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US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Jura The idiot
General
Yesterday at 7:07 AM
Stealthy Super Hornet In Cards As Boeing Plans Major Overhaul
Oct 18, 2017
F-35 is mentioned:
insideYesterday at 6:58 AM
related (and nothing about F-35 again):
Boeing pitches souped-up Super Hornets during upcoming life extension
9 hours ago
Stealthy Super Hornet In Cards As Boeing Plans Major Overhaul
Oct 18, 2017
F-35 is mentioned:
As the U.S. Navy’s Super Hornets reach the end of their planned service life, is eyeing an exhaustive overhaul that will involve structural upgrades and potentially a new stealth coating to keep the and Fs relevant well into the future.
Boeing hopes to induct the first Super Hornet into a planned service life modification (SLM) program in April 2018, Mark Sears, the company’s SLM director, told Aviation Week Oct. 17. Once on contract, Boeing will begin the work necessary to extend the life of each aircraft from its 6,000-flight-hour limit by another 3,000 hr.
The work primarily will focus on structural upgrades to the airframe and certain subsystems, but also could include capability enhancements to bring the older aircraft up to the newest Block III standard, Sears said.
One option is a new low-observable (LO) coating and radar-absorbent material (RAM) improvements in certain locations on the aircraft to increase its stealth, Sears said.
“There are various degrees of LO enhancement,” Sears said of the upgrade. “We’ve played within that spectrum, but there’s certainly an LO piece of Block III.”
It is not clear just how stealthy the newest Block III Super Hornets that roll off the production line in 2020 will be compared to the fleet’s primary stealth fighters, ’s and . The Navy funded “advanced signature enhancements” in its fiscal 2018 budget request, but Boeing has said the Block III upgrade is not primarily focused on LO.
“At some point we drew a line that would allow us to be stealthy enough in a balanced survivable way to be effective, and that is what we think we have,” said Dan Gillian, Boeing F/A-18 and EA-18 program manager. “The F-35 is a stealthier airplane, but we have a balanced approach to survivability, including electronic warfare and self-protection.”
The Super Hornet upgrade program comes not a moment too soon for the U.S. military, which has reported alarmingly low readiness levels across its fighter fleets in past few years. On a given day, just 52% of all in-reporting Navy F/A-18s can fly, including 44% of legacy Hornets and a slightly higher portion of the newer Super Hornets, 54%. These numbers reflect just how hard the Navy has flown the aircraft over the last 15 years, according to Adm. Bill Moran, vice chief of naval operations.
In the short-term, inducting Super Hornets into the SLM will reduce the number of aircraft the Navy has available for operations. But without the SLM, those aircraft are headed for the boneyard soon anyway, Sears argued.
“SLM gives them the opportunity to go back to the fleet,” he said.
To take full advantage of the time the aircraft are in SLM, the Navy also could choose to incorporate a new advanced computing infrastructure planned for the Block III aircraft, Sears said. This package, designed to take advantage of the future carrier air wing’s sophisticated sensor architecture, includes an advanced cockpit system with a large-area display for improved user interface; a more powerful computer called the Distributed Targeting Processor Network (DTPN); and a bigger data pipe for passing information known as Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT).
Most critically, this architecture will ensure the Super Hornet, Growler electronic warfare aircraft and E-2D Hawkeye can talk to each other and pass critical threat data over the same network in combat.
Boeing’s vision for Super Hornet Block III also includes a long-range infrared sensor that will allow the aircraft to detect and track advanced threats from a distance, and conformal fuel tanks (CFT) to extend range by 100-120 nm. The CFTs are designed to replace the extra fuel tanks that Super Hornets currently sling under the wing, reducing weight and drag and enabling additional payload.
Over the course of the SLM, which is slated to run through fiscal 2028, Boeing and the Navy plan to overhaul more than 400 Super Hornets, a Boeing spokesman said. The work will take place at the company’s facilities in St. Louis and San Antonio.
Sears expects the first aircraft will take about 18 months to complete, but hopes to drive that time down to about 12 months.
There is no telling what engineers will find once they tear down the aircraft, but Boeing has prepared for that process as much as possible by opening up two “learning aircraft” in St. Louis to see if predictions match the actual condition of the aircraft.
“Having those two aircraft dedicated to SLM will give us great insight into what we can expect to see,” Sears said, though he stressed: “There likely will be surprises.”
