SA work packages ramping up as Airbus Military begins A400M deliveries

12th July 2013

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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It is the year of the A400M,” enthused Airbus Military president and CEO Domingo Ureña during his company’s 2013 trade media briefing (TMB) at the end of May. “We’re almost there. The FAL (final assembly line) is no longer empty. Next year, it will be full, full, full.”

Following the delivery of the first production A400M to the first customer, the French Air Force, three more production aircraft will be delivered this year – two more to France and one to the Turkish Air Force.

"We have a clear roadmap – I will not say to solve 100% of the issues – but our customers will soon start to operate the aircraft,” he affirmed. “The A400M is a real breakthrough: it will have 80% . . . 85% . . . 90% availability.” This is a level of avail- ability that will be much higher than normal for military aircraft.

The A400M programme involves seven European core partner countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Spain, Turkey and the UK) and one export customer (Malaysia). Between them, they currently have 174 aircraft on order, comprising 53 for Germany, 50 for France, 27 for Spain, 22 for the UK (which also has three more on option), ten for Turkey, seven for Belgium, four for Malaysia and one for Luxemburg.

“The A400M is three aircraft in one: a strategic airlifter, a tactical airlifter and even a tanker,” highlighted company head of programmes: light and medium aircraft and derivatives Rafael Tentor. “The A400M is the right aircraft at the right time. The requirements were really strict and demanding: to fly at 40 000 ft (nearly 12 200 m) at Mach 0.72 (72% of the speed of sound); at the same time, it must behave like a tactical aircraft and fly at low level. It must fly like a turboprop from short and semiprepared airfields. Yet it had to be civil certified, with civilian levels of noise (for example). This caused some problems. But we are there! It is civil certified. It’s a real multirole, multipurpose aircraft. And it’s out there, ready for delivery.”

Expanded Partnership
With production aircraft starting to come out of the FAL, manufacturing is ramping up throughout the A400M supply chain, not only across Europe but across the world, including South Africa. Originally, South Africa was a partner country in the programme, with an order for eight of the aircraft. As a result, Airbus Military placed major work packages with two South African companies, private-sector enterprise Aerosud and State-owned Denel Aerostructures (DAe). But the country cancelled its order in November 2009.

Ureña agreed that South Africa had the right to cancel its order because the company has been unable to make contractual schedules. However, he believed the decision was premature. He also pointed out that some would have argued that, with South Africa no longer buying the aircraft, he should have pulled the work packages out of the country. But he affirmed that he was not unhappy that he had left major A400M work packages with the South African companies. “I don’t regret taking the decision to keep work in South Africa.”

Aerosud produces various structures for the aircraft, such as the nose fuselage linings, the cargo hold linings, cockpit linings, the cockpit rigid bulkhead, the aircraft galleys and also the wingtips. DAe makes major primary structures, namely the wing/fuselage fairings and the centre fuselage top shells (each aircraft has two of these – one each in front of and behind the centre wing box).

“Denel was in very deep troubles [in 2009],” he cited. “Denel today is doing fantastically well.” It is doing so well that last month Airbus Military awarded it a third work package, worth €15.1-million, for the manufacture of the ribs, spars and ‘sword’ – in other words, the composites framework – of the vertical tail plane.

DAe is busy keeping pace with the A400M programme. “Production ramp-up is of course complex, because it has to do with our own and our subcontractor capacity base,” points out DAe deputy CEO and COO Theo Kleynhans. “We’ve gone through a very strong capacity mapping process to determine what we need for the ramp-up. That process has been completed and incorporated into our ‘footprint’ plan, which details the production line we need, the ground area it will cover and the equipment we require. As a result, we had to order new capital equipment, including high-end, five-axis long-bed milling machines and a third autoclave for composite panel manufacturing.” The civil works to mount these machines have been finished, and the autoclave should arrive this month, with the milling machines coming in October (and commissioning in December).

Last year, DAe produced eight shipsets for the A400M – a shipset is a complete set of components for one aircraft – this year, it will manufacture 16 shipsets, rising to 24 next year. The company expects production to stabilise at 24 to 30 shipsets a year.

“The A400M has been a tremendously important programme for us,” he highlights. “It has established advanced manufacturing for serial production, both for engineering, production and logistical processes. It has allowed us to establish technologies such as composite panel production in South Africa with international accreditation. It really helped us to establish a state-of-the-art composites manufacturing capability. It has allowed us to become more visible to other manufacturers, especially in Europe, thanks to the link with Airbus. And Airbus is helping to put us in contact with its supplier base. For the local industry and not just ourselves, the A400M has been a very good opportunity and we hope to build on this relationship with them.”

“Denel, with its diverse set of expertise, capabilities and capacities, is central to Airbus Military’s ambition to develop an expanded and multifaceted partnership with South Africa’s high-tech aerospace and defence industry, tied to South Africa’s military aircraft requirements and acquisitions,” stated Ureña at the announcement of the third work package for DAe.

Aerosud is also ramping up its A400M components output. This company is already a well-established producer of components for the Airbus group’s civil airliners, including the A320 family, the A330, A340, A380 and now the predominantly composite A350 XWB. It also produces elements for Boeing airliners (the 737, 747, 767 and 777) and for the Eurofighter Typhoon multi- role fighter.

