Boeing’s Defense Unit Dealt Setback by Pentagon

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  19 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Air Force’s Roper: 3D Printing ‘Going Like Gangbusters’

  "I've been so passionate about bringing in additive manufacturing, and small batch digital manufacturing, to help on aircraft parts availability," Air Force acquisition head Will Roper says. By THERESA HITCHENSon May 15, 2020 at 12:54 PM WASHINGTON: The Air and Space Forces are speeding efforts to adopt 3D printing as a major pillar of force sustainment, now making critical spare parts for weapon systems such as engine components for fighters and rockets. “Additive and advanced manufacturing [has] been going like gangbusters across the Air Force and Space Force — printing thousands of parts for airplanes,” Air Force acquisition head Will Roper said yesterday. “We're starting to print parts for satellites, including propulsion.” And today, the Air Force Rapid Sustainability Office (RSO) announced that it had reached a first milestone in its collaboration with General Electric to 3D print metal engine parts for aircraft — printing a metal sump pump for F-110 engines used by both F-15 and F-16 fighter jets. According to the announcement, the next phase of the program — Phase 1B , now being planned — will involve a family of parts on the TF34 engine, which has been in service for more than 40 years. “The collaborative effort between the US Air Force and GE shows great promise toward the adoption of metal 3D printed parts as an option to solve the US Air Force's current and future sustainment challenges,” Col. Benjamin Boehm, director of propulsion at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) said in a press release. “This capability provides an alternate method to source parts for legacy propulsion systems throughout their life cycle, especially when faced with a diminishing supplier base or when infrequent demands or low volume orders are not attractive to traditional manufacturers.” GE originally approached the Air Force with the idea of a collaboration on 3D printed parts in 2019, and in April this year the service brought in the Defense Logistics Agency to help certify the GE-made parts for airworthiness. ALCMC, as we reported way back in September at the Air Force Association shindig, has also been pushing to get its depots around the country certified to print their own spare parts, beginning with those not critical to life and death. Air Force leaders see additive manufacturing as key to resolving the service's serious problems in maintaining aging aircraft and infrastructure and lowering costs. That said, the new 3D sump pump cover is an important piece of the engine. “Compared to other parts on the F110 engine, the sump cover might have lower functionality, but is incredibly important. It needs to be durable, form a seal and it needs to work for the entire engine to function – which is of course critical on a single engine aircraft like the F-16,” said James Bonar, engineering manager at GE Additive. The RSO-GE program is using a spiral development model, increasing the complexity and scale of parts printing with each phase. “In this program, complexity involves moving from simpler part identification, progressing to part and family of parts consolidation and eventually tackling complex components and systems, such as common core heat exchangers,” the press release said. Roper told reporters yesterday in a Zoom briefing that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, RSO has transformed its planned Advanced Manufacturing Olympics, originally planned to coincide with the now-postponed Tokyo Summer Olympics in late July, to a virtual event to be held November. It will allow 3D printing companies to show off their wares to potential service customers via a number of challenges, including a “printer shoot-off” and a “Box of Parts” challenge where manufacturers will compete to create a drone part without a blueprint. “We have been growing our network of small batch makers across the Air Force and Space Force,” Roper said. “I've been so passionate about bringing in additive manufacturing, and small batch digital manufacturing, to help on aircraft parts availability.” The COVID-19 crises has proven the “additive” value of tapping into a network of small manufacturers as the Air Force has scrambled to obtain personal protective equipment for airmen at far-flung bases, he explained. Because many large producers of items like face masks are overwhelmed, the service set up the “Air Force Rapid Advanced Manufacturing Portal,” or “AFRAMP,” as a method of finding and vetting small producers to meet service needs. “It's a portal where small batch manufacturers can make their capabilities known — show what they're able to produce — we vet them, and that then allows these small companies in aggregate to add up to large batch manufacturing,” Roper said. “We've already delivered over 11,000, different PPE devices to seven air bases that wouldn't have otherwise been able to get access for personal protective gear.” His hope is to expand that portal to other types of advanced manufacturing in the future. “I'm excited about scaling it up beyond just personal protective gear, and really having it be a one-stop-shop in the government for companies that can make things in small quantity — that can't mass produce, but can produce in mass if they're added up with a lot of their other sister companies.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/air-forces-roper-3d-printing-going-like-gangbusters/

