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August 20, 2019 | International, Aerospace
New F-35 Modification Facility Brings Strategic Capability to FRCE
By Heather Wilburn, Fleet Readiness Center Public Affairs
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION CHERRY POINT, N.C. (NNS) -- A recently-completed facility will bring a new strategic capability to Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE) and the F-35B Lightning aircraft line next year. When the new F-35 laser shock peening facility is fully operational in 2020, FRCE will be one of two sites in the world that will use laser technology to strengthen F-35 structural components.
Construction of the $6 million facility wrapped in July, and the contractor providing the laser shock peening service will take occupancy in early spring, said Donald Jeter, portfolio manager of the F-35 aircraft line at FRCE. Under that timeline, the first F-35 aircraft inducted for laser shock peening would arrive in June to undergo the validation and verification process, and then the depot will begin work on the remainder of the F-35 fleet that requires the laser shock peening modification.
“This facility is a big get for Fleet Readiness Center East,” Jeter said. “It's very exciting. Being able to perform this laser shock peening process adds a huge strategic capability to our depot. With it, we'll be able to provide a critical support element to the F-35B program and act as a force multiplier for the fleet and the warfighter.”
The 16,000-square-foot facility comprises two bays, where the actual laser shock peening process will take place, and a connected area that will house the laser generator. The state-of-the-art laser shock peening process will allow FRCE to conduct heavy structure modifications that will strengthen areas of the F-35's airframe without disassembling the entire aircraft, said Matthew Crisp, the F-35 Joint Program Office site lead at FRCE.
The process strengthens designs without adding additional metal or weight, which increases the aircraft's life and reduces maintenance costs. It has been used on the F-22 Raptor and in manufacturing aircraft components including engine blades, Crisp said, but has never been employed for the F-35. Now, FRCE will use the technology to help Marine Corps aircraft reach their full life limit.
Aircraft maintenance professionals at FRCE will conduct prep work and some structural modification on the F-35s inducted into the depot, then turn them over to the contractor running the laser shock peening operations. The contractor will complete the process to strengthen the bulkheads and airframes, and FRCE will put the jets back together, perform all the flight test functions and get them back out to the fleet, Jeter said. The end result is aircraft that have been reinforced without adding additional weight, which would reduce the fighter's capabilities by limiting its fuel or weapons carrying capacity.
Shot peening is not a new process, Crisp said, but laser shock peening is unique in that it produces a uniform result across the surface being treated. In laser shock peening, the surface of the media is first coated with an ablative layer and covered with a water tamping layer. A high-energy laser beam is fired at the metal, which creates an area of plasma on the metal's surface. The impact creates a shock wave, which travels through the metal, and compressive residual stresses remain. This compression helps improve the metal's damage tolerance, fatigue life and strength.
“(Shot peening) has been done for decades,” he explained. “It's where you take a solid media, like glass beads or some kind of metal, and you hit the surface of an item – kind of like sandblasting. You just randomly throw it at the surface, and it creates all these surface dimples. What you get is a very inconsistent surface profile, because it's not controlled.”
With laser shock peening, the process is very controlled, Crisp said.
“They create a laser beam that's actually square, and the intensity is consistent across the entire laser beam – it's the exact same at the very edge of the beam as it is in the middle,” he said. “They come up with a grid pattern and stack the squares up right beside each other, so the entire surface of the part is completely uniform. You don't have the weak spots in between these areas that would then induce cracking later.”
Jeter said he expects laser shock peening to be a main focus of the F-35 line for the next four to five years. Once the first two aircraft have undergone the validation and verification process, it will be a sprint to the finish to complete modifications on the remainder of the F-35B fleet that requires this treatment.
“After that val/ver event, the aircraft will basically be nose-to-tail,” Crisp added. “We'll completely fill every aircraft stall that's here, and for the next five years, when one leaves another will come in. That's critical, because this process has to be done on every single airplane that requires it.”
The workload does not include every F-35 ever produced, although it does include B and C models, and also encompasses F-35 aircraft owned by partner nations. FRCE will focus solely on the B variant, while Ogden Air Force Base in Utah will work on the F-35C models and take any F-35B overflow.
After the first round of laser shock peening modifications, what comes after that is still to be determined, Crisp said.
“I'm sure there will be some follow-on work,” he said. “And beyond the F-35 program, this is a little bit exciting, because this really is cutting-edge technology and we have it here at FRCE. I think maybe within the engineering community here, as people find out more about it, they may open additional discussions about how we could implement this on other aircraft lines. We might find a future capability we want to look at.”
FRCE is North Carolina's largest maintenance, repair, overhaul and technical services provider, with more than 4,200 civilian, military and contract workers. Its annual revenue exceeds $720 million. The depot generates combat air power for America's Marines and Naval forces while serving as an integral part of the greater U.S. Navy; Naval Air Systems Command; and Commander, Fleet Readiness Centers.
