18 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Against Army’s wishes, Congress primes pump to buy newest CH-47 variant for active force

By: Jen Judson

WASHINGTON — Congressional appropriators and authorizers have increased advance procurement funds for the newest variant of the CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter as preparation to supply the aircraft to the Army's active force, even though the service asked to only buy a small number of the helos in fiscal 2020 for special operations.

The service's decision to cut the aircraft from the active force was based on the need to free up future cash to cover the cost of an ambitious plan to buy two new future vertical lift aircraft for long-range assault and attack reconnaissance missions.

But Congress has gone against the Army's wishes to divert funding away from procurement for the active force, instead adding $28 million in FY20 funding — in both the recently released spending and policy bill conference reports — for advance procurement to begin to prime the pump to restore CH-47F Block II deliveries to the conventional Army.

The cut the service made would only buy 69 special operations variants — or "G" models. The original plan was to procure 473 "F"-model Block II helicopters for the active force.

The Army approved the Block II effort to move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase in April 2017, and the program officially began in July 2017. In October 2018, the first two EMD Block II Chinooks were already on the assembly line with plans to fly in mid-2019. Boeing, which manufactures the aircraft, expects a production decision in July 2021.

While $28 million won't get the service much, based on the original plan the Army would start building five CH-47F Block IIs in 2021 meant for the active force. The advance procurement in FY20 would support buying longer-lead items from suppliers, but is still a stretch to claim that the additional funding restores the program.

Those five aircraft would be delivered in 2023 based on Boeing's typical three-year lead time to build an airframe.

It remains to be seen whether the congressional plus-up will prompt the Army to restore funding for the five CH-47F Block IIs in its FY21 budget request due out early next year.

It's also unclear how many of those long-lead parts procured in FY20 could be used in G-model aircraft or are exclusive to F-models. Therefore, it's also murky how much of the $28 million in parts might be wasted if the Army sticks to its plan to only procure G-model aircraft.

The Army has indicated it might reconsider the CH-47F Block II cut; the FY21 budget request, when it is released, will likely reveal the Army's decision.

Shortly after the service's plan to cut the CH-47F Block II was revealed in its FY20 budget request, then-Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, who is now chief, told reporters the Army was comfortable with its decision, but tempered that, adding: “I think in two to three years, we will have a better idea about where we are, as far as developing the helicopters we talked about, and that will drive the decision.”

McConville was referring to the Army's plan to buy two future vertical lift aircraft.

The same day, then-Army Secretary Mark Esper, who is now defense secretary, told another group of reporters that the service would not be rethinking its plans to build CH-47 Block IIs for the conventional force.

The Army has also claimed it is pursuing foreign military sales of its CH-47F Chinooks to soften the blow from cuts made to its intended buy of the Block II variant, but none of the possible sales — to the United Kingdom or to the United Arab Emirates — were newly in the works at the time. And neither country has plans to buy Block II variants. Moreover, the number of helicopters the two countries plan to procure amount to less than 30 aircraft.

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/12/17/against-armys-wishes-congress-primes-pump-to-buy-newest-ch-47-variant-for-active-force

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7 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

