US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Oct 28, 2016
it's so so so so fancy Future Marine Mega-Drone May Carry Same Weapons as F-35

source:
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now
Marines Revisit Shipboard Group 5 UAS Requirements After Industry Warnings of High Cost
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The Marine Corps is reconsidering the requirements for its large amphibious ship-based unmanned aerial system (UAS), after early industry input showed the service was headed towards something too large and too expensive, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration told reporters today.

Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh said the
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program proves why industry input during the requirements-generation process is so important.
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process in October 2016 because the Marines were able to prove they were seeking a capability not already found in the joint force – specifically, a large Group 4 or Group 5 UAS capable of operating from a ship or small expeditionary airfield and conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.

What the JROC failed to see, though, which industry has told the Marine Corps recently, is that the requirements lend themselves to an MV-22 Osprey-like vehicle in terms of size and cost, Walsh told reporters after speaking at the WEST 2018 event, cohosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA.

The MUX program merges what used to be two requirements, and covers seven mission areas, USNI News has previously reported: MAGTF C4 (Command, Control, Communications and Computing with Spectrum Agile Data Routing); early warning; persistent fires; escort; electronic warfare; reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition (RISTA); and tactical distribution.

“If you look at the (San Antonio-class) LPDs that are out, many times doing their own operations – could be off of Africa, someplace doing operations – they need organic ISR capability,” Walsh said.
“When you look at our LHAs, our big deck, our ARG/MEUs (Amphibious Ready Groups/Marine Expeditionary Units), the thing that I think we’re missing is a platform that can go out against this kind of threat: long range, airborne early warning, has [electronic warfare] capabilities, ISR capabilities. The ICD we wrote was really all-encompassing: we were calling it a Group 4 or Group 5 that could have logistics capabilities with it, so we started really working with the contractors off the ICD and what we were kind of getting from them was, boy, this is a pretty big broad capability – this is going to be big and this is going to be expensive. They were almost looking to develop a V-22 unmanned sized and cost aircraft. So we looked at that and said, okay, that’s why we’ve got to work with industry more as we develop requirements.”

Ultimately the Marine Corps decided that industry was already investing in sophisticated unmanned logistics systems, which the service has learned through its Sea Dragon experimentation efforts. So the unmanned airborne logistics piece will likely be broken off from MUX and addressed through other means, Walsh said.

Narrowing the scope of the MUX requirements will allow more time and attention for other trades: “should it escort a V-22? Should it be armed? Those are the kind of things we’re going to have to kind of neck down and figure out the cost and what do we really need,” Walsh said.
“What we really need for sure is an unmanned system coming off of an ARG/MEU, could come off the LPD or LX(R) also, that can have long-dwell airborne early warning and ISR capabilities that we don’t have right now.”

Walsh said his colleague, Deputy Commandant for Aviation Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, wants to release a request for information on the MUX program soon, but Walsh hopes to first conduct an industry symposium to further inform the requirements before Rudder takes over the program acquisition. The symposium, which will likely be held in the next month or two, will take industry ideas and help shape the upcoming analysis of alternatives (AoA).

“What we want to do is give the AoA a much better start, because we’re already … hearing from industry, you’re asking for too much, it’s going to cost too much. And I’m going, well why would I start the AoA if they’re already telling me that?” Walsh said.
“So we want to take the time, take a pause, get with them and start the AoA with the right requirements before we move forward.”
 
all I'm able to say is I was wrong Yesterday at 8:13 PM
inside the article mostly covering political talks Senate poised to pass deal with $1.4T for Pentagon, shifting to House fight
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:

"Lawmakers are expected to vote Thursday on a
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that would allow appropriators to draft more detailed spending plans."

I can't imagine I would woke up tomorrow into yet another shutdown (I know I didn't think there would be a shutdown two weeks ago, but this time it'd be too much)
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Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Oct 28, 2016
now
Marines Revisit Shipboard Group 5 UAS Requirements After Industry Warnings of High Cost
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The US Navy arleady has one ready to go...the UCLASS, X-47B.

The Oabma administration gutted it...but it is still there and hap proven its abaility to fly off of and land on carriers. The US Navy should immediately move it back forward on the burners.

The US MArines can and should develop a seperate verticl take off airraft to do the same that its F-35s can control, just like they can control the X-47B.

