NATO Summit: UK offers up troops to counter Russian advances

The UK Prime Minister has pledged some 1,000 British troops in support of a quick reaction “spearhead force” that would be stationed in eastern Europe to protect against Russian advancements, should the implementation details be finalised at the NATO summit in Newport on 5 September.

During his opening remarks on the second day of the summit, David Cameron said the alliance is negotiating establishing a rapid reaction force that could deploy in two to five days, in response to the actions of Russia in its advancement into Ukrainian territory. Such a force would preposition equipment in eastern Europe in anticipation of a conflict, and would be headquartered out of Poland. The UK has also pledged that 3,500 British troops will partake in joint training exercises with NATO to prepare for potential conflicts over the next two years.

“To support our eastern European members we must be able to act more swiftly,” Cameron says.

Rex Features

This would have to be a quick-reaction force, because under a treaty that NATO signed with the Russian government after the Cold War, it promised that it would not have a permanent basing out of any of the former Warsaw Pact states.

Cameron’s declaration came as part of a three-part pledge which also included the UK extending partnerships across the alliance as well as calling on members to earmark 2% of their GDPs to defence, including spending 20% of that on equipment.

“This issue of equipment is as important as the amount of money spent,” Cameron notes.

Prior to the summit, on 3 September, UK defence minister Michael Fallon communicated the same message to the Royal United Services Institute in London, but said that research should also count within the proposed 20% equipment spend.

“We’re urging all allies to spend 20% of their defence budgets on new equipment, research and development of capabilities,” he said.

OPINION: Why aerospace firms must tackle titanium cheats

When Pratt & Whitney accused a supplier in late August of furnishing defective titanium for the F135 engine on the Lockheed Martin F-35, it was easy – but not entirely correct – to connect the problem to a string of component reliability failures and supplier management miscues already connected to the programme.

Although the F-35 has earned a reputation over a prolonged development period, that focus may conceal a deeper problem inside the US domestic titanium supply base that goes well beyond the single-engined stealth fighter.

P&W has sued A&P Alloys for allegedly supplying titanium sourced from Russia – the world’s largest titanium producer – and for concerns about the quality of the lightweight, high-strength metal delivered for the F135. According to P&W, the suspect titanium forced the company to suspend engine deliveries for several weeks.

A&P is not the first company to supply suspect titanium to the Department of Defense. Indeed, court documents show that faulty titanium products have triggered a 15-year-long string of aircraft groundings and lawsuits, affecting the Bell Boeing V-22, Boeing C-17, Boeing F-15, Lockheed F-22 and now the F-35.

In response, the Department of Defense convened a task force in 2009 dedicated to examining the problem of suspect titanium in the US military aircraft supply base. Based on their findings, last AprilNASA published a handbook for government acquisition managers to identify defective shipments of finished titanium.

The published reports make it clear that the fault does not lie with the producers of raw titanium bar and plate, such as TIMET, ATI and RTI.

The culprits are the distributors that take the raw material and do the finishing work. The NASA handbook identifies two kinds of titanium cheaters. Some take raw titanium plate and forge the finished component even though the specification calls for using a more complex rolling process. Others cheat by simply cutting down a raw titanium billet into the final shape, rather than using a forging or rolling process as required in the contract.

Both forms of cheating result in a metal that superficially looks right, but lacks the minimum strength or fatigue characteristics demanded by the aircraft’s designer.

The latest P&W lawsuit shows that defence contractors are still vulnerable to the problem, despite all of the government’s efforts over the past five years to identify the cheaters.

It also comes at a time when concern grows about access to Russian stocks of titanium, and the possibility that US commercial aircraft will have to depend on Western sources of supply.

Bombardier to resume CSeries flights in September

Bombardier has announced that CSeries flight testing will resume in September and reaffirmed that first delivery will occur in the second half of 2015.

The company’s update on 5 September narrows Bombardier’s window for lifting the three-month-old grounding of the CSeries fleet.

An oil system malfunction caused an explosion in the Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engine on FTV-1 during a ground test in Mirabel, Canada, on 29 May.

P&W proposed an initial fix to Bombardier in mid-July, but the airframer continued to pose questions to the supplier through mid-August.

