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  July 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  U.S. Army Upgrades Vision For Future Vertical Lift Programs

  Steve Trimble In piecing together a delicate plan to field two advanced rotorcraft simultaneously within a decade, the U.S. Army chose its priorities carefully. The Army could load the first Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) and Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) with advanced new systems and weapons needed for operations in the 2030s or keep to existing or highly mature technologies and field both aircraft years earlier. Ultimately, the Army selected an acquisition strategy based on the latter. Increment 1 versions of the FLRAA and FARA are now scheduled to enter service together in the third quarter of fiscal 2030. More advanced Increment 2 versions of both should enter service in 2034 and 2035, respectively. U.S. Army FVL Vision: Competition, open systems and incremental upgrades Empty weight and costs emerge as early concerns But the key to fielding both increments for each new type on time may depend less on rotor systems and drivetrains than on software architecture and resolving industry concerns about government demands for data rights. In a series of briefings to defense contractors the week of July 13, Army leaders laid out a vision for using the FLRAA and FARA contracts to change the aviation branch's relationship with suppliers. The Army is seeking to make the aircraft and mission systems installed on both as common as possible, with a modular open-systems architecture (MOSA) allowing the service to rapidly upgrade payloads, subsystems and design rights, thereby enabling a perpetual cycle of competitive bidding. Although the Army's commitment to the new industrial model was clear, the service's acquisition leaders acknowledged that such a strategy will force companies at all levels of the supply chain to adopt a new, unproven business model. “Most of you are thinking, ‘OK, a modular systems approach is a nice buzz term, but how do I sell that to a board of directors; how do I sell it to the [company] leadership?' Because I can potentially give up all of the future revenue streams,” says Pat Mason, the program executive officer for Army aviation. “So we owe you greater answers on that, because it's the question that you're asking, and we have to understand your perspective. From that, we then have to develop a clear business case that allows you to move forward.” In purely aircraft performance terms, the FLRAA and FARA requirements do not compromise on performance. Any of the four candidates selected by the Army in March to compete for both contracts—Bell's V-280 and Boeing/Sikorsky's SB-1 for the FLRAA; Bell's 360 Invictus and Sikorsky's Raider X for the FARA—would enter service in 2030 exceeding the 170-kt. speed limit for most conventional helicopters. But despite appearances, speed is not everything in the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program that spawned the FLRAA and FARA contract competitions. The FVL initiative is seeking to introduce a revolutionary leap in how the Army acquires the evolving array of software, electronics, sensors and weapons that come with an aircraft and represent an increasingly important share of its overall capability. With schedule and cost driving the acquisition strategy, the Army will seek to deliver the FARA and FLRAA with as many common electronic systems and payloads as possible, along with a MOSA for software. To minimize schedule and cost risk, FARA and FLRAA aircraft entering service in 2030 will be designed with electronics and systems already available or due to reach a high level of maturity by 2024. More advanced systems capabilities still at the laboratory stage mid-decade will be considered for Increment 2 versions of both types. The Increment 2 version of the FLRAA is scheduled for delivery in fiscal 2034. A year later, the FARA program plans to field an Increment 2 version. Limiting development activity during Increment 1 to the airframe is the Army's goal. “One of the key things we're trying to do with Increment 1 is get the ‘truck' right—the vehicle,” says Jason Lucas, the Army's FLRAA technical division chief. “We need to get us an air vehicle platform that can take us into the future. The other thing that we absolutely have to get right is our architecture, and our modular open-system approach to enable us to integrate advanced technologies [and] keep up with the pace of threats. “One of the things you didn't hear me say is that we need to develop a lot of advanced mission system equipment, a lot of new development” in Increment 1, Lucas adds. “We are going to take existing mission equipment.” The Army's risk-averse approach comes after decades of frustration over new aircraft development. Three failed attempts to field a scout helicopter to perform a mission similar to FARA's weigh on current program leaders. Col. Gregory Fortier, FARA project manager, notes that as a younger officer he had been told to expect an assignment in a Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 squadron, a Bell ARH-70 squadron and an Armed Aerial Scout test squadron. “As we know, those three did not come to fruition,” Fortier says, adding that avoiding a fourth program failure requires having “critical and difficult conversations” with industry up front. Such discussions came up during the industry day event. As a possible consequence of relying on existing maturing systems and payloads for the Increment 1 versions of the FARA and FLRAA, Army program managers are growing concerned about aircraft weight estimates. “I'm still seeing very heavy empty weights across our air vehicles, which I don't