Mirabel’s L3Harris delivers 2 F/A-18 Hornets to NASA

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  26 janvier 2022 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Defense industry frets as funding talks crawl

  Despite repeated warnings from lawmakers and uniformed Pentagon leaders that a full-year continuing resolution will hurt national security, some in the defense industry are still worried that budgetary route is a possibility.

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  26 janvier 2021 | International, Terrestre

  Lockheed-Boeing team pitch Defiant X, its candidate for the Army’s long-range assault helo competition

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky and Boeing have pitched a tweaked version of the team's coaxial technology demonstrator — the SB-1 Defiant — which it plans to submit for the U.S. Army's Future Long-Range Assault (FLRAA) competition, according to the companies. The modified, competition-ready aircraft design is being called Defiant X, taking the same surname as little brother Raider X, which is Lockheed's submission for the Army's other helicopter competition — the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program — running nearly in parallel. Both aircraft build off and scale up from Sikorsky's X2 demonstrator which flew for the first time in 2008. Lockheed Martin came out with Raider X roughly two years ago at the Association of the U.S Army's annual trade show. “One thing that always comes out is the importance of this aircraft at the X,” Tim Malia, Sikorsky's FARA director, said at the time. “The ‘X' is defined by the Army as the terminal area where they actually have to go do the work, do the reconnaissance, do the attack mission. The operation at the X is really critical for this program and for this platform.” And according to the Lockheed-Boeing team, it's no different with Defiant. Modernizing its vertical lift fleet is the Army's third-highest priority behind Long-Range Precision Fires and Next-Generation Combat Vehicle development. The Army intends to field both a FLRAA and FARA by roughly 2030. Defiant X made its public debut Jan. 25 featuring changes to the outer mold line compared to the demonstrator airframe, such as a sharper nose cone; a tricycle-style landing gear; changes to the exhaust system and an integrated mission systems package. The “enhancements to the design” are born from roughly 1,500 hours running algorithms in a systems integration lab, 135 hours logged in the Propulsion Systems Test Bed, and 31 flights, adding up to 26 hours of flight time, the companies reported. Some of the changes to the airframe were made to reduce thermal signature and improve aerodynamic handling. The exhaust system alterations also reduce thermal signature, the team conveyed. The landing gear changes are meant to improve stability, landing and taxiing in combat and more austere environments, according to the companies. Adding integrated mission systems is a requirement for the FLRAA competition in order to upgrade and continuously improve aircraft capability through a modular open system architecture. The MOSA will allow the systems to stay relevant in a Joint All Domain Operations environment and on the battlefield in 2035 and beyond. Defiant X will also come with “fly-by-wire flight controls integrated with autonomy capability leading to safety and workload reduction for the crew and operations in complex and degraded visual environments,” the team noted. Lockheed and Boeing are claiming that, as of now, Defiant X is the only offering that can sling-load equipment during missions “at an operationally relevant distance.” “One of the key words here is versatility,” Heather McBryan, Boeing's director of sales and marketing for future vertical lift, told reporters during a Jan. 22 roundtable held in advance of Defiant X's public debut. “Although the FLRAA mission is about more than just flying fast, and although we know the pacing mission is the air assault mission, this aircraft is going to be asked to do a whole lot of other things on a daily basis and our design and capability really provides that extreme lifting power for those types of missions.” To date, the SB-1 Defiant helicopter — as part of the Army's technology demonstration and the ongoing follow-on competitive risk reduction effort — has reached 211 knots in straight-and-level flight and 232 knots in a descent. “During the [competitive development and risk reduction], we've done hundreds of trade studies to refine this transformational capability and worked closely with our Army partner,” Jay Macklin, director of Future Vertical Lift business development with Sikorsky, said in the same call with reporters. “The design you're going to see today is a result of those studies. The CDRR has provided a great vehicle to share data back and forth to help the Army again understand and come to a decision on exactly what they are looking for,” he said. The team, according to Macklin, continue to also run tests in a digital combat environment that allows the ability to look at and test designs and maintenance procedures, fly and run operational analysis in order to ensure the best design. While Defiant X came out looking a certain way, according to newly released renderings and animations, that doesn't necessarily mean something won't change before the actual aircraft is built and ready to fly, according to McBryan. The Army released a draft request for proposals in December for FLRAA, announcing its unsurprising intentions to limit the competition to the Sikorsky-Boeing team and Bell because they are the only ones that can meet all of the service's technical and production requirements after spending years building and flying Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator aircraft meant to help define requirements and the realm of the possible for a next-generation medium-sized helicopter. Bell is expected to submit a tiltrotor that would likely not stray too far from its V-280 Valor aircraft flown in the technology demonstration. Bell's demonstrator first flew in December 2017. Defiant took longer to get off the ground due to challenges in manufacturing its complex rotor blades. Defiant's first flight took place in March 2019. The Army is plans to drop the RFP in fiscal 2021, with plans to choose a winner to produce the aircraft in FY22. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2021/01/25/lockheed-boeing-team-pitch-defiant-x-its-candidate-for-the-armys-long-range-assault-helo-competition

