March 11, 2024 | International, Land
Locking in on the same drone year after year may not make sense amid rapidly changing circumstances, he said.
September 21, 2022 | International, Land
DARPA began the second round of off-road testing for its autonomous vehicle program, this time turning to the steep hills and trees of central California.
May 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace
The U.S. Army is leading what looks to be the biggest rotorcraft program in history. Called Future Vertical Lift, it could eventually buy thousands of aircraft to replace over a dozen different helicopters in the joint inventory. FVL, as it is usually called, has been a long time coming. So long that technologies now commonplace in commercial aviation such as “fly-by-wire” flight controls are nowhere to be found in the Army fleet. So long that the Army was forced to retire all of its aged scout helicopters even though it lacked a replacement. The U.S. Army is leading what looks to be the biggest rotorcraft program in history. Called Future Vertical Lift, it could eventually buy thousands of aircraft to replace over a dozen different helicopters in the joint inventory. FVL, as it is usually called, has been a long time coming. So long that technologies now commonplace in commercial aviation such as “fly-by-wire” flight controls are nowhere to be found in the Army fleet. So long that the Army was forced to retire all of its aged scout helicopters even though it lacked a replacement. The bad news is that if Future Vertical Lift falters the way some past efforts have, much of the U.S. rotorcraft industry might falter with it. FVL isn't the only game in town, but it is by far the biggest. If production of legacy rotorcraft ceases to make room for new ones and then FVL fails to deliver, industry might not have enough cashflow to sustain essential skills and suppliers. Army leaders are acutely aware of the potential industrial-base fallout. I know that because earlier this month my colleagues and I at the Lexington Institute had a lengthy exchange with the two top Army officials managing FVL. They are Brigadier General Walter T. Rugen, leader of the service's cross-functional team for vertical lift, and Mr. Patrick H. Mason, the Army's program executive officer for aviation. I thought we would spend most of the conversation discussing the Army's need to “overmatch” future adversaries in the air. But early on, Gen. Rugen observed that Future Vertical Lift “isn't just about overmatch, it's about the industrial base.” It was a theme he kept coming back to throughout the exchange, noting that top Army leaders have been briefed on the consequences for industry if FVL doesn't come to fruition. Apparently those consequences are potentially grave, particularly at lower levels of the supply chain, where fragile, single points of failure support the entire sector. That phrase—single points of failure—was used frequently in an interagency assessment of the defense industrial base prepared early in President Trump's tenure. It detailed how a domestic industrial complex once dubbed the “arsenal of democracy” has gradually hollowed out in recent decades as manufacturers moved offshore. There has been concern about the loss of skills and suppliers in the rotorcraft industry for some time. The U.S. Army is by far the biggest operator of rotorcraft in the world, but since the Cold War ended 30 years ago it has mainly been upgrading what it already had rather than developing new helicopters. It isn't easy to sustain design and engineering talent when your top customer never buys anything genuinely new. So in addition to addressing the increasingly harsh operational environment in which Army Aviation will need to wage future wars, FVL must also provide most of the resources needed to revitalize a key part of the domestic aerospace industry. So far that effort is progressing nicely, using paperless design techniques, digital modeling and prototyping to develop strikingly new rotorcraft that will take the place of retired Kiowa scouts and Black Hawk assault helicopters in the future. The service has recently made awards to two industry teams for each effort, which will competitively develop solutions for final down-selects in a few years. The service has also awarded funding for developing a new helicopter propulsion system, and has made steady progress in developing an electronic architecture for future combat rotorcraft. One way of controlling costs and assuring interoperability on the battlefield is to equip diverse airframes with the same hardware and software for functions such as communication and navigation. It will likely take another 8-10 years before new rotorcraft developed by FVL begin reaching the operational force in large numbers, but managers have been thinking since the program's inception about how to make them reliable and maintainable for users. A big part of the affordability challenge unfolds after production, when 68% of life-cycle costs are incurred. One facet of this challenge is how and where to provide maintenance for the future fleet. There is a long-running debate in military circles about how best to sustain rotorcraft in the operational fleet, with warfighters and legislators usually favoring organic depots over industry sources for much of the maintenance. But doing that requires access to data and intellectual property generated by the companies that build the airframes. This inevitably creates tension with industry, which is as eager to protect its intellectual property in the rotorcraft sector as in other sectors. Intellectual property is a crucial source of competitive advantage. However, Rugen and Mason emphasize that FVL is trying to strike a reasonable balance between military and industry needs in securing access to sensitive information. As one of them put it, “The Army recognizes industry's need for cashflow and adequate