November 17, 2020 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The Army has activated two air defense artillery batteries at Fort Bliss, Texas, that will evaluate the Iron Dome system for possible integration into the Army's air-and missile defense architecture, according to a Nov. 13 statement from the service.
The Iron Dome batteries will serve as an interim capability to fill a cruise missile defense gap. The change was mandated by Congress while the Army determines a long-term solution to combat such threats in addition to countering rockets, artillery, mortars and drones.
The Army took receipt of the first Iron Dome battery in Israel in October. The Fort Bliss-based units are expected to receive one Iron Dome system in December followed by the second in January.
To stand up the two batteries, the Army is converting a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and realigning resources from the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery School — which is a part of the Army's force realignment initiative — according to the statement.
The move is expected to be complete by Nov. 16 and will result in 26 additional personnel at Fort Bliss. The Army chose Fort Bliss because of its proximity to White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, where the systems will be tested and evaluated.
The units will spend the next year training, testing and working with the systems to prepare Iron Dome for operation deployment by late 2021.
Part of the effort, according to the statement, will include integration of Iron Dome into the Army's Integrated Battle Command System, which is the command-and-control element of the service's future Integrated Air and Missile Defense architecture. The IBCS system is expected to reach a production decision this month and will undergo an initial operational test and evaluation in 2021. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor on the program.
The Army plans to make a final stationing decision on where and how to employ the systems “through either a forward stationing decision and/or Dynamic Force Employment concept in response to contingency operations” when the batteries reach operational deployment capability, the statement notes.
The service plans to hold a shoot-off to determine an enduring capability for its Indirect Fires Protection Capability Increment 2 system — designed to defend against C-RAM, UAS and cruise missile threats — in the spring of 2021. Elements of the Iron Dome system will be part of that shoot-off.
Iron Dome has a long track record of operational success in Israel and is produced through a partnership with Israeli-based Rafael and Raytheon.
Those companies are making plans to produce Iron Dome systems in the United States and are expected to pick a location for production by the end of the year.
September 7, 2021 | International, Land
At first glance, Army 2021 was a display of traditional Russian military might. But behind the scenes were military and civilian industry officials and experts discussing two critical issues facing local businesses.
January 14, 2021 | International, Aerospace
By Ed Adamczyk Jan. 13 (UPI) -- A $325 million U.S. Air Force contract to support E-8C surveillance planes in the Joint STARS program was announced on Wednesday by Northrop Grumman. The contract executes the Total System Support Responsibility program for the fleet of 16 planes in the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS. The E-8C planes are modified from the Boeing707-300 series commercial airliner, and carry a variety of specialized radar, communications, operations and control subsystems. The contract includes program management, engineering technical support, aircrew and maintenance training, supply chain and spares management, technical data and publications, program depot maintenance and overall customer support, Northrop Grumman said in a press release. The planes are elements of the 116th and 461st Air Control Wings at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., and in overseas forward operating locations. The JSTARS program, developed by the U.S. Air Force and Army, has been in place since 1996, providing surveillance and target acquisition radar, and serving as an airborne command and control center. It was announced in 2019 that a replacement for the system, the Advanced Battle Management System family of platforms, is underdevelopment, but members of the U.S. Congress have shown reluctance to retire JSTARS. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2021/01/13/Northrop-Grumman-lands-325M-deal-for-Air-Force-JSTARS-sustainment/5351610556602
July 20, 2020 | International, Land
The draft RFP for the Bradley replacement, out today, also opens the possibility for a government design team to compete with private industry. