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April 9, 2018 | International, Aerospace

How stealthy is Boeing’s new Super Hornet?

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WASHINGTON — The Block III Super Hornet is getting a marginal increase in stealth capability, but if you're expecting the invisible aircraft of President Donald Trump's dreams, think again.

Building a “stealthy” Super Hornet has been one of Trump's talking points since he was elected to the presidency. During a March trip to Boeing's plant in St. Louis, he claimed the U.S. military would buy Super Hornets with “the latest and the greatest stealth and a lot of things on that plane that people don't even know about.”

Trump was referring to one of the Super Hornet's Block III upgrades slated to be incorporated on jets rolling off the production line in 2020: the application of radar absorbent materials or RAM, also known as stealth coating.

But far from being “the latest and greatest,” the company has already used the exact same materials on the on the Block II Super Hornet to help decrease the chances of radar detection, said Dan Gillian, who manages Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and E/A-18G Growler programs.

Block III jets will get “a little more” of that coating applied to them, “and in a few different areas to buy a little bit more performance,” Gillian told Defense News in a March interview.

All in all, those improvements will reduce the aircraft's radar cross section by about 10 percent, and with very low risk, he said.

Although the general public tends to think of stealth like the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter or Wonder Woman's invisible plane, stealth is more of a continuum that is enabled and affected by many factors, experts told Defense News.

“It's not a Romulan cloaking device,” said Richard Aboulafia, a Teal Group aviation analyst, referencing a technology from Star Trek that allowed spaceships to be invisible to the naked eye and electro-optical sensors.

“It's about reducing the likelihood that an adversary will see you first. And seconds count, so if it buys a little extra time, then it helps.”

The most important contributors to low observability are the aircraft's shape and the use of LO coatings, with airframe shape commonly seen as twice as important as the coatings, he said.

Stealth fighters from the oddly angled F-117 to the F-22 and F-35, with their rounded edges, were all designed to bounce radar waves away from an aircraft, sometimes at the expense of aerodynamic performance or other attributes, said Brian Laslie, an Air Force historian and author.

That being said, the Super Hornet, with it's external stores and pylons, is not going to replicate the low observability of the joint strike fighter, which was designed from the beginning with stealth in mind.

“But just because it's not a pure LO aircraft doesn't mean that the designers weren't concerned with the radar return,” said Laslie, who added that it's “reasonable” to expect a 10 percent decrease to the aircraft's signature by augmenting Block III jets with additional RAM coating.

Shining a spotlight on the Super Hornet's low observable attributes may have helped sell Trump on future orders, Aboulafia speculated.

“It might be useful in the real world too, but in a much more marginal way,” he said.

One of those benefits, according to Laslie, is that the LO performance upgrade could also enable the Navy to be more flexible in its mission planning. An aircraft can be more or less easily detected by radar depending on how it is positioned or the route used by the plane, so having more radar-absorbing materials on the Super Hornet could give the pilot more options.

“I think what the Navy is doing is trying to maybe reduce enough of the cross section of the F-18 in high intensity combat scenarios,” Laslie said.

“I don't think they're trying to make the F/A-18 a stealth aircraft,” he continued. “But if they can reduce the radar cross section enough that in certain scenarios it is more difficult to pick the Super Hornet up, that would be of benefit to the Navy.”

While the president has done much to focus public attention on the Super Hornet's upcoming LO upgrade, the Block III actually offers a relatively modest increase in stealth compared to earlier concepts floated by Boeing.

In 2013, when the company began evaluating how to attract future sales from the Navy as production slowed, it started promoting an “Advanced Super Hornet” configuration that would have improved the aircraft's signature by 50 percent. That version of the jet included structural enhancements and an enclosed weapons pod, but Boeing ultimately stepped away from that concept.

