A400M’s South African partners begin ramping up component output as some uncertainties ebb
The South African partner companies in the Airbus Military A400M transport and air-to-air refuelling aircraft programme, Aerosud and Denel Saab Aerostructures (DSA), are starting to increase production of the aircraft components that they are responsible for.
There was a hiatus of some two years during which these companies’ tools and jigs largely sat idle because of technical problems with the aircraft. The prototype A400Ms proved to be overweight and the clearance and certification of the engines took much longer than originally expected, which led to significant cost increases, which, in turn, required the refinancing of the programme by the core partner countries.
Addressing the technical problems required significant redesign work across the entire aircraft. “We had to completely redesign all our components as the specifications were changed by Airbus Military,” reports Aerosud CEO Dr Paul Potgieter. The components that Aerosud is responsible for are mostly classified assecondary structures. These are the nose fuselage linings, cargo hold linings and cockpit linings, the cockpit rigid bulkhead and the nose fuselage galleys. But the company is also responsible for the wing tips, which are significant because they will contain elements of the aircraft’s defence aid subsystem.
Likewise, DSA had to redesign its com-ponents, which are large primary structures, without which the aircraft cannot fly. These are the top shells for the centre fuselage section and the wing/fuselage fairings. The top shells can be thought of as being equivalent to roof panels. The company is producing two top shells for each aircraft – one in front and one behind of the wing box, which joins the wing to the fuselage. The wing/fuselage fairings are manufactured mainly from composite materials but include aluminium parts. Each such fairing is 15 m long, 7 m wide and nearly 3 m high. “The new designs have lower weight but higher load cases,” explains DSA COO Theo Kleynhans. Load cases refer to the stresses the structures must be able to withstand. “In other words, they’re lighter but stronger.”
One set of components, for one A400M, is called a ship set. The first ship sets composed of the redesigned components were supplied by the local companies to Airbus Military last year for incorporation into the fifth A400M, confusingly designated MSN6 (MSN5 was cancelled as unnecessary), which is now undergoing assembly on the final assembly line in Seville, Spain. This will be the first production standard aircraft and should make its maiden flight in the last quarter of this year. The MSN6 will be the fifth and final aircraft assigned to the flight test programme. The MSN7 will be the first production aircraft, and is currently programmed to make its first flight in the third quarter of next year, followed by delivery to the French Air Force in the first quarter of 2013.
Production will be built up to full rate by the end of 2015. “We received the go-ahead in January to produce five ship sets for the A400M during this financial year, [April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012],” states Kleynhans. “We are starting with the ramp-up. This will be phased in over the next few years. At full production, our output will be 2 1/2 ship sets a month, or 30 a year. Things are slowly but surely coming back to life.
“We’ve started ramping up production of some of our components at the required rates,” adds Potgieter. (Most of Aerosud’s components are required later in the assembly process than DSA’s are.) “We’re already talking of the seventh and eighth aircraft.”
Partly Cloudy, or Partly Sunny?
The two companies became industrial partners in the programme following South Africa’s commitment to buy eight of the aircraft. But in November 2009, South Africa cancelled the order, creating doubt about the con- tinuation of the work packages. How could, and why should, the country keep the work if it is not buying the aircraft? Further, there has been the issue of South Africa’s predelivery payment, or deposit, for the A400Ms, which the countrywants repaid in full. On the other hand, Airbus Military has invested more than €300-million in South Africa to help the local industry produce components of the required standard for the A400M, and wants some recognition of this by Pretoria.
In Madrid last month, Airbus Military CEO Domingo Ureña expressed confidence that his company and the South African government would come to a mutually beneficial agreement regarding all these issues. “We continue to work with the South African government,” Ureña said. “Contact and talks never stopped. We have people in South Africa looking at the possibilities we still have. We still believe that South Africa needs this capability. The communications have never stopped. We are keeping communications with South Africa on opportunities.
