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  March 18, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Army selects companies to continue in long-range assault aircraft competition

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army has selected Bell and Sikorsky to enter into a competitive demonstration and risk reduction effort ahead of the start of the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, program of record. The service is on a tight timeline to field a new long-range assault aircraft by 2030. The CDRR will consist of two phases that will last roughly one year each. The companies will deliver initial conceptual designs, an assessment of the feasibility of requirements and trade studies using model-based systems engineering. The competition for the program of record will begin in 2022 with a plan to field the first unit equipped in 2030. Congress added $76 million in funding to the aircraft program's top line in fiscal 2020 to drive down technical risk and speed up delivery. The money, which Congress approved as part of its FY20 appropriations bill signed into law in December, will fund the CDRR effort. The Army completed its Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration, or JMR TD, for which Bell and the Sikorsky-Boeing team each built aircraft to help the service understand what is possible for a future aircraft — mainly to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk. “These agreements are an important milestone for FLRAA,” Patrick Mason, the Army's aviation program executive officer, said in a statement issued March 16. “The CD&RR continues to transition technologies from the JMR-TD effort to the FLRAA weapons system design. We will be conducting analysis to refine the requirements, conceptual designs, and acquisition approach. Ultimately, this information and industry feedback are vital to understanding the performance, cost, affordability, schedule risks and trades needed to successfully execute the FLRAA program.” Bell has flown its V-280 Valor tilt-rotor demonstrator for two years in the JMR-TD and has logged more than 160 hours of flight time on the experimental aircraft. Sikorsky and Boeing's SB-1 Defiant coaxial demonstrator had a more difficult time getting off the ground due to issues in manufacturing its rotor blades. Its first flight was in March 2019. Even though Defiant has flown for a significantly reduced amount of time, the Army has determined it has enough data to move forward on its FLRAA program rather than extend the JMR TD to wait for the Sikorsky-Boeing team to log flight time. Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the service's future vertical lift modernization efforts, said last spring that because of the data collected through the JMR TD process as a well as additional studies and modeling, the service now thinks it has enough information to move more quickly into a full and open competition for FLRAA. Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, the military deputy to the acquisition chief, said in a Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing around the same time that the Army is presenting an acquisition strategy to the Pentagon's acquisition chief focusing on a nondevelopmental item approach to procuring FLRAA. That route, Ostrowski said, could lead to a competitive downselect by FY22. The extra funding provided by Congress will give the service the ability to continue to fly and burn down that inherent risk in developing a new helicopter. “What [that] may do as we hit those gates, is allow us to take what was going to be a primary budget, really a starting budget for the Army in ‘23 and ‘24, and potentially move that selection back to ‘23,” Rugen said recently. “We are not going to go to selection if, number one, we don't have requirements stable, we don't have resources stable, and, number two, the technology is not there.” The Army already has had a robust technology demonstrator program, including an extension, Rugen said, but that type of effort doesn't garner the same data as a prototype demonstration or a full-up weapon system. “In the CDRR [competitive demonstration and risk reduction], we're really trying to develop a weapons system, not the tech demonstrator,” Rugen said. “So we're trying to take it to the next level.” The CDRR will assess a laundry list of technologies identified through an Office of the Secretary of Defense-conducted independent technology readiness assessment, which would require additional evaluation to reduce risk, according to Rugen. Some of these technologies include the powertrain, drivetrain and control laws of the aircraft. “When we look at the software involved in flight controls, we have to really reduce risk there,” Rugen noted. The CDRR will also allow the Army to work on the integration of its mission systems. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/03/16/army-selects-companies-to-continue-on-in-long-range-assault-aircraft-competition/

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  April 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  CSAF Goldfein’s Top COVID-19 Supply Chain Worry: F-35

