November 4, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — Two months after disclosing the existence of a next-generation fighter jet demonstrator, the U.S. Air Force is staying mum on which company may have built it. But one thing is for sure: Classified aviation programs are on the rise, and opportunities abound for the three major American defense aerospace primes — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
During an Oct. 20 earnings call with investors, Lockheed Martin Chief Financial Officer Ken Possenriede revealed the company's Aeronautics division recently won a classified contract that would necessitate the construction of a new building in Palmdale, California, where the company's Skunk Works development arm tests and creates prototypes of secret aircraft.
Sales for the division were up 8 percent in this year's third quarter compared to the same period in 2019, with about $130 million of the $502 million boost attributed to classified work. But Possenriede alluded to even more growth on the horizon.
“For Aeronautics, we do anticipate seeing strong, double-digit growth at our Skunk Works, our classified advanced development programs. We continue to execute on those recent awards,” he said, adding that there were a “multitude of opportunities” still out there.
Classified work also increased at Northrop Grumman's Aeronautics Systems unit, with “restricted activities” in the autonomous systems and manned aircraft portfolios helping bolster sales by 5 percent for the quarter and 4 percent year-to-date when compared to 2019, Chief Financial Officer Dave Keffer told investors Oct. 22.
It's tempting to draw a line from these contract awards to the recent flight of a demonstrator for the Next Generation Air Dominance program — the Air Force's effort to field a suite of air superiority technologies that could include drones, high-tech weapons and what some have termed as a sixth-gen fighter, although service officials have said any warplane in the mix might not resemble a traditional fighter.
Even though the Air Force announced in September that at least one NGAD demonstrator exists, it's unclear which companies are involved.
Still, there are plenty of other longstanding and emerging Air Force requirements that could be the source of this classified work, said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst for the Teal Group.
“It's pretty clear that there's more prototyping activity going on out there than was generally known. I had assumed that most of the work related to NGAD was happening at the systems level. It's clearly happening at the airframe level too," he said. "And then of course there are a lot of potential drone developments that are certainly worth watching,” from the MQ-9 Reaper replacement to strategic reconnaissance requirements, “which is fundamentally a very expensive activity.”
The wild card in this situation is Boeing. Because of investors' focus on the commercial side of the business — including plans for the return of the Boeing 737 Max to flight, as well as the continued downward spiral of sales caused by the global pandemic and its chilling effect on air travel — executives did not speak about Boeing Defense, Space and Security's classified activities during the company's Oct. 28 earnings call.
“Overall, the defense and space market remains significant and relatively stable, and we continue to see solid global demand for our key programs,” a Boeing spokesman said in response to questions about the company's classified business. “We project a $2.6 trillion market opportunity for defense and space during the next decade, which includes important classified work.”
After years of lost competitions, there are signs that the company's combat aircraft production facilities in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as its advanced projects division, Phantom Works, are returning to health.
Over the past two years, the company has banked major awards, including the Navy's MQ-25 tanker drone and the T-7A trainer jet, both of which were developed by Phantom Works. Boeing's work on the T-7 received praise from Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper for its use of digital engineering, which involves simulating the design, production and life cycle of a product in order to drive down costs. The company has also started selling the advanced F-15EX fighter jet to the Air Force, breathing a second life into that aircraft with this latest variant.
But Aboulafia worried that pressure on Boeing's commercial business — combined with its strategy of leveraging the work of other aircraft makers on projects like the T-7, where Swedish manufacturer Saab had a heavy influence in shaping the design — may have led to a loss of resources and engineering talent at Phantom Works.
“Either they're sitting it out now because their focus is elsewhere, or they don't have the capabilities and the commitment that the others do, or we're just not hearing about it now,” he said.
Boeing is not the only company investing in digital engineering and advanced manufacturing processes. Northrop CEO Kathy Warden pointed to her company's use of digital engineering in the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, which the company won in September to build the Air Force's next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“The work that we have done with the customer already, even under the tech maturation and risk reduction phase of the program, was done in a digital environment,” she said. “We delivered artifacts for review in a fully digital environment where they were actually looking at things in a model, not documents produced. This is the first time on a program of this size where that's been the case.”
“Those investments that we're making for GBSD are being utilized across our entire portfolio,” she added. “So as we think about Next Generation Air Dominance and the programs that are part of that overall campaign ... they too will benefit from a full digital engineering thread as being required by our customers.”
June 6, 2024 | International, Land
Specifically, this includes rocket artillery systems, laser weapon systems, simulation and training for land vehicles and helicopters, short-range air defence (SHORAD) and other areas of cooperation.
September 30, 2019 | International, Naval, Land
ByTauren Dyson Sept. 26 (UPI) -- BAE Systems Technology Solutions and Services has received a new contract for services on the nuclear weapon systems aboard U.S. and British submarines. The $50.3 million contract, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday, covers services on Trident II D5 strategic weapon system programs, submarine guided-missile attack weapons systems, nuclear weapon surety and future concepts for both nations. In early-September, the Navy launched four unarmed test Trident II missiles off the coast of Southern California as part of a Commander Evaluation Test to gauge performance expectation of the Trident II strategic weapon system. The Trident II D5 strategic weapon system is equipped aboard Ohio-class submarines and carries up to 24 missiles. The Polaris Sales Agreement requires the system to be aboard the Vanguard-class submarines used by the U.K. Navy, as well. The Trident missiles have a range of 4,000 nautical miles capable of carrying multiple W76-Mk4/Mk4A or W88-Mk5 reentry bodies. They were initially planned to be phased out of use by 2024 but the system went through a life-extending program to keep them operational through the 2040s. Work under the new contract is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2020. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2019/09/26/BAE-awarded-503M-for-nuclear-missile-work-for-US-Britain
January 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace
The 576th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron is leveraging the robotic media blasting technology for the first time to remove paint from the A-10 aircraft at Hill Air Force Base (AFB) in the US. With the use of the new robotic technology, the squadron is expanding its capacity by adding capability. New-generation robots are used to strip paint from A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft that arrive at Hill AFB for depot overhaul and maintenance. The latest process is expected to reduce man-hours and increase safety by removing employees from the blasting atmosphere, resulting in time and costs savings. 576th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron director Tim Randolph said: “There are going to be across-the-board improvements, including a dramatic reduction in exposure to a Hexavalent Chromium dust environment. “Savings will also be seen with reduced operating time and less power consumption, as well as reduced costs in material. We really haven't found a downside to this system.” The new paint removal process is carried out by two robots, which each have four hose attachments that move independently along both sides of the aircraft. 576th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Corrosion Control Flight chief James Gill said: “Compared to the manual paint stripping method, the robots use half the amount of blast media at half of the air pressure, while removing an extremely precise thickness, uniformly, across the entire aircraft surface. “This translates into a process that is less stressful on the aircraft skins and saves money in media cost, while creating only half the waste stream.” A new laser burn process is also being tested at the AFB on F-16 aircraft. The squadron expects the application of the process to the A-10s going forward. Combined together, the three processes are capable of reducing the total time an aircraft spends in depot maintenance. Last August, Boeing secured a potential $999m 11-year contract to deliver sustainment work on the USAF A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft. https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/usaf-base-robotic-technology/