US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

this is interesting:
Navy Planning Public Shipyard Overhauls To Boost Efficiency, Replacing Aging Drydocks

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

The Navy is planning a multi-billion-dollar shipyard upgrade effort to help its four yards that maintain submarines and aircraft carriers do so more efficiently and accommodate the newest ships coming into the fleet.

Naval Sea Systems Command commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore said today that the Navy will spend $3 to $4 billion replacing the drydocks at these yards, with additional money going towards renovating buildings, buying new capital equipment and revamping yard layouts.

These changes are driven by necessity, with the two main factors being workload and new specifications on the Gerald R. Ford-class carriers and the Block V Virginia-class submarines.

In the case of the attack subs, the Navy will soon begin building the boats with a Virginia Payload Module, an extra section in the middle of the submarine that adds additional missile tubes – and makes the submarine too long to fit in current dry docks. In the case of the Ford carriers, the ship’s power grid is not compatible with the pier-side power system at the public yards.

As for the workload, the four yards already face a large backlog of work, and with the fleet set to grow from today’s 275 ships up to 355, the demands on the yards will only grow. The workforce is set to increase, from today’s 33,850 to 36,100, but more employees alone is not enough to fix the problem, Moore said at an event co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute.

“Once you get that workforce trained and it’s there, I expect you to be able to figure out how to do a 250,000-man-day availability in 230,000 man-days, for example,” Moore said, so the yards can increase their throughput as the fleet grows in size.
“How your shops are set up and how you flow material can go a long way towards making you more productive.”

Moore noted that Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., had to rebuild after the yard was damaged in Hurricane Katrina, and in the rebuilding process the shipyard considered the most efficient layout of buildings and equipment and made use of new and emerging technologies. “They’re knocking it out of the park” now in terms of efficiency, he said, and he hopes the Navy can find the funds to revamp its four yards to create similar efficiencies.

The yards could also be designed with new technologies and processes in mind, so that workers aren’t conducting maintenance the same way it’s always been done simply for the sake of continuity.

“We tend to be a pretty conservative organization on how we use technology, and there’s great opportunity out there, I think, to use technology, including cell phone, et cetera – and there’s security issues – but they allow us to be more productive at the deck plate,” Moore explained.

Noting that young incoming employees are tech-savvy and not accustomed to working off paper drawings and documentation, Moore said it may be more intuitive for them – and more efficient – to have an app with their work instructions, a button to order more parts, the ability to take photos and match up what they see with how a job is supposed to look, and so on. Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding is undergoing a similar effort,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

that could spread to its Ingalls Shipbuilding yard in Mississippi or even sold to the Navy for use in these public yards.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here for us to get more productive that goes well beyond just adding people,” the NAVSEA commander concluded.

Though an expensive proposition, Moore noted that if maintenance availabilities could be completed with fewer man-hours, the requirement for maintenance funding would drop and that money could be used elsewhere in the Navy budget.

The Navy does face a challenge in upgrading its yards, in that they’ve been largely overlooked during recent years of sequestration and budget caps. Further, Moore said the Navy has typically only spent just above the 6-percent mandatory spending level on its yards, rather than pouring higher sums into improving the yards, and it tends to replace its capital equipment every 20 or 25 years despite the industry standard being every 10 to 15 years.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, and some buildings at the yards are more than 100 years old.

Moore said Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine hired an industrial engineer a few years ago to look at the yard layout and workflow and identify ways to make the yard more efficient. NAVSEA now intends to do the same at its yards in Virginia, Washington and Hawaii to guide its plans.