returns. It doesn't want to undermine industry's business model.” So while they have carefully analyzed the impact of intellectual property access on the ability of the Army's organic support base to do its job, they are mindful of the need not to impair the capacity of suppliers to make money. This is not the way the Army has typically looked at such matters in the past. Its usual approach has been to find the best deal for warfighters and taxpayers, and let industry fend for itself. But what comes through in a conversation with FVL managers is a recognition that the business pressures faced by companies must be taken into account if the Army is to have an adequate industrial base for its aviation initiatives in the future. They are also working hard to find overseas partners who might be customers for the rotorcraft that FVL ultimately produces. The bigger the international footprint that Future Vertical Lift has, the cheaper each aircraft will likely be for the Army and the more business there will be for American industry. But what Rugen and Mason would most like in the near term is a multiyear funding commitment from Congress to keep FVL on track, because if the program falters the outlook for both Army Aviation and the domestic rotorcraft industry will be bleak. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2020/05/26/army-fears-if-future-vertical-lift-falters-serious-fallout-for-industry-might-follow
November 10, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is now carving out a path to field high-altitude balloons to provide an additional but less expensive layer of communications, connectivity, range extension and surveillance capabilities, adding resiliency to the service's existing architecture of space assets and aircraft supporting multidomain operations. Recent tests and experiments with high-altitude balloons at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, left an impression on the head of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command. “It's just phenomenal what we're able to do with high-altitude balloons,” Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference, which took place virtually Oct. 13-16. “I don't have the cost analysis but, in my mind, pennies on the dollar with respect to doing it. If I had to do it via a [low-Earth orbit] or some satellite constellation, what we are able to provide with high-altitude balloons, it's tactically responsive support to the war fighter,” he added. Karbler said he sees the balloons supporting the Army's Multidomain Task Force in the future. “Conceptually, with the types of missions that the Multidomain Task Force is working, the high-altitude balloons would be a key capability enabler,” Brent Fraser, concept development division chief at SMDC's Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence, told Defense News in an Oct. 29 interview. “[The balloons would] be able to provide some beyond-line-of-sight capability, whether it's communications, extended distances, to be able to provide the ability to enable sensing of targets deep in the adversary's areas, to be able to reinforce and complement existing sensing systems other than the aerial layer as well as the space layer,” Fraser added. In terms of war games and experiments conducted with high-altitude balloons, “as we look at a number of emerging concepts and capabilities and formations,” he explained, “I think we still have a ways to go, but I think we're on a positive path to continue.” SMDC has been working on high-altitude balloons — basically dirigibles that can camp out roughly 60,000-90,000 feet in the air — for a long time, but recently the technology has improved, particularly through the commercial market. Google, for instance, used high-altitude balloons to help Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria to help establish internet connectivity. Duration is one of the areas that has greatly improved. High-altitude balloons can now stay aloft for weeks, if not months, rather than just hours or days. Users can also command and navigate the balloons better than before, and the platforms can more easily be recovered after missions. “The technology readiness levels have really come a long way,” Fraser said. SMDC has partnered with Army Futures Command to advance the technology, particularly involving the latter's Assured-Positioning, Navigation and Timing cross-functional Team as well as Training and Doctrine Command, the Army Intelligence Center, and cyber and special operations personnel. Several years ago, the Army developed a high-altitude concept that established a foundation on which to build, Col. Tim Dalton, Army capability manager for space and high altitude within the SMDC's center of excellence, said in the same interview. After integrating the concept into a variety of war games with Futures Command and other entities, the Army is starting to develop requirements. “We're in the initial stages of defining what those requirements would be,” Dalton said. “There's kind of two aspects to the high-altitude piece: the high-altitude platform, so it's the balloon, and then whatever it's carrying on there for a payload.” The Army has created initial documents for staffing through Futures Command, and over the next couple of years the service will run those requirements through the Joint Capabilities and Integration and Development System process, which will lead to review by the Army Requirements Oversight Council. The service is in the early stages of figuring out what a program of record would look like, but it has some options, Dalton said. “What we're kind of hoping to do over the next couple of years as part of our campaign of learning is to help define what that looks like and the best way to resource those requirements for the Army.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2020/11/09/us-army-floats-the-option-of-fielding-high-altitude-balloons/