You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Jura The idiot
General
according to DoDBuzz Northrop Sees Good Times Ahead for Big Defense Firms
source:Northrop Grumman Corp., which won the contract last year to build the new B-21 “Raider” bomber for the Air Force, reported solid sales and profits in its latest quarterly earnings report and predicted more growth opportunities in its defense forecast as the Pentagon rebuilds.
In a report last week and in a conference call with analysts, Northrop CEO and President Wes Bush said the firm would be a major player in the current competition with Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. to build what the Air Force is now calling the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent to replace the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
In the third-quarter, Northrop reported sales of $6.2 billion, a 3-percent increase over third quarter 2015, while earnings rose to $602 million from $516 million, Reuters reported. “Our third quarter results demonstrate that we continue to build a strong foundation for profitable growth over the long term,” Bush said.
In a defense forecast, the chief executive officer said the rising sales and profits were expected to continue as the Defense Department invests in new systems and overhauls old ones — despite the gridlock in Congress over the defense budget.
“It is an interesting time in that it’s clear that there’s a significant re-capitalization wave that’s underway across a number of our customer communities,” Bush said. “Quite frankly, it’s one that’s been deferred for quite a long time.”
The Pentagon was “facing the need to address a number of not only re-capitalizations of older, existing assets,” he said, “but also the need to address what’s going on around the globe in terms of the emergence of more aggressive threat profiles.”
Bush cited the need for “the recapitalization of the nuclear infrastructure” with the GBSD to replace the Minuteman IIIs, which have been the backbone of the nation’s nuclear triad.
“This too is an imperative for the country given the amount of time it has been since we really invested in our ICBM fleet,” he said. “It’s an area of strong expertise and knowledge-base in our company, so we see that as a really good opportunity.”
Last month, at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said of the Minuteman IIIs, “If we don’t replace these systems, quite simply they will age even more and become unsafe, unreliable and ineffective.”
The Air Force has estimated that the Minuteman III replacements will cost about $62 billion but Bloomberg News last month, citing the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, put the price tag at $85 billion.
Jura The idiot
General
this is interesting:
BAE Systems Ramps Up for Virginia-Class Submarine Payload Module Launch Tube Production
BAE Systems Ramps Up for Virginia-Class Submarine Payload Module Launch Tube Production
source:BAE Systems has received a contract from General Dynamics Electric Boat to begin work associated with the production of Virginia Payload Module (VPM) tubes for Block V Virginia-class (SSN 774) submarines. This initial award will fund work surrounding certification, special tooling, and other items related to production readiness.
The VPM is an additional mid-body section being integrated into the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class submarines, beginning with the second boat of Block V. It contains four large-diameter payload tubes, each capable of storing and launching up to seven Tomahawk cruise missiles. Accessible while at sea, the VPM also offers an unprecedented amount of flexibility in the potential integration of future payloads
“The new Virginia Payload Module will bring an additional 28 missiles to each Virginia-class submarine, tripling their payload strike capacity,” said Joe Senftle, vice president and general manager of Weapon Systems at BAE Systems. “Increasing the firepower of the Virginia class is a cost-effective way for the Navy to maintain its strike capability after its four SSGN guided missile submarines retire.”
BAE Systems has a long history of supporting the U.S. undersea fleet as the leading provider of propulsors and other submarine systems. Earlier this year the company announced it was selected to provide propulsors, spare hardware, and tailcones for Block IV Virginia-class submarines.
Work on the initial award will be performed at BAE Systems’ facility in Louisville, Kentucky. Contracts for the launch tube production are expected in early 2017, with deliveries through 2019.
US Army's new 'upgunned' Stryker unveiled
The US Army and contractor General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) on 27 October unveiled the first prototype of an 'upgunned' Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV).
This is the first of eight prototype vehicles upgraded with a 30 mm weapon to address a perceived 'capability gap' in Europe. Prototypes are to next undergo "a series of industry 'shakedown' testing prior to industry contractually delivering the vehicles to the army in December", the service said, adding that government testing would start in January 2017.
