Why do we always re-engineer our aircraft??

[skygeezer]

Ok its not a wind up....I was just wondering why in the UK forces we buy perfectly good airframes from our Sherman Tank cousins then bugger about with the design ie, putting in british engines instead of the ones it was designed, trialled & tested with, or tinker about with the other techie bits for a long time until the initial budget is overspent by a couple of 100% ??

Is it just me or do we (the brits) have an awful habit of buggering up our procurement orders in this way??

[Safeware]

Aside from issues of politics (jobs, workshare etc) it's about adaptability. We spend an awful lot of money on these bits of kit. However, the threat they were designed to deal with is ever changing. So, rather than go out and buy a anew ac specifically designed for mission x, why not adapt an existing ac to carry out mission x. It goes on all the time and, just like the human race, it's evolution.

sw

[StopStart]

Evolution :) genius! :rolleyes:
It's about creating jobs in the UK with perhaps a slight nod at interoperability. It's also about taking half decent airframes, binning all the good bits and bodging in bits of overpriced underperforming homemade rubbish.
Possibly.
:hmm:

[airborne_artist]

You might as well ask "Why do dogs lick their b@lls" - because they can....

[HOODED]

Perhaps we don't anymore! Remember the 74 Sqn Phantoms not spey powered them ones very smokey and I believe the C17s are US standard too. Maybe we learned our lesson. "If it aint broke dont fix it"

[tucumseh]

If you accept the main differences between the “air vehicle” and the “aircraft” are engines, avionics and weapons then;

a. Rolls Royce are excellent, quite apart from supporting UK industry and political factors.
b. As above, most UK avionics (except, in my experience, EW). Buying US sourced kit is easy, supporting it (80% of through life costs) is a nightmare.
c. I admit limited experience on weapons but what I have done has largely been governed by security aspects (as are airborne radars and to a lesser extent comms).

Interoperability – MoD has no real policy on, and cannot afford to be, interoperable with anyone other than UK forces, and even then that is merely an unfunded aspiration.

Functionality – The US routinely adds, and more importantly removes, functionality at the drop of a hat and usually without telling anyone. France is also notorious for this (Lynx, Gazelle, Puma). If we follow, we incur expensive, unnecessary and unplanned mods; if not, we fall behind and need to separately maintain an “old” build standard which is quickly obsolescent. To do that, we need master drawings, source code etc.

Standardisation – There is very little you can buy from the US that will simply plug and play in UK aircraft. They build to their standards, not ours.

Related to the above, we will always be a minor user to almost any US defence supplier and at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to buying spares, design changes etc.

Supportability – The first thing in any User Requirement for aircraft to be flown off CVS/RFA/SUS/DUS is “On Board Commonality”. They simply don’t have the space to carry rafts of spares, so we specify kit which is common to our aircraft, as far as possible. For example, until recently the 3 main aircraft on a CVS (SHAR, Merlin, AEW) required only two (huge) ATE suites. A third could not be squeezed in, so regardless of who wins any competition for the kit, they are directed to use one or other of these suites. If you look at the fit on these aircraft, you’ll see that in many cases the same kit, or variants thereof, is in at least two of them or capable of being tested on the same ATE. This is why Merlin has a mixture of avionics spanning the 70s, 80s and 90s. Its avionic fit hasn’t changed much since it was determined in 1983-ish. The downside is that much of it is now very old as the air vehicle part of the programme slipped a decade or so.

Obviously there is much more to this and I have simplified it somewhat, but I hope this helps. People do think about these things, but the common denominators are always politics and money.

[WorkingHard]

So if UK is a unique case for armaments (as every country possibly is) why in Gods name did the politicians destroy our defence industry and in particular our aircraft industry. Did we not at one time have the best in the world? What happened? For those of you been around long enough to fly both British built and others what is your preference and why?

[DozyWannabe]

Your answer for 10 is "because we were paying the Yanks back for our war loans and couldn't afford to research, develop and procure stuff all on our own anymore".

[Onan the Clumsy]

Well if we're buying American aircraft, then the bits we're removing are probably Chinese.

[STANDTO]

why not do as the ruskis used to?

Capture/borrow/blag something, thern reverse engineer it:)

I am really good when I put my mind to it!

