The Week In Defense, Oct. 23-30, 2020

On the same subject

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  August 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  European Hypersonic Cruise Passenger Study Set For New Tests

  By Guy Norris A team of European hypersonic researchers are preparing for wind tunnel tests of a Mach 8 concept that is designed to prove technologies for the development of future ultra-long-range, high-speed commercial vehicles and air-breathing space launch systems. Funded under Europe's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Stratofly (Stratospheric Flying Opportunities for High-speed Propulsion Concepts) is targeted at fostering hypersonic capabilities for a 300-seat passenger vehicle cruising above 30 km (19 mi.) to TRL (technology readiness level) 6 by 2035. The project builds on the Lapcat waverider concept developed under earlier programs by the European Space Agency/European Space Research and Technology Center. Using the 310-ft.-long Lapcat II MR2.4 version as a reference vehicle, the 30-month Stratofly effort is focused on classic hypersonic technology challenges such as propulsion integration, hot structures and thermal management. In addition, with environmental concerns at the forefront in Europe, the project also includes sustainability considerations such as fuel-burn efficiency, noise and emissions reductions, as well as operational issues such as life-cycle costs, safety and certification. Coordinated by The Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, the project team believes that sustainable hypersonic travel is feasible through the use of liquid hydrogen fuel and new trajectories that would enable flights from Europe to Australia in 3 hr. Specific targets include 75-100% CO2 reductions per passenger kilometer and 90% reductions in nitrous oxide (NOx) compared to current long-range transport aircraft. A version of the vehicle could also be adapted into the first stage of a two-stage-to-orbit space launch system, says the group. Other members of the 10-strong consortium include the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium, which is focused on propulsion and noise; the Netherlands Aerospace Center, NLR, which is also part of the noise study; and CIRA, the Italian aerospace research center, which is conducting high-speed flow analysis. Propulsion systems and climate impact input is provided by Germany's DLR research organization, while ONERA, the French aerospace research center, is focused on emissions as well as plasma-assisted combustion in the vehicle's combined-cycle propulsion system. Sweden's FOI defense research agency is also part of the plasma combustion study. The French National Center for Scientific Research is also evaluating the vehicle's potential climate impact, particularly in areas such as the effects of water droplets from the exhaust in the upper atmosphere. Studies of the overall business plan, human factors and hypersonic traffic management are being conducted by the Hamburg University of Technology, while the Spain-based Civil Engineering Foundation of Galicia is focused on structural analysis and optimization. Like the original Lapcat design, the Stratofly MR3 waverider configuration is dominated by a large elliptical inlet and an integrated nozzle aft located between two canted tail fins. For takeoff and acceleration up to Mach 4.5, the vehicle is powered by six air turbo ramjets (ATR, also known as air turbo rockets) in two bays of three, each fed by secondary inlets in the primary intake. Above this speed, sliding ramps cover the ATR inlets as the vehicle accelerates and transitions to a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet (DMR) for the next phase of the flight. The DMR is housed in the dorsal section, nested between the ATR ramjets, and is designed to operate in ramjet mode to above Mach 5 and scramjet mode up to Mach 8. The scramjet will incorporate a plasma-assisted combustion system to maintain the stability of the flame front and prevent the potential for flameouts. Tests of the plasma system in a combustor will take place later this year at ONERA, where supersonic combustion testing also took place for Lapcat. The tests will be conducted in November-December at ONERA's ATD5 facility and will focus on inlet conditions at Mach 3.7. Also planned for later this year is a test of the full vehicle in the high-enthalpy wind tunnel at DLR's Gottingen research facility. Testing at DLR will run through September 2020 and is expected to target similar free-stream conditions as those tested on Lapcat II—around Mach 7.8. The work will assess aerothermodynamic characteristics and be used to validate the results of earlier computational fluid dynamics analysis of the MR3 design, which incorporates external and internal differences against the reference vehicle. “We elevated the canard [a retractable feature for lower-speed flight] and redesigned the vertical tails,” says Davide Ferretto, a research assistant on the Stratofly team from The Polytechnic University of Turin. “We also redesigned the leading-edge radius of the inlet for increased efficiency as it feeds both propulsion systems.” As part of the redesign, the enclosed passenger compartment, which was divided into two sections running along each side of the vehicle, has been combined into a single cabin in the lower lobe of the fuselage. https://aviationweek.com/propulsion/european-hypersonic-cruise-passenger-study-set-new-tests

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  October 6, 2020 | International, Naval

