August 2007

In this month’s issue:

1) USAF, Lockheed Martin Quibble Over JASSM Fixes

2) Air Force Accelerates Predator Support To Central Command AOR

3) Nonkinetic weapons equally important with kinetic, Navy captain says

4) More money should be spent on ISR, retired general says

5) SOF Posture Shifts, Requires More Aircraft

6) Army UAS Woven Into Fabric of Airspace Management

7) Boeing chooses Harris Corp. for weapons data link

1) USAF, Lockheed Martin Quibble Over JASSM Fixes

Aviation Week & Space Technology 07/16/2007

Author: Amy Butler

Discussions about the troubled Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) are shifting from whether to terminate the stealthy cruise missile for cost and technical problems to how to pay for fixes so the weapons are effective in combat. But, a seemingly clear-cut issue of liability for a technical problem has evolved into a duel between attorneys for the U.S. Air Force and contractor Lockheed Martin.

A combination of a more than 25% cost overrun to the $5.8-billion program and technical problems would be enough to kill most Pentagon efforts. But, this one-time acquisition darling of the Air Force seems impervious to such travails. With 600 weapons already in the field, USAF appears to have staved off a termination--for now.

A complex set of negotiations between USAF and Lockheed Martin is heating up about who should pay to fix a GPS dropout problem responsible for three of four missiles missing their targets by 100-200 ft. in flight tests this spring. At issue is trouble with the GPS receiver and Jassm's Selected Availability Anti-Spoofing Module. Jassm's reliability dipped to 58%, well below what the Air Force wants from what was supposed to be a low-cost cruise missile. At that rate of reliability, three or more weapons are needed for a kill.

The cause of the GPS problem has been determined, say officials close to the program, but funding a fix will be a major hurdle.

Cost to correct the problem and retrofit weapons already in the field is above $100 million, government officials say. But, Lockheed Martin is digging its heels in. Company officials say they've met the requirements laid out in the Jassm contract. That document was forged during the heyday of acquisition reform under former top USAF procurement official Darleen Druyun, who has become a symbol for the Pentagon of how a focus on low cost can result in major technical problems in programs. The company is said to have offered to pay about 10% of the cost associated with the Jassm fixes.

Lockheed Martin's position on the issue has changed since its June 6 statement, which stated: "The fix will be implemented by Lockheed Martin at no cost to the government." Last week officials declined to address the question of who should pay.

The Air Force, however, isn't yet buying Lockheed's argument. Service officials want to minimize financial impact, yet are stuck with the language of the original contract. But the service has an ace in the hole. Though the Pentagon cannot technically terminate Jassm due to performance problems, it can end the effort due to its cost overrun.

Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg must still report to Congress whether he can certify Jassm to continue. He already gave USAF an extension on the decision whether to terminate, and it is unclear how long the negotiations will take. USAF officials are focused on improving the GPS problem as well as reliabilitly of the entire system.

In parallel with its efforts to save Jassm, Air Force procurement chief Sue Payton is shopping around for a backup plan--including the Navy's Surface Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response and Europe's Storm Shadow and Taurus missiles.

The Air Force plans to buy 4,900 Jassms.

2) Air Force Accelerates Predator Support To Central Command AOR

Defense Daily 07/16/2007

Author: Michael Sirak

The Air Force announced on Friday that it is accelerating by one year its previously stated goal of delivering enough MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft systems by December 2009 to provide 21 daily Predator combat air patrols (CAPs).

Already airmen operate 12 Predator CAPs each day in support of joint forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the service said in a statement it issued on July 13.

At the request of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, service officials, working with the Joint Staff and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), will increase that coverage by three CAPs in the near term, "boosting full-motion-video and rapid-strike capability to the joint force commander in Iraq," the service said. "Two of these CAPs are expected to be active this summer or early fall."

To fully staff this new level for CENTCOM, the Air Force will maintain 160 Predator crews, up from 120 last year, the service said.

Each Predator CAP can execute combat operations 24 hours, seven days a week, the service said.

Accelerated fielding of Predator CAPs is possible due to the Total Force integration of active-duty, Air National Guard (ANG) and Air Force Reserve Command personnel in the operations and maintenance of the unmanned aircraft and their ground-control infrastructure, the Air Force said.

ANG personnel based in California, Nevada and North Dakota already control Predator aircraft flying combat missions in Iraq or Afghanistan using secure satellite communication links.

This week, airmen will begin flying them from Arizona, the service said. The Air Force says it continues to push all operational Predator assets to theater to support combat activities.

3) Nonkinetic weapons equally important with kinetic, Navy captain says
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 07/17/2007

NONKINETIC EFFECTS: U.S. Navy Capt. Scott Stearney, commander of Carrier Air Group Seven, which just returned from duty in the Middle East, says that his recent deployment was the first in which nonkinetic effects were emphasized during operations. Kinetic and nonkinetic effects such as electronic warfare were "equally important" during recent ops, he said during the Precision Strike Association's recent symposium. On the kinetic side, use of the 500-pound, Global Positioning System-guided GBU-38 was widespread, but pilots are increasingly turning to strafing to kill targets in Iraq, he says. The Army's systems, meanwhile, are becoming so precise and reliable that operators are using the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) in an air support role to help troops under fire. GMLRS is becoming reliable enough that during recent engagements 83 percent of them were fired in the urban environment. Earlier rocket systems were typically not used in this role. And 69 percent of the rockets fired were used to support troops under direct enemy fire.

4) More money should be spent on ISR, retired general says
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 07/17/2007

ISR FUNDING: While huge amounts of money are going to the U.S. Air Force's strike systems, including the F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, not enough attention is being placed on developing appropriate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to support them, says Air Force Maj. Gen.
(ret.) Tim Peppe, a top business development official at Northrop Grumman. "There is not a whole hell of a lot of money realistically" going into ISR, he told an audience at the Precision Strike Association's annual summer symposium in Virginia Beach. Va. The Pentagon is also not fully exploiting the potential
of active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars that are being fielded in its fighter aircraft, according to Peppe. More work needs to be done on passive modes for AESA radars and more focus is needed to realize the potential to use them in information warfare and covert communications roles, he says.

5) SOF Posture Shifts, Requires More Aircraft

Aviation Week & Space Technology 07/23/2007

Author: Amy Butler

The ranks of special operations forces are increasing to handle the war on terrorism, and they are going to need a ride and some cover.

Planners at Air Force Special Operations Command (Afsoc) headquarters here are trying to nail down just what the future requirements will be for special operations transports, gunships and vertical-lift aircraft.

U.S. Special Operations Command (Socom), which oversees special operations forces (SOF) worldwide, has assumed the lead role at the Pentagon in prosecuting the war on terrorism. Unlike a Cold War enemy centralized in Asia and Europe, the terrorist threat is global with no set headquarters. That has propelled allotments of SOF forces up so that they can be disbursed. And a need to quickly move those forces around the battlefield is growing. This is driving Afsoc to consider additional purchases of C-130s, CV-22s and a new small platform called a Low-Visibility Aircraft that can deliver small groups of special operators to landing sites.

It is also affecting how the military postures its SOF aircraft worldwide. The command has already begun considering options to relocate units based abroad to the continental U.S. This will centralize pilots, maintainers and training assets, allowing the command to project more forces forward with less impact on proficiency requirements at home. It will also put allocation of aircraft and crews abroad under the direct authority of a single four-star general overseeing Socom. Now, aircraft based at RAF Mildenhall, U.K., and Kadena Air Base, Japan, fall under the purview of four-star officers overseeing U.S. European Command and U.S. Pacific Command, respectively. Reassigning their aircraft to missions in other areas—like Iraq, Afghanistan or South America—requires a negotiation between these commanding officers.

Meanwhile, the ranks of special operations ground forces continue to swell. This translates to a need for growth in Afsoc’s mobility fleet. A requirement for 37 MC-130s variant replacements, which is funded in the Fiscal 2008 budget request at $1.8 billion, has already been increased. A total of 61 mobility aircraft are needed, including those 37 replacements, and the number is expected to balloon again. “It is very possible that will not be enough,” says Col. Billy Montgomery, Afsoc’s director of plans and programs. “The 61 number . . . that was our requirement we believed a year ago. Since that time we’ve had another theater stand up with its own mobility requirement.”

The Pentagon is standing up a separate regional command to oversee activities in Africa. The continent is a focal point of special operators, whose mission, at least in part, is to train indigenous forces with tactics to help prevent terrorists from gaining a foothold and setting up bases in remote areas. Afsoc’s 6th Special Ops Sqdn., which oversees training of a foreign military’s aviation components in antiterrorism tactics, conducts this mission (see p. 54). “That is probably the most misunderstood part of our business,” says Lt. Gen. Michael Wooley, Afsoc commander. “We don’t teach them how to fly. We just bring our expertise, our lessons learned over these many years, and . . . take them to a higher level than they currently are at with the goal of them being better prepared to help us fight the global war on terror within their own borders.”

Montgomery says the ultimate C-130 requirement will be above 70 aircraft. While a few candidates are on the table—including a Northrop Grumman proposal to overhaul the existing aircraft to a common configuration and the EADS A400M—Lockheed Martin’s C-130J appears to be the likely candidate. Overhauling aging fleets is often a risky proposal financially, as many unforeseen problems can arise. And the A400M development continues to flounder, making it unlikely to meet Afsoc’s need to begin deliveries for initial operational capability in 2011.

Managing the SOF fleet of C-130s has been a problem for Afsoc just as Air Mobility Command (AMC) has problems overseeing its massive fleet of the Lockheed Martin-manufactured aircraft. Afsoc has a smattering of versions that require separate air crews and maintainers. Included in its fleet are MC-130Es, MC-130Hs, MC-130Ps and MC-130Ws. “One of our desires is to get out of the relatively small number of [different variants of] aircraft that we work with right now,” Montgomery says. The goal is to pare down to two types of aircraft, the modified MC-130s and the new platform, likely the C-130J.