  Goldfein said up to now no major programs have shown any signs of being "in a critical state ... at risk of cancellation" due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. By THERESA HITCHENS WASHINGTON: Gen. Jay Raymond, as head of Space Command, will lead efforts to determine how to combat expected interference with GPS receivers from the future Ligado 5G wireless mobile communication network, says Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. “We are both very concerned about this,” Goldfein told the Defense Writers Group this morning. “The best way I've heard it described ... is, if you're in a room trying to have a quiet conversation, and in the next room you've got a 500-watt speaker blaring music. Chief Raymond and I are looking at different mitigation steps,” he added. “It's a huge challenge.” Goldfein explained that, as the SPACECOM commander, Raymond is the combatant commander charged with spectrum management so any mitigation plan would be primarily his responsibility — with Goldfein serving a support function as the service chief. However, he noted that, since Raymond is dual-hatted as chief of Space Force, the two peers “will work together closely with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide options” to DoD Secretary Mark Esper. Much of Goldfein's conversation with reporters this morning centered on the affects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the service and its programs, as well as his service's responses. A few weeks ago the service went through what he called a “reset to the new normal” as senior officials worked out methodologies to ensure its highest priority missions could be maintained “despite a 15 to 20 percent infection rate.”

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  July 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Can The UK Afford To Develop Its Tempest Optionally-Manned Stealth Fighter?

