October 24, 2024 | International, Aerospace
April 26, 2019 | International, Aerospace
US Army picks 5 teams to design new attack recon helicopter
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — AVX Aircraft Co. partnered with L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, Bell Helicopter, Boeing, Karem Aircraft and Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky have won awards to design a new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) for the U.S. Army over the next year, the service announced April 23.
Only two teams will move forward, at the end of the design phase, to build flyable prototypes of the future helicopter in a head-to-head competition.
The Army laid out a handful of mandatory requirements that the vendors had to meet and also a list of desired requirements for initial designs, Col. Craig Alia, the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team chief of staff, told a select group of reporters just ahead of the contract awards.
The service also looked at the vendors' execution plans and evaluated timing as well as funding profile requirements. “The ones that were selected were clearly meeting the mandatory requirements and were in the acceptable risk level of the execution plan and the desired requirements," Dan Bailey, who is the FARA competitive prototype program manager, added. The prototype program falls under the purview of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center's Aviation Development Directorate.
AVX and L3 unveiled its design for the FARA competition at the Army Aviation Association of America's annual summit in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this month. The design uses AVX's compound coaxial and ducted fans technology. The companies said its single-engine design meets 100 percent of the Army's mandatory requirements and 70 percent of its desired attributes.
The CEO of Textron, Bell's parent company, said during a recent earnings call, that its FARA design will be based on its 525 technology rather than its tiltrotor technology. Bell has built and flown a tiltrotor prototype — the V-280 Valor — for the Army's Future Vertical Lift program.
Karem has been working to develop technology under a small contract to help build requirements for FVL aircraft focused on a medium-lift helicopter.
Sikorsky's offering will be based off of its X2 coaxial technology seen in its S-97 Raider and the Sikorsky-Boeing developed SB-1 Defiant, which are now both flying.
“This is the culmination of years of investment in the X2 Technology Demonstrator and the S-97 RAIDER aircraft that have proven the advanced technology and shown its ability to change the future battlefield,” Tim Malia, Sikorsky's director of Future Vertical Lift Light, told Defense News in an emailed statement shortly after the announcement.
“We continue to fly the S-97 RAIDER to inform the design for FARA, which provides significant risk reduction to the program schedule and technical objectives. We are eager to continue to support the US Army, and we are excited that the Sikorsky FARA X2 will be ready for this critical mission," he said.
A total of eight teams submitted data and potential designs for FARA, but upon evaluation, three of those did not meet mandatory requirements, according to Bailey.
It is not publicly stated who the losing teams were, but MD Helicopters had previously protested the Army's decision to not enter into a first phase agreement with the company to develop a FARA prototype, arguing to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the Army “unreasonably” evaluated its proposal and failed to promote small business participation.
The GAO denied the protest earlier this month on the grounds it did not have authority to review protests of contracting mechanisms like Other Transaction Authorities (OTA) which the Army used in this case.
The awards were made two months ahead of an already ambitious schedule to get FARA prototypes flying by 2023. A production decision could happen in 2028, but the service is looking at any way possible to speed up that timeline.
The Army has to move quickly, Alia said. Echoing his boss, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, the FVL CFT director, he said the Army is “at an inflection point. We can't afford not to modernize. We know the current fleet is fantastic, but we can't indefinitely continue to incrementally improve 1970s to 1980s technology.”
FARA is intended to fill a critical capability gap currently being filled by AH-64E Apache attack helicopters teamed with Shadow unmanned aircraft following the retirement of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters.
The service has tried and failed three times to fill the gap with an aircraft.
The Army is also planning to procure another helicopter to fill the long-range assault mission, replacing some UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters in the fleet, simultaneously.
With the advent of the new Army Futures Command — that is focused on six major modernization priorities of which FVL is third — the service is moving faster on prototyping capability to ultimately procure major weapon systems at a somewhat unprecedented speed. Through the AFC and the use of contracting mechanisms like OTAs, the Army has found a way to compress parts of the acquisition process that previously took three to five years into periods of time often amounting to less than a year.
“What is exciting about the new process the Army has put in place,” Bailey said, “in basically a year's period of time, we've gone through concept, through an approved set of requirements, to developing an innovative approach to contracting, to building industry partnerships to have industry propose to us a plan and a solution.”
And the Army rigorously evaluated those FARA proposals, Bailey said, all within that year.
The teams have until January or February next year to provide design plans and an approach to executing the build of the prototypes followed by potential larger-scale manufacturing, Bailey said.
The second phase of the program will be to build prototypes, and “only two will make it into phase 2 and they all know that now,” Bailey added.
According to Rugen, when the request for proposals was released, the Army did not want to get locked into keeping inflexible requirements, but the request did state that the aircraft should have a maximum 40-foot rotor diameter.
