...which should make our JSTARs guys happy, though the Sentinel --which is a battlefield tracker like the E-8C-- is smaller than its American counterpart. These types of birds are of incredible worth in places like Afghanistan, where a high ceiling and effective ground target tracking capabilities are of extradordinary use to the grunts on the ground. The Sentinel also packs the invalauable Link 16 datalink (redundant sounding, I know), which will allow it to share real-time intelligence and tracking with everything from Norwegian F-16s to Spanish frigates (as well as just about every other combat aircraft in the US and UK inventories).
Janes says that No.5 Squadron of the RAF will be deploying to Afghanistan shortly, though I seem to remember reading something about Raytheon testing the ASTOR with it's accompanying ground stations in theater a year or so ago. No.5's Group Captain seemed pretty pleased with the way it was working out, which is great news considering the MoD has sunk nearly 1 billion pounds into development and acquisition. Will be eager to see how it performs in combat.
The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] today in St. Louis unveiled the F-15 Silent Eagle (F-15SE), a new F-15 configuration designed to meet the future needs of international customers.
"The F-15 Silent Eagle is designed to meet our international customers' anticipated need for cost-effective stealth technologies, as well as for large and diverse weapons payloads," said Mark Bass, F-15 Program vice president for Boeing. "The innovative Silent Eagle is a balanced, affordable approach designed to meet future survivability needs."
Improvements in stealth include coatings and treatments on the aircraft. With the added advantage of redesigned conformal fuel tanks (CFTs) that allow for internal weapons carriage, the Silent Eagle becomes a very attractive fighter for Boeing's international customers.
Depending on the specific mission, the customer can use the CFTs that are designed for internal carriage or change back to the traditional CFTs for optimum fuel capacity and external weapons carriage. The Silent Eagle will be able to internally carry air-to-air missiles such as the AIM-9 and AIM-120 and air-to-ground weapons such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and Small Diameter Bomb (SDB). The standard weapons load used on current versions of the F-15 is available with the traditional CFTs installed.
Boeing timed this perfectly. One month before Secretary Gates puts the kibosh on Lockheed's F-22 program, Boeing swoops in with a highly versatile, 5.5 generation fighter that's both deadly and cost effective (the Stealth Eagle was announced in mid-March).
Boeing seems to be gearing this program towards overseas clients, with the USAF looking ahead to the inevitable massive JSF purchase. Fair enough. But would it hurt to beef up our inventory with a couple F-15SE squadrons? Halting F-22 production has put an enormous gap in the Air Force's fleet, so the introduction of a cheap, flexible, capable, and stealthy fighter practically has a bow on it. The old USAF, pre-decapitation, would sniff at any technology that's anything less than cutting edge and exciting. Today's boys in blue are more open to innovation.
If nothing else, it's worth a look.
Aside: Each time I read "F-15SE" I want to say "F-15 Strike Eagle" instead of Stealth Eagle. Annoying.
Epic Fail: Russia to Deploy Bombers Right Where We Want Them
Russia expressed interest in using Cuban airfields during patrol missions of its strategic bombers, Russia's Interfax news agency reported
"There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long runways, which absolutely suit us," Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev told Interfax.
Zhikharev, who is the chief of staff of the Russian Air Force's long-range aviation, said, "If the two chiefs of state display such a political will, we are ready to fly there."
Zhikharev also told Interfax that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered a military airfield on La Orchila island as a temporary base for Russian strategic bombers.
"If a relevant political decision is made, this is possible," he said, according to Interfax. Zhikharev said he visited La Orchila in 2008 and can confirm that with minor reconstruction, the airfield owned by a local naval base can accept fully-loaded Russian strategic bombers.
Annoying. We got Ivan's point vis a vis the Monroe Doctrine after the Cuban Missile Crisis, so what's the benefit here? Ivan's strat bombers, subs, and rocket forces already have the legs to paint the entire US in a lime-green radioactive glow -- so why commit your already limited defense resources to an endeavor that will inevitably drive the Pentagon back into the waiting arms of Lockheed, Boeing, NG and their generous inventory of Russian killing weapon systems?
And, just a reminder, the entire Gulf Coast remains a giant kill box, with F/A-18s, F-16s, F-15s, and F-22s based at (deep breath) Tyndall, Eglin, Homestead AFBs, Naval Air Stations Key West and Pensacola, plus the Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas Air National Guard fighter wings.
If Ivan wants to test our new President, perhaps he should deploy his high-value bombers to an AO where they're something more than pricey target drones.
--John Noonan
Hurtin' Hercs
And wasn't the Air Force resistant to purchasing C-130Js?
Air Force officials issued an immediate inspection notice Thursday to C-130 units worldwide after Robins Air Force Base, Ga., technicians found upper wing joint nut cracks in an aircraft undergoing scheduled depot maintenance.
The directive, known in the Air Force as a "time compliance technical order," requires inspection and replacement of any cracked nuts before the next flight, said Roger Drinnon, a spokesman for Air Mobility Command. The command, headquartered at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., is the principal operator of the C-130 for the Air Force.
I seem to remember the Georgia delegation forcing C-130Js down the Air Force's throat a couple years back while the service wanted to concentrate its procurement money on F-22s and C-17s. Maybe it was a sneaky ploy to "save" money in its budget knowing full well lawmakers would put the money in anyway, but it sure seemed to reinforce the notion that the Air Force is prejudiced against low-tech/high yield solutions like the Hercules and the Warthog (Fighting Falcon too?)...
As anyone who's flown in the zone knows, the C-130 is by far the baddest assed plane out there. I can't tell you how many high mountain passes I've buzzed and godforsaken gravel pit runways in the middle of nowhere I've taken off from in one of those beasts and never, ever, once felt nervous about the plane's durability and safety.
What a great aircraft and I hope the Air Force recognizes the importance of the fleet and fixes the ones it's got and buys more.
-- Christian
A Breach in Name Only
This article first appeared in AviationWeek.com.
The U.S. Marine Corps' AH-1Z and UH-1Y have run afoul of the Nunn-McCurdy law again.
Military sources tell Aviation Week that for the past couple of days, program manager Col. Harry Hewson has begun the notification process by briefing congressional staffers on the cost overruns.
Unlike in 2002, however, this Nunn-McCurdy breach apparently has little to do with program issues, sources say. The original requirement for 100 UH-1Ys has grown to 123 and the request for 180 AH-1Zs has risen to 226 as part of the Marine Corps growth plan, which will see 27,000 new Marines enrolled in the end.
More helicopters cost more money, the sources note, surpassing what was previously in the budget for the Cobra and Huey upgrades. "It's not mismanagement of funds and it's not requirements creep," a defense official said. "It's a paperwork drill."
BAE Systems is developing acoustic hostile fire indicator technology to protect low-flying military helicopters from small-arms fire.
Most aircraft have missile-warning and countermeasures systems but are vulnerable to small arms-fire, which has been difficult to detect. Crews often don’t know they are being fired on until it’s too late. Combining acoustic data, noise reduction, and location algorithms with information from existing sensors, BAE Systems is developing a solution that will give helicopter crews multiple indications of hostile fire.
In live-fire tests at a private range in the United States, an HFI system measured acoustic data and accurately detected threats (see video). Further testing on military aircraft, using additional sensing technologies and techniques, will make the system more robust and improve its detection capabilities.
Officials told me the system is a "blended solution" that combines existing defensive systems -- which I assume include missile and radar warning defenses -- with a noise sensor that's been programmed to cancel out wind and rotor noise and direction finding software to point out the shot's location.
[Here's a better video of a test shoot where you can see the helicopter jinking to avoid the fire.]
I know this is possible because I went to a demo day a couple years ago on sniper detection systems for ground vehicles. There are lots of different kinds that deliver lots of different information, but the systems work well and are robust.
BAE says the shot detection system can display the location information "on existing cockpit instruments" to help a pilot take evasive maneuvers to avoid the gunfire.
Officials said this is not a current Pentagon program and the DoD has expressed some interest in the technology.
-- Christian
Army Searching for New Skids
Our colleague Greg Grant was also at last week's AUSA Air Warfare Symposium and reported an interesting update on how the Army is picking up the pieces of the cancelled Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter.
The requirements have changed a bit since the ARH's demise, adding 2,000 feet to the "high-hot" hover requirement...a change intended to, and evidently, giving manufacturers fits.
Late last year when the Army issued a “sources sought” notice to industry for a re-competition of the ARH program, after cancelling its contract with Bell-Textron for a militarized version of its civilian 407 helicopter to replace the ageing OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, the service said it was “reassessing the ARH performance requirements.” Specifically: the new helicopter must have the capability to “perform a Hover out of Ground Effect (HOGE) at 6,000 ft/95 degrees Fahrenheit.” At standard temperature, that’s almost equivalent to flying at 14,000 feet, said Larry Plaster, Boeing’s Apache Modernization manager.
The Kiowa Warrior couldn’t meet the 4,000 foot requirement unless almost everything but the seats were pulled off the airframe. For high-hot attack and reconnaissance missions, which means pretty much everywhere in Afghanistan, the Army uses the AH-64 Apache. Plaster said the Block III Apache upgrade will carry composite rotor blades to improve high-hot performance. The powerful, twin-engined CH-47 Chinook cargo hauler has little trouble operating in the rarified air and high temperatures of the Hindu Kush mountain range.
As for existing helicopters that might fit the Army’s new ARH high-hot requirement, “there are aircraft out there that can do it,” said Col. Randolph Rotte, Deputy Director for Aviation in the Army Chief of Staff’s office, speaking at the Army’s Aviation Symposium here in the DC area this week.
“Because of that altitude and temperature that is pushing today’s current technology to the extreme limits. Big [helicopters] works there in those environments well, but to get it smaller to meet the needs of the manned light reconnaissance, that’s a challenge. So only those with some technological edges to it can attain that in the time frames without creating another Comanche program again which we don’t want to do with 10 to 15 years of R and D,” Rotte said.
Army officials refused to specify which companies responded to the November RFI, but sources confirm that at least two European players could enter the fray. One could be the Augusta-Westland A119 Ke or the A109 Power. Also, our source tells us, Eurocopter could bid the E130 or E135.
We'll see how seriously the Army takes a Euro bid on the newly revamped program. Suffice it to say they're probably gun shy after the tanker controversy.
-- Christian
Sikorsky's X2 Revealed
I spent part of the day yesterday at the Association of the US Army's Aviation Symposium here in the DC area and among other interesting things, got my first exposure to an experimental Sikorsky helicopter that could change the paradigm of rotor wing aviation.
I remember way back in the day when Sikorsky purchased Schweitzer helicopter company (the forebears of the MQ-8B Firescout helo-drone) and planned to turn that shop into the rotor wing equivalent of Lockheed's Skunk Works.
Well, it looks like they've turned out a very interesting product in the new X2 Technology Demonstrator.
According to Doug Shidler, VP for Sikorsky's Army Programs office, it was only recently -- and with the help of new technology flight tested on the Army's Rascal (rotorcraft aircrew systems concept airborne laboratory) UH-60 tech demonstrator -- was the company able to incorporate mature systems that didn't make the X2 so unstable it couldn't fly for very long.
"There's a lot of technology that we're applying that we learned on the Comanche program and that we're learning on the [Blackhawk] upgrade program that we're applying right now," Shidler said. "It will demonstrate a lot of different things that we had difficulties with in the '70s and '80s. ... What we've done is apply a lot of the technologies that we've learned developing and embodied in our platforms today and to go ahead and develop this new platform."
The X2 features a set of two counter-rotating blades and a rear-mounted propulsion blade. The goal is to get the aircraft to speeds in the 250 kt range -- which puts it in close competition with the Osprey's specs, but of course the V-22 is operational and can carry a load of troops.
Sikorsky claims this technology can be applied for light attack, light transport, SAR and intermediate commercial applications, and Shidler hinted that it could be used for heavy lift.
Their literature on the X2 claims the configuration will allow for increased payload, improved range, low downwash and cheaper price.
Shidler showed a slide that said Sikorsky had conducted a successful test flight in August.
-- Christian
Stealthy Airlift for Commandos
Another intriguing idea that emerged from this week's Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments talk comes from Bob Martinage who discussed the Special Operations Community's airlift shortfall.
You saw yesterday that we mentioned the debate over CV and MV-22 numbers and the potential replacements for a reduced buy of Ospreys for the spec ops community. But one thing I didn't write about was Martinage's call for a stealthy long-range transport for use by SOF to sneak larger numbers of personnel and equipment into shady LZs.
What Martinage proposes is to use the same airframe that the Air Force decides on for its new Next-Generation bomber program. Think of it as B-1 meets C-17.
If we want to gain access into a denied environment like China in the future, we've got to have a stealthy SOF transport. The C-130, even with all the tricks it can do for active defenses and so on, is not going to be survivable against the types of integrated air defenses that are available today, let alone 2015 or beyond. Whether it's for inserting ground forces into an anti-access area or denied environment against China, Iran or you name it -- or [for] truly clandestine operations in sensitive areas around the world, I need a stealthy transport. This will almost certainly need to be a variation of the Next Generation Bomber that the Air Force is building.
You might remember that our boy Steve Trimble at Flight Global pulled a diamond out of the rough when he spotted a line in NGB-contender Northrop Grumman's press release saying they thought delivering snake eaters to their drop zone in specialized cruise missiles fired from the NGB would be a swell idea.
That is, unless you're one of those commandos stuffed in metal tube at angels 1 traveling at 300 kts.
Anyway, though this sounds a bit "Starship Troopers" Martinage admits the Air Force has shown little enthusiasm for the less sexy (compared to the fighter jocks) world of covert ops.
It is imperative for AFSOC to field a stealthy SOF transport to provide clandestine mobility and support to SOF ground units in denied, semi-permissive and politically sensitive areas. It appears that the only feasible path ahead is to develop a SOF transport variant of the NGB. Without active support of the Air Force, both in terms of integrating fundamental performance parameters for SOF applications into the initial NGB design and willingness to procure additional airframes for SOCOM-funded modification, a stealthy SOF transport is unlikely to be realized.
That would kind of suck, huh?
-- Christian
V-22 = F-22?
Some of the sharpest minds -- and least partisan -- on defense issues in Washington spoke during a conference with media and other military experts yesterday on where they believed the Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations forces should go in the coming years in terms of organization, equipment and strategy.
It was an incredibly interesting series of talks from the folks at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and brought up a number of key issues and recommendations that in some cases jibe with what those services/organizations are already doing and forged some new ground on how the key players in the GWOT should better shed the idea of "next war-itis."
We'll be rolling out their recommendations over the next couple days here and at DoD Buzz, but I wanted to throw this one out there at the outset to get the pot stirred a bit.
Both Dakota Wood and Robert Martinage -- who spoke about the Marine Corps force posture and that of the Spec Ops community, respectively -- called for a reduction of the MV-22 buy for the Marine Corps and a recognition that the Osprey couldn't satisfy the Spec Ops aviation shortfall.
Like the Air Force's F-22, the Osprey has become a bit of a raison d'etre for the Marine Corps, which staunchly supports the aircraft as a replacement for all of its CH-46 fleet. Wood argued that the cost was simply too much for the aircraft given other pressing, high-dollar Marine Corps programs coming in the future, reset, an expanded force and any number of contingencies the service will face. And, oh by the way, does anyone think the financial meltdown and the government's bailouts will slow down in the next couple of years?
If the Air Force is going to have to rethink its F-22 buy, why shouldn't the Marine Corps do the same thing with its MV-22 plans for similar reasons?
Recognizing the Osprey has its advantages in flying farther, faster and higher than anything in its class, Wood said the service needs to buy some MV-22s for missions that fit that kind of profile. But he added his voice to a growing chorus of experts who say it's time to scale back the buy and look to a rotary wing replacement that cheaper and more available than the Osprey to do those short hop chores the MV-22 is simply too expensive to justify doing.
Martinage made an interesting point that as spec ops forces push further and further into FID and UW missions in hard to reach corners of the world, sourcing spare parts for the CV-22 when the thing goes TangoUniform will be a deal breaker. He argued that anywhere an Osprey can go, a fleet of C-27s, U-28s and long-range helos can go -- with less risk of spare parts sources and overall O&M costs.
It's the hard, cold reality of it, but these guys aren't haters of the Osprey, they're just trying to give the best recommended solutions to critical problems in a severely fiscally constrained environment. It's good food for thought.
-- Christian
ARH Death Hits Bell Hard
Our boy Bob Cox at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram alerted DT to his story on the downstream effects of the ARH kill.
Bell Helicopter cuts 500 jobs, mostly in Fort Worth
Faced with the loss of a big defense contract and an impatient corporate parent with a sagging stock price, Bell Helicopter announced Wednesday that it was cutting 500 jobs, mostly from its Fort Worth operations.
The job cuts, which began Tuesday, follow in the wake of the Pentagon’s Oct. 16 decision to cancel the Army’s $5 billion-plus contract with Bell to develop the ARH-70A Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter.
All but about 30 of the layoffs will come from personnel at Bell’s Fort Worth-area facilities, with the rest from the ranks of its Amarillo work force.
Bell spokesman Joseph LaMarca Jr. said senior Bell executives had been evaluating the company’s personnel requirements since the ARH cancellation and concluded that more cuts were needed beyond the 280 people directly assigned to the program.
"It allows us to shape our organization in such a way as to make it a more competitive, very streamlined, lean organization," LaMarca said.
The layoffs and terminations were being made at all levels, including 40 out of about 200 upper-management positions, which LaMarca described as vice presidents and directors.
Significant numbers of engineers, marketing and other white-collar personnel were included in the cuts, but LaMarca said only about 20 manufacturing workers.
Several dozen managers were notified Tuesday that they were being dismissed, and the rest of those laid off were told Wednesday.
The laid-off Bell employees will receive 60 days of pay and benefits in accordance with federal law, severance pay and outplacement services.
The company was holding meetings with the laid–off and terminated employees to explain the severance package.
Not all of the people working on the ARH program were laid off, LaMarca said. "You have good people you want to keep, with skills you want, so you have to make some other adjustments."
The Bell layoffs are one of the largest in Tarrant County recently and could foreshadow further cuts by companies as the U.S. economy slides into what many observers say will be the most severe recession in at least two decades.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area added a net 54,300 jobs in the 12 months ending in September, said Bernard Weinstein, head of the Center for Economic Research and Development at the University of North Texas in Denton, but he says that kind of performance probably isn’t in the cards for 2009.
"Like it or not, we’re part of the national economy," Weinstein said. "The national economy is in a recession. We’ll feel it too."
At least two of the positions Bell cut were reportedly senior managers assigned to Bell Agusta Aerospace, Bell’s joint venture with Italy’s AgustaWestland helicopter manufacturer to develop the BA609 civilian tilt-rotor aircraft.
The Star-Telegram reported in July that Bell officials’ enthusiasm for that program had cooled significantly and that the company would likely turn over a larger share of the development effort to Agusta.
LaMarca said discussions with Agusta over the future of the BA609 were continuing.
The Navy is inspecting its entire fleet of F/A-18 Hornets after discovering cracks in more than a dozen of the planes' wings.
There have been no flight mishaps and no planes have been grounded, the Navy said.
Navy mechanics found the cracks this month during routine post-flight maintenance on a currently deployed plane, said Lt. Clayton Doss, a spokesman.
The damage was in the aluminum outer wing panel outboard aileron hinge. Ailerons help control the rolling motion of the aircraft, so a failure of this hinge could lead to further damage and the loss of the plane.
Subsequent inspections found similar cracks in 14 other planes. Five of the planes are deployed and are scheduled for immediate repair. The other 10 were in depot, reserve or training status, Doss said.
The Navy has issued a call to inspect all 636 of its older "legacy" Hornets -- the A, B, C and D variants. There are 112 such Hornets deployed worldwide; the remainder are in depot, reserve or training status.
The F/A-18 Super Hornets -- E's and F's -- are not affected.
Will this accelerate the argument for JSFs or just push for more Es and Fs?
-- Christian
Boeing pulls back the curtain on the NGB
The most excellent Bill Sweetman of Aviation Week posted a few pictures of Boeing's Next Generation Bomber display at the Air Force Association Convention earlier today. Pretty slick looking, though after all these tanker/raptor/csar-x fiascoes you've gotta wonder what the price tag will read.
I've heard rumors that this joint Lockheed-Boeing project would produce a medium range, medium payload bomber, but Sweetman's pics kinda/sorta resemble a long range, heavy payload B-2 Spirit.
More photos and commentary here . Be sure to check out the Northrop Grumman computer model as well. We won't know a thing about capabilities for years now, but I think NG has already inched ahead in the sexiness department.
--John Noonan
A Modest Proposal on the F-22
Lockheed Martin and the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area has been doing an awful lot of hand wringing over the impending doom closure of F-22 assembly lines. Senators John Coryn and James Inafoe, both long time Raptor advocates, have argued that closing the Raptor plants would cause massive "disruptions and layoffs," and that Congress should green light $531 million for 20 additional F-22s in FY-2009.
Here's a solution: let the Aussies foot the bill. Australia is so hot for the Raptor, they'd probably trade in New Zealand for a couple of squadrons. And their loyalty can hardly be called into question, Australia has been spilling the same blood in the same mud with us since the first World War.
The real issue is whether or not we can trust them to keep the F-22's technology under lock and key. Secretary Gates says we can, but Congress hasn't budged on foreign sales.
If you asked in July, most in the defense community would -in all likelihood- favor keeping the Raptor restricted to the USAF. Then Russia went and invaded Georgia in August and suddenly all those big ticket, Russian-killing weapon systems became cool again.
So with a newly aggressive Russian in mind, let the Aussies keep our production lines open -and perhaps the equally interested Japanese, with an assurance that they don't use the Raptor to attack Pearl Harbor again- while Congress and the Pentagon figure out just how many jets they want.
Sans the technology security concerns, that's a win-win solution. We get more superbad Raptors flying for the home team, and the greater number of jets that are pushed through Lockheed's production lines, the cheaper the F-22 becomes for the USAF to purchase.
Hey, a well-armed ally is a happy ally, y'know?
-John Noonan
Picture of the Day
Courtesy of the USAF, an AC-130 deploys anti-missile flares near Hurlburt Field, FL. The flares distract incoming enemy surface-to-air missiles presumably by making the AC-130 appear totally effin' radical.
-John Noonan
Get Your F-15 Eagle Hybrid Now!
You know, with all the scandal surrounding the Air Force recently, it's refreshing to see that the service is breaking ground in areas that might be a little below the radar now, but will pay big dividends in the future for both the service itself and the general public.
F-15 Hits Mach 2 on Synthetic Fuel
History was made at Robins Air Force Base this week as an F-15 Eagle flew at more than twice the speed of sound using a blend of synthetic fuel.
The Aug. 19 flight was the world's first test of a high performance fighter aircraft powered by a 50-50 mix of traditional JP-8 jet fuel and a synthetic using natural gas as a source.
The Air Force already had tested the new blend on a C-17 cargo aircraft and B-52 and B-1 bombers. But Jeff Braun, director of the Air Force's Alternative Fuels Certification Office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, conceded that fighter aircraft offered a much different challenge.
"They are much higher performance and a much more demanding environment," he said during a late afternoon interview.
Braun said the daylong process included a 50-minute ground test Tuesday morning that pushed the aircraft's engines from military power to full afterburner.
"That was just another risk reduction step to prove the aircraft was not leaking fuel and the engines were behaving nominally," he said.
The actual test flight came in the afternoon. "It was a full functional check flight of about 55 minutes," the engineer said, "reaching speeds of Mach 2.2." Mach 2.2 is approximately 1,450 mph.
Immediate feedback came from the pilots.
"We asked them point-blank if they noticed any difference in performance and they said it was a 'non-event,' " Braun reported. "In other words, they couldn't tell the difference. The aircraft behaved the same."
For a service that's so fossil fuel intensive, it's amazing to see that something as high performance as USAF fighter jets can be powered by blended fuels seamlessly.
Wonder if the airlines will be reluctant to adopt the program since they seem to like nickel and diming the public with extra charges to cover their (waaa waaa) higher fuel costs...?
-- Christian
Who Cares? Iran says warplanes capable of reaching Israel
It's cookie cutter Iranian bluster, of course. Though some Iranian fighters do have the legs for such an operation, they'd have to drop most of their armament and load up on fuel to make the trip.
And that's assuming that Iranian warplanes had a straight shot into Israel. The minute the Mullahs sortie a strike package large enough to field against the razor sharp Israeli Air Force, the even sharper USAF and US Navy would make short work of it. That type of chest-thumping from Iran is the stuff that makes fighter jocks like Ward and Pinch drool.
"Target rich environment?" Yeah, you betcha.
--John Noonan
Another Food Fight Between Boeing and the Air Force
DT buddy Steve Trimble scored a great scoop at the Farnborough air show this week. He reports:
Boeing's global marketing campaign for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet has drawn the public wrath of the senior U.S. military official leading the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
U.S. Air Force Lt Gen Charles Davis, speaking exclusively to Flight International, has accused Boeing of "spreading lies and half-truths" about the F-35 to bolster its case for selling the F/A-18E/F.
"That's just pissing us off," Davis says. "If Boeing has to say something negative about JSF to sell their aircraft, that tells me there is something wrong with their aircraft."
Davis specifically faults Boeing executives for predicting further cost overruns and delays for the F-35 program. By comparison, Davis says, he has heard BAE Systems make no such predictions in their efforts to sell the Eurofighter Typhoon.
However, it was pointed out to Davis that Boeing had delivered hundreds of F/A-18E/Fs on time and on budget, while the JSF program has reported a 50 percent cost increase and an at least 18-month delay during the first seven years of development.
Davis acknowledges the F-35's record, but refuses to back down in his criticism of Boeing.
He says the F-35's development challenges cannot be compared with the F/A-18E/F. The Super Hornet is based on an existing airframe, he says, and reuses the avionics suite from the original aircraft.
"That's the baseline they're measured against. How hard is that?" Davis asks.
The F-35 and F/A-18E/F are in competition in several countries, and not least in the USA, where Navy officials continue to debate the need for extending Super Hornet purchases if the JSF is further delayed.
Boeing executives were not immediately aware of the news articles that provoked the Davis outburst.
"We don't know much about JSF other than what we read in the paper," says Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.
Tom Bell, a Boeing business development official, says he is unaware of the specific comments that triggered Davis' outburst, and so could not give a direct response.
Bell points out that two JSF development partners - Australia and Denmark - have already acquired or are considering acquiring F/A-18E/Fs instead.
"People with greater insight [into the F-35 program] than I are looking at the offerings available," Bell says. "Let people draw their own conclusions about why."
So is it worse when the Air Force is pissed at Boeing or the other way around like it has been during the tanker protest furor? Or is this just the kind of "healthy tension" we need between these two legs of the Iron Triangle? Stay tuned.
(Photo: General Davis demonstrates what he'd like to do to those at Boeing who are badmouthing the JSF.)
(Gouge: NC)
-- Ward
A Chocolate (well composite, anyway) Mess
DT contributer emeritus Chris Michel gave us a heads up about a series of photos over at Gizmodo that show details of the aftermath of the B-2 crash in Guam a few months back.
Here's one of them:
Composites have afforded amazing performance capabilities in modern aircraft but they are nasty when they burn. The fibers get airborne in a fire and can get into the lungs of those who might inadvertantly breath the smoke -- which is why crash crews are careful to wear respirators even after that flames die off.
An alert DT reader forwarded this article to me from a British news service.
New search-and-rescue helicopters serving remote parts of the Highlands have yet to carry out a long-range rescue - eight months after being brought into service.
There have been problems with the multimillion-pound aircraft over the use of long-distance fuel-tanks.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has insisted the problems have all been resolved, saying the tanks are now fully operational.
But crews are understood to be unhappy about the loss of seating for casualties on the aircraft in order to accommodate the tanks.
Problems surrounding the fitting of the tanks have meant the four Sikorsky S92s based at Stornoway on Lewis and Sumburgh on Shetland have been unable to carry out non-stop rescues to the range which was originally heralded.
They are, in fact, covering half the distance.
The two helicopters at Sumburgh do not have the tanks - which double their range to 400 nautical miles - fitted, while those at Stornoway, where the extra distance is most needed, are yet to carry out a rescue using them.
The MCA confirmed there had been issues over fitting the tanks.
Crewmen and spokesmen at both Stornoway and Shetland Coastguard have confirmed the tanks are "not operational" yet, despite the MCA's insistence that they are.
An interesting development for sure, but hardly an indictment on the aircraft itself. Problem is, when Sikorsky is fighting tooth and nail to get back in the running on the CSAR-X contract, news like this can't help.
More...
The first S92s were introduced in Stornoway in October, and then in Shetland in November.
Some crew are also understood to be unhappy with the tanks because they halve the seating on the craft and have questioned whether they should be used.
One source said it was a "Catch 22 situation", adding: "Do you swap the extra miles for less room for casualties, so you rescue fewer people?
The tanks have cut the seats from seven to just three."
The problems first surfaced in March when a Stornoway-based helicopter was unable to rescue an injured crewman because it was out of range.
Instead, an RAF helicopter from Lossiemouth had to fly an extra round trip of 250 miles to rescue the Russian seaman, 185 miles off Benbecula -- ironically landing him at Stornoway where the new Sikorsky S92 is based.
(Thanks to the anonymous tipster for the gouge)
-- Christian
Transonic Lift Concept in the Works
I noticed the following contract announcement this morning when I read the DoD's daily roundup:
Boeing Co., of Huntington Beach, Calif., is being awarded a firm fixed price, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for $7,521,000. The Speed Agile Concept Demonstration program seeks to achieve a technology readiness level of at least five 2010 on an integrated mobility configuration in the areas of high lift, efficient transonic flight, and flight control, in order to support future technology development and acquisition activities. At this time $800,000 has been obligated. Department of the Air Force, 84 CSW, 518CBSS/PK, Hill AFB, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA8212-08-C-0006).
Sounds interesting enough. "Speed Agile" concept demonstrator? So, I scanned around for some more info. Looks like back in August the Air Force published a solicitation for a concept demonstrator for a new generation of lifters that can operate with capabilities somewhere in between the C-130 and the C-17. Could this be the FCS Lifter?
The Speed Agile Concept Demonstrator, or SACD (I bet the Hill staffers love that acronym), will be able to take off in less than 2,000 feet [EDITOR: corrected], carry 65,000 pounds of gear or troops and fly around 1,500 nm unrefueled. This is what the Air Force is thinking about for a standard mission, and they're asking for a cruise speed of greater than .8mach at more than 30,000 feet, which means the aircraft will have to be pressurized.
The Air Force also wants the plane to be able to perform a special operations mission, carrying 20,000 lbs about 1,000 nm with a specialized flight profile that performs a 250 nm "low ingress cruise" and a similar egress cruise at "best range mach, best range altitude." The specs are intended to provide a plane that can "maximize radius and minimize mission execution time for given payload and mid-mission field length," according to an Air Force solicitation document.