“Those big compromises you have to make to get the higher levels of stealth like putting your weapons in a bay, we don't think that's a necessary part of the Block III story for the Super Hornet,” Gillian said.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2018/04/09/how-stealthy-is-boeings-new-super-hornet/

On the same subject

  • Navy Awards Sikorsky $1.13B for Next 12 CH-53K Heavy-Lift Helicopters

    May 22, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval

    Navy Awards Sikorsky $1.13B for Next 12 CH-53K Heavy-Lift Helicopters

    By: Megan Eckstein The Department of the Navy awarded Sikorsky a $1.13-billion contract for 12 CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopters, the Defense Department announced on Friday. The contract to the Lockheed Martin-owned company covers Lots 2 and 3 of the helicopter, which will replace the aging CH-53E Super Stallion. The Navy plans to buy 200 CH-53Ks over the life of the program. This award comes after an overhaul of the helicopter's test program, which had fallen behind due to inefficiencies in the test plan and technical problems in the design of the aircraft. Those problems included an exhaust gas reingestion problem in the helo's three-engine design. A recent Pentagon Selected Acquisition Report noted 126 design deficiencies, Bloomberg has reported, and the Department of the Navy has since worked with Sikorsky to restructure the remaining test program. After cost growth in the Lot 1 contract for the helicopters, the Navy and Marine Corps reduced this contract to 12, compared to a previous plan to buy 14 under Lots 2 and 3. “The aircraft quantity was negotiated for 12 vice 14 aircraft due to cost growth identified during Lot 1 production as well as the cost of incorporating the correction of known technical deficiencies that have resulted from developmental flight test to date,” Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez told USNI News. “The lower quantity will allow the program to afford the aircraft while preserving planned support efforts within the budget and program schedule.” In a Friday news release, Navy and Marine Corps leadership expressed confidence in the program despite the challenges it has faced over the past year or so. “The Marine Corps is very appreciative of the efforts by the Navy and our industry partners to be able to award the LRIP 2/3 contract,” Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, the deputy commandant for aviation, said in a news release. “This is a win for the Marine Corps and will secure the heavy-lift capability we need to meet future operational requirements and support the National Defense Strategy. I'm very confident in the success of the CH-53K program and look forward to fielding this critical capability.” “This contract award reflects close cooperation and risk sharing between the Government and industry teams to deliver critical capabilities to the Marine Corps,” James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said in the release. “Working with our industry partners, the team ensured that solutions for technical challenges are incorporated into these production aircraft. This reflects the urgency to ensure we deliver capabilities necessary to support the Marine Corps and the Department of Navy's mission, while continuing to drive affordability and accountability into the program.” In a House Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this spring, Daniel Nega, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for air programs, told lawmakers on the tactical air and land forces subcommittee that the upcoming contract would put the onus on Sikorsky to address remaining design flaws and fix any other problems that come up during the remainder of testing. “The flight envelope's been tested to the corners; Gen. Rudder talked about how we've sort of wrung it out,” he said at the hearing. “There's a relatively low risk that anything major will be found. However, if nuisance issues come along, we are not going to give those nuisance issues to the Marines, and the Navy and Marine Corps team is not going to accept the full risk of that. So the risk concurrency between the development and the production, that overlap is going to be taken care of.” Asked how the contract awarded today would do that, Hernandez told USNI News that “the production contract is structured to ensure a deployable configuration is delivered for fleet use. All known issues are included in the contract, additionally the contract provides provisions for any new issues discovered during flight testing. This will ensure appropriate shared risk between the government and industry.” Sikorsky's Path Forward Despite the ongoing technical challenges with the helicopter design and the delays in the test program – which has set back the planned start of initial operational test and evaluation but does not appear to threaten the planned first deployment of the helicopter in 2023 or 2024 – Sikorsky officials remain confident that the aircraft is on the right path following last year's restructure. “The majority of the technical issues that we've discovered over the 1,400 hours of flight test, nothing too terribly different than we would expect to find on a development program,” Bill Falk, Sikorsky's program director for CH-53K, told USNI News in an interview earlier this month. “The majority of them are already resolved, already proven and demonstrated in aircraft. We do have a set of issues that we still are in the process of resolving and demonstrating, but we've got a plan in place, parts installing in the aircraft and flight test plans to demonstrate that.” Falk said the company has dedicated one of its six test aircraft to tackle the exhaust gas reingestion issue, spending the last four or five months using computer-aided modeling and data from test flights to develop prototype solutions and test them out on the aircraft. “We have enough data that we now understand what solution we need to install on the aircraft, demonstrate and validate, which will become part of the production solution,” Falk said. “So we are at a completely different spot: where there was uncertainty four to five months ago, we have complete confidence now.” The new test plan is also more focused than the original one, tying each flight test to the delivery of a specific capability rather than just flying for flying's sake, Falk told USNI News. The helicopter has already demonstrated that it meets or exceeds all requirements for speed, range, altitude, lift capacity and more. Sikorsky and the Navy/Marine Corps team have also conducted hot weather and brownout condition testing in Arizona, and they have certified the helicopter can be transported via C-5 and C-17 cargo planes. A key upcoming test will be sea trials, where the CH-53K will have to prove it can fly on and off a flight deck and that Marines can maintain it at sea. Falk said the Navy is looking at a window of late February or early March through May of 2020 for sea trials, and that the tests will take place aboard a yet-to-be-decided amphibious assault ship. Initial operational test and evaluation is set to begin in early 2021, which would allow the Marine Corps to declare initial operational capability in time for the first deployment in 2023 or 2024. Though work still remains to be done, Paul Fortunato, director of Marine Corps business development at Sikorsky, and John Rucci, the company's senior experimental test pilot for the CH-53K, said the new helicopter has already proven it is easier to operate and maintain than its predecessor and that its warfighting capability surpasses the requirements for the aircraft. Rucci said pilots have total trust in the fly-by-wire cockpit, which essentially lands the helicopter on its own – meaning the pilots can focus on the mission at hand or evading a threat, or can safely land in a sandstorm or other degraded conditions. And Fortunado said the helo was built with easy maintenance in mind: fewer tools are required, the all-electronic maintenance documents include graphics that maintainers can zoom in on and rotate to help them maintain or repair parts, the logistics footprint is smaller and easier for deployments aboard amphibious ships. The design even includes putting electronic components in “backwards,” meaning the connections are facing outwards and easily accessible when maintainers take off a panel, instead of the wiring being in the back like usual and requiring a Marine to use a mirror to see what is going on behind the component. At Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina, Falk said, Marines are using one of the system demonstration test article (SDTA) helicopters to work out any remaining issues in the maintenance manuals and to start learning more about how to fix and sustain the new helo. “There's Marines crawling around that aircraft, taking it apart, putting it back together again, running the maintenance procedures, and basically using what we developed in order for them to be able to maintain the aircraft,” Falk said. “So the opportunity for us before we start delivering production aircraft, we can learn from that, we can feed all that back, we can improve our maintenance procedures and basically when the aircraft is deployed deliver a much higher-quality, more efficient set of maintenance instructions. Plus, you've got Marines that have already used it, done it, learned.” https://news.usni.org/2019/05/17/navy-awards-sikorsky-1-13b-for-next-12-ch-53k-heavy-lift-helicopters

