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#31
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Of course the military and civil businesses are connected -- in the
design, engineering, and manufacturing technology. The military OH-6 gave Hughes/McD/MDHI a still-viable civil product line. The Sikorsky HSS-2 launched the civil '61s. Take another look at the Eurocopter military product line derived from their civil products -- their military and civil business is now split about 50-50 thanks to Puma/Cougar, Dauphin/Panther, etc. If the commercial side of MHDI could never show a profit, the smart thing to do was improve the bookeeping, not dump the product line and deal yourself out of light helicopters. That's how Boeing got into this position of buying back a shot at ARH. HW |
#32
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Helowriter wrote:
Of course the military and civil businesses are connected -- in the design, engineering, and manufacturing technology. The military OH-6 gave Hughes/McD/MDHI a still-viable civil product line. The Sikorsky HSS-2 launched the civil '61s. Take another look at the Eurocopter military product line derived from their civil products -- their military and civil business is now split about 50-50 thanks to Puma/Cougar, Dauphin/Panther, etc. If the commercial side of MHDI could never show a profit, the smart thing to do was improve the bookeeping, not dump the product line and deal yourself out of light helicopters. That's how Boeing got into this position of buying back a shot at ARH. HW How many new OH-6s have been purchased in the last five years? The European governments have had a vested interest in building up their helicopter production capability for years and have been willing to support it at any cost. Straightening out the accounting was why the commercial side of MD was given three years to turn a profit - they couldn't do it, even from a clean slate. There were no military derivatives of any of the commercial products that anyone was willing to buy. The U.S. Army had pinned its hopes on Commanche and weren't about to go buy a passle of cheap competitors to its sinkiing ship. Commanche was in enough hot water without the Army asking someone to develop an alternative that Congress could use against them. The Europeans were buying militarized versions of their own civil aircraft to reduce the red ink on their development. They certainly weren't about to buy a bunch of militarized versions of MD commercial helicopters. There was no market. MDHI got a smokin' deal on the commercial business and still haven't been able to make a go of it. I fail to see how holding on to a money-losing operation with no potential for the future would be a smart move. Sikorsky and Bell had most of the civil market wrapped up - MD was a distant third, bleeding cash and losing steam. Vygg |
#33
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The MD500/M530/600 series share the OH-6 lineage. At least a few of
those have been sold commercially since the MDHI split. MDHI sold some MDExplorers to the Mexican Navy, and some paramilitary versions in Europe. The rotor system on the MELB was developed for the commercial MD530F. That's the point - the civil and military markets and technologies are complementary. The Europeans didn't just buy militarized versions of civil aircraft to improve their balance sheet. They developed dual-use aircraft to fill their requirements from a domestic source. With a full product line, Eurocopter can sell military or commercial as the markets shift. No, I don't expect a commercial Tiger derivative, but giving Australia a commercial helicopter assembly factory helped get that country to buy the Tiger. Technology development in military and civil helicopters is interdependent. Rotor, transmission, HUMS, and other advancess carry over from one market to the other. The flaw tolerance in the commercial S-92 makes a very safe, crashworthy military helicopter (The VXX competition chose to ignore that.) Commercial innovations -- HUMS, on-condition maintenance -- can cut O&S costs for military operators. Light helicopers have no future? Boeing abandoned the product line it now needs to compete for a sizeable US Army order. It may have also pushed itself out of the LUH contest. Tell me how that was smart business. HW |
#34
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Helowriter wrote:
The MD500/M530/600 series share the OH-6 lineage. At least a few of those have been sold commercially since the MDHI split. MDHI sold some MDExplorers to the Mexican Navy, and some paramilitary versions in Europe. The rotor system on the MELB was developed for the commercial MD530F. That's the point - the civil and military markets and technologies are complementary. The Europeans didn't just buy militarized versions of civil aircraft to improve their balance sheet. They developed dual-use aircraft to fill their requirements from a domestic source. With a full product line, Eurocopter can sell military or commercial as the markets shift. No, I don't expect a commercial Tiger derivative, but giving Australia a commercial helicopter assembly factory helped get that country to buy the Tiger. Technology development in military and civil helicopters is interdependent. Rotor, transmission, HUMS, and other advancess carry over from one market to the other. The flaw tolerance in the commercial S-92 makes a very safe, crashworthy military helicopter (The VXX competition chose to