25 septembre 2018 | International, Naval
By: David B. Larter
WASHINGTON — Congress sent a message this year that it wants the Navy to build amphibious ships, and it's going to put up the money to do it.
Overall the Navy's shipbuilding account got a $2.2 billion boost over the $21.9 billion it asked for, but amphibs fared especially well in the deal.
The minibus spending bill that advanced out of the Senate and is headed to the House for its final vote funded $350 million for accelerated acquisition of the LPD-17 Flight II, a somewhat streamlined version of the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. That move comes on the heels of the Navy awarding Huntington Ingalls Industries a $165.5 million contract for purchasing long-lead time materials in August.
The ship, which is destined to cost $1.64 billion for the first ship and $1.4 billion for each subsequent ship, will replace the old dock-landing ships designed to launch both helicopters and amphibious vehicles onto the beach.
But the spending spree on amphibs didn't stop with LPD-17 Flight II. Congress added three ship-to-shore connector craft for a total of eight in 2019, a $182.5 million plus-up over what the Navy requested. Congress also added $350 million for the advance procurement of Landing Helicopter Assault Ship 9, and added an expeditionary fast-transport ship (a fast ferry) to the budget for a total of $225 million.
The congressional largess toward amphibious shipbuilding is driven both by Congress' desire to push the Navy to a 355-ship fleet as fast as possible, and by the evolving role played by amphibious ships in the Navy's strategic thinking, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Clark, who worked on one of the Navy's recent studies to choose a composition of the future fleet, said the Navy is increasingly using the amphibs and their aircraft in combat roles and keeping the carriers in more blue water environments.
“They are using the amphibs more as front-line capital ships, with the carriers being more of a strategic force that you keep maybe not as close to the enemy shoreline,” he said.
Anti-access, area denial
This move is being driven by China and Russia, which have made the capability of long-range anti-ship strike from shore batteries a priority in order to keep the U.S. Navy's carriers at bay.
But to combat this dynamic, the Navy has increasingly looked to the Marine Corps and its amphibious force as a way to throw off the calculations of adversaries, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and now analyst with The Heritage Foundation.
The thinking goes that the Marine Corps can slip into the range of Chinese missiles, land a force on a feature or island, and start fighting back with missiles and sensors of their own. This will force the Chinese to expend resources to address the Marine threat, creating opportunities for the Navy to use its hefty strike capabilities.
“A Marine landing force on an island or feature has to present a problem to the enemy that is credible — anti-ship cruise missiles, short-range air defense, a sensor node contributing to the air or surface picture,” Wood said. “It has to be able to thin out the enemy's fire power, sensor grid and attention span to give the Navy the chance to get inside the envelope, close and have an impact.”
Jobs
Congress is also worried about attracting and keeping shipyards in business and skilled workers in the shipyards to support a growing fleet. Pumping money into shipbuilding is the best way lawmakers know to do that.
“The plus-up is really across the board in shipbuilding,” said Clark, the CSBA analyst. “You look at the three littoral combat ships Congress is buying, two of which the Navy didn't ask for. They are buying as many attack subs as the industrial base can deliver, and they are pushing toward allowing the Navy to procure two carriers at once to get the economic order quantity there.”
But in the case of amphibs, Congress is doing something new by spending on advance procurement. Generally the Navy has purchased amphibious ships one at a time, without multiyear contracts or a lot of advanced procurement money, Clark said.
Even for a 13-ship class like the LPD-17 Flight I, the ships were purchased as the money became available.
Congress adding money to advance procurement is an attempt to save funds by creating a more regular rhythm for the way the service buys its destroyers, littoral combat ships and attack submarines, Clark said.
11 juillet 2023 | International, Aérospatial, Naval
India's defence ministry on Monday gave its initial approval to buy 26 Rafale fighter aircraft and three Scorpene submarines from France, news agency ANI reported citing sources.
