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[TerraN_EmpirE]

US Helo Leaders Take on Dust, New Engines
By Joe Gould4:51 p.m. EDT March 30, 2015

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Even as sequestration budget cuts loom over US Army aviation, helicopter modernization plans are driving numerous requirements, officials said at an industry conference here.

Army officials portrayed Army aviation as active around the globe, with a need to be ready for anything. Behind the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), the greatest emphasis is on technology to see and fly through dust, fog and other obscurants, known as degraded visual environment-mitigation (DVE-M).

"If we are going to maintain overmatch and truly be game-changing, we have to fly and fight no matter what the weather, no matter what the visual conditions are," said Maj. Gen. Michael Lundy, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence. Lundy and others spoke at the Army Aviation Association of America summit here on Monday.

Funded by a raft of research and development dollars, the plan is to accelerate DVE-M efforts and potentially collaborate with ground vehicle developers. "The same stuff we put on our aircraft we have to have on our tanks and our vehicles because they've got to be able to fight in that same degraded visual environment," Lundy said.

"That's disruptive technology that we've got right now, that's maturing, and now's the right time to go after that," Lundy said.

The DVE-M program fuses images of multiple sensor technologies such as radar, infrared, and laser detection and ranging, also known as ladar, used with advanced flight controls and visual cueing and symbology. The program is led by the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.

An analysis of alternatives is underway. Army officials have said that millimeter wave radar has the greatest obscurant penetration capability in most DVE conditions, but lower visual resolution than either infrared or ladar. How the Army would mitigate the weight of multiple sensor technologies is an open question.

Telephonics, an aerospace and defense firm that specializes in maritime surveillance radars, says it has a solution: a millimeter wave radar sensor that provides a constant, real-time image of the aircraft's forward viewing area via a 3D visual display.



Sierra Nevada, which has already sold a number of its helicopter autonomous landing systems to the Army, also makes a 3D image-rendering radar that uses a 94 gigahertz frequency.

BAE offers Brownout Landing Aid System Technology (BLAST), which also uses a 94 gigahertz millimeter-wave radar to overlay images on existing terrain data in a cockpit display — helmet-mounted or otherwise.

The conversation comes in a year that Army aviation has operated in 36 countries across a variety of missions, including in Pacific exercises, the anti-Ebola mission in Africa, along with operations in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the Army presses its aviation restructure plan, officials hammered the message that the plan, which avoids $12 billion in costs, is vital for preserving readiness and modernization funds. In particular, the UH-60 Black Hawk would not be upgraded until 2028 without it, according to Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn.

Calling sequestration "the greatest threat to the Army's dominance in the future," Allyn asked senior leaders to inform appointed and elected leaders about its impact. "We cannot absorb the ax wounds of additional sequestration's blind, budget-driven cuts," he said.

Without the aviation restructuring, sequestration would impact a number of plans underway, Lundy said: ongoing purchase AH-64E Apaches, the Chinook Block II program and an avionics upgrade for the UH-60L to UH-60V.

The restructure calls for the service to divest its fleet of OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters and use the AH-64 Apache to fill the Kiowa's reconnaissance and scout role. It would pull Apaches from the National Guard inventory to fill the gap, and, in turn, provide the Guard with UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The Army would also cut three of its 13 combat aviation brigades, while the Guard would retain all 10 of its brigades.

Heidi Shyu, the Army's head of acquisition, favors the restructuring as a means of cutting costs as part of a modernization strategy.

"We've got to divest aging systems out of our portfolio, the stuff that we can no longer afford to maintain because it's really not being used," she said. "It's like cleaning out your garage."

With an eye toward the shrinking Army and simplified training, Lundy listed future requirements to include simpler communications and avionics, unmanned systems that require less manning, a common cockpit between multiple airframes, as well as a means to reduce the maintenance burden on aircraft.

"Every time we put a piece of equipment and it takes specialization, that's not a good piece of equipment," he said. "Not everything needs to be world-class … We're looking very hard at our requirements."

Army networks have "grown apart from Army aviation," Lundy said, and to fix it, the service is pursuing the Soldier Radio Waveform "to rejoin the air-ground team."

Anticipating future operations in the "tight urban canyons" of mega-cities, Lundy said, the Army will need the superior power promised by ITEP and the Army's forward-leaning Future Vertical Lift program.

For aviation modernization, ITEP is the No. 1 priority, according to Lundy and Shyu, as means of extending the range, speed and power of its Black Hawk and Apache helicopters. The program is heading for preliminary design requests in May as it aims for a 2023 production goal.

After the May requests, contracts are expected to be awarded to the two competitors in March 2016, a request for proposals issued for the engineering and manufacturing design phase in early 2017, and a downselect to one of two competitors in 2018 before beginning low-rate production.