GDLS was awarded a USD329 million contract modification in May to provide a 30 mm weapon for the Stryker lethality upgrade. The army has said the 'undefinitised contract action' covers "production of 83" lethality-upgraded Stryker ICVs as well as "contractor technical support to [US government] testing, and associated logistics products".
The company selected Kongsberg's MCT-30 medium-calibre remote weapon station that is operated from the vehicle's commander station. Orbital ATK's XM813 Bushmaster 30 mm cannon (originally developed for the former Future Combat Systems programme) was integrated onto the turret. The dual-fed, semi-automatic weapon can fire up to 200 rounds per minute, and can be used with the entire family of 30 mm x 173 mm ammunition, according to briefing slides viewed by IHS Jane's .
Army leaders are calling the upgraded vehicle the 'Dragoon' and assigned it as the XM1296 Infantry Carrier Vehicle - Dragoon.
This added weapon was driven through an operational need statement from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment (known as the Dragoons) based at Vilseck in Germany. Service leaders approved that plan in 2015. Mike Peck, GDLS' head of business development, told IHS Jane's in early October that the first upgraded vehicle could be fielded to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in April 2017. In its 27 October statement, the army said fielding the capability "is required by 2018".
Jura The idiot
General
Friday at 7:29 PM
butMar 20, 2016
kinda update:
Officials: Third Offset Strategy Key to Maintaining U.S. Military Technology Dominance
source is USNI News
source:Can the Pentagon afford its ? From anti-ship missiles to artificial intelligence, the military is experimenting with a to counter increasingly sophisticated and forces. That effort is essential, said the Defense Department’s , but there’s one problem:
If we want to go beyond experiments and actually buy any of these systems in numbers large enough to matter on the battlefield, it’ll cost a lot more money — money the military . That punts some hard decisions to , whoever or may be.
“Ultimately, we need capability, and to get capability in the hands of the warfighters, we have to go to the next step,” undersecretary told reporters Friday on the margins of a Third Offset conference at the . Kendall’s seen similar efforts — such the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTDs) — fizzle in the past, he said. His fear: “We’ll do the demo, we’ll be very happy with the results, (but) we won’t have the money to go on. That’s what I’m concerned about.”
Consider the plan to to strike moving targets on both land and sea, which made public at the CSIS conference. “What he was talking about was an experimental program,” Kendall emphasized, not yet a large-scale fielding. “It’s a demonstration, so you do one tests or two tests, and you say ‘okay, it works, now I’ve got to go finish the engineering so I can put it in the field.. and then do the production.'” But upgrading missiles en masse for use in actual war is much more expensive overall (albeit much less expensive per missile) than modifying a handful for tests.
You don’t need to fund all the experiments now getting underway, Kendall clarified: The whole point of experimenting is figuring out what works well enough to fund and what doesn’t. “Some of these will fail anyway,” he said, “but some of them need to succeed and become real programs, and those decisions are decisions that are going to have to be made over the next few years.”
“The next administration’s got to figure that out,” Kendall said. “We’re going to be…still in a very polarized political situation and arguing over the size of the , and I think we need to get to an argument about how much we really need for national security.”
“It’s distorted right now by the constraints of ,” he told reporters, referring to the spending caps imposed by the much-despised .
Kendall was characteristically gloomy — overseeing Pentagon procurement for would make anybody — but his comments line up with what the famously bullish himself told us in February:
“We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do,” . “So what we’re doing this year, Sydney, is we are trying to prepare as many demonstrations on advanced capabilities as we possibly can for the next administration to determine…the way they want to go.”
The man sponsoring , Strategic Capabilities Office director , said much the same when asked whether any of his team’s bright ideas would ever get fielded.
“,” both for the current administration and the next, Roper told reporters at the CSIS conference. “My job is to make sure there are as many choices as possible on the table, so that no matter what the budget restraints are, there’s going to be an overabundance…of things to choose from. What we certainly don’t want to do is have the next administration come in (and) have too few options to choose from as opposed to too many.”
“So in the case of the ATACMS upgrade that was announced today,” Roper continued, “my goal is to develop and demonstrate an ATACMS that’s capable of hitting moving targets at land and sea….What does that give the Army in a future budget cycle? It gives them the option to budget for fielding that system, which is an option they don’t have today.”
