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  26 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Boeing drops from next-generation ICBM competition

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Boeing has announced its withdrawal from the $85 billion Ground Based Strategic Deterrent competition, potentially leaving Northrop Grumman as the only contender vying to replace the Air Force's Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. “After numerous attempts to resolve concerns within the procurement process, Boeing has informed the Air Force that it will not bid Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) under the current acquisition approach,” reads a Boeing statement. “We've evaluated these issues extensively, and determined that the current acquisition approach does not provide a level playing field for fair competition.” Boeing Defense CEO Leanne Caret detailed the company's issues in a July 23 letter to Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper, which was obtained by Defense News and other outlets. “Throughout the procurement process, Boeing has been transparent with the Air Force about its concerns with the competition,” she wrote. “The final RFP released on July 16 made only modest changes to the draft RFPs that had been previously released. As relevant to the concerns Boeing had raised, the final RFP extended the proposal submission deadline by 60 days, from 90 days after the RFP's issuance to 150 days, and allowed offerors to submit ‘an alternative proposal in addition to their principal proposal,' that could include ‘a single, combined proposal' from both competitors." But Caret said that those changes did not address Boeing's primary concern: that Northrop Grumman would have an unfair advantage in the competition due to its recent acquisition of solid rocket motor manufacturer Orbital ATK, now known as Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. NGIS is one of two U.S. manufacturers of solid rocket motors, alongside Aerojet Rocketdyne, but both Boeing and Northrop had chosen Orbital as its supplier for GBSD prior to the merger. According to Caret, Northrop only recently — as of July 3 — signed off on an agreement that would firewall Boeing's proprietary information from Northrop's own GBSD team as Boeing negotiates with NGIS for solid rocket motors. Even though an agreement has now been reached, Caret contends that Boeing does not have enough time to negotiate a competitive price for the motors. Caret said the current acquisition approach gives Northrop “inherently unfair cost, resource and integration advantages related to SRMs,” adding: “As I said in my July 8 letter, we lack confidence in the fairness of any procurement that does not correct this basic imbalance between competitors.” Even the Air Force's accommodation that would allow Northrop and Boeing to submit a joint bid “is not a workable solution to these issues,” she said. “Because the final RFP does not address Northrop's inherent advantage as a result of its control of SRMs, Northrop retains the ability to compete on unequal terms against either a Boeing or a joint ‘alternative' proposal — and as a result, would not be incentivized to devote the significant resources required to develop such a proposal,” Caret said. Additionally, Caret said it is “not realistic” to expect that Boeing and Northrop could develop a competitive joint bid in the five months before proposals are due, given that both companies have been working on their separate proposals for more than two years. An Air Force spokeswoman declined to comment on the news, as the competition is currently in source selection. Inside Defense broke the news of Boeing's departure from the competition. Boeing's decision comes a week after the Air Force released its final request for proposals on July 16. A contract for the engineering, manufacturing and development phase is expected to be awarded by the end of 2020. Lockheed Martin had previously competed for the contract, but was ousted in August 2017, when the service awarded technology maturation and risk reduction contacts to Boeing and Northrop. It's unclear how Boeing's departure will affect the ultimate price of the GBSD program. In April, Gen. Timothy Ray, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, said he was counting on competition between Northrop and Boeing to help offset a near-term bump in cost expected as the Air Force makes investments in current infrastructure that will be reused for the GBSD system. Ultimately, that competition would help drive “billions” of dollars in savings over the lifespan of he weapon, he said. “Between the acquisition and the deal that we have from a competitive environment, from our ability to drive sustainment, the value proposition that I'm looking at is a two-thirds reduction in the number of times we have to go and open the site. There's a two-thirds reduction in the number of times we have to go and put convoys on the road.” It would be unusual for the Air Force to move forward with this program with only one competitor, Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, noted in an email. “One option would be for the Air Force to re-write the RFP to address some of Boeing's concerns, which could delay the program,” he wrote. “The RFP had been seen by some analysts as favoring Northrop Grumman because the initial portion was cost-plus, but Boeing's concerns suggest it's worried about a strategic bid by Northrop Grumman.” During an earnings call on Wednesday, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg referred to the GBSD program a single time — to say that the company would leverage its development work on GBSD for future programs such as NASA Commercial Crew effort and next-generation space launch. https://www.defensenews.com/space/2019/07/25/boeing-drops-from-next-generation-icbm-competition/

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  16 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Construction of first permanent US F-35 campus in Europe begins at Lakenheath

