Replicator offers use case for defense budget reform, panel says

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  12 mars 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Key piece of F-35 logistics system unusable by US Air Force students, instructor pilots

  By: Valerie Insinna EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The F-35 fighter jet's logistics backbone has proven so clunky and burdensome to work with that the U.S. Air Force's instructor pilots, as well as students learning to fly the aircraft, have stopped using a key piece of the system, Defense News has learned. The Autonomic Logistics Information System, built by F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin, was supposed to consolidate training, maintenance and supply chain management functions into a single entity, making it easier for users to input data and oversee the jet's health and history throughout its life span. ALIS has been a disappointment to maintainers in the field, with updates coming behind schedule and many workarounds needed so it functions as designed. But the Air Force's F-35A instructor and student pilots at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, were so disappointed with the performance of ALIS' training system that they bailed entirely, confirmed Col. Paul Moga, commander of Eglin's 33rd Fighter Wing. “The functionality in ALIS with regards to TMS — the training management system — was such a source of frustration and a time waste to the instructor pilots and the simulator instructors and the academic instructors that we at [Air Education and Training Command] in coordination with us [at Eglin] and Luke made a call almost a year ago to stop using the program,” Moga said during a Feb. 26 interview. Moga said the command's F-35 training squadrons are “not going to start using TMS again until it works.” So in the meantime, F-35A training squadrons have adopted a legacy system, Northrop Grumman's Global Training Integrated Management System. GTIMS is used by the Air Force, Army and Navy across a number of aircraft inventories to manage training schedules and cut the man-hours and costs associated with doing that work, according to a Northrop fact sheet. At this point, GTIMS provides a more agile, efficient user experience than ALIS' training management system, Moga said. But it doesn't sync with ALIS, so pilots and instructors must do “double data entry” so that each system has a record of flight records, currencies and qualifications. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/03/08/key-piece-of-f-35-logistics-system-unusable-by-us-air-force-students-instructor-pilots/

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  11 novembre 2024 | International, Terrestre

  US Army awards Repkon $435m contract for TNT production facility 

  Repkon USA - Defense has won a contract action with a ceiling of $435m for domestic trinitrotoluene (TNT) production from the US Army’s Joint Program Executive Office Armaments & Ammunition (JPEO A&A) and US Army Contracting Command - Rock Island.  

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  13 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Boeing Makes Third Move Into Metal Additive Manufacturing This Year

  Lee Ann Shay Boeing made another investment in additive manufacturing, this time with the intent of producing higher volume of multi-metal parts faster. Boeing HorizonX Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in Digital Alloys, which created Joule Printing, a metal additive manufacturing technology that uses metal in wire form and high deposition rates to produce the parts. The investment was part of a $12.9 million Series B financing led by G20 Ventures and included other companies. Boeing and Digital Alloys did not disclose the exact investment but Boeing said it “was a minority investor in this round.” Lee Ann Shay | Aug 10, 2018 Boeing made another investment in additive manufacturing, this time with the intent of producing higher volume of multi-metal parts faster. Boeing HorizonX Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in Digital Alloys, which created Joule Printing, a metal additive manufacturing technology that uses metal in wire form and high deposition rates to produce the parts. The investment was part of a $12.9 million Series B financing led by G20 Ventures and included other companies. Boeing and Digital Alloys did not disclose the exact investment but Boeing said it “was a minority investor in this round.” Get Key Developments Delivered to Your Inbox Get Your Sample Edition Digital Alloys holds two patents for Joule Printing, which can use multiple metals into a single part. This could enable new parts designs and improved thermal, electric and mechanical properties. This printing process is “similar to resistive welding and does not result in fully melting the material through external energy sources like lasers, e-beams, or electric arcs. As such, it has the potential to print alloys that have been a challenge with existing printing techniques, but with less energy and a lower machine complexity,” says Boeing. Joule Printing solves “three big problems that are gating the use of metal printing and production:” production costs, printing speeds and complexity, says Duncan McCallum, Digital Alloy's CEO. Full Article: https://www.mro-network.com/technology/boeing-makes-third-move-metal-additive-manufacturing-year