March 16, 2024 | International, C4ISR
EU sprinkles $560 million over defense firms to grow ammunition output
Most of the money will go toward the production of explosives and powder, officials in Brussels said.
August 16, 2019 | International, Aerospace
A-10 Enhanced Wing Assembly Replacement Program Comes To An End
A-10s Get New Wings
Workers at the Ogden Air Logistics Complex at Hill Air Force Base have installed the last of 173 new wings on A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft, finalizing a project that started in 2011 with aircraft 80-0173. The ALC's 571st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron swapped wings on 162 A-10s as part of the A-10 Enhanced Wing Assembly replacement program. The remaining 11 were installed at Osan Air Base in the Republic of Korea. The new wings are expected to last for up to 10,000 equivalent flight hours without a depot inspection. In addition, a better wire harness design was created for easier wing removal and to lessen the chance of damaging the wing during the process.
“From a warfighter point of view, bringing this program to a successful conclusion was a significant accomplishment for the entire enterprise team,” said Stephen Zaiser, 571st AXMS director. Working on an aircraft that has been flying for nearly 40 years wasn't without challenges. The modifications included having to make new parts for the fuselage and having to bring other A-10 parts up from the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.
“At the end of the program, making sure we had all the pieces and parts that we needed to make that happen required a really significant team effort,” Zaiser said. “I think the fact that we produced the aircraft so successfully is a testament to the whole team, the special program office, Boeing and others that were a part of making it all work.”
Lt. Col. Ryan Richardson, 514th Flight Test Squadron commander and A-10 test pilot, flew the functional check flight on the last A-10 to receive the new wings to deem the aircraft airworthy.
“It flew great and passed all the FCF checks,” Richardson said. “It's unusual to have an airplane in production for as long as this one was and have it come out and fly as well as this one did.”
Introduced into the U.S. Air Force aircraft inventory in 1976, the venerable A-10 is the only production-built aircraft for close air support. The aircraft was made to fly close to the ground in support of friendly ground troops, drop heavy loads of weapons, attacks armored vehicles and tanks, and can be called in to attack enemy ground forces. With heavy stresses put on the wings over the weapon system's lifetime and with its full-service life still unknown, the Air Force decided to replace some of the fleet's wings in order for the weapon system to remain airworthy. In 2007, Boeing was awarded a $1.1 billion contract to build replacement wings at its Macon, Georgia, plant that will allow the aircraft to continue flying into the late 2030s.
“The A-10 Special Program Office, in partnership with the Ogden ALC, is poised to keep the aircraft flying for the foreseeable future,” said Michael Hackett, A-10 SPO chief engineer.
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=e3fe8bb4-6d74-4d69-845e-d6e204fcfbe7
On the same subject
-
-
February 5, 2020 | International, Naval
Navy awards a $178M contract to update GPS systems
By: Nathan Strout The Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific has awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a $178 million contract for to modernize GPS systems in partnership with the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, the company reported Jan. 24. The Naval Information Warfare Center heads the Navy's research, development, and engineering efforts for space systems, and its Positioning, Navigation and Timing Division oversees research and development for the service's navigation sensors and systems. Under the contract, Booz Allen will support the modernization of the GPS architecture, specifically through programs such as Military GPS User Equipment, GPS III and the Next Generation Operational Control System. In other words, the company will help the Navy and Air Force modernize all three segments of the GPS enterprise, from the user terminal to the ground system to the new GPS III satellites. Booz Allen will provide system definition, requirements synchronization, capability improvement, cybersecurity engineering, platform integration and testing and acquisition program management. The contract comes at a key moment for GPS, with the first GPS III satellite on orbit and online and the military working to ensure that ground systems are capable of fully interacting with and utilizing the new satellites' more advanced features, including increased accuracy and stronger anti-jamming capabilities. While the Next Generation Operational Control System being custom built to work with the GPS III satellites is years behind its original schedule, the Air Force has contract with Lockheed Martin to provide a contingency operations software update that allows the current ground segment to work with the new, more advanced satellites. According to a Jan. 30 report from the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, slips in scheduling to all three segments of the GPS enterprise have caused testing delays. Those delays, especially to the user segment, could lead to integration issues for those platforms developed to rely on GPS. “The Air Force has improved the GPS Enterprise schedule by addressing schedule and performance risks; however, articulation of program risks with stakeholders continues to be incomplete, increasing the probability of unmitigated risks causing further program problems and delays,” the report warned. The Air Force plans to conduct operational testing of the enterprise in 2020. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/02/04/navy-awards-a-178m-contract-to-update-gps-systems
