Helicopters occupy important niches in both military and civil aviation. Military models are of two kinds—combat and transport. Combat helicopters are designed by manufacturers specifically for that military purpose, whereas helicopters for transportation frequently exist in both civil and military variants. Short-distance personnel transportation, construction, police work, and traffic and event monitoring by the media dominate civilian uses.
Seven Western and two Russian manufacturers produce most of the world’s large military and civil helicopters. Sikorsky (part of United Technologies), Bell Helicopter Textron, and Boeing have their facilities in the United States. France’s Aerospatiale and Germany’s Daimler-Benz Aerospace (later DaimlerChrysler Aerospace) combined their helicopter activities as Eurocopter. Other major helicopter makers are Agusta of Italy (subsidiary of Finmeccanica) and Westland of Great Britain as well as Kamov and Mil of Russia. A large number of helicopters are sold by the American producer Robinson, which builds low-cost, relatively unsophisticated training and light-use vehicles.
In a special category is the tilt-rotor aircraft, which can operate as a helicopter or rotate its engines and fly like a fixed-wing airplane. A modern example is the V-22 Osprey, jointly produced by Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing as a military assault transport for the U.S. Marines. First flown in prototype in 1989, the Osprey can achieve speeds in excess of 500 km (310 miles) per hour.
Uncrewed aerial vehicles
Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), a class of aircraft akin to radio-controlled models and cruise missiles, have become significant factors in military reconnaissance. Carrying sensors for surveillance, they are designed to fly either for long duration at very high altitudes or for shorter periods at low altitudes and to transmit their acquired data to orbiting satellites. A subclass of UAVs, often remotely piloted and sometimes called drones, are used as aerial targets for fighters and antiaircraft weapons. Although most aircraft companies engage in UAV manufacture, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon in the United States and Israel Aircraft Industries have specialized in this area and are major suppliers to many national defense agencies.
Missiles
Missiles (see rocket and missile system), which are unpiloted, rocket- or jet-powered delivery systems for munitions, have assumed an important role in military strategy and tactics. Originally conceived as powered artillery shells and therefore the purview of munitions manufacturers, they rapidly became products of the aerospace industry by virtue of the ranges achievable with small jet and rocket engines and of the common use of airborne launch platforms. Missiles are regarded as substitutes for very-high-cost aircraft, and the industry is a major source of new weapons to upgrade the capability of existing fighters. Long-range jet-powered cruise missiles, typified by General Dynamics and Boeing’s Tomahawk, are, in fact, unpiloted aircraft equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads. Shorter-range missiles such as the Russian SCVO, Chinese Silkworm, and French Exocet have become factors in the arsenals of developing countries, with the competition for these markets being similar to that for military aircraft.
Rocket-powered intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads have been built or integrated by major aircraft firms—submarine-based fleet ballistic missiles (FBMs) by Lockheed Martin and EADS and land-based systems such as Peacekeeper and Minuteman by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, respectively.
The structure and weight of ballistic missiles lie primarily in their rocket motors and associated liquid-fuel tanks or solid-propellant canisters. Suppliers having the largest share are Rocketdyne (see Boeing Company) and Aerojet in liquid-fuel motors and Thiokol and Alliant Techsystems for solid fuels and nozzles. Missile guidance and navigation systems provide key roles for subcontracting companies such as Litton Industries, Honeywell, Rockwell Collins, and Raytheon, although the prime contractors retain responsibility for integration and testing.
Other kinds of airborne missiles are, in essence, projectiles with aerodynamic stabilization systems, sensors, and controls that are used to seek and home in on targets. Because structure is a minimal aspect of the product, integration and testing is often the responsibility of the electronics firms supplying the guidance systems and related elements. Almost all developed countries have the capacity and industry to design and build these weapons, but American, British, French, Chinese, and Israeli products are widely purchased by developing countries.
Space launchers
The space launch vehicle is the rocket system that lifts a payload—a satellite or other spacecraft—into orbit. With the exception of the U.S. crewed space shuttle, all space missions make use of expendable launch vehicles (ELVs).
Various companies build small ELVs capable of taking light payloads into space. In this market segment the American supplier Orbital Sciences Corporation is unique in its production of an aircraft-launched booster, Pegasus, that can carry payloads as heavy as 500 kg (1,100 pounds) into a low Earth orbit. Examples of medium-size ground-launched ELVs include Orbital Sciences’s Taurus and Lockheed Martin’s Athena I and II, with payload capabilities in the 800–2,000 kg (1,750–4,400 pound) range for low Earth orbit. Multiton satellite payloads require large launchers, which are built by firms in the United States, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, China, and Japan. In the United States, Lockheed Martin makes the Atlas-Centaur and Titan families of launchers, and Boeing the Delta family. Russia’s Proton launcher is the product of Khrunichev, while Ukraine’s Zenit is fabricated by Yuzhnoye. In China, Great Wall Aerospace builds the Long March vehicle, and, in the mid 1990s, Japan entered the field with its first indigenous launch vehicle, the H-II. The largest share of the commercial space launch market, more than half, is held by Europe’s Ariane rockets. The United States enjoyed all of the commercial launch market in the early 1980s, but by the mid 1990s its share had fallen to about 30 percent.
The space shuttle is unique in that it is both a launch vehicle and a space platform. As a launcher, it is able to transport as much as 30 tons into a low Earth orbit. Although Rockwell delivered the last shuttle orbiter in 1991 (for an active fleet of four orbiters), each launch requires many components that must be supplied new or refurbished. For example, the external tank, which is discarded once the propellants are exhausted and disintegrates on reentry, is supplied by Lockheed Martin. The reusable solid rocket boosters are jettisoned and recovered by parachute after launch; new and rebuilt units are provided by Thiokol. To extend the reach of the shuttle’s payloads to higher altitudes (and to serve as an upper stage for the Titan IV launcher), Boeing produces the solid-fueled Inertial Upper Stage rocket.