Procuring new aircraft
Couldn't agree more with subject of this thread.
Rapid prototype designs, combining existing COTS components in innovative ways.
Keep your design engineers no more than 50 feet away from the people who are actually building the thing.
Ruthlessly restrict bureaucracy.
Kelly Johnson knew how to build them fast, efficiently, deliver ahead of time and under budget.
Rapid prototype designs, combining existing COTS components in innovative ways.
Keep your design engineers no more than 50 feet away from the people who are actually building the thing.
Ruthlessly restrict bureaucracy.
Kelly Johnson knew how to build them fast, efficiently, deliver ahead of time and under budget.
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Yup Computers and the software, especially with the amount in them these days, you cannot simply bolt together a low cost simple fighter anymore as you would be outclassed.
As for the idea of a Bucc with Tornado Avionics, one often wondered if a modern Rotodyne stretched with modern turbofans or quiet turboprops on the pylons and with the quiet rotor jet system they had about perfected on a modern rotor design would give the Chinook or the Osprey tilt rotor a run for its money... it would be quick.
343 km/h as opposed to the Osprey 509 km/h or Chinook 315 km/h but would carry more than the Osprey and those speeds are based on the 1959 model figures.....
As for the idea of a Bucc with Tornado Avionics, one often wondered if a modern Rotodyne stretched with modern turbofans or quiet turboprops on the pylons and with the quiet rotor jet system they had about perfected on a modern rotor design would give the Chinook or the Osprey tilt rotor a run for its money... it would be quick.
343 km/h as opposed to the Osprey 509 km/h or Chinook 315 km/h but would carry more than the Osprey and those speeds are based on the 1959 model figures.....
Last edited by NutLoose; 19th Aug 2013 at 11:29.
Nobody has to "what if" about a Bucc with Tornado avionics, as there was at least one flying out of Boscombe as part of the Tornado development effort.
Rumor on the streets was that it was embarrassingly good (dare one say superior in almost all aspects except dash speed and weapon configuration), and was quickly disposed of once the trials were over to avoid embarrassment - but who knows.
There was also a plan for a Buccaneer Mk4, with increased weapons pylons, which would reduce the Tornado advantage down to just greater dash speed, while leaving the Bucc with all its advantages.
No doubt someone out there is better placed to comment - but will they?
Rumor on the streets was that it was embarrassingly good (dare one say superior in almost all aspects except dash speed and weapon configuration), and was quickly disposed of once the trials were over to avoid embarrassment - but who knows.
There was also a plan for a Buccaneer Mk4, with increased weapons pylons, which would reduce the Tornado advantage down to just greater dash speed, while leaving the Bucc with all its advantages.
No doubt someone out there is better placed to comment - but will they?
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Buccardos
Two Buccaneers were converted to the Buccardo Configuration. Externally, this was replacement of the Buccaneer Radome with the Tornado item. Farnborough had one on the books after the Tornado Development Program had finished. It was a delight to fly, of course it was quite a lightweight, but even so!
Unfortunately, no useful tasks could be based on her so yet another aircraft was rolled onto the Farnborough Aircraft Dump.
lm
Unfortunately, no useful tasks could be based on her so yet another aircraft was rolled onto the Farnborough Aircraft Dump.
lm
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...Yup Computers and the software, especially with the amount in them these days, you cannot simply bolt together a low cost simple fighter anymore as you would be outclassed...
Software is icing on the cake - the fundemental part is getting the performance requirement right - that was the key to the F-15 - and then achieving them efficiently.
Improving existing capable airframes: Harrier II - new wing, Bucc revised rear fuselage and modern avionics, A-4/F-20/F-18L - avionic upgrades and you would have some potent airframes relatively cheaply.
Unfortunately too many focus on the Systems and never consider the package they come in.
Software is icing on the cake - the fundemental part is getting the performance requirement right - that was the key to the F-15 - and then achieving them efficiently.
Improving existing capable airframes: Harrier II - new wing, Bucc revised rear fuselage and modern avionics, A-4/F-20/F-18L - avionic upgrades and you would have some potent airframes relatively cheaply.