ignore that.) Commercial innovations -- HUMS, on-condition maintenance -- can cut O&S costs for military operators. Light helicopers have no future? Boeing abandoned the product line it now needs to compete for a sizeable US Army order. It may have also pushed itself out of the LUH contest. Tell me how that was smart business. HW Monday morning quarterbacking is easy. Again, at the time that Boeing divested itself of the commercial business there was no market for the aircraft, it was losing money (a lot of money) and was in a distant third place to Bell and Sikorsky with no hope of catching up. You're assuming that Boeing is going to win the ARH. What if it doesn't and they've already bought back MDHI? Boeing is in the same boat that it was in when it first dumped the enterprise. No market, unsustainable sales and heavy negative cashflow. Selling "some" Explorers to the Mexican Navy every few years isn't going to keep the business viable. A few months ago the conditions at MDHI were so bad that the mechanics were taking their toolboxes home with them every night because they didn't know if the doors would be chained shut when they came in the next morning. Their only hope for the future is if Boeing wins the ARH. If Bell wins - bye, bye MDHI. The vast majority of rotary wing innovations are military shifted over to civil. Not the other way around. A civilian aircraft doesn't have to be built to continue to operate after taking a half-dozen 7.62mm rounds through major wire bundles. Having a crashworthy civilian airframe is nice - having an airframe that's difficult to bring down is even better. The civilian market is for inexpensive aircraft that can be operated and maintained at a profit - not an aircraft that has to be rugged enough to handle abusive and hostile treatment. A couple of civilian innovations that can be migrated over to military (with modification) is hardly a reason to continue to pour cash into a limited opportunity. HUMS was based on military innovations like LIMMSS. On-condition maintenance is great as long as you have a regular flying schedule with plenty of logistics support handy. In any case, those are support technologies - you don't have to be in the business of building helicopters to develop support technologies for them. If Boeing hadn't sold the commercial side and ARH hadn't come along you'd be criticizing them for making a bad business decision for holding onto a losing proposition. It comes down to a basic question of business - how much of your profitable operation do you sacrifice to shore up a money pit, on the off chance that someday it may get better? MD did that for years with its commercial aircraft business and it came close to sinking the whole company. The end result was that it got bought out by Boeing. A lot of stars had to line up in order to get to the situation that we're in today - the sudden cancellation of Commanche, a MELB based on a highly modified existing civil airframe and the Army's insistence that its next scout helicopter be based on an existing civil airframe as a result. That's a lot to hope for when you're holding a money-losing civilian helicopter operation that has a bleak future ahead of it otherwise. Vygg |
#35
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Yep, that's me, Monday morning quarterback, Tuesday afternoon 'told you
so.' And now that ARH and LUH are here, I'm telling you it was a mistake for Boeing to take itself out of the light helicopter business. Now they have to buy the airframe from a shaky partner, and may lose the ARH because of that. They also dealt themselves out of the light/commerical tilt rotor business - and ancillary government/military sales. (I know -- it's a fad, and Bell will never sell more than a handful of 609s and derivatives.) Salesmen make business -- if Eurocopter and Bell could sustain commercial product lines in tough times, I suspect Boeing could have too. Do you blame people for not buying MD600s and Exploriers from a Dutch holding company when the two major suppliers have stable support networks? That doesn't mean the product lines were losers. And it doesn't mean the technology in them is worthless. The composite blades finally in test for the AH-64 are made like those already on the 530F (same autoclaves, too). Bell 430s were using that four-bladed composite rotor head and blade technology way in advance of the AH-1Z/UH-1Y go-ahead. A lot of that flaw-tolerant S-92 technology makes good sense for a military operator who has to fly alot, take battle damage, and stay within a budget. HUMS and lot of this dual-use stuff evolves in parallel. Commercial utilization rates are typically higher than military, and commercial operators get real mad when they can't fly -- that gives you RAM technologies directly applicable to military helicopters. I'm told some of the latest FARs are tougher than MILSPEC. Boeing figured 20-year sole-source military contracts like Chinook and Apache modernization and V-22 and Comanche were sure bets -- ooops Comanche wasn't a sure bet. Now, DoD has no problem going offshore for helicopters. I don't think we should just surrender the market and the industry to Europe. Monday morning, that might be good for business, and Tuesday afternoon bad for the country. HW |
#36
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Helowriter wrote:
Yep, that's me, Monday morning quarterback, Tuesday afternoon 'told you so.' And now that ARH and LUH are here, I'm telling you it was a mistake for Boeing to take itself out of the light helicopter business. Now they have to buy the airframe from a shaky partner, and may lose the ARH because of that. They also dealt themselves out of the light/commerical tilt rotor business - and ancillary government/military sales. (I know -- it's a fad, and Bell will never sell more than a handful of 609s and derivatives.) Salesmen make business -- if Eurocopter and Bell could sustain commercial product lines in tough times, I suspect Boeing could have too. Do you blame people for not buying MD600s and Exploriers from a Dutch holding company when the two major suppliers have stable support networks? That doesn't mean the product lines were losers. And it doesn't mean the technology in them is worthless. The composite blades finally in test for the AH-64 are made like those already on the 530F (same autoclaves, too). Bell 430s were using that four-bladed composite rotor head and blade technology way in advance of the AH-1Z/UH-1Y go-ahead. A lot of that flaw-tolerant S-92 technology makes good sense for a military operator who has to fly alot, take battle damage, and stay within a budget. HUMS and lot of this dual-use stuff evolves in parallel. Commercial utilization rates are typically higher than military, and commercial operators get real mad when they can't fly -- that gives you RAM technologies directly applicable to military helicopters. I'm told some of the latest FARs are tougher than MILSPEC. Boeing figured 20-year sole-source military contracts like Chinook and Apache modernization and V-22 and Comanche were sure bets -- ooops Comanche wasn't a sure bet. Now, DoD has no problem going offshore for helicopters. I don't think we should just surrender the market and the industry to Europe. Monday morning, that might be good for business, and Tuesday afternoon bad for the country. HW The light airframes are still available if Boeing wins the ARH. MDHI is shaky, but they only have to hold on long enough for AMCOM to make a decision. If Bell wins the competition, Boeing isn't stuck with a money-losing commercial operation. The decision to get out of the commercial tilt-rotor was primarily a Bell decision - no market for the aircraft. All of the tilt-rotor sales are for military, not an ancillary government/military sale from a commercial product. Tilt-rotor has been a military program from the beginning - not a commercial program with military applicability. V-22 would have never been developed if it had been a straight civilian product. The torrent of money put into it over the years would have been turned off long ago if it were a commercial aircraft - no way to ever make a profit after the development costs. Salesmen make business - its easy when you already own the lion's share of the commercial market (Bell) or have governments that protect the industry (Eurocopter). A good product line that doesn't sell is a loser. A technology that nobody is interested in has little worth in the commercial industry. Composite blades were originally in development for the AH-64A but MD first used them on the MD-530 because the U.S. Army has always been much more averse to advanced technologies than say, the USAF or USN. The MD entry into LHX was viewed with suspicion by the Army because it used the "unproven" NOTAR concept - the Army wanted something that they were familiar with. Flaw tolerance isn't the same thing as rugged. A high UTE rate in a stable commercial environment doesn't equate to a high UTE rate in a combat environment. A commercial aircraft doesn't routinely make high-speed descents into the trees, jink around, take fire and still have to come home with the crew intact. The design, build and performance criteria are very different between the two. The FARs are getting tougher because the DoD stopped requiring MILSPEC many years ago. In an attempt to "streamline" the procurement process, the Pentagon decided that they would no longer require MILSPECs for new aircraft acquisitions. Requiring FARs was a different matter. Not to be outdone, the procurement types in the USG started migrating MILSPEC standards into the FARs. We're gradually closing the circle on the old onerous procurement process and will be right back where we started in a few more years. Boeing is the prime for Chinook and Apache. Bell is the prime for V-22 and Sikorsky was the prime for Commanche. Of the four aircraft mentioned, Boeing's strategy is working. I agree about surrendering the commercial rotary wing industry to Europe being a bad thing for the country. But, you need to be talking to the folks in D.C. about that, not the folks in Chicago. Boeing was skinned, dressed and slow-roasted over an open fire for the 767T deal. They were roundly criticized in public for trying to protect their commercial B-767 product line by getting the USG to lease 100 aircraft. The company will make the decision within the next couple of months whether or not to terminate the product line as result of not having any future for it. The European governments would have no problem with subsidizing their commercial aircraft (or helicopter) industry in order to stay in the game. That's a government decision, not a corporate decision. Vygg |
#37
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Vygg wrote