enjoy,” says Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen, director of the Army's FVL cross-functional team. FLRAA and FARA technology “should be lighter and lower-cost,” he says. “You all may say I'm asking for the impossible, but I think it's nuanced. At the end of the day, we're in a hypercompetitive environment with budgets, and if we don't bring things in that are leap-ahead and fully capture the deflationary nature of the technology and get lighter and cheaper, I think we may find ourselves on the outside looking in.” Another difficult conversation inside the programs concerns the Army's plan to demand ownership of more of the intellectual property and data rights for technologies installed in the aircraft. As each of the armed services seeks a greater share of the ownership rights on future weapon systems, the defense industry is being forced to adapt to a new paradigm in the government-industry relationship. “We realize this runs contrary to some of the legacy business models, such as, ‘Here's a box. We want to integrate it and then we want to sustain it for 30 years,' ” says Michael “Ski” Horrocks, integration project manager for FLRAA and FARA mission systems. “So we do have teams working right now brainstorming how to create new collaborative and sustainable business models.” The in-service date for the FLRAA and FARA may be a decade away, but the Army is already facing critical decision points by year-end. The most important is creation of the FVL Architecture Framework (FAF) to define the interfaces and standards for the common mission systems architecture of both. Last year, the Army stood up a body composed of military, industry and academic experts called the Architecture Control Working Group to deliver the FAF by November 2020 for scheduled approval the following month. “We see Increment 2 as an opportunity to provide advanced mission system solutions to help tackle some of the most significant threats and integrate some innovation,” Lucas says. The Army's schedule calls for selecting the FLRAA developer in fiscal 2023 and the FARA prime contractor in fiscal 2024, with limited user tests of production aircraft beginning for each program four years later. But a lesson from the Army's painful experience with new aircraft development suggests little tolerance for costly technology, even if the contractors can deliver better performance. “We can develop and design and deliver this tremendous capability at the end of this fiscal 2028 timeframe,” Fortier says. “But if it's not affordable, they're walking away from it.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/us-army-upgrades-vision-future-vertical-lift-programs

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  October 29, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Does major joint military procurement really work in the Baltics?

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — On paper, the Baltic nations appear to have closely aligned defense modernization needs that make the joint procurement of advanced military equipment a no-brainer. After all, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have historically shared national interests, are currently facing a similar threat from Russia and each have relatively small defense budgets. Joint procurement would drive down costs for large defense articles by allowing the smaller Baltic nations to buy in greater numbers. It would also allow the countries to share maintenance responsibilities, which would save money. And it would drive greater interoperability in countering an adversary's simultaneous attack all three nations. But then there's the reality of the situation. “I think there are many misperceptions on Baltic integration,” Janis Garisons, state secretary for the Latvian Ministry of Defence, told Defense News during a September visit to Washington. “I think this is a little bit of a wrong perception that there is a lot of added value in those common procurements.” Garisons, the No. 2 civilian at the ministry, said he is not against joint procurement efforts, but believes such initiatives work best when purchase ammunition, small arms, or chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense equipment — purchases already in the works among the European neighbors. But for major defense articles, the legal and logsitical challenges of coordinating a trilateral contract, combined with a lack of major savings, means it might not be worth it. “We do common procurements when it's possible, but I have to say, I haven't seen much savings on those because even if you combine all three numbers, it's not like the U.S. buying together with the U.K. — thousands and thousands. It is still numbers that are very small,” Garisons said. Lithuania's vice minister for defense, Giedrimas Jeglinskas, agrees that joint procurement of major defense articles may never be feasible among the three Baltic nations. “Joint procurement, multinational procurement — I don't think it exists that much in the world,” Jeglinskas told Defense News during a visit to Washington in October. “Most of the programs out there are joint development. But when you talk about something like three-country procurement, it has been really hard for us to achieve.” Like Garisons, Jeglinskas said smaller transactions have proven successful, specifically the joint procurement of mines with Estonia and gas masks with Latvia. But even then, “the syncing of the budgets and the procurement plans for each country [is difficult]. Say we are ready to buy gas masks this year, but the Estonians may buy them two years ahead. And that's just the small things.” Kusti Salm, the director of the Estonian government's Centre for Defence Investment, told Defense News that joint procurement