US Armed Forces

[Khafee]

Pentagon: Chinese military growing fast to challenge U.S. military superiority
By Nicholas Sakelaris
MAY 3, 2019

The Chinese military is growing rapidly to counter U.S. superiority, a new report from the Pentagon said. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

May 3 (UPI) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched icebreakers and civilian research stations in Iceland and Norway that could be precursors for a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines to the Arctic region, the Pentagon said in its annual report on China.

China's military is growing rapidly as part of its goal of becoming a "near-Arctic state" with control of the "Polar Silk Road," the Pentagon report said. The report mentions the word "Arctic" 21 times -- last year's report mentioned it one time.

The push to military modernization is expected to be complete by 2035 with a "world-class" force by 2049. That includes an aircraft carrier fleet that's built domestically and a hypersonic glide vehicle. The country has one aircraft carrier in operation, the Liaoning.

Chinese "ground, naval, air and missile forces are increasingly able to project power" and "contest U.S. military superiority" in the region, the report said.

China has improved its ability to conduct complex joint operations to counter the United States. Beijing's espionage against the United States and the defense industry has focused on aviation technology and antisubmarine warfare. China can also operate at longer ranges away from the mainland.

The report warns that Chinese citizens will use "coercion and blackmail" to advance China's interests while military units also "conduct clandestine and overt intelligence collection."

China placed anti-ship cruise missiles and long-range surface-to-air missiles on Spratly Island in the South China Sea, despite claims that it won't "pursue militarization" of that area. China was excluded from naval war exercises because of the deployment last year.

China is also increasing sales of its drones to countries like Burma, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. China has "little competition" for these sales.

This latest report comes as the Trump administration continues to push for a new trade deal with China. Right now, both sides have placed tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese goods.

Pentagon: Chinese military growing fast to challenge U.S. military superiority - UPI.com

Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched icebreakers and civilian research stations in Iceland and Norway that could be precursors for a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines to the Arctic region, a Pentagon report said.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

How the Space Force might impact Navy and Marine Corps personnel
By: Valerie Insinna  
06-May-2019

A U.S. Navy communications satellite lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41. The MUOS 4 satellite was designed to bring new global communications capabilities to mobile military forces. (Courtesy of United Launch Alliance)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — As the Pentagon considers which military personnel could become part of the new U.S. Space Force, leaders with the Navy and Marine Corps have expressed confidence troops will continue to execute the space mission no matter the service to which they’re assigned.

“With regard to where our personnel are at, I can’t speak to what’s on their mind except that I know that interacting with our space operators, they’re dedicated to the mission,” Rear Adm. Christian Becker, head of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, said during a May 6 panel at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference.

“I know within the services, the dedication and passion of our space professionals will not alter. They’ll deliver on a mission call,” Becker added.

Brig. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, the Marine Corps’ director of command, control, communications and computers, doubled down on that sentiment.

“The folks that we have in this space are passionate and committed to the mission, so as soon as they get the mission, whatever you tell them to do, they’ll salute and they’ll deliver,” she said.

The establishment of a Space Force is the most visible element of a large-scale reorganization of the military’s space enterprise currently under debate within the Defense Department and Congress. While only Congress can create a new branch of the military, President Donald Trump has signed off on the establishment of U.S. Space Command, a new unified combatant command that will oversee space operations.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is leading an effort to create a detailed implementation plan for the Space Force so that the service — which will initially reside under the Department of the Air Force — can be stood up within a matter of years.

The establishment of a Space Force headquarters is planned for fiscal 2020, and billets will be transferred to the new service in the following years. By FY24, the Space Force will be comprised of about 15,000 personnel, according to the Pentagon’s strategic overview, which did not provide a service-by-service breakdown.

The Marine Corps and Navy are providing input on the detailed Space Force implementation plan, Mahlock and Becker said.

However, Becker cited an aspect of how the Navy organizes its space personnel that could complicate the decision on whether to redirect those billets toward the Space Force.

“Our officers and sailors that are involved in the mission areas that touch on space are also very involved in other mission areas,” he said. For example, a space acquisition officer might also have in-depth knowledge about aerospace engineering or information warfare.

