A new fighter aircraft is designed. It embodies a new engine, new construction techniques and new armament. The prototype shows great promise and an order is placed for a significant number of aircraft before production gets under way. But development is slow, and mass production of the aircraft encounters one frustrating delay after another. Its critics grow in number and there is talk of cancellation of the project.
Am I talking about the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter? No, I’m talking about that most iconic of combat aircraft the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire, the first production example of which made its maiden flight 75 years ago, on 14 May 1938, in the hands of test pilot Jeffrey Quill.
That flight took place over two years after the prototype made its maiden flight in the hands of Vickers’ chief test pilot Mutt Summers, on 6 March 1936. A production order for 320 Spitfires was placed with Supermarine just a week after a service test pilot, Flight Lieutenant Humphrey Edwardes-Jones, flew the prototype for the first time on 26 May 1936.
While two years might not seem a long time today, in those days it was an unconscionable delay – and quite avoidable. The result of the mounting delays to the Spitfire program was very nearly the cancellation of the project; right up to early 1940, just months before the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire was seen within the British Air Ministry as an ‘interim’ solution pending development of a more suitable fighter to take on the German Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf109.
Indeed, so disenchanted with the Spitfire was British officialdom, and so concerned at British industry’s lack of capacity to build fighters in the numbers required, that in March 1940 the British government placed an order with North American Aviation to design and build 320 single-seat fighters of a new design, to be armed with four .303in machine guns and powered by the Allison V-1710 engine. The first of these flew in October 1940 and deliveries began in January 1941, by which time this new aeroplane had been christened the Mustang. But that’s another story.
In 1939 the official view, conditioned by extreme disappointment over the difficulties of putting the aircraft into production, was that production of the Spitfire would eventually be phased out and Supermarine’s factories turned over to production of the twin-engined Westland Whirlwind or Bristol Beaufighter. But when the energetic Lord Beaverbrook was appointed Minister for Aircraft Production in May 1940 he immediately saw that the coming air battle would be fought, and must be won, by the RAF’s Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes so he made production of these aircraft an absolute priority.
What was the problem with the Spitfire? There were four, and they all compounded each other.
The first was that although Supermarine was best-known for building the series of Rolls-Royce powered high-speed floatplanes, the S4 through to the S6B, which resulted in Great Britain winning permanent ownership of the prestigious Schneider Trophy, this wasn’t its stock in trade. What it did most was build relatively small quantities of amphibious bi-planes. Supermarine was, in modern terms, little more than a ‘smart’ cottage industry, turning out barely a couple of dozen hand-built aluminium, wood and fabric float planes each year from a factory at Woolston, on the River Itchen, near Southampton.
Notwithstanding the pure genius of its chief designer, RJ Mitchell (and his under-sung aerodynamicist, the Canadian Beverley Shenstone), Supermarine was simply not capable of building a high-speed all-metal fighter in the quantities demanded by the RAF.
Its inherent lack of capacity was compounded by the shambolic nature of the Supermarine project office. For all Mitchell’s talent, he and the company’s management were unable to get a grip on the practicalities of producing aircraft in large numbers. Indeed, Supermarine’s parent company, Vickers, sent no less a figure than Dr Barnes Wallis (of Wellington bomber and ‘Dambuster’ bouncing bomb fame) to Supermarine’s plant in order to lick it into shape. Mitchell objected violently and Wallis was posted back to Vickers’ Weybridge factory; Supermarine continued on its traditional path, straight towards disaster.
The second major problem facing the Spitfire program was that, like its exact contemporary the Bf109, the Spitfire was a radical departure in the design and construction of high speed fighters. For a start, it was all-metal. This was the only way to achieve Mitchell’s design aim of a thin, strong wing and slim fuselage capable of sustaining very high speeds. Secondly, it was designed for speed, not ease of production: there was barely a straight line on the aircraft; rather, like a woman’s body, a series of elegant curves blended gracefully into one another to produce a single glorious whole. Seen from any angle it was arresting and beautiful. And it was an absolute pig to manufacture.