among the Baltic states is challenging given the need to sync up defense budget cycles, noting that “the amounts we procure are small and do not always bring us the economies of scale.” While the idea of joint procurement is popular, there is a “genuine disconnect” between the idea and the reality, according to Chris Skaluba, a former Pentagon official who is now the director of the Atlantic Council's Transatlantic Security Initiative. Skaluba points to two reasons for this: The first is that while the Baltic states are concerned about Russia, both Latvia and Estonia are more directly concerned with the threat of “little green men” — a reference to masked soldiers in green uniforms who led Russia-backed separatists in the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine. The concern steps from the high populations of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia. In response, those two countries are focuses on homeland defense, whereas Lithuania is focused on resisting a direct Russian invasion — an approach that requires a different set of equipment. Secondly, America's famously convoluted security cooperation process makes trilateral procurement from the Western ally tricky. Small purchases of ammunition or night vision goggles are doable, but the more advanced the gear, the higher the costs and the stricter the regulations. Throw in three separate national budget cycles and the process “can be daunting and just not worth the squeeze when you're through with all that work,” Skaluba said. “Do I think all sides could be more determined and find creative ways to do this? I do. I think maybe something that is technically difficult but not super expensive, like unmanned aerial vehicles, would be a good test case,” Skaluba said. “But I'm also sympathetic that because of how regulations work, the congressional requirements, having to work through [the U.S. Department of] State and the Pentagon, any major purchase is difficult. Trying to do that times three is three times as hard.” National priorities The question of maintenance is another issue for joint procurement in Garisons' eyes. The idea of having shared maintenance facilities spread across the area — for example, one tank depot in Lithuania and one helicopter depot in Estonia to service all three Baltic nations — creates vulnerabilities during an invasion, he said. “I would be very cautious assuming that we will be able to freely import, to bring everything, all supplies needed. Our goal is to ensure that all the basic things, like small arms, ammunition, the maintenance of vehicles, the maintenance of major equipment — that can be done locally,” he said. “For operational reasons we can't have shared maintenance because during wartime we will not be able to bring vehicles, for example, to any other state. “It complicates common procurements because it is not so easy to agree on joint procurements, where the maintenance base will be held and other issues. For us, I think of paramount importance to have a maintenance base.” Ultimately, Latvian officials and their regional counterparts are making informed decisions about their respective country's security, Skaluba said. “These are all really serious governments. They really feel a threat. They know precisely how they think this would work in a crisis situation and what they need to have available to them,” he said. “At a strategic level, of course it [joint procurement] makes sense, but if you're a politician or defense planner or minister of defense, your first responsibility is to defend your country. And of course you want to make sure you have resources available to you.” While skeptical of joint procurement efforts, Garisons was supportive of joint education and training across the region, calling Baltic military cooperation “as strong as any you can find.” He noted that the three nations share a high-level military education center, the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia. Estonia's Salm considers interoperability among the Baltic states critical to successful joint procurement efforts. “Defense in Estonia cannot be separated from defense in Latvia and Lithuania, as we form a single region from the military point of view,” he said. One example of that raised by both Salm and Garisons is the creation of NATO's Multinational Division North, a headquarters operation organized by Latvia, Estonia and Denmark. Garisons called it “the first attempt when we will have joint command structure, which will be able also to feed into the NATO command structure.” The command-and-control aspect of joint operations is vital, he added. A pair of major exercises in Latvia toward the end of the year will serve as test beds for the NATO division, which is expected to reach initial operational capability in early 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/10/28/does-major-joint-military-procurement-really-work-in-the-baltics/

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  July 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval

  US Navy to develop drone deployment strategy

