thunderchief
Senior Member
In 1941, USS Utah was actually both target and training ship for anti-aircraft gunners . It had a crew, and 64 for of them perished in attack on Pearl Harbor .
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US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
In 1941, USS Utah was actually both target and training ship for anti-aircraft gunners . It had a crew, and 64 for of them perished in attack on Pearl Harbor .
navyreco
Senior Member
DARPA’s Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) Concept Tested at Sea
DARPA’s Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) research effort recently demonstrated a prototype of a low-cost, fully automated parafoil system designed to extend maritime vessels’ long-distance communications and improve their domain awareness. Towed behind boats or ships, TALONS could carry intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications payloads of up to 150 pounds between 500 and 1,500 feet in altitude—many times higher than current ships’ masts—and greatly extend the equipment’s range and effectiveness.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Marine ACV Competitors Show Off Prototypes as Program Downselect Nears
By:
September 28, 2015 11:54 AM
MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO — The Marine Corps is nearing a downselect from five to two competitors in its Amphibious Combat Vehicle 1.1 program in mid-November, after years of work on the ACV and its Marine Personnel Carrier predecessor.
The wheeled vehicle will carry a crew of three and at least 11 embarked Marines, have the robust swim capability of the legacy Amphibious Assault Vehicle, and protect against roadside bombs and other threats while driving on land.
After a few failed tries to replace the AAV, the Marine Corps settled on its current strategy – to get an ACV 1.1 increment out quickly, based on proven designs; to upgrade to an ACV 1.2 next, with the ability to launch and recover from amphibious ships and with the addition of mission-specific variants; and finally to make a decision on moving to a high water speed ACV 2.0 in the 2025 timeframe, pending the outcome of research and development efforts over the next decade.
Manny Pacheco, spokesman for the Marines’ Program Executive Office for Land Systems, told USNI News at the annual Modern Day Marine expo that ACV 1.1 is on track for a milestone B decision to move into engineering and manufacturing development in mid-November. Each of the two EMD contract winners would deliver 16 prototype vehicles within nine or 10 months, and the Marines would spend 24 to 30 months testing those vehicles and soliciting feedback from Marines involved in the testing to begin developing tactics, techniques and procedures for that specific design.
“Part of the reason why we’re getting 16 vehicles from each manufacturer is to be able to maximize the testing in the shortest amount of time that we can,” Pacheco said.
“But we’re going to do everything – we’ll be doing blast testing probably at Aberdeen, we’ll be doing water probably off the coast of California at [Amphibious Vehicle Test Branch], we’ll probably do a variety of testing out at Yuma or White Sands Missile Range for a variety of things. So it’ll be ongoing, and there will be a lot of it.”
A decision to move into low-rate initial production is expected in the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2018, with the program reaching initial operational capability (IOC) at the end of 2020 and the ACV 1.1 acquisition program ending in 2023, Pacheco said.
As the five competitors await a decision, four of them showed off their prototypes at Modern Day Marine – with four different approaches to force protection, balancing water and land mobility and setting the Marine Corps on the right path to transition to ACV 1.2.
BAE Systems
BAE Systems and Iveco Defense partnered to create this entrant for the Marines ACV 1.1 competition. Photo courtesy BAE Systems.
Personnel capacity: 3 crew, plus 13 embarked Marines
Speed: greater than 65 mph on land; 6 knots in water
Optimized range: 10 nautical miles at sea, followed by 290 miles on land
Power: 690 horsepower engine
Reserve buoyancy: 21 percent
BAE Systems partnered with Italian defense contractor Iveco, which had already outfitted Italian Marines with the SuperAV personnel carrier. Though the U.S. Marine Corps will operate ACVs and legacy AAVs side-by-side for some amount of time, the Italians selected Iveco’s design as an AAV replacement.