DARPA wants a robotic satellite mechanic launched by 2022
By: Nathan Strout &emsp; The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is on track to announce a new commercial partner for its robotic servicing payload by the end of the year, with plans to have a spacecraft in orbit in 2022. “I'm standing here with a smile on my face. The program is moving forward and things are looking good and we're very hopeful,” Joe Parrish, program manager for the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Spacecraft program at DARPA, said at the 2019 Global Satellite Servicing Forum Oct. 1. “We're looking to launch RSGS in late 2022.” RSGS is intended to deliver a GEO spacecraft with a payload consisting of two large 2 meter arms and a number of tools that will allow it to perform maintenance and other work on satellites in GEO. The spacecraft will perform four main functions in space: inspection, orbital adjustments, anomaly resolution and installation of self-contained payloads. With a host of cameras onboard, RSGS will be able to inspect other satellites. This can help operators on the ground diagnose problems and inform in-orbit repairs. It can also use its arms to capture a satellite and move it, either to a new orbit or to dispose of it. DARPA envisions RSGS being able, again using its arms, to install new payloads on existing satellites, replacing legacy hardware and augmenting its mission for years to come. And, of course, RSGS will be available to traverse the GEO landscape to help satellites that fail to deploy correctly. “If somebody launches up into GEO while we're up there and a solar array fails to deploy or a reflector or antenna fails to deploy, we can come galloping to the rescue,” said Perrish. “The benefit is not to demonstrate robot arms waving around in space. The benefit is to increase the resilience of our infrastructure in space.” While DARPA is developing the payload with robotic arms, according to Parrish, DARPA needs a commercial partner to build the spacecraft that will house the payload and carry it around in orbit. “We're looking for the partner to provide the spacecraft bus — so using a heritage GEO bus that may have had some tailoring for RSGS requirements, integrating the payload and the spacecraft bus together, procuring and launching that integrated spacecraft to GEO, and then providing mission control center for operations for a long period of time,” explained Parrish. Parrish said that the full project would be turned over in due time to the commercial partner to operate RSGS for fun and profit. But DARPA has hit some stumbling blocks in securing that commercial partner. In 2017, Orbital ATK sued DARPA to stop it from developing what it saw as competition to its own satellite servicing space vehicle. While that effort failed, the company's efforts to develop its own satellite servicing program have continued. Orbital ATK was acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2018, and now the Northrop Grumman subsidiary SpaceLogistics is preparing to launch the first satellite life extension vehicle into space in the coming weeks. Then, in January, Maxar Technologies' Space Systems Loral pulled out of an agreement with DARPA to build the spacecraft to host the RSGS payload as the company moved out of the GEO construction market. DARPA has spent much of the last year working to find a new commercial partner. In May they hosted a Proposer's Day to discuss the program with potentially interested companies, and now Parrish says they expect to announce a partner toward the end of the year. “2019 has been quite a year,” said Parrish. “We are still in source selection for a new commercial partner.” Meanwhile, work on the payload itself is ongoing. The first of two flight robotic manipulator arms is in final assembly and will be shipped to the Naval Research Lab in the next two weeks, where it will be integrated into the payload. The second arm lags the first by about two months, said Parrish, and is currently in assembly. In 2020, all of the components of the payload will be sent to NRL for assembly into the actual payload. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2019/10/03/darpa-wants-a-robotic-satellite-mechanic-launched-by-2022/
10 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

Japan unveils timeline for indigenous fighter jet program
By: Mike Yeo &emsp; 20 hours ago MELBOURNE, Australia — Japan has created a timeline for the development and fielding of its locally made next-generation fighter jet, with serial production set to start at the beginning of the next decade. The Japanese Ministry of Defense presented the draft development plan for the fighter program to a group of lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Tuesday, which showed that full-scale production is due to begin in 2031. The ministry added that the prime contractor for the program will be selected by early next year, although it could happen as soon as October 2020. This is to allow for the basic design for the airframe and engine to be launched before the end of the current Japanese fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2021. The next step would be the production of the first fighter prototype, which is planned to begin in 2024, with flight tests earmarked to start in 2028 following finalization of the design and production plans. The new fighter is slated to replace about 90 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries F-2 fighters, which are due to be phased out in the mid-2030s, as its replacement is to be formally introduced into service in 2035. Japan previously said the new fighter will be stealthy and interoperable with the U.S. military. Japan has researched and developed fighter technology over the past decade, including work on stealth designs and materials, active electronically scanned array radars, and afterburning turbofan engines. In addition, the U.S. ally also conducted a series of test flights of a locally designed and built fighter technology demonstrator between 2016 and 2018 in order to validate its work. The country used the data gleaned from the test program to further refine its indigenous capabilities. Despite these efforts, the country is still the largest customer of the American Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet, with plans to eventually operate 157 F-35s, including 42 of the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35B variant. These will be used to equip the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's anti-submarine helicopter destroyer Izumo, which is being refurbished to accommodate F-35B operations. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/07/09/japan-unveils-timeline-for-indigenous-fighter-jet-program/
6 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