Unfortunately too many focus on the Systems and never consider the package they come in.
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JFZ90
The Bucc was originally produced as the NA39, of which around 20 examples were built for test flying. These lead to the production S mk1, of which 40 were produced, flying with 800, 801, 809, 736 and 700Z sqns in the early to mid 60s. The prototype S mk2 was a conversion of an S1, the difference between the two was mainly down to the different engines. I've long wondered why the remaining mk 1s were not upgraded to mk 2 standard, probably down to funding. The S mk2 was aquired in much greater numbers, 84 for the FAA and 43 for the RAF.
The S1s gained a short reprieve in the late 60s when a number of the surviving airframes were brought out of storage and issued to 736NAS to help train the first RAF crews. These aircraft were pooled with 803NAS which was the FAA headquarters sqn at the time. The S1s were withdrawn in 1970 after a crash highlighted cracking in the Gyron Junior engines, by which time the rundown of the FAA and increased production meant there were enough S2s for training purposes. If they had been upgraded, those S1s could have increased the overall Bucc fleet by another 20 or 30 aircraft, something that would have come in handy in the late 70s/early 80s...
The Bucc was originally produced as the NA39, of which around 20 examples were built for test flying. These lead to the production S mk1, of which 40 were produced, flying with 800, 801, 809, 736 and 700Z sqns in the early to mid 60s. The prototype S mk2 was a conversion of an S1, the difference between the two was mainly down to the different engines. I've long wondered why the remaining mk 1s were not upgraded to mk 2 standard, probably down to funding. The S mk2 was aquired in much greater numbers, 84 for the FAA and 43 for the RAF.
The S1s gained a short reprieve in the late 60s when a number of the surviving airframes were brought out of storage and issued to 736NAS to help train the first RAF crews. These aircraft were pooled with 803NAS which was the FAA headquarters sqn at the time. The S1s were withdrawn in 1970 after a crash highlighted cracking in the Gyron Junior engines, by which time the rundown of the FAA and increased production meant there were enough S2s for training purposes. If they had been upgraded, those S1s could have increased the overall Bucc fleet by another 20 or 30 aircraft, something that would have come in handy in the late 70s/early 80s...
Thinking aloud - this raises an interesting point.
Off the top of my head (engineers correct me if wrong) the last paradigm shifting major airframe innovations have been the use of composites and stealth.
Variable geometry died a death.
Pure speed hasn't really been a goal since the F4 (the F22 being a bit of an anomaly).
The big innovations have been systems and powerplants, primarily systems (AESA, directed energy etc).
So is there now a much stronger case for ripping the guts out of old airframes (fatigue life not withstanding) and retrofitting 21st century avionics?
The B52 comes to mind...
Off the top of my head (engineers correct me if wrong) the last paradigm shifting major airframe innovations have been the use of composites and stealth.
Variable geometry died a death.
Pure speed hasn't really been a goal since the F4 (the F22 being a bit of an anomaly).
The big innovations have been systems and powerplants, primarily systems (AESA, directed energy etc).
So is there now a much stronger case for ripping the guts out of old airframes (fatigue life not withstanding) and retrofitting 21st century avionics?
The B52 comes to mind...
Last edited by tartare; 20th Aug 2013 at 02:57.
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Thinking aloud ...The big innovations have been systems and powerplants, primarily systems (AESA, directed energy etc).
So is there now a much stronger case for ripping the guts out of old airframes (fatigue life not withstanding) and retrofitting 21st century avionics?...
So is there now a much stronger case for ripping the guts out of old airframes (fatigue life not withstanding) and retrofitting 21st century avionics?...
LF
Payloads over Platforms: Charting a New Course | U.S. Naval Institute
Very interesting LF.
Righto!
All former `toom drivers stand to attention please.
We already know you could carry more hardware than t'Lancaster.
You're about to be recalled - glass cockpits, BVR missile compatible pylons, AESA and iPad interfaces are being installed as we speak...
Stealth, smealth...
Righto!
All former `toom drivers stand to attention please.
We already know you could carry more hardware than t'Lancaster.
