May 6, 2019 | International, Naval

Robots and Lasers Are Bringing Shipbuilding into the Digital Age

BY MARCUS WEISGERBER

Even decades-old aircraft carriers are being mapped onto digital models at Newport News Shipbuilding.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — When the USS George Washington took shape here in the late 1980s, endless paper blueprints guided the welders and shipfitters of Newport News Shipbuilding. Now, with the aircraft carrier back in a drydock for its midlife overhaul, shipyard workers are laser-scanning its spaces and bulkheads.

They're compiling a digital model of the 104,000-ton carrier, which will allow subsequent Nimitz-class projects to be designed and planned on computers. That will help bring the shipyard's carrier-overhaul work in line with its digital design-and-manufacturing processes that are already speeding up construction and maintenance on newer vessels.

Newport News executives say these digital shipbuilding concepts are revolutionizing the way ships are designed and built.

“We want to leverage technology, learn by doing and really drive it to the deckplates,” Chris Miner, vice president of in-service carriers, said during a tour of the shipyard. This is the future. This isn't about if. This is where we need to go.”

This storied shipyard, now a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, has been building warships for the U.S. Navy for more than 120 years. Some of its buildings are nearly that old, and some of its employees are fifth-generation shipbuilders. But the technology they use to design, build, and overhaul submarines and mammoth aircraft carriers is rapidly changing. Paper schematics are quickly becoming a thing of the past, being replaced by digital blueprints easily accessible to employees on handheld tablets.

“The new shipbuilders coming in, they're not looking for you to hand them a 30-page or a 200-page drawing,” Miner said. “We're really transitioning how we train folks and how we do things as far as getting them proficient.”

This digital data will “transform the business,” said Miner.

The technology is spreading beyond the shipbuilding sector. Boeing used digital tools to design a new pilot training jet for the Air Force and an aerial refueling drone from the Navy. The Air Force is planning to evaluate new engines for its B-52 bombers, nearly six-decade-old planes, using digital tools. The technology is allowing companies to build weapons faster than traditional manufacturing techniques.

Engineers here at Newport News Shipbuilding are already using digital blueprints to design ships, but they plan to expand the use of the technology into manufacturing in the coming years.

“We want to be able to leverage off all that data and use it,” Miner said. “There's lots of things we can do with that [data].”

The USS Gerald Ford — the Navy's newest aircraft carrier and first in its class — was designed using digital data. The Navy's new Columbia-class nuclear submarines are being digitally designed as well.

Parts for the future USS Enterprise (CVN 80) — the third Ford-class carrier — are being built digitally. Data from the ship's computerized blueprints are being fed into machines that fabricate parts.

“We're seeing over 20 percent improvement in performance,” Miner said.

When the Navy announced it would buy two aircraft carriers at the same time, something not done since the 1980s, James Geurts, the head Navy acquisition, said digital design would contribute to “about an 82 percent learning from CVN79 through to CVN 81” — the second through fourth Ford ships. Geurts called the savings “a pretty remarkable accomplishment for the team.”

In the future, even more of that data will be pumped directly into the manufacturing robots that cut and weld more and more of a ship's steel parts.

“That's the future,” Miner said. “No drawings. They get a tablet. They can visualize it. They can manipulate it, see what it looks like before they even build it.”

As shipyard workers here give the George Washington a thorough working-over, they are using laser scanners to create digital blueprints of the ship. These digital blueprints are creating a more efficient workforce and reducing cutting as many as six months from a three-year overhaul, Miner said.

The top of its massive island — where sailors drive the ship and control aircraft — has been sliced off. It will be rebuilt in the coming months with a new design that will give the crew a better view of the flight deck.

The island already sports a new, sturdier mast that can hold larger antennas and sensors. Shipyard workers lowered it into place in early March.

The yard is also combining its digital ship designs with augmented reality gear to allow its designers and production crews to virtually “walk through” the Ford class's spaces. This helped the yard figure out, for example, whether the ship's sections were designed efficiently for maintenance.

In addition to robots, the additive manufacturing techniques, like 3D printing, could speed shipbuilding even more and reduce the Navy's need for carrying spare parts on ships. The Navy is testing a valve 3D-printed here.

Right now, at a time when the Navy is planning to drastically expand its fleet size, shipyards like Newport News are expanding, but not yet to the levels of the Reagan military buildup of the 1980s. Despite the technology advantages, Miner said people still play essential roles in the manufacturing process.

“It's really not about reducing our workforce as much it is about doing more with the workforce we have,” he said. “We're still going to hire people. We still have to ramp up. There's still hands-on things that are always going to have to be done. But it definitely helps us with cycle time to be able to build things quicker” and “enable our workforce to be more efficient.”