  US Navy’s aging surface fleet struggles to keep ships up to spec, report shows

  David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy's aging surface fleet is getting harder to maintain, and overall is showing declining health in several key areas, such as its main propulsion systems, electrical systems and Aegis combat systems, according to an annual report of the Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey submitted to Congress earlier this year. The so-called INSURV inspections found that over five years, the surface fleet found big dips in the main propulsion systems — the plants that produce the power to push the ship through the water — as well as in the electrical systems and aviation systems. The Aegis systems, a collection of sensors and software that protects the ship primarily from air threats, has also shown some signs of slipping over the last half-decade. The declining trend comes after years of intense focus on readiness inside the Defense Department, but the Navy says that recent changes to how the Navy conducts the notoriously intrusive INSURV inspections are making the fleet more ready. Still, the slipping scores do raise questions about whether the Navy's much-in-demand surface combatants are getting adequate time in maintenance. For INSURV, ships are graded across a wide variety of systems, with scores adding up to a “figure of merit” where perfect equals 1.0. Over more than 30 surface ship inspections in 2019, the Navy tracked a 20 percent drop in scores between 2014 and 2019 in the main propulsion plant and another 20 percent drop in scores for the ships' electrical systems. Aegis, which is the beating heart of the combat systems on cruisers and destroyers, saw a slight but concerning drop from a figure of merit of 0.88 in 2017 to 0.77 in 2019. Aviation systems, the systems concerned with launching and recovering rotary wing aircraft, dropped from 0.77 in 2014 to 0.68 in 2019. By contrast, scores from submarine main propulsion — governed by strict Naval Reactors guidelines and inspections — scored figures of merit of 0.94, submarine electrical systems scored 0.90, and submarine combat systems scored a 0.84. Overall, the Navy's surface fleet got high marks in navigation systems, medical systems, anti-submarine warfare systems and preservation. INSURV changes The Navy accounts for its drop in scores by pointing to a recent change in how the service conducts the inspections. In 2019, the chief of naval operations ordered that INSURV be conducted once every three years, the length of one deployment readiness cycle where the ship is maintained, the crew is trained, and the ship deploys. The inspections were also changed from an event that is planned for well in advance, to an event that comes with little notice, and requests for delays to the inspection were prohibited. The short-notice INSURV inspections are designed to get a more accurate picture of ships' readiness, instead of allowing sailors ample time to borrow parts from other ships and make temporary fixes that can boost the overall score on the inspection, according to Naval Surface Force Pacific. “Because ships knew exactly when the inspection would occur, they were able to put their best foot forward during the exam,” said SURFOR spokesperson Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman. "Over time, it became clear the (consistently good) INSURV scores ships were receiving did not accurately capture the material condition of the surface fleet. “As a result, Navy leadership directed that future INSURV inspections be performed at any time during a ship's [deployment cycle], and with minimal notice. At the same time, the Board of Inspection and Survey eliminated the possibility of ships receiving a delay to their inspection date due to a late occurring equipment casualty. The inspection is therefore more ‘come as you are' than it has been in the past.” SURFOR has also directed that ships conduct more rigorous and regular shake-out tests, such as directing the ships to max out their propulsion system in what's known as a “full power run,” and has increased the frequency of inspections of the ship's transmission, known as the main reduction gear, and monitoring of the health of the ships' SPY-1 radar system, Schwegman said. The surface fleet has made investments in increasing self-sufficiency of sailors so they can fix their own gear and made sure they have the right spares on board their ships to make sure they can fix broken gear, Schwegman said. The goal is to make sure the fleet gets away from relying too heavily on technical experts employed by the companies who make the gear on ships. “While we have the funding and availability of technical representatives (and we send them, to include with COVID-19 protocols in place), we will continue to ensure that ships are able to maintain most if not all of their equipment should technical assistance not be immediately available,” Schwegman said. Lingering questions Part of the issue, of course, is that the Navy's surface fleet is getting older. The cruisers are all closing in on their expected 35-year expected hull lives, and the first 27 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are not far behind them. Keeping the radars going in earliest ships has been a particular challenge, as has maintaining the aging engineering plants. There remain questions, however, about how much the roughly 10-to-20 percent drop in scores across critical areas inspected by INSURV is attributable to the change in the inspection regime that SURFOR points to, said Bryan Clark, a retired U.S. Navy submarine officer and senior fellow at Hudson Institute. “Probably part of that 10-20 percent is a function of just not being able to prepare as much as you would in the past,” Clark said. "The way you'd do it in the past is you'd see you had INSURV coming up and you'd have a bunch of [preventive maintenance checks] you'd perform to make sure the equipment they were going to test was in working order. You'd go run things that are almost never run and see, ‘Oh, I need to go fix that.' “So, really the old system was to both test the ship as well as force the ship to make sure all of its systems were working at the right level of capability. Now it's much more of a test where they come on board, test a bunch of stuff and they see if it works or not.” But given that the downward trends go back so far, it's also likely that the high demands placed on the force continue to degrade the material condition of the ships without adequate time for maintenance, Clark said. “Part of it has to be that the Navy continues to struggle to put the time and money into maintenance availabilities that they need to,” Clark said. “Particularly in the surface fleet, the ships' schedules have just not been able to be freed up they way they need to be, and in some cases they've had to manage costs and growth, which meant they couldn't do all the maintenance they needed to.” The move to schedule more INSURV inspections will likely yield good results over the long term, he added, but said the whole outlook on how the Navy deploys must change if any significant progress is to be made. “Doing INSURV more frequently is a good time, especially since it is pretty much the most comprehensive inspection your ship is going to get,” Clark said. "You test things that you use infrequently so that you don't need to find out they don't work in extremis. “But I suppose I question how much the Navy really has taken a turn on readiness. They've put more money into it due to supplemental funding. They've done a much better job managing availabilities. But Navy-wide, you need to complement that with a supply-based model where you tell combatant commanders ‘We just can't get you the forces you want because they need to go into maintenance and they have to be there for as long as they need to be there.'” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/10/05/the-us-navys-aging-surface-fleet-struggles-to-keep-ships-up-to-spec-report-shows/

