Air Force to deploy Ospreys in weeks as post-crash groundings lift

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  May 22, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  BAE Makes Big Bet On Small Companies: FAST Labs

  By THERESA HITCHENS BOSTON: BAE Systems, the third-largest defense contractor in the world, is funding innovative small startups to get innovative technology quickly to its Defense Department customers. Through an initiative called FAST Labs, BAE is both providing seed capital directly to startups and funding a number of accelerators to widen the potential market. The standard tactics include simply buying a smaller company to gain its technology or investing in a startup in order to control the direction of its research. Instead, BAE's FAST Labs is attempting to serve as a middle man connecting startups with DoD customers and BAE's various units. “By giving [the startups] the feasibility money, we can expose them to those harsh requirements that exist in the aerospace and defense world, but we can also in turn do social engineering inside our company,” Jerry Wohletz, the vice president and general management of BAE FAST Labs, told me. The idea is to introduce the startups' designs to BAE's factory and engineering work force, he said, “because we need to get it out of R&D land and get it into those products and services” that BAE knows its defense customers are looking for. FAST Labs is focused on research related to next-generation electronics, intelligent autonomous systems, cyber, electronic warfare, and sensors and processing. Wohletz explained that BAE does in-house research on capabilities that are solely of interest to DoD and the Intelligence Community, but it is reaching out to startups in order to partner on products and services based on commercial market needs. “A lot of aerospace and defense companies have venture capital funds,” Wohletz said. “That's not what we are trying to do. This is not an equity play to drive bottom line performance. We talk here about innovation velocity. We want speed to market.” Therefore, BAE is also putting its money — but more importantly its time — into a number of technology accelerators, such as Techstars in Boston, Capitol Factory in Austin, Texas, and MASSChallenge with hubs in both cities. FAST Labs has a team of scouts whose job is to attend pitches all across the country. “This is not based on ownership. We leave them their freedom,” Francesca Scire-Scappuzzo, who heads the scout team, told me. “We want innovation not just to support our market, we want to support their own innovation” for the commercial market. “Other defense contractors are trying to get involved with venture capital, but they for the most part don't really get it. BAE was in early, and they had the benefit of being linked with us,” Lt. Col. Dave Harden, chief operating officer of AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation hub, told me during the Techstars Air Force Accelerator Demo Day here last Thursday. Indeed, BAE cosponsored the event, and put upfront investment in at least three of 10 start-up companies participating. Neither Wohletz or Scire-Scappuzzo would tell me the size of BAE's budget for startup investment, but Wohletz said “it's getting bigger every year.” Further, the company is using accelerators not just to help itself innovate, Wohletz said, but also to find foreign companies to partner with in bids where the buying country requires offsets, such as India. “It's a completely different way of looking at this than we have done in the past,” he summed up. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/05/bae-makes-big-bet-on-small-companies-fast-labs/

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  January 30, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Lockheed CEO: Boeing’s F-15X won’t disrupt F-35 program

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin has been given assurances by top Pentagon leaders that the F-35 program will not be negatively impacted by a potential U.S. Air Force buy of Boeing's F-15X, Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson said Tuesday. “If they choose to have an order of the F-15, it won't be at the expense of F-35 quantities,” she told investors during an earnings call. “I'm hearing that directly from leadership in the Pentagon, and I think that's an important point for me to make. It's not just our suspicion, but I've been told that directly.” The U.S. Air Force is expected to roll out a plan to begin buying new F-15s in its upcoming fiscal 2020 budget release. In December, Bloomberg reported the service intends to purchase 12 new F-15X aircraft in 2020 for $1.2 billion. On Friday, Gen. Dave Goldfein, the Air Force's chief of staff, confirmed to Defense News that the service will procure new F-15s if the budget grows enough to allow it, but that the F-35 program of record would remain the same with no slowdown to the buy rate. “I'm not backing an inch off of the F-35” Goldfein said. “The F-35 buy that we're on continues to remain on track. And I'm not interested in taking a nickel out of it when it comes to buying anything else in the fighter portfolio.” Goldfein added that the Air Force wants to increase fighter procurement to 72 aircraft a year. The Air Force has about 230 F-15 "C" and "D" models currently in service, and the F-15X will replace the portion of the fleet owned by the Air National Guard, according to Bloomberg. The new F-15 model will have new radar and electronic warfare equipment, the ability to carry more weapons, and include other improvements originally designed for Saudi Arabia's and Qatar's F-15s. If the service maintained a rate of one F-15X a month, it would be free to boost its F-35 production rate to 60 aircraft a year — a number that Air Force officials had cited as key for production ramp up. However, the FY19 budget forecast showed that the service would likely be unable to procure the F-35 in those quantities before FY23. “If we had the money, those would be 72 F-35s. But we've gotta look at this from a cost/business case.” Goldfein said. “An F-15 will never be an F-35. Never. But I need capacity.” Hewson's statement indicates that support for the F-35 continues to be strong both within the Air Force and among Pentagon leaders. However, earlier on Tuesday, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters he wants to see “more performance” from the F-35, although he did not specify particular areas of improvement. “I am biased towards giving the taxpayer their moneys' worth. And the F-35, unequivocally, I can say has a lot of opportunity for more performance,” said Shanahan, a former Boeing executive. When investors asked Hewson to respond to Shanahan's critique, the Lockheed CEO said the company remains on the same page with the Pentagon on the need to reduce the cost per plane. “We're on a path to drive it to an $80 million [unit cost] for the F-35A by full-rate production,” which is projected to begin in Lot 15 with deliveries starting in 2023, Hewson said. “So as long as we stay on our procurement rate plan — which by all accounts we're going to continue to ramp up at the rate that we envisioned — then we're going to continue to drive the price down." Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2019/01/29/lockheed-ceo-boeings-f-15x-wont-disrupt-f-35-program