The plane will have to be able to handle seven standard-sized pallets, with one on the ramp. The cargo bay dimensions would be an objective of 158" wide at the bottom of the loading bay, where the C-130 checks out at about 123" at its widest point.
This is just a "concept" and the Air Force is careful to point out:
The mission profiles and performance goals provided are only intended to provide a basis for the physical scaling of concepts and are not official USAF requirements. They are intended to represent an amalgam of various physical capabilities that are of interest, and a common point of departure for comparison/parametric sensitivities to assess the robustness of integrated mobility vehicle concepts.
Well, we'll keep an eye on this and see what comes out of it. But, clearly, Boeing's getting a pretty hefty chunk of change to put this SACD together.
Army criminal investigators are looking into problems found in two military helicopters on a production line at a Boeing Co. plant in suburban Philadelphia, prompting the company to shut down the line.
A Boeing spokesman said Wednesday that aircraft at the plant were being inspected. The company didn't disclose specifics about why it shut down the H-47 Chinook line at Boeing Rotorcraft Systems plant in Ridley Township, Pa., on Tuesday. Employees reported to work Wednesday morning, but the line had yet to fully resume operations.
U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, a Democrat whose district includes the plant, said he was told during a briefing that wires that appeared to be broken or severed were found in one helicopter and a suspicious washer was found in a second.
Sestak said the assessment was preliminary and he expected the findings of a more thorough review would be available later Wednesday. He praised Boeing's handling of the situation, and said it was too early to speculate on what happened.
Dave Foster, an Army spokesman, said in an e-mail that normal production was expected to resume shortly.
"At present, this is thought to be an isolated incident, confined to these two aircraft," Foster said.
Foster said the Defense Contract Management Agency was overseeing the situation.
All aircraft on the premises were being inspected, said Jack Satterfield, a company spokesman. But he said the shutdown was isolated to one line at the plant and did not affect helicopters already in use by the military.
The Defense Criminal Investigative Service had agents on the premises conducting interviews, said Gary Comerford, a spokesman for the agency. Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman Christopher Grey confirmed the agency was also involved in the investigation, but said he could not comment on it.
The Chinook is known as the Army's workhorse aircraft. It is used to transport troops and supplies.
Boeing is currently producing new Chinooks for the Army, as well as updating older models.
Now, I'm sure these are isolated incidents. But still, with a tough protest fight going on in the CSAR-X program, this certianly can't help matters in that arena at all.
COLUMBUS, Miss. -- It's an old adage that the Guard and Reserve are the red-headed step children of "Big Army." It's the guys on active duty that get the newest, shiniest, priciest piece of gear while the part-timers get the cast offs -- last year's equipment on its last legs.
Well, that's about to change in a few weeks when the Army National Guard receives its first of 200 UH-72A Lakota helicopters to replace its inventory of Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey and OH-58 Kiowa utility helos and some UH-60 Blackhawks.
Yes, the Big Army's already gotten about 20 of the new Lakotas to free up some of its Blackhawks for duty in Iraq, but the so-called "light utility helicopter" is purpose built for the Guard to use for domestic medivac situations and other state-assigned "general support" missions.
"For a lot of missions in the U.S. we don't need a Blackhawk," said Col. Neil Thurgood, director of the Army's utility helicopters project office, during a visit to the manufacturer's Columbus assembly plant May 9. "So, we're going to save the taxpayers some money."
Based on the Eurocopter EC-145 -- a commercial bantam-weight helo used commonly for hospital "life-flight" missions -- the UH-72 takes advantage of all the modern amenities typical of its class. With two engines, advanced rotors and a glass cockpit, pilots say the Lakota is easy -- and safer -- to fly than its predecessors, particularly the venerable Huey.
"I've been flying Hueys for years and you've got to be on the controls all the time," Thurgood said. But with the Lakota's advanced flight controls and auto pilot, "squeezing the stick the entire time" isn't in the cards anymore.
"I was coming into the airfield and all I had to do was turn some knobs and dials until I was in a hover, the auto pilot did it all," Thurgood added.
For Guard pilots who already have some stick time, it'll be an easy transition to the UH-72, Army officials here said. Pilots will have to attend a 10-day course on the Lakota at a Eurocopter facility in Grand Prairie, Texas, before they fly their home-station birds, and maintainers will have to do roughly the same thing to get up to speed on the LUH's modern systems.
New Guard pilots will simply leave initial flight training and attend the same 10-day course as their more experienced brethren.
"The transition won't be a problem at all," said Lt. Col. Jim Brashear, LUH product manager.
But a helicopter that program officials claim is one of the few Army aviation contracts that's adhering to projected cost and schedule timelines does have some limitations. For one, the LUH isn't built for a combat environment, so Guard units who deploy to a war zone won't get to take their shiny new helos with them.
"They'll still be able to fly their Blackhawks when they deploy," said Keith Roberson, deputy director of the Army's utility helicopters project office.
While officials here cite the LUH as an example of what can go right with an aviation program, the helo has seen its share of controversy. In July 2006, after the Army awarded the $3 billion contract to American Eurocopter -- a subsidiary of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company -- competitor McDonnell Douglas Helicopters protested the decision, throwing the program's future into doubt.
The UH-72 emerged from the fight unscathed, but critics later charged the aircraft was ill suited to some environments, including so-called "high-hot" conditions like mountaintop wildfires and the deserts of California.
"There are no areas in the United States that we think we can't take this aircraft," Roberson countered.
The Lakota is being manufactured partly in Germany; with final assembly here at this newly-built plant in rural Mississippi. Through the rest of this year, more of the aircraft will be assembled at the Columbus plant, with the entire end-to-end production of Lakotas coming from domestic manufacturers by mid-2009, officials say.
The Lakota's foreign designers "are fulfilling their promise to shift production from Germany to the U.S.," Thurgood said. "That's contributing to our industrial base and our economy."
-- Christian
An Insider's View of CSAR-X
I got an interesting email yesterday from a combat veteran CSAR pilot. He makes some good points on the whole debate over the current CSAR-X requirements and protest, and I'd like to share them with DT readers with his permission:
(From retired Lt. Col. Charles D. Brown, former CSAR HH-53 pilot and veteran of the Vietnam evacuation and Mayaguez rescue)
The major issue in the contract comes from in the change from 'mission' ready to 'flight' ready. As a retired Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) pilot I can tell you that the seemingly insignificant difference between 'flight ready' and 'mission ready' is anything but insignificant. So, a bit of explanation. Boeing's Chinook can be 'flight' ready in the 3 hours it takes to put the helicopter back together after being off loaded from a C-17. But, 'flight ready' simply means that it can be flown on a formal maintenance check flight to verify that all the flight controls work exactly as necessary. To get the heavy-lift, Chinook into a C-17, you have to disconnect flight controls and remove major flight components. When you put it back together, you have to have a specially qualified flight crew take the aircraft up on a functional check flight before the aircraft can be used for a mission.
This maintenance check flight is supposed to happen in daylight and in good visual flight weather. Off load the Chinook at night or in bad weather, or have something go amiss during reassembly, and you might wait a day or two to have a 'mission ready' aircraft.
The Chinook is a good cargo helicopter. We need it’s heavy lift capability in our helicopter fleet. A CSAR helicopter must carry survivors, a basic crew and weapons— but heavy lift and large size is not a requirement for CSAR. It’s all about not being shot down. CSAR is about flying low over hostile enemy territory. You are there to 'sneak in, grab survivors fast, and get the hell out' before the enemy knows you have been there. That’s will be more difficult to achieve with a larger, noisier helicopter. Then there’s the challenge of finding a landing zone big enough to accommodate a helicopter the size of the Chinook, landing being preferable to using a hoist, especially if there are multiple people to pick up.
In short, the difference between “flight ready” and “mission ready” is a major issue. Anyone who has flown helicopters knows that they are maintenance intensive. The helicopter that meets mission requirements with the fewest maintenance and check flight requirements is a winner. Speed counts in getting CSAR on scene. Less time for the enemy to search for survivors and prepare anti aircraft fire for the CSAR they know is coming. It's a big deal to the squadron and the pilots trying to fly the mission, and a really big deal to the downed, possibly injured warfighter caught behind enemy lines.
Survivors are in a life-or-death situation where every minute counts, and any delays that might be required to get a Chinook 'mission ready' from 'flight ready' are unacceptable. If the military requirements are for a helicopter that can be airlifted by cargo aircraft to a theater and be rapidly mission ready, I'm happy the Air Force didn't opt to overlook this 'technicality' and I suspect families, like mine, with loved ones in Iraq are too.
-- Christian
More CSAR-X Delays
Our friends at Aviation Week sent this story over to us for posting. My former colleague Mike Fabey has been covering this issue backwards and forwards. With all the tanker dancing going on, it's instructive to remember Boeing's dealing with another major headache, this time in the rotor world.
Under a Defense Department Inspector General (IG) investigation and more intense source selection scrutiny, the Air Force's $15 billion combat, search and rescue replacement helicopter (CSAR-X) program is further delaying its planned contract award.
The IG announced its investigation about a month ago into the way the Air Force changed a key performance parameter (KPP) change for deployability (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 25).
Late last month the Air Force notified bidders Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky that the sixth amendment to the request for proposals (RFP) - in essence, a new RFP - will be released some time in the spring, with an award to follow in October. The service explained the delay by saying it needed more time to evalute the very detailed proposals. A Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) meeting on the program is likely to take place a month or so before the downselect.
Last fall Air Force officials expressed the hope that the award would be made by the summer. The CSAR-X work already has been delayed more than a year - and it has been on the Air Force drawing board since the previous decade.
Initially, Boeing won the contract with its HH-47 Chinook variant. But Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky protested the award twice, with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustaining both on the basis of how the Air Force calculated certain lifecycle costs for the proposed aircraft.
Now added in the mix is the IG investigation into the KPP change. As first reported by Aerospace DAILY, the Air Force changed a crucial bit of wording in the requirement, saying that a disassembled CSAR-X helicopter had to be only "flight" ready - instead of "mission" ready - within three hours. The Air Force said it vetted the change properly, but its own documents call that assertion into question.
Air Force officials told Congress that Lockheed Martin had asked for the change, but the service's own documents show the service had made the change prior to when it said Lockheed suggested a wording clarification. Lockheed said it never asked for any such change.
Boeing would have likely benefited most from such a wording change, analysts said. Boeing said it never requested the KPP change, but the company acknowledged a briefing with the Air Force in April 2005 - shortly before the service made the change - in which deployability times apparently were discussed.
I got an email from a congressional source in Rep. Norm Dicks' (D-Wash.) office over the weekend that foreshadows the upcoming fight on the Hill over giving those rotten Frenchies and their Euro pals billions of U.S. tax dollars for something red-blooded Americans can build better themselves (or that's what the anti-NorGrum/EADS forces are probably thinking deep down).
Attached is the letter that Sen. McCain sent to Robert Gates as he was being confirmed ... saying that the competition should not include a consideration of the WTO dispute. The result was that the Air Force a month later dropped the provision in the draft RFP that would have attempted to account for the subsidy that the USTR is alleging has gone into the A330 program. That was one of the key changes that ultimately cleared the way for the EADS-Northrop win.
Protectionism cloaked in legalistic trade jargon seems to be the first salvo fired by Boeing backers so far -- unless you count former presidential hopeful Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) who threw in a little Cold War redbaiting by basically describing EADS/Airbus as a "socialist" government-supported monopoly.
Reuters pulled the issue together well over the weekend, and I'll bet you a million bucks whoever is facing McCain in the general election will blame him for losing American jobs by scuttling the Boeing lease deal and hinting in a letter to Sec. Gates that the Air Force might be attempting to negate the A330's edge on cargo capacity (the letter was supplied by the Dicks source).
Stay tuned folks. You think the CSAR-X deal/protest was a hot one? This KC-X debate is going to get worse before it gets any better.
Pentagon picks EADS/Northrop for tanker contract: report (AFP)
The Pentagon has chosen Europe's EADS, parent of Airbus, and US partner Northrop Grumman for a massive refueling tanker aircraft contract, the Wall Street Journal said Friday.
The newspaper, citing a person familiar with the situation, said the partnership won a heated contest against US-based aerospace giant Boeing for the contract of some 40 billion dollars.
Boeing, the second leading US defense contractor after Lockheed Martin, has been considered the heavy favorite to snare the contract to provide 179 twin-engine planes that essentially are flying gas stations, used to refuel in-flight war planes and troop transporters.
The contract is one of the Pentagon's largest in recent years and the first order on a tanker market estimated at more than 100 billion dollars in over 30 years.
The outcome of the competition is being closely watched not just because of the enormous size of the contract. There are domestic and geopolitical implications at issue in the US Air Force's choice between an all-American contractor or a mainly US team that includes a foreign contractor.
An EADS victory would give the European firm its first major foothold in the world's largest defense market.
Boeing proposed a version of its long-haul cargo plane the 767-200.
EADS offered a modified version of the Airbus 330. The commercial plane would be militarized by Northrop Grumman and its American partners to prevent the transfer of sensitive technology to a foreign entity.
KC-X Decision!...Not
Friday's the big day, it seems. An insider tells me the decision has been made, but that the memorandum is making its way around the Pentagon to get all the signatures it needs.
Our boy Steve Trimble reports that Northrop Grumman shares went up slightly today while Boeing shares went down (NorGrum is partnered with EADS/Airbus against Boeing). A stock trader buddy of mine (who has no inside knowledge on this contract award at all but it's still a good point nonetheless) says "why do you think the entire military drives Chevy and Ford trucks?" That is to say, there ain't no way a European company will win the bid.
I'm not so sure I agree...But we'll keep you posted.
Tanker Announcement Expected Friday: U.S. Official
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force's top weapons buyer said on Wednesday her best bet was that the winner of a potential $40 billion refueling aircraft contract would be announced after U.S. markets close on Friday.
"That's my best bet for now," Sue Payton, assistant secretary for acquisition, told Reuters after a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on the Air Force 2009 budget request.
Boeing Co. is vying for the contract against a team made up of Northrop Grumman Corp and Europe's EADS.
"It's absolutely not going to happen today," Payton said. "We're really making sure all the 'i's' are dotted and 't's' are crossed."
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne earlier told Reuters he hoped an award would be announced "any day now," once the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, John Young, has signed off on he plan to buy 179 tankers, used to extend warplanes' operating range.
"You don't have a decision until all the paperwork is done and complete," Wynne said during a break in testimony to the House panel.
The Air Force presented its acquisition plan on Monday to a top-level panel chaired by Young, the deputy undersecretary for acquisitions. (Reporting by Jim Wolf, editing by Mark Porter)
-- Christian
Stealth Bomber Down!
For the first time in its history, a B-2 has crashed. The mishap happened as the bombed was attempting to take off from a base in Guam. Both pilots ejected safely. Here's part of the report from Military.com:
The aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific. After the crash, the other three bombers were being kept on Guam, said Maj. Eric Hilliard at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii.
At least one B-2 bomber had taken off safely from Andersen Air Force Base but was brought back when another aircraft plunged to the ground.
There were no injuries on the ground or damage to buildings, and no munitions were on board. Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build.
Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing from the wreckage at Andersen, said Jeanne Ward, a resident in the northern village of Yigo who was on the base visiting her husband.
Ward said she didn't witness the crash but noticed a rising plume of smoke behind the base's air control tower.
She said crowds began to gather as emergency vehicles arrived. "Everybody was on their cell phones, and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time," she said.
The Air Force, without identifying the pilots, said one was medically evaluated and released, and the other was in stable condition at Guam Naval Hospital.
The Northrop Grumman/EADS North America team is clearly happy to have something new to talk about with regard to its Airbus A330-based tanker. The team made the first dry contact with the new EADS-designed boom during a Dec. 10 flight test.
The first photo (both of which are from EADS) below shows the F-16 aircraft in receiver position lining up behind the A310 test platform. And, the second photo shows a close up of the contact.
Paul Meyer, Northrop Grumman's KC-30 vice president, says the purpose of the test was to validate the design of the boom and its hoist and control system. Operators also used the remote workstation onboard the aircraft to control the boom. The hoist caused some earlier problems for the team.
Yet, the team is mum on future milestones. A date to pass fuel in midair through the boom on the A310 to a receiver hasn't been announced (fuel has been passed on the ground). Nor has a target date been acknowledged for passing gas through the A330-based Australian Multi-Role Tanker Transport to a receiver aircraft. Those are to come.
One thing Meyer isn't quiet about is his apparent frustration with the Air Force's decision for a winner-take-all downselect instead of a split buy between the Airbus- and Boeing 767-based designs. He had a handful of reasons why the split-buy strategy makes sense.
There's industrial base, for one. Meyer says that the relationship between Northrop Grumman and EADS North America isn't going to hold to the next competition; USAF plans to conduct a competition for a KC-10 replacement, called KC-Y, in 2018. "We are not going to sit here and hold on this current arrangement with EADS for 10 years for the hope that there might be an acquisition program when there isn't one as a program of record today."
Furthermore, Meyer says the talk among senior Air Force leaders about ramping up a potential KC-X buy -- now between 12-18 aircraft per year up to a total purchase of 179 aircraft -- is "confusing." Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and others are pushing for the White House and Congress to boost the Air Force's topline procurement budget by about $20 billion per year, mostly to buy higher quantities of F-22s, F-35s and tankers sooner and to retire the legacy airframes more quickly.
"The RFP is 15 per year, plus or minus three. There have been general officers who have made statements that we'd like to accelerate and increase the annual buy to buy out the whole fleet," Meyer says. "You can't say that and say there is a KC-Y as well, can you? The statements don't logically match up."
Keep up to date on the USAF tanker deal from our Aviation Week friends at Miliary.com.
-- Christian
More Ospreys in Action
In spite of what the Marine Corps has labeled as "an aggressive media silence" around VMM-263's performance in Iraq (couched in "force protection" terms), photos are trickling out that provide evidence of the following:
- The "Thunder Chickens" are flying.
- The area they're flying over is light brown without much, if any, vegitation.
- For some of the sorties the Ospreys are outfitted with a ramp-mounted gun.
To add anything else would be conjecture and journalistically irresponsible. (And you know we hate that.) So just enjoy the cool photos.
(Gouge: KS)
-- Ward
Dogfight Over C-17s and Raptors
The top two U.S Air Force leaders lobbied Capitol Hill for their service Oct. 24, suggesting lawmakers help extend the F-22 Raptor production line with 20 more of the Lockheed Martin fighters than currently budgeted.
Seeking to bolster the Air Force as lawmakers hammer out fiscal 2008 defense legislation and the Bush administration mulls its FY '09 request, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, further indicated their desire for more Boeing C-17s, retirement of Lockheed C-5As and for the service's ability to take over the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program from the Army.
Wynne and Moseley told the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) that they do not want any ongoing production lines to close, and in fact they hope to increase the number of F-22s until the Lockheed-led F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is well into production. They acknowledged their proposal was deemed unfeasible by the Office of Secretary of Defense, which apparently said it could "break the bank."
Alluding to concerns with slower rollout of the two fighters under current plans, Wynne noted that Air Combat Command's requirement for 381 F-22s is unchanged despite plans for only 183 now. Meanwhile, requirements for 1,763 JSFs would be met only incrementally until 2025.
Gen. Richard Cody, Army vice chief of staff, says turning the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program into a single acquisition and operation platform under the Air Force would mean significant cost increases.
Cody spoke in response to questions from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Cody also sent Levin a copy of the Oct. 9 appeal to restore authorization for JCA funding to the Army aircraft procurement account.
"A switch to a single service will necessitate a significant and time-consuming update to all documentation and could possibly result in Nunn-McCurdy implications," Cody said in his mid-October letter.
When Pentagon program cost increases exceed a certain set amount, the services have to notify Congress they have breached so-called Nunn-McCurdy limits.
Levin had asked the Army to explain the need for a joint JCA program.
"Program documentation and activities to date have been based on an Army-led joint process. If this program were to revert to an Air Force only program, the validity of these documents and decisions will come into question," Cody wrote. "Additionally, there are three primary areas of near-term focus that will delay the program if a service switch is made. These three areas are: the acquisition program execution and documentation; the test program; and the training/fielding activity."
The Army is also currently providing 75 percent of the acquisition execution personnel, Cody pointed out. It will take "upwards of a year" for the Air Force to get the necessary staff in place to replace the Army force.
"The documentation is of particular importance with respect to the acquisition approach," Cody wrote. "This documentation ... defines the acquisition program baseline. This baseline is currently defined with the program being an Army-centric activity joint program." Cody also said the testing is now scheduled around Army processes, procedures and resources.
Cody said the key operational differences between Army and Air Force JCA fleets would not be in the airframe, but in how the aircraft would be used.
The Air Force would use the aircraft to supplement C-130s and other overall airlift needs. The Army is responsible for getting materials and service members to the last tactical mile -- where speed, not necessarily efficiency, is of the utmost importance. Many of the JCA missions would be executed with 24 hours notice or less, Cody said.
Although the Marines have been keeping a tight lid on what's going on with the Osprey since VMM-263 arrived at al Assad a couple of weeks ago, our inside sources relay that after a couple of sorties in country it's "so far, so good."
Here's a photo of the "Thunder Chickens" readying for launch from the USS Wasp:
And here's a shot of a V-22 launching off the front end of Wasp after a "rolling go," the launch method of choice for the Osprey. (From the look of the mountains in the background I'd say this photo was taken off the coast of Oman in the Straits of Hormuz.) According to Navy NewsStand, this photo was taken in the Gulf of Aqaba.
(Official U.S. Navy photos)
-- Ward
Next President's Tricked-Out Supercopter
From our friends at Popular Mechanics:
Even the president's ride can be hot-rodded. That's the best way to describe the 23 choppers scheduled to replace the current fleet of Marine One VH-3Ds and VH-60Ns. Outfitted with a kitchen, a bathroom and a White House-worthy high-speed communications suite, the VH-71 is closer in capabilities (and amenities) to Air Force One than to its short-hop predecessors.
Development of the VH-71, which had its first test flight in Yeovil, England, in July, was accelerated following the Sept. 11 attacks, with Lockheed Martin promising five production models by 2009. The remaining choppers, due by 2018, will include even more communications systems and performance boosts.
Read the rest of the Popular Mechanics story on the VH-71 HERE.
-- Christian
C-5 Upgrade Costs Climb
The Air Force senior leadership confirmed Monday that the estimated cost for upgrading the C-5 Galaxy fleet is far above what contractor Lockheed Martin has contracted for - a circumstance that may threaten the future of the upgrade program.
"We see the disparity [in the figures] and we see that no matter whose costs you use the cost of the program is going to go up through at least the 15 percent if not the 25 percent, which requires a Nunn-McCurdy announcement," Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said Monday at the Air Force Association symposium in Washington, D.C.
Under the Nunn-McCurdy Pentagon budget statute, a cost overrun of 25 percent or more requires the Defense Department to make a case for keeping the program alive. To do that it has to show the program is critical to national security, that there is no other viable alternative, and the department must demonstrate that the problems that caused the overruns are under control.
Former senior Air Force leaders have said the Air Force may use the cost breach to justify killing the C-5 program. The program to re-engine the giant cargo carrier and also upgrade the avionics has been estimated to cost about $13 billion.
Air Force officials said the service is trying to reconcile the costs now, and intends to give Lockheed its "best shot" at showing it can do the program within cost. Lockheed has previously said it could do the re-engining work for about $83 million per plane.
But former senior Air Force officials and others report that the service thinks it will actually cost up to $119 million per plane.
Both Air Force chief Gen. Mike Moseley and Wynne say they are now trying to explain to Congress and the Defense Department that a formal announcement of contract breach could be coming. The two have made no secret of the fact they'd like to get rid of at least some C-5s, but Congress to date has made that impossible by requiring the service to keep the entire existing fleet intact.
"Right now there are two laws on the books which we are complying with," Wynne said. "One is to finish the testing on the airplanes [already upgraded] and the other prohibits us from retiring C-5s, and we're in compliance with those."
"If the money sounds right and Congress holds the laws together," he said, "we're going to execute the C-5" program.
-- Bryant Jordan
Osprey on the Way
Our friend Dave Montgomery has a story about the Osprey's first deployment in this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer:
The first combat squadron of tilt-rotor V-22 Ospreys has
quietly set off to Iraq, ushering a new and controversial form of aerial technology into 21st-century warfare. A Marine Corps aviation squadron and 10 Ospreys sailed for Iraq on Monday aboard a small Navy aircraft carrier known as an amphibious assault ship, said a Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. Eric Dent.
The USS Wasp's departure from the New River Marine Corps Air Station near Jacksonville, N.C., was made under tight security with no advance public notice and no ceremonial speeches by Marine Corps officials. "It was just another workday for the squadron," Dent said.
Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, nicknamed "The Thunder Chickens," will be based at the Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq for at least seven months of combat operations.
The Marine Corps Ospreys, known as MV-22s, will be used to ferry Marines as well as cargo throughout the predominantly Sunni Anbar province. Dent, citing "operational security," offered limited details about the deployment and said he was not allowed to discuss the timetable of the trip or scheduled arrival in Iraq. The V-22s could conceivably leave the Wasp en route and fly the rest of the way.
The "rest of the way" is presumably whatever distance remains once the Wasp inchops to the Persian Gulf . . . a couple hundred miles at best (or worst).
DT readers will remember the discussion here months ago about whether or not VMM-263 would "self deploy," which is to say, fly over with tanker support. A Boeing official told us that after the program's experience translanting two airplanes to the Farnborough Air Show -- with one having to divert to Iceland enroute -- the powers that be elected to use the traditional "fly aboard the amphib" method to get the squadron to theater.
Godspeed to the "Thunder Chickens." We'll be watching with great interest.
-- Ward
Are We Seeing the Next-Gen Bomber?
A Defense Tech reader threw this little story my way late yesterday. I'm not too up to speed on the X-48B program, but from NASA's description, it looks as if this design could be incorporated into any future long-range bomber.
The idea that the blended-wing concept takes advantage of aerodynamic stability at trans-sonic speeds, low noise signatures and incorporates greater payloads than competing designs seems to say "bomber" to me.
One of the latest cutting-edge experimental aircraft, or X-Planes, the X-48B blended-wing body is a collaborative effort of the Boeing Co., NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. The 21-foot wingspan, 500-pound, remotely piloted plane is designed to demonstrate the viability of the blended wing shape. And demonstrate it has.
After completion of six flights, the X-48B team began a four-week maintenance and modification period during which removable leading edges with extended slats are being replaced with slatless leading edges in order to mimic a slats-retracted configuration. The change requires a software update to the flight control software. In addition, the team is removing and replacing all of the aircraft's flight control actuators for maintenance purposes.
NASA is interested in the potential benefits of the aircraft - increased volume for carrying capacity, efficient aerodynamics for reduced fuel burn, and, possibly, significant reductions in noise due to propulsion integration options. In these initial flights, the principal focus is to validate prior research on the aerodynamic performance and controllability of the shape, including comparisons of flight test data with the extensive database gathered in the wind tunnels at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.
The Subsonic Fixed-Wing Project, part of NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program, has long supported the development of the blended wing body concept. It has participated in numerous collaborations with Boeing, as well as several wind tunnel tests for different speed regimes. The team is focused on researching the low-speed characteristics of the design and expanding its flight envelope beyond the limits of current capabilities.
In addition to hosting the X-48B flight test and research activities, NASA Dryden is providing engineering and technical support -- expertise garnered from years of operating cutting-edge air vehicles. NASA assists with the hardware and software validation and verification process, the integration and testing of the aircraft systems, and the pilot's ground control station. NASA's range group provides critical telemetry and command and control communications during the flight, while the flight operations group provides a T-34 chase aircraft and essential flight scheduling. Photo and video support complete the effort.
The composite-skinned, 8.5 percent scale vehicle can to fly up to 10,000 feet and 120 knots in its low-speed configuration. The aircraft is flown remotely from a ground control station by a pilot using conventional aircraft controls and instrumentation, while looking at a monitor fed by a forward-looking camera on the aircraft.
Up to 25 flights are planned to gather data in these low-speed flight regimes. Then, the X-48B may be used to test the aircraft's low-noise and handling characteristics at transonic speeds.
Two X-48B research vehicles were built by Cranfield Aerospace Ltd., in England, in accordance with Boeing specifications. The vehicle that flew on July 20, known as Ship 2, was also used for ground and taxi testing. Ship 1, a duplicate, was used for the wind tunnel tests. Ship 1 is available for use as a backup during the flight test program.
(Gouge: BD)
-- Christian
Persistent Eye in the Sky
Beware the all-seeing eye.
You know, I remember seeing a few of these in Afghanistan back in ’04. The troops at Bagram joked that the only reason these surveillance aerostats were tethered above was to keep an eye on frisky co-eds and boozing Netherlanders.
But as Gen. David Petraeus describes his plans for the future force posture in Iraq – one of increasing “overwatch” and support – it only makes sense that Iraq will look more and more like the Israeli border. You can do a lot of surveillance without a lot of manpower using these aerostats, leaving your manpower for quick reaction and the real kinetic kind of stuff.
Raytheon:
Raytheon Company has been awarded a $5 million U.S. Army contract option to provide Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) Mobile Eagle Eye tower systems to protect U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.
The contract calls for nine Mobile Eagle Eye elevated sensor systems with deliveries beginning in February 2008. Work will be performed at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems' Integrated Air Defense Center, Andover, Mass., and at the Warfighter Protection Center, Huntsville, Ala.
"The equipment Raytheon is providing to support U.S. military operations is helping to save the lives of our warfighters," said Pete Franklin, vice president, National & Theater Security Programs, for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems. "The joint Raytheon and U.S. government team takes great pride in rapidly delivering this critical capability to our soldiers."
Raytheon first developed RAID to meet the military's increasingly critical need for persistent surveillance in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. RAID consists of infrared sensor systems and ground-based motion detection radars, elevated on a stationary platform, capable of detecting hostile troop and equipment movement at great distances. This capability enables U.S. and coalition forces to respond rapidly to threatening situations.
(Gouge: NC)
-- Christian
Bears R Us
Author's Note: An error that appeared in the below text regarding Russian air-to-air refueling capabilities has been amended to reflect the author's (me, in other words) original intent. Apologies go out from Defense tech and the author for this inadvertent yet gargantuan transposition of terms. The corrected text appears below in bold type. Thanks.
Taking a look at the picture to the right, you'd be excused if you thought it was taken in the mid 1980's.
It was taken in Sept of last year and there are many more of these photos lately.
A little less than a month ago Former Soviet KGB head and current Russian President Vlad Putin told the world that the Russians would, after a 15 year hiatus, begin long range reconnaissance flights again with their strategic bomber assets, most notably the Tu-95 Bear.
Whether or not this will mean anything in the long term of geostrategic military hegemony or is just a flexing of an increasingly atrophied strategic recon arm remains to be seen. The Bear, however, is the characteristic icon of these flights, with US and allied intercepts occurring around the world - in the Indian Ocean, along the US east coast, in the western Pacific, around the North Cape of Norway and many points in-between.
