17 juin 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Netherlands Selects C-390 As Hercules Replacement
The Netherlands has selected Embraer's C-390 airlifter as the replacement for its long-serving Lockheed C-130 Hercules fleet.
23 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
The Air Force tested its Advanced Battle Management System. Here’s what worked, and what didn’t.
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — The first field test of the U.S. Air Force's experimental Advanced Battle Management System in December was a success, with about 26 out of 28 capabilities showing some semblance of functionality during a recent exercise, the service's acquisition chief said Tuesday.
But the service will seek to be more ambitious during a second demonstration in April, which will focus on space and bring in elements from U.S. Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command, said Will Roper, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.
"I am thrilled to say that 26 out of 28 things work. That is too high of a success rate at this point in time, but I'll take it. We should be taking more risk than that,” he told reporters during a roundtable.
The three-day test took place at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and involved a potential cruise missile attack on the United States simulated by QF-16 drones. Through the exercise, Air Force F-22 jets, Air Force and Navy F-35 fighters, the Navy destroyer Thomas Hudner, an Army unit equipped with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, as well as special operators shared data in real time in ways the services cannot currently do in an operational environment.
What will ABMS eventually look like? That's still a mystery, even to the Air Force, which wants to test different solutions for connecting platforms, crunching data and sending it to other assets with the goal of eventually fielding what works and abandoning what doesn't.
“We gave the team the goals of: Pull what you can together in three and a half months to see how far we can stretch, how quickly we could achieve something,” said Air Force chief architect Preston Dunlap, who manages the ABMS effort. “We were quite happy actually, even with 10 percent solutions.”
Here's a rundown of some notable successes so far, as well as major failures:
The F-35 and F-22 were able to stealthily exchange data. Despite the two jets having advanced “sensor fusion” capabilities, the Air Force's two most advanced fighters can't really talk to each other. The F-35 uses the Multifunction Advanced Data Link, or MADL, to securely share sensitive information with other F-35s, while the F-22 has its own data link, the Intra-Flight Data Link, or IFDL.
Even using a non-stealthy connection to share information has its limitations: While the F-35 can both transmit and receive data via the Link 16, which meets NATO standards, the F-22 currently can only receive data.
However, the first ABMS test showed hopeful signs for fifth-generation fighter communication. The demonstration involved radio systems — built by F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin as well as Northrop Grumman, which manufactures key structures and mission systems for the aircraft, including MADL, Dunlap said. The demo also included Honeywell-made antennas built to speak across both MADL and IFDL, he added.
Those systems were integrated onto a ground based rig that “look[ed] like a big piece of hardware with radios on it,” according to Roper.
Then, the F-35 and F-22 flew over the system, exchanging data by bouncing it back-and-forth from the ground-based radios, Dunlap said.
He noted that the test verified that existing technology can be used to overcome three obstacles: translating the F-35's MADL to the F-22's IFDL; moving data across the different frequencies; and securing the communication.
"It was really herculean,” Dunlap said. "[The contractors] were excited by the speed of the acquisition team to get the ball going."
During the next ABMS demo in April, the Air Force plans to stretch the capability by putting the translation system inside the unmanned Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie for flight-based testing.
“I also challenged the team to expand the amount of information translated between the different platforms so they can take advantage of new information on the displays,” Dunlap said.
An AC-130 gunship connected with SpaceX's Starlink constellation. Although Dunlap did not provide much detail on this element of the exercise, he confirmed that the AC-130 was able to pass data through the constellation of small, high-bandwidth commercial internet satellites.
The Air Force has shown interest in connecting its platforms to commercial broadband satellites through its Global Lightning experiment. A demonstration with Starlink and the KC-135 tanker aircraft is in the works, and the service also plans to evaluate equipment from Iridium, OneWeb and L3Harris.
The Air Force created a cloud-based application for command and control. Typically, the service performs command and control from air operations centers — physical buildings where analysts sit in front of computers with specialized software that provides data from multiple assets, Dunlap said. Changes to software don't necessarily happen automatically, and they may require assistance from information technology experts.
In the ABMS exercise, the Air Force demonstrated a cloud-based battle management and situational awareness application for the first time. It used a “CloudOne” system to host data up to the secret level, which will be a formative system underlying ABMS, Dunlap said.
