Highs And Lows

There’s no doubt that modern aircraft, whether the latest jet airliner, fighter, naval helicopter or surveillance UAV, are complex, sophisticated machines which carry with them a not insignificant degree of developmental risk. There are countless recent examples of promising aircraft designs encountering technical problems and enduring delays so that promised delivery schedules aren’t met, whether it’s the Seasprite helicopter, the Airbus A380 or the Global Hawk UAV.

This is not to make excuses for aerospace companies over promising and under delivering on program timetables, but it does illustrate just how technically complex modern aircraft are.

Modern technology has allowed some amazing aerospace achievements, whether it’s fighters fitted with fly-by-wire flight control systems that allow them to perform manoeuvres once thought impossible, to the weight savings and efficiency gains of carbon fibre composite materials. But history has shown over and over that technological development does come with a risk – delay due to technical problems and the commercial pressures to deliver that technology in a timely manner.

The 787 has endured a particularly bad run of late, it’s latest delay due to technical problems compounding a run of issues with its outsourced production model, resulting in first flight, and hence subsequent customer deliveries, now being at least two years late.

So arguably the risk that all 787 customers have taken is that technical problems and program delays will in time be outweighed by the aircraft’s tremendous potential through its improved operating economics, range and passenger comfort. That is a dilemma repeated regularly across the spectrum of aviation – in essence signing up for the latest and greatest technology, whether it’s the 787s or JSF, the A380 or Tiger ARH, carries with it the risk that that technology may well be delivered late. And this is despite the immense power of today’s computer modelling tools used in aircraft development.

That risk need not be taken of course, as the alternative is to buy something off-the-shelf and already in production – witness the resurgence in A330 sales in recent years, for example, while the airline industry awaits the 787, and on the military side, the RAAF’s Super Hornet acquisition.

The A330 and Super Hornet are good examples of mature products, arguably in the ‘sweet spots’ of their production cycles, so their acquisition today carries almost no technical risk. The Qantas Group can easily add incremental A330s to its Qantas mainline or Jetstar fleets should it need additional capacity while it awaits the 787 (although in the current economic environment, it won’t need much!), while for the RAAF the Super Hornet’s introduction is relatively risk free as the aircraft is a well known quantity already with nearly 400 delivered to the US Navy, and the jet’s similarity in systems and operation with the current ‘classic’ Hornet fleet.

Undoubtedly the A330 and Super Hornet are excellent aircraft whose acquisition represents little risk of delivery delays, with their costs (on the airline side, operating costs, on the military side, acquisition costs) known quantities.

But, as the saying goes, you don’t get ‘something for nothing’. Airlines typically operate their aircraft for 20 years, the military its aircraft for as many as 30, so what is today’s low risk acquisition is tomorrow’s superseded technology. The carbon fibre 787 offers a step change improvement over the A330, the stealthy F-35 a step change leap in capability over the Super Hornet. In a decade or so from now, the Super Hornet will start to look dated in a world of F-35s, in a decade from now the A330 will start to age in a world of 787s (and A350s).

This is a gross simplification of a complex assessment process, but a major factor in aircraft acquisition has always been that tradeoff of risk versus capability/performance.

That perhaps explains why Chief of Air Force ARMSHL Binskin states emphatically the RAAF won’t acquire more Super Hornets while it awaits the JSF, and why the Qantas Group, despite its cancellation of part of its 787 buy, remains committed to the aircraft as the solution to its long term fleet needs.