[ZH875]

Because the Boss is going to work for SELEX/BAES/Insert Any Other Company*Delete as Applicable In a couple of years when he leaves his/her current IPT job.:\

[STANDTO]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOh - cynical!

I have to say, considering what we p*ss down the drain in the name of local engineering, for overdue, out of date stuff we have developed ourselves, I'd rather buy a load of US stuff in kit form, and build them and maintain them locally. If Tony and George ever fall out, then we have the ability to engineer our way out of any withfrawl of spares, etc.

That way, more hospitals, better schools, more plod funding:ok: and better lead in times

[pr00ne]

WorkingHard,

“Why in Gods name did the politicians destroy our defence industry and in particular our aircraft industry, did we not at one time have the best in the world?”

Not this hoary old chestnut again!!!!

The UK currently has the second largest Aerospace industry on the planet, no guessing who comes first! The UK defence industry is the second largest exporter with a market share of over 20% with Russia and France trailing behind.

As to the UK Aerospace industry once being the best in the world, when? When did we ever make the best? Don’t trot out the old ‘Golden Age’ of the fifties and sixties, it may have been a super time to be a UK aircraft spotter but in terms of commercial success????

DozyWannabee,

The UK paid £26Billion in debt interest last year out of a total Govt budget of £519Billion, UK debt is less than that of any of our industrial competitors; France, Germany the US and Japan, even Canada! It is WAY less than the likes of Italy.

As to not affording to research, develop and procure or own stuff, 80% of the MOD capital spend is with UK companies.

Not even the US can afford to go it alone any more, look at the JSF, a UK workshare of over 19% of a multi thousand aircraft programme is bound to be a whole lot cheaper than if we had gone ahead and developed our own 150 aircraft programme. Provides a WHOLE lot more UK R and D and production jobs as well.

Standto,

You obviously have missed the whole IPR debate if you think we can simply assemble US kit over here and “engineer” our way out if we disagree, believe me, we can’t!

[WorkingHard]

PROONE - I am very happy to be corrected on the figures you supplied. If they are accurate (no disrepect intended to you) then we are very successful. Why oh why do we have this perception then that it is different? Why is the Harrier being built in the USA and we are not building it? Am i wrong on that also?

[pr00ne]

WorkingHard,

Figures from the SBAC and Stockholm International Peace Institute respectively.

No-one builds the Harrier anywhere any more, if you mean the AV-8B and the UK GR5/7, they were a co-operative programme between the US and UK with the UK providing the fuselage, tailplane, undercarriage, engine and ejection seat, the US providing the wing and nose and each providing its own specific avionics. They were assembled on two final assembly lines, one in the US and one in the UK.

A lot of the perception about the UK aerospace industry revolves around Airbus and the feeling that it is somehow French. It is not, the French may assemble the things but they only make the very forward fuselages. The rest is concived, designed engineered, manufactured, fitted out and tested all over Europe, with a very large percentage taking place in the UK.

Final assembly is not very high tech, it is not a value add process and it does nothing to increase your tecnological capability. BAE were offered the A320 final assembly and they turned it down.

[WorkingHard]

Well PROONE you have proved yet again the PPRUNE is an amazing source of information. Thank you and I'm sure amny readers will be very pleased to see the UK industry is alive and well.

[r supwoods]

I was told by a bloke who knows, the reason the UK never bought F15 / F16 was they used different electrical standards which were not compatable with any UK support / systems etc

[Washington_Irving]

Perhaps we don't anymore! Remember the 74 Sqn Phantoms not spey powered them ones very smokey and I believe the C17s are US standard too. Maybe we learned our lesson. "If it aint broke dont fix it"

IIRC, the F4Js were USN hand-me downs, bought in a rush in the early 1980s because in the wake of the Falklands War, the Whitehall Brain Trust decided that if they were going to subject air defence aircrews to 4 months of misery at MPA, it might help relieve the boredom somewhat if they were given something with which to startle the sheep and penguins. Hence additional a/c were required as a stop gap for 3-4 years or so until that marvel of European cooperation, the F3, took the job on.

I also beleive that the C-17s are leased, and were just grabbed from a USAF production batch. Eventually aren't we supposed to give them back?

[FJJP]

IIRC the intention is to purchase the 4 C-17s and buy 2 more...

