21 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
By: Daniel Cebul
WASHINGTON — The U.S. strategic bomber program plays a vital role in U.S. nuclear and conventional posture, providing both penetrating and standoff capabilities that allow the U.S. to hit targets almost anywhere in the world. But as the Air Force expands from 312 to 386 operational squadrons — planning to increase the bomber squadron from nine to 14 — how can the service keep costs within reason?
A key to keeping down modernization costs will be the force's ability to field systems that can easily be updated as new technology develops, according to Gen. Timothy Ray, commander of Global Strike Command.
“What I really want to drive home is that if we have a force, whatever the size of the force, it has to be affordable,” Ray said at the Air Force Association's annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Sept. 18. Ray believes prices will be affordable depending on the service's “ability to field a relevant force as part of our integrated capabilities, both nuclear and conventional, that has a rapid capability to be updated and modified.”
Communications systems, weapons, sensors and defensive capabilities are very sensitive to technological change, which “is already going on much faster than what we can field right now using the old legacy processes,” Ray said. Ray pointed to the B-21 bomber as having "the right attributes that are going to set us up for success.”
Others suggest that looking at the unit price for bombers is deceptive and does not allow the Air Force to address its critical modernization needs.
“It is very easy to look at individual unit cost [per bomber], but that does not equate to value," Retired Lt. Gen David Deptula said. "People, particularly programmers, like to talk about cost, but they don't talk about the effectiveness piece.”
This sentiment was echoed by retired Lt. Gen. Bob Elder Jr., who feels the public and some military members do not appreciate the active role bombers play in defending the U.S. As busy as these bombers are, Edler said, “it's a bargain” for how much the Air Force pays for them.
Deptula also believes that if the Air Force is serious about modernization, it is past time that requirements for meeting U.S. strategic goals determine force structure, rather than depending on “arbitrary budget lines.”
“For way too long our force structure has been solely driven by the budget and not the war-fighting demands of our nation's security strategy,” he said. “I dare say no one will argue with the preamble of the Constitution, which basically talks about how we form government to provide for the common defense, and then to promote the general welfare. It doesn't say the other way around.”
“People will say the new enterprise is going to be too expensive, so don't keep it. I don't agree,” Ray said, adding that a more competitive approach will enable the Air Force to drive down procurement and modernization costs.
“I have got to know our competitive nature of our approach will draw the talent from industry; or if I'm not quite certain with a technical capability or the capability is so far advanced I can't draw the talent from industry, now I find myself with an important issue,” Ray noted.
In regard to ensuring the service can get the funding to grow its squadrons, Ray added: “Where you drop cost down and have a rapid modification capability or a relevant force for an extended period of time, then you begin to tell a more complete story,” which he explained should help dollars keep flowing into necessary programs.
21 novembre 2023 | International, Sécurité
In Episode 27 of The Pilot Project Podcast, Goddard shares his experiences as a CH-149 Cormorant pilot conducting SAR missions and rescues.
4 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
by Sandra Erwin AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate will study the physics of very low Earth orbit, and will pursue sensor technologies for cislunar space WASHINGTON — The Air Force Research Laboratory announced Sept. 2 it will pursue two new space experiments — one will test the performance of satellite instruments in low orbits and the other is to advance sensor technology to monitor cislunar space The experiments are run by AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. Col. Eric Felt, the director of the Space Vehicles Directorate, said 27 teams submitted proposals and the two projects that won address important areas of space that impact national security. The experiment known as “Precise” will study the physics of very low Earth orbit, or VLEO, which extends from 90 to 600 kilometers aboveEarth. AFRL said the experiment will examine the ionosphere and how gases impact radio propagation used for communications and navigation. “The experiment will use sensitive satellite instruments and radio waves to examine changes in the ionosphere resulting from different compositions of ion source gases,” AFRL said in a statement. Felt in June during a SpaceNews webinar mentioned that VLEO was an area of interest for AFRL. “This is like where you have to be thrusting all the time just to keep your satellite in orbit, at 200 to 300 kilometers,” Felt said. The second project, named Cislunar Highway Patrol System. or CHPS, will focus on space domain awareness beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) all the way out to the moon. “CHPS will explore concepts for object detection and tracking between GEO, where most U.S. Space Force satellites are flown, and the moon,” said AFRL. NASA and commercial companies seek to harvest resources and return to the moon, Capt David Buehler, AFRL program manager said. “This increase in activity will require greater domain awareness. We want to be there providing safety of flight when the U.S. puts boots back on the moon.” The CHPS experiment will investigate sensing technologies and algorithms for object tracking. “We need to address really basic things that start to break down beyond GEO, like how do we even write down a trajectory. The current space catalog uses Two-Line Elements, or TLEs, which simply do not capture the complex orbital dynamics and have almost no meaning in cislunar space,” said Jaime Stearns, principal investigator. The next steps for the project leaders will be to submit budgets, program timelines and specific technical objectives by Oct. 1. At the SpaceNews webinar, Felt said the “best payoff comes from pursuing things that we're not currently doing in space today.” https://spacenews.com/air-force-research-laboratory-announces-new-space-experiments/
