February 7, 2023 | International, Land
US clears Poland to buy HIMARS and ammo worth $10 billion
The U.S. State Department has approved Poland to buy advanced rockets and rocket launchers worth $10 billion.
September 21, 2018 | International, Aerospace
‘I’ll be their angel investor’: Air Force vice chief wants to crowdsource airmen’s ideas
By: Kyle Rempfer
As the U.S. military turns its attention to the threats posed by near-peer adversaries, Air Force leadership is shifting its focus to great power approaches to combat, like multi-domain operations and expeditionary warfare.
A culture of innovation among airmen will be pivotal in preparing for such a conflict, and the effort to foster that independence and creativity is already underway.
In the coming weeks, the Air Force will be rolling out a new initiative to crowdsource solutions from airmen around the service.
Across all specialty codes, the service is calling on airmen to design apps, develop algorithms and create new approaches to the problems that plague their career fields or help the Air Force carry out its missions.
The program — dubbed the Vice Chief's Challenge — will be spearheaded by Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson.
“We want to take the ideas our airmen have to see around corners, anticipate what's next and solve these really complex national security challenges,” Wilson told Air Force Times.
Those challenges range from fusing open-source social media information into actionable intelligence with new software, to upgrading legacy aircraft with gadgets to help airmen stay in the fight longer.
“Navigation apps like Waze change the way we travel across town by giving us an intuitive display that integrates traffic, hazards, and route recommendations in real time. Companies like Uber and Amazon have transformed our view of logistics," according to a copy of the Vice Chief's Challenge provided to Air Force Times. "They are not the only ones leaning forward. I am sure each of you have seen opportunities to enhance [multi-domain operations]. I want to hear your best ideas.”
The initiative is designed to deliver capabilities to the Air Force in months, rather than the usual years, Wilson said. And it's going to become routine, always running against the backdrop of the service's other acquisition initiatives.
“It's this cultural change and this shift that happens ... and today, I think it's clear in this great power competition, we need this urgently," Wilson said. “I need to remove barriers to innovation."
The Vice Chief's Challenge will consist of three phases. First, ideas will be solicited from across the service in a broad announcement. Then, workshops will be set up in which subject matter experts help refine the most promising proposals and draft development plans for the budding ideas. The final phase will involve developing and demonstrating prototypes for the chosen concepts.
“We'll start small by gathering ideas from individual airmen, rapidly evolve concepts with national thought leaders, and scale fast by working with industry to build and demonstrate prototypes in the next year,” Wilson said.
Each phase will be led by a different organization, but the Air Force Research Lab and the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff will serve as executive agents to ensure smooth transition between phases.
The initiative is similar to last year's first-ever Spark Tank innovation proposals.
“Each of the [major commands] went out to their different wings and solicited ideas, picked their best ones and came to us," Wilson said. "There were a dozen ideas, of which we picked six of them and presented them at the [Warfighter's Edge] conference.”
The idea chosen for development ended up being that of a boom operator on the KC-135 Stratotanker. He proposed a plan to re-engineer the boom operator platform instructor position for the entire KC-135 fleet at a projected cost of $1.5 million. The proposed innovation aims to both reduce back and neck injuries and save the Air Force $132 million each year in this critical aircrew specialty, according to Air Mobility Command.
“It was across the fleet, easy to implement, and that's what we're using now,” Wilson said.
Other innovative ideas that Wilson has already seen, and clearly wants more of, involve software development that connects sensors, platforms and nodes to share information across the force.
“We had an airman and second lieutenant who briefed me on software development they had done that was unbelievable — the capability they were bringing me and the speed at which they were doing it,” Wilson said.
The duo took SIPRNet information and found a way to fuse it together using complex computer coding for targeting purposes. The result was a tool dreamed up in-house that directly solved a pressing issue.
Much of that is simply owed to the fact that those airmen knew what they needed to do, how to do it and already worked in a position to provide the service.
“The CEO of Pivotal [Software Inc.] pulled me aside and said ‘I work with all the Fortune 500 companies across the world, and I would put these two people against any company, anywhere,'” Wilson said.
That's the sort of innovation the Vice Chief's Challenge is looking to tap into.
Wilson doesn't know yet how many ideas will be taken to completion, but by this time next year, he's hoping that the Vice Chief's Challenge will be handing out some awards.
“I can't compensate them like industry can, but I can offer them purpose," he said.
