The Age of Electric Flight is Finally Upon Us

As reported by BBC News: Aerospace firms are joining forces to tackle their industry's growing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, with electric engines seen as one solution. But will this be enough to offset the growing demand for air travel?

This week's Paris Airshow saw the launch of the world's first commercial all-electric passenger aircraft - albeit in prototype form.

Israeli firm Eviation says the craft - called Alice - will carry nine passengers for up to 650 miles (1,040km) at 10,000ft (3,000m) at 276mph (440km/h). It is expected to enter service in 2022.

Alice is an unconventional-looking craft: powered by three rear-facing pusher-propellers, one in the tail and two counter-rotating props at the wingtips to counter the effects of drag. It also has a flat lower fuselage to aid lift.

"This plane looks like this not because we wanted to build a cool plane, but because it is electric," says Eviation's chief executive Omer Bar-Yohay.

"You build a craft around your propulsion system. Electric means we can have lightweight motors; it allows us to open up the design space."

Eviation has already received its first orders. US regional airline Cape Air, which operates a fleet of 90 aircraft, has agreed to buy a "double-digit" number of the aircraft.

Media captionThe plane that can fly 600 miles on batteries alone

The firm is using Siemens and magniX to provide the electric motors, and magniX chief executive Roei Ganzarski says that with two billion air tickets sold each year for flights of under 500 miles, the business potential for small electric passenger aircraft is clear.

Crucially, electricity is much cheaper than conventional fuel.

A small aircraft, like a turbo-prop Cessna Caravan, will use $400 on conventional fuel for a 100-mile flight, says Mr Ganzarski. But with electricity "it'll be between $8-$12, which means much lower costs per flight-hour".

"We're not an environmentalist company, the reason we're doing this is because it makes business sense."

Image copyrightHARBOUR AIR

Image captionHarbour Air is planning to turn its fleet of sea planes electric

MagniX is now working with seaplane operator, Vancouver-based Harbour Air, to start converting their existing fleet to electric.

The future also looks reasonably bright when it comes to medium-range flight - a range of up to about 1,500km.

Unlike Alice, aircraft targeting this range would use a mix of conventional and electric power, enabling them to cut CO2 emissions significantly by switching on the electrical component of their propulsion at the key points in a flight - take-off and landing.

Several demonstration projects are now nearing fruition.

Image copyrightAIRBUS

Image captionAirbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens are co-operating on an electric-hybrid aeroplane called the E-Fan X

For example, Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Siemens are working on the E-Fan X programme, which will have a two megawatt (2MW) electric motor mounted on a BAE 146 jet. It is set to fly in 2021.

"There are huge amounts of energy involved here, the engineering is absolutely leading-edge - and our investment in electrification is ramping up rapidly," says Rolls-Royce's chief technology officer Paul Stein.

United Technologies, which includes engine-maker Pratt & Whitney in its portfolio, is working on its Project 804, a hybrid electric demonstrator designed to test a 1MW motor and the sub-systems and components required.

The firm says it should provide fuel savings of at least 30%. It should fly in 2022 and is forecast to be ready for regional airliners by the mid-2020s.

Image copyrightUNITED TECHNOLOGIES

Image captionIs United Technologies' hybrid-electric demonstrator plane the shape of things to come?

Zunum Aero, backed by Boeing, is using a engine turbine from France's Safran to power an electric motor for a hybrid craft. And low-cost airline EasyJet is working with Wright Electric, saying it will start using electric aircraft in its regular services by 2027. This is likely to be on short-haul flights, such as London to Amsterdam - Europe's second busiest route.

"Electric flying is becoming a reality and we can now foresee a future that is not exclusively dependent on jet fuel," says EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren.

It's a statement underscored by a report from investment bank UBS which predicts the aviation sector will quickly switch to hybrid and electric aircraft for regional travel, with an eventual demand for 550 hybrid airliners each year between 2028 and 2040.

But the prospects for electric long-haul flights are not so rosy.

While electrical motors, generators, power distribution and controls have advanced very rapidly, battery technology hasn't.

Image captionAirbus' Grazia Vittadini says today's planes are 75%-80% more fuel-efficient than 50 years ago

Even assuming huge advances in battery technology, with batteries that are 30 times more efficient and "energy-dense" than they are today, it would only be possible to fly an A320 airliner for a fifth of its range with just half of its payload, says Airbus's chief technology officer Grazia Vittadini.

"Unless there is some radical, yet-to-be invented paradigm shift in energy storage, we are going to rely on hydrocarbon fuels for the foreseeable future," says Paul Eremenko, United Technologies chief technology officer.

The big problem with this is that 80% of the aviation industry's emissions come from passenger flights longer than 1,500km - a distance no electric airliner could yet fly.

