US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

“Traditionally, the Navy is responsible for sea control. Once we control that, we deliver the Marines ashore,” said Cmdr. Matt Hoekstra, an operations officer with ESG-3.

“We are one of the first forces in the theater,” Hoekstra noted, and “there’s a lot more that has to come in” to support initial operations and create the environment for follow-on forces and support.

But amphibious forces, such as amphibious ready groups, have shipboard self-defense systems but limited strike capability, and they typically don’t deploy with ships such as destroyers that can strike targets at sea or further inland. “We don’t have all the fires a carrier strike group would have,” Hoekstra said. So HIMARS would “augment” naval fires and, ultimately, enable and support sea control.

On Monday, a Marine raid force boarded MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters and flew off Essex for the mission to capture an enemy-held airfield, which for the scenario was the airfield at the north end of San Clemente Island.

After capturing the airfield, they set to secure the nearby beach so follow-on amphibious forces could arrive.

“The next stage [is], let’s send the HIMARS ashore and then it can start ranging targets at sea,” said O’Connor, the amphibious task force commander for the Dawn Blitz exercise. “Suddenly, you have a mobile capability that was at sea and is now ashore, and now you’ve got an opportunity to maneuver the ships away with this providing overwatch. It’s pretty amazing.”

That plan involved sending the HIMARS crew, along with ammunition, ashore via air-cushioned landing craft (LCAC) with the forces. Once on land, the force would be poised to respond to offensive operations or against threats, whether these are at sea, say, an enemy vessel, or further inland.

The objective “could be at sea or it could be on land,” said Brig. Gen. Rick Uribe, I MEF’s deputy commander and commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Camp Pendleton. “So this gives us great flexibility to be able to go after whatever it is at the moment, whether it’s a surface target or land targets.”

“It’s all hands to the fight,” Uribe said. “On ship, we have Marines sitting below deck. They have weapons. We’ve got to think about creative ways to utilize that capability… to make sure that whatever the force is, wherever it’s going, that it’s protected and we can get to our objective area.”

So Marines who are available and aren’t tasked with other missions, such as while ships are in transit, can “help the amphibious force protect itself,” he said. “These are all concepts we are looking at.”

“That’s not too different than in World War II,” added O’Connor, noting South Pacific battles during World War II where Marines with land-based coastal defense units had anti-air and some anti-ship capabilities.

During the Battle of Wake Island in December 1941, for example, Marines firing their 5-inch guns sunk the Japanese destroyer Hayate. The heroics of that battle today are memorialized in Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211, the F-35B Lightning II squadron nicknamed the “Wake Island Avengers” and, ironically, operating with Essex for Dawn Blitz. The squadron is slated to deploy with the Essex and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit later next year.

The F-35 “is a game-changer,” O’Connor said, echoing an oft-repeated description of the added capabilities the jet gives the services that don’t exist in older aircraft.

The AV-8B Harrier, he noted, was “developed for specific types of missions. It wasn’t really developed for air defense missions,” unlike the fifth-generation, multi-mission role of the F-35.”

The F-35B will give options when, say, a carrier air wing isn’t available, he said. “It has the ability to go head to head with any aircraft in the world today,” he added. With its stealthy features, it can take out coastal defenses and missile sites “which pose a problem if you’re trying to do a standard, conventional type of operation.”

As for HIMARS, both commanders relayed support to their three-star bosses. But do they want it? “Oh yeah. Look at what we just did,” O’Connor said.

“One shot, to be fair, is one shot,” Uribe added. “The shot did exactly what we wanted it to do, based on the model. So it is a basis from which to go forward.”

“And then,” said O’Connor, “there is the question of trade-offs because ships are limited in volume, weight and personnel. So in order to bring X, we’d have to give up Y. So it’s something to consider.”

Click to expand...

Calling the work help desk for password resets can be frustrating under normal situations, but try it while being tailed by a Russian surveillance ship, avoiding the Iranian Navy and steering clear of small craft potentially carrying explosives.

Capt. Larry LeGree, commodore of Amphibious Squadron 8, recently returned from deployment with the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and described submitting the forward commander’s equivalent of a cry for tech help to just get systems running again while sailing through a crowded and not often unfriendly neighborhood.

“I sent 14 casualty reports this deployment to get a password [changed] or to get a configuration,” LeGree said.
“I shouldn’t have to do that.”

Speaking Tuesday at the NDIA Expeditionary Warfare Conference in Annapolis, LeGree’s comments were part of a panel discussing resiliency during recent amphibious operations.

While deployed, a ship’s crew or even the ARG staff often needs to make do with the resources available. A ship’s operations are continual and the threat in forward locations doesn’t diminish just because a system is down.