You're about to be recalled - glass cockpits, BVR missile compatible pylons, AESA and iPad interfaces are being installed as we speak...
Stealth, smealth...
Last edited by tartare; 22nd Aug 2013 at 00:52.
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Computor Designs?
Trouble is that Computor designs Don't pick up all the faults - Take the Tornado aircraft, for example - It wasn't until the Test Flights began that a MAJOR fault developed. It was found that at high altitude, air passed over the engine nassells, & past the tail, resulting in the Tail of the aircraft, flying in a vaccum. Thus the FIN had no effect!! - This design PANIC resulted in "Vortex Generators" being fitted to both sides of the Fin, which created a Turbulance, enabling the Fin to have an effect.
Last edited by badpuppy; 22nd Aug 2013 at 10:20. Reason: Spelling mistake!!
People think that onboard computers have revolutionised aircraft but my opinion is that y'ain't seen nuthin yet.
In the computing world we are struggling to come to terms with what's ending up in our hands. For about GBP 2700 I can get a motherboard +4 16 core CPUs (64 total). Lets say you double that to add ram and power and a couple of SSDs. That's about GBP 6,000. In 2006 a less powerful cluster of machines cost the business I was working for about GBP 88,000.
There are still a lot of businesses wasting their money by being cheap with hardware and profligate with the very expensive time of their employees which does fascinate me.
Many of today's fancy aircraft that I am aware of (and I admit I know very little) were surely conceived before this state of affairs.
The 2 excuses for this change not being reflected in aircraft are:
1) COTS hardware has a huge power budget and possibly isn't all that compact.
2) It is far from resilient enough.
The most exciting development of late, to my mind, is the amount of work being put into ARM CPUs all of a sudden because of mobile phones. They have a low power philosophy which suits many usecases but not the greatest performance yet.
...but Nvidia has a roadmap for ARMS with built-in GPUs that are programmable for general purpose tasks via the CUDA API. In essense this means you can construct a low power supercomputer. 64 of these cores would sip power. Why not have 1024 of them? Image processing tasks would fly through them. Latency might not be great but throughput would be incredible.
I do understand that I am a geek and prone to wild flights of fancy and I also imagine that my idea of what's useful (cpus+gpus) might not be quiet what aircraft require but I do think that this potential to have a little supercomputer aboard an aircraft has to end up having some incredible applications.
In the computing world we are struggling to come to terms with what's ending up in our hands. For about GBP 2700 I can get a motherboard +4 16 core CPUs (64 total). Lets say you double that to add ram and power and a couple of SSDs. That's about GBP 6,000. In 2006 a less powerful cluster of machines cost the business I was working for about GBP 88,000.
There are still a lot of businesses wasting their money by being cheap with hardware and profligate with the very expensive time of their employees which does fascinate me.
Many of today's fancy aircraft that I am aware of (and I admit I know very little) were surely conceived before this state of affairs.
The 2 excuses for this change not being reflected in aircraft are:
1) COTS hardware has a huge power budget and possibly isn't all that compact.
2) It is far from resilient enough.
The most exciting development of late, to my mind, is the amount of work being put into ARM CPUs all of a sudden because of mobile phones. They have a low power philosophy which suits many usecases but not the greatest performance yet.
...but Nvidia has a roadmap for ARMS with built-in GPUs that are programmable for general purpose tasks via the CUDA API. In essense this means you can construct a low power supercomputer. 64 of these cores would sip power. Why not have 1024 of them? Image processing tasks would fly through them. Latency might not be great but throughput would be incredible.
I do understand that I am a geek and prone to wild flights of fancy and I also imagine that my idea of what's useful (cpus+gpus) might not be quiet what aircraft require but I do think that this potential to have a little supercomputer aboard an aircraft has to end up having some incredible applications.
Last edited by t43562; 23rd Aug 2013 at 08:20.
T43562
I enjoyed reading that post.
In the mid-90s I was managing an aircraft programme. The ISD was 2001.
One of the systems required a CPU to run at around 2.5GHz minimum, at a time when the industry standard was about 400MHz. In other words, the endorsement relied upon Moore’s Law, which is by no means guaranteed. A practical problem was, of course, one could not properly test the kit during development because it didn’t work until that speed was achieved.