“We have a long-term investment plan that I’ve shown to the [chief of naval operations] that includes both the dry docks and then the facilities investments necessary to get there. It’s not cheap, you’re talking on the dry dock side of the house probably over the next 30 years an investment on the order of $3 to $4 billion necessary to make the dry docks compatible. Those are kind of must-haves if you want to have Virginia-class submarines with Virginia Payload Modules and Ford-class carriers, you’re going to have to upgrade your dry docks,” Moore said. He added that the plan is currently outlined and should be finalized by February 2018, to begin informing budget decisions.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

this is interesting:
Yesterday at 2:44 PM

but:

Q: Can I ask you about Turkey? They announced yesterday that they're going to buy four Russian S-400s, advanced anti-air. Does that put any tension in the U.S. military to Turkish military relationship? That they're a NATO ally buying a very advanced Russian hardware?

SEC. MATTIS: The problem is, how do you interoperate in the NATO system with Russians? They'll never interoperate. They're built -- you don't just layer on interoperability at the end. So, we'll have to see, does it go through? Do they actually employ it, do they employ it only in one area? All that kind of stuff. But I -- you know, we'll have to take a look at it. Obviously, it's not going to be interoperable with NATO systems.

Q: Does the U.S. approve of them buying Russian...

(CROSSTALK)

SEC. MATTIS: This is a sovereign decision, so.
Media Availability With Secretary Mattis in the Pentagon

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

(I noticed this linked at gazeta.ru:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

)

I mean, Turkey with both F-35 and Triumph, seriously?

Click to expand...

Turkey has signed a controversial deal with Russia to arm its forces with Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a deposit had already been paid. The deal is thought to be worth $2.5bn (£1.9bn).

Turkey has the second-largest army in Nato. The alliance reacted sceptically to the decision, saying the system was not compatible with its equipment.

Turkey has been establishing closer links with Russia after its recent souring of ties with the US and Europe.

Mr Erdogan's government objects to US military support for the YPG Syrian Kurdish rebels, who are linked to rebel Kurds in Turkey.

Russia says the S-400 system has a range of 400km (248 miles) and can shoot down up to 80 targets simultaneously, aiming two missiles at each one.

Russia deployed the S-400 at its air force base near Latakia in Syria in December 2015, after Turkish jets had shot down a Russian Su-24 warplane on the Syria-Turkey border.

That incident caused a diplomatic rift between Russia and Turkey, but President Erdogan later patched up his quarrel with President Vladimir Putin.

Tensions within Nato
A military adviser to Mr Putin, Vladimir Kozhin, said the S-400 contract with Turkey was "strictly compatible with our strategic interests". "On that score, one can quite understand the reaction of some Western countries who are trying to put pressure on Turkey."

Mr Erdogan, quoted by Turkey's Hurriyet daily, voiced displeasure with unnamed Western partners who were "seeking enormous amounts of money" for military drones.

He said Turkey had killed 90 YPG "terrorists" in the past week with Turkish drones - developed because the Western ones were too expensive.

"We are responsible for taking security measures for the defence of our country," he stressed.

The BBC's Mark Lowen in Turkey says the missile deal is clearly a rebuff to Nato, after the US and Germany withdrew Patriot air defence batteries from Turkey.

In 2015, Turkey urged its Nato allies to keep those batteries positioned on the Turkish-Syrian border.

Speaking to AFP news agency, an unnamed Nato official said: "No Nato ally currently operates the S-400". They added: "Nato has not been informed about the details of any purchase."

Germany's Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, said Berlin would put all arms exports to Turkey on hold due to the deteriorating relationship between the two nations.

Mr Gabriel's counterpart in Ankara, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said the comments were inappropriate for a foreign minister.

Relations between the two countries have deteriorated since Turkey arrested a Turkish-German journalist in February as part of a crackdown on political opponents in the country.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

President Erdogan called Germany's ruling politicians "enemies of Turkey".

Turkey is also angry with the US for not extraditing Fethullah Gulen, the Muslim cleric who, according to Mr Erdogan, organised the July 2016 coup plot by rogue Turkish officers. Mr Gulen denied any involvement.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

...
LOL I wonder how a Military operating both F-35s and Triumphs would fit into the world of various Analysts
I'd be at a total loss

oops now I imagined an exercise which would pitch these weapons against each other

Click to expand...

