By Geoff Fein
The next year will be a busy time for the Navy’s P-8 Poseidon program as it prepares for first flight of its developmental test aircraft in FY ’09 and begins static and fatigue testing about the same time, a Navy official said.
The first aircraft is in final assembly waiting for engine mating. In the March-April ’09 time frame, that aircraft will get the rest of its avionics installed before Boeing [BA] turns the aircraft over to the Navy, Capt. Joe Rixey, P-8 and P-3C program manager told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
Rixey said there have been some questions about supplier parts, but there haven’t been any issues.
“We’ve got S-1, it’s on the Wichita line, and all the parts are showing up on the dock on time. That build is going real well,” he said.
S-1 is the first of two static and fatigue test articles. It is being built at Wichita, Kan.-based Spirit AeroSystems.
“So there is learning curve in terms of assemble, there is a learning curve in terms of supplier management…we got through that. We are still on our schedule,” Rixey said.
That schedule plans for initial operational capability (IOC) in FY ’13, followed by full operational capability around the FY ’19, FY ’20 time frame, he added.
In addition to the test aircraft under construction, the Navy and Boeing have built two reaction frames at the company’s Wichita facility to conduct the static and fatigue testing.
Static and fatigue testing will commence in the FY ’09 time frame for S-1 and around the second quarter of FY ’10 for S-2, Rixey added.
T-1 will be the first aircraft to take to the air toward the end of FY ’09. T-2 and T-3 will go into testing as they are delivered and will undergo developmental testing for two and a half years following T-1’s first flight, Rixey said.
There has been some discussion examining whether the P-8 program could be accelerated because of the issues with the P-3C Orion’s wings, Rixey noted.
“We’ve run various drills on accelerating the P-8, but all of that has to be vetted through our Milestone Decision Authorities and our leadership before we can move,” he said. “But at this point we are still executing the program of record. But we are looking at all the contingencies associated with the P-3 red stripe.”
In December ’07, the Navy grounded 39 Lockheed Martin [LMT] P-3C aircraft due to structural fatigue concerns (Defense Daily, Dec. 18).
Rixey said the Navy has learned some lessons from the P-3C that the service and Boeing are using in development of the P-8.
One example he cites deals with static and fatigue testing.
The last time the Navy put a P-3 on a reaction frame, for static and fatigue issues, was five years ago, he said.
The Navy and Boeing are building the P-8 up front, collecting information from the two static and fatigue test articles (S-1 and S-2).
“We are going to have that data…maintenance plans, understand crack growth, understand our maintenance procedures, understand our limitations and develop our maintenance schedules associated with that instead of reacting to it like we had to do with the P-3,” Rixey said.
“We are going to run that aircraft to two life cycles, and we are going to take it and validate its ultimate load. That’s what we are doing up front, and that was a major lesson learned,” he added.
The P-8 is a military derivative of Boeing’s 737-800.
Building off a commercial derivative will result in significant savings in tooling, Rixey said, as well as in schedule.
This is the first time the Navy is not taking a “green truck,” buying it from Boeing, taking and tearing it apart and then rebuilding it, Rixey said. “There is significant labor in just doing that.”
“So there were significant savings in terms of cost and schedule…by doing this in-line build for all these aircraft and not going to a chop shop,” he added. “The other area of savings is supportability. We are going to be able to leverage the vast FAA parts pool and support infrastructure for those common parts. Obviously for the mission specific stuff we will have to have our traditional support methodologies.”
But that does cut down quite a bit on sparing and warehousing, Rixey added.
But even though the 737-800 is currently in use, the Navy will still have to certify the aircraft’s worthiness, he added.
“Its got to be certified by Navy because our fatigue spectrum and our flight profile deviate from an FAA aircraft,” Rixey said. “We will leverage off those flight regimes that are similar, but for the most part we are going to have to go check those that deviate.”
The P-8 was built to be an open air vehicle, Rixey said.
The Navy built its next-generation Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) platform with growth in mind. One area, Rixey said the Navy is proud that contained within the contractual language is the requirement for an open systems architecture for avionics. “But it is open beyond that.”
“We have a lot of cabin volume. We have a lot of growth in terms of weight. We can actually go about 21,000-pounds more in terms of mission systems,” he explained. “But what you end up doing there, if you add on more payload you take off fuel. We are still required to go 1,200 nautical miles in four hours to do our ASW mission.”
Along with the potential for growth in cabin volume, there is also room for growth in power, Rixey said.
“We are not even near 50 percent on power usage. We have two 180 kVA generators and an APU (auxiliary power unit)…that’s significant power. We have good cooling and we are able to leverage that power by the way off the wedge tail design,” he added.
The Navy also added four inches to the bomb bay so that the P-8 could carry joint weapons and whatever the future brings. “We have openness in our bomb bay. We just didn’t design it for the MK 54.”
In addition to that, the P-8 has a digital stores management system, something lacking on the P-3, Rixey noted. “This allows you to spiral in different weapons that can been envisioned in the future as well.”
“When you combine all those things we are bringing an aircraft that’s built on a commercial line, leveraging commercial practices, using commercial parts pool sparing, bringing an availability that we haven’t seen in a long long time,” Rixey said. “And its got a potential for growth, because as you know, we’ve got spirals coming through our evolutionary design. You can see its critical we get the airplane out there because our P-3 problem is not the mission suite. We’ve kept pace with the threat with that. Our P-3 problem is the air vehicle.”