The major problem I faced was not this technological risk; I like to think most engineers would have accepted it and industry is chock full of people who have experienced the same thing. The biggest obstacle was the attitude of non-technical bosses and beancounters. The concept was beyond them and they ordered this part of the programme cancelled as being too risky – which would have severely degraded Operational Capability and rendered the entire programme questionable.
My point is that the Programme Manager can do his very best, but in MoD he is at the mercy of people who will avoid such routine risks and order cancellation without even discussing it with him. Conversely (and Nimrod MRA4 is a classic example) the same people will demand a programme romps ahead, despite the world and his dog pointing out fundamental flaws that WILL prevent introduction to service. (The April 2010 audit report that led directly to MRA4 cancellation is more or less a carbon copy of the warnings issued throughout the 90s and 00s on the programme). MoD has plenty of good people with lots of responsibility but no authority. And then there are those who have the authority, and routinely abuse it, but no responsibility. That is where the problem lies. In my opinion.
I enjoyed reading that post.
In the mid-90s I was managing an aircraft programme. The ISD was 2001.
One of the systems required a CPU to run at around 2.5GHz minimum, at a time when the industry standard was about 400MHz. In other words, the endorsement relied upon Moore’s Law, which is by no means guaranteed. A practical problem was, of course, one could not properly test the kit during development because it didn’t work until that speed was achieved.
The major problem I faced was not this technological risk; I like to think most engineers would have accepted it and industry is chock full of people who have experienced the same thing. The biggest obstacle was the attitude of non-technical bosses and beancounters. The concept was beyond them and they ordered this part of the programme cancelled as being too risky – which would have severely degraded Operational Capability and rendered the entire programme questionable.
My point is that the Programme Manager can do his very best, but in MoD he is at the mercy of people who will avoid such routine risks and order cancellation without even discussing it with him. Conversely (and Nimrod MRA4 is a classic example) the same people will demand a programme romps ahead, despite the world and his dog pointing out fundamental flaws that WILL prevent introduction to service. (The April 2010 audit report that led directly to MRA4 cancellation is more or less a carbon copy of the warnings issued throughout the 90s and 00s on the programme). MoD has plenty of good people with lots of responsibility but no authority. And then there are those who have the authority, and routinely abuse it, but no responsibility. That is where the problem lies. In my opinion.
Tucumseh, I always enjoy reading your posts because the same attitudes exist in companies and it's consoling to know that it's a problem others have to face. The bit about responsibility without power is one that resonates very particularly.
What gets me is that the "management" who hound technical types like me about one thing or another (the issues du jour) often don't really care about any of them actually finally working or being of any use. Their own existence is too dependent on what their masters think (and the masters of the masters and so on until one reaches financial journalists and analysts) for them to take note of the real facts or the risks of not innovating or the risks of carrying on with something will well known flaws and not addressing them or giving up and starting again.
They are fighting to survive by dealing with their biggest problem which is not the product or work but the imperative to keep their own bosses in a cosy cocoon of mild unreality. This is why companies hire consultants to tell them how to fix the business. The consultants just ask the staff - which the middle management can't be trusted to do presumably. In the end nothing happens because the incentives are the same, the structure the same.
I think this is why it is important for some companies to go bust - they are a sort of sociological failure that can't fix itself. I have no idea what happens with government departments though :-)
Cheers,
:-)
What gets me is that the "management" who hound technical types like me about one thing or another (the issues du jour) often don't really care about any of them actually finally working or being of any use. Their own existence is too dependent on what their masters think (and the masters of the masters and so on until one reaches financial journalists and analysts) for them to take note of the real facts or the risks of not innovating or the risks of carrying on with something will well known flaws and not addressing them or giving up and starting again.
They are fighting to survive by dealing with their biggest problem which is not the product or work but the imperative to keep their own bosses in a cosy cocoon of mild unreality. This is why companies hire consultants to tell them how to fix the business. The consultants just ask the staff - which the middle management can't be trusted to do presumably. In the end nothing happens because the incentives are the same, the structure the same.