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  June 23, 2020 | International, Naval

  The US Navy and Marine Corps should acquire Army watercraft

  By: Capt. Walker D. Mills and Lt. Joseph Hanacek The Navy intends to acquire up to 30 new light amphibious warships, or LAW, to support new Marine Corps requirements. The vessels are needed to meet the challenges of “evolving threats in the global maritime environment,” according to the Navy program office, and are tied to the new operational concepts of Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and Distributed Maritime Operations as well as the Marine Corps' Force Design 2030 effort. Once complete, the acquisition will have almost doubled the number of L-class amphibious ships already in naval service. Rather than accepting a new amphibious design built from the ground up, however, decision-makers should take advantage of the fact that many key requirements of the new vessels are very similar to the capabilities of vessels operated by U.S. Army Transportation Command. The Navy and Marine Corps should delay any new construction and immediately acquire some of these existing vessels to drive experimentation and better inform their requirements for the LAW program. The key requirements of the future LAW include having 8,000 square feet of cargo space, a range of 3,500 miles, a speed of up to 14 knots, accommodation for a crew of up to 40 Navy personnel and 75 embarked Marines, and up to 200 feet in length. The vessel also needs to have a roll-on/roll-off capability, preferably with a stern ramp. U.S. Army Transportation Command has over 100 vessels, and dozens have similar capabilities to those required of the LAW. The Army's LCU-2000s, also called the Runnymede-class large landing crafts, are smaller, with roughly half of the cargo space designed for the LAW and slightly slower, but they boast nearly double the range. The Runnymede-class vessels have nearly 4,000 square feet of cargo space and can travel 6,500 miles when loaded and at 12 knots; and they can unload at the beach with their bow ramp. The Army's General Frank S. Besson-class logistics support vessels are larger than the future LAW, at 273 feet in length but can claim 10,500 square feet of cargo space and a 6,500-mile range loaded to match the LCU-2000. These vessels also have both a bow and stern ramp for roll-on/roll-off capability at the beach or ship-to-ship docking at sea. The version built for the Phillipine military also has a helipad. Army Transportation Command has 32 Runnymede-class and eight General Frank S. Besson-class vessels in service. Mostly built in the 1990s, both classes of vessel have many years left in their life expectancy and more than meet the Navy's 10-year life expectancy for the LAW. These vessels are operable today and could be transferred from the Army to the Navy or Marine Corps tomorrow. In fact, the Army was attempting to divest itself of these watercraft less than a year ago, which underscores the importance of this opportunity even further. Congress is firmly set against the Army getting rid of valuable, seaworthy vessels and has quashed all of the Army's efforts to do so thus far, but transferring this equipment to the Navy is a reasonable course of action that should satisfy all parties involved. While acquiring “surplus” military equipment might lack the allure and promise of designing a new ship class from the ground up, the reality of the situation is that this overlapping of service needs couldn't come at a better time. By acquiring a watercraft that meets most of their requirements from the Army, the Navy and Marine Corps simultaneously fill current capability gaps and obtain an invaluable series of assets they can use to support the evaluation and experimentation of new designs and concepts. This will allow Navy and Marine leaders to give their units the maximum amount of time to evaluate and experiment with new designs to get a better idea of what they need both in future amphibious craft as well as operational and support equipment. The significance of so rapidly acquiring the Army's amphibious craft isn't just limited to developing a better amphibious force either. There is a very real capability gap that exists in the fleet today in the areas of surplus seagoing capacity, and acquiring these Army watercraft would go an extremely long way toward addressing it. Often overlooked, the availability of surplus vessels is absolutely critical to the process of developing new technologies, developing the tactics to employ them, conducting training, and providing decision-makers the requisite capacity to remain flexible in the face of unexpected challenges. The Navy and Marine Corps today are hurtling toward a new future of distributed operations and unprecedented levels of integration in the littorals. The Marine Corps commandant has clearly specified that force design is his No. 1 priority and that significant changes to the Marine Corps are in the works. At the same time, the Navy and Marine Corps continue to serve as the first responders for many of the nation's emerging challenges around the globe. They've long been in need of a boost in their amphibious capabilities so as to be better positioned to meet the demands of today and prepare for the challenges of tomorrow, and taking possession of the Army's Runnymede- and Frank S. Benson-class vessels is a solution on a silver platter. Capt. Walker D. Mills is a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer serving in Cartagena, Colombia. Lt. Joseph Hanacek is a U.S. Navy surface warfare officer based in Dam Neck, Virginia. The views expressed here are theirs alone and do not necessarily represent the views of these military branches or the Defense Department. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/06/22/the-us-navy-and-marine-corps-should-acquire-army-watercraft/