July 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Tony Osborne July 29, 2020
Aviation Week's July 16 webinar on the future of combat aircraft mentioned British, French-German and Japanese fifth- and sixth-generation developments. Are there any others on the radar, such as Turkey or South Korea? Will these quieter players be able to pull the rabbit from the hat as the Turks have done with UAVs in Libya and Syria?
London Bureau Chief Tony Osborne responds:
Had we had more time during the webinar, we would have talked more about developments from Turkey and South Korea—in particular, the Turkish Aerospace Industries TF-X and Korea Aerospace Industries' KF-X. Taiwan and Pakistan are also making investments in fighter technologies, although their progress is not as mature.
Turkey benefits from having a capable partner in BAE Systems to support the design process, and I believe they could produce a combat aircraft in the next 5-10 years. The Turkish electronics industry is well advanced, and Turkish Aerospace is growing its capabilities fairly rapidly.
The biggest question is around development of engine technologies: Turkey wants an indigenous 25,000-30,000-lb. engine to power the TF-X. Although Turkey is not starting from scratch—given its experience on General Electric engines for the F-16—it has a long way to go before it can produce a reliable, locally developed powerplant. Without that, Turkey will have difficulty exporting such an aircraft. Surety of supply for a foreign engine, especially from the U.S., is doubtful given the political strains between the two countries.
In South Korea, it is a slightly different story. Its platform will use a U.S.-supplied engine, and given the close relationship between South Korea and the U.S., there is that surety of supply. Time will tell whether that will change when it comes to exporting the KF-X. With assembly of the first prototype well underway, South Korea appears to be making strong progress. We are still waiting for metal to be cut.
September 18, 2023 | International, Land
The European Union's REACT program aims to create jamming "bubbles" around formations of allied warplanes, according to a Spanish industry official.
September 5, 2018 | International, Aerospace
2018-08-30 WILLIAM KUCINSKI Officials will soon award a 350-unit contract to one of three competing aircraft teams. According to officials, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) will select a new trainer aircraft by September 30 – before the end of the 2018 fiscal year. The aircraft will be one of the three remaining next-gen trainer candidates from the USAF's ongoing T-X competition, either the clean-sheet T-X from Boeing and Saab, the T-50A from Lockheed Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd. (KAI), or the T-100 from Leonardo DRS. The USAF will replace its aging fleet of Northrop T-38 Talon supersonic jet trainers with 350 new aircraft from the T-X competition, spending approximately $16 billion to acquire and maintain the new trainers over the course of their service life – one of the largest USAF contracts in recent times. The seasoned T-38 has been in use since 1961, training nearly 50,000 pilots who would later fly aircraft like the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, McDonell Douglass F-15 Eagle, and Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. However, as the USAF transitions employs more and more cutting-edge technologies, a next-gen trainer is needed to better facilitate fifth-gen fighter aircraft pilot training for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lighting II. The winning T-X aircraft will serve as a platform to acclimate pilots to aircraft with extreme agility, full-sensor fusion, integrated avionics, supercruise, and consolidated and integrated battlespace management technologies. Industry analysts currently favor the Lockheed/KAI T-50A – based on KAI's T-50 trainer used by South Korea's Republic of Korea Air Force and co-developed by Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the F-22 and F-35; and the Boeing/Saab T-X – which, as a completely new design – benefited from additional development time due to the T-X competition's repeatedly protracted award announcement. While speculation has floated that the T-X award announcement would occur during the Air Force Association's Air, Space & Cyber (ASC) Conference from Sept. 17-19, those close to the program hinted at a decision coming through the following week of Sept. 24. https://www.sae.org/news/2018/08/t-x-competition-to-end-in-september-with-selection-of-new-usaf-trainer-aircraft
February 18, 2020 | International, Aerospace
ByEd Adamczyk Feb. 17 (UPI) -- A solar-powered unmanned aircraft with a wingspan of 114 feet completed its maiden high-altitude flight in the stratosphere, maker BAE Systems said on Monday. The plane, called PHASA-35, which stands for Persistent High altitude Solar Aircraft and its wingspan measured in meters, is meant to fly about 32 miles above the earth in the space, in the upper atmosphere between conventional aircraft and satellites. The aircraft's solar-powered batteries could allow it to stay aloft for over a year at a time, providing a stable platform for monitoring, surveillance, communications and security applications. It can also offer military and commercial customers with capabilities not available from existing air and space platforms, and could be used in communications networks disaster relief and border protection at a fraction of the cost of satellites, BAE said in a statement. The plane, which went from proof of capability to testing in only 20 months, is underwritten by Britain's Science and Technology Laboratory and Australia's Defense Science and Technology Group, and built by BAE Systems and its subsidiary, Prismatic Ltd. Its flight trials were successfully completed at the Royal Australian Air Force Woomera Test Range in South Australia. "To go from design to flight in less than two years shows that we can rise to the challenge the U.K. government has set industry to deliver a Future Combat Air System within the next decade," said Ian Muldowney, engineering director at BAE Systems. Additional test are scheduled for later this year, with plans to enter initial operations with customers within 12 months. Airbus is among companies competing in the high-altitude, long-endurance category of planes, and in 2019 completed a 26-day test flight of its solar-powered Zephyr S "High Attitude Pseudo-Satellite." https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/02/17/BAE-successfully-tests-solar-powered-high-altitude-plane