Sir Isaac and the Airbus

Human Events, Jul 28, 2008 by Babbin, Jed

Newtonian physics-which a professor of fond memory tried to teach me in freshman year of college-prescribes laws that are immutable. Dr. Fred Furst used to say, "the laws of physics are the same wherever you go, and bad things happen when you try to break them." For that reason alone. I'm confident neither Sir Isaac Newton nor Prof. Furst would choose the Airbus 330 tanker for the U.S. Air Force.

I never promised you there would be no math, but trust me: This won't be too bad. We've got to do a little math and a little physics.

Newton's second Law of Motion defines the relationship between mass (roughly, what something weighs), acceleration (not the speed of an object, but the rate at which an object gains speed) and the force required to move a mass at a rate of acceleration: Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. As Freddie Fürst said over and over again, "F=ma." About which more in a moment.

The Air Force has many guidelines and regulations. Pilots-at least those who live to ripe old age-usually go by the book. The book on tanker operations requires that the tanker aircraft be able-according to standards set by the Air Force-to perform maneuvers called "breakaways" and "overruns" in specified ways.

Breakaways and Overruns

As I described on the Rush Limbaugh Show July 17, a "breakaway" is a vital safety maneuver which is performed often in training and in flight operations. There's an imaginary envelope around the tanker "boom," the controlled crane-like device projecting from the rear of the tanker that pipes fuel into the receiving aircraft. If you go outside the envelope-say a gust of wind hits, or the fighter is going too fast, or even if it pitches or yaws, twisting away-the "boomer" (the guy sitting in the back of the tanker who "flies" the boom), the receiving pilot or the tanker driver can call "breakaway," which is supposed to result in several near-simultaneous events.

The boomer pops the boom off the receiving aircraft which then decelerates rapidly and drops about 1,000 feet of altitude. The tanker is supposed to be able to accelerate rapidly (to a specified higher speed that varies by type of receiving aircraft) and climb away from the receiver. So now we're back to F=ma.

According to the General Accountability Office's decision overturning the contract award to Northrop-Grumman/EADS for the Airbus 330 tanker, ".. .there is no documentation in the record setting forth an analysis of whether Northrop Grumman's proposed aircraft has sufficient operational airspeed when refueling the [aircraft type redacted] to initiate an emergency breakaway procedure."

What the GAO is saying, in lawyerly language, is that the facts show that the Airbus 330 can't reach a sufficient speed to pull away from one or more aircraft it's supposed to refuel. And if it can't, there could be a mid-air collision. It may also mean that the huge weight of the Airbus isn't compensated by comparable engine power to enable it to accelerate fast enough to get out of the way. You need an awful lot of "F" to push that much "m" fast enough to get enough "a" for a breakaway, and the Airbus apparently just doesn't have it.

Another part of the Airbus's inability to perform the mission is the "overrun" problem. No, Virginia, we're not talking about cost overruns (on the Airbus, those will come but only if the contract is begun). We're talking about how a tanker and a receiving aircraft join up.

Tankers usually orbit above a set position-flying a race t rack-shaped oval that may be 30 miles or more in length-waiting for whatever fly guys are coming by to gas up. When one or more do-say a pair of F16s-the tanker swings out of its orbit to theoretically come up ahead of the F-16s on the F-16s original course. But sometimes (according to the tanker guys, it's always the fighter jock's fault. You can imagine what the fighter jocks say) the tanker comes out behind.

At that point, the fighter is supposed to drop speed and altitude and, again, that old F=ma thing. The tanker is supposed to climb and accelerate past the fighter to get in position for the boomer to plug into the fighter's nose. But the Airbus weighs too much and apparently can't even go fast enough even if its engines could push it to the required speeds.

GAO: Airbus Not Fast Enough

According to the GAO decision, despite the fact that the Air Force had told Northrop Grumman that the Airbus apparently couldn't accelerate quickly enough and reach the speed set by Air Force standards to perform an overrun, the Air Force disregarded its own mandatory guideline to keep the Airbus eligible for the contract. And they had no reasonable basis to do so as the GAO determined: "...the record does not establish that the I Air Force] had a reasonable basis for concluding that Northrop Grumman's proposed solution would allow its aircraft to obtain the requisite overrun airspeeds to satisfy this...requirement."

So not only can't the Airbus accelerate quickly enough, it apparently has too low a top-speed to do the job. Again, this is a problem that cannot be overlooked. As the GAO put it, it was unreasonable for the Air Force to determine that the Airbus 330 can refuel all USAF tanker-compatible aircraft in accordance with Air Force procedures.