Jeff Head said:

Yes, the Wasp, the Essex, and the America have all exercised with the F-35B aboard.

The best visuals of what a strong LHA/LHD will look like with numerous F-35s aboard came from the recent exercises with the USS America, LHA-6.

Seeing this does my old heart and mind good! LOL!

You can see 12 F-35Bs on the America in these two photos:

View attachment 41894

View attachment 41902

Here's another:

View attachment 41895

Gotta love it.

A Wasp or America class with 12 F-35Bs is going to be a very strong vessel...particularly if they get a decent AEW aircraft for it to use.

This means the US can field an additional 3-4 carriers at any time it needs to. And in the sea control role, these vessels can carry up to 20 of these aircraft.

Any carrier with 20 F-35Bs is going to be a carrier tough to reckon with.

Click to expand...

FORBIN said:

Can be interesting a AEW variant coz for give an idea a CAP is maybe twice as efficient with ... look Falklands War... not really useful vs low threat with small countries but necessary vs more powerful countries if the LHD/LHA is around/close but necessary a new radar, for a " helo " Fleet enough small also and others needs for USN...

Click to expand...

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Wednesday he has become convinced that the United States must keep all three parts of its nuclear force, rather than eliminate one, as he once suggested.

Some argue that ground-based missiles may no longer be necessary to America's policy of deterrence, and the Trump administration has been reviewing the military's nuclear posture.

Mattis has called the submarine-based component "sacrosanct" and has said it is necessary to retain the ability to fire nuclear weapons from planes.

Together, those three prongs constitute what the military calls its nuclear triad.

Before he took over in January as President Donald Trump's Pentagon chief, Mattis had suggested that long-range, silo-based weapons, known as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), might be expendable.

"I've questioned the triad," Mattis told reporters flying with him to

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, a nuclear base in northwestern North Dakota. He said his view has changed.

"I cannot solve the deterrent problem reducing it from a triad. If I want to send the most compelling message, I have been persuaded that the triad in its framework is the right way to go," Mattis said.

Mattis has previously indicated this evolution in thinking, but his statements Wednesday were emphatic.

The key to avoiding nuclear war, he said, is maintaining a nuclear arsenal sufficient to convince a potential enemy that attacking the U.S. with a nuclear weapon would be suicidal.

"You want the enemy to look at it and say, this is impossible to take out in a first strike, and the (U.S.) retaliation is such that we don't want to do it," he said. "That's how a deterrent works."

Thus the U.S. will keep nuclear missile submarines, land-based nuclear missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft, he indicated.

Mattis also said the Trump administration is reviewing the value of the New Start treaty negotiated with Russia by the Obama administration in 2010. The treaty, already in effect, requires reductions by both sides to a maximum of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads by February.

"We're still engaged in determining whether it's a good idea," Mattis said, adding that the question is linked to adherence by others to separate but related arms treaties. That was an apparent reference to U.S. allegations that Russia is violating the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty from 1987.

Mattis declined to discuss the matter further, except to say the administration is not considering withdrawing from New Start.

Trump has criticized New Start as a bad deal for America.

Mattis' trip was scheduled before the recent series of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. But those test were giving Mattis a chance to highlight what the Air Force promotes as an always-ready fleet of land-based missiles and

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

equipped to deliver nuclear devastation to nearly any point on the globe in short order.

The Minot base is home to more than 100 land-based nuclear missiles as well as nuclear bomb-carrying aircraft.

Minot and Strategic Command headquarters at

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in Nebraska are timely backdrops for a related political message: The Trump administration intends to press ahead with a multibillion-dollar modernization of the entire nuclear arsenal.

The Pentagon is in the midst of an in-depth review of nuclear weapons policy, but it seems clear that upgrading the Cold War-era nuclear force is a foregone conclusion.

Last month the Pentagon signaled its intentions by awarding two key contracts.

