say, a Czech L-159 light attack jet, a missile that detonates behind target looks like a kill rather than a miss and some tail pipe damage.

Dan G joined in, also warning about the relative merits of turboprops:

Just how many JDAMs could a Tucano haul to 15,000' I wonder? Not many I bet.

Yours truly re-entered the discussion, taking issue with the notion that turboprops are too vulnerable for the CAS mission:

As long as helicopter pilots are flying even slower and lower than a Super Tucano every day in Iraq, I think we can dispense with the reasoning that fixed-wing pilots must be immune from taking any similar risks, if it is the most effective way to do the mission.

HerkEng made a good point that the turboprop's IR signature problems can be overcome:

Who said that they can't build a shroud around the exhaust like they do on the AC-130s? It is very effective for them and would not be that hard to make for the PT6A.

Dan C rejoined:

Don't forget how the roles of helicopters and CAS aircraft differ. CAS aircraft are deliberately routed into harm's way, while tranport helicopters fly around hot spots. The ones that do - gunships - carry heavy armour, just like the only other aircraft that operates at low level - the A-10. I don't see a titanium bathtub in the Tucano.

Contracts Round-up: 5/23

Today, you can: 

1. Help military doctors recognize the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder
2. Understand why the chemical properties of rubber insulation create problems for the US Air Force’s inventory of solid rocket motors
3. Read something that makes you ponder why the US Army is suddenly issuing RFIs on behalf of Boeing for the Future Combat System program. That used to be Boeing’s job. Has the army decided to assert more authority over the program, a la Deepwater?

4. Buy a system that can bring suspicious-looking vehicles approaching traffic checkpoints to a stop, hopefully reducing the need to shoot at the potentially innocent people inside the vehicle

5.  Hire a Catholic “director of faith formation”, whatever that is