4 février 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — If the U.S. Air Force takes two years to conduct a light-attack experiment — made possible in part by industry investments — and then abandons it, why should defense contractors buy into the next one?
That was the question posed to the Air Force's top uniformed acquisition official by one attendee of a Feb. 1 event held by the Air Force Association.
"I think there's a skepticism out here,” said Mike Loh, a retired Air Force four-star general who now runs a consulting firm.
“There's got to be a requirement or funding or both at the end of that, otherwise you've got guys in industry that are investing a lot of money, and they're looking back at light-attack aircraft,” he said. “What did you do? Nothing. You put it on the back burner.”
Loh's question highlights the confusion surrounding the Air Force's path forward on the light-attack experiment, as well as unease about the way the service approaches industry investment in short-term experimentation or development campaigns with no clear contract award at the end of the process.
Industry investments have already allowed the service to fly the aircraft, set up logistics infrastructure and try new capabilities
Last month, Air Force officials confirmed the service would not put out a final solicitation for the light-attack program. Matt Donovan, its undersecretary, said on Jan. 18 that the service preferred to conduct additional experiments and wanted to broaden the campaign.
This latest shift follows a failed attempt to acquire a light-attack plane about a decade ago. In 2009, the Air Force began the Light Attack/Armed Reconnaissance program, and its competitors — the Textron AT-6 and Sierra Nevada Corp.-Embraer A-29 Super Tucano — are the same two aircraft involved in the current experimentation campaign.
That program fizzled out due to political reasons around 2013, but the Air Force is still hopeful it can press ahead with its latest light-attack effort.
“I have ideas of how we go forward, and I think we know how we go forward,” Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the military deputy for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, said of the light-attack experiment on Friday. ”We are planning to broaden the experimentation out and carry the experimentation forward, and I think when our budget hits, you'll understand more of what we're doing."
Bunch said the experiment has helped validate the Air Force's requirement for a light-attack capability that can counter violent extremist threats in a low-cost manner.
“What I don't want to do is end up in a position that I've got F-35s chasing small buses or mopeds or whatever else we may be trying to chase,” he said.
But when it came down to it, Air Force officials looked at the new National Defense Strategy — which prioritizes a high-end fight — and decided against making a large-scale buy of light-attack planes in the upcoming budget, he said.
The Pentagon's annual report by the director of operational test and evaluation, released Thursday, shed some light on what may have been the Air Force's initial plans for the light-attack program.
The service would have purchased 359 aircraft for eight operational squadrons and three training units, with a contract for either the AT-6 or A-29 to be awarded before September, the report said. The Air Force also considered getting a waiver so that it conduct component-level, live-fire tests for both aircraft before making a final downselect.
An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed to Defense News that the timeline and procurement quantities noted in the DOT&E report are no longer accurate.
Expanding the experiment
What becomes of the light-attack experiment remains unknown — Air Force officials haven't made it clear what the service wants to see in future stages of the effort.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein stressed the importance of getting buy-in from international militaries during a Jan. 26 interview with Defense News. He also said aircraft like helicopters and drones could be considered in addition to the turboprop planes that dominated the first phases of the experiment.
On Friday, Bunch said the service could look at “technologies we may be able to put on platforms or solutions that we may not have thought of” during the first phase of the experiment.
“I know many people have talked about specific platforms. What I want to talk about [is] not necessarily that,” he said. That may point to a systems-of-systems approach similar to what the Air Force is seeking with its Advanced Battle Management System — a replacement for its JSTARS ground surveillance planes that will be comprised of a network of existing and new sensors.
But the Air Force will need to be clear with industry about what it wants, said Andrew Hunter, head of the defense-industrial initiatives group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
For example, “if the answer is that they need to do some kind of dramatic cost-cutting initiative, give them a number,” he said.
It might also benefit the Air Force to incorporate prototypes in the large-scale international exercises it regularly holds with partners, which has the added benefit of giving foreign militaries more exposure to technology that the U.S. might buy, he said.
“I think people will stick with it for a while because there's still a belief that the Air Force will invest and, more important, that there is still a broad international market for this capability,” Hunter said of the light-attack experiment.
But, he added, the uncertainty regarding the future of the effort illustrates the constraints of rapid prototyping and experimentation: There's no promise of a program of record at the end of the road.
“[While] there is some value of exercising the muscle ... not every one of these is going to lead to a production program,” he said.
After two years of experimentation, the Air Force still doesn't have an answer for how it should fill its light-attack requirement, but Bunch, the acquisition official, was adamant the experiment has had value.
"I may be the only one that believes it, but I actually believe it has been a success. We tried something we hadn't done. We built a partnership with industry. We experimented. We learned a lot, and we got to the point where we weren't ready to make a large buy decision at this stage. I still believe that is learning,” Bunch said.
“And I believe it is something we will take the lessons learned and roll it into how we go forward,” he added. “We've got to look at ourselves in the mirror and say: ‘Was that good or was it bad, and how do we do it better?' We've got to do our own image check."
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Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has discontinued its Rapid Equipping Force stood up during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to get urgently needed capabilities into the field in 180 days or less. As the Army shifts from a focus on counterinsurgency operations to going up against near-peer adversaries like Russia and China across air, land, sea, cyberspace and space domains in large-scale operations, the REF's utility and mission has been in question. The service is also disbanding its Asymmetric Warfare Group. “As our focus changes to great power competition and large-scale combat operations, Army analysis indicated that the personnel and resources could best be utilized in building the operational fighting force,” an Oct. 2 Army statement read. “To ensure the value of organization's work over the past 14 years is not lost, all lessons learned will be maintained by the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, via the Center for Army Lessons Learned, Centers of Excellence and other [Training and Doctrine Command] enterprise stakeholders.” The discontinuation won't happen overnight. Both organizations will be fully deactivated by the end of fiscal 2021 “and will transition the mission of providing immediate support to other organizations,” the statement noted. Over the past several years, the REF hung on to certain missions and continued to advocate for its relevancy. A year ago, Defense News sat down with the REF's director in a new, smaller office space at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in a conference room surrounded by small counter-unmanned aircraft systems that it was rapidly fielded to units and considered one of its success stories. In 2017, the REF was focused on counter-drone technologies; dismounted electronic warfare equipment; tethered intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; and urban operations equipment including up-armored commercial vehicles. But many of those technologies have found other homes within the Army. As the service stood up its new security force assistance brigades, the REF expected a surge in work to support the needs of those units in the field as they deployed. The REF played a small role at the time, providing the first SFAB with a few items it needed ahead of deployment such as communications gear and an item that assisted the unit with indirect fires. Last year, the REF was highlighting its nearly 10-year-old Expeditionary Lab, a 3D-printing trailer that can be deployed downrange to solve problems for units operating in austere environments. Col. Joe Bookard, who is still the REF's director, told Defense News at the time that the REF would continue to fill the niche of urgently supplying soldiers with capabilities to meet immediate needs while they are deployed. He said that, in a way, the REF has been doing what Army Futures Command is doing now, but on a smaller scale: providing capabilities that are rapidly procured to a small number of soldiers for evaluation, and then refining those capabilities as needed. In 2019, the REF addressed 400 requirements sent from combatant commanders to address operational capability gaps, Bookard said. Among some of the recent success stories is the tiny Black Hornet, an unmanned aircraft system that is now a program of record and was fielded as the Soldier Borne Sensor. The REF was also working to transition two hand-held counter-UAS capabilities — the DroneBuster and the Drone Defender — to the larger force as official programs. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/10/02/army-discontinues-rapid-equipping-force/