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  20 décembre 2017 | International, Aérospatial

  Here’s how the Trump administration could make it easier to sell military drones

  WASHINGTON — The United States is actively pursuing a change to a major arms control treaty that would open the door for wider exports of military drones. The proposed change to the Missile Technology Control Regime would make it easier for nations to sell the systems, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, that fly under 650 km per hour, according to multiple sources who are aware of the efforts. The MTCR is an agreement among 35 nations that governs the export of missiles and UAVs. Under the terms of the MTCR, any “category-1” system capable of carrying 500-kilogram payloads for more than 300 kilometers is subject to a “strong presumption of denial.” Proponents of UAV exports argue that language, while appropriate for curtailing the sale of cruise missiles, should not group together expandable weapons and unmanned systems. Instead, they argue, UAVs should be looked at the same way fighter jets or other high-tech military vehicles are. As part of an effort to find a compromise, American officials floated a white paper during the latest plenary session on the MTCR in October, proposing new language to the treaty: that any air vehicle that flies under 650 kilometers per hour would drop to “category-2” and thus be subject to approval on a case-by-case basis. A State Department official confirmed to Defense News that the U.S. presented the white paper, and that American negotiators have zeroed in on the speed of the vehicles as a potential change to the treaty. However, the official declined to comment on the exact speed under consideration. “I can't confirm any specific numbers because it's treated — inside the MTCR — as proprietary ... particularly because there's a deliberative process,” the official said. “But I can tell you that speed is the thing that we, based on industry input and all, have looked at. And that's what we have discussed with partners. And I know other governments are also looking at speed as well, so we're all sort of coming to a similar conclusion.” Under the MTCR, a “presumption of denial” about exports for category-1 systems exists. In essence, that means countries tied into the MTCR need to have a very compelling case to sell them. However, the speed change, if adopted, would result in most drones used by the U.S. military dropping down from category-1 to category-2, allowing the U.S. to sell them through the traditional foreign military sale or direct commercial sale methods. “Treating drones as missiles is fundamentally incoherent. It reflects a 1980s view of the technology,” said Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official now with the University of Pennsylvania who has studied drone issues. “To the extent creating a speed delineation helps you get around that problem, it's a good practical solution.” The impact of speed Most medium-altitude, long-endurance systems like General Atomics' MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper fly at slow speeds, with the Reaper clocking in with a cruise speed of 230 mph or 370 kph, according to an Air Force facts sheet. Northrop Grumman's RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude ISR drone, flies only at a cruise speed of about 357 mph or 575 kph. The 650 kph ceiling would also keep the door open for companies developing cutting-edge rotorcraft that could be modified in the future to be unmanned — a key request made by the companies involved in the Future Vertical Lift consortium, said one industry source. Those companies include Bell Helicopter and a Sikorsky-Boeing team, both of which are developing high-speed rotorcraft that can fly at excess of 463 kph, or 250 knots, for the Army's Joint Multi Role technology demonstrator program. However, the limitation would ensure that some of the United States' most technologically advanced UAVs stay out of the grasp of other nations. For example, it would prevent the proliferation of jet-powered, fast moving flying wing drones like Boeing's Phantom Ray and Northrop Grumman's X-47B demonstrators, both of which can cruise at near-supersonic speeds. While the UAV industry wants the U.S. government to pick up the pace on drone export reform, the State Department and other agencies argue that a prudent approach is needed. For example, any change to the MTCR that loosens restrictions on low-speed drones also needs to be closely examined to ensure that missile technology is still strictly controlled. “We don't want any unintended consequences, so it has to be crafted carefully. We don't want to inadvertently drop something else out like a cruise missile,” the State Department official said. The focus on speed is particularly smart at a time when countries are focused on increasing the speed of their munitions, Horowitz said. He pointed to growing investments in hypersonic weapons as an example where creating a speed delineation in the MTCR would allow the U.S. to push for greater UAV exports while “holding the line on exports of next-generation missiles.” Industry desires Industry has long argued that the United States has taken an overly proscriptive route, hamstringing potential drone sales to allies and pushing them into the arms of more nefarious actors such as China, the other major UAV producer on the worldwide market. Modifying the MTCR is just one facet of the Trump administration's review of drone export policy, which also includes taking a second look at domestic regulations that can be amended by the president at will. Because changes to the MTCR require consensus among the regime's 35 member countries, industry sees it as a direly-needed, but long-term solution. “Now we have lighter-than-air vehicles; we have intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance [UAVs]. We still have cruise missiles, we have aircraft that could autonomous for cargo and other purposes. But [the MTCR] doesn't distinguish between any of that, so a revisit of those MTCR rules is in order for things that fly and can fly autonomously,” said Aerospace Industries Association President David Melcher during a December 14 roundtable with reporters. American firms are particularly concerned about losing out on sales in the Middle East. China has already exported its Wing Loong — a medium altitude, long endurance UAV that resembles General Atomics' MQ-1 Predator — to multiple countries worldwide, including some close U.S. partners such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, sales of U.S.-made drones have been rarer, with many Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE only able to buy unarmed versions of American UAVs, even though those nations regularly purchase more technologically advanced weaponry like fighter jets from the United States. The State official noted that any change in the MTCR would not need to wait until the next plenary session, but could be introduced in some form as early as an April technical meeting. And at least one industry source was optimistic about the administration's MTCR reform plan. “They're taking a pretty smart process in not trying to tackle everything at once, but trying to get some of the language corrected in small bites,” the source said. “I don't see this as being an overnight process. I don't think we're going to end up in the next six months with a brand new MTCR policy.” However, Horowitz warned that the nature of the MTCR, where any single country could veto such a change, means getting any changes will not be easy. Russia, for example, could block the move not on technical reasons but geopolitical ones, given relations between Moscow and Washington. If that happens, Horowitz noted, the U.S. could potentially look to apply the 650 kph speed definition on its own, something possible because of the voluntary nature of the MTCR. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2017/12/19/heres-how-the-trump-administration-could-make-it-easier-to-sell-military-drones/