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy's top officer has ordered his staff to develop a comprehensive strategy to field unmanned systems in the air, on the water and under the sea over the coming years. Dubbed “unmanned campaign plan,” it looks to tie together all the disparate programs into a coherent way forward, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told Defense News in a July 16 interview. “We've got ... a family of unmanned systems we're working on,” Gilday said. “Undersea we've got extra-large, large and medium [unmanned underwater vehicles]; on the surface we have small, medium and large [unmanned surface vessels]; and in the air we have a number of programs. “What I've asked the N9 to do is come to me with a campaign plan that ties all those together with objectives at the end. I've got a bunch of horses in the race, but at some point I have to put my money down on the thoroughbred that's going to take me across the finish line so I can make an investment in a platform I have high confidence in and that I can scale.” Gilday's drive toward an unmanned campaign plan comes after two consecutive years of congressional criticism that the Navy is forging ahead too quickly on unmanned systems without first having designed or developed critical new technologies and mechanical systems. The criticisms have resulted in marks in legislation that deliberately slows down the development of the systems that both the Navy and the Office of Secretary of Defense have said are necessary to offset a rising China without breaking the bank. In the interview, Gilday acknowledged the Navy hadn't adequately mapped out its unmanned future in a way that would inspire confidence. “What I've found is that we didn't necessarily have the rigor that's required across a number of programs that would bring those together in a way that's driven toward objectives with milestones,” Gilday said. “If you took a look at [all the programs], where are there similarities and where are there differences? Where am I making progress in meeting conditions and meeting milestones that we can leverage in other experiments? At what point do I reach a decision point where I drop a program and double down on a program that I can accelerate?” In the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, currently working its way through Congress, lawmakers appear poised to restrict funding for procurement of any large unmanned surface vessels, or LUSV, until the Navy can certify it has worked out an appropriate hull as well as mechanical and electrical system, and that the design can autonomously operate for 30 consecutive days. Furthermore, the Navy must demonstrate a reliable operating system and ensure any systems integrated into the platform — sonars, radars, etc. — are likewise functioning and reliable, according the text of the subcommittee's markup of the fiscal 2021 NDAA, Congress's annual defense policy bill, which was obtained by Defense News. In short, the language would mean the Navy could not spend procurement dollars on a large unmanned surface vessel until it has a working model, and it may not try to develop those technologies on the fly. In a June interview with Defense News, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., head of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, said the panel supports unmanned system development but doesn't want the Navy repeat mistakes. “The message I want people to understand is that we fully support the move toward unmanned, whether that's on the surface or undersea,” Courtney said. “But we want to make sure that some of the real nuts and bolts issues ... are worked out before we start building large unmanned platforms. “We want to make sure that, again, we don't end up with situations like LCS [the littoral combat ship] where we're trying to figure out what the mission is at the same time we're building them.” Conceptualize and control That's a criticism the CNO hears and is working to address. Gilday is pushing on two major efforts to get better answers on what the Navy is trying to accomplish with unmanned systems: a concept of operations, and a network to control them with. “The concept of operations that the fleet is working on right now will be delivered in the fall, and that talks conceptually about how we intend to employ unmanned in distributed maritime operations,” Gilday said, referencing a Navy plan to physically expand its maneuvers to complicate enemy targeting rather than aggregate around an aircraft carrier. But beyond how unmanned tech will fit into a distributed fleet, the Navy is looking at where those systems should be located and how they will be supported. That's leading the Navy to consider stationing the systems and support elements overseas. “What would a day-to-day laydown look like of unmanned forward?” Gilday asked. “The Navy has got to be forward: For obvious reasons we don't want the fight back here; the Navy exists to operate forward. That's where we need to be in numbers. And with unmanned, if you are not there at the right time, you are irrelevant. “There also has to be a number of unmanned [systems] forward. I can't just decide to rally unmanned out of San Diego or in the Pacific northwest at a time when they'll be too late to need.” The other big piece of the puzzle is something Gilday has previously referred to as akin to a new “Manhattan Project,” a rapid, well-funded project to field a network that can control all the various unmanned and networked systems, sensors and weapons. And to do that, he's linking in with the Air Force's Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2, effort. “The other piece of this is the Navy Tactical Grid,” Gilday explained. “Coming into the job, the projections for the Navy Tactical Grid was for delivery in about 2035. I knew that was way, way too late. “So, on a handshake with [Air Force Chief of Staff] Gen. [David] Goldfein, I said: ‘Look, I am all in, and my vision is that the Navy Tactical Grid would be the naval plug into JADC2.' So the Navy Tactical Grid ends up being a very critical element of the unmanned campaign plan because it becomes the main artery to operate those platforms. “Without it, I have a bunch of unmanned that I shouldn't be building because I can't control it very well.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/07/21/the-us-navy-is-trying-to-get-its-act-together-on-unmanned-systems/