Advanced Turbine Engine Co., a 50-50 joint venture of Pratt & Whitney and Honeywell, is competing with GE Aviation to develop a drop-in replacement for the legacy GE T700 engines that power the Boeing AH-64 Apache and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk fleets.

The engine is also expected to power light rotary-winged aircraft expected to emerge from the service's nascent Future Vertical Lift program. However, Lundy on Monday said the FVL effort is not expected to field a helicopter, and the Army cannot wait.

The service has set target goals of 50 percent more power and 25 percent better fuel efficiency to improve capability, particularly in "high and hot" environments, such as Iraq or Afghanistan. ITEP would be a 3,000-horsepower engine and the T700 is a 2,000-horsepower engine.

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that is the same Sierra Nevada corporation making dream chaser.
The DVE or degraded vision environment is a major issue for the military particularly in the desert environment where natural sand storms and Rotary wing aircraft themselves can kick up particulate sand and generate binding clouds

 

[Jura The idiot]

I facepalmed myself
...

but now I found more on the radar I don't like LOL
Navy Builds New Radar for Carriers, Amphibs

The Navy plans to put a new ship radar system on both next-generation carriers and amphibious assault ships as a way to reduce costs and increase commonality, service officials said.

The new radar, called the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar, or EASR, is slated to go on the Navy’s second Ford-class aircraft carrier, the USS Kennedy, as well as the services’ third big-deck America-class amphib, called LHA 8.

Engineering the new EASR for the USS Kennedy, or CVN 79, will save the Navy $180 million in the cost of the ship, said Rear Adm. Thomas Moore, Program Executive Officer, Carriers.


“The radar that we choose is going to be an off-the-shelf radar that we tailor to the ship. There are a number of radars out there that appear to meet the specs. This will not be a developmental issue. LHA 8 will be the first ship to get EASR,” Moore said.

In total, the USS Kennedy is slated to cost $11.4 billion – more than one billion less than the cost of the first Ford-class carrier, the USS Ford, which has received much criticism for cost overruns.

The Office of Naval Research is currently working on a $6 million EASR study and development contract with Raytheon, however the Navy plans to conduct a competition for the new radar in coming months. A formal request to vendors for EASR designs is currently slated for May of this year, Moore said.

The decision for the new radar emerged out of a special radar commonality and affordability study conducted by the Navy which looked at finding technologies that would work across multiple platforms.

Also, the decision to put the new EASR radar was in large measure motivated by a desire to lower the cost of the Dual Band Radar currently configured on the first Ford-class carrier, the USS Ford, CVN 78.

“The benefits of commonality across multiple ship types as well as forward and backfit were considered in laying out the strategy for the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar. This did not, however, directly result in CVN 79 having a different radar than CVN 78. Acquisition cost of remaining CVN 79 radar components was also a driving factor for the change,” said Dale Eng, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command.

The highly capable Dual Band Radar, which Moore said may be more radar power than what’s needed on a carrier, was originally slated to go on 27 new, high-tech DDG 1000 destroyers. However, when the Navy changed plans and only decided to procure three DDG 1000s, the price of Dual Band Radar went up, Moore explained.

Moore also added that new EASR radar could be back fitted onto Nimitz-class carriers, which will be around through 2057.

“We are looking for a backfit solution for carriers and amphibs,” he added.

While requirements are still being refined for the new radar system, it will be engineered as a 3D phased array radar designed to be adaptive and rotate, Moore said. EASR will, among other things, be configured to perform the functions of existing ship radars such as the AN/SPS-49 and the three-dimensional AN/SPS-48 anti-aircraft sensor currently on Navy destroyers and cruisers.

The Navy’s new dock landing ship replacement amphib, called the LXR, will also be outfitted with the EASR as well, Moore said.

Carriers do not need radar as sensitive and powerful as Dual Band Radar, in part because carries will always have a destroyer or a cruiser nearby to help protect it by providing a defensive radar envelope. At the same time, the EASR will not have some of the technical capabilities of the Dual Band Radar such as fire control radar capability, Moore said.

The EASR radar is slated to go onto the USS Kennedy in the 2023 and 2024 time frame due the Navy’s new dual-phased plan to have the ship ready for service by 2025. The idea is to deliver the ship for an initial phase without some of the on-board technologies and combat systems in order to ensure that that latest technologies get built into the platform, Moore explained.

The two-fold plan is in part inspired by the fact that the USS Kennedy is slated to replace the USS Nimitz which will not retire until 2025 – thereby allowing some additional time to maximize the effectiveness of efforts to develop the Kennedy, Moore explained.

