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  August 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Four rocket companies are competing for Air Force funding, and it is war

  By ERIC BERGER Monday marked the deadline for four US rocket companies to submit bids for Air Force contracts, encompassing all national security launches from 2022 to 2026. This is a hugely consequential and much-contested bid process that has implications for the American aerospace industry for the next decade and beyond. The Air Force is seeking two providers for about two dozen launches. The prime contractor will receive 60% of the launches while the secondary contractor claims the remaining 40%. As the US military pays a premium for launch contracts to its nine reference orbits, this guaranteed revenue is extremely valuable to US companies aspiring to run a profitable launch business. The lead-up to Monday's deadline has included heavy political lobbying from the four companies: United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Northrop Grumman. As a result of this, Congress is considering some changes to the Air Force's procurement policy, including an on-ramp for a third provider during the 2022 to 2026 period. But so far, the Air Force is resisting this. Here's a look at the four bidders and what is at stake for each of them. United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance—a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that enjoyed a monopoly on national security launches before the emergence of SpaceX—may be bidding for its life. To wean itself off its costly Delta boosters (as well as the Russian rocket engines that go with its workhorse Atlas V rocket), ULA has been developing the Vulcan rocket to cut costs while maintaining performance. The company says the Vulcan will be ready for its first flight in 2021. "Vulcan Centaur will provide higher performance and greater affordability while continuing to deliver our unmatched reliability and orbital accuracy precision from our treasured cryogenic Centaur upper stage," ULA's chief, Tory Bruno, said in a news release Monday. "ULA is the best partner for national security space launch, and we are the only provider to demonstrate experience flying to all orbits including the most challenging heavy-class missions, providing the bedrock foundation for the lowest risk portfolio of two launch service providers for the US Air Force." With increasing competition from SpaceX, Europe's Arianespace, Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Russian launch vehicles, ULA has been unable to capture much of the commercial market for satellite launches in the last decade. Therefore, it has largely been reliant on government business, mostly from the military. But ULA also relies on NASA through its science missions and lifting cargo and crew missions to the International Space Station. If the company does not emerge victorious from this competition, it faces an uncertain future unless Vulcan can become commercially viable. Moreover, ULA will lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in government money to finalize Vulcan if it does not receive an award. Historically, Boeing and Lockheed have been stingy parents, and whether or not they would pay to complete Vulcan is unclear. One intriguing twist with ULA's bid is that its Vulcan rocket will use the BE-4 rocket engine, which is being developed and manufactured by Blue Origin—one of the four competitors in the Air Force bidding process. Blue Origin has said the Air Force competition was designed to unfairly benefit ULA. SpaceX The Hawthorne, California-based rocket company is the only bidder proposing to use rockets that are already flying—the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. This family of rockets has had a string of 49 successful launches since a static fire accident in September 2016, and according to SpaceX, it can meet all of the Air Force's desired orbits and payload specifications. "SpaceX means to serve as the Air Force's long-term provider for space launch, offering existing, certified, and proven launch systems capable of carrying out the full spectrum of national security space-launch missions and requirements," said the company's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell. Since the Air Force agreed to admit SpaceX to the national security launch competition in 2015, the company has won several contracts for key missions and begun flying them for the military. These include the National Reconnaissance Office Launch 76, Orbital Test Vehicle 5, Global Positioning System III-2, and STP-2 flights. SpaceX also likely will offer the government the lowest price on service to orbit. However, in its criteria for awarding missions, the Air Force listed price among the last of its considerations. Due to its lower price point, especially with is reusable Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has considerable commercial business to offset the loss of Air Force contracts. But it would hurt financially, all the same. Blue Origin Jeff Bezos' rocket company has bid its very large New Glenn rocket for the Air Force missions. However, when this rocket will begin flying is not entirely clear, as there are questions about whether it will be ready by the beginning of the 2022 contracting period. What is clear is that Blue Origin does not believe the US Air Force has created a fair bidding process. Already, the company has filed a "pre-award" protest with the US Government Accountability Office. "The Air Force is pursuing a flawed acquisition strategy for the National Security Space Launch program," Blue Origin said, according to SpaceNews. The Air Force decision to award contracts to just two companies creates a "duopoly," Blue Origin says, and it limits commercial development of strategic US assets such as rocket engines and boosters. Bezos has been investing about $1 billion a year of his own money into Blue Origin, which has largely been used to support development of the BE-4 engine and New Glenn rocket. He is likely to continue development of the New Glenn rocket without Air Force funding, but company officials say it is not fair to hold their wealthy founder against their bid. Northrop Grumman Northrop has been developing the Omega rocket for this competition since at least 2016. The Omega vehicle differs from the other entrants in the competition as its first and second stages, as well as side-mounted boosters, are powered by solid-rocket motors rather than liquid-fueled engines. The bet by Northrop is that the US military, through its national security launch contract, would want to support one of the nation's most critical suppliers of solid-rocket motors for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Northrop officials have not said whether they would continue development of the Omega rocket if Northrop were to lose out on the Air Force contract. Northrop's bid suffered a setback in May when an "anomaly" occurred during test firing of its solid-propellant Castor 600 rocket motor, the Omega rocket's first stage. From a video provided by the company, a major part of the rocket's large nozzle appeared to break apart, blasting debris around the area. Afterward, a Northrop vice president, Kent Rominger, called the test a success. "It appears everything worked very, very well on this test," he said. "And at the very end when the engine was tailing off, we observed the aft exit cone, maybe a portion of it, doing something a little strange that we need to go further look into." Nevertheless, the test cannot have instilled absolute confidence in the Air Force. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/four-rocket-companies-are-competing-for-air-force-funding-and-it-is-war/

