24 juillet 2020 | International, Naval

US Navy makes progress on aircraft carrier Ford’s bedeviled weapons elevators

By:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is over the halfway mark in certifying the new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford's 11 advanced weapons elevators, which have been at the center of an ongoing controversy over delays in getting the Navy's most expensive-ever warship ready for its first deployment.

In a news release Thursday, the Navy announced it had certified Lower Stage Weapons Elevator 1, the sixth certified working elevator. LSWE 1 moves bombs from the forward magazine up to a staging area beneath the flight deck, where the weapons are armed and sent to the upper-stage weapons elevators that go to the flight deck. Crews had already certified the elevator that brings bombs from the aft magazine to the staging area.

The elevators are designed to reduce the time it takes to get bombs armed and to the flight deck to mount on aircraft.

“LSWE 5 has given us the capacity to move ordnance from the aft magazine complex deep in the ship through the carrier to the flight deck with a speed and agility that has never been seen before on any warship,” Rear Adm. James Downey, program executive officer for aircraft carriers, said in a statement. “LSWE 1 doubles-down on that capability and ramps up the velocity of flight deck operations. LSWEs 1 and 5 will now operate in tandem, providing a dramatic capability improvement as we proceed toward full combat system certification aboard Ford.”

The remaining five weapons elevators are on track for certification by the time the ship goes to full-ship shock trials in the third quarter of 2021.

The weapons elevators became the center of a firestorm last year and contributed to the firing of former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.

In January 2019, Spencer announced he'd told the president that if the weapons elevators aren't functioning by midsummer, then the president should fire him. But within months Spencer had to admit that the weapons elevators would not be finished until the end of 2021 or maybe 2022, which he blamed on Huntington Ingalls Industries for a lack of adequate communication.

Turnover

The Ford has had a witch's brew of technical problems and delays since construction of the ship began in 2005.

The latest hiccup came in June in the form of a fault in the power supply system to the electromagnetic aircraft launch system, which is replacing the steam catapult system on Nimitz-class carriers. The fault curtailed flight operations on the ship for several days while the crew and contractors tried to identify the issue.

In the wake of that incident, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts fired Capt. Ron Rutan as Ford's program manager, citing “performance over time.” Geurts installed Capt. Brian Metcalf as program head.

Making the Ford deployment ready was a focus of former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who likened the ship to an albatross around the Navy's neck.

“The Ford is something the president cares a lot about, it's something he talks a lot about, and I think his concerns are justified,” Modly said. “It's very, very expensive, and it needs to work.

“And there is a trail of tears that explains why we are where we are, but right now we need to fix that ship and make sure it works. There is nothing worse than having a ship like that, our most expensive asset, being out there as a metaphor for why the Navy can't do anything right.”

Conceived in an era when the Defense Department was looking to make giant steps forward in military technology while it had no direct peer competitors, the lead ship was packed with at least 23 new technologies. Those included a complete redesign of the systems used to arm, launch and recover the ship's aircraft.

All those systems have, in their turn, caused delays in getting the Navy's most expensive-ever warship to the fleet, which was originally to have deployed in 2018, but now will likely not deploy until 2023. The Ford cost the Navy roughly $13.3 billion, according to the latest Congressional Research Service report on the topic.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/07/23/the-us-navy-is-making-progress-on-the-carrier-fords-bedeviling-weapons-elevators/

