L3Harris Link 16 acquisition obtains all regulatory approvals

On the same subject

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  August 24, 2022 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  Collins Aerospace completes first flight of next-generation MS-110 sensor - Skies Mag

  Collins Aerospace has completed the first flight test of its newest fast-jet reconnaissance pod, the MS-110 Multispectral Airborne Reconnaissance system, on an F-16 for an undisclosed international customer.

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  November 28, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  Japan at a crossroads: What’s keeping its defense industry from growing?

  By: Mike Yeo MELBOURNE, Australia — Japan is facing what appears to be an increasingly difficult choice, between a desire to keep its domestic defense industry in business, and getting more value for its defense spending while introducing much-needed capabilities by buying foreign off-the-shelf systems. This conundrum comes as the U.S. ally continues to warily eye nearby China's military buildup and North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. Japan's defense industry came to being soon after the end of World War II, as it attempted to rebuild its shattered economy. According to Corey Wallace, a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of East Asia Studies at Germany's Freie Universität Berlin, Japan adopted what was known as kokusanka — a conscious and systematic attempt to domesticate technologies that Japan would need for an autonomous defense-industrial base. Through licensing agreements and other methods of technology transfer and acquisition, the Japanese government in the post-war period identified the most important platforms it thought it needed and tried to domesticate them. Today, Japan's local industry produces all of the country's warships and submarines, albeit fitted with important systems like the Aegis combat system, radars and missiles from the United States as well as most of its land warfare systems. Despite these capabilities, there are a number of hurdles for Japan's defense-industrial base. Chief among these is the relatively small, domestic market that drives up unit prices as well as Japan's own set of unique requirements that sometimes create a bespoke product difficult to market overseas. The small, domestic market has also meant there is little competition. And when the price of a product is determined by what Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun calls the “cost calculation method,” in which a contractor's profit is added to the prime cost that also includes that of materials and labor, it can lead to “an open invitation for soaring costs as contractors have few incentives for suppressing the prime cost.” An example of this is the C-2 airlifter. Since 2016, Japan has ordered a total of seven C-2 aircraft out of an eventual requirement of 40. This slow production rate means the C-2 costs about $201 million per aircraft, according to the latest budget request from Japan's Defense Ministry, which has asked to procure two aircraft in the next fiscal year. This, coupled with the need to focus on the expensive missile defense systems against the North Korean ballistic missile threat, has put Japan's defense budget under strain, to the point that earlier this year Japan's Finance Ministry reportedly took the unorthodox step of urging its defense counterpart to consider the option of acquiring a cheaper airlifter instead of the C-2. Given recent developments in the geopolitical and domestic industrial sphere, Japan has turned to what Wallace calls “selectivity and concentration” — the country accepts that its defense-industrial base cannot achieve absolute autonomy, particularly in areas like fighter jets and ballistic missile defense, where international cooperation is necessary in the development process. Foreign partnerships Cooperation with a foreign partner appears to be the way Japan is proceeding with two key aerospace programs: the development of a new air-to-air missile and its next fighter jet. Japan is developing the Joint New Air-to-Air Missile, which will marry the active electronically scanned array radar seeker of Japan's AAM-4B air-to-air missile with the European MBDA Meteor ramjet-powered beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile. The missile is intended for use by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, but the program appears to be on a long timeline. Reports indicate no technical work has been done, and the first prototypes are planned to be ready for test shots after April 2022, with a decision following on whether to go ahead with the program. With regard to its next-generation fighter jets, following a request for information from several overseas manufacturers earlier this year, Japan is reportedly studying the feasibility of a joint development program. Local media has tracked the story, although official information is scant pending the release of Japan's five-year midterm defense plan later this year. It's widely expected Japan will link up with a foreign partner for the development, however some are holding out hope for a wholly domestic fighter program despite the risks and higher costs involved. Japan has not locally built fighters since Mitsubishi F-2s rolled off the line in 2011. However, Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer who is now a senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, says Japan should consider spending more on defense, telling Defense News earlier this year that figure should be about $5 billion to $7 billion more per year for the next five years. As the world's third-largest economy, he said, “Japan has all the money it needs to properly fund defense. And the amounts required are about the same as the waste and/or fraud in a couple of public works projects, but it chooses not to do so.” Japan's latest defense budget request for the next fiscal year is for $48 billion, which is a 2.1 percent increase from the previous year's allocated budget and represents a new record-high defense budget for the country. The amount is roughly 1 percent of its gross domestic product, which, although not official policy, has essentially become a ceiling for its defense budget. Notably, Japan is carrying out final assembly on most of its 42 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters, which will eventually replace the upgraded F-4EJ Kai Phantom II aircraft currently in service. The government reportedly wants to buy more F-35s, with some suggesting it's looking at the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35B to equip the flight decks of its helicopter destroyers of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. Export challenges Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has ended its ban on defense exports, which his government sees as a way to boost Japan's economy. Japanese defense companies have and continue to pursue several international acquisition programs ranging from Australia's requirement for submarines to France and Germany's requirement for new maritime patrol aircraft. However, these export opportunities have presented their own set of challenges, not least the fact that Japanese companies lack the savvy of their more-experienced competitors at the higher end of the global arms market, and that they're being priced out by cheaper alternatives at the lower end. And despite their undoubted quality, Japanese offerings are sometimes hindered in the export market by the domestic market's bespoke requirements. In the case of the C-2, there were no requirements for the aircraft to conduct operations on short or poorly prepared airstrips, and this is likely to hurt its prospects in New Zealand, which is seeking airlifters for both strategic and tactical airlift missions. In this case, the ability to operate from poorly prepared runways is important given the Royal New Zealand Air Force conducts regular operations to South Pacific islands, particularly on humanitarian assistance and disaster response missions in the aftermath of natural disasters. Newsham noted that despite the recent loosening of restrictions, there has not been significant effort by Japanese companies to dive into the international defense market, as most major Japanese companies don't consider the defense business to be profitable. Other sources in Japan who are familiar with the industry have corroborated that view in speaking to Defense News. And Newsham adds that despite being the administration that pushed for the loosening of defense export restrictions, the Abe government has not proactively supported Japanese defense companies seeking to do business overseas. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2018/11/26/japan-at-a-crossroads-whats-keeping-its-defense-industry-from-growing

