June 15, 2023 | International, Aerospace
India approves procurement of U.S. MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones
India's defence ministry has approved the procurement of U.S.-made armed MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones, sources told Reuters on Thursday.
September 19, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Bombers, fighters and tankers unite: Will the Air Force rebuild composite wings to fight near-peer foes?
By: Kyle Rempfer
The Air Force has spent the past few years gearing up for a near-peer fight against adversaries with high-end air forces that match their own. While new doctrines and technologies occupy much of the planning for such a shift, another type of preparation is needed: reorganizing wings and squadrons.
One possibility on the table is a return to composite wings.
In the early 1990s, the Air Force organized the 366th Fighter Wing out of Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, into the service's premier “air intervention” composite wing. For roughly a decade, the wing flew fighters, bombers and tankers with the goal of meeting the challenges of a post-Cold War world order — where conflict could arrive anywhere, anytime.
“They were ready to pack up and go fight as a unified team,” Lt. Gen. Mark Kelly, commander of 12th Air Force, told a crowd of Air Force leaders Monday at the 2018 Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Washington, D.C.
“But that was disbanded, and part of it came down to money," Kelly said. "The cost per flying hour of trying to sustain the small-fleet dynamics there didn't look great on spreadsheets.”
But Kelly argues that financial assessment was faulty. The quality of the training airmen were getting was being compared to the day-to-day operations at other bases around the Air Force. In reality, it was more comparable to the day-to-day training at Red Flag — a two-week, advanced air combat training exercise still held several times a year in Nevada and Alaska.
“Frankly, the training they were getting compared more to Red Flag daily ops," Kelly said. “And that would be a good problem to have and a good construct to be able to build.”
The Air Force is rethinking how it constructs wings and squadrons, as well as how it deploys airmen, as it shifts to better align with the 2018 National Defense Strategy, according to Kelly.
As it stands, “airmen only come together to fight at the line of scrimmage," Kelly said.
For instance, before airmen arrive at a forward base to fight against insurgents in Afghanistan, they may have a unified command at the squadron level, but a unified command at the wing level is severely lacking.
Additionally, airmen preparing to deploy today benefit from a surplus of “spin-up" time. They know when their unit is scheduled to deploy and have the luxury of training to meet that challenge well in advance.
“That's a luxury that we cannot rely on in great power competition,” Kelly said.
Organizing some aircraft and airmen into composite wings could provide the training and deployment structure necessary for fights against modern militaries, Kelly said.
The composite wing concept was heavily pushed in 1991 by then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak, according to his biography on the Defense Department's website.
McPeak wanted to organize wings by their mission-set, not aircraft type. According to his “air intervention” doctrine, a wing deploying for a near-peer fight should have all the aircraft and airmen it needs to accomplish its mission with limited, or possibly no, outside support.
This meant one wing could potentially operate electronic warfare aircraft for the suppression of enemy air defenses, bombers to lay waste to enemy fortifications, fighters to engage in air-to-air combat, and tankers to refuel them all.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, the old composite squadron idea was mostly discarded. The 366th Fighter Wing was restored to fly F-16Js, and the consolidation of the Air Force's KC-135 and B-1 forces led to the reallocation of the wing's bombers and tankers to McConnell AFB, Kansas, and Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, according to Mountain Home's website.
But composite wings, and the idea of sustainable fights with more or less autonomous Air Force commanders, is back in vogue.
Funding was one of the biggest challenges to composite wings back in the day, but the reasons for that unit structure are better appreciated now as concerns about China and Russia preoccupy defense planners.
To fuel a restructuring, steady funding will be key, according to Kelly. He projected the Air Force's shift to great power competition will continue to be a focus of the defense budget into 2021 and 2022.
But regardless of the funds Congress ultimately appropriates for the Air Force in the coming years, restructuring for a near-peer fight needs to happen, Kelly said.
“This has to happen regardless of if we have the force we have today with only one more airman, or the force we need with tens of thousands more airmen," he added.
On the same subject
-
-
September 26, 2018 | International, C4ISR
Pentagon Extends JEDI Deadline Again—With a Catch
By Heather Kuldell, Managing Editor The department is requiring bidders to deliver their proposals in person. Companies bidding on the Defense Department's multibillion-dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract will need to hand-deliver their proposals. “In lieu of electronic submission, an offeror's entire proposal shall be captured on one or more DVDs and submitted in person only. No other forms of submission will be accepted,” the department said in an amendment to the JEDI request for proposal posted Monday. The department also pushed the deadline back a few days. Bidders must contact JEDI procurement officials by 5 p.m. Eastern time Oct. 10 to get logistical details for turning in their proposals in person on Oct. 12. It's the second time the department extended JEDI's original Sept. 17 deadline, following other amendments that answered industry questions and a pre-award bid protest from Oracle. Defense officials describe the JEDI acquisition as the foundation for hosting mission-critical data for warfighters around the world. But since it was announced a year ago, the procurement has drawn scrutiny from industry and lawmakers for requiring a single cloud service provider instead of multiple vendors. The contract could be worth up to $10 billion over 10 years if all the follow-on options are exercised. But before the project sees a cent, Congress wants more insight into JEDI and the rest of the department's cloud computing projects. In the final conference report for the Defense-related minibus, appropriators order the defense secretary to deliver a cloud-centric budget accounting plan and a detailed, enterprisewide cloud computing strategy that includes “defining opportunities for multiple cloud service providers.” The department would be prohibited from spending anything on JEDI or the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions—another multibillion-dollar cloud contract—until 90 days after those plans are delivered to defense committees. “The conferees believe cloud computing, if implemented properly, will have far-reaching benefits for improving the efficiency of day-to-day operations of the Department of Defense, as well as enabling new military capabilities critical to maintaining a tactical advantage over adversaries,” lawmakers wrote in the joint explanatory statement. The Senate passed the minibus—which also includes labor, health, education and a continuing resolution—last week. The House is scheduled to vote on the package this week. https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/09/pentagon-extends-jedi-deadline-again-catch/151541/
-
November 25, 2020 | International, Aerospace
MQ-9 Reapers to the UAE: Why Now?
