Boeing Starts Production of T-7A Weapons Systems Trainers, Operational Flight Trainer

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  29 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  F-35 Costs Drop for Building Jets But Rise for Operating Them

  By Anthony Capaccio 29 mai 2020 à 04:00 UTC−4 The Pentagon's costliest program, Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35, is starting to look a little less expensive, with the latest estimate for development and procurement down 7.1% to $397.8 billion. Less encouraging for the lawmakers who craft defense budgets and for taxpayers: Operating and maintaining the fleet for 66 years is projected to cost $1.182 trillion, a 7.8% increase over the estimate from the Pentagon's F-35 office last year, according to the Defense Department's annual assessment of the jet obtained by Bloomberg News. The lower acquisition estimate produced by the F-35 program office is the latest in a string of good news that also includes improved on-time delivery of aircraft, the elimination of all flaws that were considered life-threatening to pilots and a steady reduction since 2018 in the number of potentially mission-crippling software deficiencies. The Selected Acquisition Report, which hasn't been released to the public, also said the F-35 program anticipates sales over time of 809 aircraft to international partners, up from the 764 projected last year. Cumulatively, the improvements might protect the F-35 from pressure to cut defense budgets as the federal deficit balloons due to spending for the Covid-19 pandemic. The Pentagon is already projecting mostly flat budgets through 2025. Even under the current budget forecast, the Pentagon report discloses that previous plans to buy 94 F-35s in fiscal 2022 will be reduced by nine. The blueprint then calls for buying 94 each year in fiscal 2023 and 2024 and 96 in fiscal 2025. Those are up from the 79 requested for fiscal 2021. The report was prepared in December before the coronavirus pandemic crippled the global economy. Lockheed announced last week that Covid-19 impacts will temporarily slow F-35 production because of subcontractor parts delays and that the Bethesda, Maryland-based company might fail to deliver as many as 24 of a planned 141 jets this year. Earlier: Lockheed Slows F-35 Production on Covid-Related Parts Delays More than 500 of a potential 3,200 F-35s for the U.S. and allies already have been delivered and will have to be retrofitted as flaws are fixed, at a cost of as much as $1.4 billion. The F-35 is in the final stages of intense combat testing to demonstrate it's effective against the most advanced Russian, Chinese and Iranian threats. Lockheed spokesman Brett Ashworth said the report “highlights our ability to work with our partners to produce the world's most advanced fighter at the cost of legacy aircraft” the F-35 is intended to replace. Brandi Schiff, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon's F-35 program office, declined to comment on the report before its release. The Pentagon assessment says that updating its numbers based on actual production performance data by Lockheed and its subcontractors, rather than projections, resulted in the reduction in acquisition cost estimates. For example, the “unit flyaway cost” of an F-35 for the Air Force's version of the fighter, not including the engine, declined by $12.1 million to $57.4 million. The Air Force plans to purchase 1,763 jets, the most of the U.S.'s planned 2,456 aircraft. The Marine Corps version dropped to $72.1 million from $80 million, and the Navy model fell to $72.3 million from $79.5 million. None of that resolves the projected long-term trillion-dollar burden of operating and sustaining the fleet through 2077. Outlining the stakes, then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said in March 2019 that “this is the largest program in DoD history and the cost of sustainment is about the same cost as nuclear modernization.” In the new report the F-35 program office said that it “remains committed to and continues pursuing multiple efforts to drive down” those costs. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/f-35-costs-drop-for-building-jets-but-rise-for-operating-them

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  23 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  Fixing relationships: How US Army Futures Command is working with small biz, academia