Wooley says the Talon 1s, MC-130Es that are slated for retirement, have an average age of 42 years. Overall, Afsoc fleet age is much younger than the rest of the Air Force, though the command still has problems with aging issues.

Afsoc plans to retain 20 MC-130H Talon IIs, 17 MC-130Ws, 17 AC-130Us and eight AC-130Hs—all of which are candidates for the $6-billion Avionics Modernization Program underway for the AMC’s C-130 fleet. Boeing is the prime C-130 AMP contractor, but problems controlling cost have prompted the Pentagon to scale back the $5.8-billion development effort from an earlier $4.5-billion concept for 519 aircraft now to 222 of AMC’s aircraft. The program is designed to produce a C-130 variant with like avionics and displays out of a disparate group of versions now in service. Meanwhile, the Air Force plans to retire its C-130Es by the end of Fiscal 2014.

The program also suffered from its association with a procurement scandal surrounding Darleen Druyun, a former senior Air Force procurement official who admitted to bias toward Boeing during her tenure at the service. She later took a lucrative position with Boeing, but was jailed for conducting illegal job negotiations while still working at the Air Force. Though government auditors found problems with the choice of Boeing for the C-130 AMP program, the government decided only to recompete the manufacturing of the Boeing-designed kits in 2009.

Afsoc must have the modifications, which include navigation and safety equipment, whether or not AMP moves forward. At the inception of AMP, Socom began an adjunct effort—the Common Avionics Architecture for Penetration (CAAP) program—that includes specialized low-probability-of-intercept/low-probability-of-detection radar and emitters for threat awareness and survivability. CAAP was also contracted to Boeing as a task under the larger AMP contract.

Boeing has modified two C-130s with the new AMP avionics and the first has undergone early flights. The second achieved first flight in March.

Due largely to AMP’s ongoing delays and contract progress, Socom terminated funding for CAAP in the Fiscal 2008 budget request and issued a stop-work order to Boeing in January. The Air Force also announced last month it has deferred AMP modifications on 166 C-130 candidates for the new avionics, 119 of which belong to Afsoc. The Air Force’s strategy is to execute work on the least-complex airframes first and report to Pentagon leadership in September on a path ahead for the special operations variants.

Montgomery says that while the equipment is still badly needed for the aircraft, the delay is not yet problematic. The aircraft have been heavily tasked for operations, limiting their availability for modifications. “Looking at the mobility requirements that we face around the world and what we are accomplishing right now in [Afghanistan] and [Iraq], quite frankly it would be very difficult for us to get aircraft into the AMP/CAAP modification.”

“Socom invested a lot of money in CAAP, and they weren’t satisfied with the progress,” Montgomery continues. A Socom official simply said that when “AMP began experiencing challenges and schedule delays, U.S. Socom chose to remove near-term funding for CAAP pending DoD’s final decision on the future of the AMP program.” Based on the original CAAP program, the first modified C-130 was to be fielded for Afsoc next fiscal year.

Since the contract award in July 2001, $203.4 million has been spent on CAAP. Though “the fate of the LPI/LPD radars is still to be determined,” according to Air Force officials, remaining Fiscal 2006 funds are being dedicated to continued work on the terrain-following/terrain-avoiding portion of the APN-241 radar “in order to allow this system to be possibly installed at a future date.”

And, like AMC’s fleet, Afsoc’s C-130s also require new structures in the center-wing box as well as modernized avionics. “It was really hard for us to justify continuing investing in CAAP when AMP also has its own significant problems,” Montgomery says. If AMP and/or CAAP do not move forward, Montgomery says the command would still need the safety and navigation components of AMP and the LPI/LPD radar and some of the emitters from CAAP to be delivered through some other effort.

Though Afsoc’s fleet of C-130s is less affected by the center-wing box wear-and-tear that has grounded some of AMC’s C-130Es, the issue is a concern for planners here. The first of Afsoc’s MC-130H Talon IIs received a modification to its center-wing box, and flights thus far have been successful, Wooley says.

The increased usage of Afsoc’s AC-130H/U gunships is “troubling,” Wooley says. The command is pushing to fund an early replacement of the gunship’s center-wing boxes to avoid potential groundings by 2010, Montgomery notes.

While reducing the number of C-130 types in service, the command is also looking to increase the types of low-end transports, which Montgomery calls Low-Visibility Aircraft. Fielding is expected as soon as next year. The first aircraft is an Air Force variant of the a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 capable of transporting a small group of soldiers and landing on rough airstrips.

But, Montgomery anticipates a need for up to three types of new aircraft of varying size, smaller than the MC-130 versions, to pick up the low-end of the Afsoc mobility mission. He says Afsoc is specifically interested in purchasing Low-Visibility Aircraft that do not look particularly militarized—like the C-27J or CASA considered for a similar U.S. Army/Air Force Joint Cargo Aircraft requirement—in order to keep a unit’s low profile while operating outside the U.S.

Planners here are also expecting their requirement for 50 CV-22s to grow to more than 70 of the Bell/Boeing tiltrotors to provide fast vertical-lift capabilities in the field.

The command’s fleet of MH-53s will be retired by October 2008, with the mission of forward-vertical-lift resupply falling solely to the Army’s MH-47 fleet operated by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

6) Army UAS Woven Into Fabric of Airspace Management

C4I News 07/10/2007

Author: Ann Roosevelt

The Army has come a long way since Desert Storm in terms of unmanned aircraft system safety and integration into the service, joint and coalition world, service officials said.

"In the Army, we call them unmanned aircraft systems for a reason, and that's because it's integrated as a system to be woven into the fabric of the other Army and, in many cases, the other Army and Marine operations, Col. John Burke, deputy director of Army Aviation, said at a Pentagon roundtable recently.

The three dimensional capability has just "exploded," in the past couple of years, he said, in terms of manned/unmanned teaming, in both concept and practice.

Col. Don Hazelwood, project manager, Unmanned Aerial Systems, said in 2004 there were fewer than 200 UAVs in theater. "Today, we have well over 1,000 in theater."

It is the speed at which technology, concept and practice are moving that is causing friction and some of the emotional criticism. Remove emotion from the discussion and examine the facts for the true picture, Burke said.

For example, critics have noted airspace integration and deconfliction more than once.

Col. Shelley Yarborough, project manager, aviation systems, said the Tactical Airspace Integration System (TAIS) is a key enabler for the Army command and control airspace element.

TAIS ties together feeds of information from the ground units feeding their positions electronically, aircraft feeding electronic information, graphic overlays from all the mission planning systems, graphics overlays from the airspace planning systems and feeds from the combined air operations centers (CAOC), she said.

"All of these control measures, the graphics, and the dynamically moving real-time positions of aircraft and vehicles that are electronically transmitting their positions are all brought into this one visual graphics display," Yarborough said.

The system grew from a post-Desert Storm effort to actively improve organizations, manning, training and its equipment and procedures to ensure an effective and integrated air and ground operational environment.

In the CAOC, the interest is in the big picture, the theater-wide picture, which could encompass a land area as large as the United States, she said.

TAIS shows only a portion of the big picture, not a view of the United States, but perhaps only a state, which magnifies features and has more fidelity. The system can also move down to a citywide level. Three-dimensional pop-ups show things such as terrain elevation, and airspace control measures--horizontally and vertically--in high resolution.

"So I can specifically look at everything moving within that very high resolution graphic," she said. TAIS also adds the fourth dimension: time.

"Now I can in real time synchronize and deconflict, maneuver, control manage everything that's going on in that battle space," she said.

TAIS is located in division operation centers and in many brigade operation centers, which tie air and ground operations together for overwatch, controlling, planning and executing operations.

Up in the CAOC, the Army has the Battlefield Coordination Detachment, 40 operators under a colonel, who have TAIS, and thus the ability to work closely with the combined or joint air space commander.

"There is no exclusivity," Burke said. Everyone has access to the information.

There are 41 TAIS in Afghanistan and Iraq, nine full systems, which include a vehicle and full communications suite, and 32 separate airspace workstations with full TAIS computing and graphic display capability, connecting over secure lines into the tactical Internet.

"You move where the fight is," Burke said. If an operation moves into an area previously not covered by TAIS, the system moves.

However, TAIS is one element in the entire battle command network that is in TOCs. "This is a fully integrated piece of the joint air and ground operational environment," Yarborough said. The Battle Coordination Detachment while located in the CAOC, could be located with a Joint Air Operations Center. If needed, the TAIS display could be linked into the large CAOC display.

"This is a well integrated, well practiced capability," she said. TAIS systems support Air Force Blue Flag exercises; they are also located at the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center.

All low-, medium- and high-altitude unmanned aircraft transmit their locations and are in TAIS, except for the small, hand-launched Raven, she said. Raven, which operates at an altitude of 500 feet or lower, must receive permission to fly from the tactical operations center (TOC). The location is put on a map in a procedural restricted operating zone. Once Raven has landed, the operator calls in and lets the TOC know so the restricted zone can be lifted.

Hazelwood said there are built in redundancies. Since 2004, when the Army converted from analog to digital, there are infrared strobes on aircraft and day/night anti-collision lights as well as transponders. So procedures are to "see and avoid" from an aviation standpoint.

As to which service "owns" systems or controls them, Burke said three overarching variables must be considered: risk, time and consequences.

The lower tactical level has "high risk, very little time and often, fatal consequenses, so the longer the mission planning time, and mission approval time, the increase in your risk, the decrease in your responsiveness time, and in some cases the higher your consequences," Burke said.

"If you believe in the information network that we have, there's no reason that anybody can't see what everybody else's air picture looks like. So this idea that I can only see the air picture if it belongs to me and only me is what were trying to dispel," he said.