Both Amazon and Microsoft are involved in standing up the CloudOne technology, but Roper said the Air Force could use the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract vehicle for CloudOne if JEDI winner Microsoft provides better rates.
The robot dogs were a swing and a miss. U.S. Special Operations Command brought the robots that are capable of augmenting surveillance operations to the ABMS field test, but operators couldn't figure out how to connect them with the other platforms involved in the exercise.
“We had some robot dogs — apparently those exist — that can go and do patrol. We were never able to patch their feeds in,” Roper said.
There's hope for cybernetic canines becoming part of ABMS in the future though. Roper added that the ABMS team would be welcome to try to integrate the robots in future exercises.
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16 janvier 2020 | International, Naval
US Marine Corps could soon take out enemy ships with Navy missiles
By: David B. Larter and Jeff Martin WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps could soon get the Navy's new Naval Strike Missile for use as a shore battery, according to the Navy's acquisitions chief. “Just yesterday [Jan. 14] we had the team in that has the Naval Strike Missile on LCS working hand-in-hand with the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps does ground launchers, we do command and control," Assistant Secretary of the Navy James “Hondo” Geurts told reporters after his Jan. 15 speech at the annual Surface Navy symposium. “We'll make that immediately available to the Marine Corps.” Geurts said the effort on Naval Strike Missile, a Kongsberg/Raytheon product, was emblematic of a more coherent approach where instead of a dedicated Marine Corps effort to examine, test and field a system, the services were leveraging each other to get capabilities out faster. The missile was recently deployed to the Pacific on the littoral combat ship Gabrielle Giffords, and the weapon is capable of flying more than 100 miles. It can passively detect enemy ships with imagery in its brain and is so precise that it can target individual parts of a ship, like the engine room or bridge. In May, Raytheon announced it had been awarded $48 million through an other transaction authority contract to integrate the Naval Strike Missile into the Marine Corps' force structure, but very few details were available at the time. This won't be the first time the missile is based on land, as Poland's coastal defense forces already have several batteries in service. And in 2018 at the Rim of the Pacific exercise, the U.S. Army fired a Naval Strike Missile at a decommissioned ship as part of a live-fire demonstration. It's unknown what the Marine Corps will use as a launcher, as it is unclear whether or not the service's M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System can be used to fire the Naval Strike Missile. However, it is likely that the Corps' manned launchers will fire the missiles while on the deck of Navy amphibious ships, as the Corps has been testing the capability with HIMARS launchers. “We're serious about it,” Geurts said. “You've heard the commandant and the assistant commandant talk about more lethal anti-ship activity. ... It's certainly something we are looking at closely.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/surface-navy-association/2020/01/15/the-marine-corps-could-soon-take-out-enemy-ships-with-navy-missiles
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4 avril 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Boeing, CAE Agree to Enhance P-8 Training Solutions for Canada, Germany, and Norway
OTTAWA, April 4, 2023 – Boeing [NYSE: BA] and CAE [NYSE: CAE; TSX: CAE] signed teaming agreements to expand multi-mission platform collaboration in Canada, Germany and Norway. These agreements utilize the complementary capabilities of each company to provide superior management, technical and cost-effective training solutions for the P-8A Poseidon program. “These agreements aim to advance mission readiness for defense customers operating Boeing P-8 aircraft,” said Torbjorn Sjogren, Boeing vice president and general manager, Government Services. “Working together, Boeing and CAE can deliver outcome-based pilot and aircrew training, maintenance ground school, in-service support, and instructor training at the point of need.” As a member of Team Poseidon in Boeing’s Canadian Multi-Mission Aircraft (CMMA) offering, CAE is part of a Canadian P-8 industrial footprint that builds on 81 Canadian partners on the platform. “Mission success depends on advanced preparation and rapid response,” said Daniel Gelston, CAE Defense & Security president. “As a premier provider in flight training and simulation, we leverage collaboration to create an agile network of proven training, simulation and in-service support solutions to deliver critical readiness for defense forces worldwide.” This collaboration amplifies a long-standing relationship spanning commercial and defence portfolios across the globe. For more than a decade CAE has delivered operational flight trainers on the Boeing P-8A platform supporting the U.S. Navy, Royal New Zealand Air Force and United Kingdom Royal Air Force.