November 17, 2024 | International, Land
October 3, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Australia releases RFI for at least 16 special operations helicopters
By: Nigel Pittaway
MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia's Defence Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group issued a request for information for at least 16 special operations support helicopters.
The helicopters will be acquired under Project Land 2097 Phase 4, which has not been formally approved by the Australian government but has been identified as a priority for future defense spending in the 2016 Defence White Paper.
The proposed timeline calls for a request for tender in the fourth quarter of 2019, with the major delivery of equipment to follow in 2022.
“The project is currently in the exploratory phase, collecting information and proposals to inform concepts for capability realisation,” according to the RFI's cover letter, authored by CASG's acting first assistant secretary of the helicopter division, Brigadier Jeremy King, and the head of land capability at Army Headquarters, Maj. Gen. Kath Toohey.
“The project is considering a wide range of procurement options based around a light helicopter as the major system. The acquisition strategy is developmental and is subject to Government approval,” the letter read.
According to the RFI, the requirement is for a proven commercial or military off-the-shelf light helicopter, which is already in service with other operators. Other requirements include optimization for use in dense urban environments, capable of rapid deployment by the Royal Australian Air Force's C-17A airlifters, and the ability to be fitted with simple and proven intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment and weapons.
The helicopters are intended for use by the Australian Army's 6th Aviation Regiment, based at Holsworthy, south of Sydney, and will complement a squadron of larger NHI MRH-90 Taipan helicopters. The Taipans are replacing the 6th Aviation Regiment's existing Sikorsky S-70A-9 Black Hawk, beginning in January 2019.
The RFI does not specify a desired size for the new helicopter, but four are required to be deployed aboard one C-17A. In an earlier update to the Army's major battlefield aviation programs, CASG's first assistant secretary of the helicopter systems division, Shane Fairweather, and Toohey discussed a helicopter in the four-ton class.
The primary role of the new helicopter will be to provide an air assault capability by small teams of special forces, with secondary roles including ISR (using electro-optical sensors), fire support and general utility. The RFI calls for a helicopter that can be rapidly reconfigured between these roles.
The main base for operations will be at Holsworthy, but the Australian Army is considering the establishment of a permanent detachment of helicopters — referred to in the RFI as the “independent detachment” — in a yet-to-be-decided location. Australia's Special Operations Command has two commando regiments based at Holsworthy and the Special Air Service Regiment based in Western Australia.
The RFI calls for four helicopters to be maintained online at Holsworthy, in addition to the independent detachment (four aircraft) and two deployable elements, each of four helicopters. The number of helicopters to be acquired is not specified in the document, but respondents are asked to provide an assessment of how many will be needed to support 16 aircraft online at any given time.
The forthcoming RFI was a major focus at the 2018 Land Forces exhibition, held in Adelaide in early September, with several major helicopter manufacturers declaring their intention to respond.
Then-head of Airbus Group Australia Pacific Tony Fraser said the European manufacturer intends to offer its 3- to 7-ton H145M helicopter. “We will compete the H145M and we expect it to be a very strong competitor,” he said.
Also speaking at Land Forces, Bell's business development director for Australia, Dan McQuestin, revealed that the company intends to bid the 2.5-ton Bell 407GT, an armed version of the popular 407GX civil helicopter. “It's COTS, it's already deployed in the field in the Middle East and maintained through a commercial supply chain,” he said.
Boeing Defence & Security's vice president of global sales and marketing for Australia said he was keen to see what the Commonwealth's requirements would be, but the U.S. manufacturer saw its 1.6-ton AH-6i Little Bird as a candidate.
“Based on our conversations, we think the AH-6i is a viable alternative for Land 2097 Phase 4,” he said. “We'll see what is in the RFI, but we certainly expect to bid.”
Leonardo's helicopter division announced during the show that it will propose the AW109 Trekker helicopter. Other potential contenders include MD Helicopters with its MD530G helicopter, and Northstar Aviation with the 407MRH Lightning, a multirole helo based on the Bell 407.
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July 4, 2019 | International, Security, Other Defence
U.S. Security Requires Multiple Elements of Deterrence
BY C. TODD LOPEZ In the context of U.S. defense policy, "deterrence" is typically understood to mean "nuclear." And America's nuclear triad — ground-based missiles, air-delivered bombs, and submarine-launched missiles — serves as America's biggest form of deterrence, which underwrites everything its men and women in uniform do. But according to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson, nuclear weapons are just one of multiple elements of deterrence the U.S. must consider either for itself, or for being aware that other nations might be using them. During a July 2 breakfast presentation hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Washington, Richardson laid out five such elements of deterrence already in use or that must be considered more deeply. Nuclear "It's an incredibly powerful military capability where potentially everybody gets destroyed," Richardson said. "We must maintain our ability to be competitive and relevant in this domain ... [and] strike back at anybody who can pose an existential nuclear threat to the homeland." The triad itself includes ground-based missiles — commonly referred to as intercontinental ballistic missiles; submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and air-launched cruise missiles dropped from bomber aircraft. In all three areas the U.S. is underway with modernization efforts. But the nuclear environment globally is changing, Richardson said. "More nations are seeking to join the club," he said. Some of those nations can bring high-tech weapons, while some are using low-tech, including dirty bombs and systems that can be manufactured with 3-D printers. Additionally, not all nuclear weapons are "strategic" in nature. Some are smaller "tactical" weapons. "The nuclear element of this mix remains very relevant, very active, and deserves a lot more attention in my mind," Richardson said. Cyber Richardson said when it comes to cyber as a deterrent, the U.S. can't maintain only defensive capabilities. "We have to have an ability for offensive cyber to truly achieve a sense of deterrence there," he said. Recent cyber provocations, he said, are "multidimensional in ways that may or may not have been expected." Included there, he said, are theft of intellectual property, invasion of privacy, invasion of identity, distortion of identity, "and most recently, perception management. This perception management idea ... might be kind of our new Sputnik moment." Space "The competition is absolutely heating up in space," Richardson said. "Of these elements that are going to constitute a tailored strategic deterrent approach, space has got to be one of those." Richard posited that in space, it might become apparent that, using directed energy weapons, it proves far easier to destroy something in space than it is to put something back up into space. "These things operate really fast ... and space goes away as an asset," he said. "You can see kind of a mutually assured destruction scenario in space pretty easily. Have we thought about that going forward?" Chemical, Biological Capabilities Increasingly, Richardson said, chemical and biological deterrence will come into the mix, especially as technologies such as CRISPR — a genome editing tool — allow for more tailored capabilities. "One of the self-deterrent aspects of chemical/biological is that it's very hard to control. It goes viral, if you will," he said. "But with these tailoring things, you can get a lot more specific. It becomes a lot more targetable. And so, it's something we have to mind." Conventional Weapons U.S. deterrence advantages in conventional weapons have relied, so far, on superior targeting ability, Richardson said. But that may become less important. "We have better sensors, better satellites, better ways to connect that data with our command and control systems, our targeting systems," he said. "We had an advantage in terms of precision." Now, he said, such sensors are ubiquitous, and commercial and military sensors are going up into space. There are cameras everywhere. "This idea of being able to locate things with precision is becoming more ubiquitous," he said. "It's less of an advantage. It's really the team that can manage that information better that's going to achieve the advantage." https://www.defense.gov/explore/story/Article/1896147/us-security-requires-multiple-elements-of-deterrence/
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September 28, 2022 | International, C4ISR
Lockheed, Verizon testing 5G-linked drone swarm for intel collection
Army, Air Force and Pentagon representatives, among others, attended a demonstration in May.