Initially, Supermarine planned to build most of the fuselage at Woolston and carry out final assembly at its nearby Eastleigh aerodrome. Manufacture of the wings and other components such as the entire tail section would be outsourced to local manufacturers.
The problems with this scheme were that, first, none of the sub-contractors had much experience of manufacturing complex metal shapes in such numbers; and secondly, Supermarine’s drawings left something to be desired – there simply wasn’t the detailed information in them required to produce these items accurately, and Supermarine didn’t provide much help. This problem found an uncomfortable echo when Australian shipyards began fabricating hull modules for the Royal Australian Navy’s new class of Air Warfare Destroyers and found that the drawings supplied from ship designer Navantia, via the Australian project office, didn’t contain sufficient information for the Australian yard concerned to build the first block module properly.
This leads to the third major problem with the Spitfire program. In order to build them at the necessary production rate plans were made for Spitfires to be built at a so-called ‘Shadow Factory’ in Castle Bromwich, near Birmingham. The factory was built (slowly and by a surly, poorly managed and strike-prone workforce) and was to be managed by no less than Lord Nuffield, the founder of the Morris car company who was considered to be an expert in mass production. In fact, by the late 1930s Nuffield was well past his prime and his organisation had absolutely no idea about manufacturing aircraft.
Indeed, according to Leo McKinstry in his outstanding book “Spitfire – Portrait of a Legend”, one motor industry veteran at Castle Bromwich was horrified at the suggestion the Spitfire should be made of aluminium.
“Make things with aluminium?” he exclaimed. “Not bloody likely! That stuff is OK for pots and pans but we are going to make things to beat the Nazis. We’ll use iron.”
Another Castle Bromwich manager insisted the Spitfire’s wing should be redesigned so that it was easier to manufacture: “The air would not know the difference between straight and curved leading edges.”
In both cases the Air Ministry had to insist the aircraft was built according to the drawings. In the end, Beaverbrook wrested control of Castle Bromwich from Nuffield, put a team of Vickers managers into the place and progress began to be made. But the planned production rate of 100 aircraft a month wasn’t achieved until well into the summer of 1940. Had the Spitfire gone into full production on anything like the original schedule it’s likely RAF Fighter Command’s frontline squadrons would all have been equipped with this aircraft and the toll wrought on the Luftwaffe during the summer of 1940 would have been even higher. But that’s all by the way.
The fourth major problem with the Spitfire program wasn’t strictly a Spitfire problem at all. It was a whole of industry problem that exists today in Australia, the UK and, increasingly now in the USA. It was, quite simply, that the British aviation industry didn’t now how to build large numbers of aircraft. The Air Ministry and RAF kept a number of aircraft companies alive during the 1920s and ‘30s by awarding small contracts to design and build experimental aircraft, or relatively small numbers of new aircraft. There was some progress in the design and construction of aircraft and aero-engines, some of it driven by challenges such as the Schneider Trophy races which stimulated innovation by designers across Europe and North America. But until the menace of Nazism took shape and cast its shadow across Europe there was no great official appetite for ground-breaking innovation and massive numbers.
Jeffrey Quill sets out the problem quite elegantly in his book “Spitfire – A Test Pilot’s Story”.
“The awkward truth was that in 1936 no firm in the industry was in a position to respond effectively to a sudden demand for great expansion of its production capacity and simultaneously make great strides in the technological field… With hindsight, the initial shortcomings of the [Spitfire] subcontracting scheme can only be attributed to the same basic cause – namely that for years the industry had been starved of orders and could barely keep its factories in business on the orders it did receive. So where were the experienced and capable sub-contractors to be found on the fringe of a half-starved industry? They simply did not exist.”
There’s a lesson here for any government that professes a need for a proficient, and efficient, aerospace or defence industry.