“Aerosud and DSA provide key parts of the aircraft,” he added. “I need to protect my programme. I need [every component] and we continue to have both companies in our supply chain. From the industrial side, we have no need to change this. We do not have anything against DSA and Aerosud. They are an essential part of the A400M as such. At the end of the day, if the negotiations [with Pretoria] are closed, then we may have to make a decision [about the work packages]. [But] we have no cutoff date for our talks with South Africa. That is not a good way to treat a customer.”
The A400M has been designed to function as both a strategic and a tactical airlifter. In the strategic role, it is able to fly at Mach 0,72 (that is, at 72% of the speed of sound, which varies with altitude) at about 12 000 m (37 000 ft) and with a range of 6 390 km with a 20 t payload, or 4 535 km with a 30 t payload.
And the chief of the South African Air Force (SAAF), Lieutenant-General Carlo Gagiano, has reaffirmed the service’s need for strategic transport aircraft. “The requirement for strategic airlift is certainly there,” he said at the Air Capability Demonstration held at Roodewal Weapons Range, in Limpopo province, last month. “The operational tempo is constantly increasing. We’ve seen how unstable the world is. If you don’t have this capability, you can quickly find yourself in hot water. Leasing is not an option. We will now try to find a goodmix of aircraft in the air transport environment.”
This strategic capability would, most probably, be in addition to the SAAF’s existing force of refurbished and modernised Lockheed Martin C-130BZs, which the A400Ms were originally meant to replace. The Hercules, however, cannot meet the SAAF’s most important current need, which is “to have something big enough to take [Oryx and Rooivalk] helicopters with minimum dismantling”. “There is a definite requirement from the UN to increase our Oryx fleet up [in Africa],” he reported. The SAAF has used leased Ilyushin II-76s to transport Oryxes, but an Oryx just fits into an II-76 – “it has to be loaded and unloaded very carefully”. Which is not easy in remote locations.
“We still believe that the A400M is the best solution for South Africa,” stated Airbus Military senior VP: commercial Antonio Rodriguez Barberán at the Airbus Military trade media briefing (TMB) in Seville last month. “In the end, the only thing we can do in South Africa is to present our options. It is for the South African government to decide.”
Phased Programme
Meanwhile, the A400M programme continues to develop in Europe. The major sections of the MSN7 are in advanced stages of construction at various plants around Europe and South Africa and final assembly of this aircraft will start during the last quarter of this year. Fabrication of major sections of the second production aircraft, the MSN8, has already started.
The aircraft’s power plant, the TP400-D6, which was developed by Europrop Inter-national and is the most powerful turbo-prop engine developed outside of Russia, received civil certification from the European Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) on May 6. This marked the conclusion of a process of airworthiness approvals for the engine by Easa, which involved intensive safety, performance and endurance tests. The TP400-D6 is both the first military engine to be certified by Easa from the beginning of its service and the first large turboprop to be certified by the agency.
The turboprop has a power output of some 11 000 shaft horsepower at sea level and has so far accumulated some 12 000 running hours, of which some 8 000 have been gained during the A400M flight test programme. Europrop is a consortium created by (in alphabetical order) Industria de Turbo Propulsores (Spain), MTU Aero Engines (Germany), Rolls-Royce (UK) and Snecma (France), and was specifically set up to develop the engine for the A400M.
Meanwhile, the two full-scale ground test airframes, designated MSN5000 and MSN5001, are continuing their test pogrammes. The MSN5000, at Getafe in Spain, successfully completed its ultimate load test campaign in September and is now being used for wing fatigue cycling tests. These will be concluded in the near future and, thereafter, it will be employed for research into matters of operational concern, such as damage tolerance and military stresses.
The MSN5001, located at Dresden in Germany, is devoted to fatigue cycling tests. These started in December and by February the airframe had undergone 1 665 simulated flights. These were required for Easa-type certification. The target is now for the MSN5001 to reach 25 000 simulated flights (which would represent 2,5 times the design life of the operational aircraft) by the second quarter of next year.