The Army also asked for the aircraft to be able to accept some government furnished equipment including an engine, a gun and a rocket launcher, Alia said.
When it comes to some of the desirable attributes for a new aircraft, the Army is considering speed, range and payload possibilities, Alia said, but the service “wanted to encourage innovation by industry to come to us with their ideas and unique ways of meeting both mandatory and desirable characteristics and that is where we got some great feedback from industry and some innovative designs.”
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July 3, 2018 | International, C4ISR
Cyber Command moves closer to a major new weapon
By: Mark Pomerleau The Air Force issued a formal proposal earlier this month for the Department of Defense's long-awaited cyber weapon system, known as the Unified Platform, sources tell Fifth Domain. DoD officials have said the Unified Platform is one of U.S. Cyber Command's largest and most critical acquisition programs to date. Industry officials have said it is necessary to conduct cyber operations and is critical to national security. Just as sailors rely on an aircraft carrier, pilots need airplanes or soldiers need tanks, cyber warriors require a system to which they launch their attacks. Pentagon leaders have said the Unified Platform will house offensive and defensive tools, allow for command and control, situational awareness and planning. Industry officials have referred to the programs as a “cyber carrier” used to launch cyber operations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. But details on what the Air Force, which issued the request on behalf of Cyber Command, wants in a Unified Platform are scarce. Sources told Fifth Domain a formal request for proposal was released through the General Services Administration's premier enterprise Alliant Governmentwide Acquisition Contract vehicle, which “provides flexible access to customized IT solutions from a large, diverse pool of industry partners ... [and] allows for long-term planning of large-scale program requirements.” Under this model, GSA completes much of the initial contracting legwork and, in this case, allows the Air Force to focus on the specific technical requirements, sources said. Companies compete to be eligible for task orders under the Alliant contract and then GSA selects contractors who compete against each other for individual task orders on the final program. This means, only vetted companies would work on the program. Alliant is also designed to streamline contracts for IT projects only, eschewing some of the documentation and financials in typical contracts enabling faster awards. The Unified Platform proposal was only released to companies on the contract about two weeks ago, sources said, and is due in mid-July. Today, each of the individual services use their own disparate systems, many of which are not linked together. The spokesman added that efforts are underway to review and consolidate existing service and Cyber Command's platforms. Unified Platform seeks to take the best of breed of these and provide all cyber warriors a consolidated system. “In concert with US Cyber Command and all Services, the Air Force as Executive Agent is directing development and deployment to ensure timely and relevant full-spectrum capabilities for our cyber warriors,” an Air Force spokeswoman said. An Air Force spokeswoman said that the Air Force's Life Cycle Management Center will serve as the system integrator and will lead a multi-contractor, agile development/operations effort to launch and expand the Unified Platform. Currently, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Booz Allen Hamilton are known to be competing for the contract. Sources said other companies may also be considering a bid. The Air Force, in its research and development budget for fiscal 2019, asked for $29.8 million for the Unified Platform program this year. It requested $10 million for fiscal year 2020 and $6 million in fiscal 2021. The total cost of the program is not immediately clear. Other companies are also working on Unified Platform prototypes in the interim. Enlighten IT Consulting, a Maryland based company, was awarded earlier this year a sole source contract to provide a Unified Platform prototype, Duane Shugars, Enlighten's vice president of operations, told Fifth Domain. Enlighten is providing a capability Cyber Command's cyber mission force is using in real world missions today in which they collect data, push it into their analytics to run and share it for intelligence fusion. As the command continues to grow and mature leaders have said it will need its own infrastructure to conduct operations. As recently as 2015, top Pentagon officials acknowledged Cyber Command did not possess a robust joint computer network infrastructure capability, a robust command and control platform and systems to plan and execute fast-moving, large-scale cyber operations. During his confirmation process to lead Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone said the organization needs its own infrastructure separate from the National Security Agency, which is currently co-located with Cyber Command and has traditionally shared personnel and infrastructure. “Operating under the constraint of the intelligence authorities that govern NSA infrastructure and tools would severely limit USCYBERCOM's ability to effectively support wartime cyber operations,” he said. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/cybercom/2018/06/29/cyber-command-moves-closer-to-a-major-new-weapon/
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June 18, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Land, C4ISR
The next key to the Army network: air-ground integration