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  April 27, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Recalculating: GPS, L-band and the Pentagon’s untenable position on 5G

  Daniel S. Goldin Last week, Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communication Commission, submitted the L-band Ligado spectrum proposal for approval, which, he said, will “make more efficient use of underused spectrum and promote the deployment of 5G” with “stringent conditions to prevent harmful [GPS] interference.” All five FCC commissioners voted to affirm the proposal, which was formally published in a 70-page report. L-band is a critical piece of spectrum that will help accelerate the deployment of U.S. 5G so we can compete and ultimately win against China. The Department of Defense argues that use of the L-band (as Ligado proposes) will interfere with GPS, which is essential to our military and economy. The FCC's final order concludes that the testing upon which the DoD and other opponents based their GPS interference claims was invalid. L-band opponents' interference measurement (termed 1dB C/No) is “inappropriate” and “there is no connection presented in the technical studies” that prove this measure of interference “relates to performance-based metrics” of a GPS receiver. In short, the FCC said there is no harmful GPS interference, and opponents have been using a flawed methodology and an invalid test with which the FCC “strongly disagree[s].” The FCC's recent report is not the first time the Ligado proposal was determined to cause no GPS interference. In early 2019, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under David Redl reviewed the Ligado proposal carefully — along with the 20 government agencies that comprise the review body — and determined there is no interference. The NTIA then wrote a recommendation for approval and, before it could get to the FCC, it was blocked, eventually leading to Redl's dismissal. Further, over 5,000 hours of testing, including 1,500 hours at a high-tech U.S./DoD-sponsored and designed facility (performed by the world-recognized standard-in-testing National Institute of Standards and Technology scientists and engineers), proved no harmful GPS interference. Afterward, a DoD expert who monitored and confirmed the testing results told me “there is no interference problem, only a bureaucracy problem.” Yet DoD has continued to blitz the executive and legislative branches, galvanizing opposition with a compelling plea: Ligado hurts GPS, which endangers military operations and will harm the economy. Powerful. But factually wrong. And if wrong, why is Defense Secretary Mark Esper continuing to lobby against the FCC? The FCC is an independent agency. The Communications Act of 1934 charged the FCC with regulating communications for important reasons, including “for the purpose of national defense.” So why is the DoD employing principles of war — offensive operations to mass upon and seize the objective — toward the demise of Ligado's proposal and, perhaps implicitly, Ligado itself? Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee are weighing in on the DoD's behalf. They have been presented partial, one-sided information. Mr. Esper is a capable, reform-minded defense secretary who has brought much-needed change to the Pentagon. But he has also been advancing one-sided recommendations from his senior staff for GPS issues, some with longstanding connections to the highly influential Position, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board — which enjoys a level of influence akin to a special interest group within the U.S. government. A reading of the defense secretary's November 2019 letter to the NTIA reveals that even the DoD was never really sure about its own GPS interference claims, stating merely there are “too many unknowns,” the “risks are far too great,” testing shows “potential for” disruption and the Ligado system “could have a significant negative impact.” Yet, once the Ligado proposal was presented for approval on April 15 — with no new testing or analysis since November — DoD leadership tweeted that Ligado's signal “would needlessly imperil” DoD capabilities that use GPS, and risk “crippling our GPS networks.” If taken at face value, this means the DoD has spent over $50 billion over 45 years on a military GPS system that is so fragile it can be rendered useless by a 10-watt transmitter (a refrigerator light bulb) operating 23 MHz away. If true, this would represent one of the most egregious mismanagements of taxpayer dollars in federal procurement history. The pandemic has shown that China is coercing nations in need of medical assistance to adopt Chinese 5G infrastructure. Coercion from Chinese dominance in 5G would be worse. Agencies like the FCC and NTIA are in the national security arena now. As Attorney General William Barr stated in February, “we have to move decisively to auction the C-band and bring resolution on the L-band. Our economic future is at stake. We have to bear in mind in making these spectrum decisions that, given the narrow window we face, the risk of losing the 5G struggle with China should vastly outweigh all other considerations.” It is time for bold, forward-looking leadership and a wartime mindset. Chairman Pai deserves credit for setting this example. His courageous decision, coupled with support from the FCC commissioners and the strong statements of support from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Barr, signals a new determination to win the 5G race. L-band spectrum will enable other key elements of the U.S. 5G strategy and private sector innovation faster than any other option. It also demonstrates that a science-based approach to technology and policy is critical, otherwise we will grind to a near halt on every major decision — like this one — to China's benefit. America is truly “exceptional,” and the envy of every political system the world over, because our system is anchored on the rule of law and institutions that allow stakeholders' competing interests to be adjudicated. All parties have had many years to make their cases. The FCC's world-class scientists and engineers have come to a conclusion. The DoD has no new information; it just does not like the result. After all the internal policy battles are fought, there is only one constituency that matters: the American people and their national and economic security, consistent with U.S. policy objectives grounded in facts. This is why we must embrace this scientifically sound and strategically wise decision by the FCC and move forward, guided by another more apt principle of war: unity of effort. https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2020/04/24/recalculating-gps-l-band-and-the-pentagons-untenable-position-on-5g/