December 19, 2018 | International, Land
By: Shawn Snow
As a shooter on rifle range qualification day, have you ever seen your target come up crooked, barely hanging onto the stand, and wonder, “What the heck are the Marines doing in the rifle pits?”
Pulling pits at the rifle range might be most Marines' least favorite task. It requires constantly raising and lowering targets just to see them fall off the rickety stands, and quickly patching them up with pasties to give the shooter a clean canvas ... just to watch them fall off again.
It's a frustrating, tedious task.
There's the fact you have to rely on another Marine in the pit to accurately score your shots — and that one-point difference between the marksmen pizza box badge and sharpshooter can save a a lot of scorn before the next chance to qualify.
There's the shooter who probably missed the target entirely during the last course of fire, leaving the scorer staring at the target for an eternity, seeking a nonexistent shot hole.
There's always the Marine who shoots on the wrong target — those must just be bonus points to help a buddy who is about to fail on the range.
The Corps' entire rifle range qualification process is rife with human error and inefficiencies that can impact Marines' scores on the range.
Well, the Corps finally is looking to remedy this. In a request for information posted on the government's business opportunities portal, the Corps is in the hunt for an automatic scoring system for its ranges.
In the posting the Corps said that the purpose of the new scoring system is to “reduce the amount of labor necessary to conduct KD [known distance] training/qualification. By eliminating the need for target operators in the pits, the labor overhead associated with KD training is greatly reduced.”
“During marksmanship training the KDAS [known distance automated scoring] will be required to accurately show the shooter where they hit the target, to provide feedback that will assist the shooter in developing their shooting skills," the RFI stated.
And the Corps is looking for a complete system that will streamline the scoring process and ease the rifle range qualification process.
According to the RFI, the Corps wants new scoring platform display systems for coaches and shooters.
For marksman coaches on the range, a new display unit will allow the coach to view and track the shots of four shooter lanes at once.
Shooters will have a display unit that will let them track their individual shot placement and score as well.
A single control system will be able to communicate wirelessly and control up to 100 targets at once, according to the RFI. That means no more Marines in the pits manually pulling targets up and down.
The new scoring system is intended to reduce “the amount of time shooters need to spend on the range, freeing them up to perform other work,” the RFI reads.
So maybe the days of showing up to the range at dawn also are coming to an end?
Responses to the Corps' request for information regarding the new scoring system are due by Jan 11.
June 2, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
After a two-year hiatus, thousands of attendees from across the globe gathered at this year's EBACE to see what new and exciting products and services would be revealed.
August 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance and SpaceX have won the Space Force's next-generation rocket contract, locking the two companies in as the Defense Department's launch providers of choice for the foreseeable future. ULA — a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing — was awarded $337 million, while SpaceX will be getting $316 million for phase two of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, the Pentagon announced Aug. 7. They beat out Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman. Phase 2 of the NSSL program is the U.S. military's vehicle for ordering launch services from fiscal year 2022 to 2027. ULA is slated to get 60 percent of the manifest, with SpaceX getting the remainder. “We don't think this is the last round of innovation that we're going to see,” Will Roper, the Air Force's acquisition executive, told reporters during an Aug. 7 roundtable. “Although we're excited for the next five years, we're looking ahead to ‘Phase 3' five years from now and wondering what new leap-ahead, lower-cost technologies might be on the forefront to make assured access to space not just assured, but cheaper.” The award pays for the first three missions in 2022, which include two ULA launches and one for SpaceX. All are classified, Roper said. There is no ceiling on the number of launches that the Pentagon can order in Phase 2, but Roper expects about 32 missions. Funding for those missions will be distributed in future task orders. The NSSL Phase 2 award moves the U.S. military one step closer to eliminating its dependence on the Russian RD-180 engine, which is used in ULA's Atlas V rocket. The Defense Department has until 2022 to stop RD-180 procurement, and Roper said he was confident was on “a low risk path” to ensure it will meet that deadline. For the Phase 2 SpaceX offered the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which are both certified and in use. ULA proposed a new rocket, the Vulcan Centaur, which is under development and expected to make its maiden flight in 2021. “Vulcan Centaur is the right choice for critical national security space missions and was purpose built to meet all of the requirements of our nation's space launch needs,” said Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO, said in a statement. Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman were also in the process of creating new launch systems under a 2018 agreement with the Space and Missile Systems Center. That organization will now work with those companies on how to best halt the government's involvement in that development, Roper said. “We will tie off the [launch service agreement] contracts as soon as we can, at a point that makes sense,” he said. “We want to make sure that work that's in flux, that we're able to document what the vendors have done. Where the government has rights to the data and the work, we want to make sure we retain them.” Unless the companies protest the contract award, the next opportunity for Northrop, Blue Origin or other challengers to compete for national security launches is NSSL Phase 3, but the department's approach and timeline for that effort is still being determined. “If funding were available for a Phase 3 launch service agreement, there's no prohibition on how early we could start Phase 3,” said Roper, who added that studies have shown “some strategic benefits for doing that sooner rather than later.” https://www.defensenews.com/space/2020/08/07/after-a-hard-fought-competition-ula-and-spacex-to-remain-militarys-rocket-launch-providers/
April 12, 2023 | International, Other Defence
Moldova needs 250 million euros ($275 million) to modernise its armed forces following Russia's invasion of neighbouring Ukraine last year, a senior defence official in the pro-Western country said on Wednesday.