“We can have Newport News build the ship and deliver the full propulsion and demonstrate the flight deck. Then we can come back into a second phase and install the combat systems and C4ISR gear. If I had to deliver the complete ship in 2022, I would not have the opportunity to put the new radar in,” Moore said. “If we wait until phase two in the 2023 or 2024 time frame –we will get later generations of the technology. We will not have to change it our as early on the ship’s life. “

This strategy, while criticized by some lawmakers for delaying the delivery of the ship, is also intended to lower the costs of acquiring technologies for the ship by increasing competition.

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[Jura The idiot]

Brumby, Jeff, I think this is (somehow related to what you discussed in you recent posts here:
Admiral: Navy’s Surface Fleet Vulnerable to Attacks Without EW Upgrades

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you can check also this:

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American warships are about to get much harder to kill. Armed with new electronic warfare systems, the US Navy “is taking back the spectrum,” Capt. Doug Small says.

The great advantage of American warships has long been their ability to absorb punishment and to keep fighting. In the modern era, however, the best defense is electronic: The most powerful (non-nuclear) warhead can’t hurt even the flimsiest ship if its targeting system is deceived into hitting empty water instead. Such defensive deception is precisely the purpose of shipboard jammers, and unlike hull armor, such electronics can be easily added to existing ships.

Most US ships are still using 1970s-vintage electronic defense, chiefly something called the AN/SLQ-32 (“Slick 32″), which have fallen dangerously behind rapid, globally available advances in electronics. Potential adversaries like Russia and China can equip their anti-ship missiles with targeting radars using frequencies too high for current US defenses to even detect. US Pacific Command is particularly concerned

“Certain countries on the Eurasian land mass are building weapons that a SLQ-32 will not detect,” Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for resources, Vice Adm. Joseph Mulloy, said at this week’s McAleese Associates/Credit Suisse conference. If US ships face these new missiles without an electronic warfare upgrade, he said, “you will never know when something bad is coming, [and] it’s coming in at a supersonic speed.”

That threat is driving the Navy’s $5 billion-plus, multi-phase Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program. “I’m buying as many SEWIP advanced modules as I can,” Mulloy said.

SEWIP Block I mainly replaces 1970s-vintage displays and other obsolete components. The Lockheed Martin-built Block II, which has been tested on the destroyer Bainbridge and — in a somewhat scaled-down version — the Littoral Combat Ship Fort Worth, will upgrade the sensors that detect enemy radar beams. Block III, for which the Navy awarded a $267 million contact to Northrop Grumman in February, will bring the fun part: new jammers.

What does this all mean militarily?

“In layman’s terms,” said Capt. Small, who overseas the program for Naval Sea Systems Command, “with SEWIP Block II and the SEWIP Block I [upgrades], I don’t think there’s anything out there we can’t detect any more, and detect at ranges where they need to be detected. With SEWIP Block III, there will not be anything that we know of that we can’t jam and jam effectively.”

Dominating the Spectrum?

At least in terms of ship self-defense, Capt. Small told me, “I usually talk about us essentially dominating the spectrum with SEWIP Block III.”

That’s a remarkable claim considering the high-level anxiety about electronic warfare in the Department of Defense. “We have lost the electromagnetic spectrum,” the Pentagon’s chief of research and engineering, Alan Shaffer, warned last fall. A Defense Science Board study identified spending shortfalls of $2 billion a year in EW. And the outgoing Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, has pushed hard (including in our pages) to revive electronic warfare to cope with high-tech adversaries like Russia and China.

The cutting edge of the Navy EW effort — and the only dedicated jamming aircraft in the US arsenal — is the EA-18G Growler jet, which carries cutting-edge sensors and, soon, a Next-Generation Jammer. SEWIP is more modest. Since ships can’t fly, a shipborne jammer will never have as long a range or as wide a field of view as a high-altitude airborne one, so it’s generally a defensive system rather than offensive. Electronic self-defense, however, is increasingly crucial as anti-ship missiles proliferate — even Hezbollah has used one — and Navy officers fear they won’t have enough interceptors to shoot down every incoming threat.

Relying more on electronic warfare for self-defense and less on anti-missile missiles will take something of a culture shift, said Small.

“It’s a tough thing,” he said. “There’s something satisfying about blowing something up, and it can be less satisfying to change a radar picture and cause someone not to launch. Then how do you know that you’re being effective with EW? Whereas, when you blow something up, you know you’ve been effective.”

But SEWIP Block III will be much more effective than the SLQ-32 system it replaces, Small said. For starters, the hardware won’t be 40 years old. SLQ-32 jammers use microwave tubes: SEWIP will have arrays of solid-state digital receivers and transmitters, similar to an AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar. That makes SEWIP much easier to maintain — “you pull the card, you replace the card,” Small said — and much more reliable, since any one element that fails is just one of hundreds or thousands in the array.

