2 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — The Super Hornet is set to meet the 80 percent mission capable rate goal by the end of the year, the Pentagon's top civilian said Wednesday, but it remains unclear whether the F-35, F-22 and F-16 will be able to meet the mark.
Last fall, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps until the end of fiscal year 2019 to bring their F-35s, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, F-22 Raptors and F-16s up to an 80 percent mission capable rate — a key metric to determine the health of a flying squadron's aircraft.
Of those, the “real emphasis was on the F-35 and F/A-18,” acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said May 1 during a House Appropriations Committee panel, and the Super Hornet has made a “tremendous” amount of headway over the past year.
“The Navy has made significant progress with the F/A-18s. I think they're on track to meet the goal in September,” he told lawmakers.
However, Shanahan suggested that the F-22 and F-16 are unlikely to hit the 80 percent goal, adding that the F-22 “has struggled” and the F-16 “is a bit of a high bar” to clear.
Shanahan was unclear on whether the F-35 — which is available in three different variants used by the Air Force, Marine Corp and Navy — will be able to meet the mandate this year.
“The F-35s, being brand new aircraft, that [80 percent] should be the baseline where we start,” he said. “The F-35 will come home. We're going to drive that home.”
The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps didn't not provide information about the F-35's progress by press time, but the most recent statistics do not seem promising.
The services have stopped publishing mission capable rate statistics last year, citing operational sensitivities, but a March report by the Government Accountability Office found that all variants of the F-35 operated at a mission capable rate of about 50 percent from a period of May to November 2018.
However, Mattis' mandate specifies that only the F-35s used by operational squadrons must meet the readiness marker. Because there are only a small number of operational F-35 squadrons, and those units typically have newer and more reliable aircraft, the services may stand a better chance of getting to the 80 percent rate.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek concurred with Shanahan's assessment of the F-16 and F-22, saying that damage from Hurricane Michael to Tyndall Air Force Base's F-22s and ongoing difficulties with maintaining the F-22's low observable coating were likely to prevent the Raptor from achieving an 80 percent mission capability rate this year.
However, the service is still “optimistic” that it will be able to get its F-16s over the finish line by the end of FY19, she said.
Given the low availability of tactical aircraft in recent years, it would be a massive accomplishment to get any of the fighter jets to meet the 80 percent goal.
In August, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told reporters that half of the service's Super Hornet aircraft were mission capable — a huge increase from 2017 when two-thirds of the fleet were not available to fly.
In 2017, the last year the Air Force put out data, F-22s held a 49 percent mission capable rate and the F-16 hovered around 65 to 70 percent, depending on the model.
Despite the services' difficulties meeting the aviation readiness goal, Shanahan maintained that pushing toward an 80 percent mission capable rate for those platforms was a worthy endeavor.
“It's a lot of iron to keep on the ground, and given all the training missions and the productivity we can generate, I think holding that standard is smart for now,” he said.
30 novembre 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Industrial conglomerate General Electric Co and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc are among those competing to acquire rocket maker Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc , according to people familiar with the matter.
1 novembre 2022 | International, Aérospatial
31 octobre 2022, par Arnaud. L'Élysée semble vouloir aller vite sur ce dossier, quitte à bousculer un peu les habitudes françaises. Lors d'une réunion avec de nombreux
11 février 2021 | International, C4ISR
By: Nate Ashton Defense priorities are shifting toward emerging technologies at an unprecedented pace, but still not fast enough to keep America ahead of potential adversaries. We need to hit the accelerator by drastically increasing the tech savviness of defense leaders. The defense establishment is better at this than it used to be. We've seen a rapid expansion of new authorities and programs to drive tech innovation since Pentagon leaders started talking about the “third offset” in 2014. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act continues that trend, establishing a national cyber director position, elevating the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and calling for open-systems architecture and API usage in some key programs. But we will not keep our current military superiority through these kinds of incremental changes alone. We need a radical shift in how the Department of Defense does business. Any organizational transformation starts with the right leadership. This is doubly true in government, where the bureaucracy is built to maintain the status quo and avoid risk to guarantee continuity of operations and effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars. But understanding where risk and opportunity lies — in areas from cybersecurity to agile procurement — is now much more important than knowing how to manage a major, multibillion-dollar weapons system procurement. The Biden administration and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should start by filling key acquisitions and management roles with leaders who have experience in the tech or venture sector, or have a record of disruptive innovation within the DoD itself. These people must bring both an understanding of the current tech landscape and a willingness to back the innovators under them. Without a clear, top-down mandate to disrupt the status quo, nothing will change. The new administration should also make it a priority to heed the advice of defense and technology advisory boards. Oftentimes leaders who have spent their careers in tech, venture, and private research and development may be unsuited for full-time government positions, yet bring invaluable perspective and expertise. The Biden administration should continue and accelerate the work already being done to implement the Defense Innovation Board's recommendations for training and software acquisition and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's recommendations for security. More than identifying useful, new technologies, defense leaders must transform culture and skills at all levels of the DoD to operationalize tech innovation. The hardest part of driving change in a big organization is not recognizing the end goal nor setting policies to get there, but rather operationalizing it at all levels across the millions of active-duty, civilian and contractor personnel doing the day-to-day work. This will take massive investments in training the existing workforce, strengthening the pathways between defense and the national tech and venture ecosystems, and changing processes to enable and incentivize new ways of doing business. The DoD needs to make aggressive investments in the near term. In the near term, defense leaders should: Train all DoD personnel on emerging technology. The need for these types of knowledge across the DoD simply can't be met by existing resources, which is why Dcode has worked with the Defense Acquisition University, AFWERX and others to equip defense leaders to innovate like a startup, evaluate tech like an investor and understand the emerging tech landscape. Provide advanced training and specialization on commercial tech procurement and software procurement for contracting and information security personnel. Today's purchases are best-value decisions that require true subject matter expertise to scope problem sets, assess the best solutions and bring those solutions in. In contracting, the practice of rating bids based on meeting rigid requirements and competing on price alone simply does not work. In security, moving from compliance-based to risk-based approaches will require a massive influx of technical talent and training. Expand, promote and incentivize industry exchange programs both ways: pulling in private sector talent, and sending the DoD's talent on loan to the tech and venture industry. Fund and empower tech innovation hubs. Some of the biggest successes in recent years have come from newer innovation hubs and centers of excellence that are proliferating across agencies and programs. Efforts like these should be encouraged to both replicate best practices from existing hubs that have seen success, seeded with funding to try new things, and matured into programs of record as their business model proves out. One need only look at the significant measurable outcomes that the Defense Innovation Unit and AFWERX have driven in recent years, with a relatively minimal amount of resources, to see that they are only just beginning to scratch the surface. Driving internal disruption at scale will take an exponential increase in the number of people and amount of funding. The future of defense innovation is bright, and the community of passionate leaders inside and outside of the government working to move things forward is incredibly inspiring. I'm hopeful the Biden administration and new Congress will see 2021 as the year to make ambitious investments for the future. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/02/10/urgently-needed-tech-savvy-defense-leaders/