25 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Necessity sparks invention at the Innovation Center, now open at Lockheed Martin's (NYSE: LMT) Missiles and Fire Control (MFC) facility in Orlando, Florida. In this 6,500-square-foot space, employees are empowered with the technology and tools to develop creative solutions to complex problems. The company expects it to aid in the creation of new patents and the win of new multimillion-dollar contracts. Lockheed Martin IC-Opening-Sept 2018 "Innovation is our 'day job' — it is core to who we are and everything we do," said Frank St. John, executive vice president at MFC. "This facility gives employees the means to bring ideas from our unlimited imaginations to life. The result of which will help us invent technologies to solve previously unsolvable problems." Five specialized labs, a next-generation video conference capability and an interactive lobby serve more than 5,000 employees and counting amidst a hiring surge at the southwest Orlando facility. Virtual reality, robotics, computer-simulated environments, 3-D printing and more are available at workers' fingertips to encourage new ways of thinking and approaching business needs. The space will also host monthly hands-on demonstrations as well as live webcasts across the business. This is the second of its kind at MFC. In less than a year's time, the Innovation Center in Dallas, Texas, has helped secure millions of dollars' worth of captured programs. "The Innovation Center is a destination for our program teams to explore what's possible with the use of high technology," said Tom Mirek, vice president deputy of engineering and technology at MFC. "Like we already have in Dallas, we're going to recognize Orlando's Innovation Center for being a vital resource to the success of our company for years to come." Orlando's Innovation Center is comprised of five unique labs: The Application Research Experimentation & Simulation (ARES) facility allows teams to use their own computing environment and applications to conduct events on a rapidly reconfigurable 12-screen hyperwall. The Genesis Lab is where ideas are born, and one can incubate and develop concepts in a creative, resourceful environment — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Employees have access to augmented and virtual reality, small robotics, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, high-powered computing, and 3-D printers. The Iris Lab offers an indoor robotics test bay for safe and controlled training, experiments, and research. The Engineering Visualization Environment Lab and its animators take complex ideas and bring them to life through feature-film quality renderings. The Polaris Lab employs sensor, optics and laser testing that provides rapid response for employees and program development. This is a fire-control-focused lab that can benchmark new technology. Opening early 2019. Employees in Orlando lead the aerospace and defense industry in their experience with technologies related to electro-optics, millimeter wave radar, image and signal processing, advanced materials, electronic packaging, and large-system integration. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 100,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. This year the company received three Edison Awards for ground-breaking innovations in autonomy, satellite technology and directed energy. SOURCE Lockheed Martin https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2018-09-25-Innovation-Center-Opens-at-Lockheed-Martin-in-Orlando
26 avril 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Only about half of the F-35s worldwide were ready to flyduring an eight-month period in 2018, with the wait for spare parts keeping jets on the ground nearly 30 percent of the time, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. Over the past several years, the Defense Department has sought to improve mission capable rates by making improvements to the way it and F-35 contractor Lockheed Martin order, stockpile and repair spare parts. However, GAO's findings imply that the situation may have gotten worse. The GAO's report, released April 25, investigated how spare parts shortages impacted F-35 availability and mission capable rates in 2018, with most data gathered between a May and November sustainment contract period. “In 2017, we reported that DOD was experiencing sustainment challenges that were reducing warfighter readiness, including delays of 6 years in standing up repair capabilities for F-35 parts at its depots and significant spare parts shortages that were preventing the F-35 fleet from flying about 20 percent of the time,” GAO said in the report. “According to prime contractor data, from May through November 2018, F-35 aircraft across the fleet were unable to fly 29.7 percent of the time due to spare parts shortages,” it said. “Specifically, the F-35 supply chain does not have enough spare parts available to keep aircraft flying enough of the time necessary to meet warfighter requirements.” That lack of improvement may make it more difficult for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to hit an 80 percent mission capable rate by the end of fiscal year 2019, as mandated by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last fall. The military services stopped providing mission capable rates for aircraft last year, citing operational sensitivities. However, the data put forth by the GAO indicates that progress stagnated in the lead up to Mattis' order. From May to November 2018, mission capable rates — which measure how many planes possessed by a squadron