The X-447B was hitsoric and was ready to go...I pray to God that we will bring it back.
 
The US Navy arleady has one ready to go...the UCLASS, X-47B.

The Oabma administration gutted it...but it is still there and hap proven its abaility to fly off of and land on carriers. The US Navy should immediately move it back forward on the burners.

The US MArines can and should develop a seperate verticl take off airraft to do the same that its F-35s can control, just like they can control the X-47B.

The X-447B was hitsoric and was ready to go...I pray to God that we will bring it back.
Jeff Nov 30, 2017
Navy expects MQ-25 decision by summer
LOL I assume it's summer of 2018 source is FlightGlobal
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for now, I'm "impressed" by one more governmental shutdown, anyway responded to your post in
US Navy MQ-25 Stingray Unmanned Aerial Tanker 22 minutes ago
 
since I read it, I post
CNO: 2019 Budget Aims for ‘Whole’ Fleet, Faster Construction of 355-Ship Navy
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waiting for "The 2019 budget will also
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, unlike the 2018 budget."
The upcoming Fiscal Year 2019 budget request will support Navy efforts to begin building a 355-ship fleet while also balancing capability upgrades and readiness, the chief of naval operations said on Thursday.

CNO Adm. John Richardson recently spoke of a six-pronged approach to creating naval power and what he has dubbed “the navy the nation needs.”

Asked by USNI News about how the FY 2019 budget request, set for release to Congress and the public on Monday, would reflect a balance of those six needs – capacity, capability, networks, sailor training, agile operations and readiness – Richardson said, “when that budget is delivered, one of the things that you can anticipate is that it will be informed by the strategic direction we are talking about, it will be consistent with the (six) dimensions of the navy the nation needs.”

Richardson said in a town hall discussion at the WEST 2018 conference, co-hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA, that the FY 2018 budget – which has still yet to be passed into law – “represents a pretty whole budget, particularly when it comes to funding those accounts that sometimes are not as visible but very important in terms of maintaining readiness. And so it funds readiness to really the maximum that is either required or executable. 2019 continues on that,” he said.

The 2019 budget will also
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, unlike the 2018 budget. The Navy has been pushing for a 355-ship fleet since December 2016 but has put out relatively little public information on how it would achieve that goal. Lawmakers have been increasingly vocal in recent weeks about wanting the service to explain not just that it needs a larger fleet, but what that larger navy would do, and why it needs to contain a particular balance of ships.

Asked by USNI News if the 2016 studies were still relevant to answer those types of questions for lawmakers 14 months after their release, Richardson said they were.

“That’s a good starting point still, is my point. Let’s get building. First and foremost, let’s get building. We can argue whether 355 is the eventual right number, or is it 360, 370,” he said. The world continues to grow more complicated by the week, he said, “but in the near-term, we’re at 280 against a target of 355. Let’s get building.”

“The great consensus is that we need more naval power,” he continued.
“We can dive into several studies that justify that in different ways, but there’s a convergence there, so I think we’re on pretty solid ground.”

Richardson said the 30-year ship plan would include historical information on shipbuilding dating to 1955.

“The shipbuilding industrial base is now one-third the industrial base it was in 1955. There are 14 shipyards that build ships that have just shuttered or gotten out of the defense business. So you can see these two conflicting trends: the need to grow the number of ships, and you just don’t have the industrial base capacity to do it,” he said.

The ability to reach a 355-ship fleet is “very realistic, but I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be a matter of commitment in terms of resources. So we have sort of a family of plans: some sort status quo, it takes a long time to get to 355. If you want to get there faster, there’s the current limit of the current industrial base, and that can go so fast. And if you want to go faster than that, we’re going to have to build shipyards or think differently.”

Also at the town hall event were Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller and Commandant of the Coast Guard. Adm. Paul Zukunft. They spoke
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that would provide higher toplines and greater funding stability and predictability.

