US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

FORBIN said:

USNS Lewis B. Puller (T-ESB 3) with four MH-53E helicopters on the flight deck but he have a hangar for on the front ?
View attachment 33745

With many pics !

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

The Program Executive Office for Submarines is working to create schedule and cost efficiencies on the Ohio Replacement (Columbia class) Program to counteract inevitable delays during construction, he said last week.

Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley said at the Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium that the first ship in the Navy’s most important acquisition program absolutely had to deliver on time – even though previous delays during early design work complicated that task.

“The biggest problem we have is there is no margin between the decommissioning of Ohios and the delivery of Ohio Replacements. And anyone who has been involved in shipbuilding knows that there will be unknowns that pop up and cause delays to the schedule,” he said.
“So my job is to try to buy margin back into that schedule so that when the inevitable unknown presents itself it’s not a fatal collision within the construction plan. So to buy that margin back into the schedule, we’re looking at targeted elements of the ship where we can accelerate construction through the use of advance procurement funding or advance construction authority to start those parts earlier and de-risk that schedule.”

PEO Subs is working with Congress to get needed contracting authorities and advance procurement and advance construction funding, and Jabaley said that effort will ultimately “provid[e] a significant benefit for schedule de-risking.”

To reduce the risk of the program from a cost standpoint, Jabaley said the Ohio Replacement and Virginia-class attack submarine program officials – as well as nuclear-powered aircraft carrier personnel in some cases, and the prime contractors and vendor base that support all three ship programs – are working together to align material purchases and construction schedules.

On materials, Jabaley said “we the government have to get the volume discount that should accrue by combined purchasing of all the things you’re going to need for the two different classes of submarines, and here’s where the carrier comes in because a lot of the components are similar or identical on the carrier when you get to the nuclear power plant, nuclear shipbuilding concerns. … That’s a volume discount price that we need to take advantage of. In order to do that, we have to reinforce with our vendor base that this mountain of work is facing them as well and that they need to ensure that their quality, their cost and their capacity is ready to accomplish that.”

The admiral noted that PEO Subs has conducted an analysis of the top 25 suppliers to the submarine programs and is working with them to make sure they are ready to execute an increased workload and provide fair volume discounts. Within the government, Jabaley said the program offices are working to ensure that requirements are written such that the SSBNs, SSNs and nuclear carriers can all share parts such as chilled water pumps. This type of multi-program procurement would require special contracting authority that the Navy will brief lawmakers on and seek approval in the next year or two, Jabaley said.

As the Ohio Replacement Program moves towards construction – and as the Virginia subs become larger and more complex with the addition of the Virginia Payload Module and acoustic superiority design changes, the Navy is working closely with builders General Dynamics Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to finalize plans for facility expansions, manpower and training plans, and simulations of how components for two or three ship classes will move through the yards without conflicting with each other.

Jabaley said the final teaming arrangement between Electric Boat and Newport News would be outlined in the ship construction contract, but he said he expects the arrangement to largely mirror how they collaborate on the Virginia subs. This unified strategy, across two yards and two submarine programs, means the Navy can pull more levers to achieve a common good – an early example being the announcement that Newport News would deliver more attack subs to free up Electric Boat to take on more Ohio Replacement work.

Where feasible, each yard will work on the same parts of ORP as they do on the Virginia class, he said.

“The key here is relying on what has already become a center of excellent in one location and continuing to focus on that.”

For all the planning the PEO has done to ensure future program success, Jabaley said ORP is at a precarious situation right now. It needs four things to happen in concert, with two of them being out of the Navy’s control: Milestone B approval to send the program into engineering and manufacturing development and system acquisition, which the Pentagon is expected to approve this week; a contract award to complete the ship design, which is still in negotiation between the Navy and the shipyards; a transition from research and development dollars to shipbuilding and conversion funds, which happens in the Fiscal Year 2017 budget; and the actual appropriation of FY 2017 funds, which has not yet occurred. Jabaley said the program can get along under the current continuing resolution until the end of the calendar year, but starting 2017 without a proper funding bill will bar the service from the shipbuilding dollars it needs to pay for design work under the impending contract and move forward with post-Milestone B activities.

