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
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
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
3) Nonkinetic weapons equally important with kinetic, Navy captain says
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report 07/17/2007
NONKINETIC EFFECTS:
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
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
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
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
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,”
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.
“Socom invested a lot of money in CAAP, and they weren’t satisfied with the progress,”
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,”
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,
While reducing the number of C-130 types in service, the command is also looking to increase the types of low-end transports, which
But,
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
TAIS shows only a portion of the big picture, not a view of the
"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
"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
"This is a well integrated, well practiced capability," she said. TAIS systems support Air Force Blue Flag exercises; they are also located at the
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
Harris Corp. has announced that The Boeing
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.