The new technology is also much more adaptable. Instead of needing new hardware to deal with a new threat, you often can just rewrite the software. So instead of being a once-and-done upgrade, Small said, SEWIP will allow continual improvement to keep up with potential adversaries.

It’s when you start connecting SEWIP with other systems, however, that you start creating entirely new options for what the Navy calls “Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare.”

All Warfare Begins In Deception

By using the same electrically scanned array technology as the latest radars, SEWIP opens the possibility of what the Office of Naval Research calls an “integrated topside” (INTOP). Instead of a ship’s structure being cluttered with traditional antennas, each dedicated to a specific function — detection, jamming, radar, communications — electrically scanned arrays could switch from one function to another as needed. A ship with INTOP could conceivably repurpose its SEWIP arrays to help its Air and Missile Defense Radar detect a threat, then have the AMDR provide extra jamming power to help SEWIP stop the attack.

There’s even more potential here than the Navy really realizes, argued a former top aide to the Chief of Naval Operations. “It opens up a whole set of operating concepts that we really haven’t thought about,” retired Cdr. Bryan Clark, now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told me. As SEWIP, AMDR, and other electronically scanned arrays are fitted to more and more ships, he said, “you could end up with a fleet in the mid to late 2020s that can do much more comprehensive and sophisticated forms of electronic warfare… over a large area.”

The Navy’s invested heavily in inter-ship networks to coordinate missile fire, but when it comes to electronic warfare, each ship is largely on its own. Even with SEWIP, a ship has to detect enemy radars with its own onboard sensors and defeat them with its own jammers. What EW information ships want to share has to go over the same networks as everything else.

“Link-16’s oversubscribed,” said Clark. “You don’t have enough bandwidth on these datalinks to use them for electronic warfare as well as all the things they’re doing already.”

But with the right software, Clark said, an electronically scanned array designed for jamming could provide wireless communications as well. It could even do both at the same time with different parts of the array. Combined with INTOP, SEWIP could provide the bandwidth necessary to coordinate electronic warfare across the fleet, not just defend an individual ship. This would allow a kind of “networked electronic warfare,” he said, where multiple ships, manned aircraft, and drones all combine their EW efforts to deceive not just a single radar but the entire enemy force.

“I would want to have multiple jammers and deception systems coming at them [at once],” painting a consistent but false portrait of the war zone, Clark said, “so the picture they’re seeing from all of their radars is incorrect.” The Air Force and intelligence community call this spoofing.

“All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu once wrote. If you could pull off this kind of theater-wide electronic scam — and that’s a big “if” — you wouldn’t just protect individual warships: You could win a war.

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[Bernard]

Extreme Stealth: Does America Need Super Advanced Drones?

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April 2, 2015

The Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft should be at the heart of a comprehensive debate about the future of unmanned technology and related concept of operations. Unfortunately, the current debate is narrowly focused on how advanced, large, and expensive to make the UCLASS.

On one side of this debate, advocates for large, exquisite strike platforms imagine a future where unmanned aircraft replicate the capabilities of the latest advanced, multimission aircraft. In the middle of the spectrum, the U.S. Navy’s current UCLASS requirements outline a modestly stealthy platform emphasizing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and operating in a lightly contested environment; strike is a secondary mission within the current Navy plan. On the other side of this much-needed debate are those who see a world where the large and the few are overtaken by the small and the many. It does not strain the imagination to contemplate the advancements in miniaturization, sensors, and weapons technology that will continue the trends ushered in with precision weapons—hiding from detection will become increasingly difficult; dispersion of forces and capability is more and more important; and massing military capability will increase the probability and cost of combat losses.

Initial UCLASS fielding is projected seven to eight years from now in 2022-3 and we will be a decade closer to the rise of the small and the many. While it is not an either/or proposition, over-investment in unmanned platforms that are large, complex, and limited in numbers (because of exorbitant cost) will significantly disadvantage the United States in a major conflict ten to twenty years from now when the UCLASS and its descendants fly into combat.

Congress and the aircraft industry seem to want all eggs in an exquisite and expensive basket. Recently, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)

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about the survivability and weapons payload capability of the current UCLASS requirements and pressed for a strike aircraft capable of operating in a medium to high-threat environment with broadband stealth, 4,000 pounds of internal weapons payload, and in-air refueling capability. In effect, Senator McCain is calling for an unmanned F-35C Joint Strike Fighter.