-
October 12, 2018 | International, Aerospace
To up fighter readiness levels, Pentagon looks to retire older planes and fix supply chains
By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — With Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis issuing new guidancedemanding readiness for tactical air assets increase in just one year, the Pentagon is openly acknowledging that older planes will have to be retired and cannibalized for parts to make it happen. The department will also look to overhaul how it handles its supply chain, according to the department's No. 2 official. In a September memo, first reported by Defense News, Mattis ordered the Air Force, Navy and Marines to get the Pentagon's fleets of F-16, F-18, F-22 and F-35 fighters to a minimum of 80 percent mission ready. That would represent a major jump in readiness over a short period of time, raising skepticism amongst analysts. From a pure numbers-on-paper standpoint, the easiest way for getting readiness rates up on the fleet would involve retiring older, less ready aircraft — essentially increasing the percentage of good-to-go planes by reducing the overall size of the fleets. Such a move may not be popular on the Hill, which routinely complains about the size of the military compared with previous eras. But it's a logical step being endorsed by both Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps chief of staff. “You gotta get rid of airplanes. At some point, you gotta get rid of the old ones,” Neller told reporters Wednesday at a Defense Writer's Group event, when asked how he would hit that 80 percent mark. Neller added that such a move has to be part of a broader spectrum of moves, including better quality parts from vendors, being more efficient with maintainers, and adjusting the flying hours for pilots to make sure the wings aren't being worn off on jets. “It's not going to be a single thing, so we've got to do our part,” he added. Speaking to reporters at the AUSA conference the same day, Shanahan seemed to zero in on the oldest Navy jets as ones that could be retired. “Well, when you look at the size of the fleet of the F-18s, you got [F-18A models] out there, then you look at what it would take to restore them to a certain level of readiness, you might say it's much easier just to retire those,” he said. “So, I mean, there's a mix of answers.” “It probably doesn't make sense to generate a lot of activity to make something that is older more reliable, but when you think about the joint strike fighter and the hundreds of those that we're going to take, 80 percent should be the minimum, OK? It shouldn't be some aspirational goal, it should be the minimum.” However, he pushed back at the idea that anyone will “game the system” to get those readiness percentages up. Commercial practices In the memo, Mattis specifically notes the commercial aviation industry is able to maintain higher readiness rates and directs the service to look that way for inspiration. “I am confident in our department's ability to generate additional capacity from our current aircraft inventory, alongside the commercial aviation industry's sustainment of high availability rates,” Mattis wrote. “As we seek to achieve our goals, we can learn from industry's benchmarks for measuring speed, cost and mission capability, as well as its best practices for implementing a sustainable, Department-wide system.” Shanahan, who will be the overall leader of the readiness rate improvement efforts, is a longtime Boeing executive who worked directly on a number of commercial jet production programs. And to him, there are absolutely lessons that can be drawn from passenger aviation. “A jet engine is a jet engine; no one will convince me otherwise,” he said. “I've lived in both worlds, I've been on more airplanes than anybody in the United States, I know these things, OK?” The deputy said his focus was on helping the service develop “methods, systems and practices” that will lead to systemic changes in how maintenance is done and provide dividends for years to come. “When you look at the F-18s, this is the same size of fleet as Southwest has. It's not a super-large fleet, they're all basically the same,” Shanahan noted. “So how do we put in place, you know, the support practices and the parts so that people aren't working as hard?” The need to keep part quality and quantity up were on display just a day after Shanahan and Neller's comments. On Thursday, the Pentagon ordered a temporary stop to flying the F-35 as it investigated a fuel tube inside the engines of the fleet. That same day, an F-22 crashed on its side following a landing gear malfunction. During his talk with reporters, the Navy was singled out as already having committed to improving their methodologies. And he called out the need to “restructure” how both the Navy and Air Force handle their supply chains — something he said will ultimately bleed over into maintenance beyond the four selected jet fleets. “The real end game to me is as a department, how do we end up with a single sustainment system? And what was good about this is that once you get the F-18 right, it spills over into the P-8, because they're side-by-side, so [the P-8 maintainers] going to be like, ‘Those guys, they're working a lot less hard than we are and they're getting much better results, why don't we just do it that way?' “And then as people see the methods they apply to shipbuilding or ship maintenance,” he added. Shawn Snow of Marine Corps Times contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/10/11/to-up-fighter-readiness-levels-pentagon-looks-to-retire-older-planes-and-fix-supply-chains