The long and short of it is that the Spitfire was a great design, so far ahead of its time that the British aircraft industry had to learn (slowly and painfully) a whole new set of techniques for manufacturing it in the quantities required. And once its initial manufacturing problems were overcome the Spitfire became the pre-eminent fighter of its generation. Its only real peers were the Focke-Wulf 190, Messerschmitt Bf109 and the Rolls-Royce Merlin-powered variants of the North American P-51 Mustang. The Hawker Hurricane, to which the RAF and the free world owes a massive debt, was a stopgap in technical terms and never close to the Spitfire and Bf109 in performance terms, but it was exactly right for its time and made history in its day.
So what does all this have to do with the F-35 Lightning II?
Only this: the Spitfire, like the F-111, was a fundamentally good design that pushed the boundaries of technical knowledge and manufacturing practice. It’s arguable that these aircraft should have been designed (or re-designed) so they were easier to manufacture. One could make the same argument for the F-35 family. That’s to miss the point, in all cases: these aircraft were designed they way they were because they had a very specific job to do. Changing the design to make the aircraft easier to build would in each case have compromised its combat effectiveness. Every aircraft design represent some sort of compromise in any case, but in the case of the Spitfire, whose design is now well documented, RJ Mitchell refused to compromise on aero-propulsive performance – and quite rightly. The F-111 was designed for sustained high speed flight at low altitude in all weathers, day and night. If it couldn’t do that then there was no point to the aircraft – despite its technical challenges in the early days nobody sought to compromise its performance as a way of making the challenges easier to surmount.
The F-35 is designed to be stealthy, to be a respectable (though not necessarily a stellar) performer and to endow its pilot with massive situational awareness. Leaving aside the difficulties of integrating an avionics and sensor suite of unprecedented capability and complexity, mass producing a stealthy aircraft involves manufacturing technology challenges which no aircraft company has ever had to master before. There can be no doubt these challenges will be mastered, in time. Meanwhile, the battle the F-35’s advocates need to win is for the hearts and minds of the customers, and this become harder to win the longer the battle goes on. The examples of both the Spitfire and the F-111 show that persistence brings rewards.
There is one significant difference between the Spitfire and the F-35.
The Spitfire’s manufacturer had no idea, in the early days, how to build a modern all-metal fighter in large numbers; and it lacked sub-contractors who understood new technologies and the techniques associated with new materials. The same is not true of the F-35. The consortium building it – Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems, led by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, with Pratt & Whitney developing the F135 engine – has an industrial pedigree that embraces collaborative, multi-national projects dancing on the leading edge of aerospace technology. The international supply chain, fed from eight different countries, isn’t carrying any freeloaders in a technical sense. But the technical challenges remain: a new construction process; a new engine and, for the F-35B variant, a new propulsion system; and a new weapon system based on a suite of avionics and sensors that’s never been integrated on such a scale before, and certainly not in a single-seat aircraft.
It’s wrong to suggest that the F-35 is the Spitfire of the 21st century, but the history of the Spitfire program should give heart to the team developing the F-35.
Sunday, 14 April 2013
Monday, 16 May 2011
Technology.... Yech!
Sometimes technology can seem like a very, very bad thing. OK, I'm grumpy today, but there's a reason for this.
I'm a journalist, I occasionally need to record interviews with important people and this often happens over the phone. Once upon a time telephone handsets would allow you to attach a mike which would pick up the sound so you could record to a cassette player or note taker. Not any more - nothing you can buy has a mike-friendly handset. This wasn't a problem while I was using an old phone/fax with a built-in micro-cassette recorder as its answering system. But that died after a long, purposeful life and the new machine has a handset that isn't microphone friendly.
So I decided to get the Skype add-on that records conversations - easy! And it works, except that you need to call the interviewee on the Skype phone so that you can activate the recorder. People can't call you, which is a minor inconvenience, sometimes. Skype records the conversation as a sound file which you can play back on all sorts of machines - very useful.
Today I was supposed to interview a cabinet minister, so I checked the Skype set up a good three quarters of an hour before hand, including the Skype headphone. This all worked fine. I rang the minister at the appointed time, and the d**n thing refused to b****y well work!
After several attempts and a great deal of very bad language I called him on my normal land line, put him on speaker phone and recorded the interview that way with my little digital recorder. It worked, and I was able to save the interview as an MP.3 file which i could then send to my transcriber (an angel of a woman named Miki - details available on request to bona fide transcription clients)...