The SASC Chairman’s desire for an advanced strike aircraft echoes a

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in February from Representative Randy Forbes (R-VA 4), the House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman. Congressman Forbes places a premium on aerial refueling, survivability, lethality, and payload. Lockheed Martin has stated that the UCLASS requires fifth-generation capability (stealth and other advanced multimission functions). A recent analysis in the March issue of Aerospace America, titled “

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,” projects that next generation fighters are likely to be produced in manned and unmanned variants.

It should be self-evident that this focus on survivability in unmanned aircraft is almost a non sequitur, forfeiting a prime value of unmanned systems. Because there are no humans on board, unmanned systems can conduct more risky missions and are, almost by definition, expendable—unless they cost $50 million dollars a copy. At what price point do unmanned systems become non-expendable and require even more investment in survivability?

Advocates for large, costly, and few unmanned aircraft (not to mention manned aircraft) offer a vision of future air combat that is a continuation of today, where, as RAND scientist Martin Libicki

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, “Aircraft are optimized—at great expense—to win one-on-one (or one-on-not-too-many) duels against other aircraft and antiaircraft ground units.” According to Libicki, however, “The fate of fifty million dollars’ worth of aircraft contesting fifty million dollars’ worth of [many small] sensors, emitters and micro-munitions may be far less satisfying.”

Libicki was one of the first to predict that stealth will lose the battle against detection and that the future battles will not be won by hiding from advanced sensors and weapons systems but by overwhelming them with numbers. In 2010 John Arquilla, the

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visionary, provided recommendations to make

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. Arquilla argued that, “The United States is spending huge amounts of money in ways that are actually making Americans less secure… against smart countries building different sorts of militaries.”

In a similar vein, Wayne Hughes, the naval strategist,

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that U.S. Navy ships should be simpler, less expensive, fielded in greater quantity, and that we should resist the tendency to create broad multimission platforms, concentrating vast capability into single platforms whose loss could be devastating. His arguments apply to air platforms as well. Numbers matter; we should increase quantity while diversifying the risk of combat losses.

Supporting an expensive and exquisite UCLASS, Senator McCain told the U.S. Navy that anything less would “operationally and strategically misguided.” However, failing to examine the alternatives to large, expensive, and numerically limited fifth and sixth-generation aviation (both manned and unmanned) is truly misguided—operationally, strategically,and fiscally. The small and the many is the way of the future; the United States can lead the advance or fly an exquisite, expensive, and small air force into the teeth of a future enemy’s swarm.

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Interesting article. It brings up some good points about the militaries procurement of expensive advanced multi mission vehicles.

 

[Jeff Head]

I believe the UCLASS should be something that can cost $20million or less, but be able to have moderate stealth, very decent sensors, and also a moderate weapons payload.

You take the really expensive aircraft that has equal sensors, better payload, better stealth...and a pilot...and you use it to control several of these aircraft on really important missions and have the drones advance the battle space in front of the manned aircraft.

The UCLASS can gather info on the adversary, target adversary assets for the manned aircraft...or prosecute really important ones themselves...and then pave the way for the following strike and/or air dominance missions.

It will be interesting to see these types of strategies pan out in the future.

Adding better stealth raises the cost...as would increasing the payload.

The further down those paths you go, the more exotic the electronic and other defense mechanisms you require to protect the investment...and, in turn, the higher you drive costs. At the same time, with better stealth, you have a platform that may be better at gathering intelligence and targeting enemy assets for the following manned aircraft.

Lots of trade offs, and a balance will have to be struck. As I say it will be interesting to see it play out.

I still believe a very effective unmanned system for this role should be able to be had for less than $20 million.

 

[Jeff Head]

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​

MARCH 31, 2015 — Huntington Ingalls Industries' (NYSE:HII) Ingalls Shipbuilding division, Pascagoula, MS, launched the company's 29th Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) Aegis guided missile destroyer, John Finn (DDG 113), at first light this past Saturday.

Ingalls uses a proven method of launching ships that it has been using for more than 40 years. John Finn was moved on rail cars from land to the company's 637 ft floating dry dock a week prior to launch. Shipbuilders then spent the next week preparing the ship and dry dock for Saturday's launch.

During launch the dry dock was flooded allowing it to slowly submerge until the ship was afloat. Once the dry dock was fully submerged, the ship was pulled by tugs to the shipyard's south berth where the ship will continue outfitting in preparation for test and activation and eventual delivery to the Navy.

The next major milestone is the ship's Aegis system light off planned for later this year.

"This is the first DDG 51 class ship to launch in almost four years and we're both proud and excited with the progress the program is making," said Capt. Mark Vandroff, the Navy's DDG 51 class program manager, Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. "I look forward to John Finn joining the fleet and the other ships of her class to continue in the legacy of success that is the Arleigh Burke destroyer."