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June 26, 2018 | International, Land
Tank makers steel themselves for Europe’s next big land-weapon contest
Sebastian Sprenger PARIS ― European manufacturers of armored vehicles are jockeying for position in what looks to be the most expensive land program for the continent in decades. The industry activity follows plans by France and Germany, reiterated this month, to build a Main Ground Combat System that would replace the current fleet of Leopard 2 and Leclerc tanks. While conceived as a two-country project for now, the hope is to develop a weapon that other European land forces will also pick up. Details remain murky about exactly what the new vehicles must be able to do, though the job description includes something about manned-unmanned teaming. Perhaps that's why officials chose an amorphous name for the project, as it could be anything from a nimble, autonomous fighter to the type of human-driven steel beast of today's armies. The target date for introducing the new platform is set at 2035, and Germany has picked up the lead role for the project both on the government and the industry side. KNDS, the Franco-German joint venture of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Nexter, put the program on the radar of visitors of the Eurosatory trade show in Paris earlier this month. The companies mated the chassis of a Leopard 2 tank to a Leclerc turret ― and voila, a European Main Battle Tank was born. Company officials stressed that the hybrid behemoth is only a stepping stone on the way toward a full-blown European tank offering under the Main Ground Combat System banner. But the product might interest Eastern European nations looking to divest their Russian legacy fleets for a good-enough, Western-made tank that ― presumably ― doesn't break the bank. The marriage of KMW and Nexter saves the two companies from having to compete against one another for the next-generation tank. It also creates the appearance that Paris' and Berlin's love for a future tank is happily echoed by their industries. “Let's assume we wouldn't have joined forces,” said Frank Haun, the CEO of KMW. Both he and his Nexter counterpart, Stephane Mayer, would have had to lobby their respective governments for a purely national solution, pulling the old argument of keeping jobs in the country, Haun said. The two companies hailed an announcement last week about a new Franco-German deal aimed at examining possible program options for the future tank. “The Letter Of Intent signed yesterday is a significant step forward in the defense cooperation between the two countries and in Europe,” reads a June 20 statement. “This close cooperation was the key motivation for the foundation of KNDS in 2015, where Nexter and KMW cooperate as national system houses for land systems.” But the binational industry team is far from the only game in town. Take Rheinmetall, for example, which is KMW's partner in the Leopard program. Company executives at the Paris weapons expo were tight-lipped about their strategy toward the Main Ground Combat System, or MGCS. But it's probably a safe bet to presume the Düsseldorf, Germany-based firm won't cede a market of tens of billions of dollars without a fight. “Come back and see me in December in Unterlüß,” Ben Hudson, head of the company's vehicle systems division, told Defense News during an interview in Paris. He was referring to a small German town one hour south of Hamburg where Rheinmetall runs a manufacturing plant. Hudson declined to say more about what the company would roll out at that time. “I can't mention it just yet,” he said. “Expect more surprises in the future. We're already working on some other things in the secret laboratories of Rheinmetall.” Either way, officials were eager to note that KNDS, despite its industrial alignment alongside the two governments in charge, is only one bidder in a field that has to fully emerge. “I think there is still a lot of water to flow under the bridge on this program, as it is only in its early days. However, with the technology in the Rheinmetall Group, we have a significant interest in playing a key role in MGCS,” Hudson said. He argued that developing the next-generation tank must begin with considering the “threat” out there, namely the Russian T-14 and T-15 tanks, which are based on a common chassis dubbed Armata. Those vehicles' characteristics, or at least what is known about them, dictate “high lethality” be built into the future European tank, according to Hudson. “How do you defeat a tank that has four active defense systems on it?” he asked. And then there is General Dynamics European Land Systems, the Old World's offspring of the U.S. maker of the Abrams tank and Stryker vehicle. The company is careful to note its European roots: a consolidated mishmash of formerly independent armored-vehicle makers from across the continent. Manuel Lineros, vice president of engineering, told Defense News that the company's Ascot vehicle will be the GDELS offering for the European next-gen tank. Advertised for its mobility and weighing in at roughly 45 tons, the tracked vehicle falls in the class of infantry fighting vehicles, putting it one notch below the heaviest battle tank category. “I understand the battlefield has changed,” Lineros said in an interview at Eurosatory. “We have to abandon the ideas of a combat vehicle versus a classic main battle tank. Everything is so mixed up now.” Whatever the Ascot lacks in sheer mass against projectiles aimed at its shell could be compensated with an active protection system and the ability to move quickly on the battlefield, argued Lineros. “We have to be flexible in this way of interpreting the requirements.” That includes defending against drone swarms, which could become the peer-to-peer equivalent of improvised explosive devices designed to rip open the underbellies of vehicles, he said. Unlike the recent countermine vehicle architecture, that type of aerial threat could mean the top surface of future vehicles will be a weak point requiring special protection, he added. Though adding armor plates remains the industry's first instinct in responding to new threats, Lineros said there is a limit to what he called an “addiction” to steel. “More and more we'll be moving out of this sport.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/eurosatory/2018/06/25/tank-makers-steel-themselves-for-europes-next-big-land-weapon-contest/