One was to Northrop Grumman and Boeing, totaling nearly $700 million, for further development of an ICBM to replace the Minuteman 3. The other was to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for $1.8 billion to work on a new nuclear-armed, air-launched cruise missile.

The Air Force also is proceeding with development of a next-generation nuclear-capable bomber,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, and the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

is building a new fleet of strategic nuclear submarines.

How this fits into the broader defense budget in coming years is unclear.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Secretary Heather Wilson said in an Associated Press interview on Monday that there is no practical alternative to modernizing the force.

"At some point, stuff just breaks," she said, referring to the Minuteman 3, which was first deployed in 1970. "The materials just are not able to be maintained anymore."

Mattis in recent weeks has all but dismissed the idea, which he raised himself in congressional testimony two years ago, that the country might be better off eliminating the ICBM fleet.

In June, the Air Force finished reducing the number of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

missiles by 50 to a total of 400, the lowest since 1962. But Mattis appears to have been persuaded by the argument that keeping ICBMs deployed in underground silos sprinkled across the western Great Plains is key to deterrence because an attacker would have to use hundreds of weapons to destroy all 400 launch facilities.

Minot hosts the 91st Missile Wing, which operates one-third of the nation's 400 Minuteman 3 missiles, as well as the 5th Bomb Wing, which flies nuclear-capable B-52 bombers.

Minot in recent years was at the center of trouble in the ICBM force, including lapses in morale, training, performance and management. The Air Force has made an effort since 2014 to correct those weaknesses, which had accumulated over a period of years, with little attention from Congress.

Click to expand...

Lockheed Martin recently published artists' views of the HH-60W helicopter rescue helicopter for the US Air Force.

The HH-60W is a derivative of the Black Hawk UH-60M with increased fuel capacity and bunker size. The aircraft will be equipped with GE T700-701D engines and composite rotors. The structures are designed to limit corrosion and guarantee the maneuverability of the device even at high altitudes Lockheed Martin announcement.

The aircraft was developed by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, to replace the HH-60G Pave Hawk currently employed by the US Air Force for "RESCO" missions (In France these missions are carried out by the H225M Caracal). A total of 112 units have to be replaced.

The contract for the replacement of the Pave Hawk was notified to Sikorsky in June 2014. The HH-60W program passed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) phase in May 2016. One year later the program crossed the milestone CDR (Critical Design Review) to launch the assembly of a first device and then the tests. The first flight of the HH-60W is scheduled for 2018.

In August 2017, Lockheed Martin announced that the future radar warning system of the HH-60W, the AN / APR-52 Radar Warning Receiver, had reached the TRL 6 maturity level. The AN / APR-52 RWR fully digital system operating on four detection channels.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Navy Intends to Transport USS John S. McCain to Yokosuka

WASHINGTON — The Navy intends to issue a task order on an existing contract for the salvage patching and transport via heavy lift of USS John S. McCain from Changi Naval Base in Singapore to the U.S. Navy’s Ship Repair Facility-Japan Regional Maintenance Center in Yokosuka, Japan, U.S. Seventh Fleet said in a Sept. 6 release.

The lift is notionalvly planned for late September.

The Navy is moving John S. McCain to Yokosuka to allow the crew to be close to their families and to allow for a complete assessment of the damage. Completion of the damage assessment is required to fully determine repair plans to include cost, schedule and location for the ship’s repairs.

The guided-missile destroyer was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Alnic MC while underway east of the Strait of Malacca and Singapore Aug 21.

The ship suffered significant damage to its port side aft resulting in flooding to nearby compartments, including berthing, machinery and communications rooms.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Jura said:

oops! Air Force One now:
Boneyard Boeings Will be the Next Air Force Ones
the article is on top of AirForceMag webpage right now ...:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

he U.S. Air Force on Tuesday awarded Boeing a contract worth just less than $600 million to begin the preliminary design of the next Air Force One planes.

