6 avril 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
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24 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense
Flooding the zone: Future aviation capability tightens kill chain at Project Convergence
WASHINGTON — Partnering helicopters and unmanned aircraft just a few years ago meant that a pilot could control a drone to fly ahead to conduct reconnaissance. Maybe it meant a pilot could control payloads or even the weapon systems on that drone.
But at Project Convergence at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, this month, manned-unmanned teaming took on a far more advanced meaning.
The Army's Future Vertical Lift team rolled into the service's weeks-long “campaign of learning” with 19 semi truck trailers and almost 200 people, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the Army's FVL modernization efforts, told Defense News in a Sept. 22 interview.
The effort brings together future weapons and capabilities envisioned for a 2030s battlefield against near-peer adversaries such as Russia and China. It includes using a machine learning and artificial intelligence-enabled battle management system that is in development.
Rugen said he was “very, very proud” to see technology at the event mature to the point that allowed for data to be pushed across networks “faster than we've done in the past” through a tight-knit kill chain that included space, air and ground assets underpinned by Assured Position, Navigation and Timing (APNT) and an advanced network.
The team had 127 technical objectives it wanted to meet through 11 use cases and the three mission threads.
The breadth of the effort reflects that the Army is at a critical juncture when it comes to modernizing its fleet. The service is attempting to develop and field both a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) as well as a variety of Air-Launched Effects (ALE) capabilities along with a modular open system architecture that makes it easier to upgrade and modernize as time goes on. Leaders want all of this by 2030.
The next level of algorithmic warfare
A year ago, the Army's Architecture, Automation, Autonomy and Interfaces capability, or A3I, was put to the test at China Lake, California. In that effort, an operator with a tablet in the back of an MH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter took control of a Gray Eagle drone and tasked it to fire a small, precision-glide munition at an enemy target located on the ground. At the last second, a higher level threat was detected and the munition was rapidly redirected toward a different threat, taking it out within seconds.
At Project Convergence, the final shot of the campaign came from a soldier on the ground taking control of a Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) munition surrogate (a Hellfire missile) on a Gray Eagle — representing a FARA — and firing on the target. This takes critical seconds out of the operation as the pilot of the aircraft wouldn't have to focus on trying to locate the target himself, aiming and firing the missile.
At China Lake, the Army was able to use automation to reroute the Gray Eagle around poor weather. This year the aircraft were avoiding threat weapon systems, Rugen said. And while the Dynetics GBU-69 small glide munition used last year was inert, this time the Army used live rounds.
The Army also used an open system architecture that was flexible enough for payloads and capabilities to be swapped in out of its A3I Gray Eagles without having to rely on the original equipment manufacturer to do it, Rugen highlighted.
Multidomain aviation
During the first mission thread, which focused on the penetration phase laid out in the Army's Multidomain Operations warfighting concept, aircraft partnered with space-based assets, APNT, and LRPF capabilities to locate, then degrade and destroy enemy assets modeled after the Russian Pantsir air defense systems and other weapons.
The ALE pushed ingested data forward through the network to get it to the right shooters, whether that would be an Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system on the ground or a Gray Eagle or another ALE.
During the exercise, the team launched six ALEs “flooding the zone with our drones for the first time and we did that multiple times over,” Rugen said.
Flooding the zone brought a variety of capabilities to the overall force during the three phases of operations.
First, the Army was able to extend the ALE capability out to almost 62 kilometers, which provides deep standoff for manned aircraft like FARA.
“For a division commander,” Rugen said, “that's just transforming his or her battlefield geometry.”
The ALEs performed both the reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting acquisition mission and worked as a mesh network to extend the battlefield. Two ALEs were truck launched and four were air launched.
“We did prove we could launch up to 80 knots forward speed on our FARA surrogate aircraft,” Rugen said.
The team was also able to recover all of its ALEs from the operation using the Flying Launch and Recovery System (FLAReS).
Rather than letting the drones belly land in the sand or on a runway, which would result in damage, FLAReS has a hook on the edge of the wing that catches the ALE's wing in flight. “It's been wonderful to see that innovation,” Rugen said.
In a classified operation related to the penetration phase of battle, an ALE dropped off a Gray Eagle at an operationally relevant altitude for the first time, Rugen noted.
