12 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
By: Stephen Losey
A series of one-day safety stand-downs across all flying and maintenance wings has given the Air Force several clues on how to correct a string of troubling — and sometimes fatal — aviation crashes and other mishaps, the service said Monday.
In a news release, the Air Force said the review identified six potential risks to aviation safety: stress caused by high operations tempos; a lack of time to properly focus on flying basics, mission activities and training; pressure to accept risk; a culture that pushes airmen to always execute the mission; decreased availability of aircraft; and the potential for airmen to become complacent when carrying out routine tasks.
The full report summary, provided at Air Force Times' request, also raised concerns about the increasing requirements on maintainers, and low experience in some operations and maintenance personnel.
The summary also cited “perception of ineffective training” as another area of concern.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein ordered the stand-down in May, after several high-profile mishaps including the May 2 crash of a WC-130 Hercules that killed the nine Puerto Rico Air National Guardsmen aboard.
“The review proved tremendously helpful as we continue to seek both high levels of safety with intense and realistic training,” Goldfein said in the release. “As air superiority is not an American birthright, our training must continue to be challenging and meaningful. But I also want commanders to have the decision authority to determine how far to push.”
The service has distributed those findings to the field, the release said, and flying and maintenance leaders are using those findings to help guide their decisions.
The summary also cites the aging fleet of Air Force aircraft as a problem contributing to increased maintenance requirements and decreased aircraft availability.
The summary said that major commands provided the Air Force Safety Center with their aggregate feedback after completing their safety stand-downs, so senior leaders could find out what issues and concerns were identified across all wings.
The Air Force has already started putting plans into place to address airmen's concerns, including adding more support back to squadrons, reducing additional duties, “enhancing information processes for aircrew mission planning” and cutting staff requirements, according to the release.
12 septembre 2023 | International, Sécurité
Both Estonia and Latvia signed a framework agreement with Diehl Defence for the procurement of IRIS-T SLM medium range ground-based air defence systems
18 janvier 2019 | International, Naval, Terrestre
By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON The Marine Corps has kicked off a rapid development program to begin firing long-range anti-ship missiles from shore-based ground vehicles in an effort to add more punch to the Navy's growing anti-ship capabilities, which are aimed squarely at Chinese and Russian advances. Dubbed the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System — that's NEMSIS to you — the program has completed its design phase. For the missile itself, Marines are looking at Lockheed Martin's new Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), with stealthy features to penetrate enemy missile defenses, a 1,000-pound warhead, and a range disclosed only as “over 200 miles”; Raytheon's Naval Strike Missile (NSM) already chosen as an upgrade for Navy Littoral Combat Ships, with a 264-lb warhead and a 115-mile range; and Boeing's venerable Harpoon, whose variants have a 500-lb warhead and ranges between 70 and 150 miles. The program kicked off last year with a request for information (RFI), after which companies signed OTA agreements with the service in September. Final proposals were submitted in December. Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2019/01/marines-want-missiles-to-sink-ships-from-shores-and-they-want-them-fast/
31 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR
By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― The National Armaments Consortium, along with the DoD Ordnance Technology Consortium and Army Contracting Command-New Jersey, is taking steps to fast-track their armament prototyping efforts, it was announced Thursday. A year after the Army's high-profile reorganization to more quickly field cutting-edge weapons technologies, the Charleston, South Carolina-based National Armaments Consortium ― made up of 900 companies and academic institutions ― wants to better sync with both the government's increased demand and its actual bandwidth for turning research into prototypes. Pentagon modernization efforts have prioritized, in recent years, long-range precision fires, hypersonic and extended-range missiles, and anti-jam GPS devices ― all of which fall in the lane of the armaments consortium, said National Armaments Consortium Executive Director Charlie Zisette. “Armaments is kind of where the rubber hits the road for our war fighter because we're dealing with everything in the kill chain, protection and survivability,” Zisette told Defense News. “All of these things created a fairly large demand signal for modernization of our systems and components.” The 20-year-old NAC is one of a growing number of Pentagon-sponsored consortia that work to translate the government's notional requirements into technological breakthroughs and business opportunities. Consortia members will work with the government through collective “other transaction agreements” or “other transaction authorities.” These OTAs have become a popular tool to allow the government to communicate more openly about its needs and to work with nontraditional defense contractors whose innovations the Department of Defense wants to harness. According to Zisette, the NAC has 650 active projects at various stages to solve tough problems like developing a new heat-resistant composite material, new types of explosives and a complex long-range precision artillery system. So far this year, its efforts have led to 150 new-start acquisition programs, half awarded to “non-traditionals.” Historically, the NAC would release one annual solicitation based on government requirements, and host one annual collaboration event for NAC members to tout their technologies and ask government representatives about requirements. NAC also hosts a members-only online collaboration portal along similar lines. But something had to change. Amid the DoD's modernization efforts, the NAC has grown such that there would be 350 government solicitations and upward of 1,400 whitepapers, almost simultaneously. It was a “huge bow wave” that overwhelmed the procurement, legal and program staffs involved, Zisette said. “It became too much for the Department of Defense, so we were seeing our award-cycle times getting stretched out,” he said. “We realized we had to level that workload out: put in more agreements officers and contracts specialists so we could ... get quickly through the process itself.” The NAC unveiled Thursday it will initiate faster deadlines to develop prototypes, but it will also move to monthly solicitation releases and three virtual collaboration events per year instead of one. Other consortia will often either deal with requirements on an annual or ad hoc basis, meaning they're emailed out as they're developed. To Zisette's knowledge, no other DoD-sponsored consortia have monthly solicitation releases like the NAC is planning, but the idea for tri-annual events was something Zisette borrowed. “The total model will be a pathfinder,” he said, “but absolutely leveraging some of the best practices and input from across the department.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/08/27/armaments-consortium-launches-new-path-to-field-high-tech-prototypes/