ROYAL AERONAUTICAL SOCIETY HISTORICAL GROUP

Handley Page Ltd Celebrating the Centenary of the First British Aircraft Company

Session 2: Technical Achievements of Ltd

HANDLEY PAGE AND PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE EUROPEAN MILITARY AIRCRAFT by Simon Howison, FREng, FRAeS, FIET Engineering Director BAE Systems Military Aircraft Solutions

SLIDE 1: TITLE

Good afternoon. It's good to be here at Hamilton Place, and it's a real privilege to be delivering my part in a centenary tribute to one of the great founding fathers of the aviation industry and to his company.

For the record what I am going to say and what I am going to show you represents as manifestation of my views and not necessary those of BAE Systems, the company I work for. We do see eye to eye at least some of the time however!

And one other thing, during this tribute, and taking a cue from Sir Frederick himself, I will refer, with all due respect, to the man and his company as HP.

What I want us to do is look at HP's military aircraft and their legacy. I want us to look at the changes we have seen from the environment in which HP operated in to that within which we operate today. And, in the context of this, I want us to look at the military aircraft of today and the outlook for them and the future.

So I better begin......

INTRODUCTION

The objective study of history – such as we are engaged in today – is as much about ever projecting forward – with the benefit of experience and lessons we can learn from it – as it is about recalling, documenting and applauding the past.

1 Handley Page was certainly one of the greatest exponents of this urge from the beginning – and it continued to be the central theme of his distinctive ethos throughout his sixty- year working lifetime and head of his company.

HISTORICAL RECORD, KNOWLEDGE AND LOOKING FORWARD

In reflecting on this central theme of the HP story, and recognizing his prodigious literary interest and knowledge, the words of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) are also apposite. In his treatise ‘On History’ Carlyle said: “What is all knowledge but recorded experience, and a product of history; of which, therefore, reasoning and belief, no less than action and passion, are essential materials?”.

Now, a hundred years on, as the introductory words of the July 2009 special Handley Page issue of Aeroplane magazine have justifiably reiterated, his company was: ‘one of the most forward-looking and successful British aircraft manufacturers of the 20th century’.

I would like to begin with a couple of bridging thoughts – spanning the HP decades and through to the present and future. This to set the scene for my contribution which centres on the common futuristic theme of these two radically different generations of our business.

Whe n the exuberant 23 year-old Frederick Handley Page boldly decided to forego his established position as a trained electrical engineer and turned to the fledgling aeronautical dimension, he was motivated from the outset by his passionate belief in the exciting potential of the wholly-new dimension to human mobility that powered flight portended – the eventual extent and significance of which was far beyond his or anybody else’s comprehension at that time, especially in the military domain.

Moreover, he was simultaneously starting a new career in a new business with a new company in a new science and technology – and not without its many skeptics – an unimaginable challenge for an individual of any age and in any context today.

Could he also have been motivated by the that famous line of his contemporary, George Bernard Shaw, who wrote: “Activity is the only road to knowledge?”.

Starting less than six years after the Wright Brothers had inaugurated the heavier-than- air, man-carrying powered flight era – and doubtless inspired by them – there was still comparatively little directly applicable theory or practice available to enable him to realize and fly a practical aeroplane himself – other than the many, and sometimes crazy, artistic images that had followed that famous original engraving by Sir George Cayley of 110 years earlier in 1799 – the first known concept of the aeroplane shape and form as we know it – incorporating fixed wings, a cruciform tail unit and a propulsion system (paddles) – now held here by the Society.

ARTISTIC TO REALISTIC

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And so HP’s daunting task was essentially translating from the artistic to the realistic within a fledgling science of shape, form, construction and mobility that borrowed heavily from hydrodynamics and engineering principles and practices derived from civil engineering and from the still rudimentary internal combustion engine of the motor car.