"With the 41 TAIS systems and the integration with the Joint Airspace Command and Control whether I'm an Air Force officer, or an Army officer, or a coalition officer, I can see the air-ground picture. So I don't need to transfer the control if I understand the positive and procedural methods that are in place for me to know, regardless of service, where everybody is in the airspace," he said.

As to whether safety is better now than it was three or four years ago, "the answer is yes," Hazelwood said.

In fact, bird strikes are more of an issue than air-to-air collisions. In 2006, there were 36 bird strikes at just under $500,000 damage to aircraft. That's an average year.

In 2004, a Raven had a midair with an OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter, below 500 feet, and there were fewer than 120 [UAV] aircraft in theater at that time, Hazelwood said. Today, there are more than 1,000 UAVs in theater, with about 300 flying at any one time.

Each UAV uses the Army's One System Ground Control system, except for Raven. This common system also adds to safety.

In 2004, UAVs were flying fewer than 2,000 hours a month, and have gone to more than 14,000 hours a month, with 250,000 midair accident free hours since 2004.

"One can conclude, based on hard data, hard facts, that we are much safer today through improvements in TAIS and positive and procedural systems being brought to the battle field," Hazelwood said.

Safety includes operator training, as well. Army aviation took over UAV training setting up the school in April 2006. The Apache helicopter course requires officers over a nine-month period have 280 hours of ground school, simulation and flight. The Shadow/Warrior UAV course includes the same: ground school, simulators and flight over 379 hours. The schools are certified to the same standard.

"Are we safer, yes, are we flying smarter, yes, are we having fewer accidents, yes, are our people better trained, yes," Hazelwood said.

7) Boeing chooses Harris Corp. for weapons data link
Monday July 30, 10:05 am ET

Published July 30, 2007 by the Orlando Business Journal

Harris Corp. has announced that The Boeing Co. has selected Harris' advanced weapons data link technology for its Small Diameter Bomb Increment II precision-guided weapon.

No value of the contract was released.

The Boeing Small Diameter Bomb Increment II will allow the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to attack moving targets in all weather conditions. The data link Harris will provide to Boeing enables the weapon to receive target location updates during flight.

July 2007 News

In this month’s issue:

1) Nonkinetic weapons arm U.S. and foes

2) Bandwidth, Not Unmanned Aircraft, Needs Attention, General Says

3) Air Force Training UAE to Operate AOC

4) F/A-18E/F To Get New Air Combat Sensor

5) Hot War Seen From Cool `Crow's Nest'

6) Air operations center opens at Tyndall

7) Air Force Unveils First-Ever CONUS "WARFIGHTING" CAOC

8) Boeing-Lockheed Martin Conduct First SDB II Flight Test

9) AESA comm capabilities link demonstrated

1) Nonkinetic weapons arm U.S. and foes

Aviation Week & Space Technology 06/18/2007

Author: David A. Fulghum

Direct military action could become a diminishing part of the next-generation, U.S. and enemy arsenals.

In fact, U.S. military planners have already reached out to senior industry officials in finding new, subtle and more intense ways to apply pressure while allowing foes to back away from a confrontation.

"If I'm asked to come up with a solution to a military event, I'm going to bring all forces to bear," says Lt. Gen. Chip Utterback, 13th Air Force commander. "That may include bringing in my friends from Bank of America to help find an innovative solution to diverting the enemy, [that does not include] a blockade or restriction on sales." The basic idea is to offer a way to defuse the situation and provide a face-saving off-ramp for a potential adversary.

"A banking system is vulnerable to network attack," he says. "If you could bring economic pressure to bear--I'm talking about shutting it down--in a disciplined, organized and integrated fashion, just like we build a [bombing] campaign, it could have as much impact as B-52s and F-22s."

The lure and threat of cyberwarfare has also led to an information operations squadron being switched earlier this year from Air Combat Command to Pacaf's Maj. Richard Bong Air and Space Operations Center (AOC), says its commander, Col. Mike Boera.

"We [are putting] an IO cell on the floor in the AOC so that they bring their skills directly to the fight," Boera says.

Classification has often kept intelligence from getting to warfighters that need it or need cyber-weapons employed in their behalf. But Boera thinks the walls are falling.

"It's still difficult, but progress has been made so that the players that need the capabilities know they're there," he says. "There's more conduits [into the IO world] than there used to be." Division chiefs that have to include nonkinetic capabilities in the air tasking order are informed, as are key members of the master attack planning and strategy teams that assemble plans of action. These plans are "briefed here, fully vetted and thought through," he says.

Many of the tools for such operations --cyber-, nonkinetic and nonlethal weapons--have great contemporary value because they don't blow up anything or kill bystanders. Cyberwarfare can range from electronic attack to invading computers to communicating to entire populations.

But there is a big, worrisome unknown about them.

"There are no rules of engagement and no legal basis from what can be done through electronic means," Utterback says. "Cyber war is incredibly important, but I'm going to sit down with my lawyers and talk about it."

He also intends working with his civilian contacts to determine how to avoid damaging critical functions unintentionally, and with his military specialists to think through how to think through battle damage assessment when nothing visible changes.

"You don't want to go after a target and by accident take down respirators in a hospital, the circuits for tele-surgery or a railroad system," Utterback says.

In the cyber world, China's Internet system is already notorious as the source or relay site for regular surveillance of and probing attacks against foreign computer systems, particularly those associated with the Pentagon.

The potential for damage was illustrated this spring when Russian spammers buried Estonia in a flood of unwanted digital data that clogged government, banking and newspaper web sites. Experts are sorting through the chaos for lessons learned from what's being called the first cyberwar.

Pacaf's 613th AOC, a critical communication and planning node for any regional military or natural emergency, is preparing for such attacks. It also has taken on the onerous task of sorting out what U.S. attacks do to foes.

"Our strategy team has taken on the challenge of ops assessment across the spectrum of operations," Boera says, including computer network, high-power microwave, nuclear electromagnetic pulse and other types of attack. "It's hard to come up with true, effects-based assessments of how we are doing in attack and defense. It's a work in progress. I look at it every week and put out an air ops directive that looks at how we've done."

If the AOC experiences a computer network attack, the staff has honed its ability to wipe programs and replace them within seconds, Boera says. There is a core staff of about 370 people that can expand to more than 1,000 personnel handling at least 1,300 sorties and possibly 2,500 sorties per day.

"Logic tells you that the more intrusive you become in electronic warfare, the more battle damage assessment you have to do," Utterback says. "Electronic attack [EA] is a realistic tactical tool with strategic implications. I think we'd be crazy not to look at high-power microwave capability both from an offensive and defensive sense. But, second and third order effects happen at the speed of light. You have to think them through before you pull the trigger. I'm not suggesting a cautious approach to EA, but rather a deliberate and disciplined effort with a strategic focus."

They also have a plan for the possibility that despite their efforts, an AOC somewhere in the region is disabled by earthquake, tsunami or missile attack. Plans are that each AOC has a partner somewhere in the U.S. that has its data stored and ready to re-create operations.

"We've just worked through a cooperative effort, using network-centric capabilities, to publish the air tasking order for another theater--Korea," Boera says. "The intent is survivability and robust backup capability. As the threat grows greater in the Pacific, my mission is to have backup capability [for Hawaii's AOC] in the AOC at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz." Moreover, he is looking at an international capability as well. "I'd love to have more computers here so that I could have systems loaded, ready to go for some of our bilateral partners like Japan and Australia."

2) Bandwidth, Not Unmanned Aircraft, Needs Attention, General Says

Defense Daily 06/05/2007

Author: Ann Roosevelt

While the services discuss who buys and operates unmanned aerial systems (UAS), it's the information that must reach those who need it that matters most, according to a top Army general.

"I'm more concerned about bandwidth," Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody told reporters last month. "Nobody's working that. Bandwidth is not controlled by anybody."

It's not the aircraft, but the sensors, Cody said. The sensors produce the flow of data or real-time video combat troops on the ground can immediately use as well as information analysts use to compile intelligence products and add to databases for future reference that are vital to prosecuting the war on terror.

Meanwhile, the Joint Requirement Oversight Council is discussing a wide variety of UAS issues, Cody said.

While the services disagree on UAS, "there's room for compromise," Cody said. "I think the only time we're going to have a problem is when the war is off."

Today, all the services have their own assets, and share information, and soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines have been able to work together doing the job in combat, he said. "If it's good enough for combat, it's good enough for everybody else."

A March 5 memo from the Air Force Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, combatant commanders, and military service chiefs concerned designating the Air Force as executive agent for medium- and high-altitude UAS.

The Air Force believes appointing an executive agent for medium- and high-altitude UASs would achieve efficiencies in acquisition and enhance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) interoperability by providing common architectures for data links and radios. Further, the Air Force contends that to make the best use of limited operational resources, all medium- and high-altitude UAVs assigned to Operation Iraqi Freedom, regardless of service, should be available to the Coalition Forces Air Component Commander for tasking to the highest operational priority at any given time.

At a mid-April hearing airing UAS service disagreements before the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, the Army contended, among other things, that giving up the operational control of any of its UASs would offer more risk to tactical commanders.

Meanwhile, the House has its own ideas about UAS acquisition management and joint operations, expressed in its version of the FY '08 Defense Authorization Bill.

"The issue has not been adequately addressed for the past two years, potentially resulting in waste of limited resources and inefficient operational use of high value, limited UAS assets," the HASC report accompanying the bill said.

Further, the report said there might be potential benefits to a single service being given authorities and responsibilities as an executive agent to guide DoD's acquisition efforts "to include research, development, testing and evaluation activities; procurement; logistics; and training."

The UAS issue also would be addressed in a report required by the House-passed defense-authorization bill directing the Secretary of Defense to review and report on DoD roles and missions.

"The committee firmly believes that if the core competencies of the military services were clearly articulated and the requirements system were aligned with such competencies...that unintended duplication of effort, inoperability issues, and disagreements over authority for operational control of medium- and high-altitude UASs could be mitigated," the report said.