[BEagle]

Aren't pr00ne's posts amusing - he makes 'Comical Ali' seem almost convincing!

OK - so, for example, the V-bombers were not a 'commercial' success, but at the time of the 'Golden Age' you sneer at, they were cutting edge designs produced as a rsult of national will. Both political parties supported them, incdentally. I imagine that the manufacturers of all those Meteors, Vampires and Venoms did, however, consider them to be pretty successful.

It was only in the age of meddling post-Sandys politicians and spineless leadership that the UK stopped most of its major design programmes.

Hamburg turns out Airbus narrow bodies like a sausage (or Bratwurst) machine - heaven knows why BWoS turned down the task. Indeed, if they'd pushed harder, perhaps the RAF wouldn't still be flying knackered old VC10s and TriShaws but would have been flying 21st century A310 multi-role transport tanker aircraft for around 5 years by now....

[pr00ne]

BEagle,

I wasn’t “sneering” at the so called Golden age, we were just never as good as we told others we were.
V-Bombers were undoubtedly cutting edge for the early fifties, but we built 3, 4 if you count the Sperrin, in penny pinching tiny numbers. They remained a cutting edge deterrent for what, about a decade? The US had the B-52 at the same time and developed it, something we stopped doing when we reached the B2 in 1962, the B-52 is now slated to be in service for another THIRTY years.

I actually agree about the Vampire, it sold very well but lets face it, the rest of the world had no industry to compete with us with at the time, same thing happened with the car, truck and merchant ship markets, we built the most as there was no competition but could not remain succesful when facing REAL competition.

Hamburg is assembling narrow bodied airliners, merely bolting fully assembled structures together. It’s not hi-tech and doesn't employ that many people, Airbus are very far ahead of Boeing in this respect, they still do an awful lot of manufacture and fitting out on the assembly line, Airbus don’t. BAE turned it down as there was very little money in it and it got them nowhere in terms of technology or value add.

I don’t see what possible difference a UK Airbus narrow bodied assembly line would have made to the FSTA farce?

[BEagle]

The original BWoS A310MRTT proposal pre-dated FSTA by a considerable number of years. Had BWoS thought ahead, once they'd converted the 2 dozen A310MRTTs they'd proposed, they would have had a facility and workforce all ready to start on Airbus narrow-body assembly work.

[WebPilot]

BEagle,
I wasn’t “sneering” at the so called Golden age, we were just never as good as we told others we were.


I disagree with this evaluation. The British industry was successful in selling large numbers of aircraft beyond the Vampire - Meteors, Hunters. I am sure that their successor types would also have found markets had the political meddling of the mid 50s to mid 60s not occurred. The industry was producing aircraft of world class and had the will been there it could have competed with the US. It is a fact that the stalling British economy was a drag factor but given the huge profits that could have been made, this should not be seen as a de facto reason for pulling the plug on the industry.

The B52 continues in service because it can continue to perform a useful function, despite its age, in today's world - and there is little to suggest that the Vulcan could not have also, had it survived in service beyond the ending of the Cold War. Obviously a re-ngining with more modern engines (a la B52H) would clearly have been much more difficult, if not impossible, with the Avro though. However had the Cold War continued beyond 1990 it is unlikely that the B52 would still be in service today - B52s over Iraq in 1990 were one thing, over Mother Russia it would have been something very different.

Why there is this continuing need to diminish the acheivements of this country is utterly beyond me.

[brickhistory]

However had the Cold War continued beyond 1990 it is unlikely that the B52 would still be in service today - B52s over Iraq in 1990 were one thing, over Mother Russia it would have been something very different.

This is slightly OT, but the might BUFF was planned to be around after 1990 in the Cold War. As a cruise missile carrier and not a pure "bombs away" mission admittedly, but still a useful aircraft.

We now return to your regularly scheduled thread......

[WebPilot]

This is slightly OT, but the might BUFF was planned to be around after 1990 in the Cold War. As a cruise missile carrier and not a pure "bombs away" mission admittedly, but still a useful aircraft.
We now return to your regularly scheduled thread......


Which, of course, was much what the Vulcan was in Blue Steel/Skybolt days!