Interestingly and coincidentally, in that same year – 1909 – a widely influential concept emerged in the art world called: ‘A Manifesto of Futurism’ – a point of view that found meaning and fulfillment in the future rather than in the past, declaring that futurists would celebrate ‘a new beauty of speed’.

The full dictionary definition of Futurism is: ‘An artistic movement in art that claimed to anticipate and point the way for the future by strongly rejecting traditional aesthetic forms and values and aiming to express confidence in the modern world by embracing the dynamic energy and movement of the modern technological and mechanical processes of the machine age’.

Although there is no known connection between this notion and Handley Page, he is said to have taken a close interest in the experience of one Jose Weiss – a pioneering French landscape artist and engineer living in England and his inherently stable models based on the flight of the samara-type seed-leaf of the Javanese Zanonia macrocarpi plant (with which the horticulturists among us will doubtless be familiar!).

Hence, the concept and term – Futurism – can also be regarded as aptly describing the enduring Handley Page ethos – always looking to the next need and opportunity and the most effective and realistic means of fulfilling it.

(Incidentally, the centenary of this equally enduring concept of the art world has also been extensively celebrated this year at the Tate Modern).

WORLD AFFAIRS – THEN AND NOW

It is also salutary to reflect briefly on the very marked contrast between the state of world affairs – straddling the dawn of the 20th century and the emergence of military aviation in World War I, a mere six years after HP had started from scratch, and to which, as we have heard, he engaged in a major way – and that of today.

This is eloquently summarized in the 2007 book: ‘The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World’ by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board, in which he says:

“By all contemporaneous accounts, the world prior to 1914 seemed to be moving irreversibly toward higher levels of civility and civilisation; human society seemed perfectible. … The pace of global invention had advanced throughout the nineteenth century, bringing railroads, the telephone, the electric light, cinema, the motor car, and

3 household conveniences too numerous to mention. … The sense of the irreversibility of such progress was universal”.

But, Greenspan also points out … “World War I was more devastating to civility and civilization than the physically far more destructive World War II: the earlier conflict destroyed the idea. I cannot erase the thought of those pre-World War I years, when the future of mankind appeared unencumbered and without limit.

“Today, our outlook is starkly different from a century ago but perhaps a bit more consonant with reality. Will terror, global warming, or resurgent populism do to the current era of life-advancing globalisation what World War I did for the previous one?. No one can be confident of the answer”.

The first paragraph highlights both the tranquil and adventurousness nature of life when HP started.

The second, the huge impetus that set him on the path of large military bomber-transport aircraft that were to dominate his whole story.

And the last paragraph effectively encapsulates the environment in which the European military aircraft business is having to face up today to in determining its future direction.

SLIDE 2: HP MILITARY AIRCRAFT

· Sovereign company and sovereign customer – highlighted with an outstanding 86-year record of service with nearly 9000 aircraft for the Royal Air Force, from its foundation in 1918 through to 2004 (and the very last military Jetstream only leaving Royal Navy service earlier this year).

· Major contributions in three World wars: 600 0/100 and 0/400 heavy bombers in the First World War; nearly 1600 twin-engine Hampden/Hereford aircraft and more than 6000 four-engine Halifax medium and heavy bombers in the Second World War; and the 84 Victor nuclear V-bombers in the – and later the Victor Tanker conversion supporting the Falklands and Gulf Wars.

· The Halton transport conversion of the Halifax – notably with Freddie Laker in the Berlin Airlift of 1948 – the first major post-war humanitarian aid airlift operation and which activity is now so often prevalent in military operations alongside full-scale military conflict.

· The 146 post World War II Hastings transports which served the RAF for more than 20 years – prefacing the continuing need for large-scale global transport aircraft logistics today.

SLIDE 3: THE HP LEGACY

4 · The split (or diversified) production principle of the Hampden and Halifax era is standard practice in multinational military and civil aircraft programmes today.

· Now the traditional subcontractor ‘build-to-print’ pattern has been replaced by ‘design-and-build’ partnerships – including managing the corresponding ‘supply chain’ and equipping – with the prime company being the ‘programme integrator’ at final assembly.

