US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

siegecrossbow said:

Is it possible to do fleet rotation (like getting the 7th to take a break while another fleet covers the maritime surveillance in the South/East China Sea)?

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kurutoga said:

they rotate at the ship level

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siegecrossbow said:

Looks like the problem is exclusive to the 7th fleet though.

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Jura said:

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no word about the cost hahaha

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The Air Force on Wednesday awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for work on a new, nuclear-capable cruise missile known as the Long Range Standoff weapon or LRSO.


Each company will rake in about $900 million for a 54-month technology maturation and risk reduction phase, the Air Force said in a statement. Because the LRSO program is highly classified — even more so than the service’s program for new intercontinental ballistic missiles — it declined to release the exact value of its contracts to Lockheed and Raytheon.

LRSO will replace the AGM-86B air-launched cruise missile, oftentimes referred to as the ALCM, which became operational in the early 1980s. The Air Force says its current inventory of ALCMs is still safe to use despite the fact that the weapon only has a 10-year lifespan. However, it has become less effective as enemies bolster their own air defenses and is harder to maintain, as suppliers dry up and parts go obsolete.

“This weapon will modernize the air-based leg of the nuclear triad,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said in a statement. “Deterrence works if our adversaries know that we can hold at risk things they value. This weapon will enhance our ability to do so, and we must modernize it cost-effectively.”

In fiscal year 2022, the Air Force will choose between Raytheon and Lockheed for LRSO’s engineering, manufacturing and development phase. The service currently intends to integrate the weapon with its nuclear-capable bombers— the B-52, B-2 and B-21 — with initial fielding slated for the late 2020s.

“LRSO will provide the next generation strategic deterrent missile for the air-launched portion of the nuclear triad,” said David Helsel, Lockheed’s LRSO program director. “Lockheed Martin’s proven experience in cruise missile and strategic systems technologies will provide the most reliable, capable, sustainable and affordable program in defense of our nation and our allies.”

A spokesman for Raytheon declined to comment on the award.

The contract announcement was bad news for Boeing, the manufacturer of the current ALCM. Boeing spokeswoman Didi VanNierop said the company was “disappointed” by the news and is awaiting more information from the Air Force regarding its decision. After being briefed by the service, the company will have 10 days to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office.

Northrop Grumman was also widely thought to have bid on the contract, but a spokesman for the company could not confirm this by press time.

Although the LRSO program has only just begun, it has been harshly criticized by some congressional Democrats who argue the weapon is too expensive and say that having a cruise missile capable of both conventional and nuclear attacks could increase the risk of miscalculation.

In March, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and nine other Democrats introduced legislation that would slow-roll funding for LRSO until the Trump administration finalizes its nuclear posture review. The bill mandates that funding remained capped at fiscal year 2017 levels — at about $96 million — until the Trump administration finalizes its nuclear posture review. That could have a chilling effect on the program’s progess, which is supposed to shoot up in $451 million in FY18.

However, that bill has stagnated since being referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee. A similar measure was proposed in the House by Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer, of Oregon, during debate on the defense authorization bill, but was defeated 169 to 254.

Supporters of LRSO have argued that existing air-launched cruise missiles are similarly dual purpose, but have not resulted in nuclear war during their decades of use. Air Force leaders have also said the bomber force needs the capability so that operators can strike from standoff distances.

LRSO is the second major nuclear program to have a contract awarded this week. On Monday, the Air Force tapped Boeing and Northrop for technology maturation activities associated with the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, which will replace the current Minuteman III ICBMs.

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Northrop Grumman has a pitch to solve communications problems between the F-35 and F-22: Put a new radio on a Global Hawk drone and have it act like a translator between the two assets.

The U.S. Air Force’s two most advanced fighter jets, the F-35 and F-22, cannot currently transmit and receive information between each other because both use different secure data links: the Multifunction Advanced Data Link, or MADL, on the F-35; and the Intra-Flight Data Link, or IFDL, on the F-22. Both MADL and IFDL allow for stealthy communication that has a low probability of detection, but that information cannot be transferred to aircraft using different waveforms.

Northrop’s proposed fix involves integrating its Freedom 550 radio aboard the RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV — which is already used as a communications node in the Middle East and elsewhere — thus providing a near-term way to allow both jets to talk to each other, said Mike Lyons, the company’s head of Global Hawk business development.

“We’ve got a solution that we’ve identified and made a pitch to the Air Force. We’re just waiting for the requirements to basically say: ‘Go do [that],’ ” he said during an interview at Northrop’s facilities in Palmdale, California.

The F-35 and F-22’s inability to share data with each other has been a longstanding issue that the Air Force has been grappling with for some time. At one point, the service planned to retrofit its F-22s with MADL, but the program was canceled early this decade. However, as the F-35 becomes a more substantial part of the Air Force’s inventory, finding a communications gateway between fifth- and fourth-generation fighters is becoming a bigger priority.