While awaiting that report, the bill directs the Secretary of Defense to present by March 1 a review of UAS-related capabilities to determine if designating a service as DoD executive agent for UAS would be the best way to go. The review also must include "a clear, objective assessment" of operational risk to each military service as a result of any changes.

However, until the reports are presented, nothing prevents the Secretary of Defense from appointing an Executive Agent for medium- and high-altitude unmanned aerial systems pending the outcome of the reports required by this bill and report on roles and missions.

3) Air Force Training UAE to Operate AOC

Inside the Air Force 06/15/2007

An Air Force team is helping train its counterparts in the United Arab Emirates so the Middle Eastern country's airmen are qualified to work in a theater-based coalition command and control facility, a service official tells Inside the Air Force.

Since April, an Air Force-led team has trained the UAE airmen in air and space control systems and procedures, said Lt. Col. Don Finley, commander of the 705th Training Squadron.

About 200 students are enrolled in intermediate- and advanced-level classes, Finley said. When classes conclude in December, the top 20 or so students with the best English speaking skills will go through instructor training.

The UAE air force built a mini air and space operations center (AOC) in a theater arts-like building using modern computers, displays and communication equipment.

"We think they're trying to be the leader of the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] in . . . command and control of air power," Finley said in a June 12 telephone interview from his offices at Hurlburt Field, FL.

"With their new airplanes and trying to learn the AOC business, we think they're well on their way to leading the GCC in that realm."

Founded in 1981, the GCC aims to "promote coordination between member states in all fields in order to achieve unity," according to the UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's Web site.

Member nations include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

The AOC students work on the same systems used by U.S. airmen, however, the ones used by the UAE airmen are unclassified, Finley said. Now in its second year -- the training, which is part of an F-16 fighter foreign military sale agreement -- cost $3 million in 2006 and $3.8 million this year. Students -- some of whom are F-16 pilots -- are chosen by UAE air force leadership.

The UAE air force flies a version of the F-16 fighter that is newer than Air Force Falcons.

In the first year of exercises, the service team conducted five different three-week long training events -- which serve as familiarization courses -- with the foreign airmen, Finley said. At the end of the training in September 2006, senior UAE air force leadership requested a higher level of training that could give them the potential to work in a coalition AOC.

Today the United States does not have an AOC classified access agreement with the United Arab Emirates, so the country's airmen cannot work in a U.S. facility, Finley said.

"Hopefully we'll get them to the level where they'll be comfortable doing so" if they were permitted to work in a coalition facility, he said.

In addition to a coalition partnership, foreign airmen must speak English and have a security clearance in order to work in a U.S. operations center, Finley said.

The UAE airmen are getting introductory training in space operations, he said. Students receive lectures and participate in a number of review of concept drills. Every test scenario is virtual, so no live aircraft are ever part of the exercises.

Mid-level and senior UAE officers "absolutely think this the greatest thing," Finley said.

The U.S. instructors training the airmen include nine contractors from L3 Communications, two communications specialists and one Air Force official, he said. The same instructors also train Air Force personnel in AOC operations back in the United States.

While the AOC training is laying the foundations for the UAE air force, two other nations -- one in the Middle East and another in Asia, are interested in receiving the command and control training from the Air Force team -- Finley said. He declined to name the countries because discussions with the potential partner nations are ongoing, however, no agreements have been signed.

4) F/A-18E/F To Get New Air Combat Sensor

Aviation Week & Space Technology 06/04/2007

Author: Andy Nativi

The U.S. Navy wants to upgrade its F/A-18E/Fs with an infrared search-and-track system out of concern that increasingly sophisticated electronic jamming systems could thwart the fighter's radar system, leaving pilots "blinded" in air-to-air combat.

Although the service has been upgrading the fighter's radar, and the latest version (the APG-79 with active electronically scanned array) should have enhanced ability to nullify hostile jamming, Navy officials are worried about the proliferation of X-band electronic countermeasures systems, which could degrade radar performance. In particular, China's expansive spending on electronic warfare equipment is being carefully monitored. The service fears this build-up could compromise their own freedom to operate in the Pacific.

The addition of an infrared search-and-track system (IRST)--already standard on many Russian and western European fighters--would provide "spectral diversity" to the Navy. Even if the radar is jammed, a pilot would still be able to spot targets using the IR sensor. Also, the new subsystem could augment the radar by helping to detect hard-to-see targets, such as low- and slow-flying cruise missiles. Spotting such weapons can be a challenge for radars due to ground clutter, but missile engine exhaust plumes should be clearly visibly with the IRST.

The service is planning to field 150 of the new device on F/A-18E/F Block 2s in Fiscal Year 2012-13. Start-up development funds of $157.7 million are in the budget request now before Congress.

F/A-18 prime contractor Boeing has chosen Lockheed Martin to provide the sensor. A first prototype is set to be tested on a Super Hornet early next year through a company-funded risk reduction and capabilities demo effort. Enhanced versions of the AAS-42 electronics and optical units used on the F-14 (already available on South Korea's F-15K) will be repackaged in a modified 480-gal. fuel tank. The equipment will also feature an off-the-shelf thermal control unit.

Boeing opted for a podded solution to save money. "Originally, we considered integrating the IRST into the aircraft fuselage, on the upper nose, or on the gunbay doors, but these solutions required significant structural, electrical and cooling system modifications and, in both cases, called for relocating existing antennas," says Chris D. Wedewer, Boeing's F/A-18E/F IRST program manager. "We also investigated the possibility of putting an IRST pod on the right fuselage station, opposite the fuselage-mounted Raytheon [Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared] targeting pod, but this option came with too many operational limitations in terms of field of view," in particular when weapons are being carried, he adds.

Those limitations drove the decision to place the sensor on the centerline weapon station, traditionally the spot for the fuel tank. Since a fuel tank has already been cleared for that station, using such a device to house the IRST was seen as the next logical step. The IRST will also function as a fuel tank, with a part of a pod still able to accommodate 330 gal., Wedewer notes.

The main change to the external fuel tank will be to the front section, which will house the IRST. A fixed window will be installed, as well as a ram-air intake to provide air flow for the environment control system. The demonstrator system will provide a large air "scoop," but the operational version is supposed to be more streamlined.

One design challenge will be adjusting for weight-distribution center-of-gravity constraints. With most of the IRST hardware in the nose-section of the pod, that will not be easy and designers, as a fallback, are considering simply adding ballast in the rear section of the device to restore equilibrium. On the aircraft side, the installation addition of the IRST should be a non-issue if the F/A-18E/Fs have Advanced Mission Computers; a software upgrade is required, though.

Keeping the cost down--to around $2.5 million per pod--creates operational drawbacks, however. There are field-of-regard restrictions with this installation, which is why fighters generally have IRSR mounted on the radome. Such an installation may come in the future, Wedewer says. On the other hand, using a pod provides flexibility because they can be distributed among fleet users as needed. Initially, pods will likely be deployed with squadrons still flying the older APG-73 radar, which provides fewer counter-countermeasures capabilities than the newer model.

Pilots will have a choice of opting for the radar to cue the IRST or vice versa. A key advantage of IRST is that it remains passive, and by cross-cueing the two sensors a pilot can minimize use of the radar to just before firing a missile.

The IRST uses a long-wave sensor, operating in the 8-12-micron range for maximum detection. The device will provide targeting quality data, although not an imaging capability.

5) Hot War Seen From Cool `Crow's Nest'

New York Times 06/02/2007

Author: Associated Press

A U.S. AIR BASE, Southwest Asia (AP) -- ''We have a downed helo.''

The words, in bright type, riveted Ken Edwards to one of his five computer screens.

From his raised platform -- a ''crow's nest'' at the heart of a cavernous operations room known as the ''Kay-Ock'' -- the Air Force lieutenant colonel glanced up at an electronic wall display. The towering map was alive with ghostly blue figures flitting through its skies, splotches of ''friendly'' troops spread blue among its towns, and now an urgent yellow rectangle, tagged ''TIC,'' troops in contact.

The ever-changing picture was the war in Iraq -- digitized. The TIC marked the site of a U.S. helicopter crash north of Baghdad on Monday. The nervous blue figures were aircraft rushing to the spot.

It's the American way of war, 21st-century style: A life-or-death drama playing out among the palms and heat of the Iraqi countryside was being mirrored in the air-conditioned calm of this secretive military nerve center 800 miles away. By day's end -- Memorial Day 2007, when President Bush loomed large on another giant screen here eulogizing America's war dead -- 10 more would join what he called a ''new generation of heroes.''

Inside the CAOC -- the Combined Air and Space Operations Center -- they weren't listening to Bush's address. The dozens of Air Force officers were too busy at their keyboards orchestrating hundreds of flights over Iraq and Afghanistan -- by strike aircraft, transports and tankers, surveillance planes and now a rescue mission.

''I hardly get a chance to see anything here,'' Edwards said over his shoulder when a reporter pointed out Bush, bigger than life on the TV screen above.

The Air Force had allowed a journalist a glimpse of the CAOC in action, on condition that no security-sensitive information be disclosed and the host country not be identified because of its sensitivity to being spotlighted as the site of a large U.S. air base.

The vast, state-of-the-art CAOC opened just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, in a three-story-high space of some 20,000 square feet, a ''warehouse'' where 500 military personnel work in round-the-clock shifts to oversee the daily ATO -- the Air Tasking Order whose flight assignments last Monday covered some 170 pages.

Across the darkened floor, the faces of Air Force professionals in jumpsuits glowed in the light of computer monitors as they quietly did their jobs in 11 ''cells,'' from space satellite reconnaissance, to midair refueling, to search and rescue.

On the soaring wall above, a dozen outsized video screens displayed weather forecasts, video from Predator surveillance drones aloft in the war zones, even a view of Iraq from space, watching for the telltale flame of an anti-aircraft missile launch.

