CACI Awarded $465 Million Task Order to Provide Expertise for U.S. Army C5ISR Missions

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  February 8, 2021 | International, Naval, C4ISR

  Lockheed Martin’s SPY-7 Radar Is Going to Sea

  Posted on February 5, 2021 by Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor ARLINGTON, Va. — Lockheed Martin's new SPY-7 radar will be sailing to sea on the ships of three navies as the company highlights the radar's capabilities for application to other navies, including the U.S. Navy. The SPY-7, which uses gallium nitride modules, initially was developed for the Navy's Air and Missile Defense Radar competition. It was adapted into the Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) procured by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) as a sensor of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system. Being installed at Clear Air Force Station in Alaska, the LRDR is designed to discriminate between incoming warheads and decoys. The core building blocks [of the LRDR] are the same core building blocks in SPY-7,” said Jon P. Rambeau, vice president and general manager, Integrated Systems & Sensors, Lockheed Rotary and Mission Systems, during a Feb. 2 interview with Seapower. “[SPY-7] is a modular radar that allows us to build different configurations for both land-based and sea-based applications.” The SPY-7 has been selected by the Spanish navy to integrate it with the Aegis Combat System on its F110 frigates. The Canadian navy is procuring the radar to install it on its new Halifax-class surface combatant. Japan had selected the SPY-7 for its two planned Aegis Ashore ballistic-missile defense sites, but when the plans were cancelled in part out of concern for missile debris falling on populated areas, Japan shifted to a plan to deploy the SPY-7 on some future, unspecified sea-based BMD platform. Japan already has BMD capabilities in its Kongo-class guided-missile destroyers with Aegis systems using the SPY-1 radar. Japan, which already has placed an order for the SPY-7, “is going through a process now to determine exactly what that platform is going to look like,” Rambeau said. “We are pleased with the progress that the technology has made, and we're starting to see some uptake both here in the U.S. as well as abroad.” “SPY-7 is part of the Aegis common source library (CSL) and the interfaces are understood,” said Patrick W. McNally, director of communications for Integrated Warfare Systems & Sensors, in a statement to Seapower. “For Japan, we have completed the first of three releases which were recently demonstrated to MDA. Starting from the CSL, with over one million lines of code, Japan will be receiving the best of both Baseline 9 and 10 [Aegis software].” The U.S. Navy is considering backfitting some Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers with a radar more modern than the SPY-1, and Lockheed is keeping a watch on developments in the event the SPY-7 could complete in the program if it comes to pass. Rambeau said his company also “has some more affordable options available to upgrade some of the SPY-1 arrays to provide improved sensitivity and improved resistance to electronic attack and we think we can do that at a fraction of the cost of a wholesale replacement, so we've put forth a couple of options for upgrades to SPY-1 to both MDA and the Navy.” https://seapowermagazine.org/lockheed-martins-spy-7-radar-is-going-to-sea

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  August 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  New Air Force leaders view plans for more virtual pilot training

  Stephen Losey The Air Force's new military leaders, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass, made their first trip with Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett Thursday. The leadership team traveled to Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph in Texas, where they were shown Air Education and Training Command's plans to take lessons from its virtual reality and artificial intelligence-infused pilot training experiment, called Pilot Training Next, and incorporate them into a new version of undergraduate pilot training, which the Air Force is calling UPT 2.5. In a conference call with reporters Friday, Barrett said the leadership team was “celebrating innovation” and airmen during their trip. The trio also visited AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation hub in Austin, and saw some of the programs it is working on. One of those, Agility Prime, aims to improve logistics and transportation with “flying cars, very Jetsons-like,” Barrett said. Barrett said the Air Force expects virtual pilot training not only will produce pilots cheaper and faster, but also better. Brown, who became the 22nd chief of staff Aug. 6, said that taking care of airmen and their families, and ensuring their quality of service and quality of life remain high, are among his top priorities. That is why he, Barrett and Bass decided to come to Randolph for their first trip together, he said, to see how the Air Force develops its future leaders. “We start leadership development the first day they walk in the door,” Brown said. “That, to me, is important, particularly when you look at the dynamics of what we're dealing with, whether it's COVID, racial disparity, potential budget pressures, high-end fight.” https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/08/22/new-air-force-leaders-view-plans-for-more-virtual-pilot-training/

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  June 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  House panel advances $733B defense budget bill over GOP objections

  By: Leo Shane III and Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― House lawmakers advanced a $733 billion defense policy bill on Thursday after nearly 21 hours of sometimes heated debate on the size of the Pentagon budget, the size of the country's nuclear arsenal and a host of other military priorities for next year. The 33-24 final vote by the House Armed Services Committee on the draft of the defense authorization bill marked one of the most divided stances from the committee in years, as Republicans voiced concerns with Democrats' priorities in the measure. The legislation, which sets military spending policy for the upcoming fiscal year, has been adopted by Congress for 58 consecutive years, usually by sizable bipartisan margins. Committee officials insist that's because the needs of the military usually rise above the partisan politics of Capitol Hill. But this year, the narrow passage out of committee illustrated the stark divide in defense policy between the two parties, and hints at a lengthy battle to come as the measure moves across Capitol Hill to the Republican-controlled Senate in the coming weeks. Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., in recent days said he is committed to finding a palatable bill for both Republicans and Democrats. But during the marathon debate he repeatedly defended his party's plans for $733 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2020 as a responsible and sufficient mark. “By a reasonably comfortable margin, this is the largest budget we will have ever passed in Congress (for defense) and it's a significant improvement on where we were before,” he said before the committee vote. Smith had already set aside some of his own priorities in a bid to win support from the panel's hawkish Republicans, who are likely to influence their caucus when it comes time to vote the bill out of the House. Without that support, Democrats may struggle to gather enough votes from progressives in their own caucus, who have questioned even the lower level of spending. But Senate Republicans have already set their authorization bill draft at $750 billion, a mark recommended by the White House and defended by HASC ranking member Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. He said that the figure is needed to keep pace with military modernization and readiness needs. Thornberry's amendment included a lengthy laundry list of weapons and platforms left out of the bill. “I worry that we talk about this like it's just numbers we're pulling out of the air,” he said. “These are real things. An aircraft carrier gets delayed a year if $733 billion is the way it comes out.” The bill includes a 3.1 percent pay raise for troops next January — a point of agreement on both sides that Smith repeatedly referenced — and provisions for increased protections for sexual assault victims, increased oversight of military housing problems and parameters for a new Space Corps within the Air Force. But fights over the effects of climate change on national security, limitations on the use of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and a provision mandating gender integration in Marine Corps basic training further divided the committee. On a series of Republican amendments aimed at preserving funds for the nuclear arsenal — including one to protect deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons on submarines — Democrats repeatedly defeated Republican proposals. Similarly, the committee upheld several provisions designed to put a check on President Donald Trump's ability to shift resources from the Defense Department to the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his emergency powers to shift Department of Defense funds for the border and send thousands of troops there. In the committee debate, Republicans generally argued Trump is taking necessary and normal steps to secure the border given political resistance to addressing the issue. “I want everybody to understand we have been sending DoD assets to the border since the Alamo,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, who sponsored one of the amendments. “We have to do it in order to keep our border secure and deal with the humanitarian crisis.” The measure now shifts to the full House, where Smith and Democratic leadership will have to build a coalition of supporters to get the measure to negotiations with the Senate. That chamber will vote on its draft next week. Work on a compromise draft between the House and Senate is expected to last through most of the summer and fall. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/06/13/house-panel-advances-733b-defense-budget-bill-over-gop-objections/