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — U.S. Army Futures Command is laying the groundwork to strengthen collaboration with academia and small businesses to solve some of the service's most major problems. The Army has struggled with relationships outside of the established defense industry, particularly with small businesses and Silicon Valley. Small businesses have expressed concerns about working with the government, mostly in regard to the time it takes to secure a contract award as well as the complex and cumbersome government-contracting process. The Government Accountability Office issued a report last week that found Army Futures Command could improve how it works with small businesses. The report was released on the eve of AFC's declaration of full operational capability, which is officially set for July 31. “The funny thing is if I talk to defense primes, they are convinced all we are working with is small business, and I talk to small business all they are convinced ... we are working with the defense primes,” Gen. Mike Murray, AFC commander, said during a July 18 press briefing at the Pentagon. “It's going to take a combination of both for us to accomplish our mission, and in many ways a combination of both working together” to achieve the command's goals in modernizing the Army, he said. But Murray agreed there is more to be done. To its credit, the command was built from scratch and was a “blank canvas” just a year ago, Murray said. The command went from 24 pioneers on the ground at its headquarters in Austin, Texas, to 24,000 soldiers and civilians in 25 states and in 15 countries, over the course of the past year. Since landing in Austin, the AFC has established “focused relationships” with industry and academia, he added. Engaging small businesses One critical step toward engagement with small businesses was the creation of the Army Applications Laboratory in Austin's Capital Factory — an innovation hub for entrepreneurs in the heart of the city's downtown. The venue, with more than 100 Army personnel, is to identify novel solutions to benefit the Army's modernization priorities. For example, the lab is kicking off a major effort this week to discover out-of-the-box solutions for an autoloader for its Extended Range Cannon Artillery system in development under its top priority — Long Range Precision Fires. Additionally, a capability the Army was eyeing a year ago — discovered at the Capital Factory — will be tested at the flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, as the service refines its new lot of virtual reality trainers being tested in a pilot program. The Senseye technology is software that can track a pilot's irises during flight simulation training to determine when a person has neurologically learned a task. The Air Force has already incorporated this technology into its simulators. The commander of the Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker said in April at the Army Aviation Association of America symposium that the technology is promising. If all goes well, the commander added, the tech could be used as part of the Army's Synthetic Training Environment. The Army has a cross-functional team, or CFT, within Futures Command focused on such an environment. The GAO recommended the AFC use its cross-functional teams to enhance small business engagement. The Army Applications Lab was also recently at Fort Hood, Texas, working with soldiers on the ground to identify problems that could be solved by small businesses. The lab also completed a trip overseas, Murray noted, but he would not discuss specifics on the location. “I'm not going to say particularly where. There was some specific re-coding of some mission command systems, which significantly helped,” he said. The GAO also recommended the command focus on better engaging small businesses for research and development programs. The command has established four related initiatives, according to the report: It set up the Army Research Laboratory Open Campus 2.0, which transitions scientific research from universities to Army technology development efforts. The command set up the Army Capability Accelerator to help small businesses mature concepts into prototypes and validate early-stage technology. This is managed within the Army Applications Lab. The Army Strategic Capital restructures a prior effort that takes venture capital to offset Army development costs by investing in existing Army Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Lastly, Halo is an effort to accelerate the “adaptation and transition of commercial and startup-derived products to Army applications and programs,” according to the GAO report. The Army Applications Lab will also manage the effort. Murray is in the process of hiring a lead for a small-business office within AFC. While the Army already has a servicewide small-business office, the GAO recommended AFC interface and use that office to improve relations with small businesses. The office will “make sure that we are at least knowledgeable focusing on capitalizing on anything that small businesses have to offer,” Murray said. AFC is also in the preliminary stage of arranging an event in Austin to establish relationships between small businesses and defense primes, Murray said. “One thing I worry about with small business is the ability to scale,” he said, “so there are a lot of ways they can scale, and one of the ways is working with a defense prime.” While defense primes have relationships with small business, Murray noted, the effort would foster new ones that might not exist. Academic pursuits AFC has also established the University Technology Development Division, which serves as the primary link between the command and its academic partners, Murray said. “That is taking root in several key places,” he explained, including Vanderbilt University, which is partnering with the 101st Airborne Division; Carnegie Mellon University, the home of the Army's Artificial Intelligence Task Force; and the University of Texas as well as Texas A&M, where the command is beginning work on several key programs. In addition to providing the building for AFC's headquarters and offering up roughly 10,000 square feet of office space and labs at its Cockrell School of Engineering, the University of Texas is building a robotics institute for the Army by converting an old building into a lab “at fairly significant cost,” Murray said. Murray has tasked engineers at the University of Texas to study the utility of robotics taking over the dirty and dangerous work while keeping soldiers out of harm's way, even bringing a leading engineering professor from the school on a recent trip to Yakima Air Force Base in Washington state to witness a robotic breach experiment that was part of the service's Joint Warfighting Assessment. The lab will also work on battery technologies, Murray added. The inventor of the lithium battery works at the University of Texas. Texas A&M is focused on hypersonics and directed-energy research, according to Murray. The university will eventually build a soldier-development facility at its RELLIS campus“where we will be able to marry up soldiers with graduate students and faculty to go into some agile development capability in solving problems for soldiers,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/07/22/can-futures-command-change-the-armys-relationship-with-academia-and-small-business/

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  5 septembre 2024 | International, C4ISR

  Northrop Grumman Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite Cleared for Flight Testing

  The system demonstrated the ability to detect, identify and counter advanced radio frequency threats while operating safely with other F-16 systems.