Pakistani defense conglomerate unveils new drone, missiles at IDEF

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  8 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Autre défense

  USAF: New Raytheon Bomb Ready for Real-World Vetting

  RACHEL S. COHEN The Air Force's top weapons development official says Raytheon's Small Diameter Bomb II, or “StormBreaker,” is ready for primetime despite needing to work out some lingering issues. “Getting them out into the field, right now I think that's the best way for us to wring this out,” Air Force Weapons Program Executive Officer Brig. Gen. Anthony Genatempo said at a recent Air Force Life Cycle Management Center conference. “Get it into the hands of the people using it, figure out what they can do with it that we did not think of, figure out what things are happening in the operational environment that we were not able to replicate and test, and then feed that back into successive upgrades.” The Pentagon plans to buy 17,000 SDB IIs, split between 12,000 for the Air Force and 5,000 for the Navy, and will fly them on all current Air Force fighter and bomber aircraft as well as the A-10, AC-130J, and MQ-9. StormBreaker was designed as a precision munition that can communicate with nearby aircraft to attack moving and stationary targets in bad weather and notch “multiple kills per pass,” according to the Air Force. “The StormBreaker tri-mode seeker uses imaging infrared and millimeter wave radar in its normal mode to give pilots the ability to destroy moving targets, even in adverse weather, from standoff ranges,” Raytheon said in a press release. “Additionally, the weapon can use its semi-active laser guidance to hit targets.” As of October 2018, the service planned to spend $1.9 billion on development and $2.6 billion on procurement, the Government Accountability Office reported in May. StormBreaker's ability to communicate with its host aircraft needs more vetting, Genatempo said, and other fixes are already being added into the current production batch, Lot 4. Its radio may not be fixed until Lot 6 or 7, and the service plans to address parts that will be outdated in Lot 8. “Whether or not that is an issue that will prevent fielding, I don't think I can say that. I don't even think Air Combat Command can say that right now,” Genatempo said. “They very well may choose to take an initial delivery of these weapons at the capability they're at, knowing that one caveat. ... It certainly doesn't affect the entire envelope of operation of the weapon. It's a miniature part of one or two different scenarios.” The weapon is moving closer to being declared ready for initial operations afterfinishing operational tests in June and an overall test program that uncovered a range of performance issues that Raytheon and government officials say are routine in the course of vetting. When airmen are ready to receive the new bomb is ultimately up to Air Combat Command. “It's a very good conversation and dialogue with Air Combat Command about what they would like, when they would like it, what they're willing to take and employ,” Genatempo said. “I very much think that this weapon is ready to go out [to] operational use.” The Air Force now expects to reach its “required assets available” milestone, which has changed multiple times, from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 through the end of 2020. It was most recently slated for January 2019. To meet RAA, the service must arm 12 Boeing F-15Es with 144 weapons and own spare parts, support equipment, and more. The milestone was originally scheduled for July 2017. Genatempo said RAA was pushed back again to avoid punishing the program for having to wait its turn for testing ranges, as range availability is scarce thanks to several weapons programs simultaneously in testing. Delaying the milestone to later this year was “predominantly a paperwork exercise to make sure we didn't breach our [acquisition program baseline],” he said. http://airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/July%202019/USAF-New-Raytheon-Bomb-Ready-for-Real-World-Vetting.aspx

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  31 octobre 2023 | International, Terrestre

  Defense firm Leidos raises outlook on robust weapons demand | Reuters

  U.S. defense contractor Leidos Holdings on Tuesday raised its full-year profit and revenue forecasts on the back of strong weapons demand amid rising geopolitical tensions.

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  7 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  How low-Earth orbit satellites will enable connectivity across all domains of warfare

  Nathan Strout The Space Development Agency will provide the unifying element in the Defense Department's future Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept, pulling together tactical networks developed by the services with a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites. With the JADC2 concept, the department envisions an overarching network capable of connecting sensors to shooters regardless of where they are located. That means U.S. Air Force sensors could feed data to U.S. Army shooters, or even National Reconnaissance Office sensors could send information to U.S. Air Force shooters. “Each of the services have their own way to incorporate [tactical networks], and JADC2 is just a way to make sure they all have the same networking infrastructure to talk to one another, essentially,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said at the C4ISRNET Conference on May 6. “We plug directly into [JADC2] as the space layer to pull all of that communication together.” Service efforts include programs like the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System and the Army's TITAN ground system. What the Defense Department wants to ensure is that programs like these have a way to share data across the armed services. “All of those are reliant on a way to be able to have a back end to go in space to be able to communicate across one another and across back to [the continental United States], etc. That's where the Space Development Agency's transport layer comes in,” Tournear said. “In fact, in the defense planning guidance, Secretary Esper put out the edict that basically said the transport layer will be the integrating aspect of JADC2 to be able to pull all of this tactical communication together in space.” On May 1, the SDA released its solicitation for the first 10 satellites that will make up its transport layer — a space-based mesh network in low-Earth orbit. When fully developed, that transport layer will provide a global network that various sensors, shooters and tactical networks will be able to plug into for tactical communications. A key part of that effort involves ensuring space-based sensors can feed into the services' battlefield networks in near-real time. Once that transport layer is placed on orbit in 2022, the SDA wants to demonstrate space-based sensor data being downlinked to a ground station, then uplinked to the transport layer for dissemination to the tactical edge via TITAN and Link 16 tactical network. But ultimately, the SDA wants to cut out the ground station and move the data directly from the space-based sensor to the transport layer via optical cross links. That's a stretch goal for those first 10 satellites, and the minimal viable product when the second tranche of 150 satellites is added in 2024, said Tournear. Tournear declined to identify the SDA's mission partners on development of space-based sensors, which will need to use optical inter-satellite cross links to plug into the transport layer. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/05/06/how-low-earth-orbit-satellites-will-enable-jadc2/