“The programme is on track right now,” A400M programme head Cédric Gautier assured international journalists at last month’s TMB.“To keep the specifications of the programme, the schedule of the programme has been stretched.” Thus, it has been agreed between the company and its core customers that the implementation of the aeroplane’s military standards will be done in six stages. The first of these, known as Initial Operational Clearance (IOC), will be achieved later this year. It will be followed by five stages of Standard Operational Clearance (SOC) – SOC1 (to be achieved later in 2013), SOC1,5 (end 2014/beginning 2015), SOC2 (end 2015/beginning 2016), SOC2,5 (late 2017) and SOC3 (end 2018/beginning 2019).
SOC1 will allow the aircraft to execute all its basic missions, but the flight manage-ment system (FMS) will not have full functionality. With each subsequent SOC, the functionality of the FMS will be increased, until it reaches full functionality with SOC3.
SOC3 functionality will not be identical for all customers, as different air forces have different requirements. “We are offering different solutions. We are very flexible on that,” averred Gautier.
The company hopes to deliver at least four A400Ms to customers in 2013.
Flight Test
Four A400Ms – MSN1 to MSN4 – are currently taking part in the flight test programme, which is being done at two centres – Seville and Toulouse, in France. To date, the aircraft have been flown by 55 pilots, from Airbus, Easa and the British, French, German and Turkish air forces.
Good progress is reported on the develop- ment tests of all aircraft systems, which are on track for civil-type certification by Easa and for IOC. The flight envelope has been cleared and a wide range of performance tests, including cruise performance, have been completed. “We are exploring the flight domain,” said Gautier. “In many areas, we are exceeding our expectations. Clearly, it is the airlifter of this century.”
Aircraft capability demonstrations are under way. So far, these have included in-flight refuelling (with formation flights and dry contacts – no fuel passed – with the A400M as the receiving aircraft); air dropping of parachutists from both the lateral doors and rear ramp; and flying and landing using night vision goggles, the aircraft’s enhanced vision system and its military radar (the aircraft can be fitted with either military radar, which gives greater detail, or civil radar, which is the same as that on the A380 Superjumbo). Takeoff and landing performance, taxiing over chalk (simulating gravel) runways, and automatic flight systems have also been demonstrated. Initial cold weather tests have been successfully done in Kiruna, northern Sweden.
In addition to these tests involving real aeroplanes, a full-size mock-up in Bremen, Germany, has been used to demonstrate the capabilities of the aircraft’s cargo hold, including the floor locking system for containers and pallets, the cargo winch, the retrieval winch, pallet carriage and securing, and medical evacuation configuration. Although military testing and trials will not be neglected, the primary objective for the programme this year is the achievement of civil certification of the A400M by Easa.
In parallel, the company is developing its in-service support (ISS) programmes for the A400M. For example, Britain and France have agreed on a joint ISS programme, based on the concept of fleet availability (Airbus Military has to guarantee that a certain number of aircraft are operational at any given time) and using a common spares pool, administered by the company. Other countries could join this – Germany is likely to – or have their own ISS programmes, tailored to their needs and including their local industries, if desired – for example, to provide maintenance, overhaul and repair services.
Because of South Africa’s cancellation of its order, and cuts in orders by Britain and Germany, owing to rising costs, the order book for the A400M now stands at 174, comprising 7 for Belgium, 50 for France, 53 for Germany, 1 for Luxembourg, 27 for Spain, 10 for Turkey, 22 for the UK and 4 for the only current export customer, Malaysia. “We are not going to make money with the launch customers,” admitted Ureña at the TMB in Madrid. “But we hope to make money, decent money, with exports. It’s a product that will be on the market for the next 30 to 35 years. Our export plan is developing, but we want to be prudent. We want to have a fully certified aircraft before we sell it.”
• Campbell attended the Airbus Military trade media briefing in Spain as a guest of the company.
Source: ENGINEERING NEWS, By: Keith Campbell
