8 avril 2024 | International, Naval
“There’s no desire to over-militarize or create a theme of a contested battlespace in the Arctic," the commander of U.S. 2nd Fleet said.
31 octobre 2023 | International, Terrestre
The contract is to establish an artillery ammunition factory for an international customer.
7 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial
Oriana Pawlyk, Military.com When Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson visited AFWERX's Pilot Training Next program in Austin, Texas, last year, she watched as trainees took flight from the seats in front of her — through the use of virtual reality. It piqued her interest enough to ask service officials to explore waysthat similar flight simulator programs could be introduced to high schools to get young students involved in the nation's endeavors to create more pilots. Officials with Air Education and Training Command (AETC) are now gearing up to present Wilson's successor with a business case for more widespread use of the system, within the force. The move provides a glimpse into Air Force leaders' thinking as they overhaul the pilot training curriculum, introducing one that augments time airborne in the cockpit with simulators and technology on the ground. It comes as the Air Force readies itself for the possibility of complex conflict with a peer-level adversary equipped with long-range missiles and advanced combat aircraft. It's a future that may represent a strong contrast to recent decades, in which the Air Force has flown in largely uncontested airspace supporting ground troops. The service is attempting to boost its pilot ranks amid a longterm pilot shortage, even as its trainer fleet ages. Air Force officials say they want to move away from the service's old-fashioned, "industrial" approach to training — having pilots sit in classrooms for weeks then moving on to a trainer. This means using virtual reality earlier and more frequently in the training pipeline. As the service prepares to bring its latest trainer, known as the T-X, into the fold, it is proposing a more "concentrated dose" of training to seamlessly transition from virtual reality to the trainer and, finally, to the Formal Training Unit, or FTU. The system is well poised to reform in a few ways, said Gen. Mike Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command (ACC). Using the low-cost immersive environment of virtual reality, together with "competency-based learning," and moving skillset testing at the graduate level to an earlier place in the model, "would experience our pilots much faster," he said. "Those are two things that are poised to make a revolutionary changein how well we train pilots and in how long it takes us to train pilots," Holmes said Tuesday in an interview with Military.com. "I want to see how fast and well I can produce experienced pilots." Pilots end up leaving the service if they feel dissatisfied and lack a sense of purpose, added Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, AETC commander. "You have to fly a lot to be good at what you do, and we don't have the money, and we don't have the weather, and we don't have the range space ... [because of] sequestration. And all these things that are politically driven oftentimes are frustrating the force," Kwast said in a separate interview. Airline hiring efforts are the biggest factor that drives pilot retention and production problem in the services, officials have said. Old learning mechanisms also bog down the system, often adding to pilots' frustration, Kwast said. "We would [add] layers of things over time" through the course of a pilot's service, "basically assuming, 'You can't handle the truth!' or 'You're not smart enough to be able to learn this holistically, we have to give it to you piecemeal and then you'd put it together in your brain over time.' That's why it would take seven years to make a great mission commander pilot." But now, he said "We're breaking that paradigm." Trainer fleet in trouble? The service still relies heavily on its trainer fleet for training, even though virtual reality is the new frontier, Holmes said. "There's still no substitute for being in a real airplane," he said. "I think we'll always want a mix of learning our skills cheaply, but also build on decision-making in a real airplane." The T-38 Talon has been the backbone of the Air Force's undergraduate pilot training, or UPT, program for decades. But last year, the trainer fleet was plagued with a series of crashes, two of which were fatal. Those selected to fly bombers and fighters typically receive their advanced pilot training in the T-38. The T-1A Jayhawk, meanwhile, is used in advanced training for students who are slated to go into cargo or tanker aircraft. The T-6 Texan II, used for instrument familiarization and low-level and formation flying, also has had its share of problems. Last year, the Air Force ordered an operational pause for the T-6 fleet after pilots suffered a series of unexplained physiological episodes, or UPEs. As a result, AETC on Feb. 1 ordered an indefinite operational pause for all T-6 aircraft at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi; Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma; and Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. That pause was lifted Feb. 28. A team of experts determined that the T-6's On-Board Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS) filter and drain valvesfailed at higher rates than expected. The discovery led to repairs and increased inspections, but pilotscontinued to suffer from UPEs. A T-6 trainer from Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, crashed just last week. The Air Force is preparing to receive new trainer jets to replace its current Northrop Grumman-made T-38s, some of which date to the mid-1960s. In September, the service awarded Boeing Co. a $9.2 billion contract to build its next aircraft for training pilots, known as the T-X program. The first T-X aircraft and simulators are scheduled to arrive at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, in 2023. The service has