“I didn’t have the ability to have downtime when operating off the coast of Yemen,” LeGree said.

A number of a ship’s communications systems, security systems, and intelligence systems are designed with maximum security in mind or are not commonly taught to Navy personnel training to maintain such systems. When in homeport, specialists can be called or brought onboard to fix problems. While deployed, LeGree said that’s a different story.

“We simply don’t have the access out on the ships at sea to reconfigure them if something goes down,” LeGree said.

Having to spend a lot of time evaluating a system, getting the right technician to fix a system, or calling land-based support is a vulnerability for forward-deployed ships, LeGree said.

In a perfect world, ships would have one basic operating system with technicians trained to keep it running, he said. But the reality is several systems onboard are one-off systems, and maybe only one sailor in the ARG is trained to troubleshoot and fix any problems. LeGree said the Navy has to plan for self-sufficiency when designing ships.

Capt. Mike Crary, commander of the Makin Island ARG, detailed how more than half of the recently completed 214-day deployment was spent either in a split configuration or disaggregated – with ARG ships operating in two different theaters of operation. The ARG operated in Asia and supported counter ISIS operations.

The ARG might have the right staff for various tasks, but the personnel could be hundreds of miles away from the ship in need, Crary said. This applies to tech support, but also medical and intelligence needs.

Crary wants more surgical teams deployed, to help reduce the risk posed to sailors when an ARG operates in a split configuration. If there were a medical emergency, the surgical team could take hours or more to reach the patient.

Both Crary and LeGree said ARGs need more intelligence staff. The missions take ships into contested regions, where threats are posed from both shore and by small vessels on the water. The risk to ships increases. Crary said, “One of the areas to mitigate that risk is more intelligence specialists.”

LeGree used whatever resources were available, including ones he described as “non-traditional ways to use ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance).” During his recent deployment, LeGree used unmanned aerial vehicles to gather information about possible threats and called 15 guided missile cruisers operating nearby because they possess capabilities the ARG just doesn’t have.

“Part of resiliency is fixing it ourselves,” LeGree said.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

I didn't get it, I wouldn't have thought the USN had needed the USMC support in sea control! as in:

"Senior officials have been looking at how the Marine Corps, which is historically focused on land based operations, can support the Navy at sea and bolster the amphibious force’s ability to obtain and maintain “sea control,” in areas of current and potential future operations."

and

"The new capability also potentially gives the Marine Corps a piece of the sea control mission."

Marines Fire HIMARS From Ship in Sea Control Experiment With Navy

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

... goes on below due to size limit

Click to expand...

Jeff Head said:

Wow...I expected them to only be used for ground suport missions. Artillary to replace what the Iowa class BBs could do and supplement the 3 Zumwalts.

But to use for sea control? Guided missiles against moving ships?

That seems odd to me. You would hope that a ARG would have sufficient Burke and Tico escorts to handle that, and then if needed the F-35Bs would be available, and if they expected sea control issues a true carrier should be available.

Intersting.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Sep 23, 2017

now the story goes on with PICTURE: KC-46A refuels another KC-46A

12 October, 2017

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Boeing on Wednesday disclosed more bad news on the KC-46 program: The company will have to eat another $329 million as a result of cost overruns.


Under the terms of its fixed-price deal with the U.S. Air Force, Boeing must pay out of pocket for any expenses over the $4.9 billion contract value. That agreement has been a tough pill for Boeing to swallow, as the company has now had to cough up about $2.9 billion in pretax fees — or about $1.9 billion after tax — as delays and cost overruns mount.

There are signs another missed milestone may be on the way.

Over the past year, Boeing has remained adamant that it can deliver the first KC-46 aircraft by the end of 2017 — although the Air Force believes it will be later, likely next spring.

Asked by Defense News whether the company still believes it can hit that deadline, Boeing spokesman Chick Ramey demurred.

“We’re working with the Air Force on the schedule and expect to deliver the first 18 tankers in 2018,” he said. Regarding a contractual obligation to deliver 18 certified KC-46s and nine refueling pods, “we remain on track for late next year.”

According to the company, Wednesday’s cost overrun was driven by “incorporating changes into initial production aircraft as we progress through late-stage testing and the certification process.”

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg provided few details about the underlying cause of the cost overrun and instead downplayed the impact of the repeated penalties on the long-term health of the program.

“We remain very confident,” he said. “The opportunity is measured in hundreds of aircraft. We expect this to be a long-term production and support franchise, one that will add tremendous value for our customers, and the need for the new tankers is very clear. So the fundamentals for the program are strong, the long-term value proposition is very strong.”

The $329 million charge is split between Boeing’s defense business unit, which took on $73 million of the overrun, and its commercial segment, which took on the remainder.