· Large-scale Hampden and Halifax production by at Preston in World War II was a major foundation stone of the vast Europe-leading BAE Systems Military Aircraft facilities at Warton and Salmesbury of today.

· The famous HP slot endures in almost every kind of aeroplane of today – and in multiple form in the .

· The perennial pursuit of laminar flow and boundary layer control – by such diverse artifices as variable camber, differential ailerons and flaps, smart and morphing structures and suction – continues unabated.

· The much-praised HP115 pre-Concorde slender delta research vehicle convincingly proved the low-speed handling ability of the supersonic form.

SLIDE 4: EVOLVING DEFENCE THREATS

Both the incidence and the nature of conflict have changed massively since HP’s time. The prime example is the /Afghanistan conflict – longer than either WWI or WWII – where hitherto conventional adversarial air-to-air combat is completely absent and where intelligence, cyber warfare, ground attack, and supply logistics in supporting the ground forces are imperative tools and the extreme sophistication of defence electronics and unmanned vehicles are increasingly proving their effectiveness, and transport and attack helicopters have primary place.

Five points highlight the principal considerations of modern warfare:

· Technology

· New Approaches & Concepts

· Global War on Terrorism

· Failed States

· Humanitarian Aid

SLIDE 5: INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE

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The HP Era:

· Large number of sovereign companies, many autocratically-led by ‘full lifetime’ pioneer signatories and competing for the same customer – the Royal Air Force.

· Similar situation in other European countries.

· 1946: Twenty-seven original British companies (four in Group formed in 1935) and eight engine companies – and this before the advent of helicopters by Westland via American Sikorsky licence.

· 1960: Government-enforced amalgamations into two main groups: British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Siddeley.

Post HP:

· 1962: Initiation of major successive European collaborative programme alliances: Concorde; Jaguar; Tornado; and Eurofighter.

· 1977: Nationalisation of BAC and HSA to form (BAe)

· 1983: Privitization of BAe

· 1999: BAe and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to become BAE Systems.

· 2000: EADS (European Aeronautic Defence & Space) company formed

· 2009: Europe: Marshall, and Rolls-Royce now the only surviving original founding aviation industrial company names in the UK; and Dassault in . USA: All three primes still retain five founding signatory names: Boeing; ; and Northrop Grumman.

SLIDE 6: THE EUROPEAN LANDSCAPE

What was a sovereign company and a sovereign customer for HP has now become international defence considerations wherein aircraft are but one element of a totally integrated defence system embracing land, sea and air components and channelled by the influences of such organisations as the EU, UN, NATO, WTO, regional political and trade alliances – and the inevitable Strategic Defence Reviews. This is well exemplified by the BAE Systems business portfolio now embracing combat aircraft, defence electronics, military land vehicles and aircraft carriers and operating in eight ‘home’ markets.

Today we have

6 · Largely national state influenced sector champions

· Leading-edge projects pursued through programme-based collaboration

· National interest influences collaborative relationships

· Few successful pan-national defence consolidations – MBDA the exception ?

· Airbus single corporate entity example of the future?

· Restructuring and down-sizing still to take place

· Compared with HP Era now extraordinarily complex

SLIDE 7: PRINICIPAL CURRENT AND FUTURE EUROPEAN MILITARY AIRCRAFT PROGRAMMES

As that old adage: ‘The Future is Now’ implies, the near- and medium-term future military aircraft picture in Europe is essentially centred on five major programmes already defined and established and in continuing substantial evolution and improvement.

This consists primarily of three independently-conceived fly-by-wire and artificially- stabilized, cyber-warfare-equipped, non-metallic composite airframe structure, supersonic fighters – all still in their ‘youth’ and with very considerable potential for development and upgrade; an American supersonic multi-role STOVL stealth fighter – with major UK industrial input and European customer preferences; and a new generation European tactical airlifter essentially to replace the ubiquitous and venerable Lockheed Hercules (born out of the Korean War and first flight August 1954 – 55 years ago).

