October 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Robert Burns
The estimate is up about $10 billion from four years ago.
The weapons, known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, are intended as part of a near-total replacement of the American nuclear force over the next few decades at a total cost of more than $1.2 trillion.
Some, including former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, argue that U.S. national security can be ensured without ICBMs, but the Pentagon says they are vital to deterring war. The Trump administration affirmed its commitment to fielding a new generation of ICBMs in a 2018 review of nuclear policy.
“The ICBM force is highly survivable against any but a large-scale nuclear attack,” the review concluded. “To destroy U.S. ICBMs on the ground, an adversary would need to launch a precisely coordinated attack with hundreds of high-yield and accurate warheads. This is an insurmountable challenge for any potential adversary today, with the exception of Russia.”
The current fleet of 400 deployed Minuteman missiles, each armed with a single nuclear warhead, is based in underground silos in Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. Their numbers are governed in part by the 2010 New START treaty with Russia, which is due to expire in February. Russia wants to extend the treaty but the Trump administration has set conditions not accepted by Moscow.
The U.S. also is building a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines to replace the current Ohio-class strategic subs; a new long-range nuclear-capable bomber to replace the B-2 stealth aircraft; a next-generation air-launched nuclear cruise missile; and a new nuclear command and communications system. It also is working on updated warheads, including an ICBM warhead replacement for an estimated $14.8 billion
The nuclear modernization program was launched by the Obama administration and has been continued by President Donald Trump. Democrat Joe Biden has said that if elected in November he would consider finding ways to scale back the program.
The Pentagon's $95.8 billion cost estimate for the Minuteman replacement was first reported by Bloomberg News. The Pentagon provided the estimate to Congress last month but had, until Monday, refused to release it publicly.
Last month the Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract for engineering and manufacturing development of the new missiles. The total “lifecycle” cost, including operating and sustaining the missiles over their expected lifetime into the 2070s, is set at $263.9 billion.
October 6, 2021 | International, Aerospace
China has put a number of operational and prototype unmanned aircraft designs on display at the ongoing Zhuhai Airshow, giving an insight to its increasingly wide range of unmanned systems in service.
November 7, 2018 | International, Land
By: Meghann Myers The Army has issued uniform items from top to bottom and inside out, except for one very important piece of clothing: a bra. Turns out, the service once took a stab at creating a tactical women's undergarment, but abandoned the idea because it didn't suit a variety of shapes and sizes. A designer at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center has taken up the cause again — however, this time adding an element of performance measurement. “So, I thought, let's kill two birds with one stone. Let's give them something that fits well and also create a platform where we can run the same tests and analysis that previously had been done on the male majority,” Ashley Cushon said in an Oct. 25 Army release. She dubbed the project BAMBI ― Biometric Algorithm Monitoring Brassiere Integration. And no, the acronym didn't come before the name. “Although BAMBI is still in its very early research stages, I wanted an innovative name that alluded to the end goal of the item ― which is to function as an integrated platform for physiological sensing specifically designed to the female soldier's biology,” Cushon told Army Times in a statement. “Most importantly, I wanted it to be an acronym that was functional and distinctive, yet relatively feminine and impactful.” While testing the prototype, soldiers will be hooked up to a Holter monitor to measure Heat Strain Index, heart rate and core temperature to predict heat stroke, exhaustion and fatigue, according to the release. NSRDEC has done these tests before, Cushon said, but could only do them on men because of the design of the vest that houses the sensors. “There are certain fit parameters that weren't accounted for when it came to the final test item and its ability to be unisex,” Cushon said. “Due to the lack of industry items that are properly suited to meet the sizing requirements of the female soldier population, we were unable to collect female data during those particular tests.” Her team will use measurements and 3-D scans taken from thousands of soldiers during 2012′s Army Anthropometry Survey to create a sports bra with proper sizing. It's not difficult to create a sensor-mounting garment, but it is a lot of work to make sure it can be worn by enough soldiers to collect significant data. “Developing a female undergarment is no simple task,” Cushon said in the release. “There's too large of a variety of body shapes and sizes to meet every need. Currently, there is no industry solution that accommodates the sizing needs of our female soldiers.” And so, few women have been able to participate in NSRDEC's push to get sensors on soldiers. “Currently, if soldiers are wearing physiological monitors in the field, they're either wearing wrist-mounted devices or some variation of a chest strap,” Cushon said. “Of the two, the chest strap is the most accurate but can cause chaffing or is otherwise not very compatible with the rest of their gear.” Using an algorithm, Natick researchers can take heart rate and core temperature data to calculate heat stress on the body, which can lead to casualties. “The long-term goal is for us to create an effective female-centric platform for introducing integrated sensing technology into the Army's effort of improving soldier and squad performance,” Cushon. Aside from health data, the Army is using sensors all over, from measuring parachute jumps to creating situational awareness for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A woman-specific garment increases the likelihood that women can contribute to and benefit from research with wearable sensors. “Female soldiers are making invaluable contributions to our great nation, and they deserve clothing and equipment designed with them in mind,” Cushon said. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/06/the-army-is-looking-to-make-a-sports-bra-that-also-measures-soldier-performance
August 19, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR
Nathan Strout WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force hopes its prototype low-Earth orbit weather satellites will entice commercial businesses and allied nations to partner up on the project, reducing the cost of delivering critical weather data to the war fighter. The U.S. Air Force has been trying to replace the aging Defense Meteorological Satellite Program for years, ever since Congress opted to can it in 2015. Two capabilities in particular have proven a challenge for replacement: cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. But now the Space Force thinks it has the answer. By leveraging the increasingly popular low-Earth orbit architecture demonstrated by SpaceX's Starlink constellation and other experiments, the military believes it can lower the cost of individual satellites, increase the resiliency of the systems and attract new partnerships. In a recent interview with SpaceNews, Space and Missile Systems Center Portfolio Architect Col. Russell Teehan explained the thinking behind the new approach. The Air Force previously struggled to attract partners due to the sheer cost of the systems, he said. After all, when a single satellite costs more than $700 million, it's difficult to find someone to share the load. That price point forced the Air Force to build exquisite systems, comprised of just a handful of satellites operating in higher orbits. As the Pentagon has come to understand with its other exquisite systems, in wartime this leaves the military's space-based capabilities dependent on just a few satellites that are difficult to defend. A proliferation low-Earth orbit, or P-LEO, constellation may solve both of those problems. Smaller LEO satellites can deliver the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost per satellite, while the sheer number of targets in the constellation means that the loss of a single satellite isn't crippling. “The goal is in doing that, that ideally the commercial and allied sector would increase their desire to partner on those activities,” Treehan said. “[T]he activities in the past were generally $700 million-plus individual systems, which forced us into architectures that were [made up of less than five satellites] that were significantly vulnerable if we were in a time of conflict.” The Space Force is targeting satellites in the $30-50 million range, Treehan added. The Space Force has issued a trio of prototype contracts this summer for new space-based sensors that can collect cloud characterization and theater weather imagery from low Earth orbit. Raytheon Technologies, General Atomics and Astra are leading separate prototyping efforts after receiving contracts from the Space Enterprise Consortium. The Space Force is asking for $131 million to continue these efforts in fiscal 2021. The decision to settle on LEO for this critical weather data follows years of disarray as the Pentagon has worked to find a replacement for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, or DMSP. For decades, the military has relied almost entirely on that program for weather data. The first satellite was launched in the 1960s, with the constellation being replenished with updated generations of weather satellites over the years. Today, there are just four DMSP satellites in operation. But no satellite is built to last forever, and there are no new DMSP satellites coming. As those satellites reach the end of their service life, they leave the two vital gaps of cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. Foreseeing this problem, Congress in 2015 directed the Air Force to launch a new weather satellite program to replace DMSP. The Air Force began working on a new constellation to launch in 2024, but there was a problem: a four-year gap between the projected end of DMSP's service life in 2020 and the launch of the new satellites. To fill that gap, the Air Force collaborated with NASA on ORS-8, a satellite to be launched just before DMSP expired. While a contract was awarded to Sierra Nevada Corp. to build that gap-filling satellite, it was protested, rescinded and ultimately canceled by the Air Force after the service determined DMSP's end-of-life date would extend beyond 2024. In 2019, the Air Force proposed a new solution: a free-flying space vehicle that would operate in low Earth orbit. The Pentagon asked for $101 million to begin the effort in fiscal 2020, with plans to launch it in 2024. But that plan didn't last the year. In September, the Air Force told Congress it wanted to scrap the free-flying space vehicle in favor of a new approach. Based on a space-based environmental monitoring capability assessment and strategy review completed in April 2019, the Air Force found it best to switch to an LEO architecture for scalability and increased resilience. Though skeptical, Congress ultimately swapped the funding for the free-flyer space vehicle to the new program. “Across the board in our weather strategies ... we're looking at multilayers of an architecture, how to most cost-effectively move forward in capability. They can be incrementally delivered over time. So that becomes a mix of large satellites that do missions and smaller satellites that we can launch in order to grow capability over time,” Col. Dennis Bythewood, program executive officer for space development at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, said in September 2019. “We're finding much more capable sensors being delivered in small packages that we think we can grow mission sets over time. Those are the types of things that we are looking at within our strategy.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/08/17/trio-of-prototyping-contracts-brings-new-approach-for-collecting-military-weather-data/