“We are looking very optimistically at the deal that’s being cut that will fully fund an icebreaker, that will not just restore our infrastructure from a ravaging hurricane season but make it so it won’t fall down – build a house of bricks instead of straw, if you will, approach to the service. But making meaningful investments in a service that the sun never sets on,” Zukunft said. He noted that 40 percent of the Coast Guard’s capital ships bought, manned and maintained with Coast Guard dollars go to the Pentagon’s geographic combatant commanders around the globe, but 96-percent of the Coast Guard’s budget falls into the nondefense discretionary account, which was subject to even stricter spending caps than was the military’s budget since the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Zukunft said the service needed a predictable budget so that it could manage risk appropriately, and it needed a higher topline for medium- and heavy-icebreaker design and construction.

“We clearly need to build new icebreakers, and with the budget deal this will finally put real money to at least build the first one,” he said.

Neller said of the pending budget deal, “I’m hopeful that they’ll pass it. It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money. And we’re going to get that money like we did last year, with about half the fiscal year left to spend it, and that’s not any way to run a business. If they can do a multiyear [budget] without having to deal with the Budget Control Act, that will help us because then we can actually project and we can be more efficient.”

Neller said the force has been operating nonstop since 2001, with operational requirements growing for the maritime force.

“The gear’s gotten older, and we’re trying to recapitalize and maintain readiness and get ready for what we think might come and maintain our legacy equipment – and that takes money,” the general said.

Even as the budget deal’s higher topline would allow the Marine Corps to more easily balance its needs – paying salaries, buying new platforms like the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, improving infrastructure like hangars and housing, and more – he made clear the Marine Corps and its sister services needed to ensure they were being smart with every dollar they spend. To that end, he praised new Pentagon and Navy leadership for pushing the services to do just that.

“I find it quite refreshing to deal with [Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick] Shanahan and Ms. [Ellen] Lord at [under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics] and our own service secretary, Secretary [Richard V.] Spencer, because they take a very different view, they take a business view, and then they’re asking us some very hard questions: they’re asking really hard questions about, okay, what did you get out of that money, what value did you get out of that, how did you spend that money,” Neller said.
“It’s forcing us to be, in a positive way, more introspective and analytical about what we’re doing and the processes we’re using and how we spend this money so we can get a maximum benefit out of it.”
 
speaking of budget requests ...
Trump wants 24 new Super Hornets, reverses Obama decision
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A request in President Donald Trump’s new defense budget proposal could add 24 Super Hornets to the Navy’s air fleet and keep a Boeing plant in St. Louis alive, according to a
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Thursday by Bloomberg News.

The defense budget proposal for fiscal year 2019 is expected to be formally released on Feb. 12. If confirmed, the request for more Super Hornets would be the largest addition since 2012 and would reverse the Obama administration’s decision to stop buying the aircraft.

The Trump administration has requested 14 Super Hornets, and House and Senate appropriators have proposed adding 10 more, according to Bloomberg. That total of 24 jets happens to be the key number needed to keep Boeing’s plant in St. Louis running.

The plant’s future was believed to be at risk after the Navy committed to adopting the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter to replace the F/A-18E/F Hornets.

The Hornets were originally set to retire by 2035, but the Navy was forced to reevaluate that date in 2015 due to
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in the F-35’s development.

The F-35Cs are expected to reach initial operational capacity this year, but the Navy needs additional Hornets to fill its inventory shortage until more of the new jets are purchased.

The Navy has struggled recently with aviation readiness. As of last October, only one-third of the Navy’s Super Hornets were fully mission-capable and
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.

The Super Hornet fleet is scheduled to begin service life extension maintenance this year, and the Navy may take advantage of the opportunity to
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to the more advanced Block III configuration. The upgrades would give the Hornets conformal fuel tanks and add to their stealth capabilities.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
The US Navy arleady has one ready to go...the UCLASS, X-47B.

The Oabma administration gutted it...but it is still there and hap proven its abaility to fly off of and land on carriers. The US Navy should immediately move it back forward on the burners.

The US MArines can and should develop a seperate verticl take off airraft to do the same that its F-35s can control, just like they can control the X-47B.

The X-447B was hitsoric and was ready to go...I pray to God that we will bring it back.
There has been talk between the USMC and Bell Helicopter regarding there V280 technologies along this route. Bell calls the concept the V247 Vigilant it's a scailed down variant of the V280 in concept with simmilar capabilities to the Predator UAS. Like the V280 Valor it would be able to take off the Deck of a LHD like a helicopter, have the exrended range and speed of a turboprop and have internally carried weapons. It could loiter and hover.
 