Yet the UK has become the first G7 country to accept the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 - a huge challenge for the air travel business with 4.3 billion of us flying this year and eight billion expected to do so by 2037.

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US Successfully Flies its Newest Hypersonic Missile on Mighty Air Force Bomber

Air Force B-52H Stratofortress

As reported by CNBC: The U.S. Air Force successfully flight tested a hypersonic weapon from a B-52 Stratofortress bomber, defense giant Lockheed Martin announced Monday.

A hypersonic weapon is a missile that travels at Mach 5 or higher, which is at least five times faster than the speed of sound. That means a hypersonic weapon can travel about one mile per second.

In August, the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin with its second multimillion-dollar contract to develop the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, hypersonic missile. The Air Force said the ARRW system will stand for more ground and flight testing over the next three years. The hypersonic missile is expected to be completed by 2022.

The “captive carry flight test” evaluates the mock weapon during flight and is the Air Force’s latest step in the budding hypersonic arms race between China and Russia.

As it stands, the U.S. currently does not have a defense against hypersonic arms, a breed of weapon that both Russia and China are developing.

A little more than a year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin touted his nation’s growing hypersonic arsenal. Of the six new weapons Putin unveiled last March, CNBC learned that two of them, a hypersonic glide vehicle and air-launched cruise missile, will be ready for war by 2020.

Moscow’s hypersonic glide vehicle, dubbed Avangard, has been in development for three decades and is designed to sit atop an intercontinental ballistic missile. Once launched, it uses aerodynamic forces to sail on top of the atmosphere.

The air-launched cruise missile dubbed “Kinzhal,” which means “dagger” in Russian, has been tested at least three times and was mounted and launched 12 times from a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet.

Meanwhile, in August, China announced the first successful testing of a hypersonic aircraft, a feat the U.S. has yet to accomplish.

When asked about China’s sprint to deploy hypersonics, the Pentagon’s top engineer described Beijing’s efforts as “much more thoughtful” compared to Moscow’s developments.

“The Chinese have been much more thoughtful in their systems development because they are developing long-range tactical precision-guided systems that will be really influential in a conventional fight,” Michael Griffin, a former NASA administrator, said in a previous interview. “The Chinese ability to hold our forward deployed assets at risk with very high speed and very hard to intercept precision-guided systems is something to which we have to respond,” he added.

Turning to Russia, Griffin noted that Moscow’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, pose a greater threat to the U.S. than the hypersonic weapons that Putin purports to have.

Last April, Lockheed Martin secured a $928 million contract to build an undefined number of hypersonic conventional strike weapons. According to the contract, the defense giant will be responsible for designing, engineering, weapon integration and logistical support. The development will take place in Huntsville, Alabama, which is known as “Rocket City” as it was the birthplace of America’s rocket program.

What’s more, Lockheed Martin is in the process of developing the SR-72, a hypersonic unmanned plane dubbed the “son of the Blackbird.” When it comes to developing a high-speed reconnaissance aircraft, the Pentagon’s top weapons supplier is playing in its home court.

In 2014, the defense firm was awarded $892,292 by NASA to study the development of the hypersonic spy plane.

In 1976, the Air Force flew Lockheed Martin’s SR-71 Blackbird from New York to London in less than two hours — at speeds exceeding Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound.

The SR-72 is envisioned to operate at speeds up to Mach 6. And while the hypersonic SR-72 isn’t expected to be operational until 2030, the company sees developing a platform of that magnitude as a game-changer.

The US Army Will Test a New GPS That’s Resistant to Jamming This Fall

As reported by The Verge: This fall, the US Army will test a jam-resistant GPS to try and overcome the problem, Breaking Defense, following suspicions that Russia has jammed GPS signals in Europe and elsewhere.

GPS jamming can also be a major liability for US and allied forces, which depend on the system for everything from troop movement to missile and drone guidance. Last fall, the US and NATO allies launched a major joint exercise in Norway called Trident Juncture, to test the joint readiness and training of a large, multinational coalition. Over the course of the exercise, the military noticed that GPS signals were being jammed, which Finland and Norway officials attributed to Russia. In April 2018, US officials said that the Russian military had been jamming the GPS systems for is drones operating in Syria.

Members of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment located in Germany will get the devices this fall, and the Army is reportedly looking into developing a new generation of Inertial Navigational Systems that could be used as a back up.

Speaking at the C4ISERnet Conference in Arlington last week, Colonel Nickolas Kioutas, the project manager for the Army’s acquisition developer Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) said that getting the devices to units quickly was essential, and that the Army is working to roll out equipment in “smaller, iterative programs.” Breaking Defense notes that getting the systems into the hands of units like the 2nd Cavalry will allow the Army to quickly evaluate the technology and improve it if needed — rather than taking years to develop and test equipment that turns out to be flawed.