“The Italian requirement was to, quote unquote, replace the AAV. And that made perfect sense to us, because as we read the Marine Corps requirement for 1.1 we were like, well wait, this is only a half step away from being an AAV replacement,” ACV program manager John Swift told reporters at Modern Day Marine.
“So we may as well ensure our design can meet all the AAV requirements, except to go well beyond the survivability requirement of the current AAV or even the upgraded AAV,” he said, referring to an ongoing AAV survivability upgrade effort.
Swift said the BAE Systems offering includes Iveco’s proven H-Drive System that provides power to individual wheels – allowing the vehicle to continue operating if a blast damaged any wheels, and allowing the wheeled vehicle to simulate a tracked vehicle for better mobility in soft soil or sand. The H-Drive System has no axels, allowing the vehicle to have a V-shaped hull for blast protection, Swift added.
For added force protection, the floor that the Marines stand on inside the vehicle is not actually connected to the hull. Rather, it bolts onto the bottom of the seats, creating somewhat less headroom when walking in and out of the vehicle but protecting the Marines’ feet from absorbing any energy from a blast below the vehicle.
Key to BAE Systems’ bid is that the vehicle has already been proven to meet not only the 1.1 requirements but also most of the 1.2 requirements. ACV 1.2 is expected to include seats for 13, not 11, embarked Marines, so BAE Systems already has its vehicle configured for 13 seats. ACV 1.2 will have to launch and recover from the well deck of an amphibious ship, and the Italians are already doing this with the SuperAV. And ACV 1.2 will create mission-specific variants of the vehicle, such as a turreted ACV – and the Italians have already integrated an unmanned 30mm turret onto some of their vehicles.
For Swift, the combination of the Italians’ success with SuperAV, plus BAE Systems having served as the original equipment manufacturer for all the Marines’ amphibious vehicles since 1939, creates a path to success not only in ACV 1.1 but 1.2 and beyond.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin’s ACV 1.1 prototype. Photo courtesy Lockheed Martin.
Personnel capacity: 3 crew, plus 11 embarked Marines (capability to increase to 13)
Speed: greater than 60 mph on land, 5 knots in water
Power: 711-horsepower Caterpillar C13 engine
Reserve buoyancy: 25 percent
Lockheed Martin’s ACV entrant is touted as a simple design that focuses on off-road missions while ensuring a robust swim capability for years to come.
Frank Bohlmann, director of ground vehicle weapon systems, told USNI News that the company has worked on the ACV and MPC programs for a combined eight years now and rolled all the user feedback received during that time into the current design.
“So everything from the large tires up through the double-wishbone suspension, which is a very similar suspension from what we’ve used before, very good offload, lots of clearance between the tires and the vehicle – the Marine Corps spends the bulk of their time off-road so we’ve designed the vehicle for that.”
ACV program manager Patrick Shepherd said that the Marines intend to operate the vehicles on roads 20 percent of the time and off-road 80 percent, so Lockheed Martin focused on off-road mobility and survivability. The frame can adjust its height to ride low to the ground for greater speed on paved roads or higher up for a smoother ride off-road, he said. And the tires can flatten when operating in an urban environment to avoid ripping up the local infrastructure.
Similar to the BAE Systems offering, Havoc has a raised interior floor that does not attach to the bottom of the vehicle for additional blast protection while operating on land.
For water operations, Lockheed Martin has added reserve buoyancy packs to the outside of the vehicle, giving 25 percent reserve buoyancy – which is more than the Marines required. Combined with a 711-horsepower Caterpillar C13 engine – the largest of the four competitors – and user-friendly independent thrusters in the water, the company is offering “plenty of power, plenty of reserve buoyancy, and we’ve got a suspension that can handle up to 25-percent weight growth, so we think we’ve got a very very capable vehicle” with plenty of room to accommodate future modifications, Bohlmann said.
In addition to room for future growth, Shepherd said another key feature is simplicity.
“To keep it relevant, we’ve actually kept it very simple. A lot of companies will make a very integrated digital display, touch screens – we’ve kind of gone to the other end where all the smarts is behind the scenes,” he said.
