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COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT OF TECHNOLOGY 134 Within the powerplant segment of the aeronautics industry, the U.S. has gained competitive advantage not only from its accumulated massive civil transport development and experience, but from advances in system design and performance sponsored by DOD. It would appear that powerplants could be built by the mid-1990s with approximately 10 percent better thrust-to-weight ratios and 15 to 20 percent lower specific fuel consumption than the "energy efficient engine" technology that evolved from recent NASA activity. The market push, because of dollar volume, is stronger for large-aircraft powerplant development than for small. Similar technology achievements are feasible and are being pursued, but to a lesser degree for small powerplants. Foreign competition is very active in the small engine area. Inherent in the system synthesis for advanced aircraft designs is industry's ability to produce and apply complex avionics systems that can provide more effective operating functions at lower power consumption and overall weights. Here, too, military developments help by stringent requirements for ultrareliable, fault-tolerant system design and the support of a production base that keeps costs lower. MAINTAINING MOMENTUM IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT A series of mutually reinforcing factors has enabled the United States to maintain the degree of competitive and commercial leadership in civil aircraft that it has at present. The bedrock of that leadership is technologyâits effective use provides superior performance and economy at competitive prices. Given the significant opportunities for further technological progress that have been identified, it is apparent that maintaining momentum in R&D is critical for preserving technological leadership. Important technological advances are not yet fully validated, and their embodiment in new aircraft, in many cases, will not occur until the 1990s. This long delay between technology development and its incorporation into new products creates vulnerability, because loss of momentum in R&D would not be apparent in the deterioration of competitive position in the U.S.âprobably until it was firmly entrenched. The growing trend toward internationalization of aircraft manufacture, with its inevitable sharing of technology with foreign partners, lends even greater urgency to the need to insure the vitality of our basic research and technology development effort. Although some information is undoubtedly transferred in international joint ventures for manufacture, the technical knowledge underlying the embodiment need not be. The technical