committed to buying 351 T-X jets, 46 simulators and associated ground equipment. The pay ment structure, officials have said, also allows for an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity option to give the Air Force the opportunity to purchase up to 475 aircraft and 120 simulators. Delays to this program or other unforeseen challenges could have catastrophic consequences, said retired Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley, former Air Force chief of staff. "My anxiety over this when I was the chief [is that] we are one sortie away from this older inventory having a problem," Moseley, an F-15 Eagle pilot, said in a recent interview with Military.com. "Here we are in 2019, and we're going to fly these airplanes until 2024 before T-X starts coming in." Kwast and Holmes agreed that the T-38 fleet will continue to undergo any upgrades necessary to keep them flying as long as it makes sense. "You can make anything last longer; it just takes more money to sustain," Kwast said. "I guarantee that the T-1, the T-38 and the T-6 all can last as long as we need them to last, depending on the business case and the amount of money you want to spend. But will the T-38 or the T-1 become too expensive, and [therefore], we have to jump to a different technology? Then we would look at other options." Boeing said it stands ready to produce the T-X. "Our T-X program, including engineering, manufacturing and test, is located in long-established Boeing St. Louis facilities," wrote Rachelle Lockhart, spokeswoman for the company's T-X program, in an email. "In fact, we built and assembled our first two T-X aircraft in St. Louis prior to contract award to prove the maturity of our design, repeatability in manufacturing and performance. We're now on contract, executing on schedule as planned, as are our suppliers." She added the trainer's production schedule could be advanced at the Air Force's request. "The US Air Force plan calls for a full production rate of 48 jets a year, and we will meet the customer need," Lockhart said. "Should the Air Force request a higher rate of production, we are well positioned to accommodate it." Full article: https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-plan-to-revolutionize-pilot-training-2019-5
3 août 2020 | International, Naval
By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is taking major steps in an attempt to shake off years of false starts and setbacks with the Littoral Combat Ship program, an effort Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said he'd oversee on his watch. In an exclusive interview with Defense News on July 16, Gilday listed LCS as a major priority, saying he will turn up the heat on efforts to get the ship to become a major contributor to fleet operations. “There are things in the near term that I have to deliver, that I'm putting heat on now, and one of them is LCS,” Gilday said. “One part is sustainability and reliability. We know enough about that platform and the problems that we have that plague us with regard to reliability and sustainability, and I need them resolved.” “That requires a campaign plan to get after it and have it reviewed by me frequently enough so that I can be sighted on it. Those platforms have been around since 2008 — we need to get on with it. We've done five deployments since I've been on the job, we're going to ramp that up two-and-a-half times over the next couple of years, but we have got to get after it,” he added. “LCS for me is something, on my watch, I've got to get right.” Gilday's renewed focus on LCS comes after years of fits and starts as the Navy struggled with almost every aspect of the complicated program: from manning and maintaining the hulls, to keeping the gear running or even fielding the sensor suites needed to perform the missions for which they were built. The ship has become a perennial whipping boy for a Congress frustrated by the service's struggle to field new technologies, such as those built into the LCS or the Ford-class aircraft carrier, conceived in the early 2000s. Two of the technologies the Navy has yet to field are the mine-hunting mission module, intended to replace the service's aging minesweepers, and the anti-submarine warfare mission module. Both are years overdue, though they have made significant progress. Getting those fielded is among Gilday's top priorities. “I have to deliver ... both the mine and ASW modules,” Gilday said. “These ships are probably going to [start going] away in the mid-2030s if the [future frigate] FFG(X) build goes as planned. But I need to wring as much as I can out of those ships as quickly as I can.” The LCS program comprises two hulls: a monohull version built in Marinette, Wisconsin, by Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri; and a trimaran version built by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama. Congress funded 35 of the ships and has commissioned 20 of them, but deploying the ship has been a challenge because of reliability problems with the complicated propulsion systems designed to meet the Navy's 40-knot speed requirement. In 2016, the Navy fundamentally reorganized the program, jettisoning the signature modularity of the program where a single LCS would have a small, permanent crew and switch out anti-surface, anti-submarine or mine-warfare mission packages on the pier depending on the mission. Each mission package would then come with a group of specialists to operate the equipment. After a series of accidents, the Navy sought to simplify the concept; semi-permanently assign mission packages to each hull; and change a complicated three-crews-for-two-LCS-hulls model to a blue-and-gold crewing model used in ballistic missile submarines as a way of boosting operational tempo. The reorg was in response to concerns that the rotational crewing model reduced crew ownership of the vessel, potentially contributing to some of the accidents that plagued the program. One of the major accidents wrecked the then-forward-deployed Fort Worth's combining gear (roughly the same as the clutch on a car) when the crew started up