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/05/robots-and-lasers-are-bringing-shipbuilding-digital-age/156763/

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July 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace

It’s official: US Air Force to buy Turkish F-35s
By: Valerie Insinna Updated 7/21/20 at 1:25 p.m. EST to add more information about the status of the eight Turkish F-35s. WASHINGTON — After a year of speculation about what would happen to Turkey's F-35s after the country was ousted from the joint strike fighter program last year, the Defense Department gave its definitive answer Monday evening in a characteristically anticlimactic manner — through its daily contract announcements. The U.S. Air Force will officially buy eight F-35A conventional takeoff and landing jets originally built by Lockheed Martin for Turkey as part of a $862 million contract modification. The deal also contains an additional six F-35As built for the Air Force and modifications that will bring the Turkish jets in line with the U.S. configuration. A defense official told Defense News on Tuesday that the contract modification fulfills stipulations in Congress' fiscal year 2020 defense policy and spending bills. It “addresses the eight production Lot 14 F-35A aircraft originally planned to be delivered to Turkey in 2022-23,” and redirects those jets to the U.S. Air Force when they roll off the production line. The six other F-35As reflect aircraft added to the FY20 defense budget. The contract modification uses funding from the FY20 budget to pay for the Lot 14 jets. The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin finalized a deal for lots 12, 13 and 14 in October 2019, which set the price of an Lot 14 A model at $77.9 million per copy. Turkey had planned to buy 100 F-35As over the course of the program, but was ejected from the program last July after accepting the S-400 air defense system from Russia after repeated warnings from U.S. officials. At that point, Turkey's first F-35s had already rolled off the production line and its pilots and maintainers were training to fly and fix them stateside alongside U.S. personnel at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., and Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. However, the aircraft were never officially delivered to Turkey. Since then, the fate of Turkey's jets had been an open question. In January, Defense One reported that 24 Turkish F-35s were in some stage of production, but top Pentagon weapons buyer Ellen Lord told reporters then that Washington and Ankara had not come to an agreement on what would happen to them. In the FY20 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress gave the Pentagon permission to spend up to $30 million to fly the first six Turkish F-35s to a location where they could be stored and preserved until the department came up with a plan for their use. Those jets, which were produced in Lots 10 and 11, are currently being held “in long-term storage in the United States pending final decision on their disposition,” the defense official said. The Senate's version of the FY21 NDAA, which is still working its way through Congress, contains additional language that would allow the Air Force to accept, operate or even modify the first six Turkish F-35s. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/07/20/its-official-us-air-force-to-buy-turkish-f-35s/
April 20, 2023 | International, Aerospace

GE Aerospace signs F-35 Avionics and Power services agreement
EVENDALE, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Aerospace has signed an agreement with Lockheed Martin to support avionics and electrical power systems on the F-35 globally. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230419005782/en/GE-Aerospace-signs-F-35-Avionics-and-Power-services-agreement
July 13, 2020 | International, Aerospace

US Air Force considers adopting the Army’s Future Vertical Lift program
By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is keeping an eye on the Army's next-generation rotorcraft program, which could fill a gap for agile airlift that might be needed in a fight against Russia and China, an Air Force general said Thursday. With its large air bases vulnerable to attacks from a near-peer adversary, there's no guarantee that the Air Force will be able to rely on its current processes or equipment to transfer supplies in and out of air bases. In a war with China or Russia, the U.S. Air Force would distribute its assets to bases owned by allies and partners, cutting down the threat to aircraft usually located at the service's large installations. But that poses a problem for rapidly transporting materiel like spare parts and maintenance equipment to more austere locations in a time of war, said Lt. Gen. Warren Berry, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection. “We know we're going to have to get after some other things that might be a different way of doing distribution and lift,” he said during a July 9 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “It might be a different way of doing airfield recovery. It might be different equipment that's lighter and leaner that allows us to set up in a more expeditious manner with less fuel.” “Agility Prime is certainly one [option],” he said, referring to an ongoing Air Force effort to tap into the emerging commercial market for “flying cars” — basically, experimental transport aircraft that the service could use for logistics, search and rescue, or shuttling troops to remote locations. Another option is the Army's future vertical lift effort, or FVL, Berry said. “That's something that we'll certainly look at, but we know that we need to do lift in a different way.” The Army intends to break FVL into multiple programs, which could give the Air Force multiple aircraft to pick from if it decides to buy in. The future long-range assault aircraft will replace the UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter and is planned to be fielded in 2030. As part of the Army's risk-reduction effort, Bell Helicopter is developing its V-280 Valor, while a Sikorsky-Boeing team is working on its own SB-1 Defiant aircraft. The future attack reconnaissance aircraft would fill an existing capability gap, accomplishing the reconnaissance missions that have been performed by AH-64E Apaches teamed with Shadow drones following the retirement of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior in 2017. It's currently on track to be fielded in 2028, with Sikorsky and Bell chosen to build prototypes. Aside from closely watching the Army's FVL effort, the Air Force is also engaging with the Army-led Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office on ways to defend U.S. bases against small drones, Berry said. “That's going to be a demand signal on this force moving forward that we're going to have to really think through and make sure that we have them [airmen] resourced appropriately to execute that part of the air base air defense mission as well,” he said. In June, the office rolled out a plan for the Defense Department to consolidate its counter-UAS technologies from about 40 systems to a total of eight. The approved systems were chosen after an Army-led assessment and included fixed, mounted and dismounted solutions. An Air Force system known as Negation of Improvised Non-State Joint Aerial-Threats, or NINJA — which jams radio signals between the UAS and its operator — was among those selected. “Our goal is to align existing and future counter-UAS technology solutions to best address operational needs while applying resources more efficiently,” said Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, the office's director. Berry said that the Air Force has embedded some of its personnel within the counter-UAS office to stay synchronized with the Army's efforts. “So far we're happy with where it is and where it's going,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/07/09/the-air-force-is-watching-the-armys-future-vertical-lift-program/

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