In January, when the company announced a $201 million charge on the tanker, Muilenburg gave a similar reason for the charges. In 2014, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration discovered that certain wiring bundles in early production aircraft did not meet military requirements, so Boeing had to rework aircraft so redundant groups of wiring were not bundled together.

Although Boeing cited the modifications to initial production as the cause of cost growth, the company has had numerous technical problems sprout up over the past several months. Most critically, the Air Force has noted numerous events where the KC-46 boom scraped the surface of aircraft — a deficiency that could possibly cause the tankers to peel away the low-observable coatings of stealth aircraft like the B-2, F-22 and F-35.

Brig. Gen. Donna Shipton, the Air Force’s program executive officer for tankers, told reporters in September that the service will do testing and analysis to better understand the root cause and prove out its hypothesis that “undetected contact” is happening at a higher rate than in the legacy fleet.

However, the timeline for resolving the problem is still up in the air, as is whether the Air Force will accept KC-46 aircraft if the issue has not been solved.

Muilenburg said that despite the challenging development program, Boeing is closing in on the finish line. The company has completed more than 2,000 hours of flight testing with six tankers, and about 80 percent of flight test requirements have been completed.

“While we’ve had some issues that have occurred during flight tests that are normal to tanker testing, like the boom scraping issue … these are not unusual items, and I can tell you the feedback we’ve heard from the customers flying the airplanes is that the airplanes are flying well and the controllability of the boom is excellent,” he said.

“The challenges we’re having right now are related to just implementing just final detailed changes on the aircraft to get them to a final certification standard,” he said. “These are not unusual, but we do have a lot of airplanes flowing concurrently through the production system.”

Click to expand...

When the most recent fighter rotation of the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

unit

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

program departed for the Pacific several weeks ago, it brought with it a full complement of 12

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, in contrast to the reduced 10-plane squadron that preceded it.

This small development is a sign of the service’s growing confidence in the readiness of its aging fighters, said Lt. Gen. Robert Hedelund, commanding general of II Marine Expeditionary Force.

Speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Expeditionary Warfare Conference on Tuesday, Hedelund said the decision to deploy 12 aircraft from the Beaufort, South Carolina-based Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 251 to Japan was thanks to an aggressive effort from Marine Aircraft Group 31 to get the planes ready to depart.

“We had been at a 10-plane deployment due to readiness concerns, and the thought was, ‘We may not be around the corner yet, but we’re seeing the corner,’ ” he said. “So let’s see if we can go back to a 12-plane deployment.”

The service’s Hornets, which will begin to retire in coming years, have suffered amid high operational demands and limited maintenance funds. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that only about a third of the aircraft were immediately able to fly, with the majority stuck on the flightline due to spare part or maintenance concerns.

At least one recent crash —

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in November 2016 — was found to have been caused in part by reduced pilot flight hours, a side effect of the reduction in available aircraft to fly.

In a

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

ahead of his retirement, the Corps’ then-head of aviation, Lt. Gen. Jon “Dog” Davis, said average monthly flight hours were beginning to improve across the force, though Hornets remained slightly below the target.

“And that won’t get better until the inventory numbers get better in F-18, and the reliability gets better with the old airplanes,” he said. “Right now, we have a pretty high break rate on the legacy F-18.”

He added that the Marine Corps and

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

had commissioned an independent readiness review on the F/A-18, and that the Corps had set in motion measures to retire Hornets several years ahead of schedule in favor of the new

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Hedelund said he is seeing some improvements at the squadron level, where pilots are getting more time with their aircraft prior to deployment, a key requirement for full preparedness.

“When I was a [Marine Aircraft Wing] commander, I used to say we deployed F/A-18s while the paint was drying. Because we literally would get the airplanes, we’d put the pilots in them, and send them on their next deployment,” he said. ” … Those days are gone, thankfully.”

Hedelund commanded 2nd MAW on the East Coast, from 2013 to 2015.

When VMFA-251 deployed to Japan, he said, the transit across the Pacific went smoothly, without any mechanical issues or aircraft left on the runway.

“[It’s] having a little bit more money that aviation always works very, very hard to put into the readiness accounts, the parts, the materials, all the things they have to start literally from aluminum to get to the flightline,” he said. “We’re not declaring victory, and we’re not dancing in the end zone, but we’re having an impact, I think, where we can.”

Click to expand...

Northrop Grumman Drops Out of MQ-25A Stingray Competition

Northrop Grumman will not compete to build the service’s MQ-25A Stingray aerial refueling unmanned aerial vehicle despite being the developer of the test platform that proved a UAV could take off and land from an aircraft carrier.

Company leaders announced the decision during a Wednesday earnings call.