"It's exciting to see another Ingalls-built destroyer in the water," said Ingalls DDG 51 Program Manager, George Nungesser. "Our shipbuilders have proven time and time again they can handle whatever it takes to build, test and deliver these extremely complex warships. This launch was no exception. Our hot production line is now in a good state as we have three DDGs under construction and another one in pre-fabrication. What our shipbuilders accomplish every day matters to our quality, cost and schedule, and implementing our learning from ship to ship will allow us to improve in every aspect of destroyer construction."

Ingalls has delivered 28 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to the Navy. Destroyers currently under construction at Ingalls are John Finn (DDG 113), Ralph Johnson (DDG 114), Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) and Delbert D. Black (DDG 119). Just last week, Ingalls received a contract modification funding the construction of the company's 33rd destroyer, DDG 121.

John Finn is the 63rd Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class destroyer, and the first of the DDG 51 Flight IIA restart ships. The keel of DDG 113 was laid in November 2013, and the christening ceremony is planned for May 2.

"DDG 51 production is in full swing at the shipyard," said Capt. Vandroff. "The Navy and shipbuilder are working closely together to ensure continued quality and value as production continues on the restart ships."

John Finn will be equipped with the Navy's Aegis Combat System.

DDG 51 Flight IIA ships will provide increased capabilities over previous flights of Arleigh Burke destroyers, including advances in anti-submarine warfare, command and control, and anti-surface warfare.

Exciting news!

You can see that Huntington Ingalls has the funding for and production going on four more of these Burke IIA restarts. Bath Iron works is working on four more.

Here's a video of the launch:

 

[Jura The idiot]

LRSB News:

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When the Pentagon picks the winner of the

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(LRSB) contest in the next few months, it faces an interesting choice. It could give

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— which is doing the design work for the Boeing-Lockheed team — almost all of the country’s advanced stealth design work. Or it could maintain the status quo, in which

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is made by

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.

It’s a really important competition, arguably more important for the industrial base and the American people than the incredibly

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.

UPDATE BEGINS: Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh offered very little of substance about the industrial base issue when I asked him about it this morning at an Air Force Association breakfast, beyond agreeing that industrial base issues have “to be at the top of the peak” and that “there’s a lot of focus on that area.” Welsh was honest enough to ask: “Was that fuzzy enough for you?” It was hard to tell whether he was being very careful because of the ongoing competition or because much of an honest answer would quickly drift into the classified realm. ENDS

“There hasn’t been a new combat aircraft development contract in over a decade, and another decade will almost certainly pass before we see the next one,” noted Richard Aboulafia, a top aerospace analyst at the Teal Group, in an article for Forbes earlier this week. “In other words, there are three primes involved in the LRS-B competition, and only two will likely survive to compete for future combat aircraft programs. Thanks to

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, Lockheed Martin doesn’t need to worry about staying in the combat aircraft business. But for the other two companies, a loss means they will likely exit the industry. The loser won’t be around to compete for

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, which should enter service around 2030.”

The argument for the Boeing-led team rests principally on the fact that Boeing often can produce large numbers of large aircraft on time and at a reasonable cost. But Boeing’s record on commercial aircraft is mixed — 777 vs. 787 — and it’s encountering difficulties with the KC-46, a commercial aircraft that’s being modified for military tanker use.

“When they get it right, when they do large volume aircraft, they do it better than anyone,” Aboulafia told me yesterday evening. “But you also have a company that stumbles pretty badly,” offering as an example the Wedgetail, and, to a lesser degree, the KC-46. Both are weapons based on commercial airframes, supposedly eliminating many of the usual problems that surface when a new military aircraft is designed and built.

Of course, if the Boeing-led team loses, the US would “lose important production capabilities” and the jobs that go with them. “On the other hand,” Aboulafia wrote earlier this week, “if Lockheed Martin and Boeing win, there would be just one combat aircraft design team left, Lockheed Martin. Northrop Grumman’s exit as a source of new combat aircraft designs would be just as painful.”

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, the Pentagon top’s buyer, said earlier this month that industrial base considerations would not play a major role in selecting the winner. The winner, he said, would be selected “on the merits. By the rules of the source selection.” Since Kendall has made a point of singling out design teams as jewels worth protecting, it seems a bit rich for him to make this claim, but he’s clearly sending a signal.

The Air Force’s commitment to a set price of $550 million (in then-year dollars) each for the 100 or so bombers — and another $20 billion or more for the research and development phase — would seem to

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since building the planes would be more about production than innovation.

And there’s the fact that Boeing and Lockheed will have enormous clout protecting the program on the Hill because of their size. But the companies will also be deeply conflicted when the budget showdowns start. Does Lockheed

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when the crunch comes in 2020? Does Boeing yield on the KC-46? Both scenarios are unlikely and would seem to argue for a single committed advocate for the plane: that would be Northrop Grumman.