I've lost some more hair this afternoon...
I'm a journalist, I occasionally need to record interviews with important people and this often happens over the phone. Once upon a time telephone handsets would allow you to attach a mike which would pick up the sound so you could record to a cassette player or note taker. Not any more - nothing you can buy has a mike-friendly handset. This wasn't a problem while I was using an old phone/fax with a built-in micro-cassette recorder as its answering system. But that died after a long, purposeful life and the new machine has a handset that isn't microphone friendly.
So I decided to get the Skype add-on that records conversations - easy! And it works, except that you need to call the interviewee on the Skype phone so that you can activate the recorder. People can't call you, which is a minor inconvenience, sometimes. Skype records the conversation as a sound file which you can play back on all sorts of machines - very useful.
Today I was supposed to interview a cabinet minister, so I checked the Skype set up a good three quarters of an hour before hand, including the Skype headphone. This all worked fine. I rang the minister at the appointed time, and the d**n thing refused to b****y well work!
After several attempts and a great deal of very bad language I called him on my normal land line, put him on speaker phone and recorded the interview that way with my little digital recorder. It worked, and I was able to save the interview as an MP.3 file which i could then send to my transcriber (an angel of a woman named Miki - details available on request to bona fide transcription clients)...
I've lost some more hair this afternoon...
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Tanker troubles
I'm looking at photos on the Flight Global web site of a British A330-200 Voyager tanker doing ground receiver clearance testing with a RAF Tornado GR.4 at Boscombe Down. Craig Hoyle's story says the RAF aircraft should be operational in November. Meanwhile, Australia's KC-30A variant of the same aircraft - identical, except for the in-flight refuelling boom - hasn't been handed over yet in spite of the fact it has been in flight test for years and supposedly has achieved European civil and Spanish military type certification.
The cause of the delay in the Australian program is attributed by officialdom to certification and paper work issues. Sounds about right - apparently the Spanish military certification process hasn't been too crash-hot, but Australian officialdom is fast becoming a by-word for mind-buggeringly slow processes and pigheaded adherence to process, with scant regard for outcomes.
If the Brits get their tankers into operational service before we do I shall spit.
The cause of the delay in the Australian program is attributed by officialdom to certification and paper work issues. Sounds about right - apparently the Spanish military certification process hasn't been too crash-hot, but Australian officialdom is fast becoming a by-word for mind-buggeringly slow processes and pigheaded adherence to process, with scant regard for outcomes.
If the Brits get their tankers into operational service before we do I shall spit.
Saturday, 7 May 2011
Sanity, please!
Here in Australia the defence community is awaiting an edict from the Department of Defence on whether and under what circumstances ADF and Defence employees may partake of corporate hospitality from the defence industry.
This follows a celebrated memo from the head of the Defence Materiel Organisation, Dr Steve Gumley, a few days before the Avalon air show reminding his staff of their "obligations". This was widely interpreted as a ban on accepting corporate hospitality during the show and caused widespread anger and disgust.
There are very few occasions on which corporate hospitality is extended on any significant scale - traditionally, events such as air shows have been the vehicle for this type of activity and its value is immense. Sitting down with somebody outside the office environment and talking freely but informally about issues and problems of mutual concern is a vital part of the defence (indeed, any) business environment. Typically, it's the industry which has the resources to provide this informal environment and the obligations it brings are mostly well understood by all concerned.
There's every reason to want to ensure the probity of relations between contractors and those who spend public money. But Gumley's memo (which I haven't seen, by the way) and the much-anticipated edict seem to be a heavy-handed and counter-productive response to a problem which doesn't exist.
Putting the relationship between Defence and Industry onto such a formal basis that people can't even sit down to share a cup of coffee or a meal as part of the process of building a respectful business relationship is just stupid.
I can't blame Gumley for this - I'm sure his orders come from much higher up, and they may be intended primarily to cause some pain and embarrassment to a Defence Department leadership which Defence Minister Stephen Smith feels isn't serving him properly.
