May 12, 2024 | International, Land
US Army sends HIMARS rocket launcher island-hopping in the Philippines
The U.S. Army and its joint partners rapidly transported and operated HIMARS rocket launchers across the Philippines during Balikatan 2024.
July 3, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Will the F-35 beat out ‘the usual suspects’ in Singapore’s search for F-16 replacement?
By: Mike Yeo
MELBOURNE, Australia ― Singapore will decide in the next few months on a new fighter to replace its fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16 multirole fighters, with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter from the same manufacturer seen as the prime candidate.
In an interview with media ahead of the southeast Asian island nation's Armed Forces Day, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said that despite ongoing upgrades, the F-16s face obsolescence beyond 2030. He added the country will make a definitive decision on its replacement in the next few months based on interoperability with Singapore's current systems and platforms as well as the price.
Ng refused to be drawn into further details as to which fighter platforms Singapore is looking at, only saying that the BAE Systems Typhoon, the F-35, Russia's Sukhois, and Chinese-made stealth fighters are “the usual suspects that you have to look at” when air forces are choosing a new combat platform.
However, Singapore has been evaluating the F-35 since 2013 and Ng had previously suggested that the type was suited to be the replacement for Singapore's F-16s. Earlier reports suggested Singapore is keen on acquiring the F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variant, with the B-model's STOVL capability seen as useful for Singapore, whose main island has an area of a mere 277 square miles and whose air bases are seen as vulnerable to a first strike.
Nevertheless, former head of the F-35 program Christopher Bogdan, said Singapore requested information on all three variants of the F-35, and the possibility of Singapore opting for the conventional takeoff and landing F-35A variant cannot be ruled out.
Singapore is a security cooperative participant of the F-35 program and is believed to have an eventual requirement of between 40 and 60 new fighters to replace its F-16s.
The Republic of Singapore Air Force, or RSAF, currently operates a fleet of 60 F-16C/D Block 52 and Advanced Block 52 aircraft delivered between 1998 and 2005. Twelve aircraft are currently assigned to a joint continuation training unit between the U.S. and Singapore air forces at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, while the remaining are split between three Singapore-based squadrons.
Singapore's F-16s are currently being upgraded by Lockheed Martin with the upgrade program, which started in 2016 and is expected to be completed in 2022, including the addition of Northrop Grumman's AN/APG-83 active electronically scanned array radar, an improved identification, friend or foe system, as well as Link 16 data links.
During the interview, Ng also outlined some of the other upcoming procurement programs Singapore is looking at. These include new multirole combat vessels to replace six corvettes and new joint multimission ships to replace four amphibious ships in Singapore's Navy, while the Army will replace its towed 155mm howitzers with a new self-propelled high-mobility artillery system in the 2020s.
On the same subject
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April 19, 2023 | International, Land
Elbit Systems Awarded Contract Worth Approximately $102 Million to Supply ATMOS Artillery Systems to an International Customer
Under the contract Elbit Systems will supply a battalion?s worth of ATMOS (Autonomous Truck Mounted Howitzer) 155mm/52 caliber truck-mounted howitzers systems.
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July 30, 2020 | International, C4ISR
How Army network modernization efforts ensure equipment works with allies
Andrew Eversden A critical piece of the U.S. Army's network modernization push is ensuring its systems work with allies. In future battles, the Army will not fight alone; it will be joined by coalition partners, as well as other U.S. services. As the Army moves to improve its integrated tactical network, it must ensure that its network tools work with coalition and service partners The Army recently completed a critical design review of Capability Set '21 a set of new network tools that will be delivered to soldiers next year. The service is in the first phase of procuring the new capabilities. A “key factor” involved in delivery to soldiers at the battalion level and below is a move to a 75 percent “secure but unclassified” network that provides improved communication between coalition partners, said Col. Garth Winterle, project manager for tactical radios at the Army's Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical. “We're moving off of an all-secret network to one that's a lot more flexible and actually encourages coalition interoperability,” Winterle said. One opportunity to test interoperability was Defender Europe 2020, which was meant to be one of the largest European exercises involving both the U.S. Army and NATO allies, but had to be scaled down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Still, the Army was able to test interoperability. There were a series of pre-Defender Europe exercises to assess capabilities “to inform future network design,” according to Justine Ruggio, director of communications for the Network Cross-Functional Team at Army Futures Command. These assessments included several pieces of Capability Set '21, including communications exercises and validation exercises with the Army's fielded Command Post Computing Environment software, Tactical Server Infrastructure and Commercial Coalition Equipment “to enable the use of the Mission Partner Environment, which allowed all participants to share classified information during the exercise, including the Polish and U.K.,” Ruggio said. During the pre-Defender Europe tests, “we were able to bridge the Polish and U.K. unit into an integrated command structure using our secret releasable network and create that common command-and-control picture,” Col. Lesley Kipling, the mission command lead and Army National Guard liaison officer to the Network CFT, said in an interview with C4ISRNET. Secret but releasable information is classified at the secret level and can be released to certain coalition partners who have sufficient clearance from their home country. An exercise scheduled for next year, called Warfighter 21-4, will allow for additional interoperability assessments with U.K. and French forces. According to Ruggio, one focus area will be on interoperability using the Network CFT's DevOps model to iterate the Command Post Computing Environment, continue to assess Commercial Coalition Equipment and evaluate the Mission Partner Environment. The event will be aligned with Capability Set '23, the next iteration of network tools. Kipling added that the cross-functional team and its partners are “continuing” to work on policies and training for properly connecting to a coalition network “so that it's not learning on the fly, but that these procedures and policies are codified in a way that they can be standardized and any user can execute whenever they're put in a situation,” she said. Brig. Gen. Joseph Papenfus, chief Information officer and deputy chief of staff of the G6 of U.S. Army Europe, said that the scaled-back nature of Defender Europe did affect network interoperability testing because soldiers were unable to come over from the United States. That means that U.S. Army Europe will focus heavily on European partners during the smaller exercises, Papenfus said, including validating network integration and establishing a secret but releasable network with NATO. “Every opportunity that we have to see how a piece of equipment works within the larger set of the network, we take advantage of that,” Ruggio said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/yahoo-syndication/2020/07/29/how-army-network-modernization-efforts-ensure-equipment-works-with-allies/