October 16, 2018 | International, Aerospace

Most F-35s return to flight operations after fuel tube problem

WASHINGTON — After a fuel tube problem sidelined all operational F-35 aircraft last week, more than 80 percent of jets have been cleared to return to flight, the F-35 joint program office stated Monday.

In a Oct. 15 statement, the JPO confirmed that the U.S. services and international partners have completed inspections of their F-35 inventories for faulty fuel tubes. The aircraft that are not impacted by the bad tubes — which are a component in Pratt & Whitney's F135 engine — are back in flying status.

“The F-35 Joint Program Office continues to work closely with the military services to prioritize fuel tube replacements using the current spares inventory,” the JPO said. “Pratt & Whitney is rapidly procuring more parts to minimize the overall repair timeline for the remaining jets. Current inventory will restore about half of the impacted jets to flight operations, and the remaining aircraft are expected to be cleared for flight over the coming weeks.”

Last week, all U.S. and international F-35s were momentarily grounded to allow for an enterprise-wide fuel tube inspection. The review began as a result of an investigation into a Sept. 28 Marine Corps' F-35B crash near Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina — the first F-35 crash in the jet's history.

It is still unclear exactly how the defective fuel tubes impact the jet's performance or how serious a safety threat they pose during flight operations. Joe DellaVedova, a spokesman for the JPO, declined to discuss the specific problems that led the program office to call for a fleetwide inspection, saying that details could not be released until the Marine Corps completes its accident investigation.

Also still up in the air is whether the Pentagon or Pratt & Whitney will be stuck paying the tab for retrofitting the fleet.

Spokesmen from the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy declined to lay out exactly how many of their aircraft had been impacted by the faulty fuel tubes. However, as Lockheed Martin delivered its 300th F-35 in June, 20 percent of the operational F-35 fleet can be estimated to be about 60 aircraft across the U.S. and international operators.

The JPO called the fuel tube problem an “isolated incident” that would not impact F-35 deliveries. A total of 91 F-35s are planned to be delivered to the U.S. military and foreign customers this year.

“The primary goal following any mishap is the prevention of future incidents,” the office said. “We will take every measure to ensure safe operations while we deliver, sustain and modernize the F-35 for the warfighter and our defense partners.”

The problem with the defective fuel tubes is the latest in a string of recent supply chain issues that have plagued F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin and engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, and comes as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sent a memo directing the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy to boost the F-35′s mission capable rate to 80 percent.

The Pentagon halted F-35 deliveries in March amid disagreements over whether the department or Lockheed should foot the bill for retrofitting part of the fleet that had not received corrosion-preventing primer in certain fastener holes. Deliveries resumed in May once the parties hammered out an agreement — although it was never revealed to the public exactly how the expenses would be paid off.

In 2016, certain F-35As were grounded after it was found that coolant lines inside the jets' fuel tanks were rimmed with faulty insulation, which was prone to disintegrating.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/10/15/most-f-35s-return-to-flight-operations-after-fuel-tube-problem

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September 18, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval

The US Navy is short almost 100 fighter pilots
David B. Larter WASHINGTON — A rash of technical and safety problems has left the U.S. Navy's fleet short by about 90 fighter pilots. Fixing the issue is an uphill battle, a top aviator said last week. The Navy has seen a slew of issues, including problems with the oxygen flow to the pilots causing negative and unsafe physiological responses in pilots and trainees, as well as readiness and engine trouble with aircraft. All of this has extended the time it takes to create a fighter pilot from three to four years, and the issues have created a gap in the number of pilots in the fleet, naval air training chief Rear Adm. Robert Westendorff said at a virtual Tailhook symposium on Saturday. “We can't just snap our fingers and produce those immediately. The time to train of a strike fighter pilot is about three years; due to the bottlenecks we've had, its getting closer to four years,” Westendorff said. “We're doing everything we can to get that back down to the three-year mark. But the recovery plan is a three-year plan. And if we stay on track, it should take us about three years.” An issue with the T-45′s engines “dramatically reduced” the availability of the aircraft this year, but the program is getting back on track, Westendorff said. Additionally, the general shortfall of F/A-18 Super Hornets throughout the fleet has impacted training, but Naval Aviation has been focused on bringing those numbers back up in recent years by fixing jets unable to fly for mechanical reasons. Naval air training has been beset in recent years with controversy over the so-called physiological episodes, the cause of which has been very hard to pin down. The Navy now believes it's a complex issue involving air flow and air pressure related to the breathing apparatus, and measures have been put in place to mitigate it, USNI News reported in June. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/09/17/the-us-navy-is-short-almost-100-fighter-pilots/
February 10, 2023 | International, Aerospace

As Ukraine braces for a major Russian offensive, its 'drone hunters' fight to defend its cities | CBC News
They stand in silent watch around key Ukrainian cities — the soldiers who call themselves the “drone hunters.” This week, CBC News was allowed access to the Ukrainian military's short-range air defence system outside of Kyiv. The system was assembled to shoot down low-flying aircraft targeting Ukraine's population centres — most of them Iranian-made kamikaze drones packed with explosives.
December 27, 2018 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

