Maintaining Mission Readiness: Collins Aerospace to support F-35 and CH-47F fleets for Royal Netherlands Air Force

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  August 12, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Land

  Here’s how the US Army’s missiles and space program office is being reorganized

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is reorganizing its Program Executive Office Missiles and Space to focus on the integrated fires mission, the office's chief said. “This is the construct that we need to have within the PEO to be agile, to be flexible, and not just meet those requirements that we see today, but to be able to bend as needed for those requirements that are coming tomorrow,” Maj. Gen. Robert Rasch said Aug. 8 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. The PEO is moving from having eight program managers to five that all fall under an integrated fires-focused portfolio. The five different program offices will be Fires Radars and Sensors, Integrated Fires Mission Command, Air-and-Missile Defense Fires, Operational and Strategic Fires, and Aviation and Ground Fires. Additionally, the PEO will have an Integrated Fires Rapid Capabilities program office. The projects under Fires Radars and Sensors will be the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense System, Sentinel, AN/TPQ-50, AN/TPQ53, AN/TPQ-36, AN/TPQ-37, the Range Radar Replacement Program, and the Army Long-Range Persistent Surveillance — deployed in several global locations to defend against aircraft, cruise missiles and drones. The Integrated Fires Mission Command portfolio will include the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, the Integrated Collaborative Environment, the Integrated Fire Control Network, and the Joint Tactical Ground Station, to name a few. The Air and Missile Defense Fires areas of responsibility will be the Indirect Fires Protection Capability Increment 2, Stinger missile, Avenger system, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile, Expanded Mission Area Missile, Interim Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile, PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missile, Patriot launcher and C-RAM Intercept Land-based Phalanx Weapon System. The Precision Strike Missile, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, Army Tactical Missile Systems, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, and the Multiple Launch Rocket System will fall under Operational and Strategic Fires. Javelin, Hellfire, Tube-launched Optically Tracked Wire-Guided missile, Improved Target Acquisition and the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition will be a part of Aviation and Ground Fires. Under the Integrated Fires and Rapid Capabilities portfolio will be Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, and the Mobile Low, Slow Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Integrated Defense Systems. All of the products living under the PEO Missiles and Space umbrella will remain, it's just a matter of shifting them around, Rasch said, and that's the easy part. “What we have lacked in the past is really a systems-of-systems look at the requirements as they come into our PEO,” Rasch said, and the new organization will “make sure that we really understand how we need to implement these from a materiel perspective.” Rasch noted that going forward a lot of focus will be on the sensors portfolio to figure out “how we can truly make best use of the various sensors we have on the battlespace to provide better situational awareness that enables everything, that truly enables the concept or integrated fires that is needed to support multidomain operations.” The newly organized PEO will reach a full-operational capability by the first quarter of fiscal 2021, Rasch said. “You ask: ‘Why so long?' ... We have a little bit of work to do before I can start turning over all the locks, so we are in deep mission analysis right now.” Moving products around to different portfolios is easy, but “when we start looking at funding lines, we start looking at leadership across the varied PM offices, you start looking at the functional support that exists within those,” Rasch said. “We are going to make sure we can, deliberately, over the next year and half.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/smd/2019/08/08/heres-how-the-armys-missiles-and-space-program-office-is-being-reorganized/

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  August 28, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Army expects to spend up to $50 billion a year on Futures Command

  By ROSE L. THAYER AUSTIN, Texas – It could cost between $30 and $50 billion annually for the Army's Futures Command to work towards modernizing the service, Gen. Mark Milley, the Army's chief of staff, said Friday. In Milley's formal remarks during an activation ceremony for the command at its new headquarters in downtown Austin, he said most of the Army is involved in today's military operations. Futures Command instead will think about tomorrow's fight. “The only thing that is more expensive than preventing war is fighting a war,” Milley said. “The only thing more expensive than fighting a war, is fighting and losing a war. This command is all about setting the United States Army up to not only win on the battlefield, but to be decisive and absolutely dominate on the battlefield so that we inflict punishment and destroy the enemy at the least cost to ourselves.” Futures Command hopes to help do that by working with technology companies, startups, academia and businesses of all sizes with ideas on how to modernize the Army and be prepared to fight forces of similar strength. The mission is to provide soldiers with the weapons and equipment they need, when they need them and ensure success on future battlefields – all at a much faster rate than the Defense Department's acquisitions process allows now. Milley said Futures Command would not have been formed if not for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who announced Friday that he is discontinuing treatment for his brain cancer. The general said he and McCain discussed the challenges of procurement about three years ago as Milley awaited confirmation as chief of staff. “[McCain] said, ‘I want you to think about how you're going to reform the Army',” Milley recalled. “He planted that seed that we had significant challenges.” They continued the dialogue for several months and slowly their talks developed into Futures Command. On Friday, Gen. John “Mike” Murray took the helm of the new command with the support of its highest ranking noncommissioned officer Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Crosby. Together, the men unveiled the command's flag on the 17th floor of an University of Texas System office building. It is the first time that the Army has established a command in the middle of an urban center. The space's still unfinished walls and ceilings showed the work ahead to get the Futures Command operational. With the expectation of employing about 100 soldiers and about 400 civilians, the cost of managing just the headquarters is expected to be about $80 to $100 million, or on par with the other four-star commands. The new command is included in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. Milley said Murray has six months to get settled, and another six to start showing results. https://www.stripes.com/news/army-expects-to-spend-up-to-50-billion-a-year-on-futures-command-1.544234

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  November 24, 2020 | International, Naval

  Navy Orders Two Hellfire SSMM Systems for LCS

  Posted on November 23, 2020 by Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has ordered two more Surface-to-Surface Missile Modules (SSMMs) for integration into the Surface Warfare Mission Package of the littoral combat ships, bring to four the number of SSMMs on order. The Naval Sea Systems Command awarded Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. a 10.7 million firm-fixed-price contract modification for two additional SSMM systems for delivery by November 2022, a Nov. 20 Defense Department contract announcement said. The SSMM is a modular weapons system that fires Lockheed Martin-built AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles from launchers built by Teledyne Brown Engineering. Each launcher houses a total of 24 missiles. A prototype launcher has demonstrated the capability to defend against multiple swarming Fast Attack Craft/Fast Inshore Attack Craft (FAC/FIAC). During one test, a volley of six missiles were launched in rapid succession from an LCS, successfully destroying a swarm of six high-speed targets. More than 100 missiles have been fired to date with a greater than 90% successful engagement rate. The SSMM achieved Initial Operational Capability on the Freedom-variant LCS in February 2019 and was deployed on USS Detroit in November 2019. Northrop Grumman is under contract to build four SSMM systems so far. The Navy has a requirement for 12 SSMM systems. https://seapowermagazine.org/navy-orders-two-hellfire-ssmm-systems-for-lcs/