Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC
Lockheed Martin believes that next-generation military-transport aircraft will use commercial engine and cockpit technology, but will require unique features precluding the adaptation of civil-freighter designs.
The next military transport will have to be produced for around the same $100 million price tag as that of a commercial freighter, says Rick Kirkland, vice-president for business development, at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems.
The company is studying transport/tanker requirements expected to emerge in the 2013 to 2017 timeframe, and sees replacements for US Air Force Boeing KC-135s and Lockheed C-130s, as well as European and Japanese transport and tanker requirements, as potential market opportunities.
Lockheed Martin and Airbus Industrie have held talks involving a joint development to meet US and European requirements.
Military transports are typically 22% more expensive than civil freighters of equivalent capacity, the company calculates, because of the unique roll-on, roll-off, requirements imposed by operating from military bases without commercial freight-handling infrastructure.
"There will always be demand to transport military equipment into a military environment-but military aircraft will have to equal the cost of commercial aircraft," Kirkland asserts.
Lockheed Martin has studied conventional high-wing, blended wing-body and joined-wing aircraft, using commercial engine and cockpit technology to reduce cost, and is now studying modular manufacturing, enabling transport and tanker variants of an aircraft to be built on the same assembly line.
Kirkland believes that the next-generation "air-mobility" aircraft has to be a tanker/transport, "-with more capability than a [McDonnell Douglas] KC-10 - a true multi-mode aircraft". He sees a requirement for the aircraft to accommodate standard shipping containers, but also "-an absolutely critical need for roll-on, roll-off, capability where there is no infrastructure". Multi-point aerial refuelling is also important, Kirkland says, favouring designs, like the joined wing, able to accommodate two refuelling booms.
Other potential requirements identified by Lockheed Martin include use of the aircraft as an intelligence-gathering platform during transport missions, carrying embedded sensors linked by communications networks to ground-processing stations.
Aircraft being studied are twin-engined, fit inside an 80m-square ground "box", have a 4m-square cargo-hold cross-section and a Mach 0.85 cruise speed.
Kirkland says that the company has set targets for its next-generation aircraft of a 15% improvement in fuel consumption, 25% reduction in weight, 30% improvement in lift-to-drag ratio, 30% cut in development cost, and a seven-year cycle time from defining a requirement to fielding an aircraft
Source: Flight International