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  15 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Lockheed Gets Interim Payment for First Multiyear F-35 Contract: Pentagon

  By Reuters WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin Corp has won a preliminary contract valued at up to $22.7 billion to build a batch of 255 F-35 jets for the U.S. military and its allies, the U.S. Defense Department said on Wednesday. The department said the deal would allow Lockheed to receive $6 billion in funding immediately, a move aimed at preventing major delays in production of the new stealthy fighter jets. This contract is the first to lock in multiyear commitments from U.S. allies as Lockheed anticipates that buying components in larger quantities will help move the price of the most common F-35 jet to below $80 million by 2020. The most common variation of the jet, the F-35 A, had a price of $89.2 million after the most recent round of contract negotiations announced in September. Lockheed is developing and building three models of the new warplanes for the U.S. military and 10 other countries that have signed up to buy the jets: Britain, Australia, Italy, Turkey, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Belgium. The Pentagon's chief arms buyer, Ellen Lord, told Reuters on Tuesday that she expected to finalize the interim terms of the deal, known as an "undefinitized contract action" or UCA, with Lockheed, its No. 1 supplier, by the spring of next year. A Lockheed representative said: "This is a smart approach for the taxpayer, the warfighter and for industry." According to the Pentagon, Wednesday's agreement means that U.S. allies buy 149 jets over the three-year period. In the United States' one-year deal, it will buy the remaining 106 jets for delivery beginning in 2020. The U.S. government will continue to buy jets in annual contracts, but is also purchasing components for future-year jets and will also benefit from the economies of scale allowed under the multiyear contract. The three-year deal, known as the "block buy" among the United States and allies, has been said to be worth more than $37 billion and encompass a record 440 jets. Wednesday's contract agrees to a high-water mark of $22.7 billion for all of the 255 jets, but that dollar figure is expected to come down during the negotiations while the jet count is considered a minimum commitment. The interim payment authorized on Wednesday will be deducted from the total contract when the two sides reach a final agreement. The Pentagon is negotiating a separate contract with Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, for engines to power the jets. (Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis) https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/11/14/business/14reuters-usa-lockheed-pentagon.html