But if the Army can’t afford to field the upgraded ATACMS, the whole exercise is rather moot. That’s what Kendall is worried about.
“All the things we’re doing are creating options for future administrations, for future congresses,” Kendall told the CSIS conference. “We’re not fielding capabilities. We’re doing early stage risk reduction, experimentation, building prototypes, we’re giving the operators to try things out, and we’re moving technology forward. It’s great for . It keeps engineers employed” — preventing a brain drain out of the defense industry — “but it is essentially buying options for future programs we would have to fund.”
“It’s going to be difficult to get enough money to (produce) even a minor subset of those things,” Kendall said. “That takes money that we don’t have, and that’s what keeps me awake at night.”
Jura The idiot
General
now I read Navy Seeking Unmanned Underwater Advances To Field Today, To Inform Next Generation Sub Design In 2020s
source is USNI NewsThe Navy submarine community is pushing hard to make progress on unmanned underwater vehicle development and operations, which lag behind unmanned aerial vehicles, through prototype testing and the creation of a UUV squadron.
Rear Adm. William Merz, who recently took over as the service’s director of undersea warfare (OPNAV N97) said Oct. 27 at the Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium that the submarine community currently gets more use out of unmanned aerial vehicles, which are more technologically mature and easier to operate, and he wants to see UUVs catch up.
“I’m tired of waiting,” he said.
“Give me what you have, I will take it to sea, I will give you feedback and you can continue to develop and evolve, and then I’ll take that to sea and give you more feedback.”
He noted the Mk 18 Mod 2 Kingfish UUV was brought to the Middle East in 2012 and used by a team of developers and U.S. 5th Fleet sailors to conduct real missions.
“We think we pretty much skipped a whole generation of testing, evaluation and development” thanks to the rapid fielding approach, Merz said.
Commander of U.S. Submarine Force Pacific Rear Adm. Fritz Roegge said at the same conference that in 2019 the Navy would stand up its first UUV Squadron, which will be subordinate to Submarine Development Squadron 5. He said that, as new types of UUVs come online, the UUVRON would be responsible for learning to man, train and equip operational UUV units and developing UUV operational concepts
This rapid learning effort with unmanned vehicles will actually be important in shaping the next manned submarine. Program Executive Officer for Submarines Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley said Oct. 26 at the symposium that current plans for the Virginia-class attack submarine call for two more blocks of new capabilities –Blocks VI and VII – It is too early to know what SSN(X) will look like, he said, but the future platform will be required to “seamlessly integrate, deploy and employ unmanned vehicles.”
The , which means an analysis of alternatives to select a material solution to meet the warfighting requirement would happen in the early- to mid-2020s, he said. Ahead of that AoA, the Navy needs to learn everything it can about UUVs, multi-domain unmanned vehicles such as those that can be launched from undersea and then fly through the air, and unmanned vehicle support systems like the Forward-Deployed Energy-Charging Outpost (FDECO) that UUVs could connect to and recharge mid-mission. While Merz is encouraging industry to send him solutions that could be fielded and tested today, Jabaley said he was soliciting any idea, no matter how crazy, for future submarine-based unmanned systems.
“We have for years used any available interface on the submarine to get the UUV off the ship, whether it was torpedo tubes, 3-inch launcher, trash disposal unit – we have to get beyond that, there has to be a better way to design this submarine from the ground up to seamlessly employ UUVs,” Jabaley said.
“And I’m talking transformational stuff – I testified before Congress earlier this year, I said, you know, it’s like the remora, that little suckerfish that attaches itself to the shark or the whale as it goes along; maybe that’s the answer. Maybe there’s some way to figure that out.”
The rear admiral said he wanted to engage industry, academia and Navy labs in the hopes of “finding those really weird ideas that everybody says, ‘well that’ll never happen.’ Yeah, but maybe there’s a part of it that can. Maybe that part you can pair with a part over here, and before you know it you have something useful.”
Jabaley said there had been talk of extending the Virginia-class program a bit longer, adding in a Block VIII instead of moving into SSN(X) in the 2030s. He said that option was still on the table but stressed that his PEO is “aggressively approaching the SSN(X) because the need for this type of platform is significant.”
