Warbird Information Exchange

I have worked on Airbus, Boeing, and Douglas aircraft, and I can say that the Boeing and Douglas aircraft were better. It was pretty much a broad feeling at the facility I worked at.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

K5dh, the T-1 is Raytheon but never Hawker. It is a direct descendant of the Mitsubishi Diamond I jet that was bought by Raytheon when Mitsubishi decided to cease building it. Raytheon changed the name to Beechjet.

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

Rick, while they weren't trainers, the US has used Hawkers in the past in limited roles as a transport.

Also, I would note that all of these "foreign built" aircraft until the awarding of the KC-45A contract were aircraft considered to be "non-critical" for national defense. They were all minor transports and VIP/DG aircraft and a smattering of second-tier training aircraft (the Slingsby Firefly for example) and were purchased mainly as suppliments to the existing fleets or to fill very specialized roles that did not warrant a full-fledged defense acquisition competition and so the DoD approved the purchase of an "off-the-shelf" aircraft. Current examples of this are the current US VIP fleet (with the exception of the VC-25, all were COTS -commercial off-the-shelf- bizjets) and some specialized aircraft like the U-28 (PC-12) for Special Operations use and the E-9A (DHC-8) range surveilance aircraft.

Cap, I know the Kestrels were Hawker built.

I was referring to the following comment :

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

Rick, looks like you were posting while I was correcting my post. I re-read the post and realized he was talking the Bizjets and not Hawker in general and changed my post. The USAF used several Hawker 800s for a while in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I believe they also leased a few to fill in until the C-20s came online as they were phasing out the Sabreliners and Jetstars.

Hi Rick,

I wasn't thinking of the Jayhawk. I'm aware of its heritage. I was thinking of the Hawker HS.125 that I saw at an air show in USCG markings. The pilot told me it was a trainer. I can't recall what the US designation was (I'm suffering from "CRS", or maybe it's just a "senior moment"). Maybe my entire recollection is incorrect. Yep... senior moment.

Dean with the poor memory

I'm not bashing Airbus with the following. I think it just highlights the difference in design philosophy between the aircraft.

The refueling facilities for the aircraft are what I like using as an example because it's "night and day" in design between Airbus and Boeing & MacDac. A great example is the difference between the A320-family and 737NGs. While a 737 can be fueled for a typical flight in about 10 minutes, it takes 20-25 to fuel an Airbus. Why? Because while the 737NG uses 2 1/2-inch lines for fueling, Airbus uses 1-inch lines. Also, the original location for all Airbus fuel panels was on the fuselage either on the wing-body fairing (A330/340), landing gear fairing (A32x), or A/C Pack fairing (A300). This meant you had to go up in the lift to attach the hose (wing's nearly 15 feet in the air afterall) then go back down and fuel from the ground. Kinda hard to watch the fuel hose and make sure it's not leaking when you're looking the other way watching the gauges. On the aircraft that do have a fuel panel on the wing (it was an option starting on the A32x and was eventually added to the A300/A310 series, but I haven't seen any A330/340 aircraft with it), it's outboard of the fuel connections and outboard by several feet, necessitating you either setting up the lift to have the connection on one side so you can be under the panel on the other or having to lean out over the railing of the lift to reach the panel. On the 737s (and all Boeing and McDonnell Douglas) products the fuel panel is within 3 or 4 inches of the fuel connections. If the aircraft is equipped with 2 fuel connections on one side of the plane (most of the larger Boeings do) they stradle the fuel panel.

The worst part of their fueling system? The doors. The fuel panel door on all but the A330/340 are unsupported and double hinged so they can be moved fully forward to lay flat against the underside of the leading edge of the wing. They have no mechanism to automatically hold them forward on the A300 and A320 (they have a support you unfold from the door and put into a slot) and the A330/340 underwing door (for access to the fuel connections) uses a spring to hold it out of the way if the airline chooses that option. The problem? If the door comes undone in flight, it'll flap forward and damage the leading edge. Frontier had this happen in spectacular fashion and ended up with an entire leading edge slat section (about 4 feet wide) depart the aircraft on approach into Kansas City, MO. The reason the door came open? Airbus uses a push-button friction lock system that if not EXTREMELY tight can shake loose in flight. Boeing uses a "clip" type lock on most panels and MacDac uses a "push-button" system like Airbus, but their panels have one distinct difference- they're single hinged so there is no way for them to come forward enough to interfere with the operation of the slats or hit them without bending the panel quite severely and usually that will cause the door to fail and separate from the aircraft instead of what happened with the Frontier aircraft.

Dean, the only USCG bird I know of with BizJet heritage in use in recent years is the HU-25 Guardian which is a Falcon derivative and the Gulfstream V used by the Commandant.

Wow, a Congressman from Kansas not happy that the home team didn't win. Its never about the end product, its always about the pork barrel on the hill. I wonder if he would be making much noise about Airbus products if Northrop/Grumman located the tanker completion/training center in Wichita and brought in more jobs and voters.