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  April 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Airbus reports $515M in first-quarter losses

  By: Angela Charlton, The Associated Press PARIS — Airbus says the aviation industry's unprecedented troubles are just beginning. The European manufacturing giant reported €481 million (U.S. $515 million) in losses in the first quarter, put thousands of workers on furlough and sought billions in loans to survive the coronavirus crisis. And its CEO said Wednesday it's still at an “early stage.” Even after virus-related travel restrictions eventually ease, Chief Executive Guillaume Faury acknowledged it will take a long time to persuade customers to get back on planes. Just how long, he can't predict. “We are in the gravest crisis the aerospace industry has ever known,” Faury said. “Now we need to work as an industry to restore passenger confidence in air travel as we learn to coexist with this pandemic.” Images shared online of packed planes and maskless, elbow-to-elbow passengers on U.S. flights — despite virus protection guidelines - have worried travelers and airline unions alike. International travel restrictions, meanwhile, have grounded thousands of planes worldwide. Faury insisted that airplanes are “probably the best place to be” during a virus outbreak because of air filtration systems put in place after previous virus outbreaks and other threats, but said Airbus will work with aviation authorities to try to calm the public. Shares in Airbus and Boeing have dropped some 60 percent this year as customer airlines collapse or seek billions of dollars in government bailouts. Airbus was unable to deliver 60 planned planes in the quarter because of virus-related problems, and said the second quarter looks similarly rough. Customers are asking for delays, which Faury called “the biggest issue we are managing at the moment.” Airbus executives expressed hope Wednesday that deliveries could start picking up in the second half of the year. But they refused to issue long-term guidance given that the virus is still spreading, and that governments are reluctant to relax international travel restrictions. U.S. rival Boeing is facing similar woes. Boeing's CEO said Monday that it will take years for the aircraft-building business to return to levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic. Airbus has slashed production by a third since the virus hit, and Faury said Airbus will study “resizing” the company after the crisis ebbs — a worrying prospect on a continent where Airbus has factories in four countries and is one of the region's industrial leaders. Already 3,000 Airbus workers in France are on temporary unemployment and the number is expected to grow. In addition, 3,200 workers in the U.K. are on furlough and negotiations are under way to put thousands of German workers on short work plans. A recent letter by Faury warning workers that the company is “bleeding cash” was a shock to many. But Frederic Romain of French union CFTC said “the situation requires transparency. It allows workers to open their eyes” to what's ahead. “Fears? We have a lot of them. For the moment we don't have a clear vision of what awaits us," Romain said. Airbus reported a 15 percent drop in revenues to €10.6 billion in the first quarter. Looking longer term, Faury insisted that Airbus remains committed to reducing airplane emissions but said it's “less urgent” than before the coronavirus crisis because the company has more pressing problems to solve. “For practical cash reasons," Airbus has stopped or suspended some projects aimed at “decarbonizing” its production, he said. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/04/29/airbus-reports-515m-in-first-quarter-losses/