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SouthernSky

Junior Member
As I said on the F-35 thread:

With this President, and judicious use of art of the deal in the buildup he is planning...I bet he could come up with a deal that would make them all happy.

The F-35 is here to stay...it will not be canceled...but he may be able to get the prices lower faster.

A new YF-23 built as a strike fighter bird could work.

Boeing can going to get plenty of work off of what is coming.

If he works the deal right, keeps them all happy with new orders and growth...then perhaps protests do not get filed in the first place.

It just takes some one who can work with them and get the wheels and gears greased.

Playing defence industry providers off against each other in such a public way is fraught with danger.

President elect Trump is making his bed early. Question is, can he lie in it full term?
 
when I saw the title
New in 2017: Surface fleet bosses will push to save LCS program
I took a deep breath and ... read :)
It’s hard to imagine how 2016 could have gone any worse for the Navy’s littoral combat ship program.

But after a string of largely unrelated engineering failures that plagued nearly every LCS in the Navy’s inventory, the surface fleet’s bosses are heading into 2017 on a mission to fix it.

In September, the Navy’s top surface warfare officer Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden ordered a radical reorganization of the LCS fleet and officials say many of those changes will start showing up in 2017. The changes were instituted to check crew errors that have either caused, or contributed to, much of the LCS’s 2016 blues.

By early September, four of the six littoral combat ships then in the Navy’s fleet had suffered major engineering casualties, including all three of the mono-hulled Freedom variant ships. Since then the Navy has commissioned two more, the Jackson and the Montgomery.

Rowden ordered the LCS program to end a crewing model that assigned three crews to rotate through two ships. Under the new plan, two crews rotate on one ship, a familiar concept in the Navy known as a Blue and Gold crewing model.

The plan also kills the idea of a separate mission module crew, upending the program’s signature modularity concept where sensors and payloads could be switched out quickly to meet emerging missions. Instead, Rowden’s plan calls for a “one ship, one mission” model, where each ship will be semi-permanently assigned a mission like anti-surface warfare, mine warfare or antisubmarine warfare.

That move boosts the crew size from 50 sailors to 70 because the mission module crew will be permanently assigned. In the original concept, mission modules would have their own sailors that embark and disembark the ships with the associated hardware.

Rowden is also moving all the aluminum-hulled trimarans of the Independence class to San Diego and all the mono-hull Freedom variants to Mayport, Florida.

As the LCS fleet builds up to 28 ships by 2023, Rowden’s plan will divide the ships up into six divisions of four ships each. Each division — three per coast — will be dedicated to a specific warfare area and will be led by a commodore.

Three of the ships will be deployers with blue-and-gold crews, and one ship will remain stateside and will be manned with an experienced LCS crew certified to train the other six crews before they deploy.

In all, it means the LCS program will begin growing in 2017, as the initial goal of 40 crews by 2023 will be increased to 46 crews, or about 420 more sailors.

The Navy is banking on Rowden's plan to start reversing the fortunes of its troubled ship class next year before Congress starts rolling it back.
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F-16-Santa-Hat-top-706x470.jpg

in case you didn't know
Many U.S. pilots wore a traditional red “Santa” hat while flying over Iraq on Christmas Day.
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FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
F-16-Santa-Hat-top-706x470.jpg

in case you didn't know
Many U.S. pilots wore a traditional red “Santa” hat while flying over Iraq on Christmas Day.
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He wear a nice hat :) but brings nice presents to ISIS :cool:

For small natural needs... for long missions how do pilots ?
 
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FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
11 EP-3E in service based to Whidbey Island, VQ-1

Pentagon prioritises EP-3 role for Triton
An 18-month-old plan to equip the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton with a signals intelligence payload will proceed after the US Navy received approval from top Pentagon officials August 2016, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) tells FlightGlobal.

The navy will field low- and high-band signals receivers on the MQ-4C starting in Fiscal 2021, adding to the Triton's powerful, Northrop-designed maritime patrol radar, says Sean Burke NAVAIR's Triton programme manager.

That multi-intelligence (multi-INT) suite of sensors will enable the navy to proceed with plans to retire the Lockheed Martin EP-3E ARIES II, the subset of the P-3C fleet tasked with eavesdropping on communications and other transmissions.