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  11 juin 2018 | International, Naval

  The U.S. Navy Is Developing Mothership Drones for Coastal Defense

  By Patrick Tucker, The service is looking to accelerate the way it buys, builds and drills drones and robotic ships. The U.S. Navy and researchers from Florida Atlantic University are developing robotic boats that can launch aerial and sub drones to protect U.S. coastal waters. “Our focus will be on developing a multi-vehicle system that can safely and reliably navigate coastal waters with a high level of autonomy while performing assigned tasks,” Manhar Dhanak, director of SeaTech, the Institute for Ocean and Systems Engineering in FAU's Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering, said in a press release. The AU researchers will develop new software tools for better sensing and collision avoidance as well as to allow the ship “to serve as a docking station” and power sub and air drones that latch onto it, according to a statement from the University. One aspect of the effort, developing software to help the surface vessel obtain a clear picture not just of obstacles to avoid but also friendly and hostile elements in the area, to help it better plan routes and paths for different missions. It's an example of the types of prototypes that will become more common, according to a Navy roadmap for the development and acquisition of autonomous systems. This Strategic Roadmap for Unmanned Systems, which began circulating around the Pentagon last year, has not yet been released. But a predecisional copy obtained by Defense One shows that the Navy is pushing to develop and buy its drones faster, integrate them more aggressively in exercises and other activity, and work more closely with universities and other non-traditional research partners particularly in the design of new prototypes. The Navy's research into unmanned weapons goes back to World War I research into flying munitions and torpedos. The term “drone” was coined in the 1930s by Cmdr. Delmar Fahrney, who was in charge of Navy research into radio-controlled aircraft. More recently, the Navy has sought to incorporate ever-higher levels of autonomy into drills and activity. In 2014, the service ran a dramatic experiment that showed that a swarm of 13 autonomous roboticized boats might help defend a warship. The Navy has also developed (and plans to soon deploy) the Sea Hunter, an unmanned ship that can guide itself on the open water while obeying international maritime laws. Former Defense Undersecretary Bob Work speculated that the Sea Hunter could be armed with ballistic missiles. “We might be able to put a six-pack or a four-pack of missiles on them. Now, imagine 50 of these distributed and operating together under the hands of a flotilla commander,” Work said at an event sponsored by CNAS. “This is going to be a Navy unlike any navy in history, a human-machine collaborative battle fleet that will confound our enemies. The Navy is experimenting with a widening menagerie of novel aerial drones, such as a tube-launched rotary-wing drone called the Nomad, which was launched off of the destroyer Pinckney in2016. Another is the hybrid flying-swimming Glider, a drone that can deploy from a plane, fly along the surface of the water, and then submerge to a depth of 200 meters. Flight-testing for a new version of Glider is scheduled for later this year, and the Naval Research Laboratory expects to a full demonstration in 2019. The new Navy roadmap argues that the service's adoption of unmanned and robotic capabilities must move far more quickly than it buys human-operated planes, boats, and ships. It outlines steps to accelerate their building, buying and deploying. One key is moving away from a “platform-centric model” — think big, expensive ships that only serve one role. Instead, envision small, cheap robots that can be robustly networked and easily configured to new tasks. “The Navy must evolve from today's platform-centric, uncontested-environment [unmanned systems] operating concept to the concept of a platform-agnostic force,” it says. “A cross-domain, distributed, netted, self-healing, highly survivable, and collaborative communications network made of manned and unmanned nodes will enable multi-domain communications. These nodes will fuse big data to interpret the environment, share relevant information, and introduce increased risk, uncertainty, and mistrust in the adversary's systems.” Marcus Weisgerber contributed to this post. https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2018/06/us-navy-developing-mothership-drones-coastal-defense/148696/