On the issue of maintaining Northrop’s stealthy aircraft design team to ensure the country isn’t left only with Lockheed’s, Aboulafia didn’t dismiss it, but he did say “there are ways in the black world of keeping someone in the design world.” While Northrop wouldn’t build the bomber if it didn’t get the contract, the Pentagon could keep its highly skilled and intelligence workers going on programs that are so highly classified they don’t appear in the budget.

A pilot familiar with stealth bombers agreed, noting that: “there are fundamental design differences between fighter and bomber stealth aircraft. They each utilize stealth in very different ways. Maintaining expertise in both is something we need to consider for the long term. I think in today’s world that can happen independent of the number of companies.”

The pilot argues that times have changed in defense acquisition. In those good old days, “companies could easily design/build/test/discard prototypes in very short timeframes due to cost, ease of production, and materials requirements. Furthermore, the level of engineering involved was nothing like what we face today. I would argue the days of aircraft design competitions are all but over. To harken back to those days is unrealistic given the realities of the technology and materials in the modern world.”

On the other hand, the B-2 pilot is a bit worried for the longer term, saying “it would serve us well to have design and production capability survive in multiple companies. It’s hard to imagine a world like that given our current strength, but history has a way of humbling the greatest of powers!”

Aboulafia also thinks Northrop’s expertise gained from building and maintaining the B-2 matters. “I think one of Northrop’s strongest points is, hey, this defines what we do. And we’re it.”

In the end, Aboulafia doesn’t really have a gut feeling — or one based on facts — about who will win the bomber contract.

If Boeing wins, Lockheed will do the critical design work and will almost certainly not share that intellectual property with Boeing. The Boeing-Lockheed team has the aircraft production credentials and the power to send dozens of lobbyists and carloads of cash to Capitol Hill to ensure the program’s safety in the face of the coming budget crunch.

If Northrop wins, the nation has two design teams able to work on stealthy aircraft and it gets the incumbent. While space is a different realm in terms of engineering and industrial base, it shares elements of requiring the most advanced engineering talent. The last time Boeing won a huge contract in an area in which it didn’t have much experience, advanced intelligence satellites, the country suffered years of cost overruns, busted schedules and got, by all accounts, a largely failed program,

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. Let’s all just hope the selection committee gets this one right.

source:

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[Jeff Head]

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​

The U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet ceremoniously disembarked the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu (LHA 5) for the final time during the ship’s decommissioning ceremony at Naval Base San Diego, March 31.

USS Peleliu, or the “Iron Nickel”, was named after the Battle of Peleliu which took place from Sept. 15 to Nov. 27, 1944 in which 1,256 Marines gave their lives to take the island which was being held by the Imperial Japanese Army.

During 34 years of service, Peleliu was homeported in both Long Beach and San Diego on the California coast as thousands of Sailors and Marines called the ship home. Capable of launching a coordinated air and sea attack from one platform, Peleliu conducted 17 deployments, 178,051 flight operations, served 57,983 personnel and steamed approximately 1,011,946 nautical miles since being commissioned May 3, 1980 in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

After the decommissioning process is complete, Peleliu will be towed from San Diego to Hawaii to join the Navy’s reserve fleet. There, the last of its class amphibious assault ship will take its place alongside its sister ship and first in class, the ex-USS Tarawa (LHA 1).

Sort of sad to see the last of these vessels go.

They did a GREAT job and have been in operation almost my entire adult life. The first, USS Tarawa, LHA-1 - was commissioned in 1976 when I was 20 years old.

Heck of a run for the Peleliu:

- 17 deployments
- 178,051 flight operations
- 58,000personnel served on her
- 1,012,000 nautical miles steamed

USS Tarawa, LHA-1 served 33 years
USSSaipan, LHA-2 served 30 years
USS Belleau Wood, LHA-3 served 27 years
USS Nassau, LHA-4 served 32 years
USS Peleliu, LHA-5 served 34 years

 

[Bernard]

F-35 Flies Against F-16 In Basic Fighter Maneuvers
The

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Joint Strike Fighter has been flown in air-to-air combat maneuvers against

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for the first time and, based on the results of these and earlier flight-envelope evaluations, test pilots say the aircraft can be cleared for greater agility as a growth option.

Although the F-35 is designed primarily for attack rather than air combat, U.S. Air Force and

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test pilots say the availability of potential margin for additional maneuverability is a testament to the aircraft’s recently proven overall handling qualities and basic flying performance. “The door is open to provide a little more maneuverability,” says Lockheed Martin F-35 site lead test pilot David “Doc” Nelson.

