By Geoff Fein
The Navy is continuing to explore its options to remedy a strike fighter shortfall projected to occur in the next nine years, as well as examining upgrades to the V-22 engines to improve maintenance and durability, a Navy official said.
Earlier this year, the Navy said the shortfall was due to the legacy Boeing [BA] F/A-18 Hornets aging (Defense Daily, March 26).
Currently, the analysis shows the Navy is going to be down, by 2017, 69 Navy strike fighters, Thomas Laux, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy (DASN) Air, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“In order to deal with that, there is really a fairly short list of options,” he noted.
The first option, Laux explained, is to live with the gap and deal with the risk of doing so. That’s not an attractive idea, he added.
“In terms of dealing with it, you can do what we need to do to extend the current aircraft, and that takes some work…inspections and modifications to the aircraft,” Laux said. “We can take a look at buying new F-18s, another multi-year…more Super Hornets to fill the need. And the third is to accelerate the ramp of the Navy F-35.”
The Navy is continuing to evaluate each of the variables in that equation to see what is affordable and what makes the most business capability sense, and provides the warfighter the impact needed within the funds that are available, he added.
“We continue to trade-off those elements as we get new information on the condition of our existing aircraft,” Laux said. “We are not done with the SLAP (service life assessment program) of the aircraft. We are continuing to evaluate what it will cost to actually make the modifications required to extend the current ones. We are continuing to make progress in that.
“I think we are in a position right now where we continue to have the option of buying new F-18s if that turns out to be the best option going forward,” he added. “And we continue to evaluate day-to-day what the progress is on the F-35 development and flight test program.”
Lockheed Martin [LMT] makes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
To stave off the anticipated strike fighter gap, the Navy began to upgrade its legacy F-18 A through D model Hornets. The effort was divided into the a Phase 1 Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) and SLAP Phases 1 and 2 (Defense Daily, July 24).
SLAP Phase 1 began in December 2001 and ended in October 2005. The study looked to extend the number of catapult takeoffs, trap landings and field landings, as well as stretch the Hornet’s flight hours from 6,000 to 8,000.
Modeling done by Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) determined that many areas that were suspected wouldn’t make 8,000 flight hours didn’t (Defense Daily, July 24).
If the Hornets were not going to be able to make it to 8,000, it was unlikely they would make it to the goal of 10,000 flight hours. That would mean the Navy would have to do a little more work than expected to get to 10,000.
“So far, early indications are, it is doable to modify the aircraft to extend from the 8,000 hours to the 10,000 hours,” Laux said. “Each aircraft is different, each aircraft has experienced different operational scenarios–on where it’s been flown, on exposure to salt water and stress corrosion and cracking and things like that.”
Each aircraft has experienced a different number of missions over various flight regimes, which ramp up the damage counts against the aircraft, he added.
“What we have been doing is to continue to examine what it is going to take to put in the inspections and modifications to each aircraft to provide the required safety margins that we can continue to operate each aircraft effectively,” Laux explained. “There is engineering analysis that is ongoing. So far we have not found any, what I would call, show stoppers. It comes down to an affordability versus capability trade-off that has to be made for each of these aircraft and that is what the Navy is taking a look at.”
Of course, while the Navy continues to do its engineering analysis, the clock is ticking, and the window to take action to narrow the strike fighter gap narrows.
Laux said there are probably several factors driving the time line.
“The first of which is our understanding of the aircraft we are flying today. A few of them have already reached 8,000 hours and those are in inspections now. We are going to put in a program to go from 8,000 to 10,000 based on those early aircraft and experience we have had when we open them up to give us good indications of where we are,” he said.
“And we continue to do the tear-downs and inspections that are required to make sure that our understanding of the aircraft that we need to have to ensure the safe operation of the aircraft is everything it needs to be. That’s where we are now,” Laux added.
“Obviously, as we have more aircraft that are approaching and surpassing the 8,000 hour kind of number, then the more pressure there is to make a decision on how we are going to deal with that,” he said.
Another factor in play is that the Navy is not going to have the option to keep the F/A-18E/F new production line open forever, Laux said. “So we are working with the aircraft prime to maintain as much flexibility as we possibly can in terms of how long we will still have the option to order new Super Hornets if, in fact, that turns out to be… an answer for the Navy.”
And the Navy continues to monitor the F-35 progress, he added.
“They have some good things that are happening and if there is an opportunity to take advantage of the progress through flight test program and balance that against the production ramp that could be achieved…[that] gets worked as well,” Laux added.
The Navy is also working some modifications to the Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT]-Boeing V-22 Osprey, Laux said.
“Right now, the thing that would provide the most bang for the buck…in warfighting capability…for the V-22 is to get more time on wing, for the AE1107C engines,” he said.
Rolls-Royce makes the AE1107C engine for the Osprey.
The Navy is working on several things to modify the engines, Laux noted.
First off, the service is looking for better ways to wash the engines to remove the dust and dirt that accumulates in theater, Laux said.
The second thing the Navy looked at were some modifications to the engine itself, he added.
“There are a couple of key areas in the compressor that we are looking at-the actual compressor blade tip to the shroud contact. [There are] some durability improvements there,” Laux said.
One possibility is the use of Titanium Nitride coating onto the airfoils in the compressor. The Marine Corps has been using Titanium Nitride onto the airfoils of the CH-53E’s General Electric [GE] T64-GE-416 turboshaft engines. The effort has saved on cost, maintenance and has enabled the Marine Corps to improve CH-53E readiness (Defense Daily, September 6).
“That is a not a universal cure-all,” Laux noted. “That works good on some applications…particularly enhancements in terms of durability and dirty operations. But it doesn’t work everywhere. It depends on the nature of the airfoil and the blade manufacturer itself.”
But preliminary information shows it could provide some very attractive benefits in the AE1107C engine, Laux added.
The Navy should have its first engine to test and the prototypes as early as February ’09, Laux said.
The service is also taking a look at nacelle improvements to figure out if the existing particle separator on the nacelle…the blowers and things like that to see what can be done to make those more effective as well, he added.