  By CHRISTOPHER DENNIS RAF LAKENHEATH, England — A $205 million construction project to prepare RAF Lakenheath for the arrival of two squadrons of U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II fighter jets in 2021 officially got underway Monday. The commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe - U.S. Air Forces Africa, Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, and other dignitaries plunged shovels into dirt at what will become the first permanent site for U.S. F-35s in Europe. U.K. firms Kier and VolkerFitzpatrick will build a flight simulator facility, maintenance unit, hangars and storage units at the site, in time for the arrival of 48 F-35s in November 2021. The Royal Air Force currently has nine F-35s at RAF Marham, about 25 miles north of Lakenheath. “This will be a great opportunity to reinforce together how we will train, execute and operate on a daily basis, and allow us to deepen what is a critically important relationship,” Harrigian said at the groundbreaking. The project is the first in a broad program to support Air Force operations in the U.K. A further $1 billion is expected to be invested in the program over the next seven to 10 years, said the Defense Infrastructure Organization, which last year awarded the contract for the F-35 campus. “The project team is in good shape — we are on schedule for completion in 2021,” Kier's managing director of aviation and defense James Hindes was quoted as saying by The Construction Index, an industry website. The completed campus will host around 1,200 U.S. airmen. Currently, more than 9,100 U.S. servicemembers are based in the U.K, according to Pentagon data. Recent problems with engine delivery of the F-35A are not expected to delay the arrival of America's newest fighter jet at Lakenheath, a 48th Fighter Wing spokeswoman said Monday. Of the 81 engines that were delivered in 2018, 86% were late, according to a Government Accountability Office report in April. That was up from 48% that were not delivered on time the previous year, when fewer engines were delivered. The delays were due in part to an increase in the “average number of quality issues per engine”— 941 in 2018 against 777 a year earlier, the GAO report said. United Technologies' Pratt and Whitney unit, the only company to make the engines, is under a corrective action request from the Defense Contract Management Agency for “poor delivery performance,” according to a July report by Bloomberg News. https://www.stripes.com/news/construction-of-first-permanent-us-f-35-campus-in-europe-begins-at-lakenheath-1.590422

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  21 octobre 2020 | International, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  U.S. Army Flexes New Land-Based, Anti-Ship Capabilities

