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June 12, 2020 | International, Aerospace

Senate defense bill limits Air Force’s aircraft retirement plans

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WASHINGTON — The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to give the Air Force more F-35 fighter jets and drones, but the panel's version of the 2021 defense policy bill leaves many questions open about the future of the service's legacy aircraft.

In the Air Force's fiscal 2021 budget request, the service proposed retiring a number of its B-1 bombers, A-10 Warthog attack planes, RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones, KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, and C-130H planes. Air Force leaders said the reductions were necessary to free up money needed for key investments in future technology areas like space and joint all-domain command and control.

However, the proposed version of the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 10 puts some limits on those proposed cuts. Instead of mandating the Air Force to retain a certain number of specific types of aircraft, SASC's defense bill “establishes a minimum number of aircraft for each major mission area ... and prohibits the divestment of aircraft until the minima are reached to ensure that Air Force can meet [National Defense Strategy] and combatant command requirements,” SASC said in a summary of the bill.

But with only a summary of the bill available, it's unclear how that compares with the Air Force's planned inventory reductions and whether any retirements will be permitted at all.

According to a committee staffer, the numbers proposed by SASC include a “primary mission aircraft inventory” of 1,182 fighters, 190 drones, 92 bombers, 412 tankers, 230 tactical airlift platforms, 235 strategic airlift platforms, 84 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, and 106 combat search-and-rescue aircraft.

Specifically, the bill blocks the retirement of three A-10 Warthog squadrons, limits F-15C divestment, and delays the retirements of KC-10 and KC-135 tankers until after the KC-46's technical challenges are resolved. The Air Force had planned to retire 13 KC-135s and 16 KC-10s in FY21.

The summary of the bill makes it clear the SASC is concerned that the Air Force's plan to trade existing aircraft for future capabilities could lead to a drop in near-term readiness as well as an scenario where legacy aircraft are never actually replaced.

The bill “requires the Secretary of Defense to submit an annual aviation procurement plan across all services,” the summary stated. It includes language that cements the Air Force's aspiration to field 386 combat squadrons as a requirement, although one staffer clarified that the provision is more a goal than a mandate, and that there is no timeline associated with it.

SASC's legislation is far from set in stone. The bill will move to the Senate floor for debate, but its House counterpart is working on its own version of the defense authorization bill, and both chambers will have to agree on a final bill.

Where's the money going?

The House and Senate Armed Services committees make funding recommendations, which are then used by congressional budgeteers in the appropriations committees to draw up the final funding bills. Nonetheless, SASC made a number of key funding authorizations that could mean major increases for certain aircraft programs.

  • Unsurprisingly, it recommended a major increase for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, approving the purchase of 60 F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing models, 12 F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variants, and 23 F-35C carrier-takeoff-and-landing aircraft. That's a net increase of 16 aircraft: 12 F-35As, two F-35Bs and two F-35Cs.
  • General Atomics was another major beneficiary of the legislation. SASC authorized $165 million for additional MQ-1 Predator drones for the Army and $170.6 million for MQ-9 Reaper drones for the Air Force, which will keep the production line going ahead of a replacement program.
  • It adds an extra $128 million for additional XQ-58 Valkyrie drones from Kratos. The Valkyrie is a low-cost combat drone currently being tested by the Air Force as part of the Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology effort, which seeks a “loyal wingman” aircraft that can penetrate contested environments and take on more risk than manned planes. The committee also calls for an LCAAT operational test plan and utility evaluation.
  • It fully funded the Air Force's KC-46 tanker program and B-21 bomber program, according to SASC Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.
  • The bill also “increases funding for critical capabilities that will help the United States maintain air superiority in contested environments, including Systems of Systems Technology Integration Tool Chain for Heterogeneous Electronic Systems (STITCHES) and advanced air-to-air weapons”

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/06/11/senate-defense-bill-puts-limits-on-planned-air-force-aircraft-retirements/