  Seventy-six years after higher-performing Tempest fighters joined the Royal Air Force's Hawker Typhoons in harrying Nazi air and ground forces during World War II, the United Kingdom is once again counting on a warplane called the Tempest to replace succeed its Typhoons. London has big ambitions for its Team Tempest program kicked off in 2018, which aims to develop a sixth-generation optionally-manned stealth fighter (ie. it can fly without an onboard pilot if necessary) to enter service around 2040 to replace its current fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighters. Unfortunately, those ambitions may simply not square with the money available for “Combat Air” programs in the British defense budget according to a new paper published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK's premier defense think tank. The author of Combat Air Choices for the UK Government, defense analyst Justin Bronk, argues that putting U.K's strategic goals in line with its available financial means may require procuring more stealth jets in the short term, while in the long term reconceiving the optionally-manned Tempest as a more affordable unmanned (drone) combat systems. British Combat Air Power, circa 2020 Today's Royal Air Force draws its primary combat strength from a projected fleet of 145 Eurofighter Typhoon fighters deployed in seven operational squadrons concentrated in two lightly-defended airbases, as well as a testing and training squadron each. Developed by a British/German/Italian consortium (BAE/Airbus/Leonardo respectively), the Typhoon is an advanced 4.5-generation fighter originally focused on a high-speed and high-altitude air-to-air combat, but which has since integrated short- and long-range precision ground attack capabilities. The RAF plans to further upgrade its Typhoons with an advanced CAPTOR-E active electronically scanned array radar which will substantially improve the type's reconnaissance, air-to-air, air-to-ground and self-defense capabilities. But because the Typhoon isn't a stealth aircraft, it can't safely penetrate airspace interdicted by long-range surface-to-air missiles like Russia's S-400 system until those systems are suppressed or destroyed. That job is set aside for 48 Lockheed F-35B Lightning II stealth jump jets shared by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force, of which 35 have been delivered so far. Though less agile than the Typhoon, the Lightning's low radar cross-section allows it to penetrate hostile airspace in comparative safety, while its powerful networked sensors enable it to locate and destroy air defense batteries and other key targets—or shuffle targeting data to non-stealth platforms a safe distance away to execute a strike Unfortunately, as discussed in this article by David Axe, 48 F-35s may not be enough to perform the anti-air defense mission in a hypothetical high-intensity conflict with Russia, particularly when the Royal Navy will want a significant chunk of those jets deployed on its Queen Elizabeth-class carriers to support naval operations. Lastly, the UK is finishing procurement of sixteen MQ-9B Protector drones which can cost-efficiently perform long-endurance surveillance and on-call strike missions in a counter-insurgency context. However, the MQ-9B lacks the stealth or agility to survive in a high-intensity conflict. The Tempest, not by Shakespeare In July 2018, the UK launched Team Tempest, a project to develop an optionally-manned sixth-generation stealth fighter that could replace the Typhoons as they age out of service in 2040. A mockup of a sleek twin-tail stealth design was unveiled at the Farnborough Airshow in July 2018, as well as a presentation highlighting concepts including adaptive cycle turbofans built by Rolls-Royce, revolutionary electrical power generation capabilities, integration of directed-energy (ie. lasers or microwaves) and hypersonic weapons, AI that could assist the pilot or even fly the plane without one, and control of swarms of supporting drones. London has committed £2 billion ($2.6 billion) in initial funding to Tempest, and Italy and Sweden have joined in as partners via companies Leonardo and Saab. Involvement of the Netherlands has also been rumored. In 2020, the British government announced it had recruited seven more companies into the program, and that the number of persons working on Team Tempest would increase from 1,800 to 2,500 by 2021. Tempest is implicitly a rival to the French-German-led Airbus/Dassault Future Combat Air System project which also includes Spain, though there has been tentative suggestions that FCAS and Tempest could be merged. According to Bronk, because modern combat aircraft have grown so immensely expensive to develop, and retaining a core of specialized engineering expertise is so vital, the fate of the Tempest program may determine the future of the UK's military aviation sector, which currently counts 46,000 jobs. “Tempest is the only way that the UK can retain a national combat aircraft design and manufacturing capability, and is currently the assumed source of a replacement capability for Typhoon by 2040... A failure of Tempest to generate significant airframe production contracts would also all but guarantee the demise of UK defence industry combat aircraft design and manufacturing capacity.” In other words, a failed Tempest project could relegate British companies to building components for other jets like the F-35 instead of for domestic jet fighter designs. The Budgetary Crunch Unfortunately, based on other stealth fighter programs abroad, completing development of an optionally-manned Tempest fighter would likely cost at least £25 billion ($32.5 billion) according to Bronk. Already, he writes there is “no headroom” to develop Tempest in the £18 billion set aside in the defense budget for Combat Air over the next decade, nor even to acquire more than 48 F-35s. The paper outlines some ways the Ministry of Defense could reallocate funds, arguing the RAF should do a “large-scale culling” of capabilities that wouldn't be survivable in a conflict with Russia, namely slow-moving intelligence/surveillance aircraft (ISTARs) and transport planes and helicopters. Additional F-35 purchases could be of the cheaper land-based F-35A model, which besides has superior performance. And older, more limited-capability Typhoon Tranche 1 aircraft could be retired early in the late 2020s. Nevertheless, completing Tempest would still likely require a large injection of funds outside of the regular defense budget. Instead, the report argues Tempest would likely become much more affordable as a stealth unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). Indeed, analysts are debating whether even the United States should choose to go that route for its next generation fighter. Removing a pilot achieves major weight savings as cockpit, ejection and life support systems can be trimmed away. The UK has already developed the Taranis stealth UCAV prototype, showing it already has a knowledge base with such technology. Furthermore the paper argues that unlike manned aircraft, closer to 100% of drones can remain available for operational missions. This is because pilots can do all of their training in simulators and units don't need to be rotated out of the line to rest and recover. That would mean both that a smaller number of UCAVs would need to be procured than jet fighters, and fewer personnel would be required to maintain them. “Cost savings derive from the significantly reduced airframe complexity, fleet size, training, testing and certification requirements compared to a piloted aircraft development effort... Without the need to rotate squadrons, airframes and personnel for training, maintenance, deployment and rest cycles, UCAVs offer significantly more operationally ready airframes from a given fleet size.” Admittedly, a Tempest UCAV would be less profitable for British defense industry. “The lower production volumes and rates which make UCAVs attractive from a military capability standpoint also greatly reduce potential profits per customer for industry,” Bronk concedes. Making the leap from manned to unmanned combat aircraft comes with other challenges. One is the need to harden UCAVs against hostile cyber- and electronic-warfare that could disrupt the command link. That likely includes building in autonomous AI capability so that UCAV can complete missions without relying on human direction. Especially in lower-intensity conflicts, it may be preferable to have a human pilot who can judge better from context whether a target is civilian or military. And air forces led by fighter pilots may resist the idea of replacing manned aircraft with unmanned ones. Regardless of whether one agrees with the RUSI report's recommendations, it seems clear that London will need to make some difficult choices in the years ahead as it balances the desired to field an effective air force today with investing in new technologies for tomorrow. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2020/07/30/can-the-uk-afford-to-develop-its-tempest-optionally-manned-stealth-fighter/#4452a87249b9