Edwards' Combat Operations unit is charged with real-time execution of the ATO drawn up by Combat Plans, a division whose informal symbol, a house of cards, denotes the fragility of each day's well-laid plans.

This day was no different.

At ''1421 Zulu,'' 6:21 p.m. Baghdad time, Edwards spotted the ''helo down'' alert on one of the 13 military chat groups he monitors, computer forums linking aviation operators.

A two-man OH-58 scout helicopter from the Army's Task Force Lightning had ''put down for an unknown reason'' in Iraq's embattled Diyala province, he explained.

Edwards, 47, an A-10 fighter pilot from Potomac, Md., quickly determined that Baghdad air staff had diverted a pair of home base-bound F-16 fighters to the scene. But the Air Force jets, low on fuel, soon gave way to ''Voodoo 51,'' a mission of two Navy F-18s pulled from a job nearby to ''overwatch'' the downed helicopter site.

Within minutes, one of the unmanned Predators, code-named ''Judge,'' flew into the area and began sending live video to a CAOC wall screen, and a small television at Edwards' elbow. But the drone, crisscrossing above date-palm groves and Diyala brushland, somehow couldn't find the crash site.

''A QRF is on its way!'' an Army liaison shouted up to Edwards.

Task Force Lightning had dispatched a QRF -- quick reaction force -- of six Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees, 24 soldiers. Unconfirmed word came that the OH-58 apparently was brought down by enemy fire. Then Edwards learned that the two crew had been lifted out by a rescue helicopter.

Still the pressure mounted, now to protect the undefended chopper and its arms and equipment from the insurgents.

''Sir, I need to take this Predator away!''

It was Edwards' senior intelligence aide, Maj. Jason Arnold, across the operations platform, reminding his boss that Judge had been pulled off a priority mission nearby tracking a ''high-value'' insurgent suspect. ''They're going to get antsy,'' said Arnold, 32, of Brighton, Mich.

Edwards wasn't moved. ''Damn, I'd really like to see if we can get eyes on that bird,'' he told Arnold. ''I don't want anyone messing with that aircraft.'' The Predator stayed in the hunt.

Then, at 7:16 p.m. Baghdad time, a new murmur arose on the floor: A TIC had developed in Afghanistan.

Intense but cool, the bespectacled Edwards turned to this new contingency, meticulously taking notes on a small pad while also checking back on the Diyala situation.

Minutes later, that situation turned worse. The CAOC was informed that the two helicopter crewmen were dead.

The Predator remained overhead, looking for signs of an ambush by roadside ''improvised explosive devices.''

''The important thing now is to make sure the guys coming in the QRF don't get hit by IEDs,'' Edwards said.

At this point, with the ground force reported less than 15 minutes from the chopper, and as a sandstorm built outside the CAOC in the desert day's dying heat, the reporter had to leave the crow's nest.

In the coming hours, at CAOC and in Baghdad, the full extent of the Diyala losses would emerge. The ground force was, indeed, hit by a roadside bomb or bombs, and six of its men were dead -- eight killed in all, out of 10 U.S. fatalities in Iraq this bloody Memorial Day. It was confirmed that the OH-58 had been shot out of the sky by insurgent fire.

''They did not want war, but they answered the call when it came,'' Bush said in his holiday speech, speaking of this new roll call of American dead.

In a war as unpopular at home as any America has waged, the world's greatest military and technological power has been fought to a standstill by Iraqis taping together makeshift bombs.

The military professionals at the CAOC and other critical posts, meanwhile, have used the four years of war to hone skills and perfect technology, to prepare for more -- in this case in a new, next-generation CAOC scheduled to open in 2008 on this low-profile base.

6) Air operations center opens at Tyndall
by Master Sgt. Linda E Welz
1st Air Force Public Affairs

6/4/2007 - TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFPN) -- First Air Force celebrated the opening of the 601st Air and Space Operations Center here June 1 with a ceremony and tour of the 37,000-square-foot, $30 million combat center.

First Air Force, which also serves under the North American Aerospace Defense Command as the continental U.S. NORAD Region, provides air security and air sovereignty defense for the continental United States. Airmen at the new AOC plan, direct and assess air and space operations for NORAD and the United States Northern Command.

Conceived in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the state-of-the-art AOC further enables 1st Air Force Airmen to protect America's airspace from attack as well as coordinate life-saving relief during natural and man-made disasters.

Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, and director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, served as the ceremony's keynote speaker. Her brother, Charles Burlingame III, a retired military aviator, was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was hijacked by terrorists and flown into the Pentagon.

Ms. Burlingame said when times are difficult, Americans pull together as a nation toward a common goal.

"We are a country of achievers who dream big and fight hard to the end," said Ms. Burlingame. "We love to win (and) this spectacular new facility is here because people will never again let a tragedy like 9/11 happen; not on our watch."

As the newest combat center in the war on terrorism, the AOC operations floor employs a high-tech, two-story, 16-screen data wall in a media-based theater reminiscent of a space-age control center.

America's AOC employs the Theater Battle Management Core Systems that the joint forces air component commander uses to task and re-task theater assets by providing real-time feeds to pilots, navigators and air battle managers, allowing them to make better-informed decisions.

It also employs, through its Western and Northeastern Defense Sectors, the Battle Control System-Fixed program, to collect input from a network of radars to alert operators of airborne activity in continental U.S. air space. BCS-F provides key technology for the protection of the sovereign airspace over the continental U.S., Canada and surrounding waters.

Gen. Ronald Keys, the Air Combat Command commander, spoke of the many sorties, evacuations, rescues, firefighting missions and other missions that the command had completed since the 2001 terrorist attack.

He called the opening of the new AOC a red-letter day.

"We stand here on the first day of hurricane season knowing well that these Florida Air National Guard warriors are on the job," said General Keys.

"Americans can sleep well knowing their Air Force is awake and engaged here at America's AOC."

Maj. Gen. Hank Morrow, the 1st AF commander, called the AOC opening another step in the continuing mission to keep America safe.

"As we continue to hone America's technological edge we are able to strengthen our homeland defenses and bring military and civilian authorities together under on roof," he said. "Our team is an operational example of how our total force is engaged to keep our skies safe."

7) Air Force Unveils First-Ever CONUS "WARFIGHTING" CAOC

5/9/2007 - Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. --

Headquarters Twelfth Air Force and Air Forces Southern unveiled the U.S. Air Forces' newest Falconer, the Gen. James H. Doolittle Combined Air and Space Operations Center, today during a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The CAOC is the "nerve-center" for the Combined or Joint Forces Air Component Commander (C/JFACC) and serves as the hub of all air and space activities during combat and humanitarian operations.

"This world-class facility will serve as the home of the only continuously operational Falconer in the continental United States -- we're proud to be facilitators of such an essential weapons system," said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, commander, Twelfth Air Force and Air Forces Southern.

The 612th Air Operations Group runs the centers day-to-day activities including disseminating and monitoring air tasking orders for on going operation in Central and South America.

The CAOC serves as the air and space component to U.S. Southern Command. The command and control capabilities of the new facility provides the Southern Command commander a tremendous capability. Staffed by a total force of Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines it is responsible for maintaining the air picture for the Southern Command, in Central and South America, as well as Caribbean operations.

"This newest CAOC will provide a tremendous capability to plan, command, control, execute, and assess both U.S. and coalition air and space operations throughout Southern Command's area of operations," said Col. John Marselus, CAOC and 612th Air Operations Group commander.

The new facility is one of five "Falconer" CAOC weapons systems used to support geographic combatant commanders worldwide-- this designates an air operations center that is fully connected and capable of facilitating air, space and information operations worldwide. The other Falconer CAOCs are located in Southwest Asia, Europe, Korea and Hawaii. Each Air Operations Center has responsibility over a specified geographic location and mission.

"The Combined Air Operations Center weapons system at Davis-Monthan is designed to support operations worldwide," added General Seip. "This CAOC is up and running helping to execute operations in the US Southern Command region, but we're ready for any contingency."

8) Boeing-Lockheed Martin Conduct First SDB II Flight Test

Defense Daily 06/08/2007

Author: Michael Sirak

Boeing [BA] and teammate Lockheed Martin [LMT] late last month successfully completed the first flight of the Small Diameter Bomb Increment II (SDB II) system that they are offering to the Air Force as a means of attacking moving targets, the Chicago-based company announced on Wednesday.

The team is competing against a Raytheon [RTN]-led consortium for the rights to supply the SDB II system, a winged, 250-pound-class, all-weather, air- launched weapon, which is envisioned for fielding around the middle of next decade. The Air Force expects to choose the winning design by late 2009.

The free flight of the Boeing-Lockheed Martin design took place on May 22 at Eglin AFB, Fla., after successful completion of ground tests and captive-carry flights there, Boeing said. An Air Force F-15E fighter aircraft released the bomb, which thereupon opened its control fins and wings and flew its planned mission, the company said.

Boeing said the flight test demonstrated the compatibility of the SDB II with the BRU-61 pneumatic carriage system, which was originally developed for the now-operational first increment of the SDB (SDB I) that the company builds. The test also showed the compatibility with the SDB logistics system and the SBD I air vehicle and autopilot design, the company said.

"As we expected, our SDB II air vehicle and flight control system performance is excellent for the moving target version of SDB," Dan Jaspering, director of Direct Attack Weapons at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, said of the flight test in the company's June 6 statement. "This allows us to focus on systems integration of Lockheed Martin's multi-mode seeker and our network data link system for the remainder of the reduction phase of the competition."

Raytheon told Defense Daily that it continues to work closely with the Air Force to provide "the best SDB II possible," but did not divulge if it has already flight tested its design or when it plans to do that.

"We are confident that we are executing very well to our SDB II development plan in all key areas: system performance and reliability, air vehicle, multi-mode seeker, software and total systems integration," a company spokesman said.