In the dis-integrate mission thread, which aims to destroy and disrupt subcomponents of enemy capability such as command and control systems and intelligence capabilitiesas well as other critical nodes, the ALEs helped refine targeting information in a GPS-denied environment and passed it back to the ERCA system for long-range shots.
In that phase, a Gray Eagle, serving as a “munitions mule,” flew outside of the enemy weapon engagement zone, and another aircraft took control of a sensor-enabled munition deployed from the Gray Eagle.
In the third mission phase, where the goal is to exploit freedom of maneuver gained in the penetrate and dis-integrate phases in order to defeat enemy objectives, the air assets and Next-Generation Combat Vehicles were able to pass information back and forth using an internally developed system called Firestorm that works as the machine-to-machine brain.
During the phase, the team was able to demonstrate the ability to automatically route the engagement, Rugen said. This means the aircraft or vehicle was able to ingest data and then the machine automatically sets up its route to engage the target with no involvement from the pilot.
“Keeping the aviator out of it was the ingenious thing we were able to do,” Rugen said.
Project Convergence also wasn't just about the technology but the tactics, techniques and procedures through which the Army worked, according to Rugen. “We're not just hitting the technology button here,” he said. “Some of it is the advanced ingress techniques against our pacing threats.”
Overall, the interoperability between various battlefield capabilities from the ground all the way to space was an achievement, according to Rugen. "I'm not saying it's flawless, but we are not in our stove pipes and it's made us, at times, uncomfortable. But being uncomfortable is not necessarily bad.
“We definitely had to converge because we were forced to, and there was some forcing to it, but it's been great,” he added.
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21 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial
Did F-35 Testing for Extreme Weather Conditions Fall Short?
By Oriana Pawlyk SALON DU BOURGET, PARIS -- More than 400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters are operating from 17 bases worldwide. From the near-Arctic region of Ørland, Norway, to a recent deployment in the Middle East, the fifth-generation jet is expanding its reach. But a recent news report shows that weather conditions have some effect on the Pentagon's stealthy fifth-gen fighter, raising concerns about its performance in extreme climate locations. In a recent Defense News report series, the outlet obtained documents showing that cold weather triggered a battery sensor in an F-35 Lightning II in Alaska. While the battery was not affected, the weather "overwhelm[ed] the battery heater blanket" that protects it, prompting the sensor to issue a warning and causing the pilot to abort his mission and land immediately, Defense News said. "We have already developed an update to the software and the battery's heater control system to resolve this issue, and this updated software is available for users today to load on their aircraft in the event they will be conducting extreme cold weather operations," Greg Ulmer, vice president of Lockheed's F-35 aircraft production business, said in an interview with Military.com at the Paris Air Show, adding the update will be in new planes by 2021. The U.S. military anticipated taking the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 around the world, with partners and allies flying the plane in both hot and cold regions, including some that are changing. "The [F-22 Raptor] and plenty of other aircraft have flown out [to Alaska] just fine for decades," Rebecca Grant of IRIS Independent Research told Defense News. Grant is a former director of the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies at the Air Force Association. "The F-35 should have had all that sorted out in the climatic lab." Ulmer, however, said all necessary steps were taken in lab testing, and the issue identified was a normal part of the design and development process. "You do the best you can relative to the engineering, understanding of the environment, to design the part. And then you actually perform, and [you realize] your model was off a little bit, so you have to tweak the design ... to account for it," Ulmer said. An F-35A from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, was on static display here during the show. "We're confident in the F-35s performance in all weather conditions," he said. The battery issue was first discovered during extreme cold weather testing at -30 degrees and below at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, in February 2018, he added. Ulmer explained there are various tests points done before the plane heads to the McKinley Lab at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, for robust experiments. The lab is responsible for high-range weather testing of military and commercial aircraft, munitions and weapons. The lab's refrigeration chamber can go as low as -70 degrees, lab chief Dwayne Bell told Military.com during a visit to the facility in 2017. He said at the time that the F-35 program had been one of the most expensive programs tested in the lab to date. There's a wide range of testing costs, but they average roughly $25,000 a day, he said. It cost about $7 