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  October 30, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  In Budget Squeeze, Coast Guard Set to Extend Life of Dolphin Helicopter Fleet

  By: Ben Werner ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. Coast Guard hopes to keep its aging fleet of short-range search and rescue helicopters flying for another dozen years while evaluating the potential of vertical lift studies from the Pentagon to fulfill future missions. The Coast Guard started flying the Aerospatiale Helicopter Corp. MH-65 Dolphin in 1984. The helicopters are used on both coasts and in Alaska. During disasters, the Coast Guard loads them into cargo planes for transport to the affected areas to assist search and rescue operations. But the fleet is nearing the end of its lifespan, and a replacement has yet to be identified, Adm. Karl Schultz, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said Friday during a briefing at the annual Military Reporters and Editors conference. “We're watching the Department of Defense very carefully with future of vertical lift,” Schultz said. “We fly a fleet of 98 of Aerospatiale Dolphin helicopters, MH-65s. There's no more of those being made, so that fleet of 98 is what we'll have there.” The Marine Corps and Army are leading the effort to develop vertical lift capabilities. The Marine Corps has used the tiltrotor MV-22 Osprey for years, and the Navy is now starting to integrate the airframe into its airwing as a replacement carrier onboard delivery aircraft for its aging fleet of 27 C-2A Greyhound turbo-prop aircraft. However, funding for the Coast Guard is tight for a force Schultz said is nation's first line of defense to protect borders, combat smuggling, ensure maritime traffic safety and keep ports open. The Coast Guard continually scrapes together resources and accepts cast-off equipment from the Department of Defense to accomplish its myriad of missions. “90 percent of the Coast Guard budget is classified as non-defense discretionary funding,” Schultz said. “We were shortsighted in the past not making some of these needs known.” A month into Fiscal Year 2019, Schultz does not have an approved budget, whereas the Department of Defense does. Congress will likely consider Coast Guard funding, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, after next week's mid-term elections. So, with other priorities requiring funding, Schultz said the Coast Guard is determined to squeeze a decade of life out of the Dolphins. “We're probably looking to fly those more than 30,000 hours, so we're into what we're calling our MH-65 Echo upgrade,” Schultz said. “We're going to keep those things in the air for a while, probably into 2030.” At the same time, Schultz is preparing a gap solution, by squeezing more life out of another aging airframe, the Coast Guard's fleet of 45 MH-60 Jayhawks. Part of the Coast Guard's strategy includes refurbishing used Navy MH-60 Seahawks and keep them flying for about 20,000 more hours. “I'd like to grow the 60 fleet because there's no more 65s and we need to press in on that gap period – 2018 to early 2030 time frame,” Schultz said. “The 60s are our long-term solution, but we'll bridging that gap.” In FY 2018, the Coast Guard received $25 million sustain and expand the fleet of 45 MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters, and $20 million to upgrade the fleet of MH-65 Dolphins, according to the Coast Guard budget. Schultz said the active hurricane season spurred Congress to provide more money for airframes. To recapitalize Coast Guard equipment, Schultz said he'd like to see annual appropriations of about $2 billion for buying new systems or refurbishing used equipment. The Coast Guard requested $11.65 billion total in 2019 to cover procurement, operations, personnel and other costs. “We've lost 10 percent of our purchasing power in the past decade,” Schultz said. “We've deferred maintenance during this period.” The Coast Guard is also refurbishing its fleet of fixed-wing aircraft. Congress funded the purchase of a 15th C-130J cargo plane in the FY 2018 budget, and Schultz hopes, if approved, funding for a 16th C-130 will remain in the FY 2019 budget. He'd like the Coast Guard to have a fleet of 22 C-130J aircraft. Meanwhile, in 2014, the Coast Guard inherited a fleet of 14 C-27J Spartan cargo planes from the U.S. Air Force. The Coast Guard is in the process of preparing these medium-range twin-engine turboprop planes for search and rescue missions, but Schultz said they ran into a snag. “There's a bit of a worldwide parts shortage,” Schultz said. “We're fielding the C-27s, and the first ones are out at our air station in Sacramento.” https://news.usni.org/2018/10/29/squeezing-another-decade-out-of-dolphin-helicopters