But it creates the mistaken impression that there is an issue that needs tackling. Nothing could be further from the truth. Australia's defence procurement system is highly regarded around the world for its probity and integrity. Pointless measures of the type we're currently awaiting are an insult to the men and women who try to serve this country and their various employers honourably and with integrity.
This follows a celebrated memo from the head of the Defence Materiel Organisation, Dr Steve Gumley, a few days before the Avalon air show reminding his staff of their "obligations". This was widely interpreted as a ban on accepting corporate hospitality during the show and caused widespread anger and disgust.
There are very few occasions on which corporate hospitality is extended on any significant scale - traditionally, events such as air shows have been the vehicle for this type of activity and its value is immense. Sitting down with somebody outside the office environment and talking freely but informally about issues and problems of mutual concern is a vital part of the defence (indeed, any) business environment. Typically, it's the industry which has the resources to provide this informal environment and the obligations it brings are mostly well understood by all concerned.
There's every reason to want to ensure the probity of relations between contractors and those who spend public money. But Gumley's memo (which I haven't seen, by the way) and the much-anticipated edict seem to be a heavy-handed and counter-productive response to a problem which doesn't exist.
Putting the relationship between Defence and Industry onto such a formal basis that people can't even sit down to share a cup of coffee or a meal as part of the process of building a respectful business relationship is just stupid.
I can't blame Gumley for this - I'm sure his orders come from much higher up, and they may be intended primarily to cause some pain and embarrassment to a Defence Department leadership which Defence Minister Stephen Smith feels isn't serving him properly.
But it creates the mistaken impression that there is an issue that needs tackling. Nothing could be further from the truth. Australia's defence procurement system is highly regarded around the world for its probity and integrity. Pointless measures of the type we're currently awaiting are an insult to the men and women who try to serve this country and their various employers honourably and with integrity.
Bye bye, Bin Laden
So Osama Bin Laden is dead at last. That's good news, but there's been a lot of commentary and criticism of the US government and President Obama for approving what some describe as a simple revenge killing.
The commentariat line is that Bin laden should have been captured alive, with the approval and assistance of Pakistan, and brought back to the US, or The Hague, to face trial and give an account of himself.
Sorry, but that was never going to happen.
Let's try to work out what would have happened if somebody had tried to do that. First, Bin Laden would have been alerted by the Pakistani intelligence services and their Al-Quaida sympathisers. He would have moved and gone to ground somewhere else, concealed by duplicitous government organisation who would continue to have made it as difficult as possible to track him down, and quite impossible to extradite him. At least that's what probably would have happened, based on what happened before.
So, there was no point in asking Pakistan for help. And asking Pakistan's permission to enter its air space with a commando snatch squad would be out of the question for the same reason. It wouldn't take much warning for somebody like Bin Laden to disappear once again, especially if he had ISI resources behind him (including almost any form of transport considered necessary at the time).
Okay - the US acts alone. Logical call. What does the snatch squad do when it enters the compound where Bin Laden was holed up? That depends on the reception it receives. Satellite and UAV surveillance probably established how many people there were in the compound, but probably wouldn't provide details of the internal layout and where individuals might be located and weapons might be stored.
Military operations are routinely blighted by the Fog of War and Murphy's Law. Complexity in the plan ('unnecessary complexity' is a tautology in this context) makes the planners and operators hostages to fortune, so I suspect the plan was probably to fight through the building until Bin Laden was found and identified, and then take him alive only if he showed signs of wanting to come quietly.
The element of surprise would be lost even before the first SEAL commandos' feet touched the ground in the compound. At the very least they would expect to have to fight their way into the building, and then overcome at least some resistance in tracking down Bin Laden before trying to overcome him - assuming, of course, he wasn't armed and preparing to fight it out. If it had been possible to overcome Bin Laden, how would he have been transferred to the waiting helicopter? And what if somebody inside the compound had continued to resist, or somebody outside the compound had decided to join in the fight on behalf of Bin Laden? And if he had been extradited alive what would have been the response from his lieutenants?
