Ex-Rolls-Royce engineer nicked on suspicion of giving F-35 info to China A former Rolls-Royce engineer has reportedly been arrested on suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act by allegedly handing British F-35 engine secrets to China. Rolls-Royce's one-time chief combustion technologist Bryn Jones, 73, was arrested at his Derbyshire, UK, home by the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism …
We should MAKE them copy it.
There was a good documentary about the Space Shuttle on the haunted fishtank a few nights ago. It mentioned the Soviet Buran, which was basically built from plans, etc. stolen from NASA, but the NASA people that were interviewed acknowledged that in the copying process, the Soviets had actually done some things better than the Americans.
I like the apocryphal story that French intelligence were aware the KGB was sniffing around Michelin at the time the tyres for Concorde were being designed. Because a very heavy plane landed at very high speed it needed special synthetic rubber - something Michelin had cracked, but the Soviets had not.
Rather than round up the spies, the story goes that the French instructed Michelin to come up with something the consistency of bubble gum and let the spies get their hands on that formula.
I've never seen an authoritative source, but I rather like the image of a TU-144 stuck to the runway whilst a lot of men in fur hats stand around wondering if their next trip is to Siberia.
something Michelin had cracked, but the Soviets had not.
That is multiply apocryphal:
1. Concorde had 10-15% higher take off and landing speed compared to Tu144 because of the canards on the latter. 350 vs 400km/h take off and 270km/h vs 295km/h. I know, this violates the sacred legend that Tu-144 was copied from the Concord, but tough, the specs say different and so does a trivial comparison of pictures of the "face" on take off and landing. Proper analysis of aerodynamics shows more differences, like more advanced positioning of the engines on the Tu-144 to use shock wave reflections - similar to B1, Tu-160, etc. As an overall result, regardless of what the stupid "patriotic legend" says, Tu-144 was significantly better behaved at lower speeds - approach and take off. Not surprising - it is aerodynamically more advanced.
2. The take off and landing speeds of Tu-144 and Concorde are not out of the ordinary for an older generation fixed wing large supersonic aircraft. Sure, nearly all of them were smaller in size, but the speeds were in the same range.
The non-apocryphal bit which USSR had an issue with for the Tu-144 were not the tires. It was the brakes. The biggest tech difference between the Tu-144 and the Concorde was the Tu-144 ridiculous breaking distances. It even had a fully blown military style drogue shute emergency braking system - something the Concorde had no need of.
The Space Shuttle-- at least near the end of the program, if not from the inception-- had the capability of automatic landings, but it was never used due to the culture at NASA that a human should always be in control of the craft. That culture originated with the early space program, when the recruited pilots objected to being mere passengers.
www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10518
There is also the story about the $$$ spent by NASA/Americans to design a pen that could be used in the weightlessness of space. And the Soviets just using pencils.
Which is why I keep a couple of pencils in the car - they always work/never dry when you want a writing implement in a hurry.
There is also the story about the $$$ spent by NASA/Americans to design a pen that could be used in the weightlessness of space. And the Soviets just using pencils.
*sigh*
Not again...
Not denying the truth of Snopes' treatment of the pencil story, but I find the positioning of Snopes as an authoritative reference point for the elimination of fake news to be somewhat disturbing. As I understand it Snopes is actually operated by just a couple of people with colourful personal lives. Don't understand why I should accept their "fakeness" verdicts unquestioned.
"Not denying the truth of Snopes' treatment of the pencil story, but I find the positioning of Snopes as an authoritative reference point for the elimination of fake news to be somewhat disturbing. As I understand it Snopes is actually operated by just a couple of people with colourful personal lives. Don't understand why I should accept their "fakeness" verdicts unquestioned."
The pencil story is easy enough to figure out with critical thinking - flying debris is extremely dangerous in space, especially when it's conductive.
pencils do write by leaving tiny graphite particles on the paper. And in 0g these particles don't settle, they float around. And graphite is carbon, and carbon is electrically conductive. Thus, according to Murphy, they will go into the worst possible places, short-circuiting whatever is most critical.
AC, Buran worked just fine, like the merkin shuttles. The worst possible solution that would actually work I think someone labeled space shuttles. However the Russians were not welded to the 90 ton reusable "spaceplane" concept as it was inefficient. Buran was built to confirm NASA were crazy. Its one flight proved the costs of running it were as predicted so the Soviets remained with the same stuff they still sell to anyone, 30 years later.
As for F35, the Chinese J21 and friends main shortcoming is propulsion. Any information that improved Chinese engines narrows the gap. The interesting question for me is the data fusion so the pilot has good situational awareness. Has that been copied ? Probably,due to an outsourcing decision.
A lift fan that rotates its thrust through 90 degrees? Based on Pegasus technology? I think the author's talking about the wrong engine.
I'm not convinced that details of the engine design would help with working out anything about the airctraft's radar or infrared signatures, either. Maybe if the guy was involved in intake design, but he wasn't.
I was thinking that, the whole F-35 connection seems a bit tenuous at best. He's a combustion specialist who left RR in '03. At that point he may have had some knowledge of the alternate F-136 engine for the F-35 that was cancelled in 2011 and probably nothing useful about the big fan.