“The driver’s station is very simple, the maintenance is very simple, looking to make it so it’s just like you would work on a normal car. It drives like a normal car in land and water. We’re trying to keep it as simple as we can to keep from having high-maintenance requirements.”
SAIC
TERREX 2 completes swim test in Charleston, South Carolina. Photo courtesy SAIC.
Personnel capacity: 3 crew, plus 11 embarked Marines
Speed: 7 knots at sea
Power: 600-horsepower Caterpillar C9.3 engine
Reserve buoyancy: 23 percent
In contrast to the user-friendly simplicity Lockheed Martin aims for, SAIC designed its TERREX 2 vehicle to enhance operators’ situational awareness. The troop commander’s seat is back with the embarked Marines, and the commander’s station is equipped with a screen displaying day/night images from a front, rear, left and right camera outside the vehicle. The 11 embarked Marines can all see the troop commander’s screen, giving them an idea of what to expect when they exit the vehicle.
Additionally, the driver’s station features an array of screens – some of them redundant, in case one is damaged – with obstacle avoidance features, situational awareness sensor feeds and more.
SAIC and its partner ST Kinetics chose to emphasize ground operations, where the ACV will spend the bulk of its time, whereas other competitors highlighted their entrants’ launch and recovery and other sea-based capabilities, senior director Bernie Ellis told USNI News.
“It’s going to spend anywhere from two to five percent of its time in the water, so you have to design it to meet the minimum requirements in terms of safely operating in the sea,” Ellis said.
“There’s objective and threshold, so in terms of competition, you want to be as close to objective … as you can. But the majority of what you want to do is optimize and shoot towards land mobility, if you spend 98 percent of your time on the land. Having great water mobility for two percent of the time is not good. So land mobility is a primary driver. Force protection, that’s a big driver. Reliability is a big driver.”
Ellis said the vehicle has a V-over-V hull, which creates a crush zone to reduce the impact of a blast on the floor. Marines would put their feet on footrests attached to the seat across the aisle from them to keep their feet from absorbing any energy from an under-belly blast. This design – compared to the BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin design where the floor the troops walk on isn’t actually connected to the bottom of the vehicle and wouldn’t absorb any blast energy – means the troops cannot keep their feet on the ground during transit but also creates a more spacious interior while the Marines are entering and exiting and arranging their supplies.
General Dynamics
General Dynamics’ offering for ACV 1.1. USNI News photo.
The General Dynamics prototype features a roomy interior, much like the SAIC vehicle, with a lower floor to create more room and footrests to keep the Marines from blast energy.
Unlike SAIC, however, “we put a lot of emphasis on the water mobility aspect, so we have a lot of reserve buoyancy, a lot of growth for the Marines in the future,” ACV 1.1 program director Scott Stilson told USNI News. Compared to SAIC and BAE Systems’ hydraulic propulsion systems for the vehicle’s swim mode, General Dynamics went with a mechanical system – “so no hydraulics, no hydraulic leaks, and we’re very efficient at transferring energy back to the propellers.”
With a 600 horsepower engine, double-V hull design used on other ground vehicles and speeds at least equal to the legacy AAV, the General Dynamics ACV is “focused on performance, protection and payload,” Stilson said.
“I think the real distinguishing feature is really the balanced design. Being able to do everything really well, and the energy that it takes to come up with that design, to me that’s actually what separates us,” he said, attributing that success to both General Dynamics’ robust systems engineering teams as well as an eagerness to incorporate user feedback throughout all the MPC and ACV testing periods.
The company conducted extensive trade studies to find the right balance between weight, protection and performance; water and land capabilities; and other tradeoffs.
“This isn’t what GD wanted necessarily, we listened to the Marine and tried to incorporate that also into the trade studies so they have a vehicle that meets their needs,” he said.
The fifth competitor, Advanced Defense Vehicle Systems, did not bring its vehicle to Modern Day Marine.