I think the point stands that while the B52 may well become the first "century" serving aircraft, it survives owing to a fluke of timing rather than any innate superiority of it or its development over other aircraft of its vintage.

[brickhistory]

.....rather than any innate superiority of it or its development over other aircraft of its vintage.

Agreed.........

[STANDTO]

PrOOne - you are indeed wise - I did miss that debate. I must have been on nights.

What about the Tucano then? Granted it is a little less complex:D

[EnginEars]

What about the Tucano?

They basically changed the cockpit to something similar to the Hawk, put an MB seat in it, some other stuff and bobs your uncle.

:-)

[seand]

[QUOTE=pr00ne]WorkingHard,
No-one builds the Harrier anywhere any more, if you mean the AV-8B and the UK GR5/7, they were a co-operative programme between the US and UK with the UK providing the fuselage, tailplane, undercarriage, engine and ejection seat, the US providing the wing and nose and each providing its own specific avionics. They were assembled on two final assembly lines, one in the US and one in the UK.
QUOTE]

Armour produce a good range of Harriers a little small but still good!

One point of the quote" UK providing the Fuselage" yes the UK did provide a large part of the fuselage but only as far as the engine bay.

[WorkingHard]

It does seem that those with greater knowledge than I cannot even agree on something like the Harrier and who built what. I always thought the Harrier was purely a British design and build but others seem to be suggesting different.

[Sunfish]

Gentlemen, you are all missing the bleeding obvious! If you don't buy aircraft and kit from overseas, how do you think senior officers are going to get luscious postings and trips to the United States?????????

OK, call me bitter and twisted.

[PT6ER]

EnginEears

For the Tucano, they also took out a perfectly good engine (see my monica) and put in a TPE331 POS.

They replaced the "rabbit ears" with a "stove pipe" - drongos!

Or was I dreaming.....

[seand]

WorkingHard

Don't even go near the Harrier engine, I believe that the US helped fund that in the 60's, in fact they have had an input with the design, thus the Harrier 1 airframe was British but the engine a joint US/UK project.

But if it helps its all British: :D

[pr00ne]

Beagle,

What on earth makes you think that BAES converting a dozen A310s to tanker transports would have left them with the equipment or manpower to assemble narrow bodied airliners? Filton converted and overhauled dozens of A300s and A310s to freighters in an operation which lost money.

Webpilot,

I agree, the UK aerospace industry is very succesful and has sold lots of first class products around the world. It has and still does compete with the US very effectively. I just don’t believe the naive propaganda of the 50’s that told us we led the world-we didn’t. That position has always been occupied by the US. The Vulcan was a superb design for its day, no getting away from it, as an original conception it was brilliant, but there is far more to success than original design, there is ongoing development, at that we in the UK have been historically very bad indeed.

STANDTO,

What about Tucano? The spec was for an off the shelf turbo prop basic trainer, it was very much an employment issue and I honestly think that whoever had proposed to build it in Northern Ireland would have won. The RAF allegedly preferred the PC-9 put forward by BAe, the actual RAF Tucano bears very little resemblance engineering wise to the original Embraer aircraft, new engine, beefed up structure, new cockpit, new systems etc etc.
Very much a political employment aeroplane.

seand,

As I said, the UK provided the fuselage and the US the nose.

WorkingHard,

We are talking about Harrier 11, the GR5/7 in the UK and the AV-8B in the US. The original Harrier, GR1 through 3 was pure UK built, as was the US AV-8A.
If it wasn’t for offshore procurement and development funds the P1127 development programme that led to the Harrier would have died long before it entered production. In the 50s and 60s US offshore procurement funds bought 100s of Hunters and Javelins for the RAF and a lot of Hunters for NATO air forces.

The funding for Pegasus may well have been of US origin but the programme was all British, Bristol Siddeley and then Rolls- Royce.

[DaveyBoy]

...meanwhile the world's first jet airliner ploughs steadily on in the background, its Spey engines unquestionably British... ;)

[Blacksheep]

When did we ever make the bestDo you mean like the Supermarine Spitfire, Avro Lancaster, RR Merlin, English Electric Canberra, RR Avon, Blackburn Buccaneer, RR Spey, Hawker Harrier or RR Pegasus? Or were you thinking of something more recent?

