Roger That, to the undisciplined life is a circle, round and round and round she goes?
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US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Roger That, to the undisciplined life is a circle, round and round and round she goes?
Jura The idiot
General
very interesting:
vid from inside of it:
source:The Army’s new passed its third flight test on . In a particularly complex exercise, the (IBCS) controlled two types of radar and two types of Patriot missile shooting down two types of incoming missile in the same engagement, contractor Northrop Grumman announced today. Next up for the program — its to determine whether IBCS can move from development into production.
IBCS is intended to connect the current arsenal of stand-alone systems into a greater whole, one in which any shooter — including potential future weapons such as — can get firing data from any sensor. In a previous test in November, for example, a low-altitude cruise missile threat evaded a Patriot radar but got picked up by a Sentinel — originally designed for short-range anti-aircraft fire, not missile defense. With both radars plugged into IBCS, the network fed the Sentinel’s targeting data to a Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) launcher for a successful shoot down.
In the field today, by contrast, Patriots can only take targeting data from their own purpose-built radars. The back in May 2015 kept both Patriot radars and PAC-2 Patriot launchers, but connected them through IBCS instead of the Patriot system, proving the new network worked.
The most recent test was the most complex yet. Cued by both Patriot and Sentinel radar, ICBS sent a PAC-2 interceptor against an incoming cruise missile target and a PAC-3 against an incoming ballistic missile. While a low-tier adversary such as might fire off just one missile at a time, even a mid-tier threat like or — let alone or — would likely launch . That makes multi-target tests particularly important.
vid from inside of it:
Jura The idiot
General
I'm afraid I read
source:One of the most important — and most maligned — elements of the Pentagon bureaucracy has gotten 30 percent faster, according to data exclusively compiled for Breaking Defense by the staff of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. In a new drive for openness, the infamously opaque JROC is also bringing in outside expertise from industry, military laboratories and the Defense Department’s in-house disruptive innovators at .
Reforming the Joint Requirements Oversight Council is a big deal. The military’s weapons-buying bureaucracy is a maze, and at the dark heart of the labyrinth lurks the JROC, which must approve the official wish list — the — for almost any major program. Led by the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, , and comprising the No. 2 officers of each service, supported by lesser boards and lower-ranking working groups, the JROC has a reputation for delaying, watering down, or killing the armed services’ proposals. Many believe it’s where good ideas go to die — slowly.
Gen. Selva wants to change all that. A of 12 requirements documents passing through the JROC process in 2011-2012 found they took, on average, nine months. The Joint Staff surveyed some 50 documents submitted in 2013-2015, a much larger sample size than the GAO took on, at the request of Breaking Defense. The average time they took to complete the process: six months. That’s still short of the official goal — three months — but is much better than the old figure.
ven as it speeds up, the JROC is also opening up. Last month, for the first time my sources can recall, DARPA briefed the JROC itself. (DARPA has briefed the JROC’s subordinate working groups before). With the whole military reemphasizing bleeding-edge technology as part of the new ,the plan is for DARPA to visit the JROC each quarter.
“This is an area [that] we’re very excited about, said the former bomber pilot who, as the Joint Staff’s deputy director for requirements (J-8), runs the JROC’s supporting staff. This wasn’t a briefing confined to any specific program, he emphasized to me in his Pentagon office, but a much more ambitious exercise in broadening the JROC’s perspective.
“It was a briefing to create a level of understanding and awareness about capabilities that the S&T [science and technology] world is pursuing, kind of the realm of the possible,” Basham said. “We’re trying to make sure that we create an environment that is flexible enough to be able to bring in all those Third Offset things that are being reviewed, whether it’s … … .”
The JROC staff is also receiving briefings from industry, including representatives from , where Gen. Selva and other Pentagon leaders have made repeated pilgrimages. “It’s connecting [the JROC staff] to…DARPA, Silicon Valley, agencies, industry, or others,” said Basham, “so they have a level of awareness that allows them to ask the right questions. What you’re looking for… is to create a system that allows that incremental development,” he added, getting bite-sized upgrades into the field quickly, rather than the that have plagued the Pentagon in the past.
The JROC does not exactly have a reputation for speed. To some extent, Basham said, there is a need for a deliberate process.