That's not to say he couldn't have given useful information to China about gas turbine design as that's an area they have to date lagged the West in. They're still using licence built Speys in some of their newer aircraft as I understand it, e.g. the Xian JH-7 which only left production last year.
'Military aircraft only need solid reliable motors, if it has the right dimensions & power why not?'
Because you could get the same power from a modern engine that was smaller and burnt less fuel, which gives you more payload/range. Or a more powerful engine the same size burning the same amount of fuel letting you carry more. For military aircraft you virtually never have enough power.
I'll agree with that, but are the Chinese just staying with the old soviet 'good enough', now build far more than the opposition can point at us.
i'd think a generation or two behind in engines is far less of an impediment than being behind with the avionics or airframe design.
'but are the Chinese just staying with the old soviet 'good enough', now build far more than the opposition can point at us.'
They appear to be in a transition phase, a lot of the aircraft they're looking to introduce in the near future appear to be much more complex than in the past. i.e. at least semi-stealth, modern avionics etc. etc. a side effect of that is you also need more electrical generation capability which again ties into the engines.
Of course a problem with trying to outnumber your opponent is that you have to train a lot more pilots, engineers, ATC, etc. As China's economy grows that becomes harder as the wage bill increases and starts to dwarf what you can spend on new shiny.
"i'd think a generation or two behind in engines..."
The Spey has actually aged quite well; it still has good low-altitude economy, low maintenance costs and a very good safety record. The more modern Tay is pretty much a Spey, but with a larger fan and higher bypass ratio.
It was an advanced two-spool design when introduced and a lot of the performance improvements since then have been due more to advances in materials science (to allow the engines to run hotter) than fundamental design development.
For military aircraft you virtually never have enough power.
Very true. The only exception I can think of was the F-15. Intentionally overpowered for intercept duties. Airshow favorite with the ability to take off and before hit the end of the runway, point it's nose up and climb vertically. True, no missiles or bombs for that bit it with missiles for intercept it was quite speedy to get into the air and to altitude.
For those who never witnessed it personally ..... An amazing sight to behold in the day [and even today methinks if the machines are able]
"Because you could get the same power from a modern engine that was smaller and burnt less fuel, which gives you more payload/range. "
Modern us military engines are pretty much "remove and service every other flight" - so I'm not sure about "reliable".
The "build lots of cheap ones" approach has a lot going for it, when you consider that even the best high-tech aircraft only has so many weapons stations to hang missles on.
Arthur C Clarke covered this in "Superiority" 60+ years ago.
'Modern us military engines are pretty much "remove and service every other flight" - so I'm not sure about "reliable".'
The modern US military engines on the aircraft parked outside my office hardly ever need removing, they'll only take one spare for an eight month cruise. So I'm not sure which ones you're using.
F-35B - Lift fan at the front, vectored thrust in the rear...
Or if you're like my dad - digging the garden...
We moved into a new build bungalow in '82 I think - the garage has 1981 Royal Wedding bricks in it.. Anyway Dad did the traditional Roundup & Diesel special. Then the three passes with the rotavator. Then the digging through and beating the crap out of the scaffolding pins.
Until he got to one that wasn't going to break - so he hit it again, didn't break, so clout it a couple more times for luck right? Still resolutely disinterested.
So dad picked up the thing and cleaned it off and was left with a metal pear shaped lump a bit bigger than a cricket ball with a funny "looks like a plastic milk bottle top" section at one end. It also had a pretty pattern of machined squares in it, like little tiles.
Emphatically NOT a scaffolding pin - at least not one used since the Romans buggered off back to Italy (too much interbreeding with the French).
To cut a long story short - it wasn't hard to tell this was a grenade. The Police were called and the response was "bugger that mate". The bomb squad turn up and they're not touching it either. They X-ray the thing and it's live! So it's into an armour plated lead box and off to Friday Woods for a controlled explosion..
Bear in mind.. This thing had been through..
Being 1ft away from heavy building works (the garage)
Being doused in Roundup and diesel and set on fire..
Being run over by a rotavator no less than three times
Being manually dug up and belted a few times with a spade
Being picked up - cleaned off and examined by dad.
All the while live and fused.. And it didn't go off. Good old British engineering.
But not quite as bad as the kidling on an Easter Egg Hunt who wombles proudly back to the woman running the thing with his, oddly heavy, "Easter Egg" with the pretty little pin on top...
Slightly more on topic how about doing an "Our Man in Havana"? I'm sure you could hoodwink the Chinese with one of those "electric turbocharger" fans, a copy of MS Paint and surgically removed integrity - the probable result reminding me of the university housemate that used my plastic tray as a baking tray because it was grey and "looked like metal".
The description "Scotland Yard’s SO15 counter-terrorism command" comes from The Sun, where this story originated.
SO15 is the Scotland Yard team that deals with Official Secrets Act breaches (as well as counter terrorism and a whole load of other things). So this is The Sun and The Register sexing up a story.
a STOVL version of that aircraft could cause headaches for Western militaries in years to come.
I'm confused by the use of the word "could" in this sentence. There is a STOVL version of the aircraft - it's called the F-35B and it already is causing headaches for certain western militaries.
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