The Bear, first slipping the surly bonds of earth in the early to mid 1950's, remains Russia's premier strategic long range bomber. Powered by 4 BIG Kuznetsov NK-12MV turboprops (pumping out 14,795 shaft-horsepower (shp) each - by comparison, the C-130 and P-3 aircraft's Allison T56 turbo props generate only 4,600 shp each), the bug bomber can reach speeds up to 525 mph, making it one of the fastest prop aircraft in the world and definitely the fastest BIG prop-driven aircraft.
Comparisons are somewhat moot with the US's aged long-range strategic bomber, the B-52, which was discussed here on DT with its upgraded avionics system. I say moot because while both are big and have a strategic use, that's where the similarities end!
The B-52 has 8 Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofan engines, pumping out 17,000 lbs of thrust from each engine (compare that to the shaft horsepower of those Bear Kuznetsovs above). Those engines, as smoky as they are at times, can push the BUFF up to 650 mph.
Ranges are somewhat similar, with the Bear reaching out to around 8,200 miles and the BUFF able to make 8,800 miles unrefueled. Both aircraft have air-to-air refueling capabilities, making their true range almost unlimited, however Russian air-refueling tactics, techniques and procedures are far below that of the US and her allies.
There's not much on the unclass side regarding the usage of the big Russian bomber over the years, but it appears that it was never used in any conventional bombing roles, whether in Afghanistan or any other nation where Soviet/Russian hardware was employed. It appears it has been used strictly in a deterrence mode, oftentimes to let the carrier battle group know that it is targeted - after a fashion.
There are about 71 scattered through out Russia (compared to 85 B-52s). Ukraine had some at the dissolution of the USSR, but transferred those back to Moscow as part of a debt reduction deal. India has a few, obtained in the late 80's for long-range reconnaissance and ASW. Like the BUFF, they'll be around for a while.
Our thanks goes out to an alert DT reader who brought to our attention a mitigating fact in the ongoing (fueled mostly by the protesting parties) debate over the CSAR-X program.
On August 21, DefenseTech posted a letter forwarded to us written by a former top general in the Air Force search and rescue community who had some pretty harsh words for the source selection officials and the ultimate decision to award Boeing with the CSAR-X contract.
He signed the letter with his name and former rank only. But what he left out is more revealing than what he put in his letter.
It turns out Maj. Gen. Richard Comer (ret.) is the executive vice president of Aerospace Integration Corporation based in Mary Esther, Fl. AICannounced with great glee in February of last year its selection as a partner with Sikorsky to do systems integration work for the company’s HH-92 CSAR-X bid. Both Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin are protesting Boeing’s win.
In Comer’s letter, he outlines his credentials in the opening paragraph, but declines to mention he’s employed by a Sikorsky subcontractor. He impugns the motives of the source selection officials in the Air Force, saying they were probably the victims of “group think” – though he caveated his remarks by saying the officers were conscientious and honest in their decision.
Our reader knows Comer and was stung by his crass assertion without ever revealing that he has a financial interest in Boeing’s demise, “selling his soul for 30 pieces of Sikorsky silver.”
And he raises a very valid point. The source selectors in the DoD are precluded by law from discussing any of their motivations beyond the stated specifications and how the selected aircraft met them. But that hasn’t stopped the protesters from pumping out info to folks like us here at DefenseTech undercutting Boeing’s win and fueling the fire of protest. The government folks can say nothing while the fur is flying.
Sober people can debate the strengths and weaknesses of the Boeing win. We’re agnostic on the issue other than to say that it seems the Air Force picked a heavy lift helicopter for a medium lift job. Hearing the Boeing folks talk about the superior range, speed and payload of the HH-47 was kind of like hearing Boeing say the C-17 is better than the Lockheed Martin C-130…of course, they’re different aircraft in separate classes.
But it’s starting to get to the point where the debate has devolved into the arcane world of defense contracting procedure and who dotted which “i” and crossed what “t” and when. At the same time, America has hundreds of thousands of troops worldwide in combat who will need this capability and it may start getting to the point where the bickering comes at the cost of our troops’ lives.
We want to extend our deep thanks to our readers for providing us important information that helps advance all the stories posted on DefenseTech. It’s difficult for us to read all the comments on each post, so if you have crucial information that can help expand on the posts, please send an email to the EDITOR.
The Navy has recently awarded a $6.8 million contract to Northrop Grumman to upgrade another three EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraft, with a $2 million option for a fourth. The firm has already upgraded 12 Prowlers with the Improved Capability III kits that provide a new crew workstation display and new radar threat detection receiver, among other hardware and software improvements.
These modifications are expected to extend the aircrafts’ usefulness to 2018. By that time the Navy will be flying the Prowler’s replacement, the Boeing/McDonnell Douglas EA-18G Growler, developed from the F/A-18F Super Hornet strike fighter. Significantly, the Marine Corps will continue to fly the EA-6B in the electronic attack role after the Navy has shifted completely to the EA-18G. Rather, the Marines appear to be waiting for an electronic attack variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), recently named the Lightning II.
Today the EA-6B is the only electronic attack aircraft flown by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. Navy and Marine Prowler squadrons provide Electronic Warfare(EW) support for the Air Force, with Air Force crewmen flying in those aircraft alongside naval aviators.
(The Air Force is believed to be resurrecting a proposed standoff jammer/EW program centered on the venerable B-52 Stratofortress. The last specialized, electronic attack/countermeasures aircraft flown by the Air Force was the EF-111A Raven, which was phased out of service in May 1998. While their EW threat and countermeasures capabilities were similar, the EA-6B was a slower aircraft, but carried three systems operators compared to one in the EF-111A, and could launch anti-radar missiles, which the EF-111A could not.)
The EA-6B Prowler was derived from the Grumman A-6 Intruder all-weather attack aircraft, flown by the Navy and Marine Corps from 1963 to 1996. The specialized, enlarged EA-6B entered Navy-Marine Corps service in 1971. Although the attack and tanker (KA-6D) variants of the Intruder have long been retired, the services continue to operate, support, and upgrade the EA-6B variant, which is flown from all 11 Navy aircraft carriers as well as from land bases. (Marine EA-6Bs have periodically flown from carriers.)
While there could be an electric attack variant of the F-35 JSF, some military officers as well as aviation industry specialists predict that the next-generation electronic countermeasures/attack aircraft will be unmanned -- an EUAV unmanned aerial vehicle that could penetrate and attack enemy air defenses.
Our friend Harold Hutchison posted another update to his F-35 coverage over at Strategy Page blog...We've cross posted here.
While the F-35 compares favorably to some of the latest European fighters, the natural question emerges: How does it fare against some of Russia's best, particularly the Su-27/30/33/35 and later versions of the MiG-29?
The Su-27 is roughly equivalent to the F-15. Like the F-15, it started out as an air-superiority fighter. However, as the years went on, it also proved to be very capable at ground attack. There have been very few combat tests of the Su-27 family to date. The only one known of is the Ethiopia/Eritrea conflict in 1999-2000, in which it scored at least five kills. The Su-27 family usually has ten weapons pylons, a 30-millimeter cannon, and a combat radius of 1,500 kilometers. The Su-30 is comparable to the F-15E, and has 12 weapons pylons. The Su-30 has been exported to a number of countries, including Venezuela, India, China, and Malaysia. It is arguably the best fighter that the Russians have been exporting, and one of the best in the world. Algeria is acquiring 28 of these planes.
The MiG-29 is a shorter-range fighter, with six weapons pylons, a 30-millimeter cannon, and a combat radius of 700 kilometers. Like the Su-27 family, it started as an air-superiority fighter/interceptor, but it also proved capable of carrying a lot of air-to-ground ordnance. The MiG-29 is flown by a number of countries, including Poland, Russia, India, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran.
What makes both of these planes interesting is their use of an infra-red tracking system. This is often used with the R-73/AA-11 air-to-air missile. The Archer has a range of 20-40 kilometers, depending on the version, and a 16-pound warhead. Another feature of the missile is the ability to work with a helmet-mounted sight (the missile goes for whatever the pilot is looking at). These are impressive systems, enabling a MiG-29 or Su-27 to get in a shot without having to use radar. Still, will they be enough to get a better chance against the F-35 in a fight?
The F-35 has one big advantage over these fighter families from Russia. Its visability, particularly with regards to its vulnerability to being picked up on radar, is very low. While the infra-red systems are an advantage, these fighters still need to be cued in via an airborne radar plane or a ground station, and they will still have trouble picking up the F-35.
The MiG-29 and Su-27, on the other hand, are much more visible on radar. In essence, the F-35 still retains the advantage it holds over the Eurofighter, Rafale, and Gripen: It will see its targets long before its targets see it. And that will enable it to get in the first shots. With missiles like the AMRAAM and AIM-9X, the F-35 will be very likely to kill its targets before they even know an F-35 is in the area. In essence, the F-35 will have the best Russian planes outperformed, and it gets worse when one realizes that the United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will combine for more F-35s than there are Flankers and Fulcrums in service.
From Defense Tech friend Bob Cox over at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Sky Talk blog...
(Photo: Sikorsky)
Vought Aircraft said it has delivered the first cabin for the Army's new generation UH-60M Blackhawk helicopter to Sikorsky Aircraft. The M-model, featuring souped up cockpit avionics, new engines and rotor blade design will be the Army's workhorse troop transport, utility and medical evacuation helicopter for the next 20 or 30 years.
The Army expects to buy some 1,200 of the M-model Blackhawk as it phases out its older A and L models. Sikorsky began Blackhawk production in 1978 with more than 3,000 of the aircraft in use worldwide.
Vought won a contract from Sikorsky and began production of Blackhawk cabins at its Dallas plant in 2005. To date the company has built 55 cabins, 39 Army L-models and 16 Navy S-models. More than 300 people work on the Blackhawk program at the west Dallas plant.
Vought would like to have the Blackhawk cabin work on a long term basis, but Sikorsky will re-bid the program later this year before going to a multi-year production contracts. Chief Executive Elmer Doty, seeking to improve Vought's financial performance, has been trying to negotiate more attractive contracts with its customers.
-- Bob Cox
Senators Drop CSAR-X Letter Bomb on Gates
The CSAR-X debate is heating back up again, with two powerful Senators on the Armed Services Committee telling Pentagon chief Gates they would withhold funds from the new rescue helicopter program until the DoD’s investigation into the procurement process for the controversial aircraft is concluded.
Here’s an excerpt...
“...Complaints by Lockheed Martin Corporation and Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, validated in part by the Government Accountability Office, call into question whether the Air Force has used a capabilities-based approach for this acquisition that is traceable, repeatable and feasible.”
“...We intend to offer an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit expenditure of any funds for the CSAR-X program during fiscal year 2008 until the later of the 60 legislative days after DoD approves the Air Force decision or the DoD provides the congressional defense committees with written notice in accordance with established procedures.”
Read the entire letter obtained by Defense Tech HERE.
Additionally, the Project on Government Oversight’s top investigator on this case – Nick Schwellenbach - posted an interesting analysis on their site the other day...
This March, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told Lt. General John L. "Jack" Hudson in an email that "I would like to stay with our selection" of Boeing's HH-47 Chinook helicopter for the combat search and rescue helicopter replacement (CSAR-X), according to a protest filing by rival defense contractor Sikorsky.
Lt. General Hudson is in charge of selecting the company that receives the contract for the CSAR-X. Wynne's statement came after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained procurement protests by rivals Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin, and Congress began to scrutinize the CSAR-X program's selection of the Chinook last
November.
In February, the GAO ruled that the Air Force's evaluation of each proposal's costs was not made according to the evaluation criteria made in the contract solicitation. GAO recommended that the Air Force clarify its basis for evaluations and request revised proposals from the competing contractors. The Air Force released an amendment to its CSAR-X request for proposals in May, but has been met with additional protests by Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky for not
addressing the problems found by GAO. The March 3, 2007, email appears to affirm the view of some insiders that the Air Force's response to the GAO is simply a face-saving measure.
Sikorsky quoted Secretary Wynne's email in its July 2, 2007, protest of the Air Force's amended solicitation, which the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has obtained. Sikorsky obtained the email and other documents from the Air Force, which was responding to Sikorsky's legal actions, according to the protest filing. POGO does not have a copy of the email itself, so it is possible that necessary context has been left out. On its face, however, the partial quote does raise questions about the Air Force's commitment to a fair
and transparent evaluation.
Wynne's email seems consistent with his answers to reporters after his February 28, 2007, congressional testimony before the House Armed Services Committee that he would "like to stay with what we got [referring to the Boeing HH-47] and get this product going as soon as possible." He also stated that the Air Force is considering whether it can take corrective action "more narrowly" than what GAO had recommended, according to a Reuters article (Andrea Shalal-Esa, "US Air Force wants no long delay on new helicopter," February 28, 2007).
"Either the Air Force is serious about fairly and transparently re-evaluating a bungled competition, or they're wasting everyone's time," said POGO Defense Investigator Nick Schwellenbach, who had been investigating the CSAR-X program. "When coupled with the evaluation inconsistencies pointed out by Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin, this email seems to indicate the latter."
And pro-Lockheed/Sikorsky DT fans sent along a copy of a letter addressed to House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee chair John Murtha from former AFSOC bubba, Maj. Gen. Richard Comer, who says:
“I know a couple of the guys who were on the selection board for the CSAR-X and I have talked with them about their thought process. I believe they did their jobs honestly and with a great deal of conscientiousness. I also believe they talked themselves into what they think is the right decision. Still, I disagree, and I believe they got into a ‘group think’ situation and reached the wrong conclusion on what helicopter the Air Force should require…”
Defense Tech friend and Strategy Page contributor Harold Hutchison sent this quick piece over to us on the Joint Strike Fighter. I’ll post it here as food for thought, and we look forward to Harold’s next post on aviation and other defense-related subjects.
My two cents on the issue is that I tend to agree with his thesis that the JSF is a good buy given its performance and stealth. What he does not address, however, is the likelihood the cost will climb even further if the program’s buy is reduced. Then the cost/performance ratio won’t be as compelling as Harold’s analysis today.
There's rumbling in both Congress and the Pentagon that the STOVL version may get dumped, the Navy won't buy in the numbers they'd previously thought, the Brits may bail...all these events are possible and could throw the value argument out the window. We'll see. But on the face of it, Harold's got a pretty good point. Read on...
Is the F-35 overhyped? That is one question that is being asked in light of both American refusal to release the source code for software, as well as the climbing price (up to $63 million per-plane). The real answer depends on what competing aircraft have to offer.
How does the F-35 compare in the air-to-air mission against likely competitors like the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, and the multi-national Eurofighter? All of European planes boast some of the best electronics suites that have ever provided for a combat aircraft. All are capable of high speed (over 2,000 kilometers an hour). All three aircraft carry excellent beyond-visual-range missiles (like the Mica, AMRAAM, and Meteor). All are highly maneuverable. But will they be better than the F-35 in a fight?
The answer, surprisingly, is probably not. The F-35 has one big advantage over these three fighters from Europe. Its radar signature, its vulnerability to being picked up on radar, is very low – as is the case with the F-117 and F-22. Given that its speed is pretty comparable to the European jets, and its AESA radar is at least as good as the European systems, this is a decisive advantage. The best weapons in the world are useless if they cannot see their targets.
The F-35 will be able to see the Rafale, Gripen, and Eurofighter long before it can be seen itself. The first rule of air combat may be "speed is life", but the second rule is "lose the sight, lose the fight". In the 21st century, sight includes radar. It is very likely that the only warning the F-35 may give of its presence will be when its radar has locked on to one of the European fighters. By that point, the F-35 is already close to launching its AMRAAMs.
The cost differential is not as big as one might think, either. The F-35 runs at $63 million (for the most expensive variant), but the Gripen is $50 million per plane, the Rafale runs about $65 million each, and the Typhoon is $58 million. That is not much difference in terms of cost.
In essence, the F-35's small additional cost gains a huge edge in a fight.
Ultimately, the F-35 does cost a little more than most of its European competition. That said, in a fight, an F-35 is probably a little better than the competition, largely due to its stealth technology. Even then, there will be far more F-35s than the combined total of the planned production runs of the Rafale, Typhoon, and Gripen. In essence, the F-35 is going to have a qualitative edge, and the quantitative edge.
-- Christian
LUH Takes More Hits
Another excellent dispatch from DT friend, Bob Cox, who's a top contributor to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's new Sky Talk blog and a veteran aerospace reporter for them...
Pentagon weapons testers are not overly impressed with the Army's new light utility helicopter, the UH-72A Lakota, which is very similar to the Eurocopter EC-145.
In a recently issued report, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation said that while the new helicopters can probably serve fine as the equivalent of a small pickup truck they're not well suited to tougher tasks, such as carrying two critically injured patients - one of the Army's requirements.
The UH-72A is intended primarily for use by the National Guard and stateside Army units as a utility aircraft, meaning carrying four or five people from point A to Point B. It's purpose is to allow the Army to keep its larger, more powerful Blackhawks for use by combat units. The report does indicate the Lakota is an improvement over the aging UH-1H Hueys and OH-58A/C Kiowa models the guard now has.
But the helicopter failed to meet key mission requirements specified by the Army, including having enough room to carry two critically ill patients with an attending medic. It also cannot lift the required weights, internally or externally, at high altitudes and hot weather. And the cabin air conditioning, which is different than that of the commercial EC-145, cannot keep temperatures low enough. The aircraft manual specifies a condition where the avionics may shut down after just 30-minutes if operated at too high a temperature.
Produced by Eurocopter/EADS, the UH-72A was selected by the Army a year ago after a competition involving four aircraft that also included entries from MD Helicopters, Bell Helicopter and AgustaWestland. American Eurocopter, the U.S. arm of the French-German consortium, is gearing up to build more than 300 of the new aircraft at a plant in Mississippi.
Our friend Bob Cox sent us his latest jibe at the MV-22 Osprey.
Editor's note: From my standpoint I think Bob's criticism is unfair. I understand that the Marine Corps sold the Osprey as "self-deployable."
But keep in mind the plane is intended to replace the CH-46 Sea Knight - which cannot self-deploy at all. The Corps doesn't fly its much more powerful CH-53E Super Stallions to the war zone either, even though technically they are self-deployable due to their in-flight refueling capability. So why is it such a big deal that the Osprey isn't?
Also, there's nothing untoward in the Corps' desire to deploy the Osprey aboard an amphib for its first stint in the operational forces. If I were a maintainer, air boss or deck handler, I'd sure want to take all that at-sea time to work out the kinks that are bound to crop up with a flight deck - and hangar deck - filled with aircraft.
But Bob's been covering this program for a long time as well, so we at DT think it's important to present all sides in this important debate. One thing I think we can all agree on, however, is that we wish the VMM-263 Thunder Chickens the best of luck and a safe deployment next month.
One of the key selling points of the V-22 Osprey, one that is repeated over and over by the Marines and the Bell Helicopter-Boeing contractor team, is that the aircraft can self deploy to combat. In other words, fly high and long distances to get from one base to a combat zone - say from the U.S. to Iraq - where it can there be put into tactical use on the battlefields.
Well, for their first combat deployment with the V-22 to Iraq next month the Marines will be going by ship, Navy Times is reporting.
“It’ll save wear and tear on the airplane,” Lt. Col. Curtis Hill said. “This will also allow time to do shipboard integration operations. That will help us down the road as we look to integrate them with the [Marine expeditionary units].”
All along the Marines have viewed the V-22 as a dual role aircraft, able to operate from ships or land. But the self deployment capability is highlighted over and over and as a true revolutionary breakthrough, at least when compared to slower moving, lower flying helicopters.
Of course, the reliability record of the V-22 is such that the Marines probably don't want to take a chance on seeing several of the aircraft have to divert to landing spots along the way for repairs. The V-22s much ballyhooed trip to England last year for the Farnborough Air Show got even more attention when one plane diverted to Iceland due to engine troubles, later described as minor, and the return trip to the U.S. was delayed for other repairs.
-- Christian
The $265 Million Misunderstanding
DT friend Bob Cox of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's new Sky Talk blog sent this little item in to us today.
All we can say is "ugh"...
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. says it discovered that it has overcharged the U.S. government by $265 million for work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and will promptly refund the money with interest.
In a statement released this morning the Fort Worth-based company said it had recently discovered "an inadvertent billing error." Actually, it appears to be the same error over and over. The company had erroneously billed the government in each of the 11 billing periods since the F-35 program launched in late 2001.
Lockheed said the error came in the way it processed invoices from the two major subcontractors, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems, but that the error was not the fault of those two companies.
Lockheed said it is in discussions with the U.S. government to determine the appropriate amount of interest that should be paid and will repay the entire amount within a few days. The company said the matter should not have a material impact on Lockheed Martin Corp. financial condition or its performance.
A source tells Defense Tech that one of the most powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill in defense matters, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), has problems with the way in which the CSAR-X decision was made.
Our source tells us that during a brief press conference announcing the completion of the 2008 appropriations bill yesterday, HAC-D chairman Murtha expressed his frustration with the contract process.
Murtha reportedly said: "What we were worried about was the way it was bid. They bid [CSAR-X] for one company, and we thought it should have been more open."
Our source also tells DT that Murtha read Air Force chief Moseley the riot act, threatening to pull all CSAR-X funding if the program wasn’t cleaned up. As it stands, the HAC-D removed $100 million of ’08 funds due to protest delays.
-- Christian
House Wants the Dirt on CSAR-X
Now it’s time for the anti-Boeing crowd to fire back in the ongoing CSAR-X cat fight that DT is only too happy to keep tabs on.
According to an email sent to us, the House Appropriations Defense panel inserted language into the fiscal 2008 Pentagon funding bill that called into question the methodology of the CSAR-X decision in favor of Boeing’s HH-47 Chinook.
The language states:
“The Committee is concerned about the selection criteria and process by which this program has proceeded to source selection. The Committee directs the Secretary of the Air Force to submit a report to the congressional defense committees detailing the source selection criteria and how they were established. The report shall include the significant factors for the Request for Proposal (RFP) that determined the source selection, their importance, and how each of the respondents to the RFP was rated against those factors. The report shall be delivered not later than September 15, 2007.”
This is all well and good of course...But the irony is it is unlikely the Defense Appropriations bill will be passed by the report deadline. With arguments over Iraq strategy and Gen. Petraeus’ surge report coming, we doubt Congress will have the comity to pass a hotly-contested defense bill.
Even if we never get the Air Force report, at least one powerful committee in Congress is concerned about the decision and has put that concern into law. In the end, however, the debate may accomplish little other than delaying a much-needed upgrade to one of the most important missions the Air Force has.
The first of a series of new helicopters for the U.S. president has made its maiden flight. Designated VH-71, the new helicopter completed a successful 40-minute flight on 3 July 2007. Developed by the European firm AugustaWestland, the VH-71 is produced by a partnership of that firm with Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter Textron.
When the President has embarked, a helicopter has the designation "Marine One." But no specific VH-71 will be designated as such.
The Marine Corps plans to procure three test aircraft and 23 operational aircraft of this type, based on the now-operational EH.101 helicopter. That aircraft is now flown by the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Italian Navy, and Canadian Forces as well as by agencies of several other governments. More than 130 EH.101s are in operational service.
Initial operational capability of the VH-71 with the Marine Corps is scheduled for late 2009. The helicopters will be flown by Marine Helicopter Squadron (HMX) 1, based at Quantico, Virginia, with a detachment at the naval station in Anacostia, Washington, D.C. The VH-71 will replace the long-serving VH-3D Sea King, now operated by HMX-1 to transport the President and other senior government executives.
HMX-1 also flies the UH-60A/N helicopters in support of the White House, although the President does not normally fly in those aircraft. The squadron is one of the largest in the U.S. armed forces with about 50 Marine officers and 600 enlisted men, plus a Navy detachment of about four officers and 15 enlisted men. The squadron, which provides test and evaluation services for the Marine Corps, also flies CH-46E Sea Knight and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters.
During the 40-minute flight on 3 July, AgustaWestland test pilots performed general aircraft handling checks, tested flight characteristics at varying speeds up to 135 knots, and evaluated the on-board avionics systems.
The Bell-Boeing MV-22 Osprey program office today announced the first landing of the tiltrotor transport on a coalition warship.
It’s not huge news, but it seems to indicate the Osprey can be accommodated on allied ships. There’s been a lot of controversy over whether the Osprey can even fit properly – and in the needed numbers – on U.S. amphibs, much less on other nations’ ships.
From Bell-Boeing:
Ahead of a US-led Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFX) on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, HMS ILLUSTRIOUS welcomed the very first embarkation of a US Marine Corps Bell/Boeing MV-22 Osprey onto the Royal Navy aircraft carrier today. It is the first time that an Osprey has embarked in a non-US vessel.
The world’s first tilt-rotor aircraft, with a unique vertical takeoff and landing capability, is ideally suited to working from the deck of HMS ILLUSTRIOUS which is currently the UK’s high readiness strike carrier. With US Marine Corps Major Frank Conway piloting the aircraft, the visit gave the Osprey’s crew a unique opportunity to demonstrate the aircraft’s flexibility as well as the versatility of the UK’s primary Maritime Strike capability. Whilst there are no current plans to operate the MV-22 from UK Ships, close co-operation of this kind is vital should the need arise for ILLUSTRIOUS to conduct operations in a coalition environment.
Commander Henry Mitchell, the Commander (Air) in HMS ILLUSTRIOUS stated that “The Osprey visit gave the ship a unique opportunity to work with this impressive aircraft” further adding “We have been planning this for some time and although it is a departure from normal operations, the landing demonstrates the truly flexible nature of the UK Strike Carrier and the Osprey. It is hugely important to recognise the opportunities this type of event brings with it and how it reinforces our ability and willingness to operate with the widest possible range of aircraft anywhere in the world.’
The embarkation of the MV-22 Osprey is a pre-cursor to a major US led military exercise-JTFX 2007 in which Commodore Alan Richards, Commander of the UK Carrier Strike Group, based in ILLUSTRIOUS will lead one of three carrier strike groups and will also embark up to 16 US Marine Corps AV8B Harrier jets as well as operate her own Sea King airborne surveillance and rescue helicopters. The exercise will test her across the broad spectrum of conflict, ranging from embargo operations involving UK and US boarding teams to air strike missions dropping precision ordnance against simulated targets. The Captain of ILLUSTRIOUS, Captain Tim Fraser said, ‘this is a really exciting opportunity for ILLUSTRIOUS. The exercise will allow us to train and test many aspects of our capability in a demanding scenario alongside the US Navy, while integrating USMC Harriers and 200 US personnel on board ILLUSTRIOUS.’
After months of debate over the controversial CSAR-X program – with losing companies Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky batting around accusations of contract and source selection malfeasance – Boeing has finally emerged from the shadows to confront its competitors.
In a telephone news conference this morning that spanned nearly an hour, top officials with the company’s winning CSAR-X program briefed reporters on the key questions that have emerged over the Air Force’s choice of the HH-47 Chinook as the winner.
Recent stories have focused on the Chinook’s size, downwash and brownout problems, culminating in a letter written to Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne from Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu saying the Chinook was unsuitable for rescue operations during Katrina because excessive downwash from its huge, twin rotors made it impossible to pluck survivors from atop flood-bound buildings.
Boeing program officials Rick Lemaster and Van Horn fired back with both barrels, claiming their twin-rotor helicopter’s downwash was actually less than that of its competitors – the Lockheed Martin EH-101 and Sikorsky S-92, both single rotor – in the key areas where rescue personnel would be operating and that they’d solved the brownout problems with new flight control systems already field tested and proven to mitigate a problem that plagues every helicopter in dusty or snow-covered environments.
The CSAR-X System Requirements Document was the document that told us what we had to be capable of doing.
This document said that downwash horizontal velocities shall not exceed 65 knots when measured from 0-6 feet above ground level while performing rescue operations, including providing emergency life saving measures to isolated personnel, placement of a non-ambulatory personnel in a hoist recovery device, overland movement, self protection, communication, and swimming.
Boeing committed to deliver the Air Force an HH-47 that will meet these downwash requirements. To support this commitment, in our proposal we told the Air Force about real-world testing that Boeing has done showing that the maximum horizontal downwash velocity will in fact be significantly less than its 65 knot requirement.
Furthermore, this testing also showed that the highest downwash velocity occurs only in fairly small regions on either side of the hovering aircraft. Outside of those spaces, the downwash is even lower.
Additionally, during the CSAR-X Source Selection, the Air Force held a Basic Aircraft Flight Evaluation (BAFE) demonstration with each competitor to evaluate the ability of the pararescue team to approach the aircraft at mid-mission gross weight at different hovering altitudes -- from 200-feet to 50-feet in 50-foot increments, then down to 20 feet.
The HH-47 successfully met all of the requirements during these tests, and personal routinely operate underneath hovering HH-47 aircraft around the world today. In fact, US Special Operations forces are currently procuring additional HH-47G aircraft because of these and other, unmatched capabilities…
…One important factor that continues to be overlooked regarding downwash is disc loading. This means the amount of energy contained in the rotor wake of a hovering helicopter is proportional to the aircraft’s disc loading (i.e., thrust divided by disc area).
The greater the disc loading, the higher the vertical velocity, or downwash, generated underneath the vehicle. Mathematically, downwash is proportional to the square root of disc loading. I can explain this further in the Q/A session if you need additional clarification.
And even though the HH-47 is heavier at the mission midpoint than either of the competitors’ aircraft, its disc loading is considerably less because it has a greater rotor disc area. In fact, the HH-47 has about 75% more disc area (the rotorcraft equivalent of wing area in a fixed wing aircraft) than the EH-101 and 127% more disc area than the S-92.
This additional disc area means the weight of the vehicle is supported by more lifting surface, resulting in a lower downwash velocity under the aircraft where rescue operations take place.
Using the relationship between disc loading and downwash, we determined that the downwash velocity of the HH-47 is less than that of either competitor at the midpoint rescue. The predicted horizontal component downwash for our CSAR competitors is between 3-10 percent greater than the HH-47 based on the Navy’s PAXMAN analytical tool…
…Finally, we want to address some incorrect information on brownouts. A recent media article made an assumption that the Air Force reached the wrong choice for the CSAR-X mission acting either through incompetence or through ignorance, when in fact the Air Force conducted a complete and through evaluation and had access to more complete and factual information than the author of this inaccurate article.
As I have already mentioned, the Air Force put all three of the CSAR-X competitors’ baseline aircraft through extensive real-world testing at Nellis AFB that was designed to specifically measure and evaluate performance in relevant environments.
Brownout conditions are a challenge for all rotorcraft operations. The U.S. Army CH-47D missions in both OIF and OEF have mainly been to transport cargo payloads, operating at or near max gross weights. These missions are not similar to CSAR missions.
The HH-47 incorporates the latest technology capabilities available from MH-47G, CH-47F and other aviation technology developments. In terms of its key features and basic platform, the HH-47 has limited commonality with the current CH-47D other than its proven rotors and drive systems and its well established survivability characteristics.
