The Euro Hawk remains making waves in Germany, even after the defense ministry pulled the plug at the surveillance drone project last week. The issues were obvious long before the debacle.
The German representatives all in favour of the Euro Hawk project still sounded confident back in December of 2012.
“The project has reached a degree of maturity that enables the Euro Hawk conditional entry into European airspace,” the German delegation said on the International Aerospace Conference in Montreal on the time.
Three months later, the German defense ministry’s undersecretary of state didn’t sound as convinced when questioned in Germany’s parliament. “There are tests currently being run definitively answer whether a procurement of Euro Hawks is justified against the backdrop of [air-space] approval problems,” wrote Thomas Kossendey based on a parliamentary inquiry within the German Bundestag.
Out-of-control costs
By May 2013, that very same defense ministry had announced the top of the Euro Hawk drone project. The fees as much as that time: approximately 600 million euros ($775 million). The ecu Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) had reportedly announced it’d not allow flights over populated areas as the drone lacks a licensed detect-and-avoid system.
The problem didn’t come as a surprise. Developers has been engaged on the Euro Hawk because the start of the millenium. In 2004, EADS, the corporate engaged on the drone, warned that a collision protection system would become necessary, notably for take-off and landing. an influence point presentation which can still be accessed on the net says that while the drones fly at an altitude of 20,000 meters – twice as high as passenger planes – dangerous situations could arise during take-off and landing, when the drone flies in the course of the passenger planes’ busy airspace. Oncoming planes, the presentation concludes, “do not stand a raffle to avoid a collision.”
Better a miserable end
At a similar time, in line with an editorial inside the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper last Sunday, the Bundeswehr’s WD61 department accountable for checking new purchases spoke of the exact same problem. Despite those reservations, Germany’s defense ministry in 2007 signed a freelance on development of the Euro Hawk with EADS and the united states Northrop Grumman company. Plans didn’t include an automated anti-collision system; instead, a control center at the ground was to observe flight safety.
In 2011, a primary test flight took the unmanned plane from the U.S. to Marching in Bavaria. The drone lost radio contact to ground control for several minutes – an event that looks to ensure criticism of the missing security system.
“Security standards that apply to the Euro Hawk are in keeping with standards for manned flight,” Wolfgang Staiger, head of WD61, is quoted as saying in a piece of writing at the German Air Force website, Luftwaffe.de. On the International Aerospace Conference in Montreal in December 2012, the German delegation expressly confirmed the “lack of a detect-and-avoid capacity appears to be acceptable.”
The defense ministry has meanwhile conceded that it’s been acquainted with certification issues since 2011 – seven years after the primary documents indicating the matter surfaced.
The defense ministry’s cancellation of the drone program may have another cause. The ministry appears to imagine the info submitted by the usa manufacturer isn’t sufficient for European certification. Some technical data in arms projects is usually confidential. Therefore, information the aviation agency needed was apparently missing. It will cost the Bundeswehr hundreds of millions of euros to run tests to make a decision that specific data.
“It is right that we have got identified possible significant additional costs to procure a prototype and airworthiness certificate for the Euro Hawk series,” the defense ministry’s undersecretary of state wrote in March. Further details weren’t available. On June 5, however, Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere is because of appear before the defense committee.
NATO meanwhile has declared that it isn’t plagued by the Euro Hawk debacle. The alliance also has plans for a reconnaissance drone in response to the U.S. Global Hawk; “the purchase of an existing operational system”, as a NATO official in Brussels described it. How the alliance plans to convince the ecu Aviation Safety Agency of the plan remains its secret.