"We are pleased to confirm that Pratt has now completed the first set of modified engines with full flight clearance approval from the relevant authorities including Transport Canada," says Bombardier CSeries programme manager Rob Dewar in a statement.

A photo of FTV-2 appeared online on 5 September, showing the aircraft in taxi tests with a pair of engines recently flown in from P&W’s factory in Hartford, Connecticut.

Bombardier now as a 11- to 15-month window for completing certification testing of the CSeries fleet, with roughly 300 hours of a 2,400 flight test programme completed as of 29 May.

HondaJet engine clears FAA certification milestone

GE Honda Aero Engines has cleared the long-awaited airworthiness milestone for the HF120 turbofan, allowing aircraft maker Honda Aircraft to accelerate efforts to certificate the HA-420 HondaJet and enter operational service next year.

The US Federal Aviation Administration awarded Part 33 certification to the 2,095lb-thrust HF120 programme, according to the joint venture between GE Aviation and HondaJet.

The award follows several years of testing that revealed problems with the original design, especially for how the engine handles ice ingestion. Design changes finally met the FAA’s standards after a testing programme that involved 13 engines and 14,000 cycles on 9,000h of testing.

“This is just the beginning for our team, which has worked tirelessly to demonstrate the technologies in our engine,” says Terry Sharp, president of GE Honda.

The next step for the HondaJet programme is for the manufacturer to receive from the FAA a type inspection authorization, which establishes a baseline of performance to receive airworthiness certification.

HondaJet plans enter service with the first production HA-420 in late-2014, or roughly a year after engine certification.

The HA-420 will compete in the same market segment as the Phenom 100 and the Cessna M2. The entry-level jet market remains severely depressed from pre-2009 levels, before the global economic crash reduced financing options for small businesses and private owners.

HondaJet believes the HA-420 can be competitive by offering a 5% improvement in fuel burn with novel features, including a natural laminar flow airfoil, over-the-wing engine mounts and the unique design of the HF120 engine.

GE Honda designed the HF120 with a front fan blisk and an unusual, reverse-flow combustor with a single-stage, air-blast fuel nozzles.

Assembly of the HF120 has started at a GE facility in Lynn, Massachusetts, but will transition to a joint venture-owned site in Burlington, North Carolina.

HondaJet assembles the HA-420 in nearby Greensboro, North Carolina, inside a cavernous new factory.

Shelling has been reported in Ukraine's eastern city of Mariupol despite a day-old ceasefire, as Moscow warned it "will react" if the EU imposes new sanctions.

PICTURE: Cessna delivers first TTx to international owner

Cessna has clinched an order from Russian pilot training provider ViraZH for 79 Skyhawks. The order comes on top of another deal in 2011 for the eleven of the four-seat, piston-engined types.

Cessna is scheduled to deliver all 79 aircraft from the latest order during the fourth quarter of 2014. Upon delivery of the final aircraft, the Moscow-based company will become one of the world’s largest operators of the high-wing type.

The Textron Lycoming IO-360-L2A-powered Skyhawk will be incorporated into ViraZH’s flight school network situated throughout western Russia.

Meanwhile. A Thai businessman has become the first international owner of the piston-engined TTx.

Cessna

The four-seat aircraft – touted by Cessna as the “world’s fastest commercially produced and certified fixed-gear single-engine aircraft” – was handed over to Kiatichai Monsereenusorn, managing director of Kiattana Transport, based in Nonthaburi, Thailand.

The $734,000 TTx was certificated in July, and is the first aircraft to be equipped with Garmin G2000 avionics. The cockpit features two 14in high definition displays and touchscreen controls.

The all-composite aircraft has an operating ceiling of 25,000ft (7,620m) and a 1,250nm (2,311km) range, allowing it to fly non-stop from Los Angeles to Houston or Bangkok, Thailand to Kolkata, India, says Cessna.

The Continental Motors TSIO-550-powered TTx also has an optional flight into known icing system, “enabling pilots to file flight plans for varying weather conditions”, the airframer adds.

Contenders make final pitches for Polish helicopter deal

By: DOMINIC PERRY

WARSAW

Source: Flightglobal.com

14:39 4 Sep 2014

All three contenders for Poland’s ongoing multirole helicopter procurement used this week’s MSPO defence show to mount a final push for the 70-unit deal, ahead of an end-September deadline for final submissions.