The SDB I has been operational since last October on the F-15E and has been used in combat in Iraq. The bomb, which the Air Force designates the GBU-39, is designed to attack fixed and stationary relocatable targets with great accuracy in all weather and day or night. Its comparative small size allows a single aircraft to carry more munitions on a sortie and strike many more targets than is possible when carrying larger conventional bombs like Boeing's 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition.

The Air Force wants the SDB II to build upon the first increment by adding a terminal seeker and datalink so that the weapon can be employed against moving objects on land and at sea from standoff ranges. Originally Boeing won the winner-take-all rights to build SDB I and SDB II when the Air Force chose it over Lockheed Martin in the original SDB competition in 2003. But after the illegal activities of former senior Air Force procurement officer Darleen Druyun came to light, the service agreed to recompete the SDB II in response to a successful protest by Lockheed Martin with the Government Accountability Office.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin then joined forces on the SDB II. Last April, the Air Force awarded risk-reduction contracts to the Boeing-Lockheed Martin and Raytheon teams to mature their respective designs until the downselect (Defense Daily, April 18, 2006 and May 4, 2006).

Boeing leads the partnership with Lockheed Martin, supplying the air vehicle, which is a derivative of the SDB I airframe, and the bomb's datalink. Lockheed Martin provides the multi-mode seeker for terminal guidance.

Randy Bigum, vice president of Strike Weapons at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said a system that can strike moving targets in all weather from standoff distances is a much-needed capability.

"We will enhance the capability of Boeing's proven SDB I system with the addition of our advanced multi-mode seeker, resulting in the best possible SDB II system," he said.

9) AESA comm capabilities link demonstrated
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 06/14/2007

Northrop Grumman Corp., L-3 Communications and Lockheed Martin Corp. have successfully completed the first in-flight communications link with an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, Northrop announced June 13.

"We took our targeting radar and turned it into a "talking" radar by enabling it to transmit and receive unprecedented amounts of information," said Teri Marconi, vice president of Northrop Grumman's combat avionics business unit. The Air Force has been promoting the radar as a possible communications sensor. The Radar Common Data Link (R-CDL) represents an advanced concept and approach in providing a high-speed pipeline to offload data and imagery from a tactical platform. R-CDL uses the AESA radar's fire control transmitter and antenna to perform high-data rate, two-way communications at
long ranges.

Synthetic aperture radar map imagery and streaming video were relayed from a Northrop Grumman BAC 1-11 test aircraft to an L-3 Communications ground station. During the mission, the team transmitted and received in full duplex at 274-megabits per second burst rate. The airborne and ground terminals used off-the-shelf L-3 programmable modems with the addition of a new R-CDL waveform.

June 2007 News

In this month’s issue:

1) Beijing close to buying Backfire bombers

2) Military leaders devise programs for moving-target munitions

3) ISR general calls for emphasis on sensors

4) U.S. mulls ending troubled Lockheed missile

5) Army Aviation Manned/Unmanned Teaming Shortens Sensor To Shooter Time, General Says

6) Air Force Aligns Air Intelligence Agency Under Air Staff's ISR Directorate

7) JFCOM Experiment Considers Information Sharing

8) Military challenges demand rethinking of military, RAND says

9) AIM-120 Recast As Ballistic Missile Interceptor

10) New JSOW variant seeks moving maritime targets

11) ISR director: Analysis, sharing key to intel

1) Beijing close to buying Backfire bombers
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 05/24/2007

China probably will order 10 to 20 Tupolev 22M supersonic bombers as soon as this year and may build them under license, a Japanese newspaper has reported. The move will bolster Beijing's efforts to deter U.S. intervention in any Chinese attempt to forcibly recover Taiwan. Russia used the Tu-22M Backfire as a naval strike aircraft primarily designed to attack U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups. The Sankei newspaper, citing Japanese and Taiwanese military sources, also said an anti-ship version of the Dongfeng 21 ballistic missile will have infrared terminal guidance. Radar would have been an alternative homing system.

Development of such a DF-21 version has been reported from time to time over the past few years. It would present a great challenge to naval air-defense systems, although such a ballistic missile would itself have the difficulty of getting distant targeting data before launch and, as its maneuvering warhead descended, discriminating one ship from another.

Special concern

The combination of cruise-missile carrying Tu-22Ms and ship-homing DF-21s is a particular concern. A simultaneous assault by both types of weapon would present special problems for any single defending ship if its radar could not handle low and close threats while at the same time looking for high and distant
ones - a reported limitation of the U.S. Navy's Aegis system. But several ships working together could each attend to a different threat sector. Fixed-target DF-21s have been deployed since the 1980s. They are credited with carrying a 600 kilogram re-entry vehicle more than 1,800 kilometers (1,100
miles). The Tu-22M has an unrefueled combat radius of 2,000-2,500 kilometers. China has been trying to buy the aircraft from Russia since 1993.
- Kazuki Shiibashi

2) Military leaders devise programs for moving-target munitions
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 05/02/2007

Enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have made their mobility a key skill, so U.S. military leaders have documented a need for greater capability to attack moving targets and are moving forward with programs to adapt existing weapons, officials said recently.

"Based upon feedback from the combatant commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan - and subsequently approved as a capability gap documented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff - the department of the Navy plans to improve our ability to attack and strike moving targets," said William Balderson, deputy assistant Navy for air programs.

Two programs in particular seemed directed to the effort: the Direct Attack Moving Target Capability (DATCM) and the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). But the efforts face collateral-damage concerns, a growing issue on irregular battlefields as well as on Capitol Hill. The Navy and Marine Corps' fiscal 2008 budget requests $29.1 million next fiscal year, and $214.5 million across the five-year defense spending plan, for the DAMTC program. It would modify the existing inventory of "direct-attack" Joint Direct Attack Munition and Laser Guided Bomb weapons for a dual-mode weapon that is capable of hitting moving targets up to 70 miles per hour, Balderson and Bruce Clingan, the Navy's director for air warfare, told the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee on April 26.

An open acquisition will be carried out "expeditiously to respond to an urgent warfighter need" for a fixed-wing aircraft-based moving target weapon," Balderson said. Initial operating capability is slated for FY '09. "This low-cost, rapid integration program adds significant capability while leveraging the existing industrial base to procure 17,720 DAMTC weapons," according to Clingan.

Meanwhile, a JSOW C-1 version will provide a moving target capability to the standoff JSOW via the addition of a datalink and guidance software improvements to the JSOW-C variant, they said. The budget includes $24.9 million to continue development of the "network-enabled" JSOW-C-1 to fill a critical mission capability gap against moving ships at tactically significant ranges.

The request also outlines $131.3 million to procure 421 JSOW-Cs, which employ an imaging infrared seeker, GPS/INS and an augmenting charge with a follow-through penetrator bomb for use against hardened targets. Inventories remain below approved Non-Nuclear Ordnance Requirements, they said.

But production of other JSOW variants are still being deferred as the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the services try to resolve unexploded battlefield ordnance issues that are a concern to U.S. officials and allies, the officials testified. In February, Democratic Sens. Diane Feinstein (Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.) introduced legislation that would ban the use of U.S.-made cluster bombs in civilian areas. While the proposal highlighted cluster bombs, it also focused attention on collateral damage concerns from "dud" munitions among populations.

3) ISR general calls for emphasis on sensors

Air Force Times

By Paul Richfield - Staff writer
Posted : Friday May 25, 2007 5:30:04 EDT

OMAHA, Neb. — America’s national defense spending emphasis should migrate from weapons to sensor platforms, but “fifth-generation” manned fighter aircraft are still needed, according to the three-star Air Force general who oversees the service’s ISR programs.

Speaking Thursday at the first 55th Wing ISR Symposium in Omaha, Neb., Lt. Gen David Deptula, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, said “ISR will lead the fight in the year 2025, and will be the key technology to get us from here to there.”

“We can’t imagine what perils await us in the future,” Deptula told the gathering of intelligence officers, flight crews and defense contractors. “All we’re certain of is that the magnitude and speed of change will be the defining aspects of the future.”

“The enemy is evolving and adapting, and is highly malleable, like a liquid that gravitates toward our weakest points and defies our efforts to hold it in our grasp. Infesting urban areas and hiding among the civilian population, just finding the enemy has become our greatest challenge.”

Meeting this challenge, he said, will require a decisive shift from a Cold War mind-set, which placed ISR in a distant, supporting role: “Then, we had the luxury of an adversary that was monolithic and predictable, and peering over the Iron Curtain was all we had to do.”

Deptula said the Cold War left the U.S. with a “shooter-heavy footprint,” that is no longer applicable to today’s fight. What’s needed now, he said, is an investment that makes ISR platforms and programs the centerpiece of the “global war on terror.”

“Today’s enemy is not massing on the other side of the Fulda Gap,” he said. “One of their primary goals is to deny us a target and negate our firepower advantage, so ISR now makes up the majority of our current operations.”

We still need “fifth-generation” fighters such as the F-22, Deptula said, and need to discard the idea that such aircraft are just air-to-air combat platforms. Their capabilities, in his view, run the gamut of Air Force ISR, electronic warfare and precision strike missions. “It’s not just an F,” he said. “It’s also an F/A, an EA, an AC, RC and a G.”

Systems already in the inventory, such as targeting pods used for “nontraditional ISR” are not being sufficiently exploited, according to Deptula.

“We need to capitalize on the investment we’ve already made,” he said, adding that the top priority should be to eliminate ISR as a “low-density, high-demand” asset. “A forward-leaning strategy should be our goal — ISR has never been more important than it is today.”

4) U.S. mulls ending troubled Lockheed missile

Reuters News 05/17/2007

Author: Jim Wolf

(C) Reuters Limited 2006.

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is considering killing a troubled $5.8 billion-dollar Lockheed Martin Corp. cruise missile as well as other options "to get this program well," the service's top weapons buyer said Thursday.