Albaugh (Boeing president and CEO) to analysts: Boeing stunned by assertions
about Tanker RFP

Boeing has been surprised and stunned by the many
recent assertions made about its KC-X Tanker proposal
to the U.S. Air Force, said Jim Albaugh, president and
CEO, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, in comments
made during Wednesday’s Citigroup 2008 Global
Industrial Manufacturing Conference in New York.

Albaugh said Boeing was surprised because the original
Request for Proposal indicated that the Air Force
wanted a medium-sized tanker. Yet, comments made
during the Air Force press conference on Friday and
leaks to the press indicate just the opposite.

"In our reading of the RFP this was never about being
the biggest," Albaugh said. "This was never about who
could haul more fuel. This was never about who could
haul the most cargo or personnel.

"This was about deploying fuel to the fight. This was
about deploying to forward runways. This was about
replacing the KC-135."

If this competition was about a big airplane, Boeing
would gladly have offered its 777 airliner, Albaugh
said.

In fact, "we were discouraged (by the Air Force) from
doing so," he said.

What’s more, Albaugh said the value of Boeing’s total
offering is less than the competitor’s, according to
the information released by the Air Force during the
press conference. Factor in the significant fuel-burn
advantage of the KC-767 AT, and he could only assume
that Boeing’s tanker cost less to operate and maintain
and would save the Air Force significant money over
the lifetime of each aircraft.

"With regard to risk - Boeing is a single, integrated
company with its assets, people and technology under
its own management control - with 75 years of
unmatched experience building tankers," Albaugh said.

"Northrop and (the European Aeronautic Defence and
Space Company) are two companies that will be working
together for the first time on a tanker, on an
airplane they’ve never built before, under multiple
management structures, across cultural, language and
geographic divides," he continued. "We do not
understand how Boeing could be determined the higher
risk offering.

"Our view is that the Air Force is buying a more
costly and less capable aircraft as measured by their
RFP and is taking on risk in doing so," Albaugh
concluded. "We need to understand why our conclusion
is different than the Air Force’s."

Albaugh said that while no one contract makes or
breaks a company like Boeing, "we obviously view this
program as important. We are looking for understanding
and to be treated fairly."

Boeing leaders expect to be debriefed by U.S. Air
Force representatives on Friday and hope to understand
how the company and service reached vastly different
conclusions.

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T-6F, N81857
warbirdridesusa@gmail.com

Interesting information. But I would prefer to see a US company make a USAF aircraft on US soil, from bauxite ore to the last dab of paint. I know that is not going to happen, but I can think of a number of reasons why it would be good for our economy right now (and in the future)- JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!

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REMEMBER THE SERGEANT PILOTS!

So, what's more important -- selecting an aircraft that meets the RFP, or selecting the best aircraft for the job?

The RFP is the document that specifies what the USAF wants the aircraft to be and do. Once again, the USAF has SPECIFIED that it wanted a replacement not an upsize and, once again, it picked the contractor that failed to do it. Just as I feel Boeing should have gotten the contract for filling the RFP given I feel that Sikorsky should have gotten the CSAR-X program over Boeing because they delivered a proposal that met the RFP given. In the past 50 years, the RFP is the BIBLE by which "suitability" is determined. In the past, if a proposed aircraft was too large or too small and another offering met the RFP better, it was the one selected.

The USAF NEEDS a replacement for the KC-135, not a suppliment to the KC-10. The USAF NEEDS the best value and efficiency aircraft available not an aircraft that costs several times more per copy and is 20-30% less fuel efficient to lift the same amount of fuel. The USAF NEEDS to be able to fit as many tankers into limited space as possible, not a very large (and very heavy) aircraft like the A330.

Sorry Randy, the A330 may be a good tanker, but it's a good tanker to fill the KC-10's role, not the KC-135. When they try to put a squadron A330s into an airbase like Aviano or into a forward operation base like some of the ones used in the past in Africa and Eastern Europe that have restricted ramp space. They've already had plenty of problems finding room for the KC-10s, now you make it even worse by putting in KC-45s.

Sorry, but it just rubs me the wrong way for the Air Force to claim to be holding a fair and open competition and then select the aircraft based on metrics that weren't fully disclosed.

Let me put it into a "real world" situation that applies to you as a pilot. How would you feel if you were participating in a competition and your mission was to destroy a 4-foot shack in a target range. Your requirement was just to ensure the target was completely destroyed. So, you use your 20MM and shred the shack. Your wingman chooses to use a 2000LB slick and misses the target by 20 yards but still destroys the target, except he moves all the debris 200 feet further down-range and doesn't destroy it as completely as you do. When you both get back to base, your wingman is scored higher because there is no debris left in the original target location, but he caused more collateral damage and it cost more for him to complete the mission. That's basically what happened here.

Here's some more light reading on the subject.

In light of the original post in this thread, take note of what percentage of the KC-767 is 'made in the USA' vs the KC-45.

http://www.leeham.net/filelib/ScottsColumn090407.pdf

CAPFlyer, I'm not arguing the "fairness" of the deal.

I'm arguing end-game capability. I don't care if they change location of the target every minute...so long as the end product shacks that target.

People are letting emotions get in the way of logically looking at the reasons the decision was made.