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  • France-Parly satisfaite des nouvelles fonctionnalités de l'A400M

    September 7, 2018 | International, Aerospace

    France-Parly satisfaite des nouvelles fonctionnalités de l'A400M

    PARIS, 6 septembre (Reuters) - La ministre française de la Défense Florence Parly s'est déclarée jeudi satisfaite des nouvelles fonctionnalités en cours de test sur l'avion de transport militaire A400M d'Airbus. “Nous sommes dans une phase extrêmement positive”, a-t-elle observé lors d'une rencontre avec l'Association des journalistes professionnels de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (AJPAE), disant attendre l'intégralité des fonctionnalités en 2021. Les retards successifs du programme A400M ont conduit les pays clients, comme la France, à réceptionner des appareils n'ayant pas toutes les fonctionnalités contractuelles, comme le largage de parachutistes par les portes latérales, des équipements électroniques de défense et le ravitaillement en vol d'hélicoptères. En mars, Reuters avait révélé que l'armée allemande avait dit dans un rapport confidentiel voir un “risque important” que l'A400M n'ait pas toutes les capacités tactiques requises après 2021, au moment du retrait de sa flotte de C-160 Transall. “Chaque étape que nous passons est une étape qui se franchit avec succès et donc ceci aide chacun à être un peu patient”, a ajouté Florence Parly. L'armée française avait annoncé au printemps la réception de son 14e A400M, avec un objectif de 25 unités en 2025 et une cible de 50 à terme. Le président exécutif d'Airbus Tom Enders a fait état fin juillet d'avancées dans les négociations avec les pays clients de l'A400M pour parvenir à un amendement du contrat d'ici la fin 2018. https://fr.reuters.com/article/frEuroRpt/idFRL5N1VS3VA

  • Roper Sees Air Force ‘Flying Cars’ In Production By 2023

    April 17, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Roper Sees Air Force ‘Flying Cars’ In Production By 2023

    "We are going to accelerate this market for domestic use in a way that also helps our military," Roper stressed. "The Air Force is all in." By THERESA HITCHENSon April 16, 2020 at 7:15 PM WASHINGTON: ‘Flying cars' using electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology could be in full-up production for Air Force use in moving cargo and people within three years, says Air Force acquisition head Will Roper. Such a capability, Roper enthused, would give the US military the ability to undertake missions “in three dimensions that we normally do in two,” giving the services “much greater agility.” This is why the Air Force program for investing in commercial firms now pursuing eVTOL vehicles is called “Agility Prime,” he noted. The Air Force will take a first look at vendor offerings in a virtual pitch event at the end of the month, with a focus on small eVTOL vehicles that could be used for missions involving transport of only a few people. Roper told reporters today that the size of any future Air Force vehicle buys would depend on what missions eVTOL vehicles prove capable of carrying out. “If it's helping us to do logistics at the edge, we could end up buying these in higher quantities. If it's things like security and rescue, it will be smaller quantities,” he explained. Roper has previously said he envisions large flying cars for carrying cargo, as well as smaller vehicles for Special Operations-type missions. But no matter what, Roper added that he expects that granting commercial producers Air Force safety certifications and allowing them to rack up flying hours under Agility Prime “will really help accelerate domestic use of these vehicles and [allow some companies to] get FAA certification sooner that it would have come if we had not interjected ourselves into the market.” The Agility Prime program will hold a “virtual launch event” April 27 to allow vendors to showcase their capabilities and interact with potential investors from both the private sector and the military, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) announced earlier this week. Roper, who will give a keynote, said the event originally had been planned as a live demonstration of capabilities by chosen vendors at the annual South By Southwest music festival in Austin that was scheduled for March 13-22, but cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The objective of the event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector,” AFLCMC explained. Agility Prime is designed as a “challenge” where eVTOL vehicle makers compete in a series of demonstration that ultimately could result in a contract for full-scale production. According to documents provided for potential competitors on the program website, the Air Force is asking potential vendors to be able to complete a flight test by Dec. 17. In the first round, companies will need to demonstrate the following specifications: Payload: 3-8 personnel Range: Greater than 100 miles Speed: Greater than 100 mph Endurance: Greater than 60 minutes Roper said the second round of the competition would be dedicated to larger vehicles for cargo, and multiple people. Agility Prime is a unique effort that involves a number of service entities working together, including AFLCMC, the Program Executive Office for Mobility, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) office, AFWERX, and the new AFVentures office that serves as an intermediary between vendors and venture capital providers. Roper said that besides helping to move the US into a prime spot in an emerging marketplace, he intends Agility Prime to also serve as an example to the commercial sector that the Air Force is serious about being “a good innovation partner.” One of the hallmarks of Roper's term as Air Force acquisition chief has been his focus on figuring out how to leverage commercial research and development to help DoD ensure that it can stay ahead of China in the pursuit of new technology — arguing that innovation is the new battlefield. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/roper-sees-air-force-flying-cars-in-production-by-2023

