The Collier Trophy honors the outstanding achievement in aerospace during the previous year, and 2012, as you’ll see from these nominees, was a year of innovation for the ages. Also, a look at Collier awards for achievements that didn’t work out as planned.
** THE BOEING COMPANY (2011): For designing, building, certifying, delivering, and supporting the Boeing 787; demonstrating significant advances in the use of materials, technologies, and systems to enhance safety, performance, comfort, and value in commercial aircraft. _Boeing’s revolutionary design was years late, billions over budget and the worldwide fleet currently sits idle as investigators try to figure out the cause of mysterious battery fires. Here’s one program we all hope rises again to great heights. _
** THE AUTOMATIC DEPENDENT SURVEILLANCE-BROADCAST (ADS-B) TEAM OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR GROUPS (2007): For conceptualizing, developing, and initially implementing the next generation performance-based air-ground, ground-air, and air-air surveillance system. By 2007 ADS-B was a mess, and the industry-wide team recognized for the Collier was still working to figure out a basic architecture for the system, a quest that five years later is still ongoing to some degree, with numerous questions left unanswered about how ADS-B works (including the U.S.’s odd dual pipe system) and why it works that way. The good news: ADS-B has opened up free near-real-time weather in the cockpit.
** LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, THE BOEING COMPANY, PRATT & WHITNEY, NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION, RAYTHEON CORPORATION, BAE SYSTEMS AND THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE (2006): For designing, testing, and operating the revolutionary F-22 Raptor, providing total air dominance for America’s future. _The Raptor, while capable of doing things that no other front line fighter can, has been a prodigiously expensive project at at time when the very need for next-gen air surpemecy fighters is debatable. The year the Raptor won the Collier, the very fate of the program was in the balance. In the end, the F-22’s production continued, but the overall order was cut by a third. The program was halted in 2011 after fewer than 200 very expensive airplanes had been produced. Since its inception, eight of the fighters have been lost, numerous pilots have lost consciousness while flying it, and rain can erode the radar evading aircraft coating. _
** ECLIPSE AVIATION (2005): For innovation in the advancement of general aviation through the design, development and manufacture of the Eclipse 500, the World’s first very light jet. _While the Collier is supposedly awarded for actual achievement, the Eclipse 500 by 2005 was the very essence of pie in the sky technology. The story of the lightest production jet, its delays, cost overruns and the company’s eventual bankruptcy is well known. The eventual full certification and reestablishment of the airplane, as the Eclipse 550, shows that sometimes even epic fails can have happy endings. _
** PRATT & WHITNEY, ROLLS-ROYCE, LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION, BAE SYSTEMS AND THE JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER PROGRAM OFFICE (2001): For designing, developing, and demonstrating the Integrated LiftFan Propulsion System, the next generation in aviation propulsion performance, efficiency and safety. _The Joint Strike Fighter, a trillion dollar program, has seen numerous (too numerous to cite) equipment failures, cost overruns, political miscalculations and performance downgrades since it won the Collier just over a decade ago. The cost of the airplane has increased, from less than $90 million per copy to more than $200 million each (or more, depending on how you do the math). Still, the F-35 will be the future of American fighter power, and pilots are now beginning to train on the airplane. Initial overseas deployment, however, is still five years away. _
** NASA LEWIS RESEARCH CENTER AND THE NASA/INDUSTRY ADVANCED TURBOPROP TEAM (1987): For the development of advanced turboprop propulsion concepts for single rotation, gearless counter rotation, and geared counter rotation inducted fan systems. _The award for this ducted turboprop research was all very well and good. The only problem is, it has led nowhere, as conventional turboprops and turbofan engines continue to dominate the marketplace and improve upon the state of the art very nicely indeed. _
** THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE 7th AIR FORCE AND 8TH AIR FORCE OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE AND TASK FORCE 77 OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY (1972): For successfully carrying out Operation Linebacker II, the air campaign against North Vietnam in December, 1972 which through precise, accurate, and determined attacks on key military targets in the face of unprecedented defenses, brought about a cease fire under terms which attained United States objectives in Southeast Asia. _One of the most controversial awards in Collier history, the trophy was presented to the personnel behind Operation Linebacker, the air campaign against targets in North Vietnam. While no one disputes the skill and bravery of the personnel who waged the campaign, the outcome wasn’t as the Collier committee predicted. While the NAA optimistically stated that the operation had been a success in determining the outcome of the war, history would soon tell a different tale. _
** PACKARD MOTOR CAR COMPANY (1931)****: For development of the diesel aircraft engine. _The NAA might have gotten this one right… aero diesels are finally coming into their own, just 70 years or so after Packard accepted the Collier hardware. _
** HAROLD F. PITCAIRN AND HIS ASSOCIATES (1930): For development and application of the autogiro. Today autogiros are everywhere we look. Okay, not so much. But they were all the rage in 1930, so the Collier committee saw fit to award its top prize to the technology. Truth is, sometimes things don’t work out the way you thought they would.