Jura The idiot
General
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
5th off the line, Flight 1 20 years in service.It might be time to send her back to the Taxpayers like they did the Miami
Jura The idiot
General
Wednesday at 9:18 PM
Boiling point: McCain frustrations with Mattis, McMaster go public
32 minutes ago
nowMcCain says he is on the rocks with Mattis and McMaster
23 hours ago
...
Boiling point: McCain frustrations with Mattis, McMaster go public
32 minutes ago
Simmering tension between Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and the Trump administration’s national security team over information sharing, the defense budget and Pentagon appointments boiled into public view last week.
As the gatekeeper for President Donald Trump’s Defense Department nominees and the prime mover for the Senate’s massive defense policy bill, McCain is too powerful a friend for the Pentagon to lose.
His message had instant impact, with both Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster making the effort to meet with the Arizona Republican in person last week. But analysts say the rift is already affecting major budgeting and policy decisions.
McCain wants more vocal support from Mattis as he calls for budgets to advance a large-scale military buildup. McCain needs ammunition as he’s been publicly linking defense budget caps to recent mishaps in which dozens of troops were hurt or killed.
The core of McCain’s complaint with Trump’s national security team is it wants the Senate as a rubber stamp and not a coequal branch of government. “I think they had this idea, once that Trump won, that we are a unicameral government,” McCain said, “and we have to do what we have to do.”
The strains came into public view last week when McCain told reporters the administration is keeping him in the dark about an ambush in Niger that killed four service members. This was a symptom of deeper problems, that the communication was better with the Obama administration’s defense secretary, Ash Carter, than with longtime friends.
“I’m very close to these people, we converse all the time,” McCain said. “We are just not getting the information in a timely fashion that we need. Talk is cheap.”
Getting answers, McCain said, “might require a subpoena.”
McMaster, after meeting with McCain, told reporters that the senator’s comments “hurt my feelings” and pledged better communication with the chairman.
“This is a problem we can solve,” said McMaster, who in August from McCain against a wave of criticisms from the far-right.
Asked about McCain’s comments, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White downplayed tensions.
“I would say that we have done all we can and we will continue to strive to do as much as we can to ensure that Sen. McCain and all the members of the SASC and the [House Armed Services Committee] have exactly what they need when they need it,” she said Oct. 19.
A history of tension
McCain’s Carter comparison was tough talk. In President Barack Obama’s final year in office, McCain jousted with Carter and the administration over the defense budget, his reform efforts and his slow-rolling of Defense Department nominees. At one point, McCain vented over a frayed relationship between Congress and the Pentagon’s civilian leadership when Carter denied McCain a courtesy preview of the 2017 Pentagon budget.
Though McCain has a history of tension with past defense secretaries, Mattis’ unique reliance on a close-knit group of advisers, rather than the broader expertise of the department, may have caused him problems.
“What is unique here is Secretary Mattis is, so far, really set up poorly for managing his ties to Congress,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former Department of Defense and National Security Council official under Obama, who is now with the Center for a New American Security. “His relationships with McCain and others should, by necessity, be very different than when he was at [U.S. Central Command].
“He is lacking a full team that can both ease the burden of interfacing with key members and highlight to him when an issue on the Hill really demands his attention before it gets out of hand, like McCain’s earlier commitment to hold up nominees.
“And by all accounts, his front office, who he’s had to rely on in the absence of confirmed appointees, has little of that political sense and have on occasion really elevated tensions with the Hill just when they needed their support.”
Policy, budget and personnel impacted
The concerns on Capitol Hill are substantive.
McCain said he fears the administration lacks a plan for the aftermath of military actions in Syria, should the Islamic State group be defeated, something highlighted by the Oct. 20 announcement that U.S.-backed Syrian rebels have taken Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS’ so-called caliphate.
“Again, we will not sit by without having a complete understanding of what is going on,” McCain said. “Raqqa just fell. Who’s going to take over? The Iranians are there, the Shiites. The whole situation is in chaos, as we predicted.”
There’s also a budget disconnect that began with the fiscal 2017 supplemental spending request, when defense leaders in Congress believed the DoD artificially lowballed their budget amendment based on its reading of the political landscape, according to Mackenzie Eaglen, a former Pentagon and congressional staffer with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“Chairman McCain would prefer to stop the shell games and just be straight with Congress,” Eaglen said.