By: Mark Pomerleau The Army wants greater network integration with its air and ground units and has started working with industry to make that process more seamless. Service leaders point to significant gaps in today's network architecture enabling aircraft to communicate with ground units and vice versa. But, they say, forces in the future will have to operate over significant distances and do so under a near constant jamming threat. “A lot of units and rifle squads in the 101st [Airborne Division] right now, that squad leader's radio in many cases can't interface with similar radios in adjacent units or the helicopter that just delivered him or her to an objective area. Or the helicopter that's providing close air support ... can't pass data with it,” Maj. Gen. Brian Winski, the division's commander, said in Nashville, Tennessee, May 30. “We need that capability for ground forces to be able to talk to their aviation partners and have that inextricable link that makes us so incredibly powerful. We also have to collectively figure out how we're going to communicate over significantly increased distances.” To solve these problems, Army leaders from the aviation and networking community gathered in Nashville, Tennessee at the end of May to hash out the challenges they face with industry and the operational community. The forum was a venue for members of the operational community to voice their concerns and provide examples of issues they faced while deployed. “This air to ground focus ... is the thing we've really got to crack the code on if we are going to penetrate deep into an [anti-Access/area denial] environment ... they've got to be able to communicate,” Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the network cross functional team, said at the event. “Contested in space, contested in cyber, there are no easy answers to that wicked problem.” Gallagher stressed to the industry representatives that it's up to their engineers to “help us crack the code to making sure we have assured network transport in a contested environment, terrestrial, aerial and space.” Operating at long distances One of the first challenges officials described was ensuring network connectivity over hundreds of miles while facing a jamming threat. “No longer are we talking about operating at distances of 100 to 150 kilometers. We're about talking of operating at distance to 400 to 1,000-plus kilometers,” Al Abejon, chief of aviation architecture at the program executive office aviation, said. “Now the challenge is: how do you maintain that continuous mission command, [situational awareness] ... throughout that operational distance and oh, by the way, be able to survive the operational environments that are going to be changing at these distances at those air speeds. "All those rolled into one thing make up a considerable problem set.” Along with the newtwork, the Army has also listed future vertical lift aircraft as one of its six top modernization priorities. These future aircraft will be capable of teaming with unmanned systems, a concept the aviation community is calling advanced teaming. From an operational perspective, Winski said the 101st must be able to share information digitally between air and ground units in the Army and with joint and coalition partners to “violently and decisively exploit developing opportunities on the battlefield.” They'll also need to provide electronic and kinetic fires over the horizon, increase the linkages between intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms and shooters, whether they are existing or future aircraft, future long range precision fires platforms or existing fires platforms. Gallagher told C4ISRNET that if beyond line of sight satellite communications are knocked out, alternative solutions could include high frequency solutions or mid-earth or low-earth orbit satellites rather than geosynchronous satellites. Abejon mentioned one option could be to link line of sight communications to the command and control aircraft that have beyond line of sight capability. Those aircraft can then move data forward while still maintaining connectivity to bases. Unmanned systems can also be used as range extension platforms. Common operating environment The Army is pursuing a common operating environment that will allow soldiers in a command post, ground vehicle, aircraft or on the ground to easily pass data back and forth, share information, communicate and look at the same map. Now, the aviation community is trying to change its mission command system and radios into a program called the Aviation Information System (AIS). This system will “centralize mission command on a single tool that connects war fighting function software and applications with [the] mission command network,” said Col. Ryan Coyle of the aviation enablers – requirements determination directorate. “Converging [the] mission command system and the network to support efficient data management but also rapid voice and data exchange are critical in order to optimize those cross domain effects.” This is similar to the Command Post Computing Environment, which will shrink stovepiped systems into applications on a common interface allowing all forces to have a common look and feel regardless of their location. The other part of a common suite of communications gear is having radios that can connect to ground and air forces. However, for air platforms, such as radios, waveforms or mission command systems, the air community must pass airworthiness standards to fly in domestic or international airspaces. “If we have a SINCGARS waveform in the bird and we have a SINCGARS waveform on the ground in a manpack radio or a leader radio, there is no reason we shouldn't be able to interoperate perfectly between those two systems,” said Jim Evangelos, standards branch deputy director of the Joint Tactical Networking Center. “One way to guarantee this interoperability is to have software defined radios on the ground, software defined radios in the bird operating the same version of the same software. That's a lot easier said than done. I totally get and understand the aviation challenges and you have to meet some very tough standards especially with airworthiness standards.” Overall, the top tactical network buyer for the Army says he wants one single network, though acknowledges there will be some exceptions. “My goal is one network. One tactical network,” Maj. Gen. Dave Bassett, program executive officer, command, control, communications-tactical, said. “There are going to be some exceptions. There are going to be some things the aviation platforms want to do in terms of [man-unmanned teaming] or sensor to shooter and other things where the networks that the common network isn't going to meet that requirement. We ought to manage those things as exceptions but that should not be the default.” To the extent possible, Bassett said, the Army should ensure the aviation community is part of the overall Army network using the waveforms and capabilities that are provided and common to all. The Army is currently soliciting white papers and will evaluate proposals to help solve these challenges. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/2019/06/15/the-next-key-to-the-army-network-air-ground-integration/