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on July 17, 2020 at 1:51 PM WASHINGTON: The Army is giving industry a lot of freedom in their designs for its future armored troop transport, letting them pick the gun, weight, number of passengers and more. But there's one big exception. While the current M2 Bradley has three crew members – commander, gunner, and driver – a draft Request For Proposals released today says that its future replacement, the OMFV, must be able to fight with two. Fewer humans means more automation. It's an ambitious goal, especially for a program the Army already had to reboot and start over once. The other fascinating wrinkle in the RFP is that the Army reserves the right to form its own design team and let it compete against the private-sector contractors. This government design team would be independent of any Army command to avoid conflicts of interest. If the Army does submit its own design, that would be a major departure from longstanding Pentagon practice. But the Army has invested heavily in technologies from 50mm cannon to automated targeting algorithms to engines, so it's not impossible for a government team to put all that government intellectual property together into a complete design. The Army has embraced automation from the beginning of the Bradley replacement program, and that's been consistent before and after January's decision to reboot. OMFV's very name, Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, refers to the service's desire to have the option to operate the vehicle, in some situations, by remote control – eventually. But an unmanned mode remains an aspiration for future upgrades, not a hard-and-fast requirement for the initial version of the vehicle scheduled to enter service in 2028. By contrast, the two-person crew is one of the few hard-and-fast requirements in the draft RFP released this morning. It's all the more remarkable because there few such requirements in the RFP or its extensive technical annexes (which are not public). Instead, in most cases, the Army lays out the broad performance characteristics it desires and gives industry a lot of leeway in how to achieve them. That's a deliberate departure from traditional weapons programs, which lay out a long and detailed list of technical requirements. But the Army tried that prescriptive approach on OMFV and it didn't work. Last year, in its first attempt to build the OMFV, the Army insisted that industry build – at its own expense – a prototype light enough that you could fit two on an Air Force C-17 transport, yet it had to be tough enough to survive a fight with Russian mechanized units in Eastern Europe. Only one company, General Dynamics, even tried to deliver a vehicle built to that specification and the Army decided they didn't succeed. So the Army started over. It decided heavy armor was more important than air transportability, so it dropped the requirement to fit two OMFVs on a single C-17; now it'll be satisfied if a C-17 can carry one. In fact, it decided rigid technical requirements were a bad idea in general because it limited industry's opportunity to offer ingenious new solutions to the Army's problems, so the service replaced them wherever it could with broadly defined goals called characteristics. And yet the new draft RFP does include a strict and technologically ambitious requirement: the two-person crew. Now, since the OMFV is a transport, it'll have more people aboard much of the time, and when an infantry squad is embarked, one of them will have access to the vehicle's sensors and be able to assist the crew. But when the passengers get out to fight on foot, there'll just be two people left to operate the vehicle. A two-person crew isn't just a departure from the Bradley. This is a departure from best practice in armored vehicle design dating back to World War II. In 1940, when Germany invaded France, the French actually had more tanks, including some much better armed and armored than most German machines. But a lot of the French tanks had two-man crews. There was a driver, seated in the hull, and a single harried soldier in the turret who had to spot the enemy, aim the gun, and load the ammunition. By contrast, most German tanks split those tasks among three men – a commander, a gunner, and a loader – which meant they consistently outmaneuvered and outfought the overburdened French tankers. A lot of modern vehicles don't need a loader, because a mechanical feed reloads automatically. But in everything from the Bradley to Soviet tanks, the minimum crew is three: driver, gunner, and commander. That way the driver can focus on the terrain ahead, the gunner can focus on the target currently in his sights, and the commander can watch for danger in all directions. A two-person crew can't split tasks that way, risking cognitive overload – which means a greater risk that no one spots a threat until it's too late. So how do fighter jets and combat helicopters survive, since most of them have one or two crew at most? The answer is extensive training and expensive technology. If the Army wants a two-person crew in its OMFV, the crew compartment may have to look less like a Bradley and more like an Apache gunship, with weapons automatically pointing wherever the operator looks. The Army's even developing a robotic targeting assistant called ATLAS, which spots potential targets on its sensors, decides the biggest threat and automatically brings the gun to bear – but only fires if a human operator gives the order. Now, industry does not have to solve these problems right away. The current document is a draft Request For Proposals, meaning that the Army is seeking feedback from interested companies. If enough potential competitors say the two-man crew is too hard, the Army might drop that requirement. The current schedule gives the Army about nine months, until April 2021, to come out with the final RFP, and only then do companies have to submit their preliminary concepts for the vehicle. The Army will pick several companies to develop “initial digital designs” – detailed computer models of the proposed vehicle – and then refine those designs. Physical prototypes won't enter testing until 2025, with the winning design entering production in 2027 for delivery to combat units the next year. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/omfv-army-wants-smaller-crew-more-automation/