  Steve Trimble Lee Hudson Finding ever new and efficient ways to sink enemy ships is usually assigned to the U.S. Navy and, to a lesser extent, the Air Force, but not anymore. Though still focused on its primary role of maneuvering against land forces and shooting down air and missile threats, the Army is quietly developing an arsenal of long-range maritime strike options. As the Army carves out an offensive role in the Pentagon's preparations for a mainly naval and air war with China, service officials now seek to develop a capacity for targeting and coordinating strikes on maritime targets with helicopter gunships in the near term and with long-range ballistic missiles by 2025. The Project Convergence 2020 event in September focused the Army on learning how to solve the command and control challenge for a slew of new land-attack capabilities scheduled to enter service by fiscal 2023. The follow-on event next year will expand to include experiments with the Army's command and control tasks in the unfamiliar maritime domain. “I think we have a long way to go in terms of partnering with the Navy for some of the maritime targeting [capabilities],” says Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, the Army's cross-functional team leader for Long-Range Precision Fires. “And I think that'll be a natural evolution into Project Convergence 2021,” Rafferty says, speaking during the Association of the U.S. Army's virtual annual meeting on Oct. 15. The Army operates a small, modest fleet of watercraft, including logistics support vessels and Runnymede-class large landing craft, but service officials have been content to respond to attacks on enemy ships at sea with the Navy's surface combatants and carrier-based fighter squadrons. Last year, the Air Force also revived a maritime strike role by activating the Lockheed Martin AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile on the B-1B fleet. But the Army's position has changed. The AH-64E Capability Version 6, which Boeing started developing in 2018, includes a modernized radar frequency interferometer. The receiver can identify maritime radars, allowing the AH-64E to target watercraft at long range for the first time. Meanwhile, the Defense Department's Strategic Capabilities Office started working in 2016 to integrate an existing seeker used for targeting ships into the Army Tactical Missile System (Atacms), which is currently the Army's longest-range surface-to-surface missile at 300 km (162 nm). Beginning in fiscal 2023, the Lockheed Martin Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) is scheduled to begin replacing the Atacms. The Increment 1 version will extend the range of the Army's missiles to 500 km. A follow-on Increment 2 version of PrSM is scheduled to enter service in fiscal 2025, featuring a new maritime seeker now in flight testing by the Army Research Laboratory. “As we begin to develop the PrSM [Increment 2] with the cross-domain capability against maritime and emitting [integrated air defense system] targets, obviously we'll be partnering with the Navy on that,” Rafferty says. Targeting ships from land-based artillery systems is not unique to the Army. The U.S. Marine Corps plans to introduce the Raytheon-Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile, firing the ground-based anti-ship cruise missile from a remotely operated Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. To strike a moving target at ranges beyond the horizon, the Army needs more than an innovative new seeker. A targeting complex linking over-the-horizon sensors with the Atacms and PrSM batteries is necessary. Moreover, the Army will need to adapt command and control procedures to an unfamiliar maritime domain. The annual Project Convergence events offer a laboratory for the Army to prepare the targeting and command and control complex before new weapons enter service. With the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, a medium-range ballistic missile and PrSM also set to enter service in the next three years, the Army is seeking to adapt quickly. Last month, the Army used the first prototype of the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node ground station. An artificial intelligence (AI) program named Prometheus sifted through intelligence information to identify targets. Another AI algorithm called SHOT matched those targets to particular weapons with the appropriate range and destructive power. An underlying fire-control network, called the Advanced Field Artillery Data System, provided SHOT with the location and magazine status of each friendly weapon system. A process that would otherwise take minutes or even hours dwindled—in an experimental setting—to a few seconds. The first Project Convergence event last month focused on the Army's traditional mission against targets on land. The next event will seek to replicate that streamlined targeting process against ships possibly hundreds of miles away. These experiments are intended to help the Army familiarize itself with new tools in the command and control loop, such as automated target-recognition systems and targeting assignments. The event also helps the Army dramatically adapt, in a few years, institutional practices that had endured for decades. “In order for a bureaucracy to change, [it has] to understand the need, and we have to create the use case in order for a bureaucracy to change,” says Gen. Mike Murray, the head of the Army Futures Command. “I think in Project Convergence, what we're able to demonstrate to the senior leaders in the army will further help drive that change.” In a way, the Army is seeking to achieve in the maritime domain a networked sensor and command and control system that the Navy introduced to its fleet nearly two decades ago. To improve the fleet air-defense mission substantially, the Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) generally develops a common, shared database of tracks from the multiple airborne, surface and subsurface sensors available to a carrier battle group. But the Navy also is building on the CEC standard. In 2016, a Lockheed F-35B demonstrated the ability to develop a target track of an over-the-horizon enemy warship. The track information was sent via the CEC to a launcher for a Raytheon SM-6. Although primarily an air- and missile-defense interceptor, in this case the SM-6 demonstrated an anti-ship role. A follow-on development SM-6 Block 1B is expected to optimize the weapon system as a long-range, anti-ship ballistic missile with hypersonic speed. More recently, the Navy has been quietly experimenting with its own series of Project Convergence-like experiments. Known as the Navy Tactical Grid experiments, the Navy and Marine Corps organized a series of demonstrations in fiscal 2019, according to the latest budget justification documents. Building on the common operating picture provided by the CEC, the Navy Tactical Grid is possibly experimenting with similar automation and machine-learning algorithms to streamline and amplify the targeting cycle dramatically. A new initiative is now replacing the Navy Tactical Grid experiments. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday tapped Rear Adm. Douglas Small, the head of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, to lead the effort known as Project Overmatch. Small must provide a strategy, no later than early December, that outlines how the Navy will develop the networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools and analytics to support the operational force. This includes linking hundreds of ships, submarines, unmanned systems and aircraft. “Beyond recapitalizing our undersea nuclear deterrent, there is no higher developmental priority in the U.S. Navy,” Gilday wrote in an Oct. 1 memo that revealed the existence of Project Overmatch. Aviation Week obtained a copy of the document. “I am confident that closing this risk is dependent on enhancing Distributed Maritime Operations through a teamed manned-unmanned force that exploits artificial intelligence and machine learning.” While Small is tasked with creating the “connective tissue,” Gilday directs Vice Adm. James Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities (N9), with accelerating development of unmanned capabilities and long-range fires, Gilday wrote in a separate Oct. 1 memo outlining the details of Project Overmatch. Kilby's assessment must include a metric for the Navy to measure progress and a strategy that appropriately funds each component. His initial plan is also due to Gilday in early December. “Drive coherence to our plans with a long-term, sustainable [and] affordable view that extends far beyond the [future years defense plan],” Gilday wrote. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/missile-defense-weapons/us-army-flexes-new-land-based-anti-ship-capabilities