Based on what we know, the risks facing the men who entered Bin Laden's compound were scary enough already; trying to capture him alive would have compounded them beyond the point where you could reasonably expect even a volunteer to carry out your orders.
Naturally, Bin Laden didn't come quietly. By all accounts he ran, accompanied by his wife. We can't know what was in the mind of the SEAL team member who killed Bin Laden but unless he had very specific orders to the contrary, killing Bin Laden may have been the safe, default option in the circumstances that commando faced.
Could the US have done anything else, or done anything differently? I don't think so. For the first time in years it knew where Bin Laden was hiding out, suspected that he was being protected (unofficially) by a government organisation in Pakistan, couldn't guarantee it would ever get a better opportunity - and, most importantly, couldn't be seen to be allowing somebody like Bin Laden to get away with what he achieved on 9/11.
The message is clear - mess with the US and, rough or not, justice will be done, eventually. And the majority of Americans, and I daresay Europeans and Australians, would feel that justice has been served to the extent that circumstances allowed
The fact that the US never gave up the search, and was willing to take the chances it did to get rid of Bin Laden, sends a powerful message. It may not deter all would-be attackers but will surely deter many, and give pause to the remainder.
The commentariat line is that Bin laden should have been captured alive, with the approval and assistance of Pakistan, and brought back to the US, or The Hague, to face trial and give an account of himself.
Sorry, but that was never going to happen.
Let's try to work out what would have happened if somebody had tried to do that. First, Bin Laden would have been alerted by the Pakistani intelligence services and their Al-Quaida sympathisers. He would have moved and gone to ground somewhere else, concealed by duplicitous government organisation who would continue to have made it as difficult as possible to track him down, and quite impossible to extradite him. At least that's what probably would have happened, based on what happened before.
So, there was no point in asking Pakistan for help. And asking Pakistan's permission to enter its air space with a commando snatch squad would be out of the question for the same reason. It wouldn't take much warning for somebody like Bin Laden to disappear once again, especially if he had ISI resources behind him (including almost any form of transport considered necessary at the time).
Okay - the US acts alone. Logical call. What does the snatch squad do when it enters the compound where Bin Laden was holed up? That depends on the reception it receives. Satellite and UAV surveillance probably established how many people there were in the compound, but probably wouldn't provide details of the internal layout and where individuals might be located and weapons might be stored.
Military operations are routinely blighted by the Fog of War and Murphy's Law. Complexity in the plan ('unnecessary complexity' is a tautology in this context) makes the planners and operators hostages to fortune, so I suspect the plan was probably to fight through the building until Bin Laden was found and identified, and then take him alive only if he showed signs of wanting to come quietly.
The element of surprise would be lost even before the first SEAL commandos' feet touched the ground in the compound. At the very least they would expect to have to fight their way into the building, and then overcome at least some resistance in tracking down Bin Laden before trying to overcome him - assuming, of course, he wasn't armed and preparing to fight it out. If it had been possible to overcome Bin Laden, how would he have been transferred to the waiting helicopter? And what if somebody inside the compound had continued to resist, or somebody outside the compound had decided to join in the fight on behalf of Bin Laden? And if he had been extradited alive what would have been the response from his lieutenants?
Based on what we know, the risks facing the men who entered Bin Laden's compound were scary enough already; trying to capture him alive would have compounded them beyond the point where you could reasonably expect even a volunteer to carry out your orders.
Naturally, Bin Laden didn't come quietly. By all accounts he ran, accompanied by his wife. We can't know what was in the mind of the SEAL team member who killed Bin Laden but unless he had very specific orders to the contrary, killing Bin Laden may have been the safe, default option in the circumstances that commando faced.
Could the US have done anything else, or done anything differently? I don't think so. For the first time in years it knew where Bin Laden was hiding out, suspected that he was being protected (unofficially) by a government organisation in Pakistan, couldn't guarantee it would ever get a better opportunity - and, most importantly, couldn't be seen to be allowing somebody like Bin Laden to get away with what he achieved on 9/11.