million to test the Marine Corps' B-model from the Patuxent River Integrated Test Force, Maryland, over a six-month period, Bell said. The Lightning II was put through major weather testing -- the lab can do everything but lightning strikes and tornadoes -- such as wind, solar radiation, fog, humidity, rain intrusion/ingestion, freezing rain, icing cloud, icing build-up, vortex icing and snow. It handled temperatures ranging from 120 degrees Fahrenheit to -40 degrees, officials said in 2017. But even testing at McKinley is limiting, Ulmer said. "What doesn't happen is that they don't stay there a long time, so once we released [Block] 3F [software] capability, now the operational fleet can actually" test new extremes, he said, referring to both speed and temperature changes. Defense News also found that supersonic speeds caused "bubbling and blistering" on the JSF's low-observable stealth coating, and that hot environments impeded sufficient engine thrust to vertically land the Marine variant. "So they take it" to new environments "and they expose it more than flight test exposed the airplane. I'm an old flight test guy. You expect to learn in the operational environment more than you do in the [developmental test] environment because you don't necessarily fly the airplane [in that environment] all the time," Ulmer said. "So we learned a little bit, and you refine the design, and you solve it," he said, adding that the design and maintenance tweaks are ongoing. "The probability of the issue reoccuring on aircraft in the operational fleet is very low and with minimal impact to safety of flight or operational performance." Thirteen Category 1 deficiencies were found and reported by operators, according to the for-official-use-only documents Defense News obtained. Cat 1 is a label for problems that would directly impact safety or the mission. Those ranged from coating fixes; pressure anomalies in the cockpit that gave pilots ear and sinus pain; and washed-out imagery in the helmet-mounted display, among others. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps each fly a variant of the aircraft designed for different scenarios, from landing on conventional runways on land, to catching arresting cables on aircraft carriers, to landing like a helicopter on amphibious assault ships. Responding to the Defense News article series, Lockheed Martin said each deficiency "is well understood, already resolved or on a near-term path to resolution." "We've worked collaboratively with our customers, and we are fully confident in the F-35's performance and the solutions in place to address each of the items identified," the company said in a statement June 12. Growing pains with new planes and weapons programs are common. But the F-35 program has been under scrutiny since its inception, mainly for cost-effectiveness and functionality. A new estimate suggests that operating and supporting fighters for the next 60-plus years will cost the government $1.196 trillion. The older F-22 Raptor has had similar issues, especially with its stealth coating, which officials have said is more cumbersome to fix than the F-35, which was built with a more functional and durable coating in mind. "The [low-observable] system has significantly improved on the F-35 when compared to the F-22," Ulmer said Tuesday. "That's all lessons learned from F-22, applied to F-35." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/06/20/did-f-35-testing-extreme-weather-conditions-fall-short.html
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17 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Cobham’s Aerial Refueling Buddy Store Mounted During MQ-25 Test Flight
Posted on December 16, 2020 by Seapower Staff DAVENPORT, Iowa — Cobham Mission Systems' underwing mounted refueling buddy store was carried for the first time during a successful test flight of Boeing's MQ-25 test asset, known as T1, Cobham said in a Dec. 16 release. The test helped to validate the unmanned aircraft's aerodynamics when carrying existing refueling equipment. The flight marks a significant milestone in the development of MQ-25, the first operational, carrier-based unmanned aerial refueler for the U.S. Navy. The Navy's F/A-18 fleet currently operates the same Cobham 31-301 buddy store, when fulfilling this key aerial refueling role. “This marks a significant milestone for the development of unmanned aerial refueling and we are proud that Boeing's MQ-25 test aircraft carried Cobham's underwing mounted equipment on this test flight,” said Jason Apelquist, senior vice president for business development and strategy for Cobham Mission Systems. “It is encouraging to see how proven solutions are being leveraged to further new mission capability. We look forward to supporting next-generation technology and continue to work with our customers as a key partner to deliver the aerial refueling solution of the future.” The 2.5-hour flight was conducted by Boeing test pilots operating from a ground control station at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, on December 9, 2020. Future flights will continue to test the aerodynamics of the aircraft and the 31-301 Series Buddy Store at various points of the flight envelope. Insights from the tests will inform the eventual progression to the extension and retraction of the hose and drogue used in refueling. https://seapowermagazine.org/cobhams-aerial-refueling-buddy-store-mounted-during-mq-25-test-flight