Click to expand...

The Boeing device is less a phone and more a locked-down portal to a faraway server.

There’s no such thing as a perfectly secure phone, especially if it also connects to the internet. But

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

every time you visit a hostile foreign country isn’t an option for everyone, and so a handful of top military commanders now have a device that can send and receive Secret and Top Secret messages. No surprise: it doesn’t work quite like the one in your pocket.

Developed by Boeing and the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Boeing Black phone has a dual-SIM card that “enables users to switch between government and commercial networks. Boeing Black integrates seamlessly into customer mobile device management systems and virtual private networks,” according to the product

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

One of the recipients is Cyber Command chief Adm. Michael Rogers, said DISA head Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn.

That’s not to say that everyone in the military can expect to receive one. “The Boeing Black is the device we’re currently working with,” Lynn said. “We’re just now in the test phase,” he said.

That the military has been working on such a device is

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

A lot of device manufactures have been eager to meet rising military needs for secure communication. One contender,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, co-founded by encryption guru Philip Zimmerman and former Navy Seal Mike Janke, has managed to push a few units into the hands of some military for testing and recreational use.

Lynn said the Boeing Black phone also works with “a large amount of encryption.” But the encryption alone is not what makes the device so secure. “There’s nothing that lives on the devices,” said Lynn. “It’s close to a VDI,” a virtual desktop infrastructure.

What that means is that the most secure phone in the world is, in the purest sense, just a window to another computer, a remote server on the military’s Top Secret JWICS network. That server does all the real work and holds the data. The phone itself just moves input commands — keyboard, mouse, and other signals — to that server. The result, said Lynn: “We’re not too worried about losing data,” at least not off the phone.

But does Rogers like the phone? Lynn said, “I think he does. Haven’t heard any complaints.”

Click to expand...

As the US Air Force seeks to replace the Minuteman III ICBMs with a new wave of nuclear weapons that will last until 2075, the Pentagon is struggling to get a handle on just how much the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) will cost.

The program is still years away from production, with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing having just submitted their proposals to win a pair of 36-month technology maturation and risk-reduction contracts that would be awarded at end of 2017.

But with the Pentagon staring down a massive “bow-wave” of program costs in the early 2020s, much of it driven by the recapitalization of the nuclear triad, getting a handle on GBSD’s cost early could prove key to keeping the department’s modernization priorities on track.

And right now, there are disagreements about just what that program will cost.

The Air Force has set an initial cost estimate of $62.3 billion for the GBSD program, but news reports pegged the estimate from the Pentagon’s office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) as coming in between $85-$100 billion. That $85 billion figure is reportedly what Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, set as the baseline cost for the program.

In an exclusive interview with Defense News, CAPE head Jamie Morin said his office had access to “different data” than the Air Force, including additional production information from the Ground Based Interceptor program.

“They used a blended model that looked at strategic launch vehicles from 1960 to I think about 1990. So capturing Peacekeeper and capturing Minuteman and capturing Poseidon for the Navy, Trident for the Navy, and the initial Trident II, I believe,” Morin explained Oct. 18. “So a lot of data, but very old. The newest data is 25 years old. So it turns out there has been cost increases in a lot of the segments, a lot of the industries that we are talking about here from the 1990s to present. So we are introducing some of the more current stuff tended to push our estimate up.

“The CAPE and the Air Force estimates are pretty close on a lot of the supporting infrastructure. I wouldn’t describe either the CAPE or the Air Force estimates for the supporting structure as high confidence, but they are comparatively a smaller share of the cost,” Morin added. “The biggest differences are in production and development of the space system, of the launch system in terms of absolute dollars. There are some areas of high percentage difference, but they tend to be on smaller dollar things. They don’t move the aggregate.”

Labor Cost Uncertainty

Morin said the reported range of $85-$100 billion is “not widely off” from CAPE’s estimate. Asked why that estimate has such wiggle room, Morin again pointed to the question of labor rates as the “biggest single driver” of that range. Labor rates have grown significantly above inflation in the satellite and space industry in the last few decades. As a result, costs might shoot up on the program in the coming years.

