Australian Government orders an additional Guardian-class Patrol Boat for Pacific Maritime Security program

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  14 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Japan Accelerates Its Defense Buildup

  by Milton Ezrati Tokyo will begin to alter the security equation in the Western Pacific in the not-too-distant future. Long pacifist, Japan has decided to accelerate its military spending and effectively begin to gear up. It should hardly come as a surprise. Though Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has long sought to shift Japan from pacifism to what he calls a “normal country,” North Korea's missiles and China's aggressiveness in the Pacific would have left Tokyo little choice anyway. Spending has stepped up dramatically, as has planning. The nature of the buildup responds to other pressures from its great ally, the United States, which wants Japan to buy more U.S. equipment, as well as from the demographic and technological imperatives facing that nation. Even now, some seventy-two years after Douglas MacArthur directed the writing of the then defeated Japan's constitution, the document still limits the country's room to maneuver. Spending cannot exceed 1.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Though clever accounting allows wiggle room, this rule nonetheless imposes a severe constraint especially next to China and the United States, each of which spend more than 3.0 percent of their much larger GDPs on defense. Because the constitution stresses defense exclusively, it naturally questions any preparation to project power, not the least the Ministry of Defense's (MoD) intention to construct two aircraft carriers and possibly base Japanese ground forces outside the country. The constitution also forbids Japan entering any mutual defense pact. Despite Japan's long-term alliance with the United States, it cannot go to America's aid if, for instance, a U.S. base in Asia was attacked. Prime Minister Abe has strived to change the constitution and has won concessions, but it remains a constraint. The MoD budget requests for 2019 nonetheless make clear the new military emphasis. According to documents published in September, the MoD is asking for ¥5.3 trillion ($48 billion) in overall defense outlays, which is 7.2 percent above the 2018 budgeted amount. A jump like that would be noteworthy in any country, but especially so in Japan, where heretofore defense spending grows by fractions of a percent per year. Five-year plans would sustain this heightened level of spending. Still more interesting is the proposed allocation of these funds. Here, each point reflects the various pressures on Japan. North Korea's presence is probably most evident. The budget document emphasizes on “deterrence,” which no doubt lies behind the decision to upgrade the electronic warfare capability of Japan's existing F-15 fighter jets and purchase six F-35A fighters from Lockheed Martin. New plans call for purchases of 147 of these new fighters over the next few years, well above the original plan to buy forty-two of them. U.S. pressure is also clearly evident in this decision, as it will preclude purchase of the domestically developed F-2 fighter. In the words of one Japanese security analyst, Masahiro Matsumura, Japan's “defense industry is being sacrificed for the political goal of maintaining good Japan-U.S. relations.” Less controversial but also clearly aimed at the North Korean threat, the budget calls for Japan to upgrade its airborne early warning capability and spend nearly ¥300 billion ($2.7 billion) to deploy two land-based Aegis missile defense systems (“Aegis Ashore”) and other U.S. manufactured missile interceptors. Measures to counter China, at sea mostly, make a longer list. Of course, the F-15 upgrades and the new F-35s constitute something of an answer to China. More pointed are MoD plans to procure RQ-40 Global Hawk long distance drones, fund research to develop a long-distance undersea unmanned surveillance device, and otherwise enhance naval heft by procuring more anti-air missile and anti-torpedo ammunition as well as more standoff missiles. Plans also call for the construction of a new submarine, aimed, in the words of MoD budget documents, at “detections, etc.” (The etcetera no doubt refers to offensive capabilities that might raise constitutional questions.) Japan also has plans to construct two new multipurpose, compact destroyers that can also sweep mines. They will bring the fleet escort force to a total of fifty-four vessels—a considerable upgrade from the past. More controversial from a constitutional standpoint are other efforts that would: 1) enable the military to project power and 2) obligate Japan to its allies. The MoD seeks to procure a tanker to support the navy at sea, a clear statement that Japanese naval power has gone beyond coastal defense. The ministry also seeks two new C-2 transport aircraft and six more UH-X helicopters specifically aimed at rapid deployments. Also, it seeks a training budget to ready Japanese ground forces for more distant deployments. The ministry also seeks to refit an existing helicopter carrier over the next few years to carry some of the new F-35 fighters and then build a second carrier. In some interpretations, this clearly violates the self-defense strictures in Japan's constitution, though the prime minister and the MoD have couched the requests in defensive terms. In what also might constitute a further violation of the constitution, the ministry has asked for concessions to allow greater integration of Japanese command, control, and planning with allies, the United States, obviously, but also India, Australia, and ASEAN, in other words those nations trying to check Chinese expansion. Beyond these obvious countermeasures to North Korea and China, the MoD has also emphasized the need for modernization. It has set aside funds to establish what in the United States might describe as a cyber-defense command and to investigate the military use of artificial intelligence (AI). In a similar vein, the ministry has dedicated development funds to eventually install protections for Japan's satellites, including an optical telescope with which to identify objects flying nearby. It has further dedicated a not insignificant ¥2.7 billion ($24 million) to work with the United States on what it calls “deep space international awareness.” Not only do these efforts capture further needs, but the budget document emphasizes that the military will help Japan cope with its long-prevailing low birth rate and the resulting shortfall in people who meet the military's age requirements. One other aspect of this effort is the ministry's remarkably un-Japanese push to put more women into uniform. Even if not every yen makes it to its designated place, it is apparent that Japan will begin to alter the security equation in the Western Pacific in the not-too-distant future. If Abe manages to alter the constitution as planned, then the change will no doubt occur at an accelerated pace. It will alter Washington's calculations. Beijing surely will also take note. Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at the National Interest , an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, the New York based communications firm. His latest book is Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live . https://nationalinterest.org/feature/japan-accelerates-its-defense-buildup-41277