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March 29, 2019 | International, Land
US Army cuts current vehicle fleet to make way for next-gen tech
By: Jen Judson Update: This story has been updated to reflect correct procurement numbers for the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV). WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has telegraphed its plans to terminate 93 programs and truncate another 93to make room for next-generation technology under ambitious and rapid modernization plans, and the first major programs to feel the ax blows in the next five years are vehicles in the current fleet. According to fiscal 2020 budget request documents released March 12, the service plans to cut back on upgrade plans for its Bradley Fighting Vehicle program, an aging platform in the fleet currently unable to effectively support technology like active protection systems. But the Army is also planning to cut not-so-legacy systems as well — the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV) built by BAE Systems and the Oshkosh-manufactured Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) — that recently replaced legacy systems, Army Comptroller Lt. Gen. Thomas Horlander said during a March 12 budget briefing with reporters at the Pentagon. The service has not reached a full-rate production decision for the JLTV. That was pushed back from December 2018 to May 2019 due to new plans to alter the vehicles — to include larger windows and the addition of a muffler — based on soldier feedback. And the first prototype for AMPV — the M113 personnel carrier replacement — rolled off the line in 2016. The budget documents lay out the Army's FY20 plans to cut Bradley A4 upgrade plans from 167 vehicles to 128. The plan is to procure five more sets of Bradley A4 vehicles with one going to pre-positioned stock in Europe and the other four replacing the oldest sets of Bradleys. Then the program will stop around 2023 to make way for the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, or NGCV, according to Lt. Gen. James Pasquarette, the Army's G-8 chief. Although the Bradley will be curtailed, Pasquarette noted that its funding in FY20 was up 37 percent from last year at $639 million. While the Army — as of last year — planned to buy 3,035 JLTVs, it now plans to purchase just 2,530 of the vehicles in FY20. Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy told an audience at the McAleese & Associates and Credit Suisse Defense Programs conference in Washington on Wednesday that the service would stop at five brigades of Bradley A4 vehicles. That decision, he said, would sync with an investment increase for the NGCV expected in 2023 and beyond. And while the Army plans to decrease JLTV buys in 2020, cuts will likely not stop there. McCarthy said the Army is looking to lower the requirement for JLTVs and could soon be locking in a new top-line requirement number. Yet, Pasquarette also said at the McAleese conference that the top-line requirement would not change for the JLTV but would just be pushed to the right. McCarthy added that cutting the fleet of JLTVs was justified because the Army has a wealth of vehicles, from 55,000 Humvees, and 49,000 more JLTVs and another 800 Infantry Squad Vehicles planned. “We clearly have more capability than we need,” he said. The AMPV buy holds steady in FY20 at 131 vehicles. The FY19 plan shows the Army wanted to buy 130 vehicles. The five-year plan has yet to be released by the Army, but it's likely to show a decline in AMPV buys following FY20. Pasquarette said the AMPV top-line requirement remains unchanged, but the service was simply slowing the procurement rate per year. The cuts to current programs were made following painstaking deliberations among Army leadership over the course of last year in a forum dubbed “night court.” Through the process, the service measured current capability against its contribution to increasing capability in a modern, more lethal Army, and it terminated or truncated programs that didn't fit the bill. Pasquarette noted that the programs that were fully terminated were small ones that did not contribute to the lethality of the future force. Some of the bigger programs were slowed such as the vehicle programs. Overall, the Army moved an additional $3.6 billion into modernization funding accounts in FY20 over last year's levels — planning to spend $8.6 billion on programs that get after a more modern force. And across the five-year budget plan, the service moved an additional $32 billion to fund modernization efforts beyond what was planned in FY19 for a total of $57 billion. The Army isn't cutting or slowing all of its legacy vehicle systems, Pasquarette noted. The Stryker Double V-Hull (DVH-configuration combat vehicles) will get $550 million per year over the next five years to outfit a half of a Stryker brigade combat team annually. The Abrams tank will receive $1.7 billion in FY20 funding, a 64 percent increase over last year, Pasquarette added. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federal-budget/2019/03/13/us-army-cuts-current-vehicle-fleet-to-make-way-for-next-gen-tech/
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August 7, 2018 | International, Land
Bulgaria details armoured vehicle procurement
Igor Bozinovski The Bulgarian Ministry of Defence (MoD) on 25 July placed details online of the project to procure 150 armoured vehicles for the Bulgarian Land Forces (BuLF). The 17-page document was approved by Bulgaria's Council of Ministers on 16 May. The BGN1.224 billion (USD722 million) BuLF modernisation project calls for BGN810 million to be spent on the acquisition of at least 90 armoured combat vehicles, and BGN414 million on at least 60 special and support vehicles. In addition, BGN240 million is planned for the acquisition of related equipment, documentation, personnel training, training and simulation equipment, an automated fire control system for a self-propelled mortar battery, and related communication and information systems. Full Article: https://www.janes.com/article/82190/bulgaria-details-armoured-vehicle-procurement