Sur le même sujet

  • UK shoots for new laser weapons against drones, missiles

    10 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial

    UK shoots for new laser weapons against drones, missiles

    By: Andrew Chuter LONDON – Britain is planning to invest up to $162 million developing three directed-energy weapon demonstrators, including one aimed at killing drones, the Ministry of Defence has announced. The MoD said it had notified industry this week, in what is called a Prior Information Notice, of its intention to procure two laser-based demonstrators and a radio-frequency weapon to “explore the potential of the technology and accelerate its introduction onto the battlefield.” The British look to start the procurement process later this year and hope to have the new systems ready for trials in 2023. A spokesman for the MoD said it's too early to talk about any other timelines or exactly how the weapons development work will be procured. In a statement the MoD said it was forming a new joint program office and is now recruiting personnel to manage the program. The demonstrators are part of the MoD's ‘Novel Weapons Programme,' which is responsible for the trial and implementation of innovative weapon systems. The new arms are expected to reach the frontline within 10 years. The British already have a laser-based technology development effort underway. A £30 million ($37 million) technology demonstrator program known as Dragonfire was awarded to an industry consortium in 2017. Missile maker MBDA, Qinetiq, BAE Systems, Leonardo and others are involved in the industrial effort. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory is leading the effort from the MoD side. Initial trials on Dragonfire are scheduled to take place this year. The spokesman said that while Dragonfire is about “assessing the viability of the technology, the new work will be looking at issues like size, functionality and exactly how they integrate on existing platforms.” The new program will include two high-energy laser demonstrators. One onboard a ship for air and surface defense applications and a similar laser mounted on a land vehicle for short-range air defense and counter-surveillance applications. The third program is aimed demonstrating a high-power radio frequency weapon mounted on a land vehicle against aerial drones and to counter enemy movements. The weapon is designed to disrupt and disable an adversary's computers and electronics. The MoD statement said Britain already has over 30 years' experience in radio-frequency and directed- energy weapons “during which time the UK has become a world leader in developing new power generation technologies and a global hub for the performance testing and evaluation of these systems.” “The new systems are expected to be trialed in 2023 on Royal Navy ships and Army vehicles but, once developed, both technologies could be operated by all three services. The armed forces will use these exercises to get a better understanding of DEW, test the systems to their limits, and assess how they could be integrated with existing platforms," said the MoD. The MoD released images of the laser weapons mounted on a Type 26 frigate and a Wildcat naval helicopter. The new program still leaves the British playing catch-up in the deployment of laser weapons. The U.S. Navy trialed a laser weapon on an operational warship several years ago and is now planning to install a high-energy laser and integrated optical dazzler with surveillance system on the destroyer Preble in 2021. On the land side, German defense contractor Rheinmetall has been developing a laser weapon for several years and recently undertook comprehensive trials with a weapon station suitable for mounting on a platform like a Boxer armored vehicle. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/07/09/uk-shoots-for-new-laser-weapons-against-drones-missiles/

  • "Nous visons les entreprises qui ont un potentiel dual, à la fois civil et militaire", annonce Emmanuel Chiva, le patron de l'Agence de l'innovation de Défense

    3 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

    "Nous visons les entreprises qui ont un potentiel dual, à la fois civil et militaire", annonce Emmanuel Chiva, le patron de l'Agence de l'innovation de Défense

