7 août 2023 | International, Terrestre, Sécurité
US Army greenlights armored vehicle for full-rate production
The Army is now entering full-rate production of its new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle following some delays.
14 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial
B-21 Avionics Testbed Aircraft Now Operating, USAF Official Says
The U.S. Air Force has commissioned a flying testbed aircraft to test the avionics system and software for the Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber, a senior official said on Aug. 13.
The first B-21 test aircraft is still being assembled in Palmdale, California, but the flying testbed allows the stealth bomber program to “buydown risk,” said Randall Walden, director of the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office, which is managing the program.
“We have a flight test aircraft that we've been hosting some of these subsystems on,” Walden said. “We're doing it kind of in a parallel approach, working out some of the bugs with the software as well as the subsystems.”
Walden, speaking to the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute, did not identify the flying testbed, but his remarks come two months after the appearance of a green Boeing 737 owned by the Air Force with registration N712JM.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 program also used a 737 to check out avionics and mission systems before test flights of the stealth fighter started in 2006.
“When you can buydown risk with subsystems on even another platform, no matter what it is like you get into the air and use some of the software and work those bugs out it goes a long way,” Walden said.
The Air Force expects to field the B-21 in the mid-2020s, about a decade after awarding the engineering and manufacturing development contract to Northrop in 2015.
The development program remains on track, but Walden is eager to begin testing as soon as possible.
“All of the tough critical designs, all of the hard engineering, is behind us,” Walden said. “I know we're not going to be immune from design flaws. We're going to have to work through those, and we're doing some of that today. I want to find out what those design deficiencies are as fast as I can to get on with the solution.”
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5 octobre 2023 | International, Terrestre
US Army Awards L3harris HMS Manpack, Leader Radio Program Production Orders
These orders, totaling more than $247 million, deliver critical cryptographic modernized communications with resilient waveforms to help ensure the Army’s Integrated Tactical Network can survive in the modern battlespace.
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10 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
Boeing: Apache helicopter fix could take until past 2020 to complete
By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Boeing has made progress on installing a “safety critical” part across the AH-64 Apache fleet, but it will probably take until at least 2020 for the company to finish the retrofit process, Boeing program officials said Tuesday. In April, Defense News revealed that the U.S. Army had suspended AH-64E Apache attack helicopter deliveries due to corrosion the service noticed on the aircraft's strap pack nut, which hold the heavy bolts that attach the rotor blades to the helicopter. The service resumed accepting deliveries on August 31 after Boeing designed a new strap pack nut that will be outfitted on AH-64Es coming off the line. The company has now retrofitted new strap pack nuts on about 25 percent of the Army's AH-64D/Es, Kathleen “KJ” Jolivette, director of U.S. Army Services for Boeing Global Services, said during an Oct. 9 roundtable with journalists at the Association for the U.S. Army annual conference. However, Steve Wade, vice president Boeing attack helicopters, said the fastest the company could move to finish retrofitting the Apache fleet is 2020, saying that “the limiting factor is how fast we can build” retrofit kits. Boeing's best case completion date appears to be at least a full year behind the Army's own projections. In September, Brig. Gen. Thomas Todd, the service's program executive officer for aviation, said that he expected retrofits of the U.S. Army's Apache fleet to occur by 2019, with the strap pack nut replacements paid for by the company. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/09/boeing-apache-helicopter-fix-could-take-until-past-2020-to-complete