“When we’re looking at one of these opportunities, let me be clear, our objective is not just to win. Winning is great, it feels good on the day of an announcement, but if you can’t really execute on it and deliver on it to your customer and your shareholders, then you’ve done the wrong thing,” Northrop CEO Wes Bush said during an Oct. 25 earnings call, first

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.
“When you’re entrusted by the U.S. or any one of our allied nations to do something in the defense arena, that’s a bond of trust that you can’t afford to break, and we really look hard at executability under the terms of [requests for proposals] that come out to make sure that we can execute.”
...

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Jun 13, 2017

and the story goes on as
Navy Releases Final MQ-25 Stingray RFP; General Atomics Bid Revealed

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Northrop Grumman will not put forward a bid for the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 unmanned tanker aircraft, its CEO announced Wednesday.

While the specific reasoning underpinning the decision was not fully explained, it appears the Navy’s final request for proposals — released earlier this month — raised questions among executives who worried that Northrop would be unable to develop a UAV that met specifications and still delivered profit for the company.

“When we’re looking at one of these opportunities, let me be clear: Our objective is not just to win. Winning is great, it feels good on the day of an announcement, but if you can’t really execute on it and deliver on it to your customer and your shareholders, then you’ve done the wrong thing,” Northrop head Wes Bush said during an Oct. 25 earnings call.

“And we’ve worked hard over a long number of years in our company to have great clarity around what our objectives are,” he said. “When you’re entrusted by the U.S. or any one of our allied nations to do something in the defense arena, that’s a bond of trust that you can’t afford to break, and we really look hard at executability under the terms of RFPs that come out to make sure that we can execute.”

Later in the call, Bush said that “the particular nature of that final RFP,” or request for proposals, triggered Northrop to withdraw from the competition, but did not further clarify what parts of the solicitation raised eyebrows.

Financial analysts on the call quickly picked up that this is the third “no-bid” by Northrop this year for a major defense acquisition program, after earlier decisions to abstain from the Air Force’s T-X training aircraft competition — which saw the company developing and flying a prototype aircraft — and the Long Range Standoff Weapon.

Northrop’s exit from the MQ-25 program comes as a shock to the defense industry, as the company was once considered the likely front-runner for the program that evolved into MQ-25, called Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike, or UCLASS.

Northrop was involved in a technology demonstrator program that was considered the precursor to UCLASS. It was widely thought the company’s stealthy, autonomous X-47B from that effort would form the basis of its UCLASS offering.

The company also had success winning other maritime UAV contests, with the Navy adopting Northrop’s MQ-4C Triton and MQ-8 Fire Scout systems.

However, the UCLASS program stagnated due to repeated delays and reviews. Two years ago, the Navy announced that, instead of UCLASS, it was looking for an unmanned aerial refueling tanker that could extend the reach of the carrier air wing and ease the burden on its fleet of F/A-18 Super Hornets.

Hornets are routinely used to tank other aircraft, so adding an unmanned tanker would, according to the Navy, free those aircraft up for other missions. The Navy’s Air Boss Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker said in August that the MQ-25 would extend the range of the service’s strike arm by 300-400 miles.

Northrop’s decision leaves Boeing, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin in competition for the MQ-25 contract.

Because both Northrop and Lockheed Martin are pursuing tankers designed as flying wings, Northrop’s departure raises questions as to whether Lockheed’s design is in jeopardy as well, said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with the Center for a New American Security.

“If Northrop is dropping, it‘s because they’ve looked at the requirements and decided the Navy isn’t looking for the plane they are offering,” he said.

That would leave Boeing and General Atomics — which developed aircraft designed with wings, a body and a tail — to duke it out for the contract.

Phil Finnegan, a Teal Group analyst that focuses on UAVs, said Northrop’s decision makes sense given the Navy’s transition from a high-end combat aircraft to a low-cost tanker.

“That shifted the advantage to a company like Boeing, which has focused on cost throughout the competition. Boeing is expected to use parts that are used by the F/A-18 in a bid to keep costs down. It also has considerable experience with tankers since it builds the Air Force tanker,” he said.

“General Atomics Aeronautical Systems too has focused on cost and has considerable experience with medium-altitude, long-endurance UAS since it builds the Reaper. Still, it does not have as much experience as Boeing with maritime systems,” Finnegan added.

Northrop will continue to make “significant investments” in unmanned technologies, which are becoming more and more autonomous, Bush said during the call.

“We’re just incredibly excited about it. It’s a class of capability that is finding application across the spectrum,” he said, adding that the company sees new missions evolving and potential customers gaining interest in the technology.

“We also want to make sure these systems are highly secure and that they can have the high degree of trust that would normally apply to a manned aircraft,” he said.

Click to expand...