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5.8 Additional Product and Technology Areas the Origin
of its home country has bought the aircraft in sufficient numbers and declared that it is prepared to operate the aircraft over its expected service life.
Product lifetime support is normally the responsibility of the producer and the cost for maintaining that support has to be calculated and factored into the price of the product. Obsolescence often makes it difficult/impossible to have spare parts avail-able. For products being used for half a century or more, there is no good solution except regular rebuilding of the product (the “aircraft”) and (as mentioned) the exten-sive use of “off-the-shelf” components and subsystems. This problem is not unique to aircraft even though its length of life makes the problem extreme. A luxury car brand manufacturer has to honor product lifetime support to be able to charge the price of a brand name. Developers and manufacturers of complex computer and tele-com systems will be expected to supply a smooth transition from one version to another of its system. One way of dealing with this problem has again been to develop products with a modular architecture. As long as the product architecture is the same, spare parts become spare modules that can be used on all versions of the product.
5.7.5 Product Life Management
The responsibility for lifelong product support is an ownership problem. The customer who plans to operate the product over its expected lifetime will want not only to maximize flexibility in product design but also to minimize lifetime operating costs. The producer who sells the equipment may not be as concerned about those two things. To achieve the desired lifetime functionalities the customer, and notably the military customer, gets intimately involved in the product design. Renting the equipment or charging for its use (buying the services of the equipment, “charging for power by the hour”) simplifies this decision for the customer and it is becoming increasingly common in civilian markets; for instance, civilian aircraft and aircraft engines, trucks, and automobiles (rentals). It then becomes a cost-minimizing problem for the producer to decide on the durability of the equipment, when to change parts or the entire product and/or when to modernize it. The product will be designed accordingly, and it is to be expected that the technical designs will differ depending on who will own the equipment.
How to achieve all this is a practical engineering task, even though the art of integrated production (See Table 8) has added a degree of analytical method to it.
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and unmanned aircraft (UAVs). These three areas are expected by many to define a great industrial future and they all draw directly on the most modern aircraft technology, i.e., on the JAS 39 Gripen system. For the time being that industrial future may be far off. Something, however, has to be said about the potential.
5.8.1 Space Research and Exploration (Case 19)
Military aircraft development and space exploration are closely related, and both Saab and Volvo Aero have had significant development work going on in the area.
For Ericsson, space and military communications technology associated with the Gripen system combined to contribute to its mobile telecom effort (see Sect. 4.4 above). When Saab Ericsson Space acquired Fokker Space in 2000, it became the largest subcontractor in Europe to the space industry. Saab has specialized on antennae and computer systems and Fokker contributed solar panels and robot controlled instruments (DI, Nov. 29, 2000).
Swedish space companies have demonstrated a competitive advantage in build-ing inexpensive satellites. Saab Ericsson Space was the leadbuild-ing developer and manufacturer in the Odin 430 million SEK space project of the Swedish Government space company (Rymdbolaget, DI, Feb. 7, 2001).17 Even so, Saab has had difficul-ties achieving the internal synergies between its core aircraft design and space product development that are necessary for satisfactory profitability. Saab therefore sold its space business in 2008 to Swiss Ruag Holding for 335 million SEK. “There are better opportunities for synergies within Ruag” says CEO Åke Svensson (DI, July 16, 2008:9). One reason for this divestment is Saab’s already very fragmented product portfolio. The space activity for Saab can therefore be seen as a spillover from its military aircraft operation that has been nursed and then sold off.
The situation for Volvo Aero is different. Space rocket engine development contrib-utes directly to its military and civilian aircraft engine systems development. The main contributions fall within new materials and welding technology to achieve systems components, today notably lightweight structures with a capacity to withstand high temperatures. High temperature robustness is important for fuel economy which is becoming increasingly demanded in civilian aircraft engine design.
5.8.2 Virtual and Secure Online Design: Encryption/Security (Case 20)
The geographical distribution of product development and manufacturing (distributed and integrated production) requires high transmission capacity and secure data com-munications, and increasingly so when it comes to virtual representations of visual drawings and maps. Security is especially demanding in military aircraft and engine development. The same technology, however, has a host of civilian applications.
It is possible today to develop and, to some extent, test the prototype design of an aircraft in the computer to make the first aircraft is the production run also the first test aircraft to be flown. The first Gripen subjected to test flights was a conventional drawing board product. The first production aircraft were, however, CAD products.
The first civilian aircraft Saab 2000 in 1992 was a digital mock up. In the late 1980s, Dassault Systems and IBM secured a contract with Boeing to “build” the first digi-tally designed aircraft (the Boeing 777) using Catia. Catia is a CAD/CAM software system, a spillover from French military aircraft industry (see Chap. 7). By the mid-1990s Dassault Systems and its Catia dominated the use of CAD/CAM systems in the auto and aerospace industries (BW, March 2, 1998). We have reasons to expect the virtual design technology potential for industry at large to be great.