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  October 6, 2021 | International, Naval

  Austal USA wins first steel shipbuilding program with T-ATS towing ship contract

  Austal USA won its first steel shipbuilding contract ahead of opening a new steel manufacturing line in April.

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  February 15, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  The tiny tech lab that put AI on a spyplane has another secret project

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — It started as a dare. When Will Roper, then the Air Force's top acquisition official, visited Beale Air Force Base in California last fall, he issued a challenge to the U-2 Federal Laboratory, a five-person organization founded in October 2019. The team was established to create advanced technologies for the venerable Lockheed Martin U-2 spyplane, and Roper wanted to push the team further. “He walked into the laboratory and held his finger out and pointed directly at me,” recalled Maj. Ray Tierney, the U-2 pilot who founded and now leads the lab. “He said, ‘Ray, I got a challenge.' We didn't even say hello.” Roper, a string theorist turned reluctant government bureaucrat who was known for his disruptive style and seemingly endless references to science-fiction, wanted the team to update the U-2′s software during a flight. It was a feat the U.S. military had never accomplished, but to Tierney's exasperation, Roper wanted only to know how long it would take for the lab to pull off. The answer, it turns out, was two days and 22 hours. A month later, in mid-November, Roper laid out a second challenge: Create an AI copilot for the U-2, a collection of algorithms that would be able to learn and adapt in a way totally unlike the mindlessness of an autopilot that strictly follows a preplanned route. That task took a month, when an AI entity called Artuμ (pronounced Artoo, as in R2-D2 of Star Wars fame) was given control of the U-2′s sensors and conveyed information about the location of adversary missile launchers to the human pilot during a live training flight on Dec. 15. Now, the U-2 Federal Laboratory is at work again on another undisclosed challenge. Tierney and Roper declined to elaborate on the task in interviews with Defense News. But Roper acknowledged, more broadly, that a future where AI copilots regularly fly with human operators was close at hand. “Artuμ has a really good chance of making it into operations by maybe the summer of this year,” Roper told Defense News before his Jan. 20 departure from the service. “I'm working with the team on how aggressive is the Goldilocks of being aggressive enough? The goal is fairly achievable, but still requires a lot of stress and effort.” In order to ready Artuμ for day-to-day operations, the AI entity will be tested in potentially millions of virtual training missions — including ones where it faces off against itself. The Air Force must also figure out how to certify it so that it can be used outside of a test environment, Roper said. “The first time we fly an AI in a real operation or real world mission — that's the next big flag to plant in the ground,” Roper said. “And my goal before I leave is to provide the path, the technical objectives, the program approach that's necessary to get to that flag and milestone.” Meanwhile, the team has its own less formal, longer-term challenge: How do you prove to a giant organization like the Air Force, one that is full of bureaucracy and thorough reviews, that a small team of five people can quickly create the innovation the service needs? No regulations, no rules During a Dec. 22 interview, Tierney made it clear that he had little interest in discussing what the U-2 Federal Lab is currently working on. What he wanted to promote, he said, was the concept of how federal laboratories could act as innovation pressure chambers for the military — a place where operators, scientists and acquisition personnel would have the freedom to create without being hamstrung by red tape. For those immersed in military technology, focusing on the promise of federal laboratories can seem like a bit of a letdown, if not outright academic, especially when compared to a discussion about the future of artificial intelligence. The U.S. government is rife with organizations — often named after tired Star Wars references that would make even the most enthusiastic fanboy cringe — created in the name of fostering innovation and rapidly developing new technologies. Many of those advances never make it over the “valley of death” between when a technology is first designed and when it is finally mature enough to go into production. Ultimately, that's the problem the U-2 Federal Lab was created to solve. As a federally accredited laboratory, the team is empowered to create a technology, test it directly with users, mature it over time, and graduate it into the normal acquisition process at Milestone B, Tierney said. At that stage, the product is ready to be treated as a program of record going through the engineering and manufacturing development process, which directly precedes full-rate production. “We're basically front loading all the work so that when we hand it to the acquisition system, there's no work left to do,” Tierney said. The lab essentially functions as a “blue ocean,” as an uncontested market that does not normally exist in the acquisition system, he explained. “There's no regulations; there's no rules.” While that might sound similar to organizations the Air Force has started to harness emerging technologies, such as its Kessel Run