Defence Minister Bill Blair to visit Latvia and Poland

On the same subject

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  August 3, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Budget Shows Flightworthy Sixth-Generation Fighter Engines Ready By 2025

  Steve Trimble July 31, 2020 Details of the first of two mostly secret initiatives to support the U.S. Air Force's five-year-old pursuit of a sixth-generation successor to the Lockheed Martin F-22 are now released and reveal that a critical technology for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program could become flightworthy by mid-2025. GE Aviation and Pratt & Whitney are scheduled to complete separate competitive designs for a Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) system by the second quarter of 2022 and finish assessments on a full-scale engine three years later, according to Air Force budget documents. The schedule and spending details on the NGAP appeared for the first time in the Air Force's budget justification documents for fiscal 2021 that were submitted to Congress in February, but passed unnoticed for several months. The Air Force awarded GE and Pratt each a $427 million contract to support the NGAP program, but the details were shrouded in budget documents within the related Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), an unclassified effort to develop a reengining candidate for the Lockheed F-35. After Senate authorizers cited the Air Force's lack of transparency for justifying a $270 million budget cut for AETP this year, service officials decided to break out funding for the NGAP in budget documents. In fact, the NGAP program reappeared in the fiscal 2021 budget documents for the first time in more than six years. The Air Force has kept all details about the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program highly secret since 2016, but there was a brief, two-year window in 2014-15 when senior defense officials provided information about the underlying technology development efforts. The NGAP was first referenced in testimony by Alan Shaffer before House Armed Services Committee in March 2014. Shaffer is now the deputy to Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. Six years ago, he was the principal deputy to the director for research and engineering. In that role, Shaffer introduced the NGAP as an enabler to the NGAD program, along with another, complementary initiative focused on new airframes. “This program will develop and fly two X-plane prototypes that demonstrate advanced technologies for future aircraft,” Shaffer said in 2014. “Teams will compete to produce the X-plane prototypes, one focused on future Navy operational capabilities, and the other on future Air Force operational capabilities.” A year later, Frank Kendall, then undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, elaborated on the Aerospace Innovation Initiative (AII). The development of the X-planes would be led by DARPA, he said. “To be competitive, the Navy and the Air Force each will have variants focused on their mission requirements,” Kendall said. “There will be a technology period leading up to development of the prototypes. This will lead to the systems that ultimately will come after the F-35.” The results of the AII program have not been released or even acknowledged by Air Force or defense officials since 2015, but the initiative suggests that one or two X-plane aircraft could be in testing now. Kendall's remarks to Congress in 2015 came a year before the Air Force received the results of an Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team on the Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan, which urged the development of a family of systems anchored by a next-generation fighter to replace the F-22. The Flight Plan prompted the Air Force to commission an analysis of alternatives (AoA) in late 2016. The results of that study were originally scheduled to be released by the end of 2017, but the analysis continued until early 2019. Meanwhile, a 2015 presentation by the Air Force Research Laboratory showed a notional schedule for the NGAD program; a contract award to launch the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase is set for fiscal 2023. As late as the Air Force's fiscal 2019 budget request, the financial resources devoted to the NGAD appeared to support that schedule: A significant increase in funding starts in fiscal 2023, and $13 billion is set aside overall between fiscal 2019 and 2023. Last year, however, as the results of the AoA study became available, the Air Force appeared to defer the launch of the EMD by at least a few years. The fiscal 2020 budget request included only $6.6 billion for the NGAD from fiscal 2020-24. Funding for the NGAD and NGAP programs is accounted for separately in Air Force budget documents. The fiscal 2021 budget justification documents reveal that the Air Force spent $106 million for the NGAP in fiscal 2019. Another $224 million is allocated to the NGAP this year. But the program has requested an additional $403 million in fiscal 2021, the budget documents show. “The Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion effort consists of four phases: preliminary design, detailed design, engine fabrication and engine assessments,” the Air Force's budget documents state. “Program deliverables include military adaptive engine detailed design parameters and models, engine hardware (plus spare parts), matured technologies, major rig assessment data (controls, combustor, etc.), program reviews, and technology, affordability and sustainability studies for next generation fighter aircraft,” the documents add. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/budget-shows-flightworthy-sixth-generation-fighter-engines

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  June 26, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  B-21 Bomber Critical Design Review by End of Year