Most safe telecom connections have been developed for military applications (Cf. Sectra case). One belief is that encryption technology and security technology, furthermore, will be the ultimate enabler for electronic banking, payments, and trade (McKnight and Bailey 1998:19).
In the aftermath of the cold war in the 1990s, thousands of electronic engineers laid off from the California aircraft and military electronics industries went to Hollywood and have since then created a revolution there in the animation and entertainment industries. Others went to automotive industry to form the backbone of a revolution in automotive virtual design. Virtual real-time game technology has been developed for military training and strategic analysis. Saab Training has been successful in marketing its systems in that field internationally. It looks as if the virtual game industry and the possibility of real-time game simulation will, in turn, spill a new wave of technologies to other civilian industries and back again into military industry.
5.8.3 Civil Security (Case 21)
In the early post-cold war era, it was soon realized that the military task might no longer be to protect national borders from armies but the interior of a nation from particularly dangerous groups of individuals. Protection of airports, nuclear power plants, and sensitive spots in the electric power grid from terrorist strikes are examples. This is a very different and probably more difficult task than monitoring the outer national borders. It has become a new challenge in the post-cold war era.
Not least important is the need to protect without violating the integrity of individuals in, and the democratic principles of Western nations, indeed a challenge that the technologically advanced Western democracies simply have to win.
The civilian security markets are potentially enormous and to a significant extent based on military systems technology, and particularly so when it comes to computing and communications. From the beginning of the new millennium service-oriented software-based systems architecture and network-based thinking dominate development. The civilian security technology may not be as sophisticated as the military technology, but without a base in military technology there won’t be a civilian security technology development. Losing the military technology
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competence, therefore, is synonymous with giving up on a business opportunity in the sophisticated end of the civil security market. And the civil security markets, even though not yet well defined and extremely diverse, are enormous.
In the post-“September 11” era, protection from terrorism has become a civil security issue of some magnitude. Most of the military surveillance and informa-tion technologies, notably those related to the so-called networked defense have direct applications to the whole range of catastrophe preparedness issues, rescue operations, etc. The capacity to monitor a complex rescue operation in real time, such as the Estonia disaster of 1994 in the Baltic, is simply impossible without modern military resources. The EU has also defined a huge R&D program for space and security research where defense from terror against civilian aircraft plays a key role (Ny Teknik, May 9, 2005). Most producers of military equipment also have a foot in the security business. Saab Avitronics develops and manufactures the elec-tronic jammer that Gripen has instead of stealth protection. It also develops and markets the civil aircraft missile protection system CAMPS. This equipment can be installed on passenger aircraft. It automatically reacts to attacking UV-missiles and dispenses pyrophoric decoys that divert the incoming missile. In fact, South African industry has a long experience from terror protection and Saab’s industrial involve-ment there therefore may become mutually beneficial in this area for both countries (See further Chap. 6). Saab Avitronics, for instance, has captured a one billion SEK order from the German Air Force for its radar alert system to be installed on the Tornado aircraft (SvD, Aug. 16, 2005).
To prepare for an established future in the civil security markets Saab pulled together activities from different business areas in 2008 to form a separate civil security business unit. To emphasize the future priority of this market civil security has been made a central part of the new Security and Defense Solutions business area that will become operational from January 1, 2010 and will account for some 20% of Saab sales. The fact is that a large number of sophisticated small technology businesses have been established and Swedish aircraft and space technology will support expansion in this market, but they are also interesting acquisition objects for foreign investors.
5.8.4 Unmanned Aircraft and Future Air Transport (Case 22)
Unmanned aircraft (UAVs) is already a military reality, and a very effective reality at that. In the long term, however, many people see a civilian market for pilotless aircraft that will be based on military technology developed ahead of time. So, all aircraft developers of importance have a foot in this field.
Midcas is a joint project between a number of European nations and aircraft producers, among them Saab. The longer-term ambition of Midcas is to define what is needed to fly UAVs in controlled airspace. In the near term, the development of sense and avoid, or collision avoidance systems, is on the agenda.18 These technologies will have a wide application area also in current manned air traffic and in automotive
accident prevention. Even if unmanned aircraft in the civilian aircraft market may be far off, development in this area is certain to steadily improve the safety of the manned civilian air traffic.
Saab is developing Neuron, a military UAV demonstrator together with French Dassault and some other European aircraft manufacturers. Such European collabora-tion projects are important for both Saab and Swedish defense and security authorities that learn to work together in the slowly merging European industrial environment.
A significant part of the problem to be solved for UAV traffic to become a reality has to do with developing and agreeing upon international standards for UAV traffic in controlled airspace. And even though completely unmanned civilian air traffic is beyond the current horizons many of the security devices already developed or in advanced stages of development can be implemented on manned aircraft, for instance to reduce the number of pilots required on long-distance flights.