Features editor
Our next issue contains a profile of the aerospace sector, one of Britain’s most consistently successful industries — though, as with many UK success stories, you could be forgiven for not knowing about it.
In our upcoming issue we profile a sector which, although occupying a world-leading position, constantly developing new technologies, growing strongly year-on-year and employing tens of thousands of people, is strangely unknown in the UK. The UK’s aerospace sector is the second largest in the world, but like a worrying number of British success stories, it’s seen as an industry in decline even to many within engineering.
There are parallels here with the automotive sector, also doing well in the UK but largely below the radar, although the sector’s stories are different. For automotive, it’s a case of real decline followed by redevelopment along different lines; industrial strife and mismanagement in the 1970s, along with poor designs and quality control, led to output falling dramatically, but new working practices, overseas investment and R&D – and design-led innovation have led to the sector reaching new record output levels.
But aerospace never actually went away. Extremely well-known companies such as Supermarine, Hawker, Avro and de Havilland were gradually subsumed in corporate manoeuvring so their names disappeared, but the businesses carried on. Meanwhile, the industry itself changed, with more and more aircraft being built by consortia of companies rather than developed and built entirely within one factory or company.
So it seems, to the outside observer, that the companies that built the Spitfire, Hurricane, Lightning, Harrier, Vulcan and Comet are no more, and the country that fostered them no longer builds planes. And, indeed, the only aircraft developed and built entirely within the UK today is the Hawk trainer jet (no mean aeroplane, though).
But what the UK does have is a very strong place in the global supply chain, designing and building arguably the most complex and interesting parts of many of the world’s most advanced aircraft: the wings of all the commercial Airbuses; the titanium-rich sections of the Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, and of course Rolls-Royce is carrying on the work of Frank Whittle, inventor of the turbojet, in developing and building the engines for a significant proportion of the world’s civilian and military aircraft.
Space, too, tends to sink below the radar. Last month, the Guardian published a list of ‘days out you wouldn’t have thought of’ including a vist to the National Space Centre in Leicester. It was an amazingly patronising and snide piece including phrases like ‘You might think Britain doesn’t have a space industry but it turns out we lead the world in… well… some satellites.’ Indeed we do, but you might have thought developing Europe’s Mars Rover and building space telescopes deserves a bit more enthusiasm. And that’s before we even get to Skylon, another descendent of Frank Whittle’s invention.
As we all know, the British press prefers bad news to good, and sneering to celebrating. So it falls to publications like ours to try to redress the balance. It’s something we’re pleased to do, but we wish we didn’t have to.
Our profile of the aerospace sector will appear in the October issue of The Engineer. The hard-copy version should reach readers next week; the digital issue, including additional content, will be on-line next week.
“overseas investment and R&D – and design-led innovation have led to the sector reaching new record output levels.”
Why not tell it like it is? It’s a bit more than foreign investment. It’s foreign ownership, design, and management.
And not a single mention of the greatest plane every to fly and still, even today, the only passenger plane on which you could eat your cornflakes faster than the speed of sound.
It is worth a mention that the vast majority of the worlds air forces choose to put Martin-Baker ejection seats in their aircraft.
Martin-Baker are still a privately owned family run business in the UK where all investment comes from within.
A couple of weeks ago the Bombardier C-Series and the Boeing 787-9 took off for the first time – each with seriously large fractions of British equipment. The C-Series had our [UTC] secondary flight control system running the flaps and slats and stopped on the runway with our TRAS system. The 787 has our TRAS system. Wolverhampton also has our sister company UTC HS Marstons making heat exchangers for many aircraft and our competitors Moog are a mile away.
Thank you for this. Aerospace is (or was) my home ground and most of my colleagues have found the consistent downplaying of this sector more than mildly irritating.
“foreign ownership, design and management”? Absolutely not. A380 wing? Designed in Filton, built in Broughton. Many other large elements of the A380 are also UK designed and built A320 wing aerodynamics? Hatfield.
The BAE Hawk? An incredible success story. The only version that did not take was the single seater (I ran the wind tunnel tests, hope this did not cause the outcome…).
Go visit the museum of flight in Seattle, parked outside is an AV8B Harrier with a label stating (pretty much) that this is the first US VTOL fighter. Hmmm, we are so good that other countries need to pretend to be us.
Rolls Royce are far from trivial in their output.
Aircraft maintenance, modification and repair is also a significant UK industry. As the article correctly states, the cost of a whole iarcraft programme is now so high that it is extremely unusual for a single manufacturer to take this on. The industry has changed shape, it may even have enlarged. Try Shorts in Belfast, their you will find Learjet Model 45 fuselages, RR nacelles, Fokker 100 wings.
Yes, we should be proud of it.
There’s some pretty grim reading about BAE in this report on the F-35:
http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2013-140.pdf
As a programmer, I am familiar with similar problems in organisation or lack thereof and it’s always because of an utter failure of management to ‘care’ or be realistic about the cost and effort required to actually achieve quality.
The British aerospace industry is not just the second largest in the world; it has been so for a long time and unsurprisingly behind the USA. It has a national association is the form of ADS and several Regional organisation such as the Midland Aerospace Alliance, NWAA, Aerospace Wales, WEAF and FAC. All of the bodies are working with the industry and Government to keep Britain in this foreground. The industry like all others has changed and in a global economy what can be made lower cost outside of the UK will be. However continued investment in technology and best practice can keep the UK as the lowest cost option in many cases.
So rather than talk ourselves into submission we need to strive to say what has and is being done to improve the industry and what more can we do to grow this great British industry.
Same old, same old, Joe public fail to recognise engineering in the UK, and aerospace is just another ignored engineering sector.
Will things change? no, not until engineers, Governments, and engineering companies raise the profile of engineering and what it gives.
Break all their cars, buses, and trains and they will complain, stop building new homes and offices they will complain louder, cut off their gas, electricity, and broadband/mobile communications and then they will take notice.
There is nowhere near enough emphasis put on the success of the private manufacturing sector. It is this sector that fuels virtually the whole economy including the financial sector. Without manufacturing virtually the whole public would cease to exist.