    Pour le directeur de l'Agence de l'innovation de défense, Emmanuel Chiva, il faut détecter plus vite les technologies capables d'arriver sur le champ de bataille pour imaginer les parades et les évaluer à des fins militaires. L'Usine Nouvelle. - Quel est l'objectif du ministère des Armées avec cette deuxième édition digitale du Forum innovation défense, du 2 au 4 décembre ? Emmanuel Chiva. - Nous souhaitons montrer à un large public la diversité de l'innovation de défense en termes de recherche, de projets et de préparation des futures capacités militaires. Nous voulons attirer des sociétés industrielles et des porteurs de projets innovants en les informant du soutien dont ils peuvent bénéficier. C'est également un moyen de susciter des vocations chez les ingénieurs et les chercheurs. Cet événement sera l'occasion de lancer notre fonds d'investissement dédié à l'innovation de défense et doté de 200 millions d'euros. Quel est le profil des entreprises ciblées ? Nous visons les entreprises qui ont un potentiel dual, à la fois civil et militaire dans des technologies qui sont importantes pour les armées : les technologies quantiques, l'intelligence artificielle, l'énergie, les matériaux... Ce qui nous intéresse, c'est de « capter » des technologies développées par des sociétés déjà établies sur leur marché primaire, mais qui présentent un intérêt pour la défense. Pourtant certaines sociétés innovantes nous disent qu'il n'est pas toujours simple de travailler avec le ministère. Comme le fabricant de drones Parrot... Je suis surpris. Des acteurs comme Parrot sont reçus à l'Agence et nous regardons comment nous pourrions intégrer leurs technologies... C'est typiquement le type d'innovation qui nous intéresse. De la même manière, nous travaillons avec Franky Zapata [l'inventeur du Flyboard, un engin à sustentation hydropropulsé, ndlr]. Nous réfléchissons à l'utilisation de sa technologie pour envisager un « robot-mule volant » à des fins d'évacuation sanitaire, de transport de munitions... Nous finançons ses travaux pour optimiser ses moteurs en termes d'autonomie et de discrétion acoustique, en partenariat avec l'Office national d'études et de recherches aérospatiales (Onera) et la société Poly-Shape, spécialiste de la fabrication additive à partir de métal. Auparavant, les grands programmes militaires dans le spatial, la dissuasion nucléaire, tiraient l'innovation civile... Aujourd'hui, l'inverse se produit. Pourquoi ? Ce qui a changé, c'est le rythme de l'innovation civile. On assiste à un raccourcissement des cycles entre l'idée, sa réalisation et son emploi sur un marché. La puissance des Gafam et de leurs équivalents chinois, les BATX, change aussi les équilibres. Ils investissent des sommes considérables dans les applications à base d'intelligence artificielle, d'où l'accélération et la démocratisation de l'accès à cette technologie. C'est une source d'opportunités pour les armées. Le secteur civil est mieux placé que nous pour développer certaines technologies car nous n'irons pas plus vite. C'est le cas des processeurs graphiques, tirés par l'industrie du jeu vidéo, ou de la propulsion électrique, tirée par l'industrie automobile. Néanmoins, ces technologies civiles vont nécessiter une adaptation. Une voiture électrique sur une autoroute européenne n'est pas soumise aux mêmes conditions d'emploi qu'un véhicule d'infanterie dans le nord du Mali, où les routes sont sommaires et les stations de recharge inexistantes ! Cette démocratisation des technologies ne représente-elle pas une menace ? Ce qui nous empêche de dormir, ce serait de rater les prochaines évolutions à très court cycle et que nos adversaires s'en emparent alors avant nous. Regardez les groupes terroristes : ils utilisent les drones, l'impression 3D pour fabriquer des armes... Plus vite nous détectons l'innovation, plus vite nous pouvons imaginer les parades pour nous en protéger et les évaluer pour un usage militaire. Nous sommes engagés dans une course. Comment l'agence s'organise-t-elle pour capter cette innovation tous azimuts ? La loi de programmation militaire 2019-2025 prévoit d'augmenter de 25 % les crédits annuels consacrés à l'innovation pour atteindre 1 milliard d'euros en 2022. Avec ses 100 salariés, l'Agence agit avant tout comme un chef d'orchestre de l'innovation. Et dans un orchestre, le chef ne joue pas tous les instruments ! Nous nous appuyons sur un réseau national qui comprend les laboratoires d'innovation des armées et les centres d'expertise technique et d'essais de la Direction générale de l'armement. Nous avons par ailleurs créé une cellule de détection et de captation, une petite équipe chargée de faire en quelque sorte « la chasse et la pêche » à l'innovation. Il s'agit de correspondants qui se rendent dans les incubateurs, les salons, les communautés d'innovations... Ces derniers ont permis à l'Agence de travailler avec la société SEAir, qui fabrique des foils rétractables pour les bateaux à coque semi-rigide. Demain, une embarcation des forces spéciales intégrera cette innovation. Nos équipes n'hésitent pas non plus à se rendre là où on ne les attend pas. Les salons de cosmétique par exemple ! Les géants du domaine réalisent des développements pour le traitement de la peau qui pourraient avoir un intérêt dans le soin aux grands brûlés. Dans certains domaines technologiques, par exemple les missiles hypervéloces, la France ne risque-t-elle pas de se faire déclasser ? Les États-Unis, la Russie et la Chine sont les plus actifs sur ce sujet. Si la France est plus discrète, elle n'a pas forcément de retard du fait des exigences technologiques dans le domaine des véhicules spatiaux liés au programme de dissuasion. Nous avons une expertise reconnue en matière de technologies spatiales, de propulsion, de guidage et de science des matériaux. Nous menons un programme structurant dans le domaine de l'hypervélocité qui s'incarne, par exemple, dans le développement par l'Agence d'un démonstrateur dédié à la montée en maturité des technologies d'un planeur hypersonique. Quelles sont vos priorités en matière de technologies quantiques ? À notre sens, l'ordinateur quantique n'est pas un sujet militaire en soi. La recherche d'un tel ordinateur est faite par l'industrie, au niveau mondial. En revanche, le ministère des Armées finance les travaux qui sont spécifiquement liés à une utilisation militaire possible des technologies quantiques. Les technologies de cryptographie post-quantique nous intéressent au premier plan. Nous suivons également de près l'évolution des capteurs quantiques. En particulier les travaux de l'Onera sur les gravimètres quantiques à atomes froids, qui peuvent avoir des applications dans la navigation sans GPS. Vous aviez en prévision la création d'une Red Team au sein du ministère des Armées, qui s'appuierait sur des auteurs de science-fiction. De quoi s'agit-il ? Nous profiterons du Digital forum innovation défense pour faire découvrir les auteurs qui ont intégré cette Red Team et pour rendre publics ses premiers travaux. Son but est d'identifier les menaces auxquelles nous pourrions être confrontés à l'horizon 2060 et la manière de les anticiper d'un point de vue technologique, organisationnel et sociétal... Pour illustrer la démarche, citons l'équipe de Los Alamos du programme nucléaire américain à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, qui a reconnu s'être inspirée des ouvrages de Robert Heinlein, un auteur de science-fiction, pour mettre au point le concept de la dissuasion nucléaire. Isaac Asimov, auteur de la série « Fondation », a également travaillé pour le gouvernement américain. Nous avons d'abord été surpris par le succès de notre appel à candidatures auprès des personnes travaillant dans le domaine de la science-fiction : auteurs, écrivains, dessinateurs... Plus de 600 candidatures ont été déposées alors que nous nous attentions à en recevoir une vingtaine ! https://www.usinenouvelle.com/editorial/nous-visons-les-entreprises-qui-ont-un-potentiel-dual-a-la-fois-civil-et-militaire-annonce-emmanuel-chiva-le-patron-de-l-agence-de-l-innovation-de-defense.N1034509