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  August 10, 2020 | International, Land

  Government watchdog warns of cost and technical risk for next-gen combat vehicle effort

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Government Accountability Office is warning the Army its approach to cost estimates and technical development for its Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program is risky and should be amended, according to an August 6 report. The Army has already struggled to get the OMFV program, intended to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, off the ground, canceling its previous solicitation to compete after receiving just one bid from General Dynamics Land Systems last fall. And GAO, in its report, is concerned that the service's newest attempt to get after delivering an OMFV comes with risk because the program documentation “does not clearly communicate the uncertainty associated with projected costs” and limits the program's “ability to gather the knowledge to effectively mitigate risk associated with system design maturity.” For one, the Army has come up with a singular cost estimate for the life-cycle of the program rather than a range of potential costs that takes uncertainty into account, according to the report. The OMFV program cost estimate, the report notes, is roughly $46 billion in fiscal 2019 dollars. “Our past work has determined that a point estimate alone is insufficient for managers to make informed decisions about the cost of a program,” the GAO writes. “For informed decisions, the cost estimate must reflect a degree of uncertainty, typically achieved through an uncertainty analysis, so that level of confidence can be given about the estimate.” For example, the OMFV program will be optionally manned, “which adds complexity and unknowns to the design as no vehicle like this currently exists in the Army's ground vehicle fleet,” the GAO said. “But the uncertainty surrounding this complex design is not reflected in the point estimate.” And because of this “decision makers are left making choices without a clear understanding of the impact on costs and may not be able to accurately budget for the program,” the report states. The constrained development schedule for OMFV is also a cause for concern as it inevitably drives risk into the program. GAO notes the Army had laid out, in its previous solicitation, a plan to design and demonstrate an OMFV prototype in three years and three months, but has since spread the schedule out a bit more with the relaunch of the program and now plans to complete system development and prototype demonstration in “close to” five years. The new solicitation also lays out a five-phase effort that will allow the Army to reassess the process at certain checkpoints throughout development, according to the report. The GAO also found promise in the Army's plan to use a modular open systems architecture to incorporate incremental upgrades. In the Army's previous plan for OMFV it also planned to use a mix of existing and new technologies but, the GAO report states, the program did not include plans to complete an independent technology readiness assessment until it was approaching a production decision. According to the Office of the Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, in a report to Congress, “the least mature technology for OMFV had only been demonstrated at the component level in a laboratory environment,” the report notes, adding that the level of technology maturity would require “significant” additional development before it could be added to a weapon system. “The Army is maturing, or has plans to mature, individual technologies to a level lower than the threshold recommended by leading practices before beginning system development,” the report says. “This creates a danger of limited insight into key technology risks.” Critical technologies, GAO states, should be demonstrated in “an operational or realistic environment — not simply in a relevant environment — prior to their incorporation into a system design to ensure that they work as intended for the end-user.” The GAO adds, based on past experience, that without proving out technology at that level, the Army risks the possibility that new capabilities won't work as planned and will require further maturation, which results in schedule slips and rising costs. In the previous competition, OMFV didn't hold a systems engineering design review before beginning system development and the Army canceled the solicitation “in part due to the conclusion that contractors could not complete a system design that met requirements within the given schedule,” the report notes, which “illustrates the risk of beginning system development without conducting a systems engineering design review.” Program officials told the GAO that the program office and requirements developers “may have misjudged the ability of contractors to integrate the desired technology within the given schedule.” The GAO recommends the Army secretary direct the OMFV program office to include a range of cost estimates to support a range of possible outcomes as well as conduct systems engineering reviews at key decision points. The report also lays out similar findings on the Mobile Protected Firepower program, which is heading into competitive prototype testing this summer. General Dynamics Land Systems and BAE Systems are competing to build the new light tank for Army infantry. The GAO recommended the Army should ensure the MPF program also include a range of cost estimates that account for uncertainty. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/06/government-watchdog-warns-of-cost-and-technical-risk-for-next-gen-combat-vehicle-effort/

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  December 22, 2022 | International, C4ISR

  US Air Force sees 5G as one of many connectors on future battlefields

  The Defense Department and its contractors are tinkering with 5G as demand explodes for more and more-protected lines of communication.