Asia Becoming Key Region for New Aircraft

[BATMAN]

Asia Becoming Key Region for New Aircraft
By Bradley Perrett

Asian aircraft projects are multiplying at a rate that can only alarm industrialists in Europe and the Americas who like to think of their regions as the real home of aviation technology.

While Asian countries’ progress in building sophisticated components has long been recognized, they are now also engaged in a broad push to get into the business of developing complete, advanced aircraft. And this will be evident at this week’s Singapore Airshow 2008. The joint venture between the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and the Defense Science & Technology Agency runs Feb. 19-24.

Note the three countries leading that push: technically advanced Japan, economically mighty China, and ever ambitious South Korea. Their latest efforts and plans make for an interesting comparison with the trickle of new programs emerging in Western Europe, for example.

“If you look at the financial and intellectual resources that are here and you couple that with the move of the world’s economic center of gravity, it is perfectly logical that this is happening,” says one senior western aerospace executive based in Asia who has long experience in the region.

Asia has hardly caught up with Western aerospace production, nor has any country in the region reached the all-around technical capabilities of the U.S., Russia or the aerospace leaders of Western Europe. But, taking a historical view, Asian countries are doing what France did in the 1950s and ’60s as it sought to catch up with the U.S. and Britain: launching a range of projects that are progressively closing the know-how gap.

Of course, Asian countries have been trying to do that for decades, off and on. The difference now is that concrete results are emerging.

For example, the AE-100, a 100-seat airliner project of the 1990s, was supposed to introduce Asia to the world of building complete commercial jets, bringing together Airbus and aerospace firms in China and Singapore. It followed an earlier Sino-German project of the late 1980s, the MPC75. Both aircraft ended up as little more than drawings—good evidence for anyone inclined to scoff at Asia’s latest attempts and say “Been there, tried that, and failed.”

But the AE-100’s successor, the Chinese ARJ21 regional jet, is now a metal and carbon-fiber reality, standing on its undercarriage in Shanghai and due to fly for the first time next month. And it isn’t a joint program. Manufacturer Avic 1 has itself developed the aircraft, integrating major systems from advanced Western suppliers.

The project has orders for 123 aircraft, almost all from Chinese airlines, its initial target market—just as early Airbus production was supported by German and French airline buys.

Moreover, it is clear that initial development of the ARJ21 is at least as much a learning exercise for the industry as it is an attempt to earn a profit, even though Chinese executives repeatedly stress the need to achieve market success (AW&ST Sept. 17, 2007, p. 76).

State-dominated companies have earmarked an investment of $7-8 billion for a follow-on aircraft with more than 150 seats and a takeoff weight of more than 100 metric tons (220,000 lb.), apparently a small widebody. Since the government has listed it among projects of national importance, it will now be politically difficult to abandon.

More immediately, Avic 1 is moving ahead with a 70-seat turboprop airliner, the MA700. Unlike its predecessors, the project aims at Western certification and broad international sales.

The weight of the world’s aerospace industry is clearly moving, says Hadi Winarto, assistant professor of aerospace technology at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He thinks China, in particular, is logically using its considerable economic resources to meet some of the demands of its own huge market.

“They would be silly to buy everything from overseas,” he says, adding “Asian technology is not at the level of Europe’s, but it is catching up fast.”

Japan is another country that has previously tried and failed to get into building competitive commercial aircraft. And it, too, is trying again. Its aircraft, the 70-to-90-seat Mitsubishi MRJ, is also a regional jet, breaking new ground in composites and its use of Pratt & Whitney geared turbofans. Mitsubishi is working toward a launch in the next month or so, with 40-billion-yen ($370-million) worth of government subsidies.

The South Korean aerospace sector rarely lacks proposals for the government to support new projects, and one of the latest would produce yet another Asian regional aircraft, a 60-seater. The government is thinking about it.

South Korean industry, supported by the defense ministry, is aiming very high on the military side, with a drive to develop a manned stealth fighter, the KFX, something that no Western European country is planning. Indeed, collaboration in the South Korean project may turn out to be the means by which one of the European fighter builders sustains its manned combat aircraft expertise (AW&ST Nov. 19, 2007, p. 32). The KFX project has run into opposition, but the South Korean armed forces and industry have a habit of pushing a domestic project until they get at least a partial go-ahead. A huge helicopter project called KMH was rejected in 2003, but it has now morphed into the KUH program, which is in full-scale development with an aim of building 245 utility helos in partnership with Eurocopter.

KFX faces a government review in the next few months. If it isn’t approved, the defense ministry and industry will probably fall back to their next trench, proposing that the government instead pay for a stealth demonstrator. Korea Aerospace Industries would also like to build a single-seat combat version of the T-50 supersonic trainer, which Lockheed Martin helped design in the 1990s.

One argument for a South Korean stealth demonstrator would be that rival Japan has already launched one, the ATD‑X Shinshin, the most advanced aircraft to be attempted in Asia. Its airframe, engines and advanced electronics are all Japanese (AW&ST Feb. 2, p. 36).

Reviewing ATD-X designs, one European engineer with experience in Asian high-technology projects says, “This is as advanced as anything that European companies could develop.”

“In terms of innovation and advanced projects, the game is now in Asia,” he adds, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of his consultancy work. “The people involved in Asian projects are more enthusiastic than in the West, partly because they are doing such interesting things. Employees also identify more with the aims of the company. And the companies have more money to spend.”

The ATD-X isn’t a production project, but Japan’s P-1 maritime patroller and C-X transporter are, with planned orders for 80 and 44, respectively. The airframes are new and Japanese, and so are the P-1’s engines and combat system. The P-1 is the size of an Airbus A321 and the C-X is larger than an A400M. Both are in development (AW&ST June 18, 2007, p. 104).

China’s effort to close the gap with Western and Russian military aircraft builders is hardly new. But it has made a huge stride forward if, as the Pentagon now says, its new J-10 fighter is comparable with the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale. The J-10 was confirmed to be in service in 2006, just as Britain was introducing its first squadron of Typhoons.

India’s most advanced projects are cooperative developments with Russia—and criticized in India for inadequate technological transfer. The much-delayed domestic LCA Tejas light fighter is still not in service, 23 years after it was launched.

Pilotless technology is opening opportunities for many countries outside of the elite aerospace club, because an unmanned aircraft is relatively cheap to develop. But defense ministries and contractors in both Japan and South Korea are working on larger than usual surveillance drones.

South Korea’s aircraft, already designed and awaiting approval, would be comparable to the largest of the U.S. General Atomic Q-9 series. The Japanese aircraft has a requirement to detect ballistic missile launches and would have a greater wingspan than Northrop Grumman’s RQ-4 Global Hawk.

The move toward pilotless aircraft particularly suits aspiring aerospace industries in the region, says Jorg Schluter, an assistant aerospace professor at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

“In this field the technology is more a question of what the payload is going to do” than the design of the unequipped aircraft, he says. “I see opportunities for Asia because here they have very strong electronics technology.”

But, considering the wider developments in Asia, Schluter suggests that Asian countries might be making a mistake with their strong effort to develop national aircraft, because the era of single-country programs is drawing to a close.

The development push “is more to do with national pride,” he says. “In 20 years most of the aircraft being manufactured won’t be national projects.”

Most economists would add that highly subsidized civil projects, at least, make little sense; a subsidy is virtually an admission that an activity is wasting resources and should cease. But, in aerospace, economics competes with national pride.