Top Air Force officer's plan to 'accelerate change or lose' is picking up speed, one year in

Sur le même sujet

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  6 septembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  F-22, F-35 jets won’t hit Mattis’ readiness targets

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force's stealthy fighters will not meet an 80 percent mission-capable rate requirement set by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, top officials revealed Wednesday. Appearing at the 2019 Defense News Conference, Lt. Gen. Mark Kelly, deputy chief of staff for operations, said that the F-22 and F-35A would both fall short of the capability target set by Mattis shortly before his exit from the Pentagon. The F-16, however, “should” hit that target rate. In a memo first revealed by Defense News last October, Mattis ordered the Pentagon's F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18 aircraft inventories to hit 80 percent mission-capability rates. A July investigation by sister publication Air Force Times revealed that in fiscal 2018, when Mattis issued the memo, the service was in a readiness nose dive: Of the 5,413 or so aircraft in the fleet, the percentage able to fly at any given time decreased steadily each year since at least FY12, when 77.9 percent of aircraft were deemed flyable. By FY17, that metric plunged to 71.3 percent, and it dipped again to 69.97 percent in FY18. Analysts were skeptical that such an increase could be achieved in just one year, and it appears that skepticism was well-founded. However, Kelly argued, not all mission-capable rates are created equal. “We learned a lot from the MC80 [mission-capable 80 percent] effort. One of the big things we learned is that our long-range readiness strategy, which takes a lot more consideration than MC80, is frankly a more viable strategy,” he said of an effort that takes a more holistic approach to whether needed assets are ready to use. “MC80 is actually a very important metric of how ready we are to go to war, but there is an easy way for the Air Force to achieve MC80 on any airframe, and that's to just stop flying. We actually flew more,” Kelly said. The F-22 struggled to hit 80 percent in large part because the low-observable coating on the plane requires slow, careful work to maintain, which drags down the mission-capable rates. The F-35A, meanwhile, was being stood up and flown more during this period than ever before, which was beneficial for the service, but meant that mission-capable rates were impacted by operational use. “So facts matter,” Kelly concluded. “The facts are: We won't make it, but the data behind the facts is we're actually having pretty good success.” During the panel, Air Force leaders were asked if the 386 squadron target, first unveiled last September, is still a hard goal for the service. Lt. Gen. Timothy Fay, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, didn't provide a concrete answer, but he did indicate that capability — as opposed to capacity — may be a more important standard for the future. “386 was an number we worked very hard on,” Fay said. “But it's not just a question of capacity. ... Yes, we have a force that's too small,” but the service is now “looking at new technologies, new ways to use those technologies.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2019/09/04/f-22-f-35-wont-hit-mattis-readiness-targets/

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  16 septembre 2024 | International, Terrestre

  New Zealand Air Force receives first Super Hercules cargo plane

  The fleet will eventually comprise five aircraft, decided in a $1 billion deal that goes back to 2020.

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  22 juillet 2020 | International, Terrestre

  DARPA issues solicitation for moving-target recognition project

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department's advanced research arm issued a broad agency announcement July 15 for technology that would use algorithms to identify moving military ground vehicles. The Moving Target Recognition program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Strategic Technology Office is a “vital part” of DARPA's “Mosaic Warfare” vision, in which each weapon system is one “tile” in a large force package that overwhelms the adversary. For the program, DARPA is interested in algorithms and collection techniques that allow synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, sensors to “detect, geolocate, and image moving ground targets,” the announcement read. If the goals of the project are met, the MTR program will then work to develop automatic target recognition algorithms for the moving target images. “Emphasis is on military vehicle targets, including slow moving vehicles whose SAR signatures are superimposed on clutter,” the announcement noted. Test for moving target recognition will include airborne data collection experiments to test and evaluate the effectiveness of algorithms. Under the contract, performers will be required to provide the airborne radar sensors and flight services, while the government team will design experiments with moving ground vehicles. DARPA anticipates handing out multiple awards. The MTR program has two phases. Phase one will focus on SAR moving target detection, geolocation and imaging, according to the announcement. It has a performance period of two years and a six-month option. Phase two, which is solicited through the July 15 notice, will center on automatic target recognition. Second phase instructions will be provided to the phase one performers before the end of the phase one base period. No award amount was provided. The U.S. Army is also working through the challenges associated with advanced target recognition capabilities, such as ensuring that algorithms receive adequate and sufficient data to mature and learn. “If you're training an algorithm to recognize cats, you can get on the internet and pull up hundreds of thousands of pictures of cats,” Gen. Mike Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, said in June. “You can't do that for a T-72 [Russian tank]. You can get a bunch of pictures, but are they at the right angles, lighting conditions, vehicle sitting camouflaged to vehicle sitting open desert?” DARPA's mosaic warfare effort includes several other projects under the Strategic Technology Office, including one that would automate aerial dogfighting. The office is also developing two complementary systems that would identify combat systems in an area available for support missions and quickly plan their route to an area. https://www.c4isrnet.com/home/2020/07/21/darpa-issues-solicitation-for-moving-target-recognition-project/