  • Stackley: Combined L3Harris Technology Will Compete to Build New Navy Distributed Battle Networks

    August 5, 2020 | International, Naval

    Stackley: Combined L3Harris Technology Will Compete to Build New Navy Distributed Battle Networks

    By: Megan Eckstein August 4, 2020 3:25 PM A year after L3 and Harris merged into a single $18-billion defense company, the corporation is finding its formerly siloed components can come together to meet some of the Navy's and joint force's most complex needs. Sean Stackley, president of the Integrated Mission Systems segment for L3Harris Technologies, told USNI News in an interview that L3 and Harris each had important pieces of the puzzle to help the Navy achieve its distributed maritime operations concept. But Stackley, who previously served as the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition from 2008 to 2017 and as the acting secretary of the Navy from January to August 2017, said the key to DMO is not just fielding new platforms and tools but rather managing how information flows throughout the network, he said. 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That is a tremendous challenge because you have to work across the services, work across the platforms, you have to work across industry, you have to work across systems. So there's not one contract that's going to go out for DMO; it's going to be incremental. It's going to be an incremental approach to building this capability over time, over systems. And frankly the Air Force and the Navy are taking different approaches. I think there are some best practices across the services that they'll benefit by as each of these get more mature,” he explained, saying those were his personal views and not the company's. “I'm frankly studying the way the Air Force is approaching ABMS [Advanced Battle Management System], and I see a lot of strengths to their approach. There's a lot of parallel activities to the way they're contracting ABMS that should allow, if we do it right, should allow the incremental steps that need to be taken to be done in parallel as opposed to one at a time in a series. And I'm frankly also spending time with the Navy trying to link up the Navy's approach to DMO with the Air Force's approach to ABMS, to at least study – the services should be studying each other's approaches – and best practices should emerge, because otherwise we won't get there, it will take too long.” For example, he said, the Navy is preparing to contract for a ship-based signals intelligence program called Spectral. It also has an upcoming competition for a Spear program for electro-optical/infrared targeting. Under DMO, Stackley said, those two could be approached in parallel to ensure the whole network has access to the data they produce, instead of pursuing them separately and waiting for someone down the line to integrate the systems into a larger network. “Traditional (acquisition) says you do the standalone upgrades; inside of DMO, you're constantly looking at the total framework architecture, how do these capabilities integrate” on the front end “so that on the back end you are, in fact, building a distributed maritime operational capability,” he said. Stackley said the company is positioned to adapt to the changing requirements of DMO. “We are on the ocean floor, and we operate from the depths of the sea to the depths of space. We are in every domain. We operate across the entire kill chain, from sensing, communications, tracking, targeting, right down to putting ordnance on target. We operate across the kill chain and across the entire electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. In the acoustic realm, we operate below 10 hertz, and then you move into the [radio frequency] and in the RF end of the EM spectrum we're operating above 50 gigahertz. So we dominate – I would say spectrum superiority is one of our strengths. And we do this to provide capabilities, solutions, for national security, ours and our allies.” The company's advantage is based on “two companies a couple of years ago that had a large number of stand-alone capabilities seeing a match in terms of our separate capabilities, and also seeing the power that comes through integration of these capabilities, understanding where the customer is going in terms of the future fight where that EM spectrum, that spectrum superiority, is so critical. Whether you're talking about the Navy's strategy, the Navy's vision for distributed maritime operations, or the Air Force's