Reece

Fifteen years ago collaboration was fairly rare and competing companies jealously guarded their patch and particularly their industrial technology. However, that has all faded in the past decade as Airbus, Panavia, Sepecat and Agusta all ably demonstrate first-hand the benefits of mutual cooperation in a crowded marketplace. In addition to collaboration between established entities, the so-called Third World has now enthusiastically joined the aerospace arena with products that are second to none. Fifteen years ago, would you have believed the Brazilians would have been building what they do today and selling upwards of 6q of the world’s fastest supercomputers in a single show-stopping order? Would you have believed just years ago that Indonesia would be building a number of sophisticated helicopters and transport aircraft that leave anything Australia has ever contemplated for dead?

Australia for its part nowadays has no real aircraft industry. What we have left over from the golden years of the forties and fifties is an industry that is primarily set up to build offset components. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing as we have mentioned many times in this magazine over the past year. Offsets nowadays are rebuilding the industry and thanks to the F-18 programme have given our major players the technology and equipment they required to rejoin the list of aerospace players following the dismal era of the seventies.

We will never build an all-new Australian-designed aircraft again, certainly not from a government-owned facility. The death of both Nomad and Wamira saw to that. Like respect, you earn credibility, and our credibility went straight out the window when both programmes, for all their faults, were summarily axed by those in control. Fortunately, one by-product of this in the longer term has been the reorganisation of the perennially inefficient GAF into what is hoped will be a leaner and more viable statutory authority. Additionally, Hawker de Havilland now has a sizeable workload along with what used to be known as CAC (now Hawker de Havilland Vic Ltd) and together they will gain many millions of manhours of work via the F-18, Sikorsky helicopters and Pilatus contracts in addition to sizeable offsets with Boeing, MDC and Airbus.

What Australia needs though is to get aboard a collaborative project, and not just with a small associate share but get involved to a level that will put our name up there beside those who count. Indonesia can do it with Casa on the CN-235 (and if anybody plans to knock that project they may well care to remember that that aircraft had more firm orders logged even before its first flight than any of its rivals do even today!). The Chinese can do it with MDC and MBB on present and new airliners. Shorts can do it with Fokker as can MBB while both companies also share workload on the prestigious Airbus programmes. Embraer can do it with Argentina’s FMA and even an airline’s engineering arm (HAECO/ Cathay Pacific) can team with the Chinese to develop and build scores of Y7 and Y12 turboprops.

Hawker de Havilland has meanwhile announced with Pilatus their dual involvement on the PC-12. This is a light twin-engined turboprop transport similar to a Dornier 228 in concept. This is already a heavily subscribed market and one that will be well served for a decade to come by an army of used Bandeirantes and. Twin Otters not to mention Embraer’s very fast EMB-123 that will do to most of these existing aircraft what the _Do228 did itself to the ol’ Bandit! HDH are also talking with McDonnell Douglas Helicopters about joining with _them on their future MD500 replacement programme while on the civil side discussions continue on shares aboard the Boeing 7J7, MD-91 and the Airbus A330 and A340 programmes.

What we. need though, to double the volume of work that the Australian aerospace industry is presently performing is to really put our name up there as a significant partner on a large programme. And the only way we will ever do that is to have real support from the government.

We are not talking of a grant, we are not talking of twenty or thirty million dollars but rather one hundred and fifty to two hundred million spread over five to nine years. After all, is this so impossible? Fokker got to where it is today through its government’s attitude to help build and promote a high-technology aerospace company capable of taking on the world’s best. What the Netherlands government did in the bleak days following WW2, was to loan Fokker the funds it required to launch aircraft such as the ultra-successful F27 Friendship and later the Fellowship twinjet. Over the years Fokker repaid every guilder owing and in doing so created one of aviation’s most respected high tech employers.

Why can’t Australia do likewise? We missed getting aboard the A320 in a meaningful fashion, and we all know how many of them will be sold over the coming two decades. Will we miss out on Boeing’s 7J7, an aircraft that will probably sell upwards of 3000 examples in all its variants over its inevitably long career? Can we get aboard the new Airbus projects, even as a major subcontractor to BAe on the world’s slipperiest wings?

The opportunities for collaboration are nearly endless. We have the technology, the competiveness of our export product in dollar terms is unparalleled and we now have the physical resources to play with the big boys. All we lack is the final commitment, a commitment that must be shared by industry and government together but primarily led by the. Level of initial financing that only·a nation’s government can afford. It’s not give away money, every dollar invested would be repaid just as has and is occurring in France, West Germany, Britain, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Spain, Italy and Canada. Even the mighty US aerospace industrial giants receive generous government development funding (despite how they claim they don’t, then knock Airbus’s state sponsorship) via NASA and a myriad of high-technology aerospace-related project giants which have both civil and military end-use.

It’s time Australia got serious, really serious about our aerospace manufacturing future. The time has never been better so let’s stop wasting our future and get amongst the international team players.