Byron Callan, an industry analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, said that labor argument makes sense to him, noting “it’s an aging workforce and it may entail new hires. That green labor could explain a lot. The people who last built Minuteman, M/X or Trident are retired or dead.”

However, any estimate made now comes with a lot of uncertainty, given the early stage the program is at, as well as the fact that there is “very, very little” information available on production of rocket systems thanks to a decision in the late 1990s not collect certain streams of data from contractors, Morin cautioned.

“With a system like GBSD where we are going to be buying several hundred missiles, not having good insight into production costs is very disadvantageous for the government,” Morin said. “So I would characterize all of the estimates in this area as lower fidelity than we would like. It’s unavoidable now because we just didn’t make those choices to collect that data ten or 20 years ago.”

Throughout the interview, Morin stressed that the program is still so early that changes in the program’s cost are inevitable.

“We are not going to get a lot of insight near term because of what we are out with a [request for proposal] for is development and different kind of work than the ultimate construction,” he said. “We will continually reassess the program, but people shouldn’t expect that in 12 months or some modest period of time like that, you are actually going to have the answers to questions like ‘how are you going to construct the missiles that you haven’t even designed yet?”

And some costs will come down due to quantity, Morin said, noting that “you are talking several hundred [missiles] which is a much bigger number for procurement than GBI. So there should be efficiencies there. We modeled those. Hopefully, we modeled them too conservatively. We can do better than that. All of those will have to be worked in execution of the programs over the next decade.”

Those in the nonproliferation community opposed to the ICBM replacement have pointed to the cost uncertainty as a sign that the GBSD program needs to be rethought. Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association calls the ICBM the “least valuable triad leg” and sees the price tag as a potential weakness for the program’s future.

“The GBSD program is unsustainable, given the projected costs and other service and Pentagon priorities, and unnecessary given the United States has and is planning to retain more nuclear weapons than it needs for its security,” Reif said. “The high end of the CAPE estimate for GBSD is in B-21 and Columbia class cost territory. At that price tag I think it is unlikely that there will be a GBSD program. Even $85 billion will be a major challenge.”

Commonality Request

Savings can come from another focus area for the program – commonality with other missile programs.

Kendall told reporters Oct. 22 that the Pentagon is “looking for some commonality between that system and the weapon system that the Navy's developed for the SSBNs. It's not going to be 100 percent. We've looked – that's not practical.”

Where commonality can be used will be driven, in part, by the three companies competing to produce the GBSD program, he added.

“Where they have a case for that, they'll propose it, but where there is a case to do something new that might be less expensive or even more capable, then they can propose that,” Kendall said. “So we use a competitive process to try to get that, to get the right balance between commonality and a distinct, different product.”

In September, two top nuclear officials – Vice Adm. Terry Benedict, director of the Navy Strategic Systems Programs (SSP), and the Air Force’s Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration – offered some clarity on what those commonality efforts may entail.

Benedict said the two services ran a series of efforts over the last 12-18 months to find potential commonalities, including with the Trident weapon, while Weinstein said the Air Force is looking to find “smart commonality” that makes sense for the long-term of GBSD.

“We also have to look at the ground based interceptors and the commonality that can come from the ground based interceptors, and also the commonality that can come from space systems,” Weinstein said. “What we need to do is, we need to deliver a system that meets requirements, reducing risk in the program, and is cost effective for the American taxpayers. We believe as we laid out our smart commonality approach, we look across the breadth that is provided in strategic system at large, we are definitely in line in supporting that commonalty approach.”

Click to expand...

Requirements for Industry

Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman all submitted their applications for the GBSD TMMR competition by the Oct. 12 deadline. While the competitors have largely declined to go into major detail about their offerings (although all three cite previous experience working on various aspects of the Minuteman III program as a selling point), some details have emerged.

One aspect is that the Air Force is open to mobile command and control solution. John Karas, Lockheed Martin vice president and GBSD program manager, told reporters Oct. 13 that factors into the survivability analysis the company did when putting together its bid.