  • F-15EX Radar Win Buoys Raytheon Market Hopes

    October 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

    F-15EX Radar Win Buoys Raytheon Market Hopes

    THERESA HITCHENS "There's definitely a big future for the export version of the AN/APG-82," says Michelle Styczynski, F-15 Senior Product Line Director for Raytheon Intelligence & Space WASHINGTON: Raytheon hopes its new contract with Boeing for an initial eight radar systems for the F-15EX is only a first step and its AN/APG-82 radar gets tapped for the entire future fleet, says Michelle Styczynski, F-15 senior product line director for Raytheon Intelligence & Space. The award, announced last Thursday, is a one-time deal for an unspecified amount, Styczynski told Breaking D today, but “obviously we would love to continue to partner with Boeing and the US Air Force to continue bringing them AN/APG-82.” Boeing was awarded a 10-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract July 13 for at least 144 F-15EXs with a ceiling of $22.9 billion that includes 15 years of support. The contract includes options for up to 200 aircraft. Raytheon's APG-82(V)1 radar is an active electronically scanned array (AESA) that equips the Air Force's current F-15E Strike Eagle fleet, with the company in June winning a contract worth up to $202.6 million to sustain the system through 2024. Raytheon delivered its first APG-82(V)1 radar to Boeing for integration with the F-15E way back in 20210. Styczynski said that the only upgrades required for the new F-15EX are software changes to integrate the radar with the Eagle Passive/Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS). EPAWSS, by BAE Systems, is an integrated digital avionics system designed to protect the F-15E against enemy air defense systems. The Air Force in April started testing EPAWSS at Edwards AFB. Part of that testing is to “establish and provide verification of the interoperability and RF (radio frequency) compatibility among the EPAWSS, the AN/APG-82 radar and various existing avionics at the installed system level on the aircraft, as it would fly versus in a system lab,” Ed Sabat, Project Development Lead and Civilian Director of Operations, 772nd Test Squadron. said in April. But, Styczynski explained, Raytheon is also pitching the Air Force options for to ensure that the venerable AN/APG-82 can be made interoperable with not only other on-board sensors, but also those of other aircraft as part of a future hyper-connected battle management network. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/f-15ex-radar-win-buoys-raytheon-market-hopes/