Air Force to accelerate deployment of anti-jam satellite communications equipment
by Sandra Erwin The Air Force is developing software and ground equipment to boost the protection of the Wideband Global satcom system. First in line for the upgrade are naval carrier strike groups. The Navy will get the new technology in 2022, about 18 months sooner than previously planned. WASHINGTON — The Air Force is cyber hardening military satellite communications equipment amid worries that foreign hackers could infiltrate U.S. networks. “Adversaries are getting better and more able to penetrate our unclassified or barely protected systems,” said Col. Tim Mckenzie chief of the advanced development division for military satellite communications at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The bulk of military satcom services are provided by the Air Force Wideband Global Satcom, or WGS, satellites and by commercial operators. All these systems require additional protection from cyber attacks, Mckenzie told SpaceNews in a recent interview. “Commercial satcom as well as our own purpose-built Wideband satellites were never designed to provide protection against some of the things we expect our adversaries to do in the near future,” he said. In response, the Air Force is developing software and satcom ground equipment to boost the protection of WGS networks in the near term, and commercial systems at a later time. First in line for these upgrades are the Navy's aircraft carrier strike groups in the Pacific, Mckenzie said. The Air Force will have this technology available for carrier strike groups in 2022, about 18 months sooner than previously planned. The central piece of the cyber security upgrade is anti-jam communications software — called the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW). A ground system, the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) will manage the transmission of the waveform over WGS satellites and terminals. Boeing, which manufactures the WGS satellites, was awarded a seven-year, $383 million contract in November to develop the PTES. “We are doing agile software development to enable early use of the PTW capability,” said Mckenzie. The anti-jam software and ground system only will work initially with WGS networks, said Mckenzie. If a commercial provider opted to use the PTW waveform, the ground system could be updated to interoperate with that vendor's network. Military satcom users will need to upgrade their satellite terminals with new modems to operate the PTW waveform. The Air Force two years ago awarded three contracts — $39 million to Raytheon, $38 million to L3 and $33 million to Viasat — to develop prototype modems. The Army, Navy and Air Force will run separate competitions to decide which modems they will acquire for their specific terminals. For carrier strike groups, the Navy will have to buy PTW-capable modems to upgrade its satellite terminals aboard ships. In the long term, the plan is to add a new space component — either newly designed spacecraft or military communications payloads hosted on commercial buses. “Our goal is to have some protected tactical satcom prototype payloads on orbit in the fiscal year 2025 time frame,” said Mckenzie. Whatever new hardware makes up the space segment, it will be compatible with the PTES ground equipment, he said. Mckenzie noted that the Air Force has been criticized for deploying satellites before the ground equipment is available. The PTW and PTES efforts reverse that trend. “We have learned lessons from being out of sync with terminals on the ground,” Mckenzie said. “We've been working for the last several years to develop modem upgrades that can be put into our existing terminals so we have terminals that can use PTW.” To get fresh thinking on how to develop a secure satcom system, the Air Force Space Enterprise Consortium is funding four design and prototyping projects. These are four areas “where we're trying o reduce risk,” said McKenzie. The consortium was stood up in 2017 and given authorities to kick start projects with far less red tape than traditional Pentagon contracting. Mckenzie said the Air Force is interested in new ideas for constellation architectures, payload hosting concepts, advanced space processing and antenna designs. McKenzie expects contracts for the development of protected tactical satcom payloads will be awarded in fiscal year 2020, with a goal to start launching new systems into orbit by 2025. Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and X-Band LLC have entered into cost-sharing agreements with the Air Force — contracts known as Other Transactions Authority — to map out constellation sizes, layouts, design lives, and concepts such as hosting of military payloads as a commercial service. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and SSL have signed OTA agreements to develop phased arrays and array fed reflectors antennas. BAE Systems, L3 and SEAKR Engineering received OTA deals to investigate requirements for secure satcom applications such as geo-location, waveform processing, and anti-jam. Boeing and Southwest Research Institute are studying hosting concepts, such as identifying interface commonalities between commercial and military bus providers and recommends ways to simplify the integration. Tom Becht, military satcom director at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, said the protected tactical satcom effort has been underway for more than eight years and now is being accelerated as the Air Force seeks to respond to military commanders' needs in a more timely fashion. “The demand for protected satcom has significantly increased,” Becht said in an interview. After the PTW, PTES and the new space segment are deployed, the next step will be to modernize the military's nuclear-hardened strategic satcom system, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency constellation. Most of the users of the AEHF system are tactical operators and the Pentagon eventually wants to have a dedicated strategic satcom constellation for nuclear command and control. “Tactical users will transition to the Protected Tactical Satcom system,” said Becht. That transition could take decades, he said. “The aggregated [tactical and strategic] AEHF will be around until the mid 2030s or a bit longer.” https://spacenews.com/air-force-to-accelerate-deployment-of-anti-jam-satellite-communications-equipment

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