I think this is why it is important for some companies to go bust - they are a sort of sociological failure that can't fix itself. I have no idea what happens with government departments though :-)
Cheers,
:-)
Last edited by t43562; 23rd Aug 2013 at 14:09.
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Buccaneer not Tornado
The actual factual of RAF operation on the Central Front to 1992 says that Bucc Mk.2 was an effective weapon system. So with MLUs to keep avionics abreast of techno-evolution it could have done much/most of Tornado GR jobs. Just like B-52 has outlived Hustlers &tc. and has no Out-of-Service date. All was not constant sweetness and light - Bucc was grounded 7/2/80-28/7/80 to Saceur's dismay, but what complex kit ever was? We know all this now, but not in 1968.
Minister Healey brought UK into the German-led NKF-90 discussions on F-104G, when RAFG was Tasked to go deep East on Canberra B(I)6/8. Scandalous. He had lost its replacement TSR.2 and AFVG, and was disenchanted with origami UKVG. His options were: more RAF Bucc S.2 (and he did buy 26 more), then to fit (TSR.2/AFVG avionics); buy/licence F-15A; explore a Euro/Canadian high volume deal. He did that: in part to get 1968, not 1953 technology; in part for overarching politics about NATO cohesion (France had rocked the boat in 1966), and UK-Continent relations (entry bid to EEC). On those big-picture tickets RAF received rather more Tornados than ever it might have received Bucc 2*/3/4...Be grateful.
(The NATO Agency buying Tornado accepted in 1970 the need for an avionics flight test bed - this was the first digital data bus system. Panavia put forward 2 cheap, available platforms: F-104F and Bucc.2. On Panavia's behalf BAC teamed with Marshalls who had track record on design one-off weirdos of no interest to parents. That bid was cheaper than MBB's F-104F so that was what NAMMA bought. No-one, then or later, doodled this experimental platform as a combat type. But, I agree: if US had succeeded in its constant endeavours, 1968-78, to kill MRCA to admit F-various, then UK might well have taken F-something for the (to be F.3) ADV role, and enhanced Buccs for GR.)
Minister Healey brought UK into the German-led NKF-90 discussions on F-104G, when RAFG was Tasked to go deep East on Canberra B(I)6/8. Scandalous. He had lost its replacement TSR.2 and AFVG, and was disenchanted with origami UKVG. His options were: more RAF Bucc S.2 (and he did buy 26 more), then to fit (TSR.2/AFVG avionics); buy/licence F-15A; explore a Euro/Canadian high volume deal. He did that: in part to get 1968, not 1953 technology; in part for overarching politics about NATO cohesion (France had rocked the boat in 1966), and UK-Continent relations (entry bid to EEC). On those big-picture tickets RAF received rather more Tornados than ever it might have received Bucc 2*/3/4...Be grateful.
(The NATO Agency buying Tornado accepted in 1970 the need for an avionics flight test bed - this was the first digital data bus system. Panavia put forward 2 cheap, available platforms: F-104F and Bucc.2. On Panavia's behalf BAC teamed with Marshalls who had track record on design one-off weirdos of no interest to parents. That bid was cheaper than MBB's F-104F so that was what NAMMA bought. No-one, then or later, doodled this experimental platform as a combat type. But, I agree: if US had succeeded in its constant endeavours, 1968-78, to kill MRCA to admit F-various, then UK might well have taken F-something for the (to be F.3) ADV role, and enhanced Buccs for GR.)
One difference which some have obliquely mentioned is that the machines designed in the past were pretty much designed as single role machines. KISS. Platforms were subsequently turned into multi-role machines.
Kelly Johnson's SR-71 may not have been quite as successful had the requirements list included A to A, A to G, ISR, AWACS, The ability to transport an MBT 15,000Nm and land vertically as it would these days (have I missed any?).
Kelly Johnson's SR-71 may not have been quite as successful had the requirements list included A to A, A to G, ISR, AWACS, The ability to transport an MBT 15,000Nm and land vertically as it would these days (have I missed any?).
Last edited by Mk 1; 28th Aug 2013 at 04:30.