As the Republican presidential candidate, President Donald Trump critiqued the cost of the program, bringing much public attention to one of the Air Force’s smaller procurement efforts. But while the service has stated that it was able to get a good deal on the two Boeing 747-8s that will become the next Air Force Ones, it reiterated that cost-saving work will continue during the preliminary design phase.

Maj. Gen. Duke Richardson, the program executive officer of the Presidential Airlift Recapitalization effort — the service’s name for the Air Force One replacement program — said the preliminary design phase marks “the next major step forward toward ensuring an overall affordable program.”

The Air Force added in a statement to reporters: “Those [cost-saving] opportunities identified will be reviewed to ensure mission capabilities are not degraded. The entire preliminary design effort will keep a focus on affordability. … The Air Force is committed to working with Boeing to ensure the PAR program meets presidential airlift mission requirements, as well as the president’s affordability expectations.”

Due to the attention from Trump, the Air Force and White House worked together to re-evaluate the Air Force requirements with an eye on shearing off expensive and non-vital capabilities.

The service has disclosed some changes to the overall design, such as nixing a requirement for aerial refueling. However, for the most part, it has kept mum about how requirements have changed and how much money has been saved on the program.

As part of the preliminary design phase, Boeing will design modifications to a baseline commercial Boeing 747, including the integration of military-specific communication systems, electrical power upgrades, medical facilities, self-defense systems, an executive interior complete with medical facilities and “autonomous ground operations capabilities,” according to the Air Force news release.

The September award was one of two major contract modifications expected to be allocated before the end of fiscal 2017. In August, the Air Force awarded Boeing a contract for two 747-8 airliners, making the unorthodox decision to buy two previously built planes sitting on Boeing’s production line at a discounted rate.

The service did not disclose the value of the deal because it could lower the company’s asking price in future commercial deals.

“We got a good price,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told Defense News during an Aug. 29 interview.

Speaking about future opportunities for cutting cost on the program, she added: “There will be a fair amount of negotiation to make sure that we’re getting good value for money. We have that obligation no matter what the program is, and every dollar that we spend was earned by somebody, and we need to make sure that we get good value for money on everything that we buy.”

The next big upcoming milestone is the contract for engineering and manufacturing development, where Boeing will continue to refine its design, modify and test the two new Air Force One aircraft, and then deliver them.

Boeing is expected to start aircraft modifications in 2019, and the new Air Force One planes could begin replacing the aging VC-25A models as early as 2024.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Sunday at 8:33 AM

sorta related:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

source:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

The US Navy has recently contracted the manufacturer of Tomahawk missiles to begin integrating a new multi-mode seeker into the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile which will allow the weapon to engage moving maritime targets.

Under a contract worth $119 million, Raytheon is expected to deliver this new capability for the Tomahawks by 2022.

The new seeker development is carried out under the navy’s Rapid Deployment Capability program – a tool that gives the navy “all available means to deliver the needed capability as expeditiously as possible”.

“The U.S. Navy and Raytheon are working closely together to further enhance this modern missile, keeping Tomahawk in the fleet for decades to come,” said Capt. Mark Johnson, Tomahawk program manager at U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. “No other weapon on earth can match this cruise missile’s capability. Proven thousands of times in combat, Tomahawk is the nation’s weapon of choice.”

Launched from ships or submarines, the Tomahawk missile can fly into heavily defended airspace 1,000 statute miles away to conduct precise strikes on high-value targets with minimal collateral damage.

“Tomahawk’s new multi-mode seeker will add even more capability to this already advanced missile,” said Dave Adams, Raytheon Tomahawk program director. “Tomahawk is second to none in destroying stationary land targets, and soon the weapon will defeat moving maritime targets. Enemy vessels at sea will not elude Tomahawk.”

Raytheon is already modernizing Tomahawk’s radio suite and software under a separate Navy contract. Recertification on the first Tomahawk Block IVs is set to begin in 2019. That process will extend Tomahawk’s service life for 15 years and enable Raytheon to make enhancements to the missile.

Click to expand...