Warsaw is expected to select a preferred bidder by year-end ahead of a series of flight tests for the tri-service requirement, as it looks to retire its ageing fleet of mainly Russian types.

Although the simmering conflict in nearby Ukraine is causing alarm in Poland, defence minister Tomasz Siemoniak told reporters that the award of the contract was not being accelerated.

He describes 2014 as a “decisive year for the modernisation” of the country’s armed forces. “Everything is on track and is according to schedule. Owing to the [Ukraine] crisis we are strongly motivated to observe our deadlines,” he says.

The shortlist for the contest comprises the AgustaWestland AW149, Airbus Helicopters EC725 Caracal and Sikorsky S-70i Black Hawk, all three of which were on display outside MSPO’s exhibition hall in Kielce.

Although the bidders were largely unwilling to discuss the precise detail of Poland’s request for proposals, a large degree of local production and technology transfer is required.

Dominic Perry/Flightglobal

This could give AgustaWestland and Sikorsky an edge, due to their respective Polish subsidiaries PZL Swidnik and PZL Mielec. However, Airbus Helicopters is also promising substantial investment in the country, and suggests that it could become the “fifth pillar” of the Airbus Group, alongside France, Germany, Spain and the UK.

Although some of that investment will happen anyway, says Airbus Helicopters chief executive Guillaume Faury, winning the multirole contest – and a looming procurement of attack helicopters – would allow the manufacturer to accelerate its plans for the country.

“The level of investment I have in mind cannot be made in two to three years if we don’t have one or two big programmes to invest in,” he says. He estimates growth in the country would be around five times slower without the “catalyst” of the contract wins.

Faury is confident that the EC725 is the only one of the three helicopters on offer than can meet Poland’s wide-ranging requirements.

“We believe we are the only OEM to be able to offer a unique common platform for the different mission requirements that have been requested. The Caracal is today already available with the vast majority of systems, equipment and mission capabilities requested by Poland,” he says.

The company is already working through a similar tri-service contract for the EC725 in Brazil, he points out.

Dominic Perry/Flightglobal

Inevitably, AgustaWestland and PZL Swidnik see things a little differently. If Poland selects the AW149 it would be the first customer for the 8t rotorcraft, which only received military certification in July this year.

Danielle Romiti, AgustaWestland chief executive, says since its acquisition of PZL Swidnik in 2010, investments have transformed the company into the Anglo-Italian airframer’s “Polish industrial pillar”.

And Mieczyslaw Majewski, president of PZL Swidnik, is scathing of Airbus Helicopters’ proposals, noting that he is “not against the [PZL] Mielec people”.

He says: “Airbus Helicopters can say they will put jobs here, but how many? It will be 100 or 200 versus the 3,500 we employ. What does the government say to those people if they choose another company?”

Although PZL Swidnik has a long history of supplying helicopters for the Polish armed forces – most recently its W-3 Sokol and SW-4 Puszczyk – the very newness of the AW149 may count against it. Indeed, the company has sought, and been granted, an extension to develop the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) variant of the rotorcraft offered to the Polish navy, says project manager Zenon Witkowski.

“We succeeded in convincing the customer that the process of installing dedicated [mission] equipment on such a helicopter requires more time,” he says.

Dominic Perry/Flightglobal

Sikorsky, meanwhile, feels its offer of the S-70i – the international variant of the Black Hawk – is the most compelling. The helicopter is already assembled for the global market at PZL Mielec, with deliveries now “into the dozens”, says Bob Kokorda, vice-president defense systems and services at Sikorsky.

The S-70i is direct equivalent to the US-built UH-60M, says Kokorda, which he describes as “great proven product in demand by a lot of different countries”.

Although Polish analysts believe the Black Hawk may have the edge over its rivals thanks to support from the nation’s military, Sikorsky’s offer is not a simple one.

Poland’s requirement calls for one platform to be operated by all three services, and for those helicopters to be assembled locally.

However, to satisfy the ASW role, the US airframer can only pitch the S-70B, “a legacy version of the [SH-60] Seahawk” which will also not be built in Poland “because the quantities won’t be high enough”, says Kokorda. But he notes that “in the guts” of the two aircraft there is considerable commonality, which would reduce the “logistics and long-term life cycle costs”.