3 août 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Andrew Eversden The Army's first iteration of new network tools, known as Capability Set '21, was heavily influenced by existing network gaps identified by the 82nd Airborne on more than a year's worth of deployments. According to Capt. Brian Delgado, S6 of the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, the “biggest game changer” for soldiers in the field provided in the integrated tactical network kit of Capability Set '21 was the secure but unclassified environment. The SBU environment allows soldiers to more easily share and receive information. In the current network, information that flows through the network is classified, and many lower-level users don't have proper clearances. “Army operational construct requires battalion formations to conduct combined arms missions, but today's network does not support the battalion's organic capacity to deconflict an air picture, nor an ability to combine dismounted, mounted, fires, intelligence and air pictures into a combined operating picture (COP),” Delgado said. “Part of this challenge is due to the fact that dismounted and most mounted COP tools like Nett Warrior (NW) and Joint Battle Command-Platform resided on the Secret enclave. The vast majority of users at the tactical level do not possess Secret clearances, which makes sharing and receiving key information difficult.” Capability Set '21 lets soldiers securely share controlled unclassified information across the network, allowing war fighters on the ground to receive important information regardless of their security clearance. With the new tools, the Army moved from a 100 percent classified network to a 75 percent SBU network. “This means we now were able to use software applications at the Unclassified level in a tactical environment. SBU allowed the utilization of tactical software like the Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) to provide a [combined operating picture] down to the lowest level of leaders,” Delgado said. Col. Garth Winterle, project manager for tactical radios at Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, said in a May interview with C4ISRNET that the SBU architecture ”opens the door for a lot of different things,” including improved information sharing with coalition partners. The integrated tactical network kit also unifies the disparate operating picture into a single digital operating picture. The combined operating picture “directly reduces risk in the clearance of fires, combat air support and maneuvering in widely dispersed formations,” Delgado said. “It allowed battalion commanders to fight teams in a dispersed manner that would have been impossible with legacy systems, and therefore greatly reduced the risk to the battalion combat power that enemy indirect fires commonly present,” Delgado added. Capability Set '21 was focused on solving immediate network capability gaps with current technology, while also making network hardware far more expeditionary and while improving network transport capabilities. The capability set includes new radios as well as smaller and lighter servers and satellite terminals. It was designed through collaboration between Army PEO C3T and the Army Network Cross-Functional Team. The Army completed critical design review of Capability Set '21 earlier this year and started procuring new tools this month. Right now, the “majority” of the Army's command-and-control systems sit on large vehicles that aren't useful on expeditionary operations, Delgado said. With the new technology, the integrated tactical network “separated these systems from vehicles, allowing for more network access during early expeditionary operations that we performed,” reducing the reliance on vehicles and allowing soldiers to dismount systems based on needs. Delgado said the new integrated tactical network, or ITN, hardware is “orders of magnitude” smaller than existing tools, providing more flexibility in how units choose command-and-control equipment for operations. “We were able to load a battalion tactical operations center worth of equipment onto a nonstandard small tactical vehicle, and then move it in a matter of hours onto a UH-60 [Black Hawk helicopter] to function as a true command aircraft,” Delgado said. The Capability Set '21 ITN kit also includes radio waveforms that are more resilient, and it allows for data transmission. The 82nd Airborne has previously been reliant on the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System as well as the Soldier Radio Waveform for tactical radio communications, but Delgado said that both had “limitations regarding their effectiveness and survivability for distributed formations,” and that they didn't allow for SBU transmissions. The Army is investing several new radios with more resilient waveforms as part of its modernization initiative, including the two-channel leader radio. “The ITN presents a significant increase in radio resiliency while operating in a contested environment. Most noteworthy are a resistance to tactical jamming, and a near-complete inability of the enemy to ... find radio broadcasts,” Delgado said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/07/31/soldiers-tout-new-network-tool-as-a-game-changer/