By CHYRINE MEZHERon November 24, 2020 at 7:01 AM BEIRUT: The United Arab Emirates has long sought advanced American armed drones. That day appears to be close. The US State Department has notified Congress it plans to sell 18 battle-ready MQ-9B drones worth an estimated $2.9 billion to the UAE as part of a bigger deal that includes up to 50 F-35 fighter jets, as well as air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions. The UAE would become the first Middle Eastern customer to acquire lethal drones. Why now? The Israeli-UAE normalization of relations laid the foundation for it all, Lebanese strategic expert Naji Malaeb told me. “The path of normalization with Israel and the agreements that paved the way for it included deals that were not announced up until today,” the retired brigadier general said, adding that “more arms sales should see the light in the long run.” According to him, the sale had to be pushed fast given that the new administration in Washington might reconsider the whole matter. “Can we really assume that things remain the same under the Biden administration?” he asked, which explains the “urgency to finalize the deal without missing out on the opportunity to help both the American defense industry and the UAE.” Another reason is the fact that the Trump administration loosened measures to export drones after reinterpreting a Cold War-era arms agreement (the MTCR) between 34 nations to allow U.S. defense contractors to sell more drones to allies. “Trump's CAT policy with its emphasis on drone exports opened the door for such a sale a while ago,” senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and former Pentagon official in charge of security cooperation in the Middle East Bilal Saab told Breaking D in an interview. Abu Dhabi's increased interest in drones is due to its growing military role in the Gulf, Yemen and the Horn of Africa. “With the great role of Turkish Bayraktar drones emerging in both the Libyan and Nagorno Karabakh wars, and the game of regional axes, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates face off on more than one front,” Khattar Abou Diab, professor of geopolitical sciences at the Paris Centre for Geopolitics, told me. Simply, “Washington fears more Turkish independency or not controlling the Turkish situation,” he said, which is why it “provided one of its vital allies in the region with advanced weapons.” Another strategic perspective is the growing naval threat from Iran, I believe. Although the drone variant is yet to be confirmed, the UAE may get hold of the MQ-9B Sea Guardian which can be equipped with maritime surveillance radars, capabilities would be useful to the Gulf state. Military researcher and defense analyst at the Arab Forum for Policy Analysis in Cairo, Mohammad Al-Kenany believes the UAE will be using the Reapers for both land and maritime missions. “The systems won't be specialized to perform certain missions,” he said. Instead, the Gulf country is planning to operate them in missions related to overland ISR and to monitor the maritime activities across the Gulf. “It remains more important to the UAE however to keep a close eye on its waters,” he emphasized, given the ongoing Iranian threats in that area. The details of the deal clearly indicate that the UAE will also be equipped with ASW mission kits, receivers and acoustic processors, thermometric sonobuoys, active and passive sonobuoys and ASW acoustic operator workstations,” Al-Kenany explained, adding that “Iran's small fleet of submarines could well be a driver behind the UAE pursuing ASW capability with its drones.” What The Deal Represents The deal is a win-win situation for the US and the UAE as it clearly represents a huge leap for General Atomics' MQ-9 production line for one and the UAE air force for another. With Chinese and Turkish competitors proving highly successful at selling armed drones on the export market, and indigenous Arab industries quickly becoming more capable in producing their own unmanned vehicles, the agreement puts America on the map again. Saab, however, says he is less concerned about the first part: “We're less worried about competition in that space than we are in fixed-wing aircraft and larger land and air-based platforms. Our competitive advantage in UAS equipment is strong.” The UAE operates dozens of Chinese-made Wing Loong armed UAVs that were used against Houthi rebel leaders in Yemen and against ISIL-affiliated fighters in the Sinai. It produces its own drones, recently unveiling the new Garmousha drone, a light military unmanned aircraft designed to carry payloads of approximately 100kg with an endurance of six hours and 150km. All that shouldn't be a problem however because, “as cheesy or self-evident as it sounds, U.S technology offers greater operational flexibility,” said Saab. Malaeb agrees. “The UAE has long awaited such technologies even with the Chinese armed drones making a significant effect on the battlefields across the MENA region,” he said. “But let's face it, the MQ-9 Reaper is combat-proven, with an excellent operational record, albeit over non-contested skies.” Still, only time will tell the specific details of the deal which could reveal the kind of technology the U.S agreed to grant the UAE, without undermining Israeli military superiority or its military qualitative edge in the region. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/11/mq-9-reapers-to-the-uae-why-now/