[BEagle]

If BWoS lost money with the A300 conversion programme, why is it that Elbeflugzeugwerke goes from strength to strength doing precisely the same thing? 't Bungling Baron's soft southern brother can't have got his sums right, I guess?

Whether the Brabazon hangar would have been suitable, post-MRTT conversion, for narrow-bosy final assembly, or whether additional facilities would have been required is a moot point; the fact remains that the core work force would have been capable of either task.

Nevertheless, although both the A310-300 with ACTs and the 767-200ER both came out extremely well in cost and operational assessment by MoD DFS a decade ago, the nonsense of PFI and Noo Labia's underfunding of the Armed Forces to support its own political adventurism has left FSTA years and years late. I recall a senior civil serpent confidently predicting "This programme will NOT slip"......:rolleyes:

And before our tame Trot leaps to the defence of his Labour luvvy fellow-travellers, I doubt whether the Tory party would have admitted its invention of PFI-for-the-Armed Forces was a crock either...:mad:

[WebPilot]

Do you mean like the Supermarine Spitfire, Avro Lancaster, RR Merlin, English Electric Canberra, RR Avon, Blackburn Buccaneer, RR Spey, Hawker Harrier or RR Pegasus? Or were you thinking of something more recent?


Exactly. While I'd agree with proone that ongoing development has been lacking in the British industry over the years it was, until dismembered by political idiocy, world class. That is to say that while not every product was the best in the world, many were and let's not imagine some utopia where everything the Americans built was a class leader either. The British industry punched well above its weight, and continues to do so, and we should "celebrate" that (to use a nasty modern idiom), not try to diminish it.

[pr00ne]

Blacksheep,

Were any of the types you quote really, REALLY, the BEST in the world? The Spitfire-extremely short range, difficult to mass produce, expensive to make requiring dollar expenditure on US machine tools and Swiss instrumentation-If it was the best why the need for the Mustang?

Lancaster-outcome of the disastorous Manchester programme-was it REALLY better than the B-29?

Merlin was undoubtedly superb.

Canberra-a jet powered Blenheim, radar less and as vulnerable to Migs as was a Fairey Battle to ME109s in 1940.

Buccaneer and Harrier-who bought them?

To be fair though I was thinking specifically of the propaganda claims made in the fifties.

BEagle,

Don’t Elbeflugzeugwerke do their A300 freighter conversions in Dresden? A lot cheaper per hour than in Filton? They may well be a little more desperate for work and jobs than BAES and have lower margin expectations. If I were doing it I would be carrying out that sort of work in China.

Nevertheless, the 6500 people employed by BAES/Airbus UK at Filton are busy enough on wings, (AXXX and A400M) doubt if a final assembly facility would offer anywhere near as many jobs, certainly not as skilled and qualified as they are there now.

Filton airfield is a mite restricted runway and location wise it it not?

I could not agree more about the FSTA farce, which ever persuasion is in power it would have been no different, even more so now that David Tony Blair Cameron is adopting NOO Labor policies on a daily basis.

[pr00ne]

Webpilot,

Indeed the UK industry was and always has been world class, of that there is no doubt. For a very expensive offshore island coping with withdrawal from Empire the fifties and sixties did indeed see us punching well above our weight, of that we can be very proud, as we can of the state of the industry today, after all the trials and tribulations of political interference, mergers, policy shifts etc to end up with the worlds second largest industry is truly amazing. I am VERY proud of it. Before you start BEagle, I agree that the current state of play is in no way the responsibility of the Labour party or Tony Blair!

[BEagle]

Filton is about 50m shorter than Dresden (and 180m shorter than Finkenwerder) - plenty long enough for an Airbus narrow body, though perhaps tight for a heavy A300/310. Road access to ether Filton or Dresden is excellent; road access to Finkenwerder is utterly appaling, as the long-suffering local residents are only too acutely aware.

Post-reunification German policy was to encourage development of the east; hence there was considerable investment at the excellent dresden airport. But EFW is expanding its activities; they are the equal of any German aero-engineering business and certainly neither desperate for work nor have lower margin expectations.

I can't see EU politicians - particularly French ones - endorsing major Airbus work outside the EU. Except, perhaps, KC-30 if the USA eventually decides that it, rather than Seattle, actually does need yet more tankers.