Lyons told Defense News he expects the Air Force to release a joint urgent-operational-needs statement sometime over the next six months, and that a Freedom 550-equipped Global Hawk would likely be Northrop’s offering.

The Freedom 550 is a multichannel, software-defined radio that shares data from MADL and IFDL through J-series messages via Link 16, according to Northrop. It can also link fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 and F-22 with fourth-gen jets like the F-15 and F-16.

“It has the ability to pull the fifth-gen comms — the secured comms — and then it can bridge it over to an unsecured network, if you want, like Link 16 or SADL” Lyons said, using an acronym for the situational-awareness data link. “It allows those secure comms to talk to each other, because right now they can’t.”

Northrop has demonstrated the Freedom 550 in a series of simulated and live exercises between fourth- and fifth-gen fighter jets, but never with F-35s and F-22s in a live environment or using the Global Hawk as a communications relay.

Earlier this year, the company partnered with the British Royal Air Force on a two-week trial called Babel Fish III that used the Freedom 550 to allow F-35Bs to talk with Eurofighter Typhoons, which operate over the Link 16 network. The F-35 also operates Link 16 and can pass data directly through that link, but MADL-specific data cannot be transmitted.

So why use the Global Hawk?

The Air Force regularly flies an EQ-4 configuration of the Global Hawk for communications relay purposes. Instead of being outfitted with electro-optical/infrared sensors and radar like a typical RQ-4 used for surveillance, the EQ-4 carries the battlefield airborne communications node, which links surface and air operators on different networks — particularly useful in rough or mountainous terrain, where it’s often difficult to retain connectivity.

“We’ve had missions where the Navy won’t fly if this is not up and flying, because it’s the only way they can talk to their ships from their airplanes,” Lyons said.

Global Hawks are long-endurance, high-altitude UAVs can spend nearly 34 hours in the air. However, there is still space in the EQ-4’s payload bay for additional communications systems like the Freedom 550, Lyons added.

The scope of the Air Force’s joint urgent-operational-needs statement is still to be determined, but it’s possible that others besides Northrop could come forward with their own technology. For instance, Boeing has developed a data link pod called Talon HATE designed to be carried by the F-15. In May, the company proved that two F-15Cs equipped with the Talon HATE pod could communicate with F-22s.

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Jura said:

Jan 23, 2017
now
Lockheed, Raytheon nab contracts for nuclear cruise missile

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The Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. contracts to begin preliminary work on the new Long Range Standoff weapon, known as LRSO.

The defense contractors were awarded agreements valued at $900 million apiece and lasting almost five years “to mature design concepts and prove developmental technologies,” the

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said in a release on Wednesday.

“This weapon will modernize the air-based leg of the nuclear triad,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said. in a statement. “Deterrence works if our adversaries know that we can hold at risk things they value. This weapon will enhance our ability to do so, and we must modernize it cost-effectively.”

LRSO is a nuclear-capable cruise missile to be launched from aircraft such as the

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,

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and future B-21 Long-Range Strike Bomber. The

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,

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, is not slated to receive the weapon, Air Force officials told Military.com.

The LRSO program would replace the

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Air Launched Cruise Missile, known as ALCM, developed in the early 1980s. The Air Force plans to start fielding LRSO in the late 2020s, the release said.

“The Long Range Standoff is a critical capability required to support Gen. John Hyten’s war plans,” added Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, citing the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal.

Both companies will do preliminary work until the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center will choose a sole company to design and manufacture LRSO in 2022.

Lockheed will perform work at its Orlando, Florida, facility while Raytheon will use in Tucson, Arizona, as its facility, the release said.

Earlier this week, the Air Force awarded two contracts to Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co. for its Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program to replace its

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intercontinental ballistic missile system.

Air Force officials on background said that unlike GBSD, information on LRSO — like the

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— is scarce because of its upped classification. The only commonality between GBSD and LRSO “are that they are nuclear,” but LRSO remains a more tactical program. Officials explained the LRSO missile is a weapon in it of itself — and does not divulge tactics, techniques or procedures — instead of an entire launch and command-and-control system like GBSD.

Classification of the program was determined by the “appropriate classifying authority,” officials said, and noted that appropriate leadership — such as lawmakers — are briefed accordingly on a need-to-know level as the program progresses.

Furthermore, defense companies have not openly disclosed if they bid on the program. The Air Force launched the contract request for proposal

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.

In March, Rep. William “Mac” Thornberry, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he “would be willing to support” speeding up the fielding of LRSO, or the B61-12 nuclear bomb on the

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because of continuous

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s from Russia.

The congressman’s comments came the same day as nine Senate Democrats said they wanted to cap funding on the LRSO program in an effort to slow its development.

Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and eight senators introduced the bill, which would limit funding for a new nuclear-armed air-launched missile “at 2017 levels until the Trump administration submits a Nuclear Posture Review to Congress,”

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.

A similar bill was introduced by House members

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. Neither bill has made it to committee.

Air Force officials reiterated the need for LRSO, and not just because of ALCM’s age. With adversaries technological advances, ALCM will no longer be able to penetrate various systems, they said.

LRSO will only be able to be carried on bomber aircraft. It will not be interchangeable with the B61-12 nuclear bomb, for example, on the F-35 Lightning II.

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kurutoga said:

it is poor people's kids fighting poor people's kids from the other side.

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Neighborhood median income of AC NPS enlisted accessions At the advent of the AVF, there was concern about the representation of the force, particularly socioeconomic representation. Researchers found that accessions in the early years of the AVF were, for the most part, representative of the U.S. population in terms of their socioeconomic backgrounds.23 More recent studies report similar findings on socioeconomic characteristics, such as neighborhood income, for the 1990s and early years of this century.24 Because household or family income is not collected from the families or households from which recruits come, these studies must identify a proxy for household income of recruits. For example, in a recent study, Lien, Lawler, and Shuford used the median income for recruits’ census tracts as a proxy for recruit household income. 25 In short, they measured “neighborhood affluence” or how well-off (well-to-do) recruits’ neighborhoods were. Each neighborhood is synonymous with a census tract.

References
23 See, for example, Richard N. Cooper, Military Manpower and the All-Volunteer Force, RAND Publication, R-1450-ARPA, 1977. 24 See, for example, Shanea J. Watkins and James Sherk, Who Serves in the U.S. Military? Demographic Characteristics of Enlisted Troops and Officers, Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report CDA 08-05, Aug. 21, 2008. 25 Diana S. Lien, Kletus Lawler, and Robert Shuford, An Investigation of FY10 and FY11 Enlisted Accessions’ Socioeconomic Characteristics, CNA Research Memorandum DRM-2012-U-001362-Final, Aug. 2012. 25

We updated the Lien, Lawler, and Shuford study for FY14 AC NPS accessions, mapping each accession to his or her home-of-record census tract and computing neighborhood affluence (median household income) for each tract. We then divided neighborhood affluence income measures into income quintiles. 26 Figure 15 shows FY14 AC NPS enlisted accessions by the median income quintile of their home-of-record census tracts.27 The 20-percent line defines each income quintile based on census-tract-level median household income data. Relative to all households, FY14 NPS accessions are underrepresented in census tracts with the lowest and the highest median incomes, while those in the middle three quintiles are overrepresented. Lower-income neighborhoods tend to have fewer people qualified to serve. In FY14, for example, virtually all NPS accessions were high school diploma graduates, and high school dropout rates are higher in low-income neighborhoods. For the highest neighborhood median income quintile, the lower representation is probably due to higher college attendance rates among youth in these census tracts.28 The findings depicted in figure 15 are important because they dispel the myth that the military obtains the majority of its recruits from the lower socioeconomic classes—those neighborhoods with the lowest income levels. Quite the opposite is true. The military actually gets the largest proportion of its recruits from the three middle quintiles.

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test bd said:

...for the chart mentioned scroll down to page 26. ...

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Damaged destroyer USS Fitzgerald to be repaired at Huntington Ingalls Industries

The US Navy has selected Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) for the restoration of USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the US Naval Sea Systems Command has announced.

While the start date, scope, cost and the time required to fully restore the ship have not yet been determined, NAVSEA plans to award the contract before the end of the year.

Although the destroyer was built by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Maine, the navy chose HII following a review of the capabilities and workload of new construction and repair shipyards.

To remind, USS Fitzgerald suffered extensive damage following a collision with Philippine-flagged merchant vessel ACX Crystal off the coast of Japan on July 17. Seven sailors lost their lives in the incident.

Given the complexity of the work and the significant unknowns of the restoration, the Navy determined that only an Arleigh Burke-class shipbuilder could perform the effort, NAVSEA said adding that only HII had the available capacity to restore USS Fitzgerald to full operational status in the shortest period of time with minimal disruption to ongoing repair and new construction work.

Before it can start repair works, the US Navy will first need to transport the destroyer from Japan to the US. A contract for the heavy lift transport of USS Fitzgerald from SRF-JRMC Yokosuka to the continental United States is still in the works, the navy said.

USS Fitzgerald suffered damage on her starboard side above and below the waterline. Compartments that were affected include two berthing spaces, a radio room, a machinery space, and various lockers, passageways, and access trunks. In addition to the restoration effort, the navy intends to incorporate previously planned modernization efforts into the availability that were to have taken place at SRF-JRMC Yokosuka in 2019.

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