the system without lube oil running. Prior to the Fort Worth accident, the combining gear onboard the Milwaukee encountered problems on the ship's transit from the shipyard to its home base in Florida and had to be towed into Norfolk, Virginia. Mission packages Gilday's goal of fielding the mission modules is well along already, according to two sources familiar with the progress, who spoke to Defense News on condition of anonymity. The mine-warfare mission module is on track for a final test and evaluation by the end of this year, a source with knowledge of the program told Defense News, and the individual components have already passed testing and are in initial low-rate production. End-to-end testing of the mine-warfare mission module is set to begin in fiscal 2021 and is on track to have its initial operating capability declared in 2022, another source said. The status of the ASW mission module, which has been a regular target of Congress-imposed budget cuts, is a little less clear. The next major milestones for the ASW mission package will likely slip to next year due to budget cuts, a source with knowledge of the program said. The mission module has been integrated into the LCS Fort Worth and testing began last fall. It's unclear if the testing will be delayed or interrupted if the Navy is able to carry through its plan to decommission the first four littoral combat ships. For the Independence variant — the trimaran hull — testing for the ASW mission module is slated to be installed on the LCS Kansas City, but there is no fixed date yet, according to a Navy official. Missions Aside from the issues with a buggy propulsion train and the delayed mission modules, Gilday said he was happy with where LCS is with regard to manning, and said the blue-gold crewing was giving him a lot of availability to play with. “I do think we have it about right with manning,” Gilday said. “We were honest with ourselves that the original design wasn't going to do it. I really like the blue-and-gold construct because I get way more [operational availability] than I would with just the single crew. “So I can get these ships out there in numbers doing the low-end stuff in, let's say, 4th Fleet where I wouldn't need a DDG.” The Navy deployed the LCS Detroit to South America — the 4th Fleet area of operations — last year on a counternarcotics mission, and it returned earlier this month. Those are the kinds of missions for which the LCS is perfectly suited, Gilday said. “I can deploy these things with a [law enforcement detachment] and a signals intelligence capability, and I can do that on LCS with carry-on gear,” Gilday said. “It's the right kind of platform for that. Also in 5th Fleet, those maritime security missions that we were heavily sighted on in the late 1990s and early 2000s: They still exist, I'd just prefer to do them with an LCS instead of a DDG if I can.” But without getting more reliability out of the propulsion system, even the low-end missions the Navy wants of the LCS will be a challenge. The heart of the issue seems to lie with long ocean transits, such as the one from San Diego, California, to Singapore, where the ships are supposed to be forward based. Cutting back on that transit, and the wear it puts on the ship, should be core to the Navy's strategy to getting more from LCS, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “The propulsion architecture's unreliability means you are going to have to come up with a different way to deploy the ship that doesn't require every deployment to be transoceanic,” Clark said. “By the time the ship gets to Singapore, it needs a lot of work done to it and your deployment time is cut down by the fact that you have to repair the ship once it arrives. Then it has to return to the U.S. So both those trips are so fraught that the Navy ends up devoting a lot of time and resources to it.” One alternative would be to forward-station the ships for a longer period of time than the 16-24 months the Navy envisioned, and place them in Sasebo, Japan, rather than Singapore, Clark said. Sasebo has always been in the cards for LCS as a home for the mine-warfare LCS hulls. When it comes to the delays on the mission modules, Clark said, the Navy should consider fielding those capabilities in the mine-warfare mission module that are already workable, or consider an alternate structure based on the model used by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians. “The other thing they need to do is come up with a way for the mine-warfare capabilities to the degree they are available. And come up with the concept of operations for that, meaning the warfare folks in San Diego would need to come up with concepts for the equipment they do have rather than what they want to have,” he said. As for the ASW mission module, that might be something the Navy will want to revisit, he added. “They need to decide if the ASW mission package is going to be part of LCS,” Clark explained. “The ASW module is the module with the most proven capability in it and is the one that would offer the best improvement in LCS contribution to the fleet. “But it's also the most expensive. And if LCS is not deploying, then why spend the money on it? And with the frigate coming along, it's going to be doing the same missions with the same kind of systems, so why invest in the LCS version?” What is clear is that leadership from the upper echelons of the Navy should help move things along, Clark said. “It's good to hear Gilday is taking it on,” he noted. “But I think part of that is going to be accepting that we're never going to get where we wanted to be on LCS, and accepting second best is probably the best way to get the most from LCS. “You'll have to say: ‘We accept the fact that we're not going to have a full mine-warfare mission module. We accept that we'll have to deploy them forward and eliminate these long transits and ASW is probably out the window.' So it is about making hard choices like that and taking the heat.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/07/31/the-us-navy-is-preparing-a-major-surge-of-lcs-deployments/