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  12 juin 2020 | International, Naval

  BAE Systems to Produce More Vertical Launching System Canisters Under Five-Year U.S. Navy Contract

  June 11, 2020 - The U.S. Navy has awarded BAE Systems a contract to produce multiple types of Vertical Launching System (VLS) canisters with a total lifetime maximum value of $955 million. The initial contract was awarded in February with $24 million funded, followed by contract modifications of $99 million and $43 million received in March and May respectively. Options on the contract include additional canister types for future Navy production requirements. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200611005404/en/ “These canisters are a key element of the Navy's Vertical Launching System, and our experience includes 30 years of VLS production, integration and testing to support this world-class capability,” said Brent Butcher, vice president and general manager of the Weapon Systems product line at BAE Systems. “The Navy will continue to benefit from our high-quality canisters and lean, efficient operations, which translate into the best possible value for our customers.” VLS canisters serve in a multifaceted role as containers for missile shipping and storage as well as launch tubes when loaded into the VLS. They also provide identification and firing support to multiple missile types, including the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, Standard Missile-2, Standard Missile-3, Standard Missile-6, and the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile. Under this latest contract, BAE Systems will produce canisters not only for the U.S. fleet but also for allied nations under a Foreign Military Sales program. Deliveries for the initial order are expected to begin in early 2021, and if all options are exercised, the contract could support the production of canisters over a five-year period, with deliveries extending into 2025. Work on the new contract will be performed at the BAE Systems production facility in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with engineering and program support in Minneapolis. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200611005404/en/

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  27 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Hypersonics: DoD Wants ‘Hundreds of Weapons’ ASAP