· Anglo-German-Italian

· Swedish Saab Gripen

· French Dassault Rafale

· American Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

· EADS Airbus A400M

Not forgetting Surveillance, Tanker and Trainer aircraft and Helicopters (Eurocopter claims to cover 70-80 per cent of the helicopter market needs) – and other specialized types.

7 Beyond this immediate agenda is the emerging generation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which I will be discuss later.

Considering each briefly in turn with a few distinguishing features of interest:

EUROFIGHTER TYPHOON

· Four-nation £22 billion programme: UK, Germany, Italy and Spain

· Industrial partners: BAE Systems, EADS, Finmeccanica, CASA – plus the Eurojet engine consortium.

· Designed to replace 10 existing aircraft types in Europe

· Very advanced autonomous automated systems architecture enables single-seat swing-role operations (ie simultaneous combined air-combat and ground- attack mission capability) with a single pilot concentrating solely on prosecuting the mission without also having to monitor the systems – and hence four times the ‘pilot efficiency’ cf. two-crew Tornado.

· More than 600 ordered. Tranche 3A recently confirmed

· In service with five air arms: UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria

· Initial export deliveries to Saud i Arabia: 72 aircraft ordered; 24 to be built in UK and 48 in Kingdom. Directly follows Al Yamamah Tornado programe

Although the first notions were as long ago as 1972, two major re-designs have resulted in the exceptionally capable, world leading, platform and weapon system now in service, recognising this demolishes the recurring myth that it a outmoded Cold War airplane.

SAAB GRIPEN

· Fourth generation indigenous Swedish jet fighter programme (with manufacturing and marketing assistance from BAE Systems) – Sweden historically ‘politically neutral’

· In service with Swedish, South African, Czech Republic, and soon Thai, air forces

DASSAULT RAFALE

· Sovereign French programme (France outside NATO)

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· In service with the French Air Force and Navy only. No foreign sales to date.

· Combat-proven with four-month active service deployment in Afghanistan (Feb- May 2009) – following earlier carrier-borne operation there

LOCKHEED MARTIN F-35 LIGHTNING II JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER (JSF).

· World’s first and only stealthy, supersonic multi-mission ‘’ (JCA).

· Transatlantic co-operative venture led by Lockheed Martin – teamed with Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems as first tier partners

· Fifth-generation supersonic fighter basically conceived to meet the multi-mission needs of five air arms in two countries within a single basic design – to replace AV8B Harrier, A-10, F-16 and F/A-18 Hornet for US forces and Harrier and Sea Harrier for UK forces.

· Conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) version for United States Air Force (USAF); Carrier version (CV) for the US Navy (USN); Short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) version for the United States Marine Corps (USMC); and UK Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.

· Follows two earlier generation Lockheed products co-produced in Europe and widely deployed by national airforces: F-104 Starfighter of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by Belgium, Denmark, Germany, , Italy, Netherlands and Spain; followed by the (ex-General Dynamics) F-16 from the 1980s by Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands through to today.

· Central aerodynamic challenge – the extremely demanding ‘STOVL-to- supersonic (Mach 1.5) cruise’ mission performance.

· Incorporates major conceptual and design input from Harrier

· BAE Systems designing and building rear fuselage and empennage plus fuel system; airframe structural and dynamic testing at Brough; technically involved in many other areas of expertise e.g. mission systems, support model

· Rolls-Royce provides the lift engine and drive gearbox; also the ingenious main engine swiveling exhaust nozzle.

· More than 2000 aircraft market predicted. Also selected in Europe by Norway and Netherlands; and by Australia. UK and Netherlands have each ordered two evaluation/ development aircraft.