software development factory, Tierney bristled at the comparison. “We're basically developing on the weapon system, and then working our way back through the lines of production, as opposed to a lot of these organizations like Kessel Run, which is developing it on servers and server environments,” he said. That distinction is critical when it comes to bringing modern software technologies to an aging platform like the U-2, an aircraft that took its first flight in 1955 and is so idiosyncratic that high speed muscle cars are needed to chase the spyplane and provide situational awareness as it lands. Because the team works only with the U-2, they understand the precise limitations of the weapon system, what its decades-old computers are capable of handling, and how to get the most out of the remaining space and power inside the airplane. Besides Tierney, there are only four other members of the U-2 Federal Lab: a National Guardsman with more than a decade of experience working for IBM, and three civilians with PhDs in machine learning, experimental astrophysics and applied mathematics. (The Air Force declined to provide the names of the other employees from the lab.) As the lone member of the team with experience flying the U-2, Tierney provides perspective on how the aircraft is used operationally and what types of technologies rank high on pilots' wish lists. But what most often drives the team are the projects that can make the biggest impact — not just for the U-2, but across the whole Defense Department. Making it work One of those projects was an effort to use Kubernetes, a containerized system that allows users to automate the deployment and management of software applications, onboard a U-2. The technology was originally created by Google and is currently maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “Essentially, what it does is it federates or distributes processing between a bunch of different computers. So you can take five computers in your house and basically mush them all together into one more powerful computer,” Tierney said. The idea generated some resistance from other members of the lab, who questioned the usefulness of deploying Kubernetes to the U-2′s simple computing system. “They said, ‘Kubernetes is useless to us. It's a lot of extra processing overhead. We don't have enough containers. We have one processing board, [so] what are you distributing against? You got one computer,'” Tierney said. But a successful demonstration, held in September, proved that it was possible for even a 1950s-era aircraft to run Kubernetes, opening the door for the Defense Department to think about how it could be used to give legacy platforms more computing power. It also paved the way for the laboratory to do something the Air Force had long been aiming to accomplish: update an aircraft's code while it was in flight. “We wanted to show that a team of five in two days could do what the Department of Defense has been unable to do in its history,” Tierney said. “Nobody helped us with this; there was no big company that rolled in. We didn't outsource any work, it was literally and organically done by a team of five. Could you imagine if we grew the lab by a factor of two or three or four, what that would look like?” The lab has also created a government-owned open software architecture for the U-2, a task that took about three months and involved no additional funding. Once completed, the team was able to integrate advanced machine learning algorithms developed by Sandia National Laboratories in less than 30 minutes. “That's my litmus test for open architecture,” Tierney said. “Go to any provider that says I have open architecture, and just ask them two questions. How long is it going to take you to integrate your service? And how much is it going to cost? And if the answer isn't minutes and free, it's not quite as open as what people want.” The U-2 Federal Lab hopes to export the open architecture system to other military aircraft and is already in talks with several Air Force and Navy program offices on potential demonstrations. Could the Air Force create other federal laboratories to create specialized tech for other aircraft? The U-2 lab was designed from the outset to be franchisable, but Tierney acknowledged that much of the success of future organizations will rest in the composition of the team and the level of expertise of its members. “Can it scale? Absolutely. How does it scale is another question,” Tierney said. “Do you have one of these for every weapon system? Do you have just a couple sprinkled throughout the government? Does it proliferate en masse? Those are all questions that I think, largely can be explored.” For now, it's unclear whether the Air Force will adopt this framework more widely. The accomplishments of the U-2 Federal Laboratory have been lauded by Air Force leaders such as Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, who in December wrote on Twitter that the group “continue[s] to push the seemingly impossible.” However, it remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will give the lab the champion it found in Roper, and continued pressure on the defense budget — and to retire older aircraft like the U-2 — could present greater adversity for the lab. But as for the other challenge, the one Tierney and Roper didn't want to discuss, Tierney offered only a wink as to what comes next: “What I can say is that the future is going to be an interesting one.” https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/02/11/the-tiny-tech-lab-that-put-ai-on-a-spyplane-has-another-secret-project/