Special Operators Predict AC-130J Will Be 'Most Requested' Aircraft

Sur le même sujet

• 

  10 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Watch India test its new homemade hypersonic vehicle

  By: Vivek Raghuvanshi NEW DELHI — India on Monday conducted a successful test of a fully indigenous hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle powered by an air-breathing scramjet engine, the Defence Ministry announced. With the test, India joins the U.S., Russia and China in the race for hypersonic technology development. The flight test took place Sept. 7 around 11 a.m. on an island off the coast of Odisha. The demo vehicle was indigenously developed by the government's Defence Research and Development Organisation, and it has the ability to fly at six times the speed of sound, according to defense scientists here. The ministry said the hypersonic cruise vehicle was launched using a solid rocket motor, which took it to an altitude of 30 kilometers. Then the cruise vehicle separated from the launch vehicle and the air intake opened as planned, the ministry added. “The successful demonstration proved several critical technologies including aerodynamic configuration for hypersonic manoeuvers, the use of scramjet propulsion for ignition and sustained combustion at hypersonic flow, thermo-structural characterisation of high-temperature materials, separation mechanism at hypersonic velocities, etc.,” DRDO said in a statement. A top DRDO scientist told Defense News that the vehicle will be used to launch both hypersonic and long-range cruise missiles. "DRDO has spent around $4.5 million on its [HTDV] prototype development cost, and three more tests will be carried out in the next five years to make this platform into a full-fledged hypersonic weapon that is capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads, "he said. DRDO spent about $30 million on the design and development phases. Congratulating DRDO, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “The scramjet engine developed by our scientists helped achieve a speed of 6 times the speed of sound! Very few countries have such capability today.” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh called the test a “landmark achievement” toward India becoming self-reliant and less dependent on foreign technology. “It's now time to progress to the next phase with all critical technologies being established by the successful [HTDV] flight test, using the indigenously developed scramjet propulsion system,” he added. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/09/09/india-tests-homemade-hypersonic-vehicle

• 

  3 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Turkey launches F-16 life-extension program amid lack of replacement aircraft

  By: Burak Ege Bekdil   ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey's procurement and defense authorities have launched a program designed to increase the structural life of the country's existing fleet of F-16 Block 30 jets from 8,000 flight hours to 12,000, the country's top procurement official announced. Ismail Demir, who leads the Presidency of Defence Industries, wrote in a Feb. 2 tweet that the comprehensive upgrade program would involve revisions, renewals, replacements and body reinforcement. “The upgrades will cover 1,200 to 1,500 parts per aircraft,” Demir said. Caglar Kurc, a Turkish defense analyst, said the upgrade program indicates Turkey's intention to keep the F-16s as its main aerial firepower until the country completes work on its planned indigenous fighter jet. “In addition to the F-16s, [armed and unarmed] drones could be used to support, particularly, anti-terror missions,” Kurc said. Turkey has been seeking options for a new-generation fighter after it was suspended from the American-led, multinational Joint Strike Fighter program that builds the F-35 Lightning II. Turkish Aerospace Industries will perform the structural upgrades for the F-16s as part of an ongoing upgrade program. TAI is currently building 30 new F-16 Block 50+ aircraft for the Turkish Air Force and is running an upgrade program covering more than 160 F-16 Block 30/40/50 aircraft. Turkey's indigenous fighter program, dubbed TF-X (or MMU in its Turkish acronym), has been crawling over the past years due to technological failures and issues with know-how transfers. Turkish engineers must first select an engine for the planned aircraft before finalizing the design phase. TAI has been in talks with British engine-maker Rolls-Royce for engine know-how and co-production, but a final contract has yet to emerge. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/02/02/turkey-launches-f-16-life-extension-program-amid-lack-of-replacement-aircraft/

• 

  7 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Future Missile War Needs New Kind Of Command: CSIS

