Retired F-117s Fly As ‘Cruise Missiles’ For Training

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  29 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  US Air Force looks to up-gun its airlift planes

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Humble airlift planes like the C-130J Super Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III could become heavily-armed weapons trucks capable of airdropping large bundles of munitions that deliver a massive blast. So far, the Air Force has conducted two successful tests of “palletized munitions” from the C-130 and C-17, said Maj. Gen. Clint Hinote, the deputy director of the service's Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability cell. “We are in discussions right now about how do we proceed to prototyping and fielding,” he said during a May 27 event held by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Like the name suggests, palletized munitions are a collection of weapons strapped together onto a smart pallet, which would feed the munitions tracking and targeting information as they are dropped from an airlift platform. A request for information released in February characterized the technology as “a bomb bay in a box” that could allow mobility aircraft to stay out of a threat zone and launch a mass of standoff weapons. “It's all about capacity,” Hinote explained. “You've got to create enough capacity so that a long-range punch is really a punch. What we see is that no matter how big our bomber force is, the capacity that the joint force needs is always more and more. And so this is why we think that there is a real possibility here for using cargo platforms to be able to increase the capacity of fires.” Air Force Special Operations Command conducted one demonstration of the technology on Jan. 28, when a MC-130J performed three airdrops of simulated palletized munitions at at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. “In this case, munitions stacked upon wooden pallets, or Combat Expendable Platforms (CEPs), deployed via a roller system,” the Air Force Research Laboratory said in a May 27 release. “AFSOC aircrew released five CEPs rigged with six simulated munitions, the same mass as the actual weapons, including four Cargo Launch Expendable Air Vehicles with Extended Range (CLEAVERs) across a spectrum of low and high altitude airdrops." In response to questions from Defense News, AFRL clarified that simulated long-range cruise missiles were deployed from an off-the-shelf pallet system as well as an Air Force designed crate system. CLEAVER is a new weapon under development by the lab as part of a separate effort, though it may be used in palletized munitions in the future. On Feb. 27, Air Mobility Command conducted a similar demonstration with a C-17, which conducted two airdrops of simulated palletized munitions, AFRL said. In future demonstrations, AFSOC plans to release more advanced forms of simulated munitions as well as full-up weapons vehicles that can be configured with a warhead and terminal guidance system. However, the Air Force is looking for other technological options. Through its request for information, which closed in April, the service sought data about new or existing palletized munitions concepts. The service hopes to use that information to inform future experimentation efforts, operational assessments or the acquisition palletized munitions systems. Five companies responded to the RFI, AFRL said. If the effort moves forward, one big question will be figuring out which entities in the Air Force have command over a mobility asset that is playing a combat role more similar to a fighter jet or bomber. “Some kind of extremely streamlined command and control is going to be necessary, or else you must have an integrator somewhere,” said Hinote, who added that cultural barriers inside the Air Force could be harder to overcome than the technological challenges of creating palletized munitions. Hinote also acknowledged that it currently may be hard to find the funding to move forward with a new program. “We're in the last year of an administration. We've had to turn in the budget early with not too many changes, and we're looking at the possibility of a continuing resolution where new starts are going to be difficult to do,” he said. However, “that is all temporary,” he said. Updated 5/28/20 to add more information from AFRL about past palletized munitions experiments. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/05/27/air-force-looking-to-up-gun-its-airlift-planes/

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  24 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Two French defense heavyweights scoop up Dolphin chip designer

  By: Pierre Tran PARIS — European missile company MBDA and microchip maker Soitec said Aug. 21 they are acquiring Dolphin Integration, a design firm for low-power chips which has fallen into receivership. The two companies will buy through a joint venture the chip maker, which filed for insolvency July 24. Dolphin Integration has designed chips which are “indispensable” for certain highly classified sectors, including the French nuclear deterrent, a defense source said. MBDA will acquire 40 percent, while Soitec will own 60 percent. MBDA and Soitec will pay a total of some €6 million (U.S. $7 million) to acquire most assets of Dolphin Integration, pay some of the liabilities and inject a significant amount of cash to meet working capital requirements, the companies said. Further details of how the acquisition amount will be shared were not immediately available. All the business and staff will be kept on, but the sale price will not cover all amounts owed to creditors, Dolphin Integration said in an Aug. 21 statement. MBDA is a strategic customer of Dolphin Integration for defense applications since 2004, the missile company said. The acquisition will strengthen its industrial collaboration and long-term commercial pipeline for application specific integrated circuit and system-on-chip products, the company added. “With the support of MBDA, Dolphin Integration will be able to advance its positions in aerospace and defense design,” the missile company said. Other key clients include Airbus Defence & Space, Safran and Thales, besides MBDA, the defense source said. Soitec specializes in chips drawing on fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology, running on low power and at high speed. The acquisition can be seen as an “offensive” move by securing a market upstream for FD-SOI, while MBDA takes a "defensive " step by protecting a strategic supplier, the defense source said. Soitec played an active role in an industry group which lobbied the Elysée president's office to support a European Project of Common Interest, the source said. Such projects are backed by the European Commission for cross-border work on infrastructure and energy. Soitec will seek to strengthen Dolphin Integration in the semiconductor market, to develop and promote products and services in strategic sectors such as mobile devices and infrastructure, data centers, and space and industrial applications, the chip specialist said. Dolphin Integration had annual sales of €17 million for the year to March 31, 2018 and employs 155 staff, of which 130 are design engineers. The company is based in Grenoble. MBDA's interest in semiconductors has sharpened since the U.S. blocked the sale of American chips for the Scalp cruise missile sought by Egypt to arm its fleet of Rafale fighter jets. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/08/23/two-french-defense-heavyweights-scoop-up-dophin-chip-maker

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  4 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Air Force Research Laboratory announces new space experiments

  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/