“Aerosud has six work packages on the A400M, working with the UK, Germany and France,” explains company CEO Dr Paul Potgieter. “The ramp-up phase entails significant expansion for the initial batch of production aircraft, involving capital and facility expansions, manpower expansion (recruiting about 60 more people), significant growth in the domestic subcon- tractor supply base – including some South African companies getting Airbus quality approvals this year – and a significant expansion of international supply chain volumes.

“Although the A400M development programme and the financial impacts thereof on Aerosud have indeed been painful, with the A400M production now ramping up, the Aerosud position is that, having established an equitable and mutually satisfactory agreement with Airbus Military on the production of at least the first 40 to 50 A400M shipsets, Aerosud is now an established and committed A400M supplier,” he affirms. “The A400M programme has undoubtedly brought new skills and broadened the experience base in Aerosud.”
The company expects that steady-state production for the A400M will be reached by the third quarter of next year. It also expects its turnover to increase to just under R800-million during the current financial year, and the A400M will be a “substantial contributor” to this.
Ureña hopes that South Africa will remember how his company kept faith with its South African suppliers. “Now, if the requirement [for a strategic transport for the South African Air Force] re-emerges, I’d like to be part of that requirement. It wouldn’t be fair if a company which showed faith in South Africa wasn’t involved in resolving the requirement.”

Hardware & Software
Meanwhile, in Europe, the A400M programme continues. There are five aircraft involved in the flight test campaign, and between them they had, by May, racked up more than 5 000 flying hours during 1 700 test flights.

Last year, some further, but rather minor, delays were caused by problems with the aircraft’s specially developed TP400-D6 turboprop engines (designed and manu- factured by Europrop International, a joint venture between Rolls-Royce, Snecma, MTU Aero Engines and Industria de Turbo Propulsores – better known as ITP). “The issues we had with the engines explain why the [2012/2013] schedule has not exactly been met,” said A400M programme head Cedric Gautier at the 2013 TMB. “I have to say now that everything has been fixed. Entry into service will be without any limits on the performance of the engines.”

The engine glitches delayed the aircraft’s function and reliability testing. But once this was started, the aircraft – the fifth of the development aircraft, designated MSN6 – accumulated 300 flying hours in 26 days, with only six days of purely routine maintenance required. It flew 16 hours a day, on successive days, without developing any significant airframe or engine problems. “This is the first evidence for our customers that the maturity of the aircraft is already good,” he affirmed. While the engines have not yet been able to demonstrate their speci- fied lifetime, this will not be a problem for some years yet, and Europrop is working hard on fixing this.

Now the focus of the development programme is on the aircraft’s software. This will be released in six iterations over the next five years. The first three production aircraft – known to the company as MSN7, MSN8 and MSN9 – will have the first itera- tion, known as IOC (for initial operating capability). This will allow these aircraft to operate as strategic transports or civil freighters, flying from established air base to established air base. The final A400M to be delivered this year (the MSN10, to France), in December, will have the next software iteration, SOC1 (for standard operating capability). SOC1 will be followed by SOC1.5, scheduled to be released during the third quarter of next year, and then by SOC2 (the second half of 2015), SOC2.5 (the second half of 2017) and SOC3 (the second half of 2018). Each release will increase the operational envelope of the A400M.

“With SOC1, at the end of this year, we have to demonstrate the tactical capabili- ties of the aircraft,” explained Gautier. “We are doing a lot of campaigns to demon- strate these tactical capabilities. The first real milestone is SOC1.5, in which most, although not all, of the tactical capabilities will be demonstrated.”

The economic crisis in Europe, with its resultant actual and threatened defence cuts, does cast a cloud over the programme. Germany, for example, has 53 aircraft on order but has announced that it now only requires 40. Nor is there any clarity – least of all, it seems, in Paris – about how many A400Ms France will actually acquire. The latest French White Paper on defence states a need for 50 “tactical transports” but no one knows if this number includes the country’s force of 27 Airbus Military CN235s or not.

If it includes the CN235s, that would imply a cut in the A400M order to 23 aircraft. If it does not, it implies no cut at all in the A400M purchase.

“We can say two things about this situa- tion – first, we have a contract, and, for the time being, there are no discussions about any renegotiation of the contract. Second – take the example of France – perhaps, they will take [economy] measures later on, but they need the A400M now: their [current transport aircraft], Transalls, are at the very end of their life,” he pointed out. “We think that, if we do have negotiations about cutting some aircraft, it will not concern the first deliveries and the early years of deliveries. So, that might be why some customers may think that they have some time before having to start negotiations. We think the short-term, even the medium- term, programme is protected.” And in the long term, there is likely to be economic recovery and perhaps a rescinding of cur- rently planned or pondered cuts.

Anyway, there is the potential for exports outside Europe. “We are in a segment of the market where we have no competitors and we foresee no competitors for the next ten years,” stated Tentor. “Strategic airlifters cannot use unpaved airstrips. Tactical transporters cannot carry outsize loads. This year, we are starting negotiations with a number of possible customers. We see market opportunities in Asia, the Middle East, Australasia and South America. And what of the US? They have a huge gap between the [Boeing] C-17 and the [Lockheed Martin] C-130J, and they have no project to fill that. So, we see an opportunity in the US in the medium to long term. Our market forecast is to export 400 A400Ms over the next 30 years. It’s a conservative estimate. It’s been a long and winding road, but we are here!”

 

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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