US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

4001/78 = 51 of course rounded
Contracts for March 20, 2019
NAVY

The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, is awarded a ceiling priced $4,040,458,297 modification to convert a previously awarded advanced acquisition contract (N00019-18-C-1046) to a fixed-price-incentive-firm-target multi-year contract. The target price for this multi-year contract is $4,001,410,000. This modification provides for the full-rate production and delivery of 78 F/A-18 aircraft, specifically ...

... etc.:
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Brumby

Major
... is your naïve opinion claiming a connection between installing some gear and "progress", just look at USN LCSs
Presumably you understand that is fallacious reasoning. Every program is assessed on their individual merits i.e. case by case. Attributing the issues of the LCS program to the Laser system is simply wrong and pushing such a view is disingenuous.
The most recent decision to install a laser on board a destroyer is a culmination from various program testing that began in 2009. At that time the beam power was reported at 30 kW. In 2014, the testing continued on the USS Ponce until 2017. Operational testing at sea include against swarming boats and UAVs. The outcome of that was the HELIOS project and an increment 1 laser system initially to deliver 60 kW. Following RFP in July 2017, LM was awarded a contract to build 2 HELIOS system with one to be installed on an Aegis destroyer. I believe the plan is by increment 3, the system will deliver 150 kW of power. IMO, putting the HELIOS system on board a destroyer is a major milestone because that is a step that typically precede a full rollout.should the results meet operational expectations.
 

Brumby

Major
radar news, actually interesting, despite sensationalist title
With an eye to China and Russia, the US Navy plans a lethal upgrade to its destroyers
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IMO, the decision to upgrade the radar is a big deal because SPY-6 delivers double the detection range on half the detection size. It is a 32 factor improvement in S/R. Even though what is planned for Flight IIs is downsized, the capability improvement is still very significant.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
ends with

"So, a decade after the Marine Corps first unveiled the Harvest Hawk concept, the path finally looks clear for the service to give the kits the guns that it had promised were coming from the very beginning."

[facepalm emoticon]
Being blunt given the shift from Asymmetric where gunships and Coin Turboprop shine to Peer on peer I am in the why bother at this point.
The attack capabilities in a C130 platform are nice against ISIS but if you deal with someone packing and integrated air defence it's a flying bullseye.
 

anzha

Senior Member
Registered Member
The US navy has been putzing around with its AOA for its Next Generation Fighter (what it is called on the budget line). This year was projected to be when they finished the AOA. They had only put about $5M/year for some time and projected that for some time into the future. That has modestly changed. The US Navy is asking for $20M in FY20 for the NGF.

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Presumably you understand that is fallacious reasoning. Every program is assessed on their individual merits i.e. case by case. Attributing the issues of the LCS program to the Laser system is simply wrong and pushing such a view is disingenuous.
"Attributing the issues of the LCS program to the Laser system" is not what I said or implied Yesterday at 8:16 PM

actually it's easy to reconstruct this conversation:

pulling from #10835 Brumby, Yesterday at 10:16 AM "Regardless of the history and your scepticism, the fact that they are moving ahead in putting a laser on board an operational destroyer is the strongest testament of progress. ..."

I added Yesterday at 8:16 PM

"... is your naïve opinion claiming a connection between installing some gear and "progress", just look at USN LCSs"

the whole point is the Pentagon plus of course the vendor may just, LOL if my English doesn't fail now, 'put on a brave face'

(in case you didn't know what I meant, here it'd be the Pentagon and of course the vendor denying for example lasers wouldn't work against sea-skimming missiles:

arctic-convoy.jpg


and the Pentagon and of course the vendor offering 'future increments' in such a situation, LOL)

the connection to the USN LCSs is at one point the Pentagon knew 'single-role frigate' was a flawed idea, but the Pentagon kept spending tens of billions on the USN LCSs;

EDIT do you know what I mean?
The most recent decision to install a laser on board a destroyer is a culmination from various program testing that began in 2009. At that time the beam power was reported at 30 kW. In 2014, the testing continued on the USS Ponce until 2017. Operational testing at sea include against swarming boats and UAVs. The outcome of that was the HELIOS project and an increment 1 laser system initially to deliver 60 kW. Following RFP in July 2017, LM was awarded a contract to build 2 HELIOS system with one to be installed on an Aegis destroyer. I believe the plan is by increment 3, the system will deliver 150 kW of power. IMO, putting the HELIOS system on board a destroyer is a major milestone because that is a step that typically precede a full rollout.should the results meet operational expectations.
 
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Being blunt given the shift from Asymmetric where gunships and Coin Turboprop shine to Peer on peer I am in the why bother at this point.
The attack capabilities in a C130 platform are nice against ISIS but if you deal with someone packing and integrated air defence it's a flying bullseye.
LOL!

so why, according to you, they'll now add those Bushmasters:
 
since I've now read it, I post
More fire power: US Army sets out to develop new missiles in FY20
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:

The U.S. Army is embarking on several new missile development programs while ramping up and accelerating other ongoing programs to deliver more fire power to the force at greater ranges, according to the service’s justification books for its
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.