"Termination is one of the things on the table" for the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Sue Payton, assistant secretary for acquisition, told a breakfast session.

"We don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water here," she said. "At this point, we do not think that we have a design flaw."

The missile, known as JASSM, is designed to destroy high-value, well-defended, fixed and relocatable targets.

Its GPS en-route guidance system and terminal imaging infrared seeker are supposed to provide pinpoint accuracy in difficult environments.

Payton said the Air Force would know more about recent flight-test problems in 30 days after reviewing data.

Lockheed Martin had no immediate comment on Payton's remarks.

But it said anomalies were experienced with four JASSM weapons test-flown in early May as part of an Air Force weapons evaluation program.

"An investigation is under way to identify the most likely cause of those anomalies," said Don McClain, a spokesman for Lockheed's Missiles and Fire Control business unit in Orlando, Florida. "Until this process is completed, it would be purely speculative to comment on potential factors contributing to the anomalies."

In a move unrelated to the test failures, the Defense Department told Congress in April that the program's costs had increased enough to require a full review of whether it should continue.

By law, the Pentagon's review must assess whether other solutions may be available to meet the mission and, failing this, affirm that the program's management is sound enough to proceed without further problems.

Lockheed has blamed the JASSM breach of a law known as Nunn-McCurdy on a range of factors, including procurement of an extended-range variant, which more than doubled the overall JASSM buy; previous Congressional budget cuts; and implementation of reliability improvements.

"Lockheed Martin has maintained its cost and schedule, and the reported budget increases have come principally from growth in the quantity of missiles ordered and additional capability requested by the Air Force," McClain said.

President Bush has asked Congress for a total of $213.3 million for the JASSM program in fiscal 2008 starting Oct. 1, including $201.1 million for Air Force procurement and $12.2 million for research and testing.

Lockheed shares were down 75 cents at $98.89 in late- morning New York Stock Exchange trade.

5) Army Aviation Manned/Unmanned Teaming Shortens Sensor To Shooter Time, General Says

Helicopter News 05/15/2007 Author: Ann Roosevelt

ATLANTA--The Army's teaming of manned and unmanned aviation assets is producing effects better than the service ever expected, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army said recently.

"We're getting persistent stare on the battlefield in ways that we never imagined," Gen. Richard Cody said in the keynote address to the Army Aviation Association of America conference here.

Back in the early 1990s, the Army was talking about teaming unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with rotorcraft. However, technology was not ready.

The Army built Task Force ODIN (Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize) to go after targets such as bomb makers, bomb emplacers and suicide bombers, Cody said. It is built around a C-12 aircraft with special mission package, and a Warrior UAV with special mission packages and command and control systems to get a common operating picture of the air and ground.

The idea was to shorten the sensor to shooter link.

What the service found out was that linking a C-12, Warrior and AH-64 Apache and OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters didn't necessarily mean helicopters in the air patrolling and seeking targets. The helicopters could be on the ground, on strip alert.

"We've been able to increase the survivability of our aviation fleet and our ground convoys because of the quick sensor sharing and common operating systems," Cody said.

While Cody wouldn't cite specifics, nor share tactics, techniques or procedures, he has seen the effects on videos, read the reports and talked to the soldiers.

"Suffice it to say, the routes they looked at, the enemy doesn't know they're up there," he said. The enemy can't hear or see the UAVs.

In the tactical operations center, the combat aviation brigades have situational awareness and understanding of what the manned or unmanned system is saying, and knowledge of where aviation assets are.

"I'm going from sensor-to-shooter killing in less than five minutes," Cody said.

"We are on the cusp of fully understanding how to get persistent stare," he said.

6) Air Force Aligns Air Intelligence Agency Under Air Staff's ISR Directorate

Defense Daily 05/16/2007

Author: Michael Sirak

The Air Force's Air Intelligence Agency (AIA) will formally have a new name and parent organization come June 8, the service announced on Monday.

As part of sweeping changes that the Air Force announced earlier this year to optimize its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) functions, AIA will become the Air Force ISR Agency and report directly to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for ISR (A2) in Air Force headquarters as a field operating agency, the service said. Previously, the AIA was aligned under Air Combat Command.

"The realignment of the newly designated, Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency under Air Force A2 will underscore the nature of ISR as an Air Force- wide enterprise," Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for ISR, said in a statement.

The move will give the agency direct access to the Air Force's senior intelligence officials, the service said.

Deptula said the agency "will now be responsible for broadening [its] scope beyond the signal intelligence arena to include all elements of ISR. The intent is to provide unmatched ISR capability to our nation's decision makers and combatant commanders."

The renamed agency will remain at Lackland AFB, Texas, but its force structure will include the 70th Intelligence Wing and the Air Force Cryptologic Office at Fort George G. Meade, Md.; the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; and the Air Force Technical Applications Center at Patrick AFB, Fla.

The Air Force Information Operations Center at Lackland, formerly a part of AIA, was reassigned on May 1 to 8th Air Force at Barksdale AFB, La., to fall under the service's new cyberspace command.

"The organizational realignments will enable the Air Force ISR Agency to transform our approach to ISR by managing systems, programs, and personnel through a capabilities-based construct, rather than focus on ownership or myriad unconnected budget lines," said Brig. Gen. Jan-Marc Jouas, vice commander of Air Force ISR Agency.

The Air Force announced its plans to transform its ISR operations in January, although service officials say the conceptual work began internally last August (Defense Daily, Jan. 19). The goal is to make the Air Force's ISR enterprise a preeminent organization, with the most respected personnel and the most valued capability by addressing how the Air Force provides ISR to joint warfighters as well as how it is organized to do this and how it trains and fosters a cadre of ISR professionals, service officials have said.

"This realignment is the result of nine months of hard work by ISR professionals in the Air Force and civilian sector," Maj. Gen. Craig Koziol, Air Force ISR Agency commander, said of the changes to his organization. "Air Force ISR transformation will allow us to treat intelligence as an Air Force-wide enterprise, coordinate and integrate ISR capabilities, and present those capabilities to joint warfighters and national users."

Koziol said he intends for the agency to become the focal point for Air Force ISR development and modernization.

"Our team must keep one thing in mind though; this is about delivering the best trained forces and most effective capabilities and how we can conduct integrated ISR operations, with precision at all levels, for air, space and cyberspace missions," he said.

"It's also about organizing, training, equipping, presenting and integrating multi-intelligence all-source ISR capabilities for joint forces commanders through the coalition/joint force air component commander," Koziol continued. "I am also looking forward to developing even stronger relationships with the combat support agencies within the national intelligence community--these organizations continue to play a vital role across the entire warfighting spectrum."

The changes with the agency are important steps in moving toward seamlessly integrated tactical and national ISR operations, he said.

7) JFCOM Experiment Considers Information Sharing

Defense Daily International 05/18/2007

Author: Ann Roosevelt

An early insight from the U.S. Joint Forces Command Noble Resolve 07-1 experiment is how to properly balance the needs of operational security and the need to share information between the military and homeland security personnel, according to an official.

There's a need to work on this issue because there's "a dynamic tension between [operational security] OPSEC and the need to share information...especially between DoD and some of our state and local responders," Mark Wolfe, deputy director for the Noble Resolve campaign, told sister publication Defense Daily in a recent interview.

Noble Resolve grew from an Army-JFCOM war game in 2006 finding a need for homeland defense experiments. It combined a terrorist scenario--a ship heading toward the United States from Africa with a radiological device on board, with a hurricane descending on the Tidewater area of Virginia.

The April 23-27 experiment at JFCOM facilities in Suffolk, Va., included at least a dozen coalition partners, representatives from the combatant commands, Coast Guard, Department of Energy, FEMA, Port of Norfolk, Maersk Line, the city of Portland, Ore., Defense Threat Reduction agency, University of Virginia, the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Early results can be expected by the end of the month with an executive report to follow, officials said.

Wolfe said part of the problem in studying maritime domain awareness with homeland security and homeland defense is how to share information among all the interested players, and at what level of security.

Some nations, such as Finland and Sweden, have an excellent cooperative network sharing information constantly on the Baltic Sea, he said. Others do not.

Eighty percent of the world's cargo is traded on some 50,000 ships. This trade is under regulated and not well protected, while economic damage could be enormous for a small terrorist investment.

Wolfe said one insight was that "we don't need an enormous 'uber alles' type of C2 structure to be top down driven like a U.N.-driven type of organization for maritime awareness...maybe just a system of systems," Wolfe said. "We're going to expand that look as we go into [Noble Resolve] NR 2, looking at a baseline idea on maritime domain awareness."

JFCOM's sophisticated modeling tool, called G2, looked at the processing of information among the parties involved in the experiment.

"G2 looked at all sorts of different emergency management and first responder and DoD and DHS types of information," Wolfe said.

Noble Resolve 07-1 worked with the Virginia Emergency Response Team Exercise (VERTX) fusion center, a fairly new construct, Wolfe said. There are some half-dozen of them in the United States, mostly funded by the Department of Homeland Security. The center had homeland security representatives, Virginia State Police, FBI, law enforcement, and analysts to review at all sorts of information flowing in.

Another early indicator, and a positive insight, was that "these fusion centers probably do need to have information on what's going on," Wolfe said.

Some "amazing" lessons are being learned, he said. For example, fusion centers and the information sharing that needs to go on: "a lot of eyes opened with that. You want to be able to get ahead of the threat...especially a natural threat, to plan ahead properly...and make good sound decisions before event occurs."

One benefit of an experiment like Noble Resolve is that it "frees us up a lot, not tie our hands to [tactics, techniques and procedures] TTPs, allows us to discuss freely what we think we would do as a changing situation occurs," Wolfe said.

Now, there's a fairly sophisticated effort to get the information about the experiment out, officials said, because there's high interest across the nation and among various allies in the discussions and insights that will be forthcoming.