Australia releases weapons wish list amid defense spending boost
By: Nigel Pittaway MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia plans to increase defense spending over the next decade to AU$270 billion (U.S. $187 billion) in response to what it says is a deteriorating regional environment. The July 1 announcement by Prime Minister Scott Morrison about the plan coincides with the launch of the government's 2020 Defence Strategic Update and the associated Force Structure Plan, which will raise projected spending from AU$195 billion as laid out in the 2016 Defence White Paper. “The simple truth is this: Even as we stare down the COVID pandemic at home, we need to also prepare for a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous and that is more disorderly,” Morrison said during the documents launch at the Australian Defence Force Academy on Wednesday. “We have not seen the conflation of global, economic and strategic uncertainty now being experienced here in Australia in our region since the existential threat we faced when the global and regional order collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s.” Morrison also cited trends including military modernization, technological disruption and the risk of state-on-state conflict as further complicating factors in the Indo-Pacific region, which he said has deteriorated more rapidly than forecast by the previous whitepaper from 2016. “The Indo-Pacific is the epicenter of rising, strategic competition. Our region will not only shape our future; increasingly though, it is the focus of the dominant global contest of our age,” he said. “Tensions over territorial claims are rising across the Indo-Pacific region, as we have seen recently on the disputed border between India and China, and the South China Sea and the East China Sea.” What do the documents say? The two defense documents forecast the development of closer ties with Australia's regional partners and with the U.S., but it also warns of the need for enhanced self-reliance, which Morrison said signals the country's “ability and willingness” to project military power and deter actions against it. “Relations between China and the U.S. are fractious at best as they compete for political, economic and technological supremacy. But it's important to acknowledge that they are not the only actors of consequence. The rest of the world and Australia are not just bystanders to this,” he said. “Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, the countries of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Pacific all have agency, choices to make, parts to play, and of course so does Australia.” Additional capabilities to those already being acquired include long-range strike weapons, area-denial systems and cyber tools — including the establishment of an offensive cyber capability. Also included on Australia's shopping list is the Lockheed Martin AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile, which would become the country's next air-launched maritime strike weapon under Project Air 3023 Phase 1. Defence Minister Linda Reynolds confirmed Thursday that Australia will acquire an unspecified number of LRASM weapons through a Foreign Military Sales deal with the U.S. Navy. Training on the weapon is to begin in the U.S. in 2021. The missile will initially be employed by the Royal Australian Air Force's fleet of 24 Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet strike fighters, with an initial operational capability to follow in 2023. Reynolds said the missile will also be integrated with Australia's F-35A jets, which are also made by Lockheed. Australia is also seeking replacement fleets for the Royal Australian Air Force's Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Hercules, Airbus KC-30A Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft, Boeing E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control planes and EA-18G Growler electronic attack platforms. The country's Jindalee Operational Radar Network is also to be expanded to cover Australia's eastern approaches. The government is also backing the creation of a hypersonic weapons development program. The documents also call for the Royal Australian Navy to receive two new multipurpose sealift and replenishment vessels and up to eight mine countermeasures and tactical hydrographic vessels, to be based on the Arafura-class offshore patrol vessels now under construction in local shipyards. The Australian Army is to receive an active protection system for its Hawkei and Bushmaster fleets of protected mobility vehicles; two regiments of self-propelled howitzers, to be built locally; and a replacement for its Abrams M1A1 main battle tanks. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/07/02/australia-releases-weapons-wish-list-amid-defense-spending-boost/

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