9 · Italian Government has approved $2 billion to build an alternative final assembly line and check-out plant in Italy to assemble Italian and possibly Dutch aircraft

Background

The programme began in 1994 with a US congressional decision to combine a USAF/USN requirement for a strike aircraft with a USAF/USMC requirement for a light fighter/attack aircraft to be built in conventional and STOVL forms. The American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) advanced the preferred solution of a radically new jet-lift powerplant concept. This uses the main propulsion engine to shaft-drive a cold-air lift fan which magnifies the available lifting force and produces a relatively low energy jet efflux (reducing ground erosion and hot-gas re-circulation problems) and in its V/STOL form uses the lift-fan and a deflecting final nozzle. This is the hitherto untried solution adopted by the winning Lockheed Martin submission.

The main disadvantage of this arrangement was that, when not used in the STOVL mode, the lift fan would become dead weight. However, there are hidden benefits. The space occupied by the lift-fan can be used for fuel in the CV and CTOL versions, both the USAF and the USN having greater range requirements than the USMC. However, the lift fan has two major advantages over the direct-lift concept adopted by the rejected Boeing contender. Firstly, it greatly improves the thrust recovery of the engine and, secondly, it avoids the many problems caused by hot-exhaust re-ingestion. The lift-fan blows a cushion of cold air under the aircraft when in the hover, thus preventing most hot gas from reaching the main engine intakes, which could seriously degrade engine performance. The aerodynamic performance will also be enhanced by the requirement for conformal carriage of the weapon load.

AIRBUS 400M

· Twenty-first century Lockheed Hercules replacement, sized and equipped to handle today’s military equipment.

· World’s most powerful turboprop engine. Build status far more complex than originally specified. FADEC (Full Authority Engine Data Control) problem typifies modern complexity.

· First carbon-fibre wing for a large transport aircraft. Important preface to commercial A350XWB

10 · 192 aircraft ordered for nine launch-nation customers: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and UK in Europe; and exports to Malaysia and South Africa.

SLIDE 8: THE NEXT PHASE – EXPORT MARKETS

The contenders:

· Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab Gripen, Dassault Rafale, Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin F-16 and MiG-35.

The markets:

· Many countries in view of the still dangerous world.

· Thirteen potential customers identified in the next five years: Brazil, Bulgaria, , Denmark, Greece, , Japan, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, , Switzerland and United Arab Emirates (plus Norway and Netherlands to be confirmed): Brazil and India (130 aircraft each) and Japan seen as primes – all three also consider that one or other of the European contenders could possibly form the basis for an indigenous design to enhance their own industries.

Who will succeed ?

· Today success is more dependent on the politics than the engineering. A poor product is a barrier to entering the competition, but without significant support from one’s own government an export sale is hard to achieve.

SLIDE 9: THE UNMANNED AIR VEHICLE

This is the major wholly-new opportunity and industrial activity for the future.

Whereas Handley Page’s initial objective was simply to achieve man-carrying powered flight, only now, a century later, is there is an accelerating proliferation of just the opposite – unmanned aerial vehicles – and in which field the European aircraft industry is a leading player.

Although the concept of remotely piloted vehicles is by no means new and dates from the 1950s as aerial gunnery targets (Australian/BAC Jindivik and the American Ryan Firebee), neither the technologies nor the motivation have hitherto existed to make UAVs more than a curiosity, nor to progress from remotely piloted to autonomous vehicle. This despite the infamous Sandys White Paper in 1957 (fifty-two years ago) declaring the end of manned aircraft.

11 The real catalyst was the ‘Operation Desert Storm’ conflict of 1991 in which the Israeli Pioneer UAV proved to be a valuable tool in drastically reducing the loss of aircraft and human pilots in dangerous reconnaissance and surveillance missions and which lead to these first combat-deployed UAVs. Now widely used in the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts

· Deleting the human pilot, life support systems (enabling operation up to 40,000ft without pressurization) and control interfaces, together with the powerful electronic data-processing capacity, make for much smaller and simpler , and hence lower fuel consumption and much longer range and (24-hour plus) endurance

· Practical combat-proven and Proof-of-Concept research vehicles designs already defined