Of the many major improvements being delivered in the CH-47F and being incorporated into the HH-47, two are especially relevant to brownout environments: the Common Avionics Architecture System cockpit (CAAS) and the Digital Automatic Flight Control System (DAFCS).
CAAS greatly improves air crew situational awareness; and DAFCS provides dramatically improved flight control capabilities through features such as "hover hold," "altitude hold" and "beep down" that improve performance and safety in brownout and throughout the flight envelope.
These state of the art capabilities will - in terms of performance, safety, and supportability - be equal to or better than any rotorcraft flying today.
To give just one example, using the “beep down” feature, an HH-47 pilot will be able to take the aircraft from a hover down to the ground by using a button on his control stick to “beep” the aircraft down a little bit at a time, in any low visibility condition, whether due to sand or snow, or fog or smoke, or simply darkness.
The CH-47F, newly developed for the U.S. Army, has recently passed Operational Testing with flying colors; demonstrating the capabilities in extensive operational testing.
Horn said that the Landrieu letter addressed an older version of the aircraft and that she cited experts who were misquoted.
These claims amount to a strong defense of the Boeing helo. But one of the strongest arguments – and one that’s hard to counter – is that all the protests, and all the arguing, amount to a protracted delay in fielding a capability that’s badly needed in the war zone now. The HH-60 Pave Hawk suffers from the same overload problems as other legacy helicopters: keep adding on new flight control systems, computers and hardware and your performance goes down.
Lemaster and Horn were confident that even though more than $100 million has been slashed from the program by lawmakers based largely on the delay, if the protests by Sikorsky and Lockheed are overturned, the Air Force will have a convincing case to restore the funds quickly and get the new bird in the air.
Defense Tech participated in the teleconference and has been in touch with Boeing’s competitors to get their impressions of the defense. A spokesman for Lockheed Martin strongly questioned Boeing’s claim that the rotor wash was the same or less than the EH-101. He was unable to address the Landrieu letter and added the EH-101 platform has been combat proven with the British military in Iraq.
-- Christian
Chiding the Chinook
Senator Mary Landrieu, an influential Democrat from Louisiana, sent a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne last week questioning the service’s decision on a winner for a new combat search and rescue helicopter.
The decision to field a CSAR version of the HH-47 Chinook has been controversial from the start. The two losing companies in the competition, Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky, have protested Boeing’s win, delaying the program start and buying time for competitive designs to gather political and rhetorical momentum.
The more obviousdiscrepancies between what the Air Force seemed to be asking for in its CSAR-X RFP, and what the service ultimately picked, have been well covered. But with Landrieu’s letter, it seems a real-world scenario with a politically-charged event might give Boeing’s competitors some more momentum.
I feel it is imperative that I share with you some lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.
In their desire to rescue as many citizens as possible off the rooftops in and around New Orleans, rescuers unknowingly put citizens at greater risk by simply using the CH-47 Chinook helicopters. Due to the downwash created by the Chinook’s twin rotors, these helicopters had to be removed from conducting rescue missions. Instead the CH-47 Chinooks were reassigned to conduct missions such as transporting survivors, food, medical support and sandbags to repair levees. In this capacity, the CH-47 Chinook performed well, but the downwash made them dangerous in direct rescue missions...
...As the Air Force moves forward in the procurement process for a new rescue helicopter, I hope that you will keep in mind the valuable lessons we learned from Hurricane Katrina. I know that we all share the same goal of providing the best equipment possible for our Armed Forces, and I appreciate your taking my concerns into consideration.
So far Boeing – as with all controversial programs – has been mum on the issue. But if the debate this week over the 2008 defense budget fans the flames on CSAR-X, Boeing might need to put the gloves on and step into the ring.
Lockheed Martin announced today it had completed the first test flight of the VH-71 Presidential Helicopter on July 3, conducting general aircraft handling tests, avionics checks and test flight speed evaluations during the 40 minute flight.
A cooperative endeavor between Lockheed Martin and AgustaWestland, the new “Marine One” project is one of the most important U.S. helicopter projects in a long time and marks a significant development in the “globalization” of the American defense industry.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll see the president of the United States flying off the south lawn of the White House in an aircraft of a European design built in part by foreign – though allied – labor in October of 2009.
The Lockheed Martin press release follows in part:
The VH-71 helicopter made its maiden flight at AgustaWestland’s facility in Yeovil, UK, on July 3, marking a significant milestone in the development of the United States' Presidential aircraft.
The new "Marine One" will be the world’s most technologically advanced helicopter that will safely and reliably transport the president and vice president of the United States, heads of state and other official parties both at home and abroad with mobile “Oval Office in the sky” capabilities. The designated Test Vehicle #2 (TV-2), built under contract to the U.S. Navy, was assembled and prepared at an AgustaWestland facility. It is the first test aircraft built specifically for the VH-71 Presidential Helicopters Program.
During the 40-minute flight, AgustaWestland Chief Test Pilot Don Maclaine and Senior Test Pilot Dick Trueman performed general aircraft handling checks, tested flight characteristics at varying speeds up to 135 knots, and evaluated the on-board avionics systems. Initial Operational Capability of the Presidential helicopter is scheduled for late 2009…
…“Today’s first flight of TV-2 is a tremendous achievement,” said Jeff Bantle, VH-71 vice president and general manager at Lockheed Martin Systems Integration in Owego, NY. “This marks the formal start of the VH-71 flight test program, and positions the team to deliver production aircraft capable of flying the President in October 2009.”
Before TV-2 is delivered to the test facility in Patuxent River, MD this fall for structural testing, the aircraft will complete initial shake-down flying and embark on flight trials to test the integrated avionics systems and aircraft systems.
The VH-71 industry team will build a fleet of “Marine One” helicopters in two increments. Four test aircraft and five pilot production VH-71 aircraft comprising the Increment 1 phase are to be delivered through 2009. Increment 1 will answer the urgent need for an air system with enhanced performance. Increment 2 will see a significant increase in aircraft performance, and will feature technical enhancements designed to give command and control capability while in flight.
Aircraft final assembly will be by Bell Helicopter in Texas with missionization by Lockheed Martin Systems Integration in NY.
Lockheed Martin Systems Integration – Owego is the prime contractor and systems integrator for the Navy’s VH-71 Presidential Helicopter Replacement program with overall responsibility for the program and aircraft system. The VH-71 is based on AgustaWestland’s successful EH101 multimission helicopter. Since 1997, over 130 EH101s have been delivered worldwide and are operated by the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Italian Navy, Canadian forces, and the Governments of Denmark, Portugal and Japan. To date, the EH101 fleet has accumulated over 120,000 hours of worldwide operations in harsh operating environments including desert, maritime, arctic, and mountainous areas.
AgustaWestlandBell, the U.S. principal subcontractor to Lockheed Martin, has responsibility for the basic air vehicle design, production build, and basic air vehicle support functions, while General Electric is supplying the engines. More than 200 U.S. suppliers support the VH-71 program.
-- Christian
Navy JSF Takes a Step Forward
Marketwatch reports that the F-35C variant of the Joint Strike Fighter has passed its Air System Critical Design Review (CDR), which according to the report is "a significant development milestone that verifies the design maturity of the aircraft and its associated systems." Completion of the CDR allows the F-35C to move into the Low Rate Initial Production phase of the acquisition cycle.
As most DT readers certainly know, the F-35C will be the Navy's first stealth aircraft. (Remember the A-12?) The JSF is designed to replace the legacy Hornet and serve alongside the Super Hornet.
The Marketwatch report breaks down the variants like this: "While it shares its fundamental design with the F-35A (conventional takeoff and landing) and F-35B (short takeoff/vertical landing), the F-35C is specialized for the catapult launches and arrested recoveries of large aircraft carriers. It features 30 percent more wing area than the other two variants, larger tails and control surfaces, and wingtip ailerons -- all contributing to the precise slow-speed handling characteristics required for carrier approaches. The F-35C's internal structure is strengthened to withstand the punishment of repeated catapult launches and arrested recoveries on the carrier deck."
Although the Navy variant is heavier than the Air Force variant, it'll be flown by Navy pilots and therefore be able to kick the F-35A's booty in any 1-v-1 scenarios.
The Project for Government Oversight has distributed a press release that flags the number of mishaps the H-47 Chinook has suffered as a result of "brownout." Brownout refers to the pilot's loss of ground reference created by the cloud formed due to the helo's downwash. Generally, more downwash, bigger cloud. Here's the release:
Brownout Accidents Plague CSAR-X Helicopter:
Controversy Surrounds Air Force Selection
The H-47 Chinook clocked only 7 percent of all U.S. Army helicopter flight hours between February 2003 and June 2005, yet accounted for 30 percent of all brownout mishaps between fiscal years 2002 and 2005, data from the U.S. Army shows. According to Aerospace Daily and Defense Report yesterday, "Congressional lawmakers are reviewing downwash data for the helicopters that competed for the U.S. Air Force's combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter replacement fleet to make sure rescue operations can be done safely." As part of this review, Congress should also look at Army data which show that the Chinook disproportionately suffers accidents from brownout (swirling dust and sand) compared to the rest of the helicopter fleet.
Boeing's H-47 Chinook helicopter was selected for the $10 to $15 billion combat, search, and rescue (CSAR-X) contract last year which required, but the contract is being re-bid in response to protests by competitors.
POGO recommends that the Air Force make a fair comparison of the bidder's proposals on the basis of this and all the other key performance parameters, and that the comparison and standards for comparison be made as transparent as possible to the bidders.
CSAR-X program documents clearly state the need for a helicopter which does not have a rotor downwash that will impede operations. According to the June 16, 2005, Capability Development Document for Combat Search and Rescue Replacement Vehicle (CSAR-X)/Personnel Recovery Vehicle (PRV):
The downwash produced by the CSAR-X (PRV), at mid-mission gross weight, in and around the recovery vehicle during a hover in all operational environments must not impede safe and successful recovery of isolated personnel. These environments include, but not limited to, heavily forested steep mountainous, smooth-level, rough-level, smooth-sloped, and roughsloped terrain in calm and high crosswind conditions. Loose particles such as tree limbs, sand, snow, water or rocks in the hover zone at mid-mission gross weights with SCL in Appendix G must not prevent the Recovery Team or injured and un-injured isolated personnel from conducting safe AIE operations (providing emergency life saving measures to isolated personnel, placement of a non-ambulatory personnel in a hoist recovery device, overland movement, self protection, communication, and swimming). (Emphasis added)
According to POGO Defense Investigator Nick Schwellenbach, however, "The Air Force seems to have ignored its own requirement when it picked the Chinook."
Despite the rotor downwash requirement, the initial competition picked a helicopter—Boeing's Chinook—that produces significant downwash, and is prone to accidents due to brownout (swirling sand and dust caused by downwash). According to the May 2005 article "Brownout on the Battlefield," in FlightFax, a magazine by the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center,
In the past 5 years, there have been 11 Class A, B, and C aviation accidents involving Chinook aircraft with brownouts being the trigger event. These mishaps have resulted in 16 non-fatal injuries and equipment damage costs in excess of $37 million.
A look at data compiled by the U.S. Army shows that the Chinook disproportionately suffers from brownout, and other mishaps and accidents when compared to the overall U.S. helicopter fleet.
The Royal Air Force has achieved an interesting solution to the problem of replacing its aging fleet of aerial tankers -- VC-10 and TriStar aircraft. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force continues its lengthy and, at times torturous, path toward a replacement aerial tanker.
In London the Ministry of Defense has approved a private financing initiative to procure a fleet of 14 Airbus A330 tankers to provide aerial refueling services to the Royal Air Force. The tankers will be owned by the firm AirTanker but will be flown by RAF pilots under the operational control of the RAF. The aircraft will be based at RAF Brize Norton, the largest RAF station and home to the service’s air transport, tanker, and parachute communities.
The project is estimated to cost US$26 billion over 27 years.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force has received proposals from an EADS (European Aeronautic Defense and Space) and Northrop Grumman team offering the Airbus A330 tanker -- with the U.S. designation KC-30 -- and from Boeing offering the KC-767 based on Boeing’s 767 passenger-cargo aircraft. The Air Force expects to make a selection by September 2007 with the winning aircraft replacing the 1950s-vintage KC-135E tankers and, most likely, the later KC-135R tankers. (The Air Force also flies the McDonnell Douglas KC-10 in the tanker role.)
The new tanker selected by the Air Force will automatically become a prime candidate to replace several of the numerous specialized variants of the C-135 and Boeing 707 in U.S. service. These include reconnaissance, surveillance, Airborne Warning And Control Systems (AWACS), and research aircraft as well as cargo carriers. (France, Turkey, and Singapore also fly Boeing-built KC-135 tankers. The A330 is the most likely replacement for the French aircraft.)
The EADS-Northrop Grumman tanker can carry 122 tons of fuel in its wings, reportedly about 20 percent more than the proposed KC-767 design. This fuel arrangement allows the A330/KC-30 to carry passengers, cargo, or additional fuel in its fuselage.
David Galula wrote the bible on counter-insurgency warfare. Trained at the French military academy at Saint Cyr, Galula saw conventional warfare action in World War II, then spent the remainder of his career fighting guerrillas and insurgents from Africa to Indochina. In 1961, he published "Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice". The book is 99.98% about tactics, and 0.02% about equipment, which tells you something about the nature of counter-insurgency.
He lived to see his careful instructions ignored by US military planners in Southeast Asia. This was a pattern tragically repeated by US military planners in Southwest Asia.
Galula limits his guidance on equipment mostly to three main paragraphs, with a heading entitled: "Adaptation of the Armed Forces to Counter-Insurgency Warfare".
Defense Tech recently has discussed whether the US military needs its own counter-insurgency aircraft fleet, provoking quite a bit of informed discussion. To keep the conversation going, it's probably a good idea to read what the master says. To wit:
"As long as the insurgent has failed to build a powerful regular army, the counterinsurgent has little use for heavy, sophisticated forces designed for conventional warfare. For his ground forces, he needs infantry and more infantry, highly mobile and lightly armed; some field artillery for occasional support; armored cavalry, and if terrain conditions are favorable, horse cavalry for road surveillance and patrolling. For his air force, he wants ground support and observation planes of slow speed, high endurance, great firepower, protected against small-arms ground fire; plus short takeoff transport planes and helicopters, which play a vital role in counterinsurgency operations. The navy's mission, if any, is to enforce a blockade, a conventional type of operation that does not require elaboration here. In addition, the counterinsurgent needs an extremely dense signal network.
"The counterinsurgent, therefore, has to proceed to a first transformation of his existing forces along these lines, notably to convert into infantry units as many unneeded specialized units as possible.
"The adaptation, however, must go deeper than that. At some point in the counterinsurgency process, the static units that took part initially in large scale military operations in their area will find themselves confronted with a huge variety of nonmilitary tasks which have to be performed in order to get the support of the population, and which can be performed only by military personnel, because of the shortage of reliable civilian political and administrative personnel. Making a thorough census, enforcing new regulations on movements of persons and goods, informing the population, conducting person-to-person propaganda, gathering intelligence on the insurgent's political agents, implementing the various economic and social reforms, etc. -- all these will become their primary activity. They have to be organized, trained and supported accordingly. Thus, a mimeograph machine may turn out to be more useful than a machine gun, a soldier trained as a pediatrician more important than a mortar expert, cement more wanted than barbed wire, clerks more in demand than rifleman."
-- Stephen Trimble
Spooky/Spectre Update
Air Force Special Operations Command has begun and ambitious program to modernize the weapons suite on its fleet of newer AC-130U Spooky gunships.
AFSOC commander, Lt. Gen. Mike Wooley, explained his force is replacing the 25mm GAU-12 “Equalizer” Gatling gun and World War II-era 40mm Bofors cannon on its entire fleet of AC-130Us with 30mm Bushmaster cannon to improve accuracy and to take advantage of modern munitions. The command now has four Spookies outfitted with the 30mm guns.
The 30mm cannon “is much more effective as an area weapon to keep people’s heads down in an engagement or to put down a barrage of fire to take out the enemy in a certain area with munitions that are available today,” Wooley told reporters at a Wednesday morning meeting in Washington. “The 40mm is World War II ammunition, and it’s hard to find.”
Companies like Alliant Techsystems offer a wide range of 30mm munitions, with airburst capabilities and specialized anti-armor characteristics, giving spec ops airmen a wide range of ammo choices to meet particular missions.
“I would like to, once it’s proven, proliferate that to all the gunships – all the ‘Us’ and all the ‘Hs,’” he added
Wooley also said his office is looking to “smooth bore out” the fleet’s 105mm Howitzer cannon to 120mm in hopes of some day integrating Army innovations in precision-guided mortar munitions. Despite recent incidents of Spooky and Spectre gunships accidentally spraying their lethal payload on civilians in Afghanistan, Wooley claims the AC-130 is one of the most accurate and discriminating platforms in theater.
“Positive identification, visual identification of the target is very important to us when we strike a target,” Wooley explained. “That’s one of the beauties of our gunships with a 5-pound warhead that does have very low collateral damage. That’s one of the reasons why every unit running around the battlefield would like a gunship right over their head.”
Beyond the weapons upgrade, Wooley said his command is working on a wing box replacement program to extend the service life of the “U” fleet, which has seen a spike in operational tempo since the war in Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off – though he admitted Iraq operations far outpace Afghan flight by sometimes four to one. He also called for an increase of 24 gunships to make up for what will surely be an increased demand from added Marine special operations units and a boost in Special Forces Alpha teams.
In the future, AFSOC is working toward a technological leap for its gunship replacement. Wooley spoke about his desire to outfit future Spooky-like aircraft outfitted with an “exotic weapons suite” of directed energy weapons, lasers and non-lethal weapons.
The Air Force has already begun testing an airborne tactical laser, but one problem that clearly needs to be ironed out before we start seeing gunships zapping bad guys like Buck Rogers is to lighten the load.
“If you look at the lasers of today they’re so big – if you look at the aircraft we have outfitted to test the laser it’s full of chemicals and generators and all that kind of stuff,” Wooley said. “The key is going to be pushing the technology to get all that stuff to where it can fit in a fourth-generation aircraft.”
He added the future gunship may not be a “mobility” platform like the C-130, and could instead look more like a bomber. Wooley wants a new gunship that can operate “24 hours a day” rather than be restricted to flying under the cover of night.
“This is a 24 hour a day fight that we’re in,” he said.
It’s good to see the gunship community finally getting its day in the sun. Operators have been singing the Spectre/Spooky’s praises for years – a victory for brute force, utilitarian designs over exotic, and expensive, technological solutions so many seem so enamored with. It remains to be seen if the future gunship gets mired in the budget, testing and requirements battles such a high-tech solution will undoubtedly encounter when it comes up against F-22, JSF and future bomber buys.
The Iraqi air force in two years will be flying a new fleet of single-engine turboprops as counter-insurgency (COIN) aircraft. See the contract solicitation, posted by the US Air Force, here.
The requirement limits the potential bids to companies that have an aircraft that a) is already in wide use and b) is powered by the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 engine.
Not to play favorites, but Defense Tech humbly suggests this means there are only two serious candidates: the AT-6 and EMB-314 -- with the AT-6 gaining a huge advantage from the "Made in America" sticker stamped on the program's marketing literature.
But don't count out the Brazilians with the Super Tucano. Expect the executives in Sao Jose Dos Campos to propose moving the EMB-314 assembly -- or opening a second production line -- to Florida, if they win the contract.
Keep your eye on this program. This could be the first of many such requirements for a dedicated counter-insurgency aircraft fleet to come down the line, both abroad and in the US.
A reader commented on The Dew Line a few weeks ago:
"The T-6 is a trainer, and attempts by Hawker Beechcraft (or whatever it's called this week) to remodel it as an armed platform are not convincing. That's not what it was designed to do.
"Remember, the T-6 is just a Pilatus PC-9 and the original Swiss design is forbidden by law from being armed...anyone with armed PC-9s has made their own, alternative, arrangements. So flying in combat is not in its genes. Attempts by Raytheon to compare the armed T-6 with the F-15 were met with an embarrassed silence at one show I remember, not so long ago.
"The Super Tucano on the other hand was designed to be a combat aircraft from Day 1 – that’s why it makes a lousy trainer because it’s so big and heavy. The Brazilians deploy it into Amazon dirt strips to fight drug smugglers, it has guns (not an “internal gun pod” but two 0.50-cals in the wing), it can carry air-to-air missiles and has a very sophisticated (data linked) cockpit (thank you Elbit). In its class the Super Tucano is probably the aircraft you want to go to war in."
Also, see my colleague John Croft's account of his recent experience flying the AT-6 here on FlightGlobal.com.
I'll just note that an armed variant of the T-6A is flown by the Hellenic Air Force, but lacks internally mounted guns in favor of a 50-cal pod.
From the looks of the Government Accountability Office document, evaluators failed to weigh the Chinook’s time-consuming reconfiguration after transport aboard a C-17 Globemaster III. Nick Schwellenbach at POGO writes a solid investigative report on what the document disclosure could mean.
According to the GAO, the Chinook came within a hair's width of not making its deployability requirement -- and even that is in question. In a flight demonstration in December 2005, it took the Boeing team 2 hours and 58 minutes to get the Chinook "flight ready," just two minutes shy of the 3 hour maximum threshold.
However, Boeing's build-up time did not include required maintenance and the installation of an item necessary for flight. Despite this Boeing "ultimately was found not deficient" in the key performance parameter of deployability. Was it really flight ready within 3 hours?
GAO explained that "the solicitation did not provide for a pass/fail flight demonstration that would be conclusive as to whether the proposed CSAR-X met the SRD requirements"--an explanation that seems to suck the meaning of the word "requirement."
Our friend Mike Goldfarb over at the Worldwide Standard put together a pretty good primer in the CSAR-X program and how the awarding of the contract to Boeing was called into question by GAO. But still missing is what exactly was on the Air Force’s mind when they picked the huge – and hugely capable – CH-47 Chinook for what was supposed to be a medium-sized solution to the aging HH-60 Pave Hawk.
Though the Air Force’s top officer was quoted before the decision as lukewarm to the Boeing helo, he recently threw his weight solidly behind the Chinook – at least in the interest of getting something out there quickly.
“The notion of a continued protest, the notion of continued lawyers and admin and messing with this is not right from the operational side when you’re fighting a war,” Moseley said April 24. “So we need to get on with this program. This is not about lawyers, this is not about companies - this is about operational capability that will pick up Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines and coalition partners.”
Moseley went on to almost prejudice the medium-weight competitors, laying out a scenario where ranges, payloads and altitudes meant only the 47 could accomplish the mission.
“If you want to fly the distances we’re flying in Afghanistan and Iraq you’ve got to put a fuel cell in the back. If you put a fuel cell in the back, you got to take the PJ out, you can’t put a litter in the back. The HH-60 is unsat in the world that we’re operating in,” Moseley said.
“…At the end of the day this is about picking somebody up at 300 to 400 miles in an opposed area where people just shot you down. … That’s why we need this helicopter.”
Though the back-and-forth between the Air Force and GAO does delay the fielding of the CSAR-X platform, the contract protest should scrub the process to help eventually provide rescuers with truly the helicopter they were looking for.
In a wide-ranging interview today with the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, it came to our attention that the service had recently grounded its fleet of U-2 Dragon Lady surveillance planes due to dangerous fuel leaks.
Moseley used the occasion to bolster his case for funding to buy more satellite technology and RQ-4 Global Hawk high altitude aerial drones, a platform that has taken over most of the U-2’s spying job.
“Picture in your mind what a U-2 looks like,” Moseley said. “It’s nothing but fuel, an engine and one of our Airmen in a space suit.
So, if you’ve got leaks in the main sump tank that feeds the engine, adjacent to a wiring bundle arcing, you begin to paint a pretty interesting picture of an old airplane. So we said, not a good picture.”
The grounding lasted a couple weeks until the problems were isolated and fixed, he said.
With Global Hawk, the Air Force can send the drone on a mission for 30 hours vice 11 hours for a piloted U-2, unless you want to subject the pilot to a lengthy decompression.
“The computer chip doesn’t know whether it needs to be decompressed or not,” Moseley said.
Though the RQ-4 is due to replace the entire inventory of U-2s, the last of the spy planes will be kept in the air because they carry a high-tech signals intelligence package that the Global Hawk does not yet have. PaCom needs those U-2s for snooping missions over North Korea.
But Moseley said the days of Cuban Missile Crisis icon are indeed numbered. With the merger of the Global Hawk training squadron and the U-2 training unit at Beale, the pilots who learn to fly the drone go to the same school as those that fly the manned plane. That’s got to be pretty spooky for those space-suited Airmen.
The RQ-4 will ultimately receive an upgraded sigint package so the U-2 can be fully retired, an outcome the recent grounding proved couldn’t come soon enough.
“We will begin to go through these and retire them out so we don’t have to worry about a hole in the fuel tank next to a wiring bundle arcing next to a person in a space suit at 60,000 feet plus. Not good!” Moseley said.
-- Christian
Going Whole Hog
I’ve been planning to do a post on this for a while but hadn’t got the chance with all the other stuff going on. But I want to draw your attention to a story that our friends over at Defense Industry Daily have updated recently.
There are few things I’d rather see when the rounds are zipping by from an insurgent ambush than the slow, low swoop of an A-10 Thunderbolt II overhead. The “Warthog” is one of those just purely American planes that says “bigger and badder is better.” No frills here. Just an armored bathtub, run-flat tires and a huge gun that says “hey buddy, wanna play?”
Well, after years of a fighter mafia dominance that kicked the A-10 to the curb, Air Force officials finally woke up and realized all anyone cares about these days is putting warheads on foreheads, not shooting down MiGs from 10 miles away. So the blue-suiters have finally given the Hog its due and funneled some much-needed money to the workhorse CAS platform. And now they’re accelerating the Warthog renaissance.
From DID:
The Precision Engagement modification is the largest single upgrade effort ever undertaken for the USA's unique A-10 "Warthog" close air support aircraft fleet. When complete, it will give them precision strike capability sooner than planned, combining multiple upgrade requirements into one time and money-saving program rather than executing them as standalone projects. Indeed, the USAF has accelerated the PE program by 9 months as a result of its experiences in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The entire A-10 fleet will be modified over 4-5 years, at an estimated total contract value of $168 million. While A/OA-10 aircraft continue to outperform technology-packed rivals on the battlefield, this set of upgrades is expected to help keep the aircraft current until the fleet's planned phase-out in 2028.
To date, A-10 fleet upgrades have been somewhat patchwork and piecemeal. This program changes all that. An April 2, 2007 GAO report places the A-10 Precision Engagement program's total overall cost is estimated at around $420 million in an April 2, 2007 GAO report.
Lockheed Martin Systems Integration - Owego is the prime contractor and systems integrator under the direction of the A-10 program office (508th Attack Sustainment Squadron), leading a team that includes Northrop Grumman of St. Augustine, FL; BAE Systems of Johnson City, NY; and Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) of San Antonio, TX. The Air Force awarded the Precision Engagement development contract to Lockheed Martin in 2001, and as the prime contractor Lockheed is expected to deliver a total of 356 kits over 5 years, at an estimated cost of $168 million. Lockheed Martin received the production contract in February 2005, with the first production kits delivered to Hill AFB in March 2006.
While the program was originally supposed to consist of several spirals, these plans were modified in light of USAF requests and needs. The program now consists of 2 increments, with JTRS fielding left as an open item to be addressed once the JTRS AMF equipment is available.
Well, I've been covering the V-22 Osprey for nearly 10 years as a defense reporter. It started for me in 1999 as an intriguing new platform. A hybrid airplane/helicopter that sated my sense of fascination with “leap-ahead” technology, the Osprey was just to the point of being fielded when a horrific crash in the spring of 2000 in Arizona killed 19 Marines – mostly infantrymen who were passengers on a test flight.
Despite a firm stance from the Corps that the Osprey could still be fielded, another crash in December of that year shocked the service into shape and the program was put on hold.
Over the intervening years, mainstream reporters grew increasingly skeptical of the aircraft, aligning with think-tankers, former DoD testers and the rest of the trade press against what they saw as an overly complex and accident-prone aircraft.
That’s part of the reason that, despite all those years writing stories about the Osprey, I had never ridden in one. Until last week.
A short disclaimer is probably in order here. I have always been a contrarian when it comes to the Osprey. I do not see any alternative but to make tiltrotor technology work. Helicopters have a physical limit. They can’t go more than a certain speed because of the drag of the rotors. Now I’m sure I’ll get some people much smarter than me to argue this, but when it comes down to it, helicopters are just not going to cut it for much longer. We need the Osprey, and I have always believed the V-22 would revolutionize STOVL flight and be very effective for the Corps.
Now, back to the test flight.
After a short press conference announcing its first deployment, the Marine Corps set up a press junket for reporters to take a ride on the tiltrotor transport and see for themselves how different the plane is from the helicopter it’s due to replace – the CH-46 Sea Knight.
On April 13, 20 of us flew off the Pentagon helipad on a Sea Knight that was part of the presidential fleet. While the interior was a lot nicer than the 46s I’d flown in during deployments to Iraq and elsewhere, it still performed like the old phrogs I knew and (grudgingly) loved: slow and low…
We landed on a field at Quantico and watched as our CH-46 departed and two Ospreys came screaming overhead. Their speed and size was jaw-dropping. The rotors are huge and they moved across the sky much quicker than a 46 ever could.
After a short interview with the squadron commander, Lt. Col. Paul Rock, it was time for the ride. We filed onto the aircraft, strapped ourselves in and lifted off. I kept my eyes out the back window and also scanned the small side window to see how the nacelles (the engine and rotor housings at the end of each wing) were oriented. We flew most of the first minutes of the flight with the nacelles at a sort of 45 degree pitch.
Then it all changed.
As soon as the pilot shifted the engines to full forward, transitioning to conventional flight, the Osprey lurched ahead, pulling all of us toward the rear of the aircraft. It was really hard to stay upright the thrust was so dramatic. It reminded me a bit of a catapult shot off an aircraft carrier (notice in the video how fast the ground flows below, and see how hard it is to keep the camera steady when the Osprey banks to the right or left).
We jinked and jived over the rolling woods of Quantico, then evened out and glided in for a quick landing in a pretty large field. I noticed the whiff of burning grass as we settled down, an indication of the intense heat streaming out of the powerful engines in helicopter mode. We hovered a bit more – turning left and right – then lifted out dramatically and sped ahead in conventional flight. After more banking and turning (with a few of my colleagues making use of the airsick bags handed out before the flight) the Osprey alighted once more on the field where we began.
I’ll let you judge for yourself how impressive the Osprey’s flight characteristics are (please forgive how raw the video is). But I’ll tell you something, every single one of us – even the pukers – was beaming when we emerged from the plane. It was one of the most exciting rides I’ve ever taken – and I’ve taken some pretty cool ones.