The service’s No. 1 modernization priority is Long-Range Precision Fires, or LRPF, because the Army believes it is central to future operations in environments where access to terrain may be difficult or entirely denied, or where soldiers lack the territorial advantage to counter threats.

And the LRPF capability plays an important role the service’s emerging doctrine — Multidomain Operations — where the Army and its sister services will work more in concert across sea, land, air, space and cyber domains to overtake the enemy.

The Army plans to begin the development of three major missiles beginning in FY20: a land-based hypersonic missile, a mobile medium-range missile, and a future interceptor for medium-range air and missile defense.

The service also
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over five years to get the programs well off the ground.

Land-based hypersonic missile

The service plans to spend $1.2 billion across the next five years beginning in FY20 to develop a land-based hypersonic missile through Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Army Forces Strategic Command.

The project’s goal is to build a “prototype strategic attack weapon system to defeat Anti Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities, suppress adversary Long Range Fires and engage other high payoff/time sensitive targets,” the Army’s budget documents read.

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within the Army have been kept relatively close, and little about the effort is public.

The plan, according to the Army, is to integrate common hypersonic glide bodies with two-stage boosters into canisters to create an all-up round prototype.

The Army would like to spend $228 million in FY20 to conduct a systems requirement review and start a preliminary design review.

A total of $181 million is requested in FY21 to move through the preliminary design review, which will end in the first quarter of FY22.

In FY22, the Army will conduct a critical design review and then begin testing all-up rounds at the end of the fiscal year into FY23. The service has budgeted $137 million in FY22 to accomplish those tasks.

The service will then move into full-system flight tests in FY23 using a $359 million budget.

While the hypersonic weapons effort is not resident in the Army’s LRPF Cross-Functional Team, the CFT is closely watching the development, according to its director, Col. John Rafferty.

The service established CFTs as part of Army Futures Command, a new four-star command stood up last year to tackle the service’s top modernization priorities. Each CFT focuses on a different priority.

The Army’s new hypersonic program office will own the program, but the LRPF CFT will be “joined at the hip” with the office as well as Space and Missile Defense Command as the missile is developed. So many are involved because the technology will be useful in future development within the LRPF portfolio and is part of a “layered standoff” capability needed against future threats that the CFT is developing as a concept, Rafferty told Defense News in a March 19 interview.

Mobile medium-range missile

Over the next five budget cycles, the Army will spend nearly $1 billion on another new missile program it’s calling the mobile medium-range missile.

The missile has been called a variety of names in conversation, including the intermediate-range missile, the INDOPACOM missile and the land-based cruise missile; but its development is in response to a need in the Indo-Pacific area of operations to address a medium-range (1,000-kilometer) gap in capability there.

It’s unclear under what program office the MMRM would live, but it’s possible the LRPF CFT could host its development down the road.

According to the budget documents, the Army is developing the missile to provide the joint force commander a lower-cost strategic capability “that can attack specific threat vulnerabilities in order to penetrate, dis-integrate, and exploit in the strategic and deep maneuver areas,” and it mitigates an “extremely high risk” capability gap.

The Army is requesting $20 million to get started in FY20. The service plans to develop acquisition and contract strategies, identify system requirements, and assess technology and component maturity.

In FY21, the service plans to move into the technology-maturation and risk-reduction phase, which will continue into the outyears beyond the Army’s five-year plan.

The service also plans to reach a milestone A decision point in FY21 to enter into the technology- and component-maturation phases.

An initial design review is scheduled for the end of FY22, and a preliminary design review at the end of FY24.

Future interceptor

The Army is looking for its next missile for a medium-range air and missile defense system currently under development.

Though the service hasn’t chosen a new radar for the system, Northrop Grumman is continuing to build the brains of the system — the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System — which is expected to reach initial operational capability in FY22.

The Army’s legacy system — the Patriot air and missile defense system — fires a family of Patriot Advanced Capability missiles as well as the Guided Enhanced Missile used to defeat tactical ballistic missiles.

Not much is budgeted across the five-year funding plan — $232.9 million — but the program will kick off in FY20, using $8 million to start a competitive selection of a future interceptor for its Integrated Air and Missile Defense system.

The service will conduct an analysis of alternatives in FY20 and plans to use other transaction authorities — a special contracting mechanism — to work on competitive concept developments.

The Army will make a materiel development decision in the second quarter of FY20, and will then take a year to conduct the analysis of alternatives.

The service will work on concepts over a two-and-a-half-year period, ending in the beginning of FY23. The service will simultaneously produce a future interceptor capabilities development document.

A competitive request for proposals will drop in midway through FY22 with a competitive downselect in the second quarter of FY23, when the Army will also reach a technology maturation decision point.
 
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