“The most important thing is to get that early analysis as good as you possibly can (and) put yourself on a good vector right off the bat,” he said. “I’d rather have nine months of good analysis early in the process than rush it through the process, not fully vet the requirement, and only have to come back in later on, when it’s going to cost me actually more time and more money.”
That said, Basham went on, “you have to ask very tough questions, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be a long and drawn-out laborious process.” The J-8 staff is working to clarify exactly what information the JROC requires so programs can come in well-prepared, minimizing time-consuming back-and-forth. It’s also trying to shift more rigorous analysis earlier in the process, before a program can head down a problematic path
The staff is also trying to work with the four armed services before they officially submit a program to the JROC, to streamline the formal process once it begins. It might make some in the services nervous that the Joint Staff is peering over their shoulder before they’re ready, Basham acknowledged, but the purpose is to share information and speed the process — not to second-guess anyone.
“The dialogue and the discussion that takes places throughout the entire process [–] even before those [formal] documents come to the process — that is all goodness, and it creates awareness, it creates visibility, a level of understanding to the requirement,” Basham said. “It is absolutely now designed to be more transparent to provide the greatest level of visibility.”
Conversely, Basham said, the joint staff need to understand that they might not get answers to every question. “Waiting until you have perfect information is just probably not acceptable,” he told me. “If you want to move a little bit quicker, it’s going to take an understanding by all, all parties in the process that we don’t have 100 percent visibility, but we have enough information to move forward.”
“Is it better to move forward incrementally or just wait while ?” Basham asked. “It’s better to in any way that you possibly can.”
Blackstone
Brigadier
The neocons are just as stupid on Russian relations as Chinese.
There are smarter ways than “soft power” for the United States to outmatch its competitors for global influence. The next administration should focus on building competitive “power-niche capabilities”—deliverables focused on specific tasks and directed to achieve specific outcomes. This will give America, and its friends and allies, a much keener edge in the fight to preserve their freedom, prosperity and security in today’s messy world.
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Beautiful !!!
4 US Air Force F-22 Raptor over La Fayette Squadron Memorial
Pretty rare and cool pic of an US Air Force B-52 Stratofortress over Paris
3 French Air Force Mirage 2000N and 1 Rafale B over La Fayette Squadron Memorial
USAF basing revised bomber count on 'minimum' of 100 B-21s
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The command counts 159 bombers in its inventory today including the B-1B, B-52H and B-2A.
“AFGSC continues to analyse the required future bomber force structure which includes successfully fielding a minimum of 100 B-21s,” an AFGSC spokeswoman says in an email. “AFGSC is very focused on ensuring we are ready with properly trained operators and maintainers for the B-21. The minimum of 100 B-21s that we intend to field will fly with a mix of legacy bombers and the total number of bombers required is still being evaluated.”
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Textron braces for V-22 production cut after 2018
Textron is already bracing for further production rate cuts for the Bell Boeing V-22 tiltrotor as the programme enters a proposed third multi-year contract period in 2018.
“I don’t think it’s likely we’ll hold current productions,” says Scott Donnelly, the chief executive of Textron, the parent of Bell Helicopter, speaking to analysts on 20 April on a first quarter earnings call. “It’s going to be a little bit south of that.”
V-22 production peaked in 2013 with 41 aircraft delivered to the US Marine Corps and US Air Force. It has since declined to an annual rate of 24 aircraft deliveries, even as the tiltrotor has attracted its first export order from Japan and secured a long-term deal to supply 48 CMV-22s to the US Navy starting in 2021.
But the USMC and USAF’s’ requirement for the hybrid vertical-lift machine is nearly exhausted. Beyond 2017, when the second multi-year contract expires, the Marines plan to buy around 40 more aircraft. The USAF is considering buying a handful of new aircraft in the next multi-year contract period.
Programme officials have discusseed winning more contracts overseas, but Textron’s bookkeepers are not counting on foreign orders to keep production rates steady.
“I don’t see a potential outcome where we hold production rates,” Donnelly says.
Bell Boeing delivered six V-22 aircraft in the first quarter, matching the output in the same period of 2015.
The US Navy awarded Bell Boeing a $151 million contract earlier this month to begin developing a longer-range version of the V-22, which the service intends to put into service as a replacement for the fixed-wing Grumman C-2 carrier onboard delivery fleet.