I wish the program luck. But the plane is going to take some getting used to for infantrymen who aren't used to flying all the time.
Maybe the Corps should stock up on airsick bags to prepare for the first deployment.
The Marine Corps announced the first operational deployment of the controversial MV-22 Osprey will be a combat tour to western Iraq.
Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway said the New River, N.C.-based “Thunder Chickens” of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 will deploy to al Asad air base Iraq in September.
The Corps had declined to reveal the location of its first real-world deployment of the Osprey for months; leading some to speculate the transport would be sent on a lower-profile deployment to guard against programmatic shock-waves should something go wrong.
“This deployment directly supports our number one priority: Marines and sailors in contact at the tip of the spear,” Conway said during a press briefing announcing the decision.
“It’s been a road marked by some setbacks, lots of sacrifices and the success of these Marines standing before you today,” he added, with the Corps aviation chief, Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, standing at his side.
(DT staff note: Defense Tech salutes the Marine Corps on this announcement and wishes VMM-263 all the best.)
Graham Warwick at Flight International updates the status of JSF's cutting edge helmet system:
"Lockheed Martin has begun flying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with the helmet-mounted display (HMD) system that will be the primary source of flight information for pilots of the stealthy combat aircraft.
"Developed by Vision Systems International (VSI), the HMD was used by chief test pilot Jon Beesley for the first time last week, on the 10th test flight of the F-35. Previous sorties were flown using only head-down instruments as the F-35 is the first fighter in decades to fly without head-up display (HUD).
"The HMD provides a 'virtual HUD' capability, says VSI, presenting flight symbology as well as displaying day and night imagery from the F-35's 360° distributed-aperture infrared sensor and electro-optical targeting sensor.
"Replacing the HUD with a helmet-mounted display requires precise head tracking and low-latency graphics processing, says VSI.
"Developing the JSF HMD has presented tough challenges, particularly clearing the helmet-mounted optics for safe ejection at speeds up to 450kt (830km/h). VSI says the HMD demonstrated structural integrity up to 600kt in tests leading to flight certification."
No HUD? What are the Hornet drivers going to do? And will we replace "HUD cripples" with "Helmet cripples"?
In DT's ongoing quest to bring our readers both sides of the story and the full truth in all matters defense and tech, we offer this press release forwarded to us by Jamie Darcy at the V-22 program at NAVAIR:
MV-22 on track for Initial Operational Capability
WASHINGTON — The MV-22 Osprey has accomplished two major steps required for initial operational capability (IOC) with completion of a major Block B operational test period and a successful IOC Supportability Review pre-board, program officials announced at a press conference April 4.
Col. Mathew Mulhern, V-22 Osprey Joint Program Manager, and Gene Cunningham, Bell Boeing V-22 Deputy Program Manager, briefed reporters at the Navy League Sea-Air-Space Expo in Washington on the MV-22’s progress toward combat readiness. The Marine Corps’ tiltrotor is expected to earn the go-ahead this summer for operational deployment, bolstered in part by the aircraft’s high performance under mission-representative testing in February and March.
Marine Tiltrotor Test and Evaluation Squadron 22 (VMX-22) put the Block B Osprey – the combat configuration of the aircraft – through its paces for that evaluation period, known to testers as OT-IIIA. Crews completed 120 Block B flight hours and an additional 65 hours on Block A aircraft, in real-world scenarios over 18 days in the California and Arizona deserts. Crewmembers from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (VMM-263) and Marine Medium Tiltrotor Training Squadron 204 (VMMT-204) also participated.
“Although the official test report won’t be issued until later this month, initial results tell us that the Osprey really showed its full potential, both in terms of mission performance and reliability,” Mulhern says. Block B improvements for the Bell Boeing tiltrotor include the Ramp Mounted Weapon System, retractable refueling probe, personnel hoist and fast rope system, mission auxiliary tanks, and numerous reliability and maintainability upgrades.
“The aircraft did very well. We were actually above our normal mission-capable averages for those three weeks,” says Lt. Col. Denny Sherwood, VMX-22 aircraft maintenance officer. Maintenance resources and supplies were all in keeping with standard deployment planning, he says. “We had the aircraft we needed to accomplish all the missions despite the high op tempo.”
Those missions included a 2,100 mile self-deployment, assault raids, company insertions, recon insertions and extractions, casualty evacuations, tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel, noncombatant evacuation operations, and battlefield logistics. Missions involved fast rope and personnel hoist operations, external lift of the M777 Lightweight Howitzer, 1,200 rounds fired from the Ospreys’ M-240D ramp-mounted machine guns, and 22 aerial refuelings. A third of the flying was done at night, including eight aerial refuelings.
Crews faced multiple ground threats day and night, to validate and refine the tactics, techniques and procedures for objective area entry and threat reaction. They also integrated their operations with F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8 Harriers and AH-1 Cobras. For troop delivery and recovery missions, the MV-22s carried 22 to 24 Marines, along with their gear. Average mileage per mission was 725 nautical miles, with the four VMX-22 aircraft logging a total of 30,000 miles during the evaluation period.
“We absolutely went out there and operated in a very operationally representative manner,” says VMX-22 Commanding Officer Col. Keith Danel. “You name it, we did it, and the aircraft held up very well. And we operated it in a gritty, windy, austere environment, and maintained a very high tempo.”
The Marine Corps has extensive experience operating the Osprey in the desert, and Sherwood said many maintenance lessons have been learned along the way. Besides prior operational testing in the desert in 2004 and 2005, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (VMM-263) completed an extended training deployment to Naval Air Facility El Centro, Calif., in September and October 2006.
Operating under deployed conditions in the sand, squadron maintainers generated mission capable rates with their Block B Ospreys on par with goals for actual deployment.
“We know that if the Osprey deploys to the desert, it’s going to see the same increased wear and tear that the every other aircraft sees over there. So we’ve planned our logistics support accordingly,” Mulhern says.
On March 23, the Osprey program earned a passing grade on its logistics support plans for first deployment from the final IOC Supportability Review pre-board, which has convened every six months over the last two years to track logistics planning.
“It’s not enough to give a capable aircraft system to the operators. You have to deliver it with all the support necessary to keep those aircraft up and flying over the long haul, whenever and wherever they’re needed,” says Mulhern.
The IOC Supportability Review board membership includes the Second Marine Aircraft Wing, Commander Naval Air Forces, Marine Forces Command, the Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Inventory Control Point and other key agencies. Their endorsement will be a required precursor for the Marine Corps to declare the Osprey ready for deployment. That decision is expected this summer, following a positive OT-IIIA report and final capability additions to VMM-263’s Block B Ospreys.
Beyond the positive performance of the aircraft and identification of remaining corrective action items, Danel says OT-IIIA has larger implications for validating the acquisition strategy adopted by the Marine Corps and Program Office for the MV-22. He points out that while the formal Block B operational test period has only just concluded, individual Block B capabilities have been tested incrementally over the last year and delivered to the Fleet for training and integration as soon as they were cleared.
“We’ve produced interim assessment reports on capabilities as they’ve been available . . . In the old acquisition system, we would have done OT-IIIA and then cleared the Fleet to fly Block B. Because we’ve released capabilities as they’ve been tested, the squadrons are nine months to a year ahead of where they would have been. It really speaks volumes about the successfulness of spiral development, spiral testing and interim reporting.”
“It’s up to the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense to decide when and where to deploy this aircraft,” Mulhern said. “But we’re committed to ensuring they have the capability they need and all the support to employ it anywhere in the world.”
There’s an interesting piece in today’s issue of USA Today with an update on how the U.S. military is reacting to the spate of helicopter shoot-downs earlier this year.
Instead of looking solely to technological answers to the problem, commanders are restricting helo flyways, funneling them into narrower and narrower flight paths.
The enlargement of several "no-fly zones" north of Baghdad — marked as red circles on aviation maps — may be yielding results. Enemy fire brought down at least seven U.S. military helicopters between Jan. 20 and Feb. 21, but there have been no new reported shootdowns since that period.
But, interestingly, the Army in Iraq is also shifting to more and more night operations. That’s a tactic the Marines have been using for at least the last two years over most of Iraq, flying troop transport missions under night optical devices in blackout conditions.
Electronic countermeasures can only do so much – as we’ve seen with counter-IED efforts – so TTPs have to make up for the rest. But there could be a down side.
Enlarging the no-fly zones may push pilots repeatedly into the same areas, creating a pattern insurgents could detect, said Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Remington, who pilots a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with the 2nd Battalion. "It's just a matter of time before the enemy realizes, 'Hey, they used to come that way, now they're coming this way,' " Remington said.
And one has to wonder if the latest order from Sadr for his militia forces to hole up during the initial stages of the Baghdad security crackdown has more to do with the respite than anything else.
There is a news bit by Sharon Theimer (AP) that dovetails quite nicely with the recent “repossession” of 4 mostly demilitarized F-14 aircraft in the south west.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) is introducing legislation aimed at preventing the Pentagon from selling surplus parts for the F-14 – parts that could end up in the hands of the only other country on the earth to fly the Tomcat – Iran.
This is a necessary thing. With the retirement of the F-14 from US inventories late last year, there is a veritable cornucopia of Tomcat parts that could be available from nefarious and profit-over-patriotism middlemen. We don't need many things, but one thing we REALLY don't need is helping an adversary such as Iran replenish its air order of battle.
An effort to bar the Pentagon from selling surplus parts for the F-14 fighter jet — a plane now flown only by Iran — will be introduced in the House.
An Arizona Democrat said Thursday she will make it her first proposal as a congresswoman.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (news, bio, voting record), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called her bill "a commonsense piece of legislation."
"I don't believe most Americans are aware of the fact that the Iranians do have a fleet of F-14s and that we sold them to them," Giffords said. "I hope that this legislation is just one step in what will be many to be able to keep better control over our equipment and to make sure that we are not helping to militarize the Iranians."
We do not have any direct evidence that insurgents in Iraq are using advanced surface-to-air missiles (sometimes called MANPADS – from MAN-portable Air Defense System); just best guesses, for now. But with the loss of five (and maybe even six or seven) helicopters in quick succession -- and an insurgent video apparently showing the latest loss to be a missile casualty -- the possibility needs to be considered.
Early MANPADS like the Russian SA-7 are fairly primitive, homing in on exhaust heat. As they steer towards the hottest object in their field of view, they can easily be lured away by decoy flares (or even the sun).
With more advanced missiles, it becomes a game of cat and mouse between the electronics in the missile seeker head and the countermeasures seeking to confuse it. Advanced seekers can not only discriminate flares from engines, but they can be smart enough to home in on the source of the flares. Advanced laser-based countermeasures like CLIRCM do not blind or dazzle seekers as is sometime supposed, but produce a signal which generates false targets and sends the missile off course.
Some missile makers claim that their seekers can beat all known countermeasures; some countermeasures manufacturers claim to be able to defeat all known missiles.
Certainly better missiles need better countermeasures. It's interesting that the proposed defenses for civilian airliners against terrorist MANPADS only goes up to the level of Stinger Basic, a technology now 20 years old.
Earlier missiles were intended to get close enough to have some chance of damaging an aircraft with shrapnel; modern warheads are contact fuzed, indicating that they are expected to actually hit the target. And hit in a specific place: the missile can discriminate between single-engine, multi-engine aircraft and helicopters and select the optimum point of vulnerability. The recent models are designed to send a dense pattern of high-speed fragments through the target for maximum damage, and the explosion may be enhanced by fuzing which detonates any unused fuel. Their destructive power is formidable.
This leads to last-ditch defenses like aim-point biasing, relatively cheap countermeasures (compared to the multi-million dollar laser jammers) to get the warhead to strike the less flight-critical parts of a helicopter and make the difference between a hit that results in a hard landing and one that destroys the helicopter completely.
Another way of dealing with the threat is to gets the MANPADS first. While Rules of Engagement are unlikely to be changed to alow helicopters to open fire at will, the AirCrcaft CounterMeasures (ACCM) laser provides one option. This is a laser dazzler fitted to helicopters to illuminate potential threats on the ground. The laser makes it much harder to target a helicopter, but more significantly the reaction of the person targeted gives a clue as to whether they are an insurgent getting ready to fire or an innocent civilian.
Another new approach, Ares notes, is DARPA's Battlefield Helicopter Emulator, an expendable decoy drone which produces the same noise and heat signature as a real helicopter. It may seem like an expensive option -- but losing helicopters is a far more costly prospect.
Helicopters operate at low speed and low altitude, making them especiallyvulnerable to MANPADS. Heavy armor is not an option except for attack choppers like the AH-64 Apache; transport, utility and scout craft carry much lighter protection. And in Afghanistan, even the Soviets' armored Mil-24 Hind gunships proved vulnerable to Stinger MANPADS.
The situation in Iraq has its parallels with the conflict then. The main importance of new missiles would not be in shooting down helicopters, but on the morale of both sides. The Mujahideen took new heart that the previously invincible ‘Devils Chariot’ could be defeated. Soviet helicopter crews found themselves facing an opponent who could shoot back, and were forced to adopt more evasive tactics which limited their effectiveness.
A similar decrease in effectiveness could happen in Baghdad.
"Based on what we have seen, we're already making adjustments in our tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we employ our helicopters," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell was reported as saying earlier.
Previously, US helicopter cover has prevented insurgents from operating from rooftops. If exposing helicopters becomes too risky, then that cover will be more limited. In this way, just a handful of MANPADS could have a significant impact on the ground battles. Which makes the timing of these latest helicopter losses -- just before the surge of US troops arrives for a make-or-break operation in Baghdad -- highly significant.
(My thanks to Jim O'Halloran, editor of the authoritative Jane’s Land Based Air Defence for providing an insider view on this topic.)
I've put this post back up at the top of the site, after today's tragic events in Iraq.
When three American copters crashed over Iraq in about a week, Kiowa Warrior pilot ME chalked it up to dumb luck and thinly-armored aircraft. Now that a fourth and a fifth have been shot down, ME is having second thoughts. It could be that Iraq insurgents have gotten their hands on a new, more deadly strain of surface-to-air-missiles (SAMs), he thinks.
"Sunni militants" have recently boasted that "'God has granted new ways' to threaten U.S. aircraft," the AP says. And that could be a major problem for U.S. commanders, the wire service observes, in another story. American forces "rely heavily on helicopters not only in combat but also to move soldiers and supplies around the country. Helicopters have been used more and more as the war progressed to avoid a bigger threat from roadside bombs."
The latest helicopter casualty, an Apache, "exploded in a ball of fire" on Friday, according to witnesses.
"That's unlikely to happen due to small arms fire," ME says, "and the odds of hitting an Apache heads on with an unguided RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] are pretty slim."
The fuel cells are crashworthy, and unless they are hit by something like an API (armor piercing incendiary - like a .50 cal or higher) shell, I don't think they are going to explode. Hitting munitions onboard isn't likely to make a fireball either. But the explosion of a SAM hitting it might look like a fireball.
If a copter pilot does get attacked by an advanced SAM, he has a couple of ways to defend himself. He can fire off flares to confuse heat-seekers. He can set off radar or infrared jammers. Or he can fly "NOE" ("Nap of the Earth"), very low to the ground, following the contours of the landscape. That "minimize[s] the amount of time to acquire, and shoot a targe -- whether it's an AK[-47 assault rifle], RPG, or SA-7/14/18 [SAM]," according to ME.
But in training for Iraq, ME recalls, "we weren't too worried about SAMs... [W]e didn't think they had very many of them, in operating condition, in the hands of trained users. The more likely threat was massed fire from the vastly more common AK and RPG."
That threat assessment seems to be changing, quickly. "Based on what we have seen, we're already making adjustments in our tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we employ our helicopters," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters.
But there are only so many changes that can be made. These copters don't have a lot of armor. And not much more can be added, without "trading off fuel, weapons, or some other weight," ME notes. "Helicopters are already at very near their max weight... Improved electronics/avionics would help save a lot of weight, but most pilots would rather have the improved flight performance that reduced weight provides, rather than more armor."
"The real problem," he adds, "is the idea of using an anti-armor bird like the Apache or a scout like the Kiowa to slug it out with insurgents on the ground. Neither were really built for it, and the pilots aren't trained for it (unless its done at the individual unit level). TF160 [160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment] teaches and trains the best air to ground engagement tactics, but the rest of the aviation community doesn't get the ammunition, or range time to really teach it."
OK, sure. But now that we're in this counterinsurgent fight, what choice do those pilots really have?
UPDATE 02/08/07 11:10 AM: "The two military and intelligence sources believe al-Qaeda has organized a grouping of cells [with a mission of] deny[ing] Coalition forces the free use of helicopters to ferry troops, resupply outlying areas, and conduct assault missions," Bill Roggio reports.
Al-Qaeda wants to force Coalition forces to use ground transportation, where it believes heavier casualties can be inflicted on U.S. forces via roadside bombing and mine attacks (IEDs). Helicpoter shoot-downs also "make for compelling television," according to a military source, which "helps project the image of a deadly, unbeatable enemy." Al-Qaeda is believed to have deployed multiple anti-aircraft cells along the known overflight routes in and around Baghdad.
The cells are thought to be armed with Russian made Strela SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, a first generation shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile which is widely distributed throughout the world. These weapons are not as sophisticated as U.S. made Stingers, which were used with deadly consequences by mujahideen in Afghanistan against Soviet fixed and rotary wing aircraft. U.S. aircraft have systems to deter missile threats (jammers, flairs, chaff) but there are no reports these systems were deployed during any of the engagements.
Giant Blimp Deflated; Laser Jet Delayed
The big weapons -- the destroyers, the aircraft carriers, and the stealth jets -- all emerged pretty much unscathed in the Pentagon's latest budget. Some of the more bleeding-edge projects weren't so lucky. Especially at the Missile Defense Agency, which took about a half-billion dollar hit for fiscal year 2008.
Take the High-Altitude Airship, for instance. Just a year ago, the Pentagon handed Lockheed a $150 million contract to build the missile-spotting dirigible. No, it wouldn't be 25 times bigger than the Goodyear Blimp, as originally planned. Nor would it be powered by lasers. But it would still be built to "hover above the jet stream at an altitude of 65,000 feet for months at a time." That is, if major advances in solar panels, fuel cells, aerodynamic controls, and flexible materials could be overcome.
Lockheed won't get the chance any time soon, however. The High Altitude Airship "has been canceled due to funding constraints," according to the Missile Defense Agency. But get too distraught, blimp-lovers; the budget for the Aerostat Joint Program Office just jumped from $243 million to $481 mil.
The Airborne Laser -- the modified 747, meant to zap missiles as they take off -- still gets more than $500 million in the new budget. But its first live-fire test has been delayed, again. Originally scheduled for 2002, the blast has now been rescheduled for 2009, Inside Defense notes. The Laser Jet's alternative -- the "Kinetic Energy Interceptor," a non-explosive interceptor missile -- has been pared back, as well. There's no longer a "kill vehicle," or warhead, part to the program, Defense News observes. Instead, the KEI has been tweaked, to become a "common booster" for all sorts of missile interceptions.
There's much, much, much more in this budget to explore. Expect lots of posts in the week to come.
Osprey Ready for Primetime? Part Two
Like a bad stain, it seems the V-22 Osprey can't wash away the stigma that it's crash-prone. The main culprit: so-called vortex ring state, a circulating, donut-shaped air flow that can cut a copter's lift, almost instantly. VRS helped down a pair of Ospreys seven years back, killing 23. And those blood spots should be hard to get out. But how accurate is the recent criticism that the V-22 remains dangerously and uniquely susceptible to VRS and blade stall?
After months of flight testing, the Marine Corps and Osprey's makers, Boeing and Bell Textron, said VRS is no more of an issue than for other rotorcraft: something that pilots need to be aware of, but not something they should freak about. And it's not something that only test pilots are qualified to avoid. Contrast that with Lee Gaillard's critical report which depicts VRS as a monster waiting to devour any distracted pilot who wanders outside of a very narrow arrow of the flight envelope.
What's the objective bystander to think? Gaillard makes much ado about how the Osprey is limited to vertical descents of 800 feet per minute (only 9.1 mph, he emphasizes). He says such a slow descent would make the Osprey a fat target in a hot landing zone. But 800 fpm is a meaningless number when separated from horizontal speed; and the report never mentions that the 800 fpm limitation only applies when forward airspeed is less than 40 knots.
Above 40 knots, the limit on vertical descent grows dramatically until, in full airplane mode, the Osprey can, like any airplane, drop like the proverbial brick. NAVAIR says the 800 fpm-descent limit at less than 40 knots applies to ALL Marine Corps helicopters, and that flight testing showed that the V-22 doesn't get close to VRS until 2000 fpm. Furthermore, the V-22 can swoop in from high altitude at more than 200 knots and not start slowing down until it's a minute and a half from the landing zone, minimizing its exposure, says NAVAIR. And it's 75 percent quieter in aircraft mode than the CH-46 and CH-53 it's supposed to replace.
But what does the Navy know? For comparison, look at the UH-60 Black Hawk. A Black Hawk pilot told me he sometimes sees 2500 fpm descents when coming into an LZ doing 60 or 70 knots. That's a vertical speed of 28 mph (only!), but apparently it's no problem for the ubiquitous, beloved and combat-proven Black Hawk. Why would anyone think a V-22 carrying 60 knots forward airspeed would be any worse?
So while critics are all hung up on 800 fpm, it's really no big deal. The Gaillard brief has lots of information, but, in the end, creates more heat than light. At least on this issue. For his work mapping the V-22's VRS envelope, Boeing test pilot Tom Macdonald was honored by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in 2003. Macdonald wrote the book on VRS and how fleet pilots can avoid it. I met Macdonald, an ex-Navy helo pilot, at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. He didn't seem like the kind of guy who would hide facts that would endanger other pilots or Marines. Ditto for his testing partner, Marine Col. Kevin Gross, who has written a detailed piece about the V-22 and VRS.
Is the Osprey perfect? No, but what aircraft is and who defines perfection anyway? Is it a widow maker as its critics claim? If yes, than it seems doubtful that VRS will be the culprit. But the jury is out. While it seems Osprey critics may be wrong about VRS, that doesn't mean their other criticisms are off the mark. Make no mistake: the Osprey is a historic achievement. But it is crazy expensive and still has flaws such as its lack of defensive firepower and a pressurized cabin, which will seriously reduce its advertised range and speed while carrying troops. The question is whether those issues can be fixed or whether operators can find practical ways to work around them. We'll wait and see what the guys who fly and fight in it have to say.
The sales of all F-14 parts were suspended on January 26 pending a review, the Defense Logistics Agency said in a statement. Dawn Dearden, a spokewoman for the agency, told AFP the sales were frozen “given the current situation in Iran.” Iran bought 79 F-14s from the United States before the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. The move comes amid growing U.S.-Iranian tensions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program and what Washington sees as Iranian subversion of U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
Not to mention Iranian agents have been fingered in the recent Iraq commando raid that killed five U.S. troops, according to The New York Times:
Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the inquiry.
With a confrontation looming, the U.S. is trying to strangle the Iranian air force in advance of a bombing campaign. As I reported last year at Defense Tech, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force has managed to maintain or even increase its combat power despite embargoes:
All told, the IRIAF flies as many as 300 fighters. All are older designs, but have been maintained and, in many cases, upgraded by the indigenous aerospace industry, which has become proficient in reverse-engineering weapons and spare parts -- and perhaps even engines. And the IRIAF has aerial tankers too -- a force multiplier only the most advanced air forces maintain.
Iran's air defense network would be a tough nut to crack, even with our F-22 fighters and aircraft carriers. We could do it, of course, but probably not without loss. But then what?
And don't forget: there is still no direct evidence of state-sanctioned Iranian meddling in Iraq. If there is, our government hasn't entrusted us with it.
ThreeAmericanhelicopters have gone down in Iraq in a little more than a week. Is there anything behind this collection of crashes? Or is just lethal coincidence -- part of what happens when troops do something death-defying, over and over again? I asked Defense Tech pal ME, a former Kiowa Warrior pilot who served in Iraq, to weigh in with his thoughts.
I haven't heard of any reason as to why we're losing more lately, but we also haven't lost any in a long time prior to this - I think it's reflective of somewhat of the odds catching up to us and an increased combat operations tempo.
[That said], I would point out that US helicopters aren't that heavily armored. [Something David Axe noted about last week's Blackwater copter crash -- ed.] They have blocks of armor protecting some key parts of the engine, and crew compartments, but it's not nearly comprehensive. Most don't have flare systems, and their only active countermeasure against IR missiles is an ALQ-144 jammer. Relatively speaking, there is very little protection from direct small arms hits.
In my opinion, our greatest threat was from small arms and RPGs while operating at low altitude and low airspeed. My troop was under standing orders not to fly above 500 feet AGL (above ground level) or under 60 knots - and never hover unless absolutely necessary. At low altitude - we felt that it was key to minimize the time available to acquire us as a target. We used the ALQ's but at the time I was there, we didn't see much threat from SAMs [surface-to-air missiles]. Towards the fall of 2003 we did start getting more reports of SAM engagements - spiral smoke trails arcing up, rather than lob shots from RPGs, but in our flight regime, AK's and RPGs were the biggest threat.
The Kiowa Warrior... has very little armor [see the pics]. The Blackhawk is similar, and the Apache has relatively more. A friend of mine who was a troop commander in the (in)famous deep strike to kick off OIF said the only positive from that mission was that they learned that the Apache could soak up a lot of small arms fire and keep flying. When you look at the armor though, it's easy to see how a few small arms rounds in the wrong place can bring a bird down.
There are some other issues with the ALQ-144. Some of them are classified. Some are mundane: they're difficult to keep operational in the desert, and must be cleaned to be effective. They also must be turned off and on as part of a landing checklist (see my next point). The Blackwater birds don't appear to have them at all. If there are new supplies of SAMS coming in, they may be much more effective than RPGs and AKs.
…Complacency kills, especially in an environment as unforgiving as Iraq is. With high temps and flying at high gross weights, there is little performance margin. Combat maneuvers take power, and familiarity (read boredom) take their toll, even on experienced pilots. After a few months, I could fly from Baghdad to Al Asad without a map, and knew every neighborhood in between - and it made me too casual at times, about mission prep and procedures. As pilots go back for repeat tours, they may fall into that even more quickly.
"Since May 2003, the U.S. military has lost 54 helicopters in Iraq, about half of them to hostile fire," according to the AP.
Osprey Ready for Primetime? Part One
“It’s a great aircraft, powerful, stable, twice as fast as a Frog and goes over six times as far.” That’s Lieutenant General. John G. Castellaw, the Marine Corps’ Deputy Commandant for Aviation, comparing the new Bell/Boeing MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor to the 40-year-old Boeing CH-46 “Frog.”
More than 20 years after beginning development, and seven years after a spate of crashes that killed 30 people, the $130-million-per-copy Osprey is finally prepping for its first combat deployment. One of the Marines’ two operational squadrons will head to Iraq or Afghanistan sometime this year. Meanwhile, deliveries continue to the Marines and the Air Force, with more than 50 aircraft in service against a planned total of 410.
Despite the Osprey program’s advanced state, critics are still calling for its cancellation. None have been more vociferous than the wonks at Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. On January 18, freelance writer Lee Gaillard presented his CDI-backed report V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker. “This glitch-plagued program … is poised to reveal fundamental flaws that may cost even more lives.”
* The Osprey is prone to stalling while descending at 800 feet per minute or faster
* The cabin is too small to haul the advertised two squads (around 26 Marines)
* The cabin isn’t pressurized, limiting how high it can fly with troops
* Its range is no greater than that of many heavy helicopter designs
* Lacking guns, it’s vulnerable in hot landing zones
Many of these flaws were revealed in the military’s operational evaluation that wrapped in 2005. Still, the Pentagon cleared the Osprey for service. Gaillard chalks this up to “unstoppable political momentum” resulting from the Bell/Boeing team lining up contractors in 45 out of 50 states.
Of course, the military contests Gaillard’s claims. It says that after the bugs were ironed out, the Osprey not only works – it’s revolutionary.
I'm on the fence. On one hand, I’ve been around long enough to know that defense contractors sometimes lie … and that the Pentagon sometimes lets them get away with it. On the other hand, last year I heard a similarly scathing CDI brief on the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter jet, a brief that didn't really match with what I saw, once I had paid a visit to a Raptor squadron to see for myself. So while the documents Gaillard offers as proof – military evaluations, Government Accounting Office reports (PDF!), etc. – I'd like to make up my own mind, thank you very much. In this series, I'll try to nail down: Is Osprey right for emerging missions in the Long War?
The tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries fighting alongside coalition soldiers in Iraq aren't just tooling around in up-armored SUVs sporting submachine guns. These guys have got helicopters too that they use to escort convoys -- and one of them has just been shot down over Baghdad, according to the Associated Press:
Five civilians died in the Baghdad crash of a helicopter owned by the private security company Blackwater USA, according to a U.S. military official. The helicopter was shot down Tuesday over a predominantly Sunni neighborhood, a senior Iraqi defense official said. The crash came three days after a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter crashed northeast of Baghdad, killing all 12 soldiers aboard.
Blackwater should have seen this coming. Unlike U.S. military helicopters, which are armored and equipped with countermeasures to defeat shoulder-fired missiles, Blackwater's McDonnell Douglas MD-369FF Loaches are essentially defenseless, unless you count the two mercs hanging out the cabin doors with their rifles.
Note that Blackwater's choppers -- which fly from the same Green Zone helipad used by the U.S. Army and Marines -- are just civil versions of the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse that the Army began phasing out after the Vietnam War due to their vulnerability. U.S. Special Forces fly updated H-6s, but only at night, when it's safer. It's not clear what time of the day the Blackwater bird was shot down, but I've witnessed these choppers buzzing around in broad daylight.
It's too early to tell what this shoot-down means for Blackwater and for merc ops in Iraq. But one thing's for sure: with the military struggling to scare up another 20,000 troops for its so-called "surge," the demand for private soldiers isn't going away.
UPDATE 1/24/07: Four of the dead Blackwater men were apparently killed execution-style, perhaps after surviving the chopper crash, while the fifth was a member of a second chopper crew also at the site of the crash. All this according to the Associated Press:
In Washington, a U.S. defense official said four of the five killed were shot in the back of the head but did not know whether they were still alive when they were shot. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. ...
Another American official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three Blackwater helicopters were involved. One had landed for an unknown reason and one of the Blackwater employees was shot at that point, he said. That helicopter apparently was able to take off but a second one then crashed in the same area, he added without explaining the involvement of the third helicopter.
The New York Times, citing unnamed American officials, reported that the helicopter's four-man crew was killed along with a gunner on a second Blackwater helicopter.
Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, an industry group that includes security contractors, said the type of helicopter downed, known as a "little bird," is among the safest modes of transportation in war zones.
"Their crews are the best -- they really know their stuff," he said in an e-mail. "They are very good at avoiding fire, flying low and fast -- and the tiny helicopters are very hard to hit."