The message is clear - mess with the US and, rough or not, justice will be done, eventually. And the majority of Americans, and I daresay Europeans and Australians, would feel that justice has been served to the extent that circumstances allowed
The fact that the US never gave up the search, and was willing to take the chances it did to get rid of Bin Laden, sends a powerful message. It may not deter all would-be attackers but will surely deter many, and give pause to the remainder.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Happy Hogmanay!
It's New Year's Eve - and over 12 months since my last post. That is seriously slack. Sorry folks, but I promise to try harder in the coming year.
Shortly before Christmas the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra published a modest paper they had commissioned me to write: "Risks and rewards: Defence R&D in Australia". If you haven't seen it you can download it here:
http://www.aspi.org.au/publications/publication_details.aspx?ContentID=276&pubtype=-1
My paper set out to describe the current defence R&D environment in Australia and how this relates to the ADF's capital equipment acquisition plans, and highlight what seem to me to be some incongruities.
Shortly after, on 27 December (it must have been a very slow news day in the national capital!), The Canberra Times published a news story by defence reporter David Ellery under the headline "Skimpy research on Defence gear". It was very flattering to be described as a "leading academic" and the author of the so-called "Ferguson report", but I should point out David Ellery didn't try to contact me in connection with the story and if you're interested in the subject I'd urge you to read my paper rather than accept his interpretation at face value.
It's an interesting experience being on the other side of the editorial transaction, so to speak. The Canberra Times story highlights the difficulties faced by the media in trying to understand and then interpret against a tight deadline often-complex situations, technologies and arguments for a non-specialist readership. David Ellery does a good job, as do his peers in the other mainstream newspapers, but the subtleties of the defence market mean that reporters and readers alike can sometimes become confused (and God knows I'm not immune to this....); without trying to draw too long a bow, this looks like a good argument for more openness between Defence and the media so that the media have a better general understanding of what's going on and therefore are better able to place new information and breaking stories more accurately into context. That would do more for Defence's reputation in the long term than the "small target" media strategy adopted by the current government and most of its predecessors.
Meanwhile, tonight is what we Scots call Hogmanay. This is the traditional Scottish mid-winter and new year celebration (Christmas Day wasn't even a public holiday in Scotland in my childhood!).
Once the revelries are over I'll be back on deck.
Wishing you all a very happy new year and the very best for 2011
Shortly before Christmas the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra published a modest paper they had commissioned me to write: "Risks and rewards: Defence R&D in Australia". If you haven't seen it you can download it here:
http://www.aspi.org.au/publications/publication_details.aspx?ContentID=276&pubtype=-1
My paper set out to describe the current defence R&D environment in Australia and how this relates to the ADF's capital equipment acquisition plans, and highlight what seem to me to be some incongruities.
Shortly after, on 27 December (it must have been a very slow news day in the national capital!), The Canberra Times published a news story by defence reporter David Ellery under the headline "Skimpy research on Defence gear". It was very flattering to be described as a "leading academic" and the author of the so-called "Ferguson report", but I should point out David Ellery didn't try to contact me in connection with the story and if you're interested in the subject I'd urge you to read my paper rather than accept his interpretation at face value.
It's an interesting experience being on the other side of the editorial transaction, so to speak. The Canberra Times story highlights the difficulties faced by the media in trying to understand and then interpret against a tight deadline often-complex situations, technologies and arguments for a non-specialist readership. David Ellery does a good job, as do his peers in the other mainstream newspapers, but the subtleties of the defence market mean that reporters and readers alike can sometimes become confused (and God knows I'm not immune to this....); without trying to draw too long a bow, this looks like a good argument for more openness between Defence and the media so that the media have a better general understanding of what's going on and therefore are better able to place new information and breaking stories more accurately into context. That would do more for Defence's reputation in the long term than the "small target" media strategy adopted by the current government and most of its predecessors.
Meanwhile, tonight is what we Scots call Hogmanay. This is the traditional Scottish mid-winter and new year celebration (Christmas Day wasn't even a public holiday in Scotland in my childhood!).