“In the acquisition of space-based capabilities, they bring their knowledge and capabilities and their strengths to that acquisition fight, and then they bring what they had gained from the space acquisition fight back to delivering naval capabilities,” he said. “So it is much more of a broad base of mission area for our folks, particularly in the acquisition domain.”

Mahlock said the reorganization of the space enterprise — especially the establishment of U.S. Space Command — could provide an opportunity for the Marine Corps to be “really vocal" about what the Marine air-ground task force “can do in that global fight.”

However, she acknowledged that the Marine Corps, like its sister services, is still figuring out how to develop and retain the “exquisite talent” that is in the space-based force.

How the Space Force might impact Navy and Marine Corps personnel

The question is how many Navy and Marine Corps billets will transfer to the Space Force.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The Navy’s top officer wants you to stop counting his ships
By: David B. Larter  
06-May-2019

The John C. Stennis strike group conducts a replenishment at sea. (MC1 Bryan Niegel/U.S. Navy)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Navy’s top officer wants people to stop thinking about thesize of the fleet in terms of how many ships it has, and instead start thinking about what those ships can do.

Asked whether he thought unmanned ships would ultimately count against the Navy’s battle force of ships, which now stands at 289, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said he’d like to move away from thinking in terms of ship count.

“It’s kind of a theoretical discussion,” Richardson said. “The thing that really matters is how much naval power do those platforms deliver. That’s the thing we’re after, I’m not so caught up in what counts against the battle force.

“Because if that platform, manned or unmanned, delivers a requisite amount of naval power that’s available and assignable by the theater commander, then OK, that contributes to naval power.”

The distinction may seem like an exercise in semantics, but for Congress, the number of ships in the fleet has always been a useful metric when discussing the need for a larger or smaller Navy. Even President Ronald Reagan made a specific ship count — 600 ships — an organizing goal and rallying cry.

Today, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have made the Navy’s current force-structure assessment goal of 355 ships a focal point of their efforts.

Going after a concept like “total naval power” is somewhat more abstract and difficult to fit on a bumper sticker. However, the danger of chasing ship counts is that it could drive the Navy toward buying platforms it doesn’t need to meet a specific number, Richardson said.

“We have to be very careful to make sure that we’re not constructing something that counts on a tally but doesn’t contribute to naval power,” Richardson said. “At the end of the day, the real metric is power.”

The question will become relevant as the Navy prepares to roll out its force structure assessment later this year, which service leaders have intimated will likely grow the number of ships it needs to support the National Defense Strategy. Richardson’s answer represents a view widely held inside the Navy: that simply counting hulls is inadequate.

However, others have argued that quantity has a quality of its own, and that for a variety of demands placed on the fleet outside of being able to fight and win a war — presence, training with partners and freedom of navigation operations, to name a few — at some point the service will need enough hulls to fulfill the mission.

Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with Telemus Group, has argued for years that numbers are critical to the Navy’s role in preserving the peace. Citing the 2007 maritime strategy, Hendrix said numbers matter.

“In that strategy they found that preserving the peace was at least as important a mission as winning the war,” Hendrix said. “This idea of peacetime presence is crucial, and capacity is very critical in the peace preservation mission. You can’t’ surge trust and you certainly can’t be virtually present.”

The Navy’s top officer wants you to stop counting his ships

"The real metric is power," says the chief of naval operations.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

NORTHCOM: Arctic now America’s ‘first line of defense’
By: Kyle Rempfer  
06-May-2019

Coast Guard Diver 1st Class Dylan Smith, assigned to Regional Dive Locker West, dives into a water hole during a torpedo exercise in the Arctic Circle in support of Ice Exercise 2018. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Daniel Hinton/Navy)

WASHINGTON — In order to operate in the Arctic, the U.S. military must spend more money on joint training and cold weather technology and more time on Alaska’s ranges and working with Native American tribes, according to defense officials.

U.S. defense officials announced at the Sea Air Space forum here on Monday that September Arctic sea ice is receding at a rate of roughly 13 percent per decade. That presents economic opportunities for nations with coastlines that hug the region but also competition from rivals.