Doug is a nice guy. But I'll put my money on Axe as the more objective observer.
UPDATE 01/24/07 11:07 AM: Robert Young Pelton has details on the incident -- and recent footage of Blackwater choppers in action.
New "X" Plane's Twisty Wings
The wings on the Air Force's latest experimental "X" plane can't stay on straight. And that's a good thing.
The X-53 -- formerly known as the "Active Aeroelastic Wing research vehicle," or AAW -- is pretty much your standard /A-18 fighter jet. Except its wings are flexible, twisting as the plane races through the air at transonic speeds -- and giving the plane better maneuverability, in the process.
Every plane's wings bend a little, when air pressure hits 'em. But that "aeroelastic effect" is usually a bad thing for the aircraft, dragging it down. So, "traditionally, air vehicles have been designed with stiff geometry in order to minimize aeroelastic instabilities," the Air Force notes.
The X-53, on the other hand, is built from the start to bend with the wind. Its flaps, ailerons, and actuators are repositioned, so that the air pressure bends the wing in a way that provides lift, instead of drag. A thinner skin allows the outer wing panels to twist up to 5 degrees.
When Orville Wright first took to the air on Dec. 17, 1903, he didn't have ailerons or flaps to control his airplane. Instead, the Wright brothers had chosen to twist or "warp" the wingtips of their craft in order to control its rolling or banking motion. Rather than using one of the craft's two control sticks to make the wingtips twist, they had devised a "saddle" in which the pilot lay. Cables connected the saddle to the tips of both wings. By moving his hips from side-to-side, the pilot warped the wingtips either up or down, providing the necessary control for the Wright Flyer to make turns.
The X-53 -- a cooperative effort between the Air Force Research Lab, NASA, and Boeing's Phantom Works, in the works since the beginning of the decade -- should give engineers "more freedom in designing more efficient, thinner, higher aspect-ratio wings for future high-performance aircraft while reducing the structural weight of the wings by 10 to 20 per cent," NASA says. "This will allow increased fuel efficiency or payload capability, along with potentially reduced radar signature. The technology also has application to a variety of other future aircraft, such as high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft, transports, and airliners."
The Secretary of Defense, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, dropped in at our FOB in Iraq on Saturday, and I got to ask him some questions. On the subject of the Key West Agreement -- the one that splits the skies between the Army, Air Force, and Navy -- Mr. Rumsfeld said that people in the Pentagon do not operate under "antiquated agreements." So I guess that means the Key West Agreement is no longer in force. It's open season for Army Aviation!
One glaring gap in Army aviation is in the light attack role, currently filled by the AH-64 Apache, designed in 1972. As aviation programs now take decades to develop, we need to start looking at the follow-on Apache replacement.
Apache ably fulfills its primary role, which is conducting anti-tank ambushes in the deep battle against enemy armor formations in approach march. However, it is doubtful if we will ever see a hostile enemy armor formations in an approach march situation in this century. The Army's needs will be close air support, armed reconnaissance, and helicopter escort, which Apache does right now. However a fixed wing platform like the old OV-10 will be more efficient at these missions most of the time. In general, helicopters require more maintenance per flying hour than fixed wing aircrafts. On an engine thrust basis and fuel consumption basis, prop-driven fixed wing aircrafts are more efficient than helicopters in delivering payloads. For a given payload, a fixed wing aircraft is cheaper than a helicopter. With a stall speed of 55 mph, the OV-10 can take on the slower spectrum of helicopter missions. What helicopters give you is the ability to VTOL, which is not a requirement in the light attack mission set. In fact, the only reason the Army went into the attack helicopter game in the first place was because of the Key West Agreement.
An attack helicopter can operate from a very small forward arming and refueling point to increase sortie rate, but the Army does not use small FARPs very often. In a fast-maturing theater like Iraq, the FARPs rapidly evolve into full-on Army Airfields, rivaling the size of Third World air force bases. On the Army airfields, there is plenty of space for the 400-meter runway a light attack plane like OV-10 might need.
[Edited to add: My bad, FARPs don't evolve into army airfields. The aviation brigade assembly areas become army airfields. However, the OV-10 can make the round trip to the airfield before an AH-64 comes back on station from a FARP.]
Army aviation's experience in Iraq provides evidence supporting a prop-driven fixed wing platform. Apache crews trained to fire their weapons from a hovering position, reflecting the anti-tank ambush scenario. However, in the 360 degree security environment in Iraq, a hovering helicopter will quickly draw fire from hidden insurgents. Apache crews now use a shallow dive when they deliver their munitions to minimize exposure to ground fire. Since we're not hovering to fire anymore, an OV-10 would do much better for our missions here.
I am not advocating the elimination of attack helicopters. The ARH will be very useful, and it will fill the missions where the light attack plane is not as optimal. And there are many situations where a Ka-50 may out-perform an OV-10. For the follow-on platform for the Apache, though, we should opt for a prop-driven fixed wing aircraft.
-Jimmy Wu
Coasties Cover D.C.
Sometimes they buzz my apartment on the summit of Columbia Heights in northwest Washington, D.C. They're bright red with white stripes and black noses, and they make a noise like giant lawnmowers. They're Eurocopter HH-65C Dolphins belonging to the U.S. Coast Guard, and they've inherited an unusual mission, patrolling the skies over the nation's capital to intercept infiltrating light aircraft like the one that crashed onto White House grounds in 1994.
It used to be this mission belonged to the Customs Service's air branch (PDF!) with its sharp black-and-gold Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks, aka "Customshawks". Sharpshooters aboard the aircraft could, in a pinch, put a bullet or twelve into the infiltrator's engine to prevent it crashing into anything important such as, oh, my apartment. Or my favorite breakfast spot. Or Congress.
But Customs has been busier now that it has merged with the Border Patrol and finds itself responsible for 2,000 miles of porous southern border. And besides, the Coast Guard has, in recent years, refined the so-called "airborne use of force" mission using a small squadron of MH-68 choppers based in Jacksonville, Florida. These nimble birds are ideal for chasing down drug smugglers' fast boats and positioning snipers to shoot out their engines so Coast Guard cutters can move in for an arrest. It was a small step for the Coast Guard to perform a similar mission using its standard HH-65 rescue choppers, targeting airplanes instead of boats. Details about the D.C. detachment are classified, but the choppers' presence is pretty obvious when they're flying right overhead.
Five years ago, armed Coast Guard helicopters were a rarity. But the service has beefed up since 9/11 to tackle a wider range of increasingly lethal threats, from smugglers to terrorists and even, while deployed alongside the Navy, waterborne insurgents. The future of warfare is looking more and more like policing on steroids. So the nation's coastal cops are becoming more like warriors every day.
I went flying with an HH-65 unit over Atlantic City this week. It was great fun. Check out my Flickr stream for pics.
Sikorsky cuts quality control inspectors from 70 to 8. Chopper rotor blades start "depart[ing] the aircraft." The POGO Blog has details.
Recon Planes vs. I.E.D.s
Since the Iraq insurgency began, the U.S. Air Force has been looking for ways to use its planes to fight roadside bombs. Electronic warriors like the EC-130H Compass Calljam frequencies used to set off explosives. Drones patrol highways, looking for new, suspicious mounds along the road. Sometimes they even take out the bomb-planters.
Inside Defense reveals another Air Force tactic: Using ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) aircraft "to help coalition units round up insurgent cells believed to manufacture lethal improvised explosive devices."
Military officials -- working backward using surveillance video -- were able to successfully trace IED placers’ moves using targeting pods and ISR aircraft like the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), Lt. Col. Clint Hinote said during a Nov. 21 telephone interview...
[T]he Air Force has used its surveillance assets to find insurgent IED makers, as opposed to solely working to find or disarm the deadly devices, Hinote said...
“You can have a security camera in the sky,” he said. “We actually have aircraft that have that capability of just taking shots of what’s going on.”
After IEDs detonate in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, Air Force ISR officials begin marking tapes of radar sweeps in an attempt to pinpoint the explosion, he said. They then essentially rewind the tapes, trying to discover any movements in the specific area prior to the blast.
“Maybe you can find the car that was involved and backtrack it to a certain house,” Hinote said. “We’ve got several ISR assets that right now are working on this backtracking plan.
“That’s actually led to a couple of good successes where we’ve rounded up some IED cells,” he added.
The ultimate goal is to track the IED maker to a bomb-making equipment storage location -- “and then even further back,” Hinote said.
Pimp My Gunship 2: Directed Energy
The AC-130U Spectre is a byword for high-precision fire support. But equipping it with directed energy weapons (DE) will take close air support to an entirely new level. The technological breakthrough needed to get there is a radical $22m superconducting generator which the Air Force will demonstrate by 2009 and which is specifically indended to fit on a C-130.
Instead of conventional copper wiring, the generator uses metal foil coated with superconducting material. This can carry very high currents with no loss, making it suitable for high-power uses. Maintaining superconductivity means staying at low temperature, requiring a liquid nitrogen cooling system.
Driven by a turbine, the new generator is about the size of a small beer keg, and is designed to generate five megawatts. Power sytems based on existing generators weigh over 20,000 lbs, the new system should cut that in half. It will also pave the way for further improvements and even smaller and more powerful generators.
The suggestion of a laser-armed F-35 has also been floated, but this is much less practical for attacking ground targets. A laser or other DE weapon can take several seconds of 'dwell time' to be effective, so what is needed is an aircraft which can keep a weapon aimed at the same point for an extended period -- exactly what AC-130s do best.
DE weapons have a deep magazine, as they can keep firing for as long as the fuel supply lasts. Ivan Oelrich, director of strategic security programs for the Federation of American Scientists, estimates here that "To operate a thing like that requires a few tons of fuel per hour."
To get the benefit of this sort of firepower you need an aircraft which is going to stay around over the battlefield rather than disappearing after a few passes. Again, the job is tailor-made for the AC-130, and there have been several proposals for weapons that the generator could drive:
- Electric lasers are already looking likely to supercede the primitive and toxic chemical oxygen iodine lasers like the one developed for the Airborne Laser and Avanced Tactical Laser. Last month Northrop Grumman unveiled Vesta, a 15 kW electric laser which can run for twenty minutes at a time. This is a major step towards achieving the Joint High Power Solid State Laser Program's goal of a 100 kW solid state laser weapon in FY 2007. Such a weapon would have sniper-like accuracy, being able to pick out one person from a crowd or destroy pinpoint tagets like aerials or radar without collateral damage. The weapon could fire continuously extended periods, creating a significant morale effect, and the 5-Megawatt generator could power several beams at the same time.
- The Active Denial System, the Air Force's non-lethal beam weapon which hurts without harming. A high-power version mounted in an AC-130 would have a variety of uses, providing for the first time a non-lethal means of dealing with distubances on the ground. I'll be looking more closely at this one later in the week. More advanced non-lethal RF weapons may also be in the pipeline.
- A High Power Microwave Weapon (HPM), a directed-energy beam weapon equivalent of the "e-bomb" which destroys electronics at a distance. It would also be useful for knocking out command centres, air defense sites and other targets which depend on electronics -- like television stations -- without harming anyone. It would also be a formidable tool for interdictiction: an HPM-armed Spectre could flying down a hundred miles of road and knock out every single vehicle on it.
However, with this sort of weapon there is a big risk of 'friendly fire' accidents and this is likely to be a major issue.
The civilian suprconducting generator program ground to a halt earlier this year when GE dropped its $27 million generator program, a move which "leaves the superconducting generator concept squarely in the hands of the military," according to Mark Bitterman, Executive Editor of Superconductor Week. This means Air Force's superconducting generator program will take on new significance as the sole source of this technology. There is a growing demand for small, powerful and efficient generators and electric motors -- and yet again the military are pioneering technology which will have much wider use.
Does a slow, Vietnam-era gunship have a place on the modern battlefield? Can you upgrade the old warhorse into a 21st century charger?
The fixed-wing gunship idea goes back to barnstorming flyers who invented to the ‘pylon turn,’ pointing one wing at an object such as a pylon on the ground as they turned around it (...there is quite a story behind this one). By extension, if you have weapons firing out of one side of the plane they can maintain accurate fire on a fixed point even though the plane is moving at relatively high speed. The idea worked well in Vietnam, and now the latest version of the gunship is the AC-130U Spectre, packing a 105-mm howitzer, a 25mm 1,800-round-a-minute Gatling gun and a 40mm Bofors gun. It can provide impressively accurate fire support; this video from Iraq apparently shows one destroying moving vehices outside a mosque without hitting the building.
To F-22 Raptor enthusiasts who think air power should be supersonic and stealthy, the Spectre might look like a dinosaur. It’s slow and noisy and has to come in close to the target, making it vulnerable to portable SAMs. But the old-style Spectre could be the basis for an ultra-modern gunship, according to Bill Elliot of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. His Future AC-130 Gunship Integrated Weapons Systems Concept is the cutting edge of close air support.
The basic idea is to upgrade from dumb, short-range munitions to smart long-range ones. Out goes the 105-mm howitzer in favor of a 120mm smoothbore – you’d call it a mortar, except that a downward-firing mortar is weird. Add to it racks of smart Viper Strike glide bombs. And instead of relying on onboard sensors, the Spectre will be able to launch its own fleet of drones to locate and designate targets. This increases the range at which targets can be engaged from 3 miles to 15 miles or more, so opponents will no longer be able to hear the Spectre coming before it strikes.
Pallet-loaded Dominator UCAV/munitions might also be a useful addition to the mix; in fact, the Future Spectre could be a veritable Arsenal Aircraft carrying a range of weapons and drones depending on the mission.
Instead of short-range, high-volume firepower, it will be delivering long-range precision strikes. Both Viper Strike and the XM395 120mm smoothbore rounds can be laser guided, with designation can come from the aircraft itself, from accompanying drones or from ground troops. Targets under hard cover can be destroyed rather than just suppressed, with "top floor, third window from the left" precision.
There are plenty of other ammunition options for the 120mm smoothbore - it can fire a full range of mortar rounds. This includes developments like the M971 cargo round, which can saturate an area the size of a football pitch with bomblets, a gun-launched UAV, and even non-lethal rounds delivering CS gas and flash-bangs for crowd control. New monopack containers reduce the packaging weight by 60% and significantly increase the amount which can be carried. This should greatly increase the versatility of the Spectre. But it is the precision strike which will make the biggest difference, greatly increasing the chances of single-shot kills and so extending the number of targets that can be engaged.
Instead of orbiting around a fixed point and firing at a sngle target, the upgraded Spectre will be able to tackle multiple targets at dispersed locations simultaneously. And the accuracy of that fire will be enough to destroy targets under cover rather than suppressing them, as well as preventing 'friendly fire' accidents and collateral damage. In effect, Bill Eliot is bringing 'smart bombs' to the gunship, which could increase its effectiveness as much as precision-guided bombs have for strike aircraft.
Eliot quotes a memo from the Secretary of Defense:
"We need more weapon systems like the AC-130, where the ordnance can be directed in a more precise way”
What better solution than an upgraded AC-130? The Future Spectre is still doing the same job as before, providing close air support to those who need it most, but doing it better. But it would be the heart of a network which includes drones, munitions and ground troops. It will continue to provide the persistence, firepower and high precision that has earned the Spectre its reputation. And it will be able to do it all from a range that greatly reduces risk to the aircraft.
It may not be the vision of those who want to conduct airstrikes from mach 1 and 50,000 feet, but when things get messy on the ground, then a gunship with smart weapons looks like a very good investment.
Feel like you've lived a wee bit too long? Looking for a spectacular way out -- one that'll keep your family crying in disgust for years on end?
Well, has Popular Mechanics got a gizmo for you: the personal helicopter. This $30,000, assemble-yourself "Gen H-4" mini-chopper relies on "two blades on the same axis and rotating them in opposite directions to counteract each other's torque, eliminating the need for a tail rotor."
The contraption meets "the FAA's rules for ultralight aircraft: a top speed of just over 60 mph and a 5-gallon gas tank, for about an hour of flying. That means you don't need a license to own or fly one."
Oh, joy!
Pop Mech is also featuring a slightly safer model, just in case you want to take a few trips before the big crash.
Bombs Over Afghanistan
Today's Times has a fascinating story out of Afghanistan. Well, more like above it, really. Reporter David Cloud hitched a ride on a "B-1 bomber orbit[ing] at 20,000 feet, responding to radio calls from American and Canadian troops who asked the plane to use its radar to watch for insurgent forces and to be prepared to drop bombs."
The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for American air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, Air Force officials said...
The NATO forces are mostly operating without heavy armor or artillery support, and as Taliban resistance has continued, more air support has been used to compensate for the lightness of the units, Air Force officials said. Most of the strikes have come during “close air support” missions, where the bombers patrol the area and respond to calls from ground units in combat rather than performing planned strikes...
To carry out the heavier mission load, the Air Force’s entire complement of B-1 bombers was shifted over the summer from the British air base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a Middle Eastern airfield closer to Afghanistan. The new basing arrangement shortens the flying time to Afghanistan by two hours, allowing bombers to remain overhead for longer periods between refueling by aerial tankers...
The 2,095 attacks by American aircraft since June is many times greater than the number of airstrikes in Iraq, where the terrain and nature of the conflict are less susceptible to bombing campaigns. There have been only 88 attacks by American aircraft in Iraq since June, according to Air Force figures. Unlike in Afghanistan, insurgents in Iraq are largely in urban areas and do not often mass in groups large enough to warrant use of airstrikes, Air Force commanders said.
I think we al know how effective close air support can be. But is it really a substitute for having fewer troops on the ground?
The tandem rotor, heavy-lift, high-altitude HH-47 is based on the CH/MH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, with performance capabilities that have been widely demonstrated in the ongoing global war on terrorism and in numerous U.S. and international humanitarian relief operations.
Damn straight. When the Pavehawk was procured, C-SAR was all about nabbing downed fighter pilots from Soviet-held Germany -- a short-range mission in a cool climate requiring minimal lifting capability. These days C-SAR is about much more: reinforcing outnumbered ground troops on some distant mountaintop, spiriting noncombatants away from a remote warzone and plucking hurricane survivors off rooftops. That takes speed, range and powerful engines, things the Chinook has in spades.
The award comes hot on the heels of a search-and-rescue shuffle that saw the Pavehawks and their crews get bumped from the regular Air Force to Special Operations Command then back. It was SOC that favored the HH-47, and this preference apparently stuck despite the reshuffle.
The decision means that the 40-year-old Chinook design will remain in production until around 2020 at least. In addition to the new Air Force models, the Army is buying 400 new CH-47Fs and Special Forces MH-47Gs ... and international customers are starting to line up too.
When the Air Force threatened last year to cap production of Boeing's C-17 airlifter, a major cash-cow, the company freaked out -- and wasted no time blackmailing Congress with the threat of lost jobs. (C-17 production employs 25,000 people in many states.)
The result? Last month Congress tacked another 10 of the $200-million C-17s onto the program, for a grand total of 191. Combined with foreign sales to England (5), Australia (4), Canada (4) and NATO (3-4), this keeps the Long Beach, Calif., C-17 plant humming until 2009.
But, already, Boeing is begging for more USAF orders, with an eye to sustaining C-17 production until the company can secure civil or more foreign orders, as reported in Aerospace Daily:
The next opportunity to secure more C-17s will occur in the second FY '07 supplemental, which is expected to be at least $40 billion if not more. Top defense officials are scheduled to finalize their request in November. Otherwise, industry representatives can try for more funds under regular FY '08 budgetmaking, which will be hammered out between the White House and the Pentagon by the end of the year.
Lawmakers forcing airplanes onto the military is not a new phenomenon -- nor is it always unwelcome. For decades, the Air Force has counted on Congressional add-ons to top off its Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules fleet. (Congress likes the C-130s because they keep a lot of people employed and because they're good state-level assets.) But with the C-17, the Air Force seems genuinely reluctant to divert too much cash to further production, as it's struggling to find money for the upcoming Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning, the new KC-X tanker and another long-range bomber.
But it's not that the Air Force doesn't need the C-17s. The fleet is too small as is, Aerospace Daily continues:
Onlookers suggest the Pentagon did not take into account the heightened need for airlift to support natural disasters, homeland security missions and perhaps of most concern, the Army's Future Combat System deployments. The Army's shift to a U.S.-based expeditionary force will allow it to use smaller vehicles and network-centric systems, but industry officials question whether the Pentagon has taken into account how this strategy will affect its need to have airlift at the ready to quickly react to situations around the globe.
It's proof of the bleak budget picture that the Air Force is resisting airplanes it truly needs for other airplanes it needs even worse.
So I'm a tacair junkie. Sue me. And of all the U.S. tactical air forces, the Marines' small force flying Boeing F/A-18 Hornets and Boeing AV-8B Harriers is my favoritest. These guys pull off minor miracles every day with ancient airplanes, a tiny budget and operational commitments (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan and aboard Navy aircraft carriers) that keep them very very busy.
On top of this, the Marines must be ready for a wide range of contingencies, perhaps requiring forced entry against a conventional foe flying sophisticated fighters. To that end, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 312 "Checkerboards" based in Beaufort, South Carolina, is honing its dogfighting skills with live missile shoots, exercises against adversary fighters and by sending pilots to Topgun at Fallon, Nevada. I go into detail over at Military.com:
"Is there an air-to-air threat in Iraq? No. but if we start training just to fight right now, when that fight's over, something else pops up and we're unprepared," says Major Bruce "Flesh" Gordon, a 34-year-old Checkerboards pilot with more than 1,600 hours in the Hornet. He says the Marine Corps' small community of 14 Hornet squadrons -- each flying a dozen jets and half of which are based in Beaufort -- needs to be ready to deploy on 48 hours' notice to cover Marines storming some foreign shore to meet an unexpected threat.
"If a [Marine] commander wants to make a landing in, say, Bashir, Iran, he needs a secure beachhead. He won't have that if the Iranians are launching [Sukhoi Su-25] Frogfoot [attack planes] and [F-4] Phantom [fighters]," 34-year-old Captain Hank Thomas says by way of a hypothetical example.
Hopefully that example never becomes a reality. But if it does, the Marines will be ready.
A decade after the final retirement of Lockheed Martin's Mach-3 SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, the Air Force is preparing to test a plane that flies more than three times as fast. Two Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicles, built by Lockheed Martin with input from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), will take to the air in 2008. The $100-million program aims to field a Mach-10 unmanned aircraft that can spy on foreign powers, drop bombs or even lob satellites into orbit.
The Blackbird, which was first retired in 1990 then briefly resurrected between 1995 and 1997, reached its Mach-3 top speed by way of its hybrid Pratt & Whitney J-58 engines, which featured a conventional turbojet engine installed inside a ramjet optimized for supersonic flight. At low speeds, the turbojet did most of the work; at high speed the turbojet throttled back and the ramjet took over.
Engineers are improving on this so-called "combined cycle" to propel the Falcon, using a more powerful "scramjet" in place of the ramjet. "We need propulsion that transitions seamlessly from Mach 0 to Mach 9 or 10," says Lockheed Martin's Bob Baumgartner.
"For low speed, we're looking at turbine engines that can perform at speeds from Mach 0 to Mach 4, then a scramjet ... that takes over anywhere between Mach 2 and Mach 4 and goes up to higher Mach numbers -- depending on the fuel, up to Mach 10," says Steven Walker, a Darpa researcher. "For sure, we know how turbines work, but we don't have turbines that work at Mach 4."
"The scramjets are still at a low-technology readiness level," he adds. "Combining both flow-paths and looking at how you transition from one to the other and the transition back ... that's all new, break-through technology."
"Thermal protection ... is the next major enabling technology," Baumgartner says, referring to ways of coping with the high temperatures that Mach-10 flight generates. "We're looking at durable metallic thermal protection panels to withstand heat and keep it away from structure. We're also looking at ceramic panels."
Foil insulation is an option too, he continues. And for the engines, developers are looking at new ceramic or metal-alloy coatings that can withstand temperatures reaching thousands of degrees.
Lockheed Martin's Craig Johnston, who works on a hypersonic engine project, sees many applications for Falcon and similar vehicles. "I can easily envision this technology eventually making its way into advanced aircraft ... something like long-range strike aircraft, supersonic bombers or future fighters."
Darpa also foresees using Falcon to cheaply launch small satellites. "Falcon will develop a low cost, responsive Small Launch Vehicle that can be launched for $5 million or less," an agency statement reads. "The SLV will be capable of launching small satellites into sun-synchronous orbits and will provide the nation a new, small-payload access to space capability."
The military would like to use blimps as eyes -- and cell towers -- in the sky. But, for the plan to really work, the antennas attached to those airships have to be light, flexible, and fit perfectly on the blimp's hull. And so far, building those antennas has been hard to do.
A crew of Air Force-funded companies has a new approach: paint-on antennas that can be slopped right on the side of an airship. The goop is "a combination of polymer-based dielectrics and highly conductive paint," Aviation Week says. And during a recent flight test, a spherical blimp with "paint-on electromagnetic antennas communicated voice and data to an Iridium Global satellite."
The key, apparently, is a product called Unishield, a coating which "creates an electrical field that can be specifically tuned to absorb or reflect radar frequencies." Which means that the stuff can not only be used to make paint-on antennas -- but can create magnetic fields to make planes more stealthy, too.
Drones, Blimps Lose Out in Border War
For those of you hoping for hordes of drones and blimps to start patrolling the Mexican and Canadian borders, there's bad news this morning. "After a face-off among large military contractors, the Boeing Company was picked by the Homeland Security Department to lead a high-tech effort to secure borders," the Times reports. And unlike proposals from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, Boeing's plan for the Secure Border Initiative, or SBInet, doesn't rely that much on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or airships.
"Boeing's proposal relied heavily on a network of 1,800 towers, most of which would need to be erected along the borders with Mexico and Canada. Each tower would be equipped with a variety of sensors, including cameras and heat and motion detectors," the Washington Post notes. Boeing teamed up for the project with an Israeli company that built a bunch of the imaging equipment used in Israel's controversial fence along the West Bank. That gear, Boeing said, would be less risky and expensive than UAVs or airships -- even though both have been used to watchover southern Arizona for illegals.
But, not to worry: the Times says that there are still a few drones in the Boeing plan -- "small, relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched from a pickup truck by an agent in the field and then fly for, perhaps, 90 minutes." I'm guessing the paper means these drones here.
"Homeland Security has been criticized harshly in recent years for initiatives that have either failed or far exceeded their budgets. In one case, cameras that the department installed on the borders broke down in bad weather," the Post observes.
"The administration has spent $429 million of the taxpayer's money to try and secure our borders with two already-abandoned border security programs," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss). He expressed concern that the same thing will happen to SBInet.
Mindful of that record, Boeing emphasized that all its technology has been proven to work. "The low-risk approach is probably going to carry weight here."
"The contract will at least initially be much more limited than some industry officials had expected, valued at $80 million instead of the $2 billion estimate given for the six-year deal," the Times writes.
Area 51: Hype vs. Reality
In the October Popular Science, veteran aviation journo Bill Sweetman writes about secret airplanes he believes might be under development at the Air Force's remote Groom Lake test facility in Nevada, a.k.a. Area 51. Sweetman describes three demonstrators unveiled in recent years -- the Northrop Grumman Tacit Blue and Boeing Bird of Prey manned stealth planes and the Lockheed Martin Polecat drone -- but insists these are just consolation prizes offered up by a military that is keeping its major black airplane programs under wraps.
Not that he has a ton of proof. "Hint[s]" and guesswork, mostly. The new construction at Groom Lake must mean something, he figures. And then there are those "obvious... significant gaps in the military’s known aviation arsenal -- gaps that the Pentagon can reasonably be assumed to be actively, if quietly, trying to fill."
It's a strange series of calculations to make. The perceived holes -- high-speed, penetrating reconnaissance and long-range, stealthy strike -- are fairly well plugged up, at least until 2020. And the proposed gap-fillers are some of aviation history's more discredited flops and boogeymen.
In his story, Sweetman speculates about "possible all-weather attack vehicles now in testing -- ones available sooner than [the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning's] 2014 [debut] and capable of carrying significant bomb loads."
A hint about [the plane]... could reside, aerospace historian Peter Merlin pointed out, in a test pilot’s unclassified biography. Daniel Vanderhorst, who flew Northrop’s [Tacit Blue] Whale and six other secret aircraft in a 20-year career, evidently “tested modified landing gear and conducted initial tests of internal weapons bays and weapon separation tests.” What’s unusual about this is that most prototypes are simple aircraft without weapon bays, which suggests that this airplane was closer to an operational type. Specifically, I’m guessing, it could be an extension of the heavy-payload, all-weather attack jet A-12 Avenger II, which then–Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney canceled in 1991 because it was overbudget and not meeting its technological goals.
Never mind that the plane only got as far as the mock-up stage -- and even the mock-up was a mess, according to insiders. The airplane was an unmitigated disaster from the outset, as the lovable nerds at Globalsecurity.org explain:
The A-12 proved to be the most troubled of the new American stealth aircraft in large part because of problems found in the extensive use of composites in its structure. These composites did not result in anticipated weight savings, and some structural elements had to be replaced with heavier metal components. The weight of each aircraft exceeded 30 tons, variously estimated at between 10% and 30% over design specification, and close to the limits that could be accommodated on aircraft carriers.
The Department of Defense terminated the contract [in 1991] after the contractors failed to deliver a single airplane after receiving more than $2 billion in payments. Instead, the contractors refused to continue with the contract unless they received extraordinary relief in the form of relaxed terms and extra funds. At the same time, they would or could not assure delivery of an aircraft by a time certain, specify the aircraft's performance capabilities, or commit to a specific price for the aircraft.
For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been trying to get a $2.3-billion refund on the A-12 from the contractors.
Addressing that alleged gap in penetrating reconnaissance, Sweetman dredges up the old Aurora spyplane, the Bigfoot of aviation journalism. When the super-cool Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird was retired in 1991, aviation enthusiasts imagined that something cooler had taken the Blackbird's place. That something cooler was the triangular, hypersonic, high-flying Aurora, Sweetman writes:
Such a vehicle -- a ramjet-powered reconaissance and strike aircraft capable of flying at least five times the speed of sound and deploying anywhere in the world in a matter of hours -- has been high on the government’s wish list. Aurora is certainly possible. The basic propulsion unit, the ramjet, is no more than a tapered tube with a fuel injector and burner in the middle and a thrust nozzle at the end. Basic ramjet-powered missiles have topped Mach 6. A wealth of aerodynamic data and test flights suggest that a wedge-shaped aircraft would work at these speeds.
I first heard about this kind of program in the mid-1980s, and the first public hint of the project popped up in 1988, when The New York Times reported that the Air Force was developing a spyplane capable of better than Mach 5 -- nearly twice as fast as the SR-71, then the world’s fastest airplane.