“We traded off the [concept of operations] for mobile sites. I think the main driver is the survivability analysis, which was rather lengthy and complex, so we’re trying to provide the right blend of fixed sites and reduce the number of sites to help reduce the [operation and sustainment] costs but maintain all the survivability.”

Carol Erikson, vice president and GBSD program manager for Northrop Grumman, confirmed that mobile command and control is an option they looked at, although like Lockheed, declined to go into detail about how much mobile was included in their proposal.

Another survivability area of focus is in cyber hardening, said Andy Healy, Boeing’s manager of business development and strategy for GBSD. And he adds another area of interest – the government wants to own the technical baseline, in order to “control and, essentially, compete industry to get the best value for the taxpayer’s dollars.”

Just how much the Air Force will own is somewhat up to the companies, Erikson noted.

“They did not prescribe a specific level. Our proposal basically gives our recommendation for the appropriate level. They’ve been pretty clear on why they want to own the technical baseline – they do not want to be dependent on a single vendor going forward,” she said. “The Air Force doesn’t want to get into a situation where they are dependent on any single vendor for 50 years, so making sure that they have sufficient insight into the interfaces and are able to maintain the system without having that specific vendor dependency going forward.”

When it comes to industry, another intriguing detail has emerged- that the Air Force is not willing to allow any of the competitors to lock in an engine manufacturer as their sole partner.

In a statement to Defense News, Col. Heath Collins, GBSD system program manager at the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, said “as part of our Request for Proposal, we put in non-exclusion language that the prime contractors cannot set up any binding contracts or relationships with key subcontractors that keep them from being able to team on other efforts."

That appears to apply in particular with potential engine companies, meaning firms such as Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK are available for all three competitors.

As to the other partnerships, only Lockheed has revealed its teaming, which features General Dynamics, which will focus on weapon system command and control; Draper Laboratories, which will help develop the guidance navigation and control systems; Moog, to provide the cross-vector control systems; and Bechtel, to help develop the launch facilities.

Both Boeing and Northrop have confirmed they have teams in place, but declined to say with which companies.

Click to expand...

NEWS JORDAN 2 HOURS AGO
Three US troops killed in shooting at Jordan airbase
Three US service members came under fire at gate of al-Jafr airbase. One Jordanian officer was also wounded.

It was not immediately clear who initiated the shooting, which took place at the gate of Al-Jafr base in southern Jordan [File: Reuters]

Three US troops were killed in a shooting attack outside a Jordanian training facility on Friday, a US official said, following earlier reports that one or two US personnel were dead.

"A total of three US service members died today in the incident in Jordan," the official said. "Initial reports were that one was killed, two injured. The two injured service members were transported to a hospital in Amman, where they died."

"The service members were in vehicles approaching the gate of a Jordanian military training facility, where they came under small arms fire," the official added.

"We are working with the Jordanian government to gather additional details about what happened."

The shooting took place at the gate of the Prince Faisal airbase in al-Jafr, southern Jordan, when the car carrying the US trainers failed to stop, the Jordanian army said, adding that a Jordanian officer was also wounded.

Jordan, a key US ally in the Middle East, is a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

US forces have trained a small group of vetted Syrian rebels in Jordan, and American instructors have trained Iraqi and Palestinian security forces in Jordan as well over the past few years.

Friday's incident comes almost a year after a Jordanian policeman shot dead two US instructors, a South African and two Jordanians at a police training centre east of Amman, before being gunned down.

Washington said at the time that the two Americans killed in the November 9, 2015 shooting were employees of the private firm DynCorp contracted by the State Department to train Palestinian forces.

Two other Americans were wounded in that incident, which sparked concern in Washington and was condemned by the US embassy.

Last year, the US announced its intention to increase overall assistance to Jordan from $660m to $1bn annually for the 2015-2017 period.

A government source told AFP that military training is provided at Al-Jafr airbase by instructors of various nationalities, including Americans, to participants from different countries.

Source: Al Jazeera News And Agencies

Click to expand...