Nov 22, 2017
Nov 10, 2017

and here comes a pretty tough article
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source is BreakingDefense
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now Is JSTARS the right way forward? Even Lockheed says it’s a question worth asking.
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Next week, the U.S. Air Force is expected to
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on whether to continue the JSTARS recap program, but a top Lockheed Martin executive contends that
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might actually be the best approach, even as a win could mean a $6.9 billion contract for the next phase of the program.

“If ultimately the Air Force decides to not go forward with that program, clearly we will respect that decision. And frankly, we understand,” said Orlando Carvahlo, vice president of Lockheed’s aeronautics business area, during an exclusive interview with Defense News Tuesday at the Singapore Airshow.

In September, the Air Force acknowledged that it was considering canceling JSTARS recap in favor of a distributed model that would tie together its current intelligence assets and perhaps introduce new nodes could help fill the ground surveillance role.

The concern, according to Air Force leaders like its civilian head Heather Wilson, was that a buy of 17 mission-equipped aircraft would neither provide enough coverage to meet requirements nor be survivable enough to penetrate into non-contested environments.

Carvhalo acknowledged that those concerns may be valid, and that an alternative approach would bring some benefits.

“Having insight into some of the operations that have been going on in the Middle East, things like that, we can appreciate the tradeoff that the Air Force is trying to make, especially as they think ahead into the future and look at a more distributed model for command and control, also taking into account permissible versus non-permissible airspace,” he said.

“There is a very legitimate, very reasonable discussion you can have, debate you can have about, is JSTARS the way you want to provide this kind of capability in the future?”

Carvahlo’s statements contrast sharply with that of Boeing and Northrop Grumman, the two other defense companies currently in source selection with Lockheed, both of which are fiercely fighting for the program’s continuation. In part, that may be because Northrop and Boeing have more to lose if the JSTARS recap program is canceled.

Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor on the legacy E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System program, which was based on a Boeing 707 airframe.

For Northrop, the program gives the company the opportunity to continue on as the provider of airborne ground surveillance and battle management. It also is a surefire win for the company’s radar wing, which beat out Raytheon late last year to provide the main sensor for the recap program.

Boeing sees JSTARS as the opening salvo in a wider strategy to sell militarized versions of the 737 to meet the Air Force’s needs for special mission aircraft. Boeing’s JSTARS recap offering is based on the 737, but that airframe could also be used as the basis for future E-3 AWACS or RC-135 replacements, a Boeing official said in 2016.

During a Sept. 13 briefing with reporters, Rod Meranda, business development lead for Boeing’s JSTARS recap program, asserted that the JSTARS recap program was the best way to replace the current capability.

Other alternatives would entail using more aircraft—for instance, six to eight RQ-4 Global Hawk drones to have the same radar coverage of a JSTARS plane—and increase the amount of time it takes to make decisions, as data captured onboard an unmanned system would have to be processed on the ground and then exported back to other airborne assets, he said.

“With the JSTARS, [it] sees it — people are onboard and can communicate it out to all the fighters and bombers immediately and take care of those targets,” he said. “If you lose that satellite communications capability, the unmanned platforms are useless.”

Experts have said Lockheed’s lack of ties to the current JSTARS program makes it more a dark horse candidate in the recap competition, although Carvahlo argued that Lockheed’s Skunk Works technology wing’s longstanding pedigree in ISR aircraft production like the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 Dragon Lady makes it a viable JSTARS recap provider.

Although none of the companies have been briefed by the Air Force on the outcome of the decision and source selection on the program continues, Carvahlo said that Lockheed had already begun thinking about other approaches for doing the JSTARS mission and hinted that some of those could incorporate aspects of the sensor fusion technologies that characterize its flagship product, the F-35.

“We haven’t walked in and said, ‘Here’s our alternative,’ but we have concepts for how we think are other ways to do it, and those other ways may not lend themselves to a platform, it could be very much a much more federated, distributed approach instead of having it centralized in a single platform,” he said.

“What we’re seeing with our fifth-gen airplanes, both F-22 and F-35, with the ISR capability those planes have [and] how those airplanes are integrating more into the network in their operations, that to us appears to add a lot of credence to the idea that you might be able to do this mission differently.”
 
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