  Integrating missile defense – shooting down incoming missiles – with missile offense – destroying the launchers before they fire again – requires major changes in how the military fights. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on July 07, 2020 at 4:00 AM WASHINGTON: Don't try to shoot down each arrow as it comes; shoot the archer. That's a time-honored military principle that US forces would struggle to implement in an actual war with China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran, warns a new report from thinktank CSIS. New technology, like the Army's IBCS command network – now entering a major field test — can be part of the solution, but it's only part, writes Brian Green, a veteran of 30 years in the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, and the aerospace industry. Equally important and problematic are the command-and-control arrangements that determine who makes the decision to fire what, at what, and when. Today, the military has completely different units, command systems, doctrines, and legal/regulatory authorities for missile defense – which tries to shoot down threats the enemy has already launched – and for long range offensive strikes – which could keep the enemy from launching in the first place, or at least from getting off a second salvo, by destroying launchers, command posts, and targeting systems. While generals and doctrine-writers have talked about “offense-defense integration” for almost two decades, Green says, the concept remains shallow and incomplete. “A thorough implementation of ODI would touch almost every aspect of the US military, including policy, doctrine, organization, training, materiel, and personnel,” Green writes. “It would require a fundamental rethinking of terms such as ‘offense' and ‘defense' and of how the joint force fights.” Indeed, it easily blurs into the even larger problem of coordinating all the services across all five domains of warfare – land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace – in what's known as Joint All-Domain Operations. The bifurcation between offense and defense runs from the loftiest strategic level down to tactical: At the highest level, US Strategic Command commands both the nation's nuclear deterrent and homeland missile defense. But these functions are split between three different subcommands within STRATCOM, one for Air Force ICBMs and bombers (offense), one for Navy ballistic missile submarines (also offense), and one for Integrated Missile Defense. In forward theaters, the Army provides ground-based missile defense, but those units – Patriot batteries, THAAD, Sentinel radars – belong to separate brigades from the Army's own long-range missile artillery, and they're even less connected to offensive airstrikes from the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Navy's AEGIS system arguably does the best job of integrating offense and defense in near-real-time, Green says, but even there, “different capabilities onboard a given ship can come under different commanders,” one with the authority to unleash Standard Missile interceptors against incoming threats and the other with the authority to fire Tomahawk missiles at the enemy launchers. This division of labor might have worked when warfare was slower. But China and Russia have invested massively in their arsenals of long-range, precision-guided missiles, along with the sensors and command networks to direct them to their targets. So, on a lesser scale, have North Korea and Iran. The former deputy secretary of defense, Bob Work, warned of future conflicts in which “salvo exchanges” of hundreds of missiles – hopefully not nuclear ones – might rocket across the war zone within hours. It's been obvious for over a decade that current missile defense systems simply can't cope with the sheer number of incoming threats involved, which led the chiefs of the Army and Navy to sign a famous “eight-star memo” in late 2014 that called, among other things, for stopping enemy missiles “left of launch.” But that approach would require real-time coordination between the offensive weapons, responsible for destroying enemy launchers, command posts, and targeting systems, and the defensive ones, responsible for shooting down whatever missiles made it into the air. While Navy Aegis and Army IBCS show some promise, Green writes, neither is yet capable of moving the data required among all the users who would need it: Indeed, IBCS is still years away from connecting all the Army's defensive systems, while Aegis only recently gained an offensive anti-ship option, a modified SM-6, alongside its defensive missiles. As two Army generals cautioned in a recent interview with Breaking Defense, missile defense and offense have distinctly different technical requirements that limit the potential of using a single system to run both. There are different legal restrictions as well: Even self-defense systems operate under strict limits, lest they accidentally shoot down friendly aircraft or civilian airliners, and offensive strikes can easily escalate a conflict. Green's 35-page paper doesn't solve these problems. But it's useful examination of how complex they can become. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/future-missile-war-needs-new-kind-of-command-csis/