Unless you count some unexplained sonic booms or the uninformed testimony of one amateur plane spotter (who was probably, unknowingly, looking at a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit), there is not a shred of evidence of Aurora's existence. Yes, the basic technology for such an aircraft is there, but it's not yet advanced enough nor integrated for practical use. The Air Force/Lockheed Martin Falcon program (among others) is just beginning to pull together a useful hypersonic aircraft.
Maybe Sweetman has some treasure trove of corroborating data that he doesn't share in his article. Otherwise, what's seems to be happening here is a recycling of some of aviation's favorite ghost stories ... followed by a retroactive identification of the military roles they might fill and claims that urgent needs in these areas proves the secret airplanes' existences.
The problem is that none of the needs are really all that urgent. Let's start with long-range stealthy strike. Sweetman writes that the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor's bombload is too light, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning is too far from service and the Lockheed Martin F-117 Nighthawk lacks a radar for precision targeting.
The F-22's bombload is indeed light compared to, say, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress'. But the Raptor can deliver two 1,000-pound satellite-guided Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munitions at supersonic speed and high altitude, imparting unprecedented energy and range to these very accurate weapons. It's nothing to sneeze at. The F-117, for its part, was never intended to drop radar-guided munitions. Its main weapons are laser-guided bombs, which don't require a radar and are still more accurate than even JDAMs.
Sweetman leaves all the Air Force's strategic bombers off his list. What about the B-2, which is long-ranged, stealthy and can carry an enormous bombload? We have 21 of those. Or the Boeing B-1B Lancer, which in addition to its long legs and huge bombload has a radar cross-section smaller than even most fighters'? We have 70 Lancers. Our 90-strong B-52 fleet can fire stealthy cruise missiles hundreds of miles away from its targets. Sure, the planes are decades old. But they work really well. Why not count them?
Truth be told, we have more than 180 very capable long-range bombers, many of them stealthy, plus 50 F-117s and 60 out of an eventual 180 Raptors. We took down Iraq's air defenses in 2003 with just a small percentage of the bomber fleet.
Sure, anti-air systems are growing more sophisticated – especially as you look out into the 2020s. But in ten years, we'll have a couple hundred F-35s on the ramps too. Five years after that, we're supposed to see the product of the Air Force's new Long-Range Strike study, which is a clean-slate approach to stealthy bombing. A revamped A-12 is an unlikely candidate for the competition.
As for Aurora ... it would fill a need now met by a combination of satellites, drones, camera pods and upgraded aircraft including the Lockheed Martin U-2 Dragon Lady. Despite some hand-wringing over the average age of Air Force recce planes, most experts admit that our portfolio of reconnaissance assets is diverse and robust.
We broke a story at InsideDefense.com yesterday that you'll be hearing more about soon. It's now up on Military.com:
The Air Force is proposing a $5 billion down payment for a next-generation long-range strike aircraft, money the service hopes will propel research and development needed to meet the Pentagon’s goal of fielding a new bomber fleet by 2018, according to sources familiar with new Air Force investment plans.
This robust commitment -- detailed in the Air Force’s proposed six-year spending plan, which was submitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense earlier this month -- would accelerate bomber modernization by two decades in a bid to augment the effectiveness of U.S. air power in the Asia-Pacific region.
“The purpose of this initially is to do some studies, design trade-offs as well as research and development,” a source familiar with the Air Force’s new bomber plans.
For the official Air Force word on future bombers, try this.
. . . . And with that, I'm out. It's been fun. Thanks to Noah for another opportunity to sit in the guest editor's chair.
One shameless plug before I sign off: Go see this band. They're terrific. I'll be at their New York show Monday night.
In an effort to catch up in the growing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) market, Lockheed Martin is playing up what it's got, and that means just about anything. Lockheed Martin recently talked up its idea for a pilotless version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, according to today's Washington Post:
The idea has been in the works for two years, Lockheed Vice President Frank Mauro said at a briefing yesterday. He provided few details but said the plane could be built as an interchangeable hybrid -- manned by a pilot for some missions and operated remotely for others.
This follows last month's unveiling of the company's Polecat at the Farnborough Air Show, a UAV built with Lockheed's own funds.
The unmanned JSF isn't really a brand new concept---Lockheed apparently has bandied the idea around for some time, and there's no evidence the Air Force is interested. But then again a little free publicity never hurt anyone.
Falcon – a word that evokes power, speed, lethality. Then why did the Air Force’s latest FALCON fall out the back of a C-17 at 32,000 feet?
The answer: drop tests. The drop from the C-17, which proceeded according to plan, was part of DARPA’s efforts to develop a Small Launch Vehicle (SLV) as part of its FALCON program. This particular FALCON is the Force Application and Launch from the CONtinental United States program -- and shouldn’t be confused with the rocket, the satellite, the fighter jet, the supercomputer, or any of the other pieces of hardware which undoubtedly bear the same name in the defense tech community.
The SLV is a small rocket (still over 60 feet in length) that, if successful, will be able to quickly place a lightweight military satellite into orbit. I guess dropping a 72,000 pound rocket out the back of a plane is easier than waiting for a launch pad at Vandenberg.
The SLV would allow for the rapid replacement of failed assets, provide supplemental reconnaissance for a hot zone, etc. Rapid launch could also be applied to space weapons, providing the Air Force with the ability to quickly deploy either passive or active weapons systems without providing the public and international community the opportunity to protest.
The SLV also has another objective - to boost a scramjet-powered hypersonic bomber to its target halfway around the world. This is part of FALCON’s other aim, to provide Prompt Global Strike capability to any location in the world in under two hours. Prompt Global Strike is basically the always-ready, rapid response system behind our ballistic missiles. Except in this case, you can’t use missiles, and you can’t use nukes.
The hope is to drop conventional bombs on far-flung targets quickly without the showstopper issues associated with using a Trident II. The problem with the Trident is, you don’t want to place the world’s nuclear second-strike forces on alert as you send a conventionally-tipped Trident II toward Osama bin Laden.
FALCON has lofty goals by attempting a truly global reach and a 12,000 pound payload. You could send more than just bombs – deploying Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVS) are certainly possible. It can, in fact, carry so much that some people want to use it to rapidly deploy a Marine squad. However, it is unlikely that even hardened Space Marines (OOO-RAH!) could sustain the necessary G forces in their potential drop ship.
FALCON is centered on the Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV), a reusable unmanned bomber. Traveling at over Mach 5, the HCV will use a scramjet engine, a significant departure from the rockets traditionally used in long-range weapons systems. Since a scramjet’s trajectory is markedly distinct from an ICBM it will also be readily identifiable.
What is not clear is, given the HCV’s proposed range and payload, is whether the international community would consider it any less of a threat than a Trident. It doesn’t even have to be nuclear-tipped to scare the heck out of you – 12,000 pounds of munitions in the right place can be devastating. In fact, FALCON could be a bigger threat than the nuclear arsenal since there is a much greater chance of its use in non-apocalyptic scenarios.
Diesel subs, diesel subs, everyone's worried about diesel subs. With the advent of Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) and the proliferation of German- and Russian-made diesel designs -- including to our favorite bugaboo Iran -- a lot of folks in the U.S. Navy are working really hard on ways to find and kill these quiet, lethal boats.
Enter the Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin MH-60R Seahawk helicopter. This new bird will boost the Navy's ability to root out pesky diesels and make the littorals safe for $5-billion carriers.
The so-called "Romeo" is a major driver behind a massive overhaul of the Navy's helicopter fleet. Five years ago the Navy flew seven helo models each in relatively stovepiped missions. SH-60B Seahawks droned along the outer edges of a battlegroup sensing for magnetic disturbances caused by large submarines. SH-60Fs dipped sonars into the middle zone of a carrier group to spot infiltrating submarines. HH-60Hs rescued downed pilots. MH-53E Sea Dragons towed mine-detecting gear. CH-46 Sea Knights hauled supplies. What the Navy needed was a larger helo force that it could swing between missions -- say, to swarm an enemy coast on day one clearing out the diesel subs then switch to fighting small suicide boats on day two while retaining the ability to do urgent resupply, noncombatant evacuation or search and rescue.
The Romeo model of the Seahawk will perform all these missions and more -- and do them better than earlier choppers thanks to better equipment and aircrew training. The key to the latter is a new simulator built by firm Manned Flight Simulators that can replicate the tricky acoustics of littoral waters.
The first four Romeos have been fielded by San Diego-based training squadron HSM-41. As many as 300 more worth $3 billion will follow in the next decade. Alongside the transport- and cargo-optimized MH-60S, which shares an airframe and cockpit with the Romeo, the MH-60R will provide the Navy a large, flexible and lethal helo force capable of taking out quiet diesel subs and blazing a trail for vulnerable carriers in coastal waters.
Two years after the Army canceled its high-tech, $42-billion RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopter, the service is putting together a new fleet of choppers that it claims are more affordable and better-suited to real-world missions than the Cold War Comanche ever was.
In recent months, the Army has let contracts for new light utility helicopters and new armed reconnaissance helicopters and has agreed to cooperate with the Air Force on a new light cargo aircraft. Meanwhile, new models of the venerable Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk, Boeing CH-47 Chinook and Boeing AH-64 Apache are in development or production. In all, the Army will buy as many as 2,000 helicopters in the next 15 years.
"Overall, we're doing exceptionally well," says Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, chief of the Pentagon's Army Aviation Task Force.
That wasn't always the case.
In early 2004, Army Aviation's future appeared bleak. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had demonstrated helicopters' vulnerability to small arms and rocket-propelled grenades (more than 120 have been lost so far) and had proved that most Army aircraft were under-powered for hot weather and high-altitude flying. The aircraft fleet's average age was around 20 years and climbing. The rising cost of the Comanche threatened to bankrupt the force while delivering only a fraction of the new aircraft needed to recapitalize the Army's 4,000-strong rotary-wing fleet.
"We needed to meet the Army's vision for modularity and sustainability," Mundt says. Killing Comanche was the only way.
UPDATE 12:43 PM: The Army has been able to go on this shopping spree because it kept the money for the Comanche to buy new aircraft. Now, Congress is threatening to cut those funds, Inside Defense notes. And Army aviation chiefs are having a fit.
Israel's Aerial Blockade
Some of the same technologies that the U.S. military used to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are playing a critical role in Israel's new campaign against Hezbollah. The Israeli air force has brought to bear strike aircraft armed with laser- and satellite guided bombs and toting sophisticated targeting pods. The mission: sever communications links to Lebanon -- depriving the terrorist network of foreign support -- and to ensure that captured Israeli soldiers are not sneaked out of the country.
Since Wednesday, Israeli warplanes have systematically bombed roads, bridges, television and radio stations and the runways at the Beirut airport. These attacks have effectively isolated Lebanon at the price of around 100 Lebanese deaths plus many injuries (see picture). In light of the swift and devastating nature of the air campaign, that death toll is surprisingly low. But then, considering that Hezbollah has no air defenses to speak of -- and that all the world is watching -- in this conflict the Israeli air force's greatest enemy is itself. It must achieve its operational goals with minimal civilian deaths to avoid turning world opinion against Israel.
That means accurate targeting and precision weapons. Most of the communications targets are static ones that Israel mapped out years ago, using aerial reconnaissance -- as well as signals and human intelligence. So figuring out what to bomb isn't hard. Hitting the targets accurately -- without civilian casualties -- is. And with airport terminals, bridges and highways teeming with local civilians and foreign tourists, the job is even tougher.
Fortunately for Israel, its air force is on the cutting edge of precision weapons technology. In the 1980s, Israeli firm Rafael pioneered small targeting pods for tactical warplanes. Today, the Rafael Litening family of pods -- containing day and night sensors, a laser designator and tracker and GPS -- equips Israeli F-16s and F-15s and U.S. aircraft such as Marine Corps F/A-18s.
Israeli aircrews probably approach from medium altitude, straight and level, using the cameras in their pods to zoom in on the target. They then designate it with a laser or determine its GPS coordinates -- or both. At the optimal distance and angle, they pickle the weapon, either an Israeli Aircraft Industries laser-guided bomb or a Boeing Joint Direction Attack Munition (JDAM), which Israel has procured in quantity since 1999.
The F-15Is and F-16Is are the most advanced strike aircraft in the Middle East, with the possible exception of the Emirates' F-16E/Fs. But the only pictures of current air operations that I've seen have shown just F-16Cs and Ds, which makes sense. The early F-16s and F-15s are best suited for air-to-air missions and the F-15Is and F-16Is are long-range strike aircraft with conformal fuel tanks, likely being held in reserve for possible action against Iran, which reportedly has troops in Lebanon and supplied the drone that damaged an Israeli patrol boat and killed four sailors on Thursday.
UPDATE 6:59 PM: Stratfor says that "we are now in the period preceding major conventional operations. Israel is in the process of sealing the Lebanese coast. They have disrupted Lebanese telecommunications, although they have not completely collapsed the structure. Israeli aircraft are attacking Hezbollah's infrastructure and road system. In the meantime, Hezbollah, aware it is going to be hit hard, is in a use-it or-lose-it scenario, firing what projectiles it can into Israel."
The Israeli strategy appears to be designed to do two things. First, the Israelis are trying to prevent any supplies from entering Lebanon, including reinforcements. That is why they are attacking all coastal maritime facilities. Second, they are degrading the roads in Lebanon. That will keep reinforcements from reaching Hezbollah fighters engaged in the south. As important, it will prevent the withdrawal and redeployment of heavy equipment deployed by Hezbollah in the south, particularly their rockets, missiles and launchers. The Israelis are preparing the battlefield to prevent a Hezbollah retreat or maneuver.
Hezbollah's strategy has been imposed on it. It seems committed to standing and fighting. The rate of fire they are maintaining into Israel is clearly based on an expectation that Israel will be attacking. The rocketry guarantees the Israelis will attack. Hezbollah has been reported to have anti-tank and anti-air weapons. The Israelis will use airmobile tactics to surround and isolate Hezbollah concentrations, but in the end, they will have to go in, engage and defeat Hezbollah tactically. Hezbollah obviously knows this, but there is no sign of disintegration on its part. At the very least, Hezbollah is projecting an appetite for combat. Sources in Beirut, who have been reliable to this point, say Hezbollah has weapons that have not yet been seen, such as anti-aircraft missiles, and that these will be used shortly.
UPDATE 7:20 PM: Be sure to check out Tom Barnett's take on the crisis, too; this is Iran's "form of a pre-emptive war -- well-timed and well-placed," he says.
Iraq's Geriatric Choppers
I follow Marine Corps aviation pretty closely, but somehow I missed this: despite repeated proposals to retire them, the Marines are still flying their ancient CH-53D Sea Stallions. And now the old birds have been deployed to Al Asad airbase in western Iraq with Heavy Marine Helicopter Squadron 463, part of the West Coast 3rd Marine Air Wing.
The squadron's aircraft have been around for close to 40 years, according to Capt. Shayne M. Frey, pilot training officer, HMH-463.
"They aren't as high speed as some of the newer planes," said Frey, a Lancaster, Pa., native. "We have a lot of daily and hourly inspections on them. The maintainers are out there in 120 degrees, all day long, working on these aircraft. Not only do they have to fix them when we break them, but they have to upkeep them, too."
The Sea Stallions are twin-engine progenitors of the three-engine CH-53E Sea Stallions. The 1980s Echo models are themselves rapidly aging and badly in need of replacement, so you can imagine how the Corps feels about its Vietnam War-era Deltas.
Fortunately, there are plans firmly in place to reequip the Marines' rotary-wing squadrons and put these old workhorses and their equally-decrepit CH-46 Sea Knight stablemates to pasture. The MV-22 Osprey program, currently in the production phase, should field around 300 aircraft to replace the Sea Knights, while the CH-53K program will put new Super Stallions on the ramp in 2014.
In the meantime, the Marines keep their old helos flying with a lot of maintenance muscle and prayer. And to keep the Super Stallion squadrons up to strength, they're even pulling five retired Navy CH-53Es out of the Arizona boneyard.
The Air Force chief of staff announced Lightning II as the F-35 name during a Joint Strike Fighter Inauguration Ceremony today at the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. at Fort Worth, Texas.
Gen. T. Michael Moseley made the final decision after an extensive nomination and review process, coordinated with the other services and partner nations.
In naming the F-35, General Moseley said, "Today, the enemies of peace and freedom have been put on notice. They have feared this day because the F-35 provides the coalition warfighter the perfect blend of speed, precision and stealth.
The name 'Lightning' was considered for the F-22 before 'Raptor' was finally chosen. Other F-35 names receiving support were 'Lynx', 'Phoenix', and, um, 'Black Mamba'. The first flight is planned for later this year. More info on the F-35 unveiling here on Military.com.
-- Murdoc
UPDATE 07/08/06 9:42 AM: Told ya so! Told ya so! Defense News (and, by extension, this site) had the new name all the way back on Monday.
The stand-off with Iran over its nuclear ambitions was just beginning while I was embedded with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 at Al Asad air base in Iraq. More than once the fliers lamented that they'd probably be back in the States by the time the "inevitable" bombing of Iran got underway. One conversation went something like this:
Aviator #3: Yeah, my wife [deployed to northern Iraq] saw one!
Aviator #1: We'd still kick their asses.
Me: Oh God.
If, God help us, the stand-off does turn violent, U.S. air power will play a critical role. For months pundits have predicted a massive bombing campaign to target Iran's nuclear facilities, and perhaps even to attempt regime change.
But don't expect Iran's air force to roll over like Iraq's did in 1991 and again in 2003. Unlike the Iraqi air force, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) appears to be well-armed, well-trained and eager for a fight. Besides the aforementioned F-14 Tomcats, 79 of which the U.S. sold to the country before the Shah was deposed, the air force operates several dozen of each of the following types:
All told, the IRIAF flies as many as 300 fighters. All are older designs, but have been maintained and, in many cases, upgraded by the indigenous aerospace industry, which has become proficient in reverse-engineering weapons and spare parts -- and perhaps even engines. And the IRIAF has aerial tankers too -- a force multiplier only the most advanced air forces maintain.
Veteran aviation correspondent Tom Cooper and his co-writer Liam Devlin wrote a fascinating feature for a recent issue of Combat Aircraft Magazine, profiling the IRIAF. The authors interviewed IRIAF defectors and U.S. Navy aircrew that have tangled with Iranian fliers over the Arabian Gulf. The feature cautions against the Western habit of underestimating the IRIAF:
In November 2003, a USAF E-3 Sentry flying a patrol over Iraq tracked a formation of no less than 16 IRIAF F-14As ... This was the largest group of Iranian F-14s detected in flight by the U.S. military since 1997, when nine IRIAF Tomcats were tracked over the southern Persian Gulf by the U.S. Navy. ... During the summer of 2005, several Su-24s were observed operating over the Persian Gulf, armed with Chinese-made C802K-2 anti-ship missiles. ... Iranian Phantoms were sighted as well, usually carrying AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder [air-to-air missiles].
Now that the 1st Fighter Wing has its first F-22 squadron combat-ready, and with the Navy's Super Hornets equipped with electronically-scanned radars, we have the capability to beat the IRIAF. But it wouldn't necessarily be an easy fight. Throw in Iran's SA-15 surface-to-air missiles and you've got a tough air-defense nut to crack. And remember ... an air campaign might be just a prelude to a ground invasion. Last year I stood on the Iraq-Iran border and listened to Iranian armored divisions throw down practice artillery barrages. The Tennessee National Guardsmen I was with (the 278th cavalry regiment equipped with M-1 Abrams tanks) admitted that they couldn't punch through that border if they wanted to.
We must find a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions.
P.S. -- This discussion of Cooper's article includes some interesting insights.
JSF Delays Vex Marines
The Marines put all their tacair eggs in one basket when they decided, in the early 1990s, to pass up the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and wait for a vertical take-off plane instead. That plane turned out to be the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, and the Marines have committed to buying as many as 500 to replace around the same number of single- and two-seat F/A-18 legacy Hornets, AV-8B Harriers and EA-6B Prowlers -- necking down to one tactical airframe and saving loads of cash in the process.
Sounds great, right?
The problem is that the F-35 initial operational capability keeps sliding right thanks to weight, software and engine problems. It's unlikely the Marines will be able to field a squadron before 2012, several years later than originally planned. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Marines are flying the life out of all their airplanes, putting as many hours on a deployed jet in just seven months as they would in two years back in the States.
By the time the JSF enters Marine Corps service in large numbers, the service's jets will be around 25 years old on average. That's old for a naval jet. But when you talk about aircraft age, there's calendar age and then there's fatigue age. What with all the hard use in hot, sandy Iraq and on the Navy's carriers (to alleviate Navy force cuts, the Marines contribute several Hornet squadrons to carrier air wings), the Marines jets "feel" a lot older than they actually are.
The result is premature retirement for dozens of tired jets, mostly Hornets. As the fleet shrinks without a hot production line to replace losses, the only way the Marines can keep its squadrons fully equipped is to decommission a few squadrons and redistribute their jets. Which is exactly what will happen in March 2007, when the Corps shutters VMFA(AW)-332 and VMFA-134 flying the F/A-18D and F/A-18A+, respectively.
I embedded with 332 in Iraq this year, reporting on the great work they were doing supporting the ground troops in restive Al Anbar province. 332 is a fine unit with one of the best safety records in the entire Marine Corps, having last crashed a jet around 30 years ago. It'll be a shame to see them go.
On the other hand, these force structure cuts themselves don't actually reduce the number of jets in Corps service. They just consolidate the existing jets into fewer, larger units that can fly and maintain the planes more efficiently. This is making lemonade out of lemons from trees planted a decade ago when the Corps pinned all its tacair hopes on a paper airplane that is only now taking shape, years late.
Here's to hoping the F-35 pans out. If it doesn't, the Air Force can buy new F-16s and F-15s from production lines sustained by foreign sales and the Navy can boost its Super Hornet order (as has already been rumored), but the Marines are screwed. As long as nobody at HQMC is interested in the Super Hornet, there's no contingency plan.
Pay 332 a tribute by checking out some of their Iraq snapshots at Flickr.
The problem with the American military today is that it doesn't have a giant, robotic airship, two-and-a-half times the size of the Goodyear blimp, that can watch over an entire city at once. Thankfully, the Pentagon's way-out research arm, Darpa, is trying to fix that.
The program is called ISIS, short for "Integrated Sensor Is Structure." And the idea is to park an unmanned airship over a hot zone for a year, at nearly 65,000 feet in the sky. Up there, ISIS can spot enemy soldiers up to 180 miles away, target tanks and trucks, and watch out for incoming cruise missiles 350 miles in the distance -- a "detailed, real-time picture of all movement on or above the battlefield," one Darpa program manager says. During down times, ISIS might even serve as a cell tower in the sky, relaying communications to U.S. troops.
But to pull it all off, almost the entire hull of the ISIS ship would have to be turned into a phased-array radar antenna. And that is no mean task.
To get the airship to fly, the antenna would have to weigh about 2 kilograms/meter -- as opposed to 20 kg/m today. And new tricks in power storage will be needed, too -- batteries that can store a kilowatt-hour's worth of juice in half a kilogram, instead of the 2 kg currently required.
Darpa, along with the Air Force Research Lab, just handed Lockheed Martin the latest in a $42.5 million series of contracts to develop components the uber-blimp. If all goes well -- and that's a big, fat if -- the ISIS could fly by 2011.
The radar weighs 1,500 pounds and makes the Apache sluggish in hot and high-altitude environments -- really the only places the Army fights anymore. Aviators are cool with flying without their radars since the things were designed for taking out Soviet tanks. "It was designed for a different fight than we're finding ourselves in now," Lt. Col. Mark Patterson told Defense News. He added that the A-model Apache (dating from 1983) is better suited to today's fights.
This is old news. In Balad, Iraq, in February, Sgt. Erik Morrow told me that the M-1A1 Abrams tank was better for Iraq than the newer M-1A2 since the A1 tank is more reliable and starts up quicker. Earlier, the Marine Corps aviators of All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332, deployed to Al Asad in western Iraq, had told me their old $40-million F/A-18D Hornets equipped with sensor pods are better-suited to counter-insurgency combat than $130-million F-22A Raptors, which don't even have hardpoints for pods. See my Flickr for pics.
The major impetus for the constant development of new and more high-tech weapons was the arms race with the Soviet Union and the need to counter massed tank armies with much smaller forces. Those things no longer apply, and now critics across the services are calling for a different way of doing things -- namely, sticking with weapons that work, even if they're old. In some cases, the Defense Department has listened, which is why we're seeing M-14 rifles and Light Antitank Weapons pulled out of storage for troops in Iraq.
But old stuff doesn't keep the defense industry flush with cash. And Pierre Sprey, one of the designers of the F-16 Fighting Falcon and an F-22 critic, told me that's the point of most new weapons. More on that later.
According to Aviation Week, the fringe-science organization and the Air Force have successfully tested a kick-ass new airborne datalink -- think wi-fi in the sky -- that could make all others obsolete. You think the raid that knocked off Zarqawi was fast? With this new datalink, air strikes will happen even faster:
Although it's just one piece of a much larger [Time-Critical Targeting] infrastructure, a program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has made quantum leaps in delivering high-speed, Internet-protocol-based communications to front-line air and ground combat platforms. This Tactical Targeting Networking Technology (TTNT) program recently proved its potential during the 2006 Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX) at Nellis AFB, Nev. Seven aircraft and four ground nodes equipped with TTNT terminals worked with about 20 other fighter aircraft, most equipped with today's low-bandwidth Link 16 data links.
Mission information was routed via TTNT to AWACS and E-2C air-to-air command-and-control platforms, then on to fighters for execution. By all accounts, the technology worked very well, and both uniformed and contractor participants declared the experiment quite successful.
Datalinks between airplanes and ground stations have been around for decades. Link 16 -- for which thousands of fighters, missile batteries and ships are wired -- is really just an evolved 1950s air-defense datalink good only for transmitting basic location data. For years, the military's goal has been to transition to a true Internet Protocol datalink. Not only would an IP datalink be fast (2 Mb/sec versus Link 16's 238 kb/sec) and long-ranged (up to 100 miles), it would be compatible with a wide array of internet-ready systems.
The Aviation Week article includes this scenario:
Using its Sniper targeting pod, an F-15E Strike Eagle crew detects a band of insurgents smuggling weapons into Iraq. But it's dark, the pod's infrared images are a bit fuzzy, and the crew is reluctant to attack without corroborating information.
The F-15E's weapons systems officer captures a still image of the suspected insurgents loading weapons and presses a single button to send the geolocated picture to a Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC). A quick search of online intelligence databases by CAOC operators uncovers other data that correlate with the fighter-transmitted image. Soon, the F-15E crew receives new images of the target area, each annotated with critical data that show the location of friendly forces. An accompanying text message outlines a "workflow" of steps that the F-15E crew and associated command-and-control (C2) aircraft in the region should follow.
Bottom line: No friendlies in the immediate area. Considerable insurgent activity and communications "chatter" at the designated location was detected within the last three days. "Cleared to attack." Time elapsed: single-digit minutes.
That's fast. Link 16, the current state-of-the-art in airborne datalinks, could never relay the same amount of data so quickly or so easily. I wrote about Link 16's limitations for Sea Power back in the spring:
Link 16 is far from perfect. The network’s finite capacity means that [network nodes] broadcast information only every 12 seconds, and entering terminals every 24, meaning a networked platform’s situational awareness, while more complete than ever, comes at the price of being up to 12 seconds old.
Its relatively anemic data rate is another one of Link 16’s major limitations.
The waveforms that evolved into Link 16 were intended just to connect interceptors to ground control stations. As a result, these waveforms supported only highly-specialized message formats adapted to particular relationships between particular platforms.
Adan says that specialized message formats have dangerous consequences. “Recall that during Operation Iraqi Freedom, without common Link 16 capability, we had Patriot batteries targeting F-16s and F/A-18s.”
All these limitations mean Link 16 is essentially a compromise system. Ideal future networks would employ Internet Protocols (IP) to enable true plug-and-play capability at much higher data rates. But getting to there from here will take years and require all the services and the Department of Defense to commit to standard equipment and waveforms.
Squabbling between and within the services stymied earlier efforts to field an IP datalink. And TTNT ain't out of the woods yet. While the TTNT datalink should be compatible with some of the same terminals used for Link 16, it's intended for a large-scale rollout with the Joint Tactical Radio System, or Jitters, which has suffered huge cost overruns and delays.
Check my Flickr to see pics of Air Force and Marine Corps squadrons that recently gained datalink terminals as part of upgrades to their F-16s and two-seat F/A-18Ds. And check out a recent review of my graphic novel WAR FIX.
Ten years ago, taking out Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi with F-16s would have been an impossible task. Air strikes were planned days or even weeks in advance. Pilots weren't trained to change missions mid-stream. Sensors and weapons weren't accurate and flexible enough to spot and hit fleeting targets.
But during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Air Force pioneered the prosecution of what it calls Time Sensitive Targets, or TSTs. Since then, the Navy and Marine Corps have gotten in on the game too, and these days, over Iraq, it's typical for jets to launch with only the vaguest idea of what's out there. New sensors and weapons, high-tech surveillance drones and better training have resulted in a minor revolution of which the Zarqawi attack is just one result.
The Air Force has been mum on the subject, but it's entirely possible that the F-16 drivers who eliminated Zarqawi were just flying a routine patrol before orders came to hit the safehouse. In stark contrast to the rigid preplanned sorties that were typical during the 1991 Gulf War, these days over Iraq, fighters from the Air Force and its sister services launch in two-jet sections carrying sensor pods and laser- and satellite-guided bombs. They have no specific targets in mind. Orbiting over their assigned areas, they scan the ground below with sensor pods and helmet-mounted sights, use datalinks to pass around video imagery and the GPS coordinates of potential targets and coordinate with ground-based forward air controllers to hit insurgents who appear in crowded cities or crawl onto highway medians to plant improvised explosive devices. Hitting a safehouse is relatively easy by comparison.
Sensor pods are perhaps the most visible technology in the military's efforts to take on TSTs. Pods contain day and night cameras, GPS for employing satellite-guided bombs and laser designators and trackers for laser-guided bombs. The cigar-shaped pods are slung under jets' wings or fuselages.
Lt. Col. David Wilbur, commander of Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332, which returned from Iraq in February, says that the new Litening AT pod enables Marine fighter crews to switch easily between looking for insurgents and attacking them, even in bad weather. Litening AT made its combat debut on Marine Corps jets during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and since have become standard equipment.
"There's no reason to take off without one," says Lt. Col. Wilbert Thomas, commander of Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 224, which served in Iraq between January and August 2005.
The Air Force is buying a number of different pod designs for nearly all of its combat aircraft types. In recent years, F-16s, F-15Es, A-10s, B-52s and B-1Bs have been fitted with pods.
The newest sensor pods include datalinks tied to a laptop computer-based terminals called Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receivers, or ROVER. The system allow crews to beam pod imagery to troops and commanders on the ground, letting them see what the crews see and facilitating close coordination between U.S. personnel on the ground and personnel in the air. A datalink called Link 16 performs a complementary role. Link 16-equipped jets can transmit a graphical target schematic based on and including GPS coordinates to other jets and to ground stations.