can perform at least one of its missions — hovered around 50 percent for all versions of the F-35. But when GAO assessed how many planes were fully mission capable — meaning that they were ready to fulfill all of their mission sets — all variants were far from meeting the 60 percent target. Only 2 percent of F-35C carrier takeoff and landing versions hit the fully mission capable mark, with the F-35Bs slightly better at 16 percent and the F-35A at 34 percent. The GAO is skeptical that the services will be able to hit the 80 percent mission capable rate goal this year, and it is even more critical of the Defense Department's plans to fund spares in future years. The department intends to buy “only enough parts to enable about 80 percent of its aircraft to be mission-capable based on the availability of parts.” However, that planning construct will likely only yield a 70 percent mission capable rate at best, the GAO said, because it only accounts for the aircraft on the flight line and not jets that are in the depot for longer term maintenance. No silver bullet for parts shortage issues Like all complicated problems, there is no single solution for the F-35 spare parts shortage, which is driven by a number of factors. GAO indicated that the Defense Department still has “a limited capacity” to repair broken parts, creating a backlog of 4,300 parts still needing to be addressed. Between September and November, it took more than six months to fix parts that should have been repaired in a window of two to three months. The F-35's much-maligned Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) was designed to be able to track parts and automate the process of generating and expediting work orders, however, GAO notes that the system still requires manual workarounds from users in order to accomplish tasks. Supply and maintenance personnel cited challenges such as “missing or corrupted electronic spare parts data,” limited automation and problems caused by ALIS's subsystems not communicating with each other properly, it said. As the F-35 is still a relatively new platform, it has taken time for the program to assess which parts have been failing more often than previously estimated — but that is an area where the Defense Department is making progress, the GAO stated. “DOD has identified specific parts shortages that are causing the greatest aircraft capability degradation, and it is developing short-term and long-term mitigation strategies to increase the quantity and reliability of these parts,” the report said. One such component is a coating used on the F-35's canopy to help it maintain its stealth characteristics, which has been found to peel off at an unexpected rate, creating a heightened demand for canopies. “To address these challenges, the program is looking for additional manufacturing sources for the canopy and is considering design changes,” the GAO stated. But — somewhat paradoxically — the F-35 has been flying for a long enough time that there is significant parts differences between the first jets that rolled off the production line to the most recently manufactured planes. The GAO found “at least 39 different part combinations across the fleet” on top of variations in software. “According to the program office, DOD spent more than $15 billion to purchase F-35 aircraft from the earliest lots of production, specifically lots 2 through 5 ... but it faces challenges in providing enough spare parts for these aircraft,” the report stated. One problem — the cannibalization of F-35 aircraft for parts — is partially user-inflicted. “From May through November 2018, F-35 squadrons cannibalized (that is, took) parts from other aircraft at rates that were more than six times greater than the services' objective,” the GAO stated. “These high rates of cannibalization mask even greater parts shortages, because personnel at F-35 squadrons are pulling parts off of other aircraft that are already unable to fly instead of waiting for new parts to be delivered through the supply chain.” During an interview this February, Lt. Col. Toby Walker, deputy commander of the 33rd Maintenance Group, told Defense News that F-35 maintainers at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., had stopped pulling parts off a cannibalized F-35 and had seen some improvements to mission capable rates as a result. “We're not continually moving parts from one aircraft to another. We're relying on the program to provide our parts,” he said. “It was a very strategic plan to do that to increase aircraft availability by not sitting an aircraft down.” In a statement, Lockheed Martin said that it had taken key steps to improve parts availability, such as transitioning some suppliers to performance based logistics contracts that incentivize companies to meet certain targets, as well as “master repair agreements” that will allow other suppliers to make longer term investments in their production capability. “These actions are beginning to deliver results and we're forecasting additional improvement. Newer production aircraft are averaging greater than 60 percent mission capable rates, with some operational squadrons consistently at 70 percent,” the company said. “From a cost perspective, Lockheed Martin has reduced its portion of cost per aircraft per year by 15 percent since 2015. Our goal is to further reduce costs to $25,000 cost per flight hour by 2025, which is comparable to legacy aircraft while providing a generational leap in capability.” https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/04/25/government-watchdog-finds-more-problems-with-f-35s-spare-parts-pipeline