· UK: ‘Taranis’; France: ‘Neuron’; Germany ‘Barracuda’

The main BAE Systems UAV programmes demonstrate the scope of UAVs

Taranis · £124 million project. Jointly funded by the UK MoD and UK industry

· Provide the UK MoD with experimental evidence on the potential capabilities and help to inform decisions on the future mix of manned and unmanned fast jet aircraft

· Taranis aims to push the boundaries of technology by providing advancements in low observability capability and autonomous mission systems operations demonstrating the feasibility and utility of UAVs

· The appointment of BAE Systems as the industry lead and prime contractor is important in signifying the move from 100% company funding to getting Government formal involvement and financial support

Herti · HERTI is a low cost, high endurance Unmanned Air System (UAS), providing robust, cost-effective surveillance and reconnaissance capability

· HERTI offers a fully autonomous flexible solution, providing high quality imagery using safe, reliable platforms, able to integrate seamlessly with current and future information networks

12 · A fully autonomous Image Collection and Exploitation (ICE) system supports the integration of a full range of imaging sensors, providing clear, high quality imagery

· Data can be relayed to ground stations, forward deployed units and command centres in a variety of operational environments with very low bandwidth demand

· The HERTI mission control system allows simple re-tasking and re- routing whilst airborne

· Simple and robust to operate with low demands on logistics, personnel and communications infrastructure

Mantis · Deep and persistent strategic UAS capability.

· Maximise exploitation and interoperability across existing assets and infrastructure

· 24 hr all weather operational capability

· Multi sensor capability

· Armed Capability

· Highly Autonomous system

UAVs – THE HANDLEY PAGE CONNECTION

Importantly, there is even a Handley Page legacy element supporting the current BAE Systems UAV activity – two Jetstream 31 light transports being used for flight development – one as a surrogate UAV modified to test control and sensor systems (albeit with a safety pilot on board), and the other providing simulated air-space conflicts, which have been successfully resolved by the ‘unmanned’ aircraft’s sensors and autonomous systems.

It is an interesting hypothetical thought that, had the 23-year-old Handley Page been a trained electrical engineer entering the UAV business today, he would have doubtless been in his element with a future prospect as exciting and challenging as in his own era at that age.

13 SLIDE 10: BACK TO THE FUTURE – HANDLEY PAGE STYLE

Before closing it is perhaps interesting to reflect on some of the prescient HP ‘what might have been’ ideas generated by the company’s far-sighted leading designers and researchers and particularly noting the associated dates.

· 1955: HP 100 Canard supersonic bomber

· 1956: HP 109 Supersonic Transatlantic Civil aircraft · 1960: HP126 Aerobus Project (blended wing-body)

· 1965: HP135 Global Range Boundary Layer Control transport

The ethos of the six-decade HP regime can be said to be:

· The sustained primacy of military bomber-transport aircraft · Diligent research and exploitation of the basic enabling science of aviation – Aerodynamics · Aeronautical Education

All three remain equally valid in the industry today – and for as far ahead as can currently be foreseen.

I am told that HP also always had great confidence in the abilities of his designers, and in the 1920s he was bold enough to advertise his aircraft as: ‘Guaranteed to Fly’. Today, we have to define and meet a whole matrix of interlocking performance guarantees – but nowhere, to my knowledge, do we guarantee actual flight.

SLIDE 11 CONCLUSION

In summary, I hope I have shown that - liberally spiced with Handley Page legacy benefits, the British and European military aircraft industry continues to hold its rightful place as a powerful and fully competitive force in the global defence nexus - in no small way because of the ability of our founding fathers, like HP to project forward and to harvest the potential of existing and developing knowledge and skillsets. Just as they did in his day, the challenge of still being able to effectively do this is starkly laid out before us. Only history will tell if we rise to the task. Of one thing I am certain. We do, as he did then, stand on the cusp of change. His legacy is a challenge to us all.

Thank you for your time!

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