Adopt a treaty for semiconductor export control

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  29 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  KC-135s and C-130Js are the next aircraft to enter the Air Force’s data-driven maintenance program

  By: Jeff Martin The KC-135 refueling tanker and the C-130J airlifter will be the next two aircraft to be part of the Air Force's predictive maintenance program, part of the service's effort to do maintenance before airplanes break--and improve mission capable and availability rates, according to Air Mobility Command's logistics director. "The bottom line is to get to where we are scheduling all of our maintenance, rather than reacting to the maintenance,' said Brig. Gen. Steven Blaymaier, who oversees Air Mobility Command's logistics, engineering and force protection, in an interview at the 2018 Airlift Tanker Association symposium outside Dallas, Texas. “We want our units to achieve their mission-capable rates on a sustained basis.” According to the latest available data, from FY2017, the KC-135 fleet had, on average, a 74 percent mission capable rate, and the C-130J fleet had a 77 percent mission capable rate. As for the rest of the mobility fleet, by that same data, the C-5M fleet stood at 60 percent, the C-130H fleet was at 73 percent, and the C-17 fleet was at 84 percent mission capable. The concept, known as conditions based maintenance, has already been rolled out to the C-5 fleet within AMC, and the B-1 fleet in Air Force Global Strike Command. It uses algorithms based on reams of data to create models to predict when a part might break, rather than waiting for it to fail. Its a standard practice in the commercial aviation industry, and is now making its way into the Air Force. Blaymaier says the KC-135 fleet will join the program in spring of 2019, and the C-130J fleet will follow in the summer. Blaymaier also added that the other aircraft in AMC's fleet would be joining the program eventually, like the C-17 and KC-10. “They're all in work at their program offices right now,” he said. “What we learn from C-5 will be incorporated into the other aircraft.” Blaymaier also said the Air Force was modelling their effort after Delta Airlines's Tech Ops division's procedures, and that the service was at the beginning or “crawl stage” of the process. He also noted that Delta took “eight years” to get achieve the results they were looking for, and that the Air Force was working on that path. In September, Lt. Gen. Robert McMurray, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, told Defense News that the conditions-based maintenance program was critical to increasing the readiness of the Air Force's aircraft. "Given the aging fleet situation that we have, we probably need to be using data better to take care of it — which is a drive toward what most everyone right now is saying is the right way to manage fleet sustainment, which is through condition-based maintenance and data analytics,” he said at the time. Another benefit Blaymaier described was that the service will be able to track maintenance needs by individual aircraft, rather than by a general fleet-wide standard. That could reduce time in depots and increase mission capable rates, a top priority of senior Pentagon leaders. “As we move forward with conditions based maintenance plus (CBM+) and predictive analytics, we'll be able to know by tail number which parts are going to fail on certain aircraft," he said."It'll be much more surgical [and] operational." Blaymaier added that while the transition to conditions based maintenance might be a long journey, it would lead to huge benefits for the Air Force. “Ultimately we want to achieve those aircraft availability standards that we established for each of our fleets that are required to meet our wartime taskings,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/airlift-tanker-annual/2018/10/27/kc-135s-and-c-130js-are-the-next-aircraft-to-enter-the-air-forces-data-driven-maintenance-program

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  18 juin 2020 | International, Terrestre

  Army Reassures Anxious Industry Over Stryker Cannon Competition

  While at least two of six competitors have dropped out, the Army says it will still have plenty of 30mm turret options to choose from as it starts testing this fall. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on June 17, 2020 at 2:43 PM WASHINGTON: “This is a healthy competition,” the head of the Army Stryker program, Col. Bill Venable, reassured reporters. “My No. 1 mandate as the overall program manager was to protect the competition in this first phase.” Venable was allaying anxieties yesterday about the five-year-old effort to upgun the infantry transport version of the Stryker, an 8×8 armored vehicle that's become an Army workhorse worldwide since its controversial introduction in 2003. The wheeled Stryker was criticized for having lighter armor than the tracked M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley, although it's far better protected than Humvees. It often struggled over Afghan terrain. But its ability to move rapidly by road – with fewer stops for gas and maintenance than heavy armored vehicles – made it a favorite of US commanders from Iraq to Estonia. So, while overshadowed by high-tech prototypes from hypersonic missiles to high-speed helicopters to robotic tanks, the Army is doubling down on the proven Stryker in several ways: Two light infantry brigades are being converted into Stryker units, which increases the number of active-duty Stryker brigades from five to seven. (There are two more part-time units in the National Guard). Original manufacturer General Dynamics has a $2.4 billion contract to rebuild hundreds of existing Strykers as DVHA1 models with bigger engines, upgraded electronics, and mine-resistant “double-V” hulls. Leonardo DRS is developing a new anti-aircraft variant called IM-SHORAD. It is several months behind schedule due to COVID disruptions and software issues. And the Army is upgunning the basic infantry-carrier variant from an exposed 12.7mm (0.50 cal) machinegun, viable against infantry and unarmored trucks, to a turret-mounted Medium Caliber Weapon System (MCWS), a 30mm autocannon capable of killing light armored vehicles widely used by Russia General Dynamics urgently built 83 upgunned Strykers to reequip a single Europe-based brigade. Now the Army is holding an open competition for an official Program of Record (POR) to upgrade at least three more brigades with a more refined 30mm turret design – but we've heard some anxiety over whether any other vendor can really unseat the incumbent. Out of six companies awarded $150,000 design contracts last summer, Venable confirmed that at least two have dropped out. At the current — sensitive — stage of the competition, the program manager said after a quick consultation with his staff, he isn't allowed to disclose how many companies remain and how many have quit. But Venable did tell reporters that one vendor dropped out because it wasn't making adequate progress to meet the technical requirements, while another decided it didn't have a good enough chance of winning to justify the investment. While the Army gave competitors free Strykers and 30mm guns, they must provide their own turrets, electronics and other components to integrate the weapon and the vehicle into a functional fighting system, to be delivered to the Army for testing by August 10. “We're not funding their development,” Venable said, “[which is] in some cases millions of dollars they're going to invest.” While he won't second-guess any company's cost-benefit calculus, he's been working with all of them to try to keep them in the running, despite disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have adjusted the evaluation strategy in order to maintain the competition as robust as we can,” he said. “This isn't the first competitive selection effort that I've run, and I will say we have more [viable competitors] than the incumbent, significantly more than the incumbent,” Venable told reporters. “We're going to present a variety of choices to the source selection authority to evaluate starting on 10 August.” Once the vehicles arrive in August, the Army will live-fire the 30 mm guns, check out the armor, and conduct a host of other tests. By January, Venable expects to have that data ready for the evaluation board, which aims to announce a winner by the end of April, 2021. After that, the winning company will start mass production, with the first vehicles scheduled for delivery to a Stryker unit in August or September 2022. That meets the Army's previously announced deadline to start fielding by the end of fiscal '22, Venable said. But the brigade will spend months more taking possession of the vehicles and training on them – a “Rubik's Cube” of logistics and scheduling, Venable said — before it's officially declared the “First Unit Equipped,” probably around March 2023. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/army-rebuffs-anxiety-over-stryker-cannon-competition

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  15 juillet 2021 | International, C4ISR

  Northrop Adopts Lean-Agile for Development of F-16 AESA Radar Software

  Northrop Adopts Lean-Agile for Development of F-16 AESA Radar Software