Transition to the Super Hornet also for VFA-113,146 to Lemoore and 87 to Oceana the last before F-35C.Mighty Shrikes celebrate final “Legacy” Hornet flight
Pilots, ground officers, maintainers and family members gathered on Aug. 26 to bid farewell to an old friend.
The "Mighty Shrikes" Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 94 completed their last Lemoore-based flight of the venerable F/A-18C “Legacy” Hornet before their transition to the F/A-18F Super Hornet. Piloting the final flight was the Commanding Officer, Cmdr. Mike Langbehn.
"I couldn't think of a better way to wrap up 25 years of Hobos in Hornets than to do a low level self-escort strike with high drag ordnance on the Fallon Range Training Complex," Langbehn said when asked about this historic flight. "Thanks to the best maintenance department in Naval Aviation, the jet performed flawlessly.”
VFA-94 began flying the Hornet in 1990. Revolutionary for its time, the McDonnell Douglas designed airplane allowed complicated radars and sensors to be operated with the efficiency of a single pilot.
The squadron operated the aircraft from the decks of carriers over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan for many Western Pacific deployments before assignment to the Unit Deployment Program (UDP) in 2005. Assigned to land based USMC units in Japan, the squadron participated in many multi-national exercises and detachments to bolster the US presence in the Pacific region.
The squadron returned to its sea going roots in 2012 when it was assigned to Carrier Air Wing 17 onboard USS Carl Vinson, where it recently completed a nine and a half month deployment in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
Following its illustrious history with the Shrikes, the aircraft will continue to serve with many squadrons on the east coast and in the Marine Corps until replaced by the F-35C Lightning II. The squadron looks fondly on its past, but is excited for the transition to the newer Super Hornets.
“The Mighty Shrikes have proven there is still plenty of sting left in the Hornet,” Langbehn said, “but I can't wait to see what this amazing team does with the Super Hornet!”
With the transition now in full swing, the squadron looks to begin a new chapter with the Navy’s current front-line fighter.
Video
Right now 17 Sqns to Oceana : 5 Hornet, 11 S Hornet and 1 OCU mixed ; to Lemoore 16 Sqns : 3 Hornet, 13 S Hornet including OCU.
Next year one Super Hornet Sqn from Oceana go to Lemoore.
In more 4 S Hornet Sqns based to Atsugi.
Jura The idiot
General
"shield in place":
...
... and I think this is related:
found it a moment ago inNATO warships will gather for Exercise Joint Warrior (JW15-2) in Scottish waters from 5th-16th October 2015. This large biannual event has been running for many years and covers the full spectrum naval operations. This month JW15-2 will introduce a unique component with an at sea demonstration (ASD15) of a ballistic missile interception. Networked sensors aboard several NATO warships will be used to track and destroy an Aegis Readiness Assessment Vehicle (ARAV) ballistic missile surrogate with a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) fired from USS Ross. The exercise is the first of its kind in European waters and will help test and evaluate interoperability between participating warships and provide data for further development.
UK and NATO navies take further small steps in developing ballistic missile defence
The first AC-130U Spooky gunship was retired after more than twenty years of service during a ceremony at Hurlburt Field Florida, on 21 September 2015. Bad Omen was delivered to Hurlburt Field on 17 February 1995.
The aircraft (US Air Force serial number 90-0163) was flown on more than 2,300 sorties totaling more than 10,000 flight hours during its career. On 21 July 2011, the crew of Bad Omen was involved in an intense firefight over Afghanistan. During eight separate attacks, 146 40 mm cannon rounds and forty-one 105 mm howitzer rounds were fired. This aircraft, flown by the 4th Special Operations Squadron, was retired primarily because of several non-standard modifications, according to officials. Bad Omen was flown to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, after the ceremony.
USAF have 17 now 16 later remains 12 AC-130W and 37 new AC-130J in order, first based to Eglin for test.