AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/MARCH 30-APRIL 12, 2015 65
T
he new civil airliners rolled out by leading aircraft builders
in recent years share two common traits: They incorporate
marvelous technological features that improve aerodynamic
efciency, operating costs and passenger comfort—and have
been significantly behind schedule in get-
ting to market. The Airbus A380, Boeing
787 and Bombardier CSeries have caused
no small amount of hand-wringing.
Thus it was no small feat when Airbus
handed over the first A350 widebody on
time to Qatar Airways last Dec. 22. The
delivery capped a nearly flawless test-
flight program that met its targets of fly-
ing the first prototype before the 2013
Paris air show and winning certification
in the third quarter of 2014.
The guiding hand behind the suc-
cessful A350XWB campaign was Didier
Evrard, a veteran aerospace engineer/
program manager who joined Airbus as
A350 program manager in 2007, several
months before the first A380 was delivered after a daunting
series of delays. His time leading programs at MBDA served
him well in his new job.
Getting the A350 right was hugely important for Airbus,
S
election of the 2015 Laureate for Defense was particularly
charged this year, but one of four strong contenders, the
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) team, stood out
for its persistence in solving a decade-
long problem.
Carlos Kingston, former GMD pro-
gram manager at U.S. Missile Defense
Agency (MDA), led the team through
the thorny “track gate anomaly”
problem, which culminated in a long-
sought successful intercept test last
June. Kingston was waylaid due to the
snowstorm in Washington, but Boeing’s
Jimmie Taylor and MDA Deputy Direc-
tor U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Kenneth
Todorov accepted the award for him.
GMD is a complex, young system in
oscillating states of alert and test that
protects the U.S. from ballistic missile
attack, primarily from North Korea.
The anomaly was the result of what
engineers dubbed a “new physics phe-
nomenon” of high-frequency vibrations that drove a malfunc-
tion in the highly sensitive inertial measurement unit on the
Raytheon Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle. Originally detected
in 2001, engineers thought the track gate anomaly—so-called
because it drove the targeting sensors to shift in space—was
the result of electromagnetic interference. It took several more
which was locked in a fierce competition for market share
with the Boeing 787. The 787 had a head start, and that lead
widened when Airbus was forced to redesign the A350 after
its initial design was panned by customers. But when the 787
program ran into its own delays, Evrard and his team seized
the opportunity to narrow the gap.
The A350 development track was fraught. Like the 787 pro-
gram, problems with suppliers threatened to upend sched-
ules. But Evrard stayed on top of those
challenges, dispatching fix-it teams to
supplier sites. The A350 program will
continue to be vetted in 2015 and 2016
as production ramps up, but its 780 firm
orders attest to the aircraft’s commercial
success. On Jan. 1, Evrard was promoted
to executive vice president and head of
all of Airbus’s civil aircraft programs.
Three other finalists vied for the
Civil Aviation Laureate: The 787-9 pro-
gram was nominated for being the first
aircraft to apply hybrid laminar flow
control to its vertical and horizontal
stabilizers, smoothing out airflow and
reducing drag on the aircraft’s tail; the
FAA for implementing a NextGen air-
space redesign project in the Houston area, creating more
efcient routes that reduced emissions and fuel consumption;
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly for his airline’s consistent
excellence in operations and financial performance. cyears to finally grasp that vibrations from the divert-and-atti-
tude control system were the culprit.
GMD prime contractor Boeing had to craft a new test ap-
paratus to even observe the phenomena on Earth—it was
only detectable in space. Fixes are now in production.
Prior to last June’s success of the most complex GMD
test—involving head-on engagement geometry and counter-
measures—the last inflight intercept
was in December 2008. Such a gap for
the highly visible system afected global
politics; North Korea’s then-new leader,
Kim Jong-un, rattled sabers, sparking
then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
in 2013 to announce deployment of 14
more GMD interceptors—bringing the
total to 44—in 2017.
Also nominated was BAE’s Taranis
unmanned combat aircraft, which took
a major leap last year with “full stealth”
flight tests using low-observable air da-
ta-handling systems, a key advance for
Europe as it seeks to marry broadband
stealth and unmanned piloting.
Northrop Grumman’s F-35 Integrat-
ed Assembly Line team demonstrat-
ed exceptional efciency in adapting
auto motive assembly practices for building fuselages.
Finally, the Boeing, U.S. Army High-Energy Laser Mobile
Demonstrator team gave a glimpse Boeing/U.S. of how lasers can
eventually change warfare for soldiers. In a test series last year,
the 10-kw system downed mortars and unmanned aircraft in the
cluttered maritime environment, powered only with diesel fuel. cCivil Aviation
Defense
Airbus’s A350 Triumph
Successful Intercept
Airbus’s Didier Evrard (left) receives
Civil Aviation Laureate from Aviation
Week EIC Joseph C. Anselmo.MDA Deputy Director Brig. Gen. Kenneth
Todorov (center) and Boeing’s Jimmie Tay-
lor (right) accept a Laureate from Aviation
Week Senior Pentagon Editor Amy Butler
on behalf of the MDA’s Carlos Kingston.CHRIS ZIMMER PHOTOS