Army weighs changes to Futures Command modernization teams

On the same subject

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  February 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Top US Air Force general hopes for major KC-46 fix by March

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — After more than a year of deliberations, the U.S. Air Force is hoping to have a fix in hand for the KC-46 tanker's most critical technical problem by the end of March, the service's top general told Defense News in an exclusive interview. The hope is for the Air Force and Boeing to sign off next month on a finalized design for the KC-46's Remote Vision System, or RVS — a series of cameras and sensors that allow its users to steer the aircraft's boom into a plane for aerial refueling. “The fact [is] that we're in negotiations right now; I can't say anything that would affect those negotiations,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein said in a Feb. 18 interview. “Here's what I will tell you: They're not stagnant in any way, shape or form. It's a very active dialogue. We're working on getting a serious fix,” he said. “We're looking for a serious fix on the table by the end of March, and we're going to be flying that fix and starting to test it by the end of this summer.” For several years, the KC-46 program has grappled with a critical deficiency involving the RVS, which is manufactured by Rockwell Collins. Under certain lighting conditions, the imagery is difficult to see and sometimes distorted, making it difficult for operators to safely move the boom without scraping the aircraft receiving fuel. Despite ongoing RVS problems, the service and Boeing came to a compromise in late 2018 that would allow the aerospace firm to begin delivering the KC-46 if the company would swallow the cost of fixing the system to the Air Force's specifications. At the time, Boeing and the service agreed on nine performance areas where the Air Force wanted to see improvements, but the parties have been embroiled in debate for months over how to turn those into technical requirements that would allow Boeing engineers to make specific hardware and software changes to the RVS design. The first tanker was delivered in January 2019, but months later in September, Air Mobility Command head Gen. Maryanne Miller said Boeing had made no progress on the RVS and that it would take three to four years before the KC-46 was technically mature enough to deploy. Tensions culminated in January 2020 when Goldfein sent a letter to incoming Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun criticizing the company for “unsatisfactory” progress on the RVS despite having a year to make design changes. “We require your attention and improved focus on the KC-46,” Goldfein wrote in the Jan. 9 letter, which was first obtained by Bloomberg News. “The Air Force continues to accept deliveries of a tanker incapable of performing its primary operational mission.” Calhoun came to the Pentagon for a face-to-face meeting with Goldfein on Jan. 15. According to Goldfein, the meeting went well. “[Calhoun] committed to me in the meeting that the KC-46 was his top priority and he was going to put the talent, the resources and whatever the company needed to do to get it on track, so now I'm holding him to his word,” Goldfein said. “I don't want to go into too many details because we're in a pretty intense negotiation, but I've seen a behavior change,” he added. Goldfein declined to provide examples of specific improvements but said he had seen “a different level of intensity from the leadership at Boeing on getting a serious fix for the KC-46.” In a statement to Defense News, Boeing said it valued its partnership with the Air Force and is committed to delivering a KC-46 that matches the service's expectations. “We're engaged in productive discussions with the Air Force about enhancements for the KC-46 Remote Vision System. We expect those discussions will establish a collaborative plan through which we can improve the aircraft's already robust capabilities,” the company said. Having a finalized RVS fix on the books could be crucial for defending the Air Force's fiscal 2021 budget. The service plans to retire 13 KC-135 and 16 KC-10 tankers in FY21, but Congress has been skeptical of making reductions to the Air Force tanker fleet when demand continues to outpace supply. An agreed-upon fix could also bring some financial relief for Boeing. The Air Force is currently withholding $28 million per aircraft upon delivery of each tanker with the hopes of inducing Boeing to arrive at an RVS fix sooner rather than later. However, officials have said the service would be open to rolling back the amount of money the service withholds if it sees progress. According to the terms of Boeing's fixed-price contract for the KC-46 program, the company is responsible for all costs past the award's $4.9 billion ceiling. Boeing has already eaten more than $3 billion in cost overruns, and the final price of the RVS redesign is still unknown and will likely trigger further penalties. So far, 31 KC-46s out of the 179 planned for purchase have been delivered to the service. The Air Force indicated in 2019 that it would take three to four years to develop a fully functioning RVS. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-warfare-symposium/2020/02/20/top-us-air-force-general-hopes-for-major-kc-46-fix-by-march/

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  July 19, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  How Attractive Is A&D To Workers? Companies Labor After COVID-19 | Aviation Week Network

  A&D should be an enviable career, but as the U.S. sees a vast migration of workers, industry fears being left behind.

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  June 8, 2020 | International, Land

  U.S. Army Flickr Page Inadvertently Reveals New Hypersonic Weapon Concept

  Steve Trimble A new hypersonic weapon concept has emerged inadvertently on a social media page managed by U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy that describes a Mach 5-plus projectile with the ability to penetrate into defended airspace and dispense a multi-role loitering air system over a target area. The concept—labeled as the Vintage Racer Loitering Weapon System—reveals a solution to an operational problem for the Army: When high-speed munitions, such as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), enter service with the ability to strike targets thousands of kilometers away, how will the Army find the most elusive targets, such as road-mobile launchers for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) or radars for air defense batteries? The Vintage Racer concept, as revealed so far, suggests it may be possible to launch a hypersonic projectile into a general area without knowing the specific location of the target. As it reaches the target area, the projectile may be able to dispense a loitering air system, which is then uses its own sensors to find and identify the target. If the loitering system also carries a warhead, it may be able to strike the target by itself or transmit the target coordinates to another weapon. Once the existence of the Vintage Racer concept appeared, a Russian expert on military-political affairs noted such an idea has been discussed as a possibility within the hypersonic weapon community. “The fear is that [this] hypersonic ‘something' might reach the patrol area of road-mobile ICBM launchers [after] penetrating any possible air and missile defense, and then dispense loitering submunitions that will find launchers in the forests,” said Dmitry Stefanovitch, an expert at the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council. Only the broadest information about the Vintage Racer weapon is visible on the briefing paper describing the concept. The image appears in an album of photos from the Association of the U.S. Army convention posted to McCarthy's Flickr account last October. Most of the pictures from the event show McCarthy meeting attendees, giving speeches and receiving informal, standing pitches from industry officials in the exhibit hall. One picture shows McCarthy standing at a table across from an unidentified industry official in the exhibit hall. The table is covered with multiple objects, including a General Atomics press release, what appears to be a model of the LRHW and a rifled barrel of a 155mm artillery gun with a hole burned through the object. The table also is covered with at least four sheets of briefing papers, of which three are not visible. The only visible paper, which is partly obscured by McCarthy's right hand, is headlined “Vintage Racer - Loitering Weapon System (LWS) Overview.” The paper includes six main bullet points, which read “Hypersonic Ingress,” “Survivable,” “Time Over Target,” “Multi-role,” “Modular payload,” and “Cost Imposition Strategy.” Ten sub-bullets are also visible on the page, but the letters are not readable. At the bottom of the page, a tag line highlighted in yellow is partly obscured by McCarthy's hand, but the visible portion reads: “Long Range, Rapid Ingress.” A vague reference to Vintage Racer previously appeared in Defense Department budget justification documents released in February, but went unnoticed. Under a line item owned by the Office of Secretary of Defense for a “quick reaction fund,” Vintage Racer is described as a “recent success story.” “The project successfully validated aerodynamic design with wind tunnel testing and integrated a guidance subsystem for targeted kinetic effects before culminating in a fiscal 2019 flight test. Documentation and prototype technologies transitioned to the U.S. Army for additional development and follow-on acquisition activities,” according to budget documents. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/sensors-electronic-warfare/us-army-flickr-page-inadvertently-reveals-new-hypersonic