Earlier this month, McCain said he would refuse to advance Trump’s nominees to the Pentagon until he is satisfied the administration is communicating its plans for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As SASC chairman, he sets the schedule for DoD nomination hearings, and as a senator, he may request a hold on any presidential nominee.
Also fueling tension, according to Eaglen, is the snail’s pace at which the Trump administration has announced Pentagon nominees, Mattis’ preference for Democrats in many senior positions, and the tight control of access and vetting in the hands of a very small number of people in Mattis’ front office.
The same day McCain made his comments about Mattis and McMaster, David Trachtenberg finally got a vote in the Senate and was confirmed as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
The SASC’s top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said the path looks clear for other DoD nominees awaiting Senate votes, since the Senate has moved on from health care reform. Much like Trachtenberg, John Gibson, the pick for deputy chief management officer, as well as Navy general counsel nominee Charles Stimson and Owen West, Trump’s choice for assistant defense secretary, have been waiting since July.
Reed was supportive of McCain’s delaying actions as “the prerogative of the chairman” to pursue details about Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea, saying: “I would suggest not only for Sen. McCain’s benefit, but the public’s benefit, that it be made clear.”
Jura The idiot
General
this is interesting (dated October 22, 2017):
EXCLUSIVE: US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert
EXCLUSIVE: US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert
The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status .
That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice.
“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”
Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come. That decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, the head of U.S. Northern Command. STRATCOM is in charge of the military’s nuclear forces and NORTHCOM is in charge of .
Putting the B-52s back on alert is just one of many decisions facing the Air Force as the U.S. military responds to a changing geopolitical environment that includes North Korea’s , President Trump’s to Pyongyang, and Russia’s .
Goldfein, who is the Air Force’s top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat.
“The world is a dangerous place and we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons,” he said. “It’s no longer a bipolar world where it’s just us and the Soviet Union. We’ve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It’s never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.”
During his trip across the country last week, Goldfein encouraged airmen to think beyond Cold War uses for ICBMs, bombers and nuclear cruise missiles.
“I’ve challenged…Air Force Global Strike Command to help lead the dialog, help with this discussion about ‘What does conventional conflict look like with a nuclear element?’ and ‘Do we respond as a global force if that were to occur?’ and ‘What are the options?’” he said. “How do we think about it — how do we think about deterrence in that environment?”
Asked if placing B-52s back on alert — as they were for decades — would help with deterrence, Goldfein said it’s hard to say.
“Really it depends on who, what kind of behavior are we talking about, and whether they’re paying attention to our readiness status,” he said.
Already, various improvements have been made to prepare Barksdale — home to the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service’s nuclear forces — to return B-52s to an alert posture. Near the alert pads, an old concrete building — where B-52 crews during the Cold War would sleep, ready to run to their aircraft and take off at a moment’s notice — is being renovated.
Inside, beds are being installed for more than 100 crew members, more than enough room for the crews that would man bombers positioned on the nine alert pads outside. There’s a recreation room, with a pool table, TVs and a shuffleboard table. Large paintings of the patches for each squadron at Barksdale adorn the walls of a large stairway.
One painting — a symbol of the Cold War — depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words “Peace The Old Fashioned Way,” written underneath. At the bottom of the stairwell, there is a Strategic Air Command logo, yet another reminder of the Cold War days when American B-52s sat at the ready on the runway outside.
Those long-empty B-52 parking spaces will soon get visits by two nuclear command planes, the E-4B Nightwatch and E-6B Mercury, both which will occasionally sit alert there. During a nuclear war, the planes would become the flying command posts of the defense secretary and STRATCOM commander, respectively. If a strike order is given by the president, the planes would be used to transmit launch codes to bombers, ICBMs and submarines. At least one of the four nuclear-hardened E-4Bs — formally called the National Airborne Operations Center, but commonly known as the Doomsday Plane — is .
Barksdale and other bases with nuclear bombers are preparing to build storage facilities for a new nuclear cruise missile that is under development. During his trip, Goldfein received updates on for the 400-plus Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the new .
“Our job is options,” Goldfein said. “We provide best military advice and options for the commander in chief and the secretary of defense. Should the STRATCOM commander require or the NORTHCOM commander require us to [be on] a higher state of readiness to defend the homeland, then we have to have a place to put those forces.”