Once the revelries are over I'll be back on deck.
Wishing you all a very happy new year and the very best for 2011
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Best wishes of the season
I've left it until Boxing Day to wish everybody the compliments of the season and offer my best wishes for 2010.
Why? Because I'm slack.
Its been an interesting year - plenty happening on the defence and aerospace side of things: the Australian government has ordered 14 Joint Strike Fighters (why just 14?); the first RAAF Super Hornet is flying and will be delivered early-ish in 2010; the AWD project continues to move along; the RAAF has short-circuited Canberra's cumbersome bureaucracy and laid its hands on a couple of Heron UAVs while the Army and DMO mess around trying to decide what they'e going to do about acquiring Tactical UAVs under JP129; the government says we need 12 bigger and better submarines than the current Collins-class, and mouths are already pursed censoriously at the prospect of an industry program that's bigger and more complex than the Collins, and run by the same stakeholders; and Navy at some point will have to decide what sort of helicopters it wants. Or, rather, somebody will have to tell the Navy what sort of helicopters it's going to get, because it's not a choice I'd entrust to the RAN just at present. There are two contenders and they need to be compared properly, and on its performance to date I'm not confident that the Fleet Air Arm is equipped to either make that choice or cope with the consequences of getting it wrong.
My viewpoint on this has been sharpened by my three-month sabbatical, courtesy of the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) in Melbourne, studying defence industry innovation. I'll be flagging up papers and survey results in due course, but it's becoming clear that there are a number of factors which both stimulate industry innovation and affect the prospect of its success; these include the professional and technical expertise of the customer and their effect on his ability to identify, estimate and manage risk; and the customer's willingness to invest in a developmental project - the two seem to be related.
It's nice to see the DMO concentrating on the professional and technical development of its people, but the recent Mortimer and Pappas reviews of Australian defence procurement urge the government to buy more equipment off the shelf, which could see opportunities for Australian innovators reduced significantly. Hope not, but we'll see.
I'll try and blog a bit more frequently next year; the difficulty is finding something interesting to say that I'm not being to write for somebody else. Is that a New Years Resolution? Fat chance!
Why? Because I'm slack.
Its been an interesting year - plenty happening on the defence and aerospace side of things: the Australian government has ordered 14 Joint Strike Fighters (why just 14?); the first RAAF Super Hornet is flying and will be delivered early-ish in 2010; the AWD project continues to move along; the RAAF has short-circuited Canberra's cumbersome bureaucracy and laid its hands on a couple of Heron UAVs while the Army and DMO mess around trying to decide what they'e going to do about acquiring Tactical UAVs under JP129; the government says we need 12 bigger and better submarines than the current Collins-class, and mouths are already pursed censoriously at the prospect of an industry program that's bigger and more complex than the Collins, and run by the same stakeholders; and Navy at some point will have to decide what sort of helicopters it wants. Or, rather, somebody will have to tell the Navy what sort of helicopters it's going to get, because it's not a choice I'd entrust to the RAN just at present. There are two contenders and they need to be compared properly, and on its performance to date I'm not confident that the Fleet Air Arm is equipped to either make that choice or cope with the consequences of getting it wrong.
My viewpoint on this has been sharpened by my three-month sabbatical, courtesy of the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) in Melbourne, studying defence industry innovation. I'll be flagging up papers and survey results in due course, but it's becoming clear that there are a number of factors which both stimulate industry innovation and affect the prospect of its success; these include the professional and technical expertise of the customer and their effect on his ability to identify, estimate and manage risk; and the customer's willingness to invest in a developmental project - the two seem to be related.
It's nice to see the DMO concentrating on the professional and technical development of its people, but the recent Mortimer and Pappas reviews of Australian defence procurement urge the government to buy more equipment off the shelf, which could see opportunities for Australian innovators reduced significantly. Hope not, but we'll see.
I'll try and blog a bit more frequently next year; the difficulty is finding something interesting to say that I'm not being to write for somebody else. Is that a New Years Resolution? Fat chance!
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