  “We want to deliver hypersonics at scale,” said R&D director Mark Lewis, from air-breathing cruise missiles to rocket-boosted gliders that fly through space. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has created a “war room” to ramp up production of hypersonic weapons from a handful of prototypes over the last decade to “hundreds of weapons” in the near future, a senior official said Wednesday. Those weapons will range from huge rocket-powered boost-glide missiles, fired from Army trucks and Navy submarines at more than Mach 10, to more compact and affordable air-breathing cruise missiles, fired from aircraft at a relatively modest Mach 5-plus. “It isn't an either-or,” said Mark Lewis, modernization director for Pentagon R&D chief Mike Griffin. “It isn't rocket-boost or air-breathing, we actually want both, because those systems do different things.” Right now, however, US combat units have neither. Inconsistent focus and funding over the years means that “we had a number of programs in the department that were very solid technology development programs, but at the end of those programs, we would have prototypes and we'd have weapons in the single-digit counts,” Lewis said during a webcast with the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute. “If you've got a program that delivers eight missiles and then stops, well, which of the thousand targets in our target set are we going to use those eight missiles against?” With hypersonics now a top priority for both Undersecretary Griffin and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the Pentagon is trying to improve that stop-and-go track record with a new “hypersonic acceleration plan” – no pun intended, Lewis said. Griffin likes to compare the effort to the Cold War, when the US had a massive nuclear weapons infrastructure capable of building complex components by the tens of thousands. “We want to deliver hypersonics at scale,” Lewis said. “That means hundreds of weapons in a short period of time in the hands of the warfighter.” Mass-production, in turn, requires production facilities – but today hypersonic prototypes are basically hand-crafted by R&D labs like Sandia. Lewis and his counterpart in the Pentagon's acquisition & sustainment directorate, Kevin Fahey, are “co-chairing what we're were calling a war room ... looking at the hypersonic industrial base,” he said. “That's not just the primes, but the entire industrial base” down to small, specialized suppliers. Controlling cost is both essential to large-scale production and a huge challenge, Lewis acknowledged. “We don't know what these things cost yet,” he said. “We've asked the primes to consider costs as they're developing.” Which hypersonic weapons the Pentagon buys also makes a major difference. “There are some technology choices we can make that lead us to more cost-effective systems,” he said. “I'm especially enthusiastic about hypersonic weapons that come off the wings of airplanes and come out of bomb bays, [because] I think those are some of the keys to delivering hypersonic capabilities at scale and moderate cost.” Likewise, “[there's] larger investment now in the rocket boost systems,” Lewis said, “[but] one of the reasons I'm so enthusiastic about scramjet-powered systems, air-breathing systems is I think that, fundamentally, they can be lower-cost than their rocket-boosted alternatives.” Why is that? Understanding the policy, it turns out, requires a basic understanding of the physics. Breaking Defense graphic from DoD data Four Types of Hypersonics “Hypersonics isn't a single thing,” Lewis said. “It's a range of applications, a range of attributes, [defined by] the combination of speed and maneuverability and trajectory.” To put it in simple terms – and I'll beg the forgiveness of any aerospace engineers reading this – there are two kinds of hypersonic projectile, based on how they fly: one is an air-breathing engine flying through the atmosphere, like a jet plane or cruise missile; the other is a rocket booster arcing to the edge of space, like an ICBM. There are also two kinds of platform you can launch from: an aircraft in flight high and fast above the earth, or a relatively slow-moving vehicle on or below the surface, like an Army truck, Navy warship or submarine. Combine these and you get four types. Lewis thinks all four could be worth pursuing, although the Pentagon currently has programs – that we know about – for only three: Air-launched boost-glide: Air Force ARRW (Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon). The Air Force also had another program in this category, HCSW (Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon), but they canceled it to focus on ARRW, which the service considers more innovative and promising. Surface-launched boost-glide: Army LRHW (Long Range Hypersonic Weapon) and Navy CPS (Conventional Prompt Strike). Both weapons share the same rocket booster, built by the Navy, and the same Common Hypersonic Glide Body, built by the Army, but one tailors the package to launch from a wheeled vehicle and the other from a submarine. Air-launched air-breathing: HAWC (Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept) and HSW-ab (Hypersonic Strike Weapon-air breathing). Arguably the most challenging and cutting-edge technology, these programs are both currently run by DARPA, which specializes in high-risk, high-return research, but they'll be handed over to the Air Force when they mature. Surface-launched air-breathing: This is the one category not in development – at least not in the unclassified world. But Lewis said, “eventually, you could see some ground-launched air breathers as well. I personally think those are very promising.” Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages, Lewis explained. Rocket boosters are proven technology, offering tremendous speed and range. The Minuteman III ICBM, introduced in 1970, can travel over 6,000 miles at Mach 23. Their one drawback is that ICBMs can't steer. Once launched, they follow a predictable course like a cannon ball, which is why they're called ballistic missiles. The big innovation of boost-glide weaponry is that it replaces the traditional warhead with an agile glider. Once the rocket booster burns out, the glide body detaches and coasts the rest of the way, skipping nimbly across the upper layers of the atmosphere like a stone across the pond. But boost-glide has some big limitations. First, once the rocket booster detaches, the glide body has no engine of its own so it just coasts, losing speed throughout its flight. Second, precisely because the rocket launch is so powerful, it puts tremendous strain on the weapon, whose delicate electronics must be hardened against shock and heat. Third, the booster is big, because a rocket not only has to carry fuel, it has to carry tanks of oxygen to burn the fuel. Breaking Defense graphic from DoD data An air-breathing engine, by contrast, can be significantly smaller. It just has to carry the fuel, because it can scoop up all the oxygen it needs from the atmosphere. That means the whole weapon can be smaller, making it much easier to fit on an aircraft, and that it can accelerate freely during flight instead of just coasting, making it more maneuverable. But while conventional jet engines are well-proven technology, they don't function at hypersonic speeds, because the airflow pours their intakes far too fast. So you need a sophisticated alternative such as a scramjet, a complex, costly technology so far found only on experimental vehicles, like the Air Force's revolutionary Boeing X-51. Even with a scramjet, you can't fly too high because the air doesn't provide the needed oxygen. That means air-breathing weapons can't reach the same near-space altitudes as boost-glide missiles. They also can't fly nearly as fast. Lewis expects air-breathers will probably top out around Mach 7, half or less the peak speed of a boost-glide weapon. (That said, remember the glider will have slowed down somewhat by the time it reaches the target). Sandia National Laboratories glide vehicle, the ancestor of the Army-built Common Hypersonic Glide Body The platform you launch from also has a major impact on performance. Warships, submarines, and long-bodied heavy trucks can carry bigger weapons than aircraft, but the weapons they carry need to be bigger because they have to start from low altitude and low speed and go all the way to high-altitude hypersonic flight. By contrast, an air-launched weapon doesn't need to be as big, because it's already flying high and fast even before it turns on its motor. All these factors suggest that the big boost-glide weapons are probably best launched from land or sea, the smaller air-breathing ones from aircraft in flight. But since boost-gliders go farther and faster than air-breathers, you still want them as an option for your bombers for certain targets. On the flipside, while a naval vessel or ground vehicle has plenty of room to carry boost-glide weapons for ultra-long-range strikes, it can also use the same space to carry a larger number of the smaller air-breathers for closer targets. “We're interested in basically the full range,” Lewis said. “We've got some ideas of things we want to put into play quickly, but we're also extremely open-minded about future applications, future technologies.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/hypersonics-dod-wants-hundreds-of-weapons-asap/