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  September 22, 2020 | International, Naval

  US Marines wants to move fast on a light amphibious warship. But what is it?

  David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps is moving as fast as it can to field a new class of light amphibious warship, but it remains unclear what it will do, where it will be based or what capabilities it will bring to the fight. The idea behind the ship is to take a commercial design or adapt a historic design to make a vessel capable of accommodating up to 40 sailors and at least 75 Marines to transport Marine kit over a range of about 3,500 nautical miles, according to a recent industry day presentation. While the presentation noted that the ship should have few tailored Navy requirements, that also creates a problem: If the Navy is going to pay tens of millions to develop, build, crew and operate them, should it not provide some additional value to the fleet? Analysts, experts and sources with knowledge of internal discussions who spoke to Defense News say the answer to that question is a source of friction inside the Pentagon. The idea of the warship arrived on the scene in 2019 with the ascension of Gen. David Berger as commandant of the Marine Corps. His planning guidance called for a smaller, more agile amphibious force that could operate inside the Chinese anti-access, area denial window in the South China Sea. In a recent virtual meeting of the Surface Navy Association, the chief of naval operations' director of expeditionary warfare, Maj. Gen. Tracy King, emphasized that above all, the platform must be cheap and come online quickly. “I see the efficacy of this [light amphibious warship] is really to help us in the phases and stages we're in right now,” King said Aug. 27. “We need to start doing things differently, as an extension of the fleet, under the watchful eye of our Navy, engaging with our partners and allies and building partner capacity: We ought to be doing that right now. I think we're late to need with building the light amphibious warship, which is why we're trying to go so quickly.” When asked whether the ship should contribute to a more distributed sensor architecture to align with the Navy's desire to be more spread out over a large area during a fight, King answered in the affirmative. "[But] I really see it benefiting from [that architecture] more,” he said. “We need to build an affordable ship that can get after the ability to do maritime campaigning in the littorals.” The unstated implication appeared to be that if the ship is loaded up with sensors and requirements, it will slow down the process and increase the cost. Analysts who spoke to Defense News agreed with that, saying the Navy is likely trying to put more systems on the platform that will make it more complex and more expensive. The Navy has said it wants to keep the price under $100 million per platform and begin purchasing them as early as the latter half of 2022. “The hardest part is going to be appetite suppression, especially on the part of the Navy,” said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine officer and analyst with The Heritage Foundation. "This is what we saw in the littoral combat ship: It started out as a very light, near-shore, small and inexpensive street fighter. And then people started adding on requirements. You had ballooning costs, increasing complexity of the platform, and you get into all kinds of problems. “The Marine Corps wants this quickly. It needs it to be inexpensive so you can have 28-30 of them over a three- to four-year period.” There is the additional challenge of where the ships will be based, since they will probably not be built to the kinds of standards of normal Navy vessels built to last for 30-40 years in service. The minimum service life for the light amphibious warship will be about 10 years, according to the industry day presentation. Wood said that would be a challenge for the Marines and the State Department to work out in parallel with the effort to get the hulls quickly built. Jerry Hendrix, a retied Navy captain and analyst with the Telemus Group, agreed with that assessment, saying the Marines are eager to move forward to get something fielded, in part to make sure this transition to a lighter, more distributed force being pushed by Berger actually happens. "The commandant can't divest of some of the legacy platforms he's building — these big, expensive and vulnerable platforms — until he has something that replaces it in the water. And so he's anxious to get going with something else so he then has a reason to move away from what he has. “The commandant is well aware he has a four-year clock and its ticking. So if he's going to make changes, he's got to get moving to get those changes in place and commit the Marine Corps to them to make sure it's going to last. And right now I'm not sure there's a lot of high confidence that they are going to last.” Hendrix acknowledged that the Navy has good reason to want the light amphibious warship to have more capability, but added that the Corps is more interested in something simple than something costly and elaborate. “What that does,” Hendrix said, “is drive up unit cost and drive down the numbers that can be purchased.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/09/21/us-marines-wants-to-move-fast-on-a-light-amphibious-warship-but-what-is-it/