"Triton does similar things to what the EP-3 can do — similar profiles, conops [concept of operations] that sort of thing, so it’s kind of a logical transition," Burke says.

The navy had proposed fielding the MQ-4C with a multi-INT capability in 2021 for several years, but the concept at last received final approval in August. The acceptance came with the decision by Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics, to approve the MQ-4C to enter low-rate initial production.

The first two MQ-4Cs will be delivered in Fiscal 2018 with a maritime reconnaissance capability only. Three years later, the first MQ-4Cs augmented with a SIGINT payload are scheduled to achieve initial operational capability, Burke says.

The upgrade plan allows the navy to replace the EP-3E fleet without incurring the expense of a dedicated replacement programme, but requires operators to adapt the mission from crewed reconnaissance aircraft to a UAV that transmits SIGINT data to a ground station in real time.

The service will change the baseline aircraft later on to fit the multi-intelligence configuration, which will take about six to seven months to retrofit. System development and demonstration for the baseline configuration wrapped in December and the Navy began its preliminary design review for the multi-intelligence configuration later that month, Burke says.

Triton will fly four aircraft at each of its proposed five surveillance orbits in Guam, Italy, the Persian Gulf and and both US coasts.

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inside
Dec 1, 2016
now I read (dated 30 November, 2016) Congress punts extra F-35s, Super Hornets in defence bill

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"In the case of the JSTARS recapitalisation programme, the Defense Secretary could waive the need for a fixed-price contract in case of a national security interest, staff say."
and now JSTARS Recap Program Moves Forward After DoD Nixes Fixed-Price Requirement
The US Air Force on Wednesday released a request for proposals (RFP) for the JSTARS recap program after the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer waived statutory language that would have compelled the service to pursue a fixed-price contract.

The waiver, granted by Defense Department acquisition chief Frank Kendall on Dec. 23, allows the Air Force to proceed with a hybrid contracting strategy that includes both fixed-price and cost-plus elements. In the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress stipulated that the engineering, manufacturing and development (EMD) phase of the JSTARS recap must be executed under a fixed-price deal — a change that Air Force leaders had said could add months to the program.

“We realize intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance is currently a combatant commander top priority,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in a statement. “Given the language in this year’s defense policy bill, we took additional time before releasing the JSTARS request for proposal. With the support of the department on the importance of JSTARS to national security, we are moving out to deliver this critical ISR capability. We will continually look for ways to speed up the process towards initial operational capability.”

In an exclusive interview with Defense News earlier this month, James disclosed that the Air Force might seek a waiver. She directed service acquisition executive Darlene Costello to evaluate whether a fixed-price approach was feasible, but James herself had concerns that reworking the contract strategy would delay initial operational capability (IOC).

“If we were to full stop that [hybrid strategy] and come back to firm-fixed price, I’m sure that would cause a delay because we would in essence be largely starting over. So a delay in the RFP would produce a delay in the IOC,” she said then.

The JSTARS recap program, worth about $6.9 billion during the EMD phase, will replace the original Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System fleet, a Boeing 707-based design that provides command and control and ISR capabilities. The original JSTARS aircraft have flown more than 125,000 combat hours since the September 11, 2001 attacks. However, the high-demands of combatant commanders have taken its toll, and the planes are becoming more difficult and expensive to maintain.

“The future of combined arms lies in fusing information through multi-domain, networked, and integrated command and control,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said in a statement. "It’s going to be far more about how you take all the information you collect and turn that into decision-quality information faster than any adversary could ever counter. A recapitalized JSTARS will play an integral role in this future.”

The service plans to award a contract in fiscal 2018 that includes the first three test aircraft, including the airframes, radar, communication systems, and battle management command and control suite. Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are the prime contractors competing for the award, and they are able to submit as many as two proposals — one with a Raytheon radar and the other with a Northrop Grumman radar, both of which are moving through risk-reduction efforts.

The EMD contact award also contains contract options for two low-rate initial production JSTARS systems, as well as the remaining full-rate production aircraft. Other options include ground support systems, training materials, integration labs and spares.

The Air Force plans to field the first assets by fiscal 2024 and buy 17 aircraft total.
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