Russian forces are projecting power within the Arctic, operating the world’s largest icebreaker fleet while building out air bases, sea ports, weapons and domain awareness tools to operate there.

China also has declared itself a “near-Arctic state" as it angles for a share of the trillions of dollars to be made off minerals, natural gas, ocean fisheries and trade routes in the region.

“I’m not sure that’s even a defined term,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy said of China’s self-designated title.

O’Shaughnessy, who helms both U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said that enforcing a “rules-based international order” is at the forefront of U.S. policy. But the security implications of a warming Arctic are clear: the U.S. homeland is no longer a sanctuary.

“The Arctic is the first line of defense,” O’Shaughnessy said.

While the U.S. Coast Guard continues to invest in a new icebreaker fleet, defense officials say more must be done to cement America’s place in the Arctic.

Exercises like NATO’s Trident Juncture — involving 50,000 troops, 150 aircraft, 65 ships and 10,000 vehicles — gave a taste of the frigid challenges the alliance would face should a northern member, like Norway, be invaded.

During that autumn training operation, the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman became the first U.S. Navy flattop in nearly three decades to sail north of the Arctic Circle for an extended period of time.

Waging war in the Arctic will also require troops capable of conducting mountain terrain analysis, cold-weather operations, land navigation in the alpine wilderness and rock climbing, among other skills.

Aircraft crews will need to understand and prepare for cold-weather flight, not to mention the strain that ice, cold and high latitudes put on airframes.

And the armed forces must collaborate with those who have lived in the region for generations — especially the Alaska Federation of Natives, or AFN, the largest statewide Native organization, according to O’Shaughnessy and other defense leaders.

“We need them. I need to tap into that local knowledge," said Navy Rear Adm. John Okon, commander of Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command.

“Leveraging indigenous people’s knowledge to operate up there is critical for us.”

Native Alaskans have an acute understanding of ice-flow, melting conditions and shifting weather patterns, Okon said.

Tapping into that knowledge will be critical because the region remains an operational enigma for much of the military, he added.

Okon warned that the state of weather observation in the Arctic today is comparable to that across the continental United States during World War I.

“We’re a hundred years behind understanding the conditions of where we’ll have to defend the homeland and our partners,” Okon said.

While computer models can map weather patterns, the military needs to make those models reliable by collecting detailed observations at sites across the Arctic.

“We’re operating in the blind," Okon said, and that’s a problem because the “Arctic is harsher than any other place on Earth, under, on or above the sea."

Temporal conditions make predicting weather tricky and the lack of accurate navigation charts complicate operations even more, he warned.

American efforts to shore up decades of Arctic inattention come amid growing Russian influence in the region.

Moscow’s forces already operate across the Bering Strait at Kotelny Island’s Northern Clover military base.

The installation brims with coastal defense missile systems and a cold-weather version of Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air missiles.

Russian forces are preparing to monitor airspace and secure the Northern Sea Route, which has the potential to turn the Arctic into a geostrategic thoroughfare on par with the Strait of Malacca — a major shipping channel connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans — and the Suez Canal, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Officials said that Pentagon planners contemplating 21st century operations in the Arctic must confront challenges unique to the region.

For example, while America’s military embraces autonomous vehicles, those systems are limited in the Arctic by a lack of persistent operations and high costs to create and maintain them.

New technology deployed to the region must be reliable, affordable and allow for persistent operations, they said, but a major limitation remains the duration of battery power in cold conditions.

NORTHCOM: Arctic now America’s ‘first line of defense’

New business opportunities in the Arctic also invite new strategic competition, U.S. defense officials say.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The US Navy’s unmanned dream: A common control system
By: David B. Larter  
06-May-2019

An MQ-8C Fire Scout is chained to the flight deck of the Independence-class littoral combat ship Coronado. (U.S. Navy)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy’s growing and increasingly diverse portfolio of unmanned systems is creating a jumble of control systems, creating problems for a force that hopes robot ships, aircraft and submarines will help it regain a significant advantage over rivals China and Russia.

One