The operational maneuvers were flown by Nelson in AF-2, the primary Flight Sciences loads and flutter evaluation aircraft, and one of nine F-35s used by the Edwards AFB-based 412th Test Wing for developmental testing (DT). The F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards has six F-35As, two F-35Bs and a single F-35C dedicated to DT work, as well as a further set of aircraft allotted to the Joint Operational Test Team. Work is underway as part of efforts to clear the final system development and demonstration (SDD) maneuvering envelopes on the way to initial operational capability (IOC). The U.S.

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F-35B IOC is targeted for later this year, the Air Force’s F-35A in 2016, and the U.S. Navy’s F-35C in 2019.

“When we did the first dogfight in January, they said, ‘you have no limits,’” says Nelson. “It was loads monitoring, so they could tell if we ever broke something. It was a confidence builder for the rest of the fleet because there is no real difference structurally between AF-2 and the rest of the airplanes.” AF-2 was the first F-35 to be flown to 9g+ and -3g, and to roll at design-load factor. The aircraft, which was also the first Joint Strike Fighter to be intentionally flown in significant airframe buffet at all angles of attack, was calibrated for inflight loads measurements prior to ferrying to Edwards in 2010.

The operational maneuver tests were conducted to see “how it would look like against an F-16 in the airspace,” says Col. Rod “Trash” Cregier, F-35 program director. “It was an early look at any control laws that may need to be tweaked to enable it to fly better in future. You can definitely tweak it—that’s the option.”

“Pilots really like maneuverability, and the fact that the aircraft recovers so well from a departure allows us to say [to the designers of the flight control system laws], ‘you don’t have to clamp down so tight,’” says Nelson. Departure resistance was proven during high angle-of-attack (AOA) testing, which began in late 2012 with the aircraft pushing the nose to its production AOA limit of 50 deg. Subsequent AOA testing has pushed the aircraft beyond both the positive and negative maximum command limits, including intentionally putting the aircraft out of control in several configurations ranging from “clean” wings to tests with open weapons-bay doors. Testing eventually pushed the F-35 to a maximum of 110 deg. AOA.

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An “aggressive and unique” approach has been taken to the high AOA, or “high alpha” testing, says Nelson. “Normally, test programs will inch up on max alpha, and on the

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it took us 3-4 months to get to max alpha. On this jet, we did it in four days. We put a spin chute on the back, which is normal for this sort of program, and then we put the airplane out of control and took our hands off the controls to see if it came back. We actually tweaked the flight control system with an onboard flight test aid to allow it to go out of control, because it wouldn’t by itself. Then we drove the center of gravity back and made it the worst-case configuration on the outside with weapons bay doors and put the aircraft in a spin.” The aircraft has been put into spins with yaw rates up to 60 deg./sec., equal to a complete turn every 6 sec. “That’s pretty good. But we paddled off the flight-test aid and it recovered instantly,” he says.

Pilots also tested the ability of the F-35 to recover from a deep-stall in which it was pushed beyond the maximum AoA command limit by activating a manual pitch limiter (MPL) override similar to the alpha limiter in the F-16. “It’s not something an operational pilot would do, but the angle of attack went back and, with the center of gravity way back aft, it would not pitch over, but it would pitch up. So it got stuck at 60 or 70 deg. alpha, and it was as happy as could be. There was no pitching moment to worry about, and as soon as I let go of the MPL, it would come out,” Nelson says.

Following consistent recoveries, the test team opted to remove the spin chute for the rest of the test program. “The airplane, with no spin chute, had demonstrated the ability to recover from the worst-case departure, so we felt very confident, and that has been proven over months of high alpha testing,” says Nelson. “It also satisfied those at the Joint Program Office who said spin chute on the back is not production-representative and produces aerodynamic qualities that are not right.” Although there are additional test points ahead where the spin chute is scheduled to be reattached for departure resistance with various weapons loads, the test team is considering running through the points without it.

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With the full flight envelope now opened to an altitude of 50,000 ft., speeds of Mach 1.6/700 KCAS and loads of 9g, test pilots also say improvements to the flight control system have rendered the transonic roll-off (TRO) issue tactically irrelevant. Highlighted as a “program concern” in the

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’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (

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&E) 2014 report, initial flight tests showed that all three F-35 variants experienced some form of wing drop in high-speed turns associated with asymmetrical movements of shock waves. However, TRO “has evolved into a non-factor,” says Nelson, who likens the effect to a momentary “tug” on one shoulder harness. “You have to pull high-g to even find it.” The roll-off phenomena exhibits itself as “less than 10 deg./sec. for a fraction of a second. We have been looking for a task it affects and we can’t find one.”

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[FORBIN]

All Army Aviation helos

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