advanced battle management system, it is the same capability the services are looking for, which is to have the advanced sensors at the forward edge, have the information that they collect communicated back through secure data links to platforms, have that information integrated into a common picture so that we can control the spectrum, we can ensure our communications, we can disrupt [adversaries'] communications, and we can pull the information from our sensors and get it to where it's most needed so that when the time comes we can put ordnance on target rapidly and reliably,” Stackley said. The two companies had different tools in their portfolios prior to the merger that contribute to this new ability to network together tools for fighting in the EM spectrum. For example, “Harris focuses on tactical communications, electronic warfare, space payloads and supports FAA air traffic control modernization. L3's portfolio is a bit more diverse and includes electronic components, aircraft modernization, flight simulation, UAS/UUVs, airport security and C4ISR components and subsystems,” Defense News quoted Byron Callan, an analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, as writing in a note to investors ahead of the merger. In the interview, Stackley used undersea warfare as an example of where L3 and Harris have been to provide the Navy options to support DMO. On the seabed, the company leveraged each of the halves' legacy systems to create an underwater acoustic system that won a prime contract with the Navy – something neither L3 nor Harris could have done before the merger. “Within the first year, we're offering integrated solutions to the customer that prior to the merger we would never have seen and would never have found together,” Stackley said. The combined portfolio also includes experience with unmanned underwater vessels. L3Harris is competing for the Medium UUV program that will replace separate medium UUV systems for the explosive ordnance disposal and the submarine communities. Stackley said the company had an already-existing, highly modular design that allowed it to work with Navy labs to integrate and operate advanced payloads at sea while the Navy was developing its specifications for the MUUV program. The company's UUV experience, Stackley said, coupled with underwater acoustic systems and above-water communications capabilities that reside within L3Harris, means it can offer a package that allows the Navy to receive real-time or near-real-time updates from this UUV. The company also recently won a contract with the Navy to design and build at least one Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MUSV), with options for more vehicles. Stackley said L3Harris had extensive experience with USVs, including through the Overlord large USV demonstrator program run by the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office. For its MUSV offering, the company is partnering with Gibbs and Cox, which also participated in the Overlord program. Through its in-water testing, L3Harris has learned about autonomy software, vehicle reliability, and command and control. Stackley said the company, outside of the MUSV program, wants to take its USV a step further and demonstrate to the Navy another option for combining several legacy L3 and Harris technologies. The company builds the signals intelligence system on the Air Force's RC-135 surveillance aircraft. That system had been stovepiped in the company's aircraft systems division before, but Stackley said L3Harris plans to use that as the basis for the upcoming Spectral competition, which will be a ship-based SIGINT tool. L3Harris will adapt that system for integration on a medium USV, he said, thereby demonstrating “a sensing capability, where you start with a reliable unmanned surface vessel that has endurance on station, more so than an aircraft; you give it a sensor package that [meets Navy and Joint Force needs]; and then you add to that the data links that L3Harris provides and the secure communications that we provide, so that now you've got a node on the network that's passing critical information to the operating force from an unmanned vessel.” He made clear that the SIGINT package on the USV is not part of the Navy's current MUSV program but that L3Harris would pitch the capability to the service. https://news.usni.org/2020/08/04/stackley-combined-l3harris-technology-will-compete-to-build-new-navy-distributed-battle-networks

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