Hundreds Of U.S. Flights Canceled As GPS-Based Aircraft Navigation System Fails

As reported by Forbes: "Does anyone know what happened to GPS/ADS-B last night?" one aviation commentator asked Twitter on June 9, a Sunday. "The issue seemed to be quite wide-spread, with a lot of aircraft grounded... Had this happened on a weekday, it would have been leading headlines on national news⁠—some sort of GPS fault grounded a chunk of the U.S. commercial fleet and hardly anybody noticed."

But at the time of publishing that issue remains unresolved and the weekend is all but over.

According to the FAA, "certain aircraft equipped with the Rockwell Collins GPS 4000-100 and select ADS-B out GPS receivers are indicating 'ADS-B fail, unavailable, TCAS fail or transponder fail' messages." Aircraft without working transponders were directed to coordinate with the FAA before departure, a prior directive had instructed those planes not to fly above 28,000 feet.

Rockwell Collins, acquired by United Technologies last year, provides avionics and information technology systems and services. The issue appears to center on some of the company's ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) systems that send flight data to be picked up by ground stations. "The ADS-B system depends on GPS data to function properly," explained Hackaday, "but a problem with the quality of the GPS data has disrupted normal ADS-B features on some planes."

Whether the issue was caused by poor GPS data or a software upgrade to affected systems remains speculation, nothing has yet been confirmed. But, whatever the cause, the issue has led to a significant number of flight cancellations. According to CNBC, regional carriers in the U.S. "canceled about 400 flights scheduled for Sunday." A Delta spokeswoman said "about 80 of its regional flights were canceled," and American and United regional carriers were hit by the same issue.

Various online reports suggested impacted planes were mostly CRJ jets made by Canada’s Bombardier, but also some Boeing 737s, 717s and possibly a 767 as well. "We are working to determine the cause of the problem," the FAA said in a statement, "which may have resulted from a software update to the aircraft navigation systems."

A Collins Aerospace spokesperson told me by email that "we identified a technical issue with our recently released GPS product(s) impacting availability, and have since determined the root cause and the resolution. We are engaging with our customers to ensure continued safe operational capability."

"GPS isn’t down," Hackaday reported, as anyone with a smartphone can see easily enough. "However, it is degraded. How a plane’s GPS system reacts to that depends on the software built into the GPS receiver. If the system fails, the pilots will have to rely on older systems like VOR to navigate. But ADS-B will have even more problems. An aircraft ADS-B system needs position data to operate. If you can’t transmit your position information, air traffic controllers need to rely on old fashioned radar to determine position. All of this adds up to a flight safety problem, which means grounding the aircraft."

There has been online speculation that military testing of GPS jamming might be responsible, although that seems to have been discounted⁠—such tests are heavily publicized beforehand. There was also apparent confusion for some airline passengers, with disruption being blamed on the weather rather than on system issues. "Hey Delta," one passenger tweeted, "some updates would be nice. Y’all keep saying weather but our pilot just said the military is jamming Delta’s GPS which is why we were diverted."

What is clear, is that the issue is more widespread than its lack of publicity might suggest. This comes just as extensions have been announced to the grounding of Boeing 737 Max aircraft following accidents that killed 346 people, as well as speculation around aircraft drone safety measures. And so the quality and reliability of aircraft flight support and navigation tools have been very much headline news.

At the time of writing, the situation is evolving, and we will soon find out if this weekend issue is set to cause Monday morning travel chaos.

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Walmart has More Than 120 Ultra-Fast EV Charging Stations in 34 States

Electrify America promises that more are on the way.

As reported by Engadget: Walmart has come a long way since it unveiled plans to add Electrify America chargers to its stores. The big-box retailer now has over 120 of the VW-backed fast EV charging stations across its stores, giving drivers in 34 states a way to top up while they're shopping. There are plans to continue expanding, too. Neither partner said how many more stations were coming, but Reuters sources claimed that 180 more stations were coming before the end of 2019.

Most of the existing stations are placed at stores near key highways, although there are "dozens" more due near large urban areas. As before, the chargers range in power from 150kW to 350kW, offering enough speed for both the latest EVs as well as upcoming models that can take advantage of higher charging rates.

Both Electrify America and Walmart have clear incentives to bring chargers to as many stores as possible. For Electrify America, it's about laying the groundwork for a deluge of VW group EVs that will need a fast charging infrastructure. This is also one more step in mending VW's bruised image following the diesel emissions cheating scandal. Walmart, meanwhile, can use this to keep its stores relevant in the online shopping era -- you'll need somewhere to charge, and you might just wander into the shop while your car is plugged in.