SAFECOM Publishes SAFECOM Governance Operating Processes and Procedures (March 2024 Update) | CISA

On the same subject

• 

  October 15, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Super Herculean Accomplishment: Global C-130J Fleet Surpasses 2 Million Flight Hours

  ATLANTA, Oct. 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) announced today the global community of C-130J Super Hercules operators recently surpassed 2 million flight hours. These hours were logged beginning with the C-130J's first flight on April 5, 1996, through the end of July 2019. Twenty-two operators from 18 nations contributed to this achievement, adding hours through multiple missions including combat, transport, aerial refueling, special operations, medevac, humanitarian relief, search and rescue, weather reconnaissance, firefighting and commercial freight delivery. Rod McLean, vice president and general manager of the Air Mobility & Maritime Missions line of business at Lockheed Martin, announced the milestone at the Hercules Operators Conference, the annual C-130 operator-industry event held in Atlanta. "The C-130J has earned a reputation as the world's workhorse and this most recent achievement is a powerful reminder of the Super Hercules' unmatched global reach," McLean said. "Crews continue to exemplify the C-130J's proven capability and versatility with every mission they fly. The Lockheed Martin team is proud of the work of the Super Herc crews who rely on the C-130J to support vital missions, both home and abroad." Countries with military variant C-130Js contributing to these flight hours include (in order of delivery) the United Kingdom, United States (the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard), Australia, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Canada, India, Qatar, Iraq, Oman, Tunisia, Israel, Kuwait, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, France, and Bahrain. Also contributing is Lockheed Martin Flight Operations, whose crews are the first to fly every C-130J produced. The U.S. Air Force maintains the largest C-130J fleet, with Super Hercs flown by Air Mobility Command, Air Combat Command, Air Education and Training Command, Special Operations Command, and Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units. In addition, Defence Contract Management Agency crews support C-130J test flights at Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics site in Marietta, Georgia, home of C-130 production. The C-130J Super Hercules is the current production model of the legendary C-130 Hercules aircraft. For more information on the C-130J Super Hercules, visit www.lockheedmartin.com/c130. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 105,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-10-15-Super-Herculean-Accomplishment-Global-C-130J-Fleet-Surpasses-2-Million-Flight-Hours

• 

  October 15, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Lockheed, Bell begin forging prototypes to compete for Army’s future armed recon aircraft

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin's Sikorsky and Bell have each begun to forge the aircraft that will compete to become the U.S. Army's Future Armed Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) expected to be fielded by 2030. “It's become very real to me,” Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who leads the Army's effort to develop future vertical lift aircraft, told Defense News in a recent interview. “We're seeing forgings, castings, transmissions, gear boxes, blades, cockpits, airframes, real tangible things that are already built, already manufactured and going together,” he said. Final designs on the aircraft are due from both Bell and Lockheed in November, according to Rugen. And despite complications across the defense industry due to the coronavirus pandemic, both vendors “see no problem” achieving that original schedule. The Army will take about a month to review those final designs, Rugen said, and then the service will conduct a readiness review with Army senior leaders in mid-December, where the hope is the program will get the final go-ahead. The service is pushing for the prototypes to fly for the first time in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. One major factor in getting those prototypes airborne is whether the Army's Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) engine is ready to drop into the aircraft. The ITEP engine has been developed to replace the engines in UH-60 Black Hawk utility and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, but will also be FARA's first engine. Key to progress with that is getting the first engine into testing starting in late 2021, Rugen said. “That is our engine and that is our critical path really through the engine,” he said. General Electric, which is building the ITEP engine for the Army, “understands that,” Rugen said. “They've had a lot of friction to fight through and they're fighting through it very well from what I can see,” he added, referring to the impact of the pandemic on the company's progress. While the ITEP engine schedule has not slipped, it has now essentially lost any padding and is aligned with the original schedule, Rugen said. General Electric and the Army had previously found some ways to accelerate the timeline. In addition to ITEP, the Army is also planning on furnishing a gun and a modular effects launcher to both competitors. The 20mm gun has begun firing live rounds and will fire 285,000 rounds “this year,” Rugen said. The modular effects launcher is in the prototyping phase, but Rugen added that, like the 20mm gun, it will fly at Project Convergence 2021 on a FARA surrogate aircraft. Sikorsky has pitched a design based off of its S-97 Raider that it is calling the Raider X. The S-97 has been flying for more than five years. “These flights have produced tremendous data that inform our flight program, help refine the design of Raider X ... and reduce risk for the program,” Jay Macklin, Sikorsky's business development director for FVL, told Defense News. The company began building physical components last year in anticipation of a contract to build a prototype, he said. Sikorsky also has had key suppliers under contract for more than a year. During the flight test period, Sikorsky plans to be “more focused on validation of design versus traditional methods of fly-fix-fly that have been used on many past aircraft across industry,” Macklin said. Bell unveiled its design — the 360 Invictus — for FARA a year ago just ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference. Bell has completed multiple design and risk reviews and reports it is on schedule for its build, according to Chris Gehler, vice president and program director of the Invictus program. The company has completed critical design reviews for rotors and drive systems, and the team has been accepting parts at its Amarillo, Texas, facility where it will soon begin to build the aircraft, Gehler told Defense News. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2020/10/14/lockheed-bell-begin-forging-prototypes-to-compete-for-armys-future-armed-recon-aircraft/

• 

  June 13, 2024 | International, Naval

  Are we sure China views sea power the same way the West does?

  Opinion: The problem with mirroring is that it catalyzes policies aimed at eliciting certain behaviors on the assumption that two actors think alike.