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  April 20, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  No title found

  Lockheed Martin Demos S-97 Raider Helicopter for U.S. Army

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  June 10, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Losing Market Share And Damaging National Security Due To Anachronistic Drone Policy

  Dave Deptula Contributor Adherence to an obsolescent approach to the international nuclear non-proliferation export guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is hurting the United States (U.S.) both commercially and from a national security perspective. In a nutshell, the MTCR treats large drones as if they were nuclear missiles—which they are not. As a result, this self-imposed restriction not only limits the sale of large U.S. drones to our friends and allies but pushes them into the arms of foreign suppliers some of whom are potential adversaries. The result is a series of negative consequences for the U.S. When the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released its annual report on global arms transfers earlier this year, it was a good news story for the U.S. From 2015-2019, the U.S. accounted for 36 percent of major global arms sales, a 23 percent increase in volume over the previous five-year period and 76 percent more than its next closest competitor—Russia. The dominant position the U.S. finds itself in is a testament to both the quality of U.S. defense equipment, which is typically accompanied by robust training, sustainment, and support packages, as well as the mutual desire of the U.S. and its partners and allies to develop and maintain strong defense relationships. However, one important segment of the defense market where this pattern does not hold are large military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). This is not due to a lack of capability—the U.S. remains the world's leader in UAV technology and expertise—nor a lack of demand as by 2029 the international market will account for over 50 percent of the over $10 billion projected to be spent annually on UAVs. Instead, the U.S. has hamstrung itself due to restrictive export policies that equate large UAVs to nuclear missiles. This mismatch between the definitions and controls imposed on UAVs and the reality of how they are actually employed has significantly harmed coalition operations, U.S. relationships with its partners and allies, and the U.S. defense industrial base. It is imperative that the U.S. modernize its UAV export policy. Currently, the MTCR governs the export of U.S. UAVs. Initially formed in 1987, the MTCR is a voluntary agreement intended to limit the proliferation of missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons—and later weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The MTCR defines UAVs capable of delivering a 500-kilogram payload more than 300 kilometers one way as Category I systems, the transfer of which “are subject to an unconditional strong presumption of denial.” Although at the time the MTCR was negotiated no UAV exceeded the Category I thresholds, their envisioned use as delivery vehicles for WMD equivalent to cruise missiles precipitated their inclusion in the MTCR. However, since then the development of UAVs evolved as remotely piloted aircraft, not cruise missiles. Unfortunately, export policy has failed to keep pace, resulting in a situation where the export of UAVs is regulated under the same stringent regime as intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. policy failure to adequately remedy this situation creates significant problems for the following reasons. First, current U.S. export policy prevents the U.S. from realizing the full potential of UAVs in coalition operations. Because current policy frequently results in the denial of export requests for U.S. UAVs by close partners and allies, these nations must either resort to indigenous production or to another foreign manufacturer to meet their military requirements. Under the best of circumstances, the result is a lower level of interoperability with U.S. forces than possible had they been able to acquire U.S. UAVs. This hampers the integration of partners that would enable the coalition to be much more effective. The current policy impedes the use of common UAVs critical for success in allied operations. Of greater concern is that much of the unmet demand by friends for U.S. military UAVs is now being fulfilled by China because of the MTCR restrictions. Integrating partners into coalition operations using Chinese UAVs creates significant security risks. This is because China maintains control of the systems necessary to operate their UAVs. This enables them to collect intelligence on coalition operations if allowed access to coalition networks. From the perspective of a U.S. commander, the risk these likely infiltrations pose to security is sufficient to exclude partners operating Chinese UAVs from participating in both U.S. led coalition operations and intelligence sharing agreements. Second, the U.S. denying UAV export requests from nations that are security partners fosters frustration, raises doubts about U.S. commitments, and drive partners to pursue security relationships with China. Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates provide recent examples of solid U.S. partners that have procured Chinese UAVs. Furthermore, these countries are then forced to rely on China for training, sustainment, intelligence processing, and other related services. China's willingness to integrate indigenous industry in joint ventures—another practice restricted by the MTCR—serves to further solidify the ties between China and the partnering nation. Absent a change in U.S. policy, China will continue to expand its UAV market share and associated influence into regions important to the U.S. Third, the associated U.S. loss of global market share of UAV sales weakens U.S. business and the U.S. defense industrial base. Domestic funding for certain UAVs already faced downward pressure in the most recent budget request amidst other modernization priorities. Looking ahead the enormous federal expenditures to address the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic downturn are likely to result in significant cuts to future U.S. defense budgets. Greater access to foreign markets would serve to diversify the customer base of U.S. manufacturers of large UAVs, helping to offset reduced revenue from domestic buyers and keeping commercial production lines. Unfortunately, current UAV export policy precludes this from happening. Declining production rates for large military UAVs threaten to not only to shrink the U.S. aerospace industrial base, but also to undermine its competitive edge. Lacking predictable cash flow and sufficient profit margins, companies that manage to remain in the market will become more reticent to invest significant funds into research and development. Furthermore, the MTCR prohibits co-development and co-production of UAVs, precluding U.S. drone companies from pooling resources and expertise with international partners. The danger is that the U.S. may squander its drone advantage just as international interest in procuring advanced, survivable, multi-mission UAVs ramps up. It would be a tremendous shame if the U.S. finds itself no longer in a leading position and must instead rely on others to develop cutting-edge UAV technologies. Although there is growing awareness of these problems, recent efforts to craft a more reasonable UAV export policy have largely fallen short. Rather than a fundamental shift in policy, the few positive steps taken have been stopgap measures involving workarounds—approving more Category I sales via direct commercial sales rather than foreign military sales—or maneuvering within the confines of the MTCR through attempts to modify UAV definitions such as adding a speed criteria. Instead, as is comprehensively laid out in the Mitchell Institute's most recent policy paper, what is needed is for the Congress to insert language into the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that explicitly defines UAVs as combat aircraft and subject them to the same export considerations. This would effectively remove U.S. UAV export decisions from the MTCR guidelines. The U.S. has a proven process of adjudicating sales of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world, including how to configure them to make sales mutually beneficial to the U.S. and its partners. The example of the F-35 is particularly pertinent because technologies approved for export on the F-35 would be restricted by the MCTR if applied to a UAV—the only difference being the pilot of the F-35 is in the aircraft whereas large UAVs are remotely piloted. Given both the high degree of commonality of combat aircraft and UAVs, as well as the proven success combat aircraft sales have in providing partners a formidable deterrent and warfighting capability, improving interoperability among coalition partners, and supporting both U.S. and partner industrial capacity, treating UAVs as combat aircraft for export policy offers the most sensible and effective solution. Change cannot come soon enough. The U.S. has a limited window to re-engage with partners with a stated interest in U.S. UAVs or who are experiencing buyer's remorse with regard to their Chinese UAV partnerships. It is therefore critical that the U.S. normalize its UAV export policy before China can consolidate its gains. The future of warfare increasingly depends on UAV technology. Exporting large U.S. UAVs is vital to effective coalition operations. For too long the MTCR has distorted the balance of national security and economic interests against the fear of nuclear and WMD proliferation. Acknowledging UAVs as what they are—aircraft, not missiles—will enhance U.S. security, improve commercial trade in a growing business sector while preserving the MTCR as an effective means to prevent the proliferation of missiles and their associated technologies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davedeptula/2020/06/09/losing-market-share-and-damaging-national-security-due-to-anachronistic-drone-policy/#50ce76d51332