Air Force 77th Fighter Squadron commander Lt. Col. Donavan Godier says that Link-16 means a "large jump forward". "In the past we needed a lot of [voice] comms." Godier says that, in a combat scenario, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft like the RC-135 Rivet Joint and E-8C J-STARS can "feed targets to us via datalink". "We can refine that data or pick up new threats. We can populate the network ... [and] pass data to link-equipped fighters."
Navy Lt. Comm. Trenton Lennard used Link 16 in conjunction with the new Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System, or JHMCS, a visor that allows pilots to direct their radars, targeting pods and weapons just by looking at a target. "With that helmet, on the [Link 16 terminal], a pilot can look down, designate a target and put it out to everybody. ... It gets target pods, sensors and eyeballs on to the same piece of dirt."
With pods, datalinks and JHMCS, if one pilot or sensor operator sees a target, so can every other friendly force in the area. A target need enter only one person's situational awareness to enter everyone's. That makes it hard to hide and allows commanders ands controllers to assign the best shooter to a given target, cutting the time between spotting the target and attacking it.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), blanketing Iraq in cameras and radars around the clock, only reinforce what is already a robust network of sensors and shooters. The Air Force flies 20 small Predator drones and a handful of larger Global Hawks on continuous orbits that cover almost every corner of the country. The service calls this "persistent" surveillance. Navy Capt. Steve Wright, a UAV manager for the Chief of Naval Operations, says that UAVs help the military maintain a "common operational picture" -- in other words, a universal, constantly-updated picture of the battlefield, with which it can quickly assign on-station pilots to hit new targets.
While most attacks are carried out by high-performance manned aircraft, Predators themselves have been armed to give commanders more options. It was an early armed Predator that killed U.S.S. Cole bombing suspect Abu Ali in 2002. A new version of the versatile UAV will carry more ordnance.
Despite the depth and breadth of the military's sensor/shooter network, single human beings who don't want to be found represent a daunting targeting challenge. The system is in place to quickly kill high-value targets such as Zarqawi, but it depends on someone on the ground pointing out the target's location to begin with, accurately and in a timely manner. This is where previous decapitation strikes failed. An air raid in Fallujah in June 2004 narrowly missed Zarqawi. Notorious Ba'ath Party leader Ali Hassan Al Majeed, aka "Chemical" Ali, had already left his safehouse in Samawah when it was hit in March 2003. Several attacks on suspected safehouses in Baghdad failed to kill Saddam Hussein in the early months of the war. Indeed, the opening shot of the U.S. invasion was a bomb dropped on Dora Farms, one of Saddam's country retreats, on March 20, 2003. The strike was launched based on reports that the Iraqi leader was at the site, when in fact he hadn't visited in months.
Despite the sophistication of U.S. warplanes, sensors and ordnance, all results of billions of dollars of investment -- and despite great progress in prosecuting TSTs -- most decapitation strikes have been undermined by tardy or faulty intelligence at the ground level. The Zarqawi killing represents the first time in more than four years that intelligence has allowed the technology of surgical strikes to fulfill its potential.
(Full Disclosure) I saw Executive Decision once. In the 10 years since, I've slept safely with the knowledge that somewhere, somehow Navy Seals are jumping from F117's to Boeing 747's. So when I read that the Air Force Research Lab have finally developed a "concept of a rearming aircraft capable of reloading the wing stores of a combat aircraft while in flight," I couldn't help but think, "Wow, what a totally safe idea clearly based on years of success."
The need is definitely there. The vast distances between allied airbases and missions deep within Afghanistan and Iraq affects the 75 or so daily requests CENTAF gets for things like Close Air Support and UAVs (CENTAF says it gets about 75 such requests a day). During the invasion phase of OIF, approximately 40,000 missions were split between 1800 coalition aircraft.
But couldn't the Air Force make their rearm scheme look less dangerous, at least? The design system would consist of "a boom… attachable to and extendible from the rearming aircraft; a weapons mount that is attachable to the host aircraft, and a weapons platform attached to the boom which is capable of positioning and orienting the munition for transfer from the boom to the weapons mount." Gulp.
A similar set-up (pictured above) using a C-130 appeared in Defense Update last autumn.
Despite (my) concerns about its safety in flight (which I'll leave for the pilots and boomers to debate) the benefits are certainly appealing. Air-to-Air reloading would enable longer flights with less maintenance, much needed heavy weapons backup for ground troops and if applied to UAV's - 'sentinels' could persist for days without interference. It's like an Air Force version of Sea Strike, providing the capability to conduct offensive operations "on demand".
AFRL have yet to comment on the negative consequences of transferring thousands of pounds of munitions at high altitude, but I can think of one - and it rhymes with schmucking frightmare.
In the mortal words of ED's Sgt 'Cappy' Matheny: "I think we're looking up the ass end of a dead dog...but it's worth a try"
The stand-off with Iran over its nuclear ambitions was just beginning while I was embedded with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 at Al Asad air base in Iraq. More than once the fliers lamented that they'd probably be back in the States by the time the "inevitable" bombing of Iran got underway. One conversation went something like this:
Aviator #3: Yeah, my wife [deployed to northern Iraq] saw one!
Aviator #1: We'd still kick their asses.
Me: Oh God.
If, God help us, the stand-off does turn violent, U.S. air power will play a critical role. For months pundits have predicted a massive bombing campaign to target Iran's nuclear facilities, and perhaps even to attempt regime change.
But don't expect Iran's air force to roll over like Iraq's did in 1991 and again in 2003. Unlike the Iraqi air force, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) appears to be well-armed, well-trained and eager for a fight. Besides the aforementioned F-14 Tomcats, 79 of which the U.S. sold to the country before the Shah was deposed, the air force operates several dozen of each of the following types:
All told, the IRIAF flies as many as 300 fighters. All are older designs, but have been maintained and, in many cases, upgraded by the indigenous aerospace industry, which has become proficient in reverse-engineering weapons and spare parts -- and perhaps even engines. And the IRIAF has aerial tankers too -- a force multiplier only the most advanced air forces maintain.
Veteran aviation correspondent Tom Cooper and his co-writer Liam Devlin have a fascinating feature in the current issue of Combat Aircraft Magazine, profiling the IRIAF. The authors have interviewed IRIAF defectors and U.S. Navy aircrew that have tangled with Iranian fliers over the Arabian Gulf. The feature cautions against the Western habit of underestimating the IRIAF:
In November 2003, a USAF E-3 Sentry flying a patrol over Iraq tracked a formation of no less than 16 IRIAF F-14As ... This was the largest group of Iranian F-14s detected in flight by the U.S. military since 1997, when nine IRIAF Tomcats were tracked over the southern Persian Gulf by the U.S. Navy. ... During the summer of 2005, several Su-24s were observed operating over the Persian Gulf, armed with Chinese-made C802K-2 anti-ship missiles. ... Iranian Phantoms were sighted as well, usually carrying AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder [air-to-air missiles].
Now that the 1st Fighter Wing has its first F-22 squadron combat-ready, and with the Navy's Super Hornets equipped with electronically-scanned radars, we have the capability to beat the IRIAF. But it wouldn't necessarily be an easy fight. Throw in Iran's SA-15 surface-to-air missiles and you've got a tough air-defense nut to crack. And remember ... an air campaign might be just a prelude to a ground invasion. Last year I stood on the Iraq-Iran border and listened to Iranian armored divisions throw down practice artillery barrages. The Tennessee National Guardsmen I was with (the 278th cavalry regiment equipped with M-1 Abrams tanks) admitted that they couldn't punch through that border if they wanted to.
We must find a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions.
P.S. -- This discussion of Cooper's article includes some interesting insights.
Cargo Chaos: Key West's Revenge
The military is supposed to be one big, happy family these days. But in The Hill, Roxana Tiron reports on yet another episode of inter-service rivalry that's costing the Defense Department big bucks and compromising capabilities.
Today in Iraq, the military is minimizing its convoy presence by moving the materiel and people through the air instead. In many situations, such as flying mail between FOBs, it is not efficient to use Air Force's C-130. That's why the military is relying heavily on its fleet of intra-theater cargo airplanes, like the Army's C-23 Sherpa and C-12 Huron. [The Air Force left the intra-theater business when it retired the C-27 Spartans after Panama Canal handover.] However, the C-23s and C-12s are rapidly wearing out. So the Army went looking for the replacement Future Cargo Aircraft, to be fielded in 2008.
Because the Air Force had similar requirements, DoD merged the two into the now Joint Cargo Aircraft. However, there is a mismatch in institutional priorities. The Army needs the aircraft in 2008, but the Air Force, having C-130s, is waiting until 2010. So for the 2007 budget request, the Army requested $113m for the JCA, while the Air Force $15m. The Airland Subcommittee asked the Air Force about the status of the JCA program, and the Air Force responded that "it is nowhere near buying the aircraft." Thus the subcommittee cut $109m from the Army budget. (Huh? It doesn't make sense to me either.) Fortunately, the House did not make the same mistake. Hopefully they'll fix the problem in conference.
This entire screwup is another sad legacy of the Key West Agreement, which divided up the skies between the Army, Air Force, and Navy. It's time we scrap it, and start over again.
Because of the Key West Agreement, the Army and Air Force shares the air lift function, the Army intra-theater, and the Air Force inter-theater. However, in today's non-linear battlefield, it's difficult to tell where to draw the "theater" line. So when the Army initiated the FCA, the Air Force felt compelled to protect its turf in the air lift business by joining the program, and then delayed the program by dragging its feet on its portion of the joint requirement. I think it was instructive to note that, only after the Army has announced the request for proposal for the FCA, did the Air Force start making noise about its similar requirements, yet did not have its set of requirement ready right away. What was the Air Force rep on the JROC doing? Isn't it his job to tell the Air Force before the Army announces its RFP?
In the 1960s, the Air Force did the same thing by appropriating the intra-theater C-123s from the Army using the same arguments, and then promptly retired the fleet. Similarly, the Air Force took over the CAS function from the Army, and has let it atrophy ever since. Just look at the ongoing attempts to sandbag the A-10 fleet. Today the Air Force flies F-16s to conduct the CAS surveillance mission for convoys in Iraq. As David Axe noted earlier, the Air Force is moving its focus toward the deep strike arena and moving away from CAS as it recasts the AF J-UCAS into a deep strike platform.
We need to abolish the Key West Agreement. Obviously, the Air Force has no institutional interest in either the CAS nor intra-theater lift functions. The Air Force needs to get out of the way and give A-10s to the Army. The Air Force needs to stop stalling JCA and let the Army buy as soon as possible. The Air Force can get in on the order later after it has completed its requirement process. Afterall, the AF is already using the C-130 to fulfill most of its intra-theater requirements anyway. The Army has a war to fight and the institutional Air Force needs to understand that.
-- Jimmy Wu
Stealth Fighter's Costs Soar
The Pentagon has a motto for its next-generation attack jet, the Joint Strike Fighter: "Lethal, Survivable, Supportable, Affordable." But the military may want to think about modifying that a bit, now that each JSF is going to cost $82.1 million, according to Defense News. Just a few months ago, the head of the JSF program, Rear Admiral Steven Enewold, told me that the most expensive variant of the plane would come in at about $60 million.
The JSF is designed to replace everything from Harrier jump jets to F-16s to Super Hornets with a single class of fighter. At a projected $256 billion, it's already the most expensive weapons program in Pentagon history.
But the fighter makes sense in today's increasingly-tight budgets, RADM Enewold said, because the stealthy JSF not only could beat the air defenses of the future -- it could knock out guerilla hideouts, too.
But that fiscal logic, he acknowledged, hinged on keeping the cost per plane down. Otherwise, sending this high-performance jet after insurgents would be like putting out a fire with Dom Perignon. Even before the latest price jump, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigational arm, called the JSF’s original business plan "unexecutable." Wonder what they'll say about the program now?
UPDATE 9:10 AM: Here's some more budget news, all courtesy of Inside Defense:
* Army committed to troop cuts
* Operating costs could ground laser jet
* Rail gun not ready 'til 2020
* 2008 deadline for Future Combat Systems?
UPDATE 2:05 PM: This is huge, if it holds up. I'm guessing it won't. A House subcommittee has passed legislation to limit the DD(X) destroyer program "to just two ships," Defense News says.
Rising DD(X) costs have prompted Congress to cut the program repeatedly, from as many as 30 ships planned in the late 1990s to just seven this year. Originally, the ships were supposed to cost about $1 billion each. Last year, the Navy said it could build them for $3.3 billion apiece, but independent estimates put the price at $4 billion or more per ship.
The plan to halt the DD(X) buy at two would leave the Navy with a pair of ships that would serve mainly as demonstration models for a new generation of guided missile cruisers that would be built using the same hull.
not your daddy's strike fighter
There's a sea change taking place in air combat. Gone are the vast air armadas that waged largely independent campaigns over Kuwait and Iraq in 1991 and over Serbia in 1999. Today's aircraft fleets are much smaller, albeit more capable individually. And in this age of insurgencies, air power is increasingly an adjunct of ground power.
These trends plus breakthroughs in podded sensors, agile radars and datalinks have turned tactical aircraft into extensions of the ground-pounder's eyes and hands. Air Force F-16s, F-15s and A-10s, Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18s and Marine AV-8s fly over Iraq and Afghanistan in two-ship sections carrying infrared sensor pods and small GPS- and laser-guided bombs. They scout out ahead of the ground troops, deliver accurate fires when called upon and hang around to assess the damage while retaining the (rarely-needed) ability to fight other aircraft. In short, two-jet sections perform the entire range of air combat functions in single sorties. Just ten years ago that would've required a dozen jets.
By far the most important function these days is the scouting part. In mil-speak this is called Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or ISR. My coverage of Marine Corps All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 in Iraq touched on their ISR role. Now the Navy is in the game too, with two new F/A-18E/F Super Hornet squadrons flying from the equally-new U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier.
"Almost every flight that goes off the Reagan right now does nothing [over Iraq] but ISR with ATFLIR [sensor pod] systems,” said Capt. “BD” Gaddis, the Navy’s program manager for the Super Hornet.
Gaddis described a typical scenario over Iraq, with a new helmet-mounted capability as part of the situation. A Super Hornet pilot on a forward air controller mission spots enemy activity on the ground. His helmet, fitted with the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System — a system that slews a sensor on the aircraft to focus on whatever the pilot is looking at — automatically slews the electro-optical sensor in the ATFLIR pod. He designates the target on his cockpit display and its latitude and longitude are transmitted over the radio data link. Whoever is on the data net receives the target information.
“When they select ‘target designate,’ their radar, their ATFLIR, their helmet, all slew to that same point on the ground, and there is no talking,” Gaddis said. “It’s all machine-to-machine.”
The ATFLIRs have joined in combat over Iraq with similar sensor pods on the Marine Corps’ AV-8B Harrier II [and F/A-18D -- ed.] attack aircraft, the Navy’s F-14 strike fighters, and the Air Force’s F-15E and F-16 fighters.
Actually, cross the F-14 off that list, as the old bird flew its last operational sortie early this year. Today's Naval air force is built around the Super Hornet, which thanks to its helmet-mounted sight, Advanced Electronically-Scanned Array radar, generous power supply, sensor interfaces and large number of weapons hardpoints is more flexible and therefore better suited to today's operational environment than the hotrod F-14.
As far as tactical air forces go, these days the Navy is way ahead of the Air Force. Thanks to the flexible, $60-million Super Hornet, which the Navy has been building at the rapid clip of 40 per year since the mid-1990s, the Naval air force is healthy and useful. The Air Force, meanwhile, has struggled to build 20 $180-million F-22s annually in just the last few years and as a result is seeing the average age of its fighter force climb higher by the day. And while Super Hornets are supporting the troops in Iraq, F-22s are sitting on the tarmac at Langley Air Force Base without the sensors and weapons the ground troops need.
With F-22 production slashed to just 180 from the 380 the Air Force says it needs, the service is scrambling to figure out how to fill the gap.
The problem is that the current air superiority force of F-15C Eagles numbers more than 300 jets. To keep watch over the U.S. and South Korea plus provide enough jets for contigencies, the Air Force is going to have to fly some of its Eagles longer than expected.
Considering that the last C-model Eagle rolled off McDonnell Douglas' St. Louis production line 20 years ago and that the last major update was the Multi-Stage Improvement Program (MSIP) in the mid-90s, maintaining the F-15C is going to require structural mods and upgrades.
A roadmap of options for the remaining F-15Cs and Strike Eagles is nearly complete, [according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley]. That document is expected to outline needed upgrades, such as active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, for some F-15Cs that would allow them to detect cruise missiles. Raytheon officials have been pitching upgrades to the existing radars as well as new systems for the F-15.
Some folks in the Air Force figure, Hey, if we're going to tear these jets apart for major surgery, why not give them a ground-attack capability while we're at it? The idea is to turn old Eagles into 'Raptor Lites' (my term, not the Air Force's).
Aviation Week outed this plan in its infancy as far back as 2004:
To provide a "bridge" to the F/A-22's ground-attack capability, [then-Air Force Secretary James] Roche said the Air Force is considering upgrading part of its F-15C Eagle fleet to give the air-to-air fighter an improved ground-attack capability. Unlike the newer F-15E Strike Eagle, which performs air-to-ground as well as air-to-air missions, the F-15C Eagle saw little action in Iraq because there was almost no air-to-air combat.
"We found in the last conflict that we had C's flying around looking for Saddam Hussein's airplanes which never flew," he said. "Effectively, the C's were taking up ramp space."
The Air Force is looking at adding weapons and improving the radars on some of its F-15Cs so they could do air-to-ground missions in future conflicts. The upgraded F-15Cs might be called "Golden Eagles."
Air Force Times says as many as 200 F-15s could receive the modifications.
Glowing Planes, Hidden Bombers
This is the second in a two-part series on radioactive stealth from exotic weapons guru David Hambling. Check out part one here.
Back in the 60's, there was considerable work done on developing radioactive coatings which would have the double benefit of absorbing radar and reducing drag. We know that from the patents we looked at in part one. What aircraft would have had such coatings?
In the late 1950’s there had been several attempts to reduce the radar cross-section of the U2 spy plane under the name Project Rainbow, detailed here. These included the ‘trapeze’, an arrangement of poles and wires, and ‘wallpaper,’ material printed with with radar-aborbent circuitry. The results were not satisfactory – Kelly Johnson called the modified U2s ‘dirty birds’ because of the effect on their aerodynamics which lost them several thousand feet. Even worse, the ‘wallpaper’ caused overheating with the loss of one aircraft and the death of test pilot Robert Sieker.
A coating that reduced radar returns and improved aerodynamics would have been the answer – but at the price of a visible glow at night. So, were there any sightings of mysterious glowing U2s? A CIA report on the CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 states:
According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. (45) This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.
Why would anyone report a U2 as a UFO?
The early U-2s were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays from the sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. They often appeared as fiery objects to observers below.
I leave it to those who compile statistics on flying saucers to say how many glowing UFOs were sighted under these conditions and how many appeared to be luminous on their own account. Note also the wording in Patent 3,713,157 which says that the plasma cloud produces a combination of ‘absorbtion, reflection, refraction and diffraction’ across frequencies including visible spectrum, which would certainly alter the appearance of an aircraft, perhaps to the point of making it an unrecognisable blob.
A radioactive coating would be unlikely to be applied to the entire aircraft – as Martin Streetly of Jane’s pointed out to me, this would immediately block the aircraft's own radar, communications and navigation aids. However, a coating on the locations contributing most to radar returns – inlets and wing-body junction – would have a significant effect, and a coating along the leading edge would give the desired reduction in drag. It might even be possible to have coated surfaces which could be covered or uncovered as needed.
Given that the radioactive plasma coating was known to improve aerodynamics and stealthiness in the 1960’s, we would expect the next step to be a way of achieving the same benefits without radioactivity.
This brings us to the B-2, an aircraft with has long been the subject of speculation. Even respected aviation writer Bill Gunston has commented on suggestions that the B-2 employs a system which charges the leading wing edge to ‘millions of volts’. (Interestingly, most such speculation is tied up with ideas of ‘electrogravitics’, anti-gravity and alien technology, which belong firmly in the disinformation category).
This would chime with a comment in Ben Rich’s book about the Skunk Works . He could not believe that Northrop’s stealth bomber design was 10% more aerodynamically efficient than Lockheed’s competing design, which was externally similar (page 338 in the Warner edition). Perhaps Northrop were exagerating, as Rich suggests; but perhaps their plane had a secret advantage.
Many have commented on a photograph of a B-2 from Edwards AFB (published in Air Forces Monthly in October 2000) in which the wing seems to be enveloped in a faint glowing cloud. This was explained by the Air Force as water vapor, but some commentators have argued that such a cloud would not form simultaneously above and below the wing.
See also the discussion and perhaps anomalous picture here.
The USAF appears to have been using plasma aerodynamics for decades. The Russians certainly know all about it , as does anyone who has bought the technology off them. According to the patents it has additional benefits too – it can muffle the noise produced by engines as well as preventing contrails from forming.
The only people not enjoying its benefits are the civilian taxpayers who funded it in the first place.
(If you’re interested in more, there’s a chapter on secret aircraft and UFOs in my book Weapons Grade, out this week in paperback, and chapters on new military developments in other fields from nanotechnology to artificial intelligence).
Hampton Stephens is the former managing editor of Inside the Air Force. Now a graduate student at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, he's written for the Boston Globe, TechCentralStation.com and Air Force magazine. This is his first post for Defense Tech.
The years of delays were caused by the ignominious collapse of an ill-conceived Air Force scheme, first hatched in late-2001, to lease, rather than buy outright, Boeing "KC-767" tankers. That plan was the brain-child of former Air Force Secretary James Roche, who resigned in January 2005 in the wake of a number of scandals connected to the tanker plan.
Roche's idea was admirably elegant: by leasing tankers from a third-party (backed by private sector investors) rather than buying them outright and directly from Boeing, the Air Force could avoid the huge upfront costs normally incurred in developing and building aircraft. With the savings, the Air Force could then spend its money on buying shiny new planes -- like F-22 fighters -- rather than on mere replacements for its outdated tanker fleet.
The only problem: The leasing plan would not have saved the Air Force any money. It simply would have kicked the costs down the road, and its total cost -- around $21 billion -- would have far exceeded the cost of a traditional procurement program. Accountants at the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere soon got wise to this -- and unfortunately for Roche and every Air Force official involved, so did Sen. John McCain. Not only did McCain see the deal as a taxpayer ripoff, but the fact that it seemed a sweetheart deal for Boeing exercised McCain's longtime antipathy to corporate welfare, sending him into conniption fits. In numerous Senate hearings on the matter, McCain resembled a rabid bulldog. Even by McCain standards, his hammering of Roche and other Air Force officials was merciless.
To make a long story short, after McCain got his hands on DOD documents outlining the sordid history of the deal's genesis, Roche's wasn't the only head to roll. Former Air Force acquisition official Darlene Druyun, in fact, ended up in federal prision, convicted on conspiracy charges. It seems Ms. Druyun had secretly talked with Boeing officials about a cushy post-government job even as she negotiated the terms of the tanker deal on the government's behalf.
All this, of course, has been to the benefit of Airbus, Boeing's only real competitor in the market for the kind of wide-body aircraft the Air Force is seeking for conversion to tankers. Boeing's misdeeds were egregious enough that Airbus's European ownership no longer precluded it from competing, even for a Congress prone to vigorously defend the U.S. defense industrial base. Airbus's owners, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, promptly set up a North American subsidiary to capitalize on this good luck, and began making plans to build a U.S. manufacturing facility for its own tanker, the KC-330.
According to the Aerospace Daily story, the Air Force plans to issue a "request for proposals" for the tankers by September. So stay tuned. Because of its strange history, and the international stakes involved in the duel between Boeing and EADS, this competition may be much more interesting to watch than your average Defense Department contract fight.
This may just be my favorite Aviation Week article of all time. It explores, in depth, just how influential the B-2 bomber has been; a quarter-century later, plane-makers are still leveraging lessons they learned from building the thing.
Best of all -- and most unusually, for AvWeek -- the article is actually written (for the most part) in English, not in Pentagonese or aeronautical engineer patois. So we can all appreciate how freakin' cool the B-2 really is.
By almost any measure, the bomber's development was one of the largest, most technically complex, expensive and demanding programs in aerospace history. But the final product dramatically changed air combat forever. The B-2's "stealth" or low observability (LO) enables unprecedented penetration of enemy territory, essentially neutralizing very costly air defense systems. Precision weapon delivery in all weather conditions, day or night, changed an air warfare tenet from "sorties per target" to "numbers of targets per sortie." In the B-2's case, a single bomber carrying 16 conventional weapons can destroy 16 targets. The same mission once would have required dozens of aircraft dropping hundreds of bombs...
[The B-2 relied on] all-composite skins and structures--the first aircraft to use composites so extensively. This challenge was considered so risky that, for a while, a second team was set up to design an aluminum wing in parallel. A metal structure would have been much heavier, greatly reducing the B-2's range-payload capability. Thus, a
This article first appeared in AviationWeek.com.
The most excellent Bill Sweetman of 
however Russian air-refueling tactics, techniques and procedures are far below that of the US and her allies.
Early MANPADS like the Russian SA-7 are fairly primitive, homing in on exhaust heat. As they steer towards the hottest object in their field of view, they can easily be lured away by decoy flares (or even the sun).
"Sunni militants" have recently boasted that "'
Take the 
After months of flight testing, the Marine Corps and Osprey's makers, Boeing and Bell Textron, said VRS is no more of an issue than for other rotorcraft: something that pilots need to be aware of, but not something they should freak about. And it's not something that only test pilots are qualified to avoid. Contrast that with Lee Gaillard's critical report which depicts VRS as a monster waiting to devour any distracted pilot who wanders outside of a very narrow arrow of the flight envelope.
I haven't heard of any reason as to why we're losing more lately, but we also haven't lost any in a long time prior to this - I think it's reflective of somewhat of the odds catching up to us and an increased combat operations tempo.
The 
Uh-oh. America's brand-spankin', new, 
Apache ably fulfills its primary role, which is conducting anti-tank ambushes in the deep battle against enemy armor formations in approach march. However, it is doubtful if we will ever see a hostile enemy armor formations in an approach march situation in this century. The Army's needs will be close air support, armed reconnaissance, and helicopter escort, which Apache does right now. However 
Sometimes they buzz my apartment on the summit of Columbia Heights in northwest Washington, D.C. They're bright red with white stripes and black noses, and they make a noise like giant lawnmowers. They're Eurocopter 
Feel like you've lived a wee bit too long? Looking for a spectacular way out -- one that'll keep your family crying in disgust for years on end?
Boeing's 
When the Air Force threatened last year to cap production of Boeing's 
So I'm a tacair junkie. Sue me. And of all the U.S. tactical air forces, the Marines' small force flying Boeing F/A-18 Hornets and Boeing AV-8B Harriers is my favoritest. These guys pull off minor miracles every day with ancient airplanes, a tiny budget and operational commitments (in 
The Blackbird, which was first retired in 1990 then briefly resurrected between 1995 and 1997, reached its Mach-3 top speed by way of its hybrid Pratt & Whitney J-58 engines, which featured a conventional turbojet engine installed inside a ramjet optimized for supersonic flight. At low speeds, the turbojet did most of the work; at high speed the turbojet throttled back and the ramjet took over.
A crew of Air Force-funded companies has a new approach: paint-on antennas that can be slopped right on the side of an airship. The goop is "a combination of polymer-based dielectrics and highly conductive paint," 
"Boeing's proposal relied heavily on a 
Not that he has a ton of proof. "Hint[s]" and guesswork, mostly. The new construction at Groom Lake must mean something, he figures. And then there are those "obvious... significant gaps in the military’s known aviation arsenal -- gaps that the Pentagon can reasonably be assumed to be actively, if quietly, trying to fill."
Unless you count some unexplained sonic booms or the uninformed testimony of one amateur plane spotter (who was probably, unknowingly, looking at a 
Truth be told, we have more than 180 very capable long-range bombers, many of them stealthy, plus 50 F-117s and 60 out of an eventual 180 Raptors. We took down Iraq's air defenses in 2003 with just a small percentage of the bomber fleet.
Falcon – a word that evokes power, speed, lethality. Then why did the Air Force’s latest FALCON fall out the back of a C-17 at 32,000 feet?
Enter the Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin 
In recent months, the Army has let contracts for new light utility helicopters and new 
Some of the same technologies that the U.S. military used to 
Since Wednesday, Israeli warplanes have systematically bombed roads, bridges, television and radio stations and the runways at the Beirut airport. These attacks have effectively isolated Lebanon at the price of around 
25 F-15I Ra'am (essentially 
Marine Corps News 
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter 
If, God help us, the stand-off does turn violent, U.S. air power will play a 
By the time the JSF enters Marine Corps service in large numbers, the service's jets will be around 25 years old on average. That's old for a naval jet. But when you talk about aircraft age, there's calendar age and then there's fatigue age. What with all the hard use in hot, sandy Iraq and on the Navy's carriers (to alleviate Navy force cuts, the Marines contribute several Hornet squadrons to carrier air wings), the Marines jets "feel" a lot older than they actually are.
The program is called ISIS, short for "
Although it's just one piece of a much larger [Time-Critical Targeting] infrastructure, a program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has made quantum leaps in delivering high-speed, Internet-protocol-based communications to front-line air and ground combat platforms. This Tactical Targeting Networking Technology (TTNT) program recently proved its potential during the 2006 
But during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Air Force pioneered the prosecution of what it calls Time Sensitive Targets, or TSTs. Since then, the Navy and Marine Corps have gotten in on the game too, and these days, over Iraq, it's typical for jets to launch with only the vaguest idea of what's out there. New sensors and weapons, high-tech surveillance drones and better training have resulted in a 
The need is definitely there. The vast distances between allied airbases and missions deep within Afghanistan and Iraq affects the 
Today in Iraq, the military is minimizing its convoy presence by moving the materiel and people through the air instead. In many situations, such as flying mail between FOBs, it is not efficient to use Air Force's 
The Pentagon has a motto for its next-generation attack jet, the 
By far the most important function these days is the scouting part. In mil-speak this is called Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or ISR. My 
Considering that the last C-model Eagle rolled off McDonnell Douglas' St. Louis production line 20 years ago and that the last major update was the Multi-Stage Improvement Program (
By almost any measure, the bomber's development was one of the largest, most technically complex, expensive and demanding programs in aerospace history. But the final product dramatically changed air combat forever. The B-2's "stealth" or low observability (LO) enables unprecedented penetration of enemy territory, essentially neutralizing very costly air defense systems. Precision weapon delivery in all weather conditions, day or night, changed an air warfare tenet from "sorties per target" to "numbers of targets per sortie." In the B-2's case, a single bomber carrying 16 conventional weapons can destroy 16 targets. The same mission once would have required dozens of aircraft dropping hundreds of bombs...