  JOHN A. TIRPAK The secret B-21 bomber will progress to a major milestone—critical design review—by the end of this year, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office director Randall Walden said Monday. Walden also revealed that the B-21 is merely one of 28 programs being managed by the RCO, which he noted is funded at about $30 billion over the five-year future year defense plan. Walden, speaking at an AFA Mitchell Institute event in Arlington, Va., said the B-21 has already passed its preliminary design review, and noted that the release of drawings for the bomber is progressing well. As for critical design review, "we haven't done it, but we're on our way," and he predicted it would happen by the end of December. Major design work on the bomber is taking place at Northrop Grumman's Melbourne, Fla., facility. He acknowledged that subscale models of the aircraft have been tested in wind tunnels, but said no full-size version has yet been fabricated. "Component testing" is moving along at an "appropriate" speed, he said. "We're looking forward to ... an 'on-time' start of production," Walden said. Walden has spoken publicly about the RCO in a number of venues, but was more forthcoming than usual about the organization and its products at the Mitchell event. Of the 28 projects in the RCO's portfolio, 13 are "ACAT 1," he noted, meaning they are major defense acquisition programs, which usually means a major platform, like an aircraft, missile, or command and control system. While Walden would only identify the B-21 and X-37 orbital vehicle among those that the RCO is working on, he said the majority of the rest could best be characterized as "family of systems" projects. Interestingly, Walden said the RCO has not been called on to undertake any hypersonics programs. The Air Force is pursuing hypersonics projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the other services are conducting independent research in the field. Walden said the RCO has about 220 people, who are headquartered at JB Anacostia-Bolling, in Washington, D.C. Among them are experts from the line Air Force who are "embedded" with programs to offer operator advice on design and development. Four bomber pilots are attached to the RCO to advise on the B-21's development, he noted. The B-21 program manager—who Walden did not name—has had experience with management of the F-22 and F-35 programs, he said. The B-21 program has long been scheduled to produce a "usable asset" in the 2024 timeframe, according to comments offered by Air Force officials for the last three years. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chair of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces panel, revealed in March that problems had arisen with airflow to the B-21's engines, and Walden said Monday that these had been resolved. "Complex weapon systems, especially engine integrations, ... you've got to get throat sizes done right, prior to anything being built" he said, referring to the serpentine tunnels by which air reaches the B-21's engines, which are buried in the fuselage. The RCO obtained "insight from actual lab testing" and found the optimal solution, he said. The RCO has been asked to help with the set-up of a dedicated "Space RCO" at the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles AFB, Calif., and Walden said he has recommended veterans of his own shop to run it, especially those who have worked on space systems, and they have been hired, he said. Walden resisted allowing his own people to be hired away for the new organization, he said. Walden was asked whether the RCO is working on a successor platform to the X-37, and although he did not reply directly, he did say that it is "no different from any other system, ... it starts to get old," and there begin to emerge problems with vanishing vendors and parts obsolescence. However, he forecast no "big change" in that program in the near future. The X-37 tends to fly two-year missions, and various agencies that use the data collected from it are very happy with its activities, he said. Walden told Air Force Magazine he is not experiencing trouble obtaining the workforce he requires, but he said he's aware that major vendors are experiencing difficulties hiring all the engineering and especially software talent needed to execute the Air Force's array of high-tech projects. He also reported that the RCO's experience with protests—wherein a contractor not selected for a program complains that the judging was not fair—is no worse, and probably somewhat better, than that experienced by the Air Force in its "white world," or non-secret programs. Commenting on the "culture" of the RCO, Walden said it is largely based on the Lockheed "Skunk Works" model of small teams with tightly defined objectives and a vastly shortened reporting chain. Where the RCO saves time and money is usually in the area of "deciding to do" something and not going into endless coordination efforts. The RCO can save two to three years on a project simply by having the authority to make decisions, Walden said, avoiding "the tyranny of consensus." It reports to an executive committee comprised of the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the service's acquisition executive, and the Pentagon's acquisition chief. It's not possible to rush the development of, say, an aircraft, he said, noting that basic design must be gotten right or problems are inevitable later on. It takes about three years at a minimum to develop a design, he said. Asked whether the RCO can provide a model to the overall acquisition system, Walden said it can be applied to a degree, but there is the risk that the organization could get too big. "There is a knee in the curve. I can't tell you" what it is, he said, but at a certain size, an RCO-like acquisition agency would no longer be able to do things rapidly. The value of something of constrained size, like the RCO, is to "make a decision, get on contract," Walden said. The mainstream acquisition system takes "an inordinate amount of time" on those two steps. An analysis of alternatives can take up to three years and "sometimes no one makes a decision," Walden said. Walden insisted the RCO is fully observant of the 5000-series of acquisition regulations, but makes a careful review of them on all its efforts and works to "avoid" the ones that don't really affect its programs. He also said the organization turns away many people who want to be involved in overseeing or getting briefed on RCO activities unless they are required under regulations. Even so, he said the RCO has a good relationship with Congress because it tries to be transparent with members, and even when it runs into problems, people on Capitol Hill "want to help." He added that the Pentagon's "risk-averse" acquisition process took many years to get that way and reversing that mindset to one of risk-taking and experimentation will not happen quickly. http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2018/June%202018/B-21-Bomber-Critical-Design-Review-by-End-of-Year.aspx

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  May 26, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  No title found

  Engines can make or break a business aircraft, as Cessna and Dassault discovered a few years ago. The exhibition halls display a range of established, reliable types of turbofan, intermingled with newer types yet to prove themselves in the hard slog of daily use. There is always scope for innovation, hence the appearance of some promising electric powerplants. Whether their likes will dominate the EBACE booths in a decade’s time is a matter for a "happy hour" debate after the show closes.