For example, the command is working with the association of Adjutant Generals and likely all the governors within the next few months.

Among the efforts that "opened everyone's eyes" was the use of the Joint Semi-Autonomous Forces (JSAF) tool that modeled the environment in 3-D, the effects of a hurricane in Hampton Roads, Va., how a tidal surge of 10 feet from the hurricane climbed the sides of buildings in nearby Norfolk. That type of tool can be used to help "plan evacuations, how to position your first responders--firemen police, construction, to assist folk," Wolfe said.

A long term JFCOM goal is to transition JSAF to those who need it. However, while the federal government knows how to share things among agencies, how to share it with states, or mayors, for example, have to be worked out. "Everyone understands it's the right thing to do."

JSAF is just one of the planks of the modeling and simulation consortium JFCOM is building to make a homeland defense/homeland security experiment environment, Wolfe said.

A Hurricane Prediction Tracker, shared by U.S. Northern Command, modeled the path and predicts hurricane effects. Such a tool helps officials, for example, determine at what stage traffic needs to be reversed out of the area, and how defense support to civil authorities fits, and where assets need to go.

JFCOM is adding complexity to its simulations and tools so states would be able to take advantage of them for planning.

Overall, Wolfe assessed Noble Resolve 7-01 as "a big success." Now planning is underway for future experiments, to include Noble Resolve 07-2 in August, and TOPOFF 4, a Department of Homeland Security exercise scheduled for October. The multi-year Noble Resolve experiment plans two more efforts in 2008.

Essentially, JFCOM believes policy should be a guide, not a hamper, and expects to work to rapidly transition learning from this experiment to those who would benefit.

8) Military challenges demand rethinking of military, RAND says

Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 05/21/2007

MORE RETHINKING: "Complex" military challenges facing the United States will require all four military services to rethink the way forces are manned, equipped and deployed, according to a RAND Corp. study issued May 17. "U.S forces are being called upon to perform new missions far outside their normal repertoire, from confronting terrorism spawned by radical Islam to the possibility of fighting new nuclear powers," says Andrew Hoehn, director of RAND's Project Air Force and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. The primary roles for the Air Force and the Navy will be to conduct large-scale "power projection" operations, while the Army, Marine Corps and Special Forces will be used more to promote stability worldwide, RAND reports. Similarly, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) is pushing legislative language under the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill that would require the Defense Department to reassess its roles and missions

9) AIM-120 Recast As Ballistic Missile Interceptor

Aviation Week & Space Technology 05/21/2007

Author: David A. Fulghum

Raytheon is trying to win the international race to develop an air-launched weapon that can shoot down ballistic missiles within tens of seconds after launch. Its entry is a new, longer-range version of the AIM-120 Amraam that could be carried by manned fighters or unmanned surveillance or combat aircraft.

The missile's new second-stage, liquid-rocket motor was tested in December, and its seeker will be demonstrated this summer, says Mike Booen, vice president of advanced missile defense and directed energy weapons for Raytheon Missile Systems. The size, center of gravity and aerodynamic shape of the hit-to-kill interceptor are the same as for the AIM-120.

The concept is that long-endurance UAVs the size of the Predator B could carry adequate missiles and fly high enough to set up "launch area denial spheres," Booen says. That area of denial would be big enough to cover the missile launch complex in eastern North Korea from an orbit over international waters in the Sea of Japan. In fact, the missile could be launched from any platform that has the electrical interface for Amraam, including the F-22 Raptor or F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

If you don't want somebody to launch missiles, "you can deny those launches with a UAV combat air patrol well offshore and out of the way," Booen says. The UAV would be positioned in the "launch tube" between the missile's firing point and the target.

The Amraam was initially designed for beyond-visual-range, air-to-air combat. But recent variants have been reconfigured for internal carriage by manned and unmanned aircraft. Others have specialized for head-on attacks of small stealth cruise missiles and for better maneuvering at the terminal stage of its flight. While the new missile is intended for engagements in the boost and ascent phase, it is also expected to have application for the terminal phase as warheads re-enter the atmosphere.

Researchers will test the new interceptor's seeker--carried by a fighter-fired AIM-9X--against a boosting ballistic missile in late summer at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Booen says. Because two-thirds of the missile is already in production, he predicts the company could begin to field the new weapons for less than $1 million each in about four years. "The services or the Missile Defense Agency [MDA] can adopt these missiles [without] a large logistics bill in the future for introducing this new weapon," he says. Raytheon has offered MDA a series of tests that would leave a residual of 20 production representative missiles for more tests and a small operational capability.

The experiment is called the Network-Centric Airborne Defense Element (Ncade) because it is designed to pull real-time targeting information from many sources, including the Defense Support Program early-warning satellite constellation that provided information of Iraqi scud-missile launches against Saudi Arabia and Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Researchers have taken the infrared sensor from the company's AIM-9X short-range, air-to-air missile and integrated it with the AIM-120 Amraam missile body and solid-fuel rocket motor as its first propulsion stage. After firing, the first stage drops away.

A new liquid-fuel second stage--the advanced hydroxyl ammonium nitrate thruster--will provide at least an extra 25-plus sec. of powered flight at more than 150 lb. thrust, Booen says. A variable direction exhaust nozzle will allow rapid maneuvering, without fins, of the missile's front half at exoatmospheric altitudes of 100,000 ft. or more. The thruster was demonstrated in December. Because a liquid-fuel motor can be stopped and restarted, the burn time can be programmed for extended flight or to save fuel for extra axial velocity or maneuvering in the late stages of flight. The liquid fuel will be environmentally friendly.

Raytheon also has fabricated two prototype Ncade seekers, modified to pick a missile body out of exhaust. Their ability to track a booster has been tested in a high-fidelity simulator. The standard AIM-9X seeker has a single point modification of the filter wheel so that hard bodies can be picked out of the bright rocket plume.

Meanwhile, Israel has been flying a secret new Heron II unmanned aircraft with a wingspan of more than 85 ft. expected to carry two Rafael-designed missiles (see p. 32). A version of the Derby beyond-visual-range, air-to-air missile is being developed for boost-phase intercept, and an air-to-ground vision of the Python short-range, air-to-air missile is being eyed for attacking mobile ballistic missile launchers.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, builder of the Predator UAV family, and Aerojet, maker of the new second-stage motor, have partnered with Raytheon on the project. Initially, the program was focused only on Predator B because of its altitude performance and payload, but veteran fighter pilots "pointed out that in a conflict, fighters carrying mixed loads of ordnance will be flying around the clock," Booen says. "It would be nice to have one of these missiles on the rails, so that if the enemy launched ballistic missiles, we could do something about it." The new UAVs and fighters also will have advanced infrared sensing systems and "could take target information from anywhere."

11) New JSOW variant seeks moving maritime targets
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 05/25/2007

Raytheon announced May 24 that a March award from the U.S. Navy to develop the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) AGM-154C1 (formerly JSOW Block III) will provide a capability against moving maritime targets.

The new JSOW variant is scheduled to be produced in 2009. The AGM-154C1 builds upon the JSOW Block II weapon by adding a weapons data link to receive in-flight target updates from F/A-18E/F aircraft. The new JSOW variant includes updated seeker algorithms designed to hit moving targets, a growing requirement identified by Pentagon program officials (DAILY, May 2). The $93.7 million Naval Air Systems Command contract stems from earlier trade studies performed by the NAVAIR and Raytheon team to develop an initial architecture and mission effectiveness assessments for the AGM-154C1, according to Raytheon (DAILY, March 20).

Earlier this year, Raytheon chose Rockwell Collins to develop and qualify a dual UHF and Link 16 weapon data link called Strike Link. Raytheon will use Strike Link in several weapons and, with the assistance of the NAVAIR team, will be the supplier of the Harpoon Block III data link, the company also said.

11) ISR director: Analysis, sharing key to intel

Air Force Times

By Paul Richfield - Staff writer
Posted : Friday May 25, 2007 5:14:33 EDT

OMAHA, Neb. — Since the National Security Agency sets the technical standards for U.S. signals intelligence collection, the Air Force should look to the Fort Meade, Md.-based organization for guidance before embarking on SigInt-related hardware and software acquisitions, according to a top Air Force official.

Col. James Whidden, director of intelligence operations with the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, formerly the Air Intelligence Agency, believes acquisitions in these areas will bear heavily on two upcoming ISR programs: the Web-based Distributed Common Ground System and the RC-130, a proposed SigInt variant of the Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft.

“The current focus on sensor capabilities rather than on the old Cold War threat-based approach is fine, but we must not forget that such systems must have the ability to fight, to go into harm’s way,” Whidden said Wednesday at the first 55th Wing ISR Symposium in Omaha, Neb.

“We have to find a balance between collection and all-source analysis, and need to accept that we’re going to collect much more data than we can ever analyze,” he said. “Obtaining a particular piece of imagery is important, but understanding the history of that image — detecting subtle changes — is much more important. And the key to SigInt is providing a precise location of an emitter, right now.”

Whidden cited Air Force inconsistency in the area of intelligence sharing.

In South Korea, he said, Republic of Korea personnel work alongside Americans but this is an exception attributable to a 55-year security arrangement. In most other cases, no mechanism exists for the sharing of SigInt data with coalition partners.

“When we deploy [the RC-135] Rivet Joint, we have no means of involving our allies and this is unacceptable,” he said. “We’re never going to fight alone, and we need to do a better job with establishing the rules for sharing. And it won’t be a case of ‘one size fits all’ — the rules for sharing with the British and with the Colombians will be different.”

Reorganization of the Air Force’s ISR infrastructure is necessary, Whidden said, as the line between intelligence and combat operations becomes less clearly defined. Whidden predicts a time when Title 50 — the guidelines for intelligence agencies — become indistinguishable from Title 10, the legal framework for combatants.

“The services already have authority in both, so what’s needed are ‘Title 60’ organizations” that formalize the arrangement, he said.