Gripen makes first flight with new HMD
 The Guardian helmet-mounted display system has successfully completed its first series of flight tests aboard the Gripen. |
To further enhance the combat capability of the Gripen fourth-generation swing-role fighter, SAAB-BAE Systems has given the aircraft a new Guardian helmet-mounted display (HMD) developed by Pilkington Optronics in partnership with Cumulus and Kentron of South Africa. A Gripen, equipped with the new display, has completed its first series of test flights in Linkoping, Sweden. Flown by test pilot Magnus Olsson, the compatibility of the Guardian display with Gripen's advanced avionics and cockpit was demonstrated. The system is also being optimized for use with the IRIS-T advanced short-range air-to-air missile, which is being adopted as a standard weapon for the Swedish Air Force Gripen fighters.
The Guardian display provides flight reference data, weapons information, and weapons aiming capability through the visor; the pilot need not look down at cockpit instrumentation or forward through the head-up display. The HMD provides the pilot with "look and shoot" capability. It allows optimum use of the Gripen's fully integrated digital information system and precision engagement weapons, including advanced short-range air-to-air missiles, during combat missions.
Integration of the Guardian HMD forms part of a fully-funded ongoing technology insertion program that will ensure that the Gripen continues to be at the forefront of combat aircraft technology. Each Gripen fighter has a built-in ability to absorb future developments with ease. The aircraft's five MIL-STD 1553 databuses are currently used to just 50% capacity, offering much growth potential. Unlike integration programs for older in-service aircraft, future systems upgrades for the Gripen will be software-based, cost effective, and relatively straightforward; they will not require the fleet to be grounded for lengthy periods of time while work is carried out.
SAAB-BAE Systems and its partners continue to study advanced technologies, including multimode active electronically scanned array radar, cockpit adaptation for use with night vision goggles, infrared search and track, and the TARAS next-generation communication system.
- Frank Bokulich
Volvo Aero's novel route to quality
Quality has long been the watchword of the aerospace industry, but achieving it can be a very expensive business. It is not just a matter of design, lengthy development, the use of high-grade materials, advanced manufacturing standards, and the input of intellectual expertise and experience; it is also essential that every person involved with each aspect of the process—engineers, designers, technicians, and managers—maintains not just a duty, but an active interest in achieving and enhancing quality. To do that, Volvo Aero has established an unusual campaign at its Norwegian manufacturing facility. "Quality has to be experienced with all the senses," stated Volvo Aero Norway, which employs some 560 people. "All employees are constantly exposed to new impressions—everything from pictures of air crashes to meetings with pilots who fly hundreds of passengers every day."
Volvo Aero Norway believes that a problem for the company as a subcontractor to major global aerospace organizations is that people who produce a component may not see its place in the end product nor the way it is applied. No natural connection between producer and end user exists. Yet for aerospace engineers together with the rest of the company's employees, it is natural to want identification with the end user of their products.
As head of quality at Volvo Aero Norway, Arly Soltvedt said he can appreciate that studying required quality parameters does not necessarily make for exciting reading. What is needed, he believes, is a fresh approach and the application of lateral thinking to complement traditional quality engineering philosophies. "It is a question of finding new methods, new ways of making people react, so that they feel really inspired by their jobs," he said. "This is essential, as blank discipline is not part of our culture."
Therefore, Soltvedt focused on refining ways of making the company's employees more interested in the importance of always getting things right. Because Volvo Aero Norway is a relatively small organization, he had the opportunity to apply flexible and novel solutions. Although other suppliers may give some of their employees the opportunity to visit the original equipment manufacturers or end user's facility, Soltvedt has taken that philosophy a stage further. His first move was to discuss the situation with the Royal Norwegian Air Force, which uses Volvo components, including F100 engine modules for the F-16 fighter. The outcome of this was the establishment of a highly unusual training package.
Revealing the scheme in its company publication, Aero Magazine, Volvo Aero Norway said that groups of 12 employees travel to the airbase at Kjevik in southern Norway to be shown where components from Volvo Aero are installed on engines. Employees are briefed on the capabilities of jet engines—as well as the functions that Volvo Aero's components perform—and are also told of the special requirements that customers impose.
During the visit, Volvo Aero Norway's employees attended briefings, each ending with a written examination. As a special experience, one of the 12 members of each course is selected to sit in a tethered F-5 fighter during a ground engine test, including a check on afterburner performance. The company hopes the experience will make it easier to understand what it must be like to be a pilot in that aircraft, 10,000 m above the ground. This understanding is reinforced still further during the visit when a pilot describes an emergency and shows the team pictures of a subsequent crash. To keep this fresh in the minds of Volvo staff when they have returned to work at the plant, Soltvedt regularly displays pictures of air crashes. These may include detailed illustrations that would not normally be published by the general media. Employees are told that all documentation relating to every component that is produced by Volvo Aero Norway is filed for at least 40 years.
To underline this aspect, Volvo Aero Norway made a film about the need for quality. "It is important that the employees understand that their work is just as important as that of the pilot," said Soltveldt. Employees are also shown how liquids, including soft drinks and citrus fruit, can damage the metals with which they work as a demonstration of why such drinks are banned in the workplace.
Volvo Aero Norway uses "escapes" as a quality indicator. An escape is a deviation, either a written error in a document or a physical error in a product, that has left the plant but is found by a customer. According to Volvo Aero Norway, there has been a recent dramatic reduction in the number of escapes. Soltvedt plans to expand Volvo Aero Norway's novel quality scheme.
- Stuart Birch
Storing pods from EPS Logistics
Transportation and long-term storage of military equipment calls for increasingly specialized systems with particular focus on the control of relative humidity. EPS Logistics Technology has been contracted by Raytheon Systems for the design, development, and production of the Reconnaissance Airborne Pod storage and shipping container for the Tornado combat aircraft. Storage may be for up to five years and the container will have a 20-year service life. It must protect against extreme environments and handle shock and vibration. Steel wire shock- and vibration-isolation mounts are used to limit acceleration experienced by the pod to less than 6 g when subjected to demands such as free-fall air drops, horizontal impact, and random vibration input spectra.
Internal relative humidity is controled to less than 50% by a silica gel desiccant charge. This can be replaced without removing the lid and monitored externally. The container has a gross mass of 2000 kg. Containers can be stacked three high. The container will be manufactured using specially designed aluminum alloy extrusions, castings, and sheet metal.
- Stuart Birch