"The decision to get out of the commercial tilt-rotor was primarily a Bell decision - no market for the aircraft. All of the tilt-rotor sales are for military, not an ancillary government/military sale from a commercial product. Tilt-rotor has been a military program from the beginning - not a commercial program with military applicability." Did you mean to write a Boeing or McDonnell decision? Bell in the end was better off without Boeing as a partner on the 609, but at the time BOEINGS decision to drop out almost killed the program. The engineers at Boeing Vertol are some of the best, but their managers had no concept on how to run a commericial aircraft program. A Boeing Vertol management mentality of spending aircraft development money on "engineering processes" instead of engineering design resulted in Boeing claiming that they had completed 90% of all the 609 engineering. When Bell started opening files of what were supposed to be stress analysis, what they found were one sentence notes stating that the formal analysis would be completed at a later date. When all Boeing enginnering was reviewed, it turned out they had only completed about 40% of what they claimed. They had spent however over 100% of what they were budgeted. This is why Boeing Vertol managers were elated when presented the opportunity to drop out of the 609 program. The grunt engineers however were devastated. Many key engineers ended up leaving Philly for Texas as a result Take care, CTR |
#38
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CTR wrote:
Vygg wrote "The decision to get out of the commercial tilt-rotor was primarily a Bell decision - no market for the aircraft. All of the tilt-rotor sales are for military, not an ancillary government/military sale from a commercial product. Tilt-rotor has been a military program from the beginning - not a commercial program with military applicability." Did you mean to write a Boeing or McDonnell decision? Bell in the end was better off without Boeing as a partner on the 609, but at the time BOEINGS decision to drop out almost killed the program. The engineers at Boeing Vertol are some of the best, but their managers had no concept on how to run a commericial aircraft program. A Boeing Vertol management mentality of spending aircraft development money on "engineering processes" instead of engineering design resulted in Boeing claiming that they had completed 90% of all the 609 engineering. When Bell started opening files of what were supposed to be stress analysis, what they found were one sentence notes stating that the formal analysis would be completed at a later date. When all Boeing enginnering was reviewed, it turned out they had only completed about 40% of what they claimed. They had spent however over 100% of what they were budgeted. This is why Boeing Vertol managers were elated when presented the opportunity to drop out of the 609 program. The grunt engineers however were devastated. Many key engineers ended up leaving Philly for Texas as a result Take care, CTR V-22 has always been a Bell-Boeing enterprise. MDHS didn't become a part of Boeing until the buy-out. Boeing Rotorcraft was, and still is, headquartered out of Philly. MD didn't have a say in the 609. I can't speak for the management or operation there as I'm only familiar with the Mesa site. The two operations just . . . well, to be diplomatic about it . . . tolerate each other. In any case, Bell is the prime for V-22/609 and it was their call to terminate the commercial product. Boeing probably had an input, but Bell made the final decision. Vygg |
#39
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Vygg,
The decision to drop out of the 609 was Boeing Vertols. No doubt with some influence by Harry Stonecipher. Per the provisions of the partnership contract, by dropping out Boeing was obligated to turn over at zero cost to Bell all hardware and enginering they had created. Originaly this appeared to be a windfall to Bell. But over the past five years Bell and their new partner Agusta have been forced to redesign almost every part originally designed or specified by Boeing. In their rush to justfiy all the money they had spent, Boeing Vertol managers (not the engineers) demanded the release of engineering that had more in common with fantasy than fact. One 609 supplier to Boeing told me that when when they responded to a critical RFP technical requirement "What you are requesting defies the laws of known physics!" Boeing managers responded "You are awarded the contract to develop this device". Turns out that they were the only ones to respond at all to the RFP. Bell ended up scrapping all Boeing engineering for this design and starting from scratch. Kept the same supplier though. Honesty has its rewards. Take care, CTR |
#40
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Hate to tell you, but the commercial 609 is still quite alive, and Bell
claims an order backlog. Bell market studies a couple of years back projected 45% of the small tilt rotor market would be US and foreign governments. Whatever the origins of the Apache composite blade, going back to the AH-64B, MSIP, etc. the technology to make the things got a chance in a commercial development - 530F. That's how these things sometimes work, and denying yourself a commercial avenue denies you development opportunities that pay off later. Would Boeing Mesa have been better just learning how to make the Apache blade from scratch today? Flaw tolerance does indeed equate to ruggedness - the margins to tolerate flaws caused by damage and keep flying. That is a good thing for any helicopter - military or civil. HW |
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