  • FARA: Five-Way Fight For Army’s Future Scout

    26 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial

    FARA: Five-Way Fight For Army’s Future Scout

    By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: After four decades of failed attempts to replace its Vietnam-vintage OH-58 Kiowa scout, next month the Army will choose two of five competing teams to build prototypes for a new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. Those prototypes, in turn, will compete for a mass-production contract in a 2023 “fly off,” with deliveries no later than 2028. A new scout is urgently overdue as the US faces ever-more-sophisticated Russian and Chinese air defenses that can keep traditional aircraft at bay. But with limited budgets, the Army will have to pick and choose high-priority units to get FARA first, and the rest of the force will have to wait. “We've got to look at, where are the most critical spots to bring capability,” said Brig. Gen. Michael McCurry, director of aviation for the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for operations and plans. The priority is the cutting-edge combat units that must break open sophisticated anti-aircraft defensives for the rest of the force to follow, he told me: “That penetrate force, that's where FARA is going to go.” Learning From the Past Now, the Army has made its job easier in a couple of important ways. Perhaps most important, instead of the traditional dozens or hundreds of detailed technical specifications that hem in designers' ingenuity, Future Vertical Lift director Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen told me, “we have very few critical attributes within our FARA spec.” One huge thing that the Army is not asking for: stealth. Unlike the costly Boeing Comanche cancelled in 2006, the FARA won't have to be shaped and coated to be impervious to radar – which is largely irrelevant to low-flying helicopters hiding behind hills, trees, or buildings, which are most often detected by the sound of their rotors, not by radar. Like the Comanche, advertised as a “digital quarterback,” FARA will act as an electronic hub for battlefield intelligence, collecting target data from drones and passing it to Army artillery, hypersonic missiles, and Air Force strike fighters – but network tech has come a long way since 2006, the year before the iPhone went on sale. Finally, unlike the Comanche, FARA won't be a conventional helicopter with a single main rotor and a small tail rotor for stability. The speed and range required to survive the future battlefield are greater than that classic set-up can achieve. That's driven all four firms who've discussed their designs in public – Boeing has not revealed anything – to adopt innovative configurations the Army's never fielded before. Only one of the designs, Sikorsky's, is based on an existing aircraft that's done actual flight tests. But the Army is confident the competitors can deliver. In detailed modeling, Rugen said, “all those offerings are beating those [minimum] mission critical attributes that we're trying towards.” Congress actually cut the FARA budget for 2020 by $34 million. That won't slow the program down, the Army has said, but it will reduce the amount of Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) the service can provide the contractors to build their prototypes around: weapons systems including a 20-millimeter autocannon and a missile launcher, Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) electronics, and the GE Improved Turbine Engine. To simplify and speed up development, all the competitors are required to include these standard-issue systems in their design — but the aircraft they build around them are radically different. Design shop AVX has proposed an aircraft with two helicopter-style main rotors for vertical takeoff, wings for extra lift, and a pair of their characteristic ducted fans for speed. AVX, founded by Bell alumni, has never built an actual aircraft. But it's backed by the manufacturing might of the much larger L3Harris, a firm created by the merger of the 18th and 26th-largest defense contractors in the world (as per their 2019 rankings on the Defense News Top 100). By contrast, Bell – part of Textron, No. 34 on the Top 100 – is a major builder of both military and commercial helicopters, as well as the revolutionary V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, from which the company's contender for the Army's future transport aircraft, the V-280, derives. Ironically, the Bell 360 Invictus is the most conservative-looking of the four known FARA designs: It's a streamlined single-main-rotor helicopter (looking kind of like Comanche) with the addition of two short wings for extra lift. Inside the aircraft, though, Bell is using new fly-by-wire flight controls and other technologies developed for its civilian Bell 525. Aerospace giant Boeing – No. 2 of the top 100, counting its defense contracts alone – builds the Army's current mainstay armored gunship, the AH-64 Apache; its heavy lifter, the CH-47 Chinook; and, with Bell, the V-22 tiltrotor. But Boeing, which built the stealthy Comanche, is so far in public-relations stealth mode on FARA, declining to discuss its design. Karem Aerospace is another design shop with an excellent pedigree – its founder is the father of the Predator drone – but no track record of actually building an aircraft. However, it's partnered with Northrop Grumman (No. 3 of the top 100) and Raytheon (No. 4) for this program, giving it serious manufacturing heft. The Karem AR-40 design has a unique combination of a single main rotor on top, a propeller at the tail that can swivel to act either as a tail rotor for stability or a pusher propeller for thrust, and wings that can tilt for the optimum aerodynamic angle in different modes of flight. Last in the alphabet, comes Sikorsky, the helicopter division of the world's biggest defense contract, Lockheed Martin. While Sikorsky's Raider-X design hasn't flown yet, it's essentially a 20 percent larger version of the two S-97 Raiders the company built and flight-tested at its own expense. (One of them was totaled in the process, thankfully with no loss of life). And Sikorsky already knows how to upscale its compound helicopter technology, because there's already an even bigger member of the family, the Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 Defiant, now in flight tests for the Army's Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA). All these aircraft derive from the Collier Trophy-winning X2 and share its configuration: two main rotors on top, using ultra-rigid blades to provide maximum lift with minimum vibration at high speeds, and a single pusher propeller at the tail. Between the X2, the S-97, and the SB>1, Sikorsky's configuration has been through far more flight testing than any of its competitors on FARA. So which team has the best combination of innovative design, proven technology, and the manufacturing muscle to build it at a price the nation can afford? That's a call the Army will make, and soon. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/02/fara-five-way-fight-for-armys-future-scout

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