  • L'intelligence artificielle fait évoluer le paysage de la défense

    April 16, 2020 | International, C4ISR

    L'intelligence artificielle fait évoluer le paysage de la défense

    Une étude vient mettre en avant l'impact de l'intelligence artificielle dans les armées, à la fois sur un plan opérationnel et industriel. L'IA, facteur d'innovation. La révolution et les évolutions apportées par l'intelligence artificielle ne sont plus à démontrer. Dans le monde civil comme militaire, algorithmes et IA viennent apporter un complément d'information et représentent une plus-value, d'autant plus incontestable dans le domaine militaire. L'ensemble des armées du monde ont bien compris la nécessité de se tourner vers le big data et l'IA afin d'innover et de parvenir à conserver une supériorité opérationnelle sur l'adversaire. Les stratégies d'IA appliquées à la défense se multiplient et s'accompagnent généralement de réflexions sur les questions éthiques, dans un contexte occidental où l'emploi de SALA est vivement critiqué. Compétition internationale. Market Forecast a consacré une étude à ce sujet, et est venu analyser les impacts de l'IA au domaine de la Défense. C'est-à-dire aussi bien les apports pour les armées que la façon dont les travaux sont menés par les industriels. Nommé « Artificial Intelligence will arm defense contractors for global growth », ce rapport met en avant la façon dont les Etats se sont tournés vers cette nouvelle technologie afin de venir compléter les moyens de leurs armées. « Des nations comme la Chine ou la Russie réalisent des investissements substantiels dans l'IA pour des applications militaires, venant parfois poser des questions au regard du droit international et des droits humains », peut-on lire dans le rapport de Market Forecast. Des investissements visant ainsi à concurrencer les pays membres de l'OTAN, qui se sont eux aussi tournés largement vers l'intelligence artificielle afin de renforcer les capacités de leurs plateformes. Volet industriel. Mais l'adoption de l'IA dans les technologies de défense vient également questionner le tissu industriel. Selon Market Forecast, dans une grande majorité des cas, les Etats devront se tourner vers de nouvelles entreprises, plus petites et souvent non issues du secteur de la Défense afin de pouvoir se doter d'algorithmes performants. « Par exemple, aux Etats-Unis, plus de 60% des contrats tournés vers l'IA, inscrits dans le budget présidentiel de l'année fiscale 2017, sont menés par des acteurs non traditionnels de la Défense et des petits fournisseurs », rapporte Market Forecast. S'il n'y a aucun doute sur le fait que les géants de la défense et fournisseurs historiques continueront à mener leur activité, beaucoup s'appuieront donc sur de plus petites structures, spécialisées, afin d'intégrer la brique IA. En France, on peut ainsi penser à la petite entreprise EarthCube, qui malgré sa taille réduite et son jeune 'ge fait fortement parler d'elle et est parvenue à décrocher d'importants contrats dans la défense. Elle en a même fait son cœur d'activité. A l'avenir, les géants de la défense devront donc marcher aux côtés des plus petits et apprendre à collaborer avec ces structures qui portent elles aussi l'innovation. Car en effet, le marché de l'IA pour la défense devrait connaître un taux de croissance annuel moyen de 10,29% entre 2020 et 2028, démontrant l'importance de cette technologie qui offre d'importants débouchés commerciaux. https://www.air-cosmos.com/article/lintelligence-artificielle-fait-voluer-le-paysage-de-la-dfense-22924

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