October 21, 2024 | International, Land
AeroVironment pitches Army drone for quick battlefield changes
AeroVironment says its P550 drone will be able to be adapted in less than five minutes by popping old units out and putting new ones in.
October 17, 2019 | International, Land
Here’s who will build the US Army’s new missile defense radar
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — Incumbent Raytheon will build the U.S. Army's new missile defense radar to replace the Patriot air and missile defense system's current radar as part of the service's future Integrated Air and Missile Defense System.
The company has taken its years of experience refining gallium nitride, or GaN, technology at its Massachusetts-based foundry to help design a new radar system that will provide the Army 360-degree threat detection capability in a configuration that includes one large array in the front and two smaller arrays in the back.
The contract is worth roughly $384 million to deliver six production-representative units of the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS.
“Our clean-sheet approach to LTAMDS reinforces Raytheon's position as the world's premier air and missile defense radar capability provider,” Ralph Acaba, president of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, said in a statement.
The service earlier this year held a “sense-off” at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, between three working radars from Raytheon, a Lockheed Martin and Elta Systems team,and Northrop Grumman. The service analyzed the results and was in contract negotiations with the winner as the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference, which kicked off Oct. 14.
Brig. Gen. Brian Gibson, who is in charge of the service's air and missile defense modernization effort, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the show that negotiations were ongoing and that the award would happen soon.
Without public knowledge of the win, Raytheon brought its offering for the LTAMDS competition to the show and passed out red lanyards advertising LTAMDS that said: “No time for a blind spot,” referring to the 360-degree coverage capability.
Replacing the Patriot radar has been a long time coming. The radar was first fielded in the 1980s, and the Army previously attempted to replace the system with Lockheed Martin's Medium Extended Air Defense System through an international co-development effort with Germany and Italy. But that program was canceled in the U.S. after closing out a proof-of-concept phase roughly six years ago.
Since then, the Army studied and debated how to replace the Patriot radar, while Raytheon continued to upgrade its radar to keep pace with current threats. The service has acknowledged there will come a point where radar upgrades will be unable to keep up with future threats.
Taking years to decide, the service moved forward on a competition to replace the radar in 2017 and chose four companies to come up with design concepts for the capability — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Technovative Applications.
Toward the end of 2018, Raytheon and Lockheed were chosen to continue technology development under that program. But then the Army redirected its plans into a sense-off competition last fall.
Raytheon is expected to build six prototypes by the end of fiscal 2022.
The radar that Raytheon specifically designed for the Army uses next-generation GaN and is 7 feet longer but 11 inches more narrow than the current radar unit. But it no longer requires outrigger stabilizing legs. Rather, the system is held stable by jacks underneath, which means it takes up less space on the sides, according to Bob Kelley, Raytheon's director of domestic integrated air and missile defense programs for business development and strategy.
The radar meets all of the Army's mobility and transport requirements, Kelley said, including fitting in a C-17 aircraft.
The smaller arrays are about 50 percent of the size of the legacy Patriot system's array, but are twice as capable due to the advancements with GaN technology, he added.
Though the Army backed off its 360-degree detection capability requirement for the competition, Raytheon has been steadfast about keeping that capability in its offering.
In addition to being able to constantly cover 360 degrees, the radar can see farther than the currently fielded Patriot radar. That radar is unable to fully support the maximum kinematic range of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement that it fires. The Army claims that its effort to tie the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System with Patriot would help the MSE missile reach its full potential.
The LTAMDS will be able to fully support current missile systems including PAC-3 MSE range capability and future missiles ranges, Kelley said.
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September 17, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Skilled worker, parts shortages still hurting Hornet and Growler maintenance, government watchdog finds
By: David B. Larter A shortage of skilled workers and repair parts is causing backlogs in maintenance depots for Hornets and Growlers, creating headwinds in the Navy's efforts to put more aircraft in the air, the Government Accountability Office found. The Navy, which is chipping away at a readiness crisis among its fighters and electronic attack aircraft, is being hampered by a lack of skilled workers and capacity, specifically at depots on the West Coast at Whidbey Island, Washington, and Lemoore, California. Furthermore some parts needed to repair the Hornets and Growlers were manufactured by suppliers who have gotten out of the business, significantly slowing the process and forcing the Navy to cannibalize parts on aircraft to offset the delays, the September report found. One challenge pointed out by the GAO is the distance between where aircraft are based and maintained and where parts are repaired for the E/A-18G Growlers. The Growlers, largely based at Whidbey Island, many of the components that need fixing must be repaired at the depots in Lemoore. “However, according to officials, Lemoore's depots have limited capacity to repair these aircraft, creating a maintenance backlog,” the report found. The issue of manufacturers getting out of the business was at least in part caused by the Navy's shorting of repair parts accounts during Obama-era budget cuts. A recent study found that between 2011 and 2015, as many as 17,000 suppliers left the defense industry. The Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran discussed the supplier issues with Defense News in April, saying stable funding should get suppliers to come back into the pool. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/09/15/skilled-worker-parts-shortages-still-hurting-hornet-and-growler-maintenance-government-watchdog-finds
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August 1, 2024 | International, Aerospace
Air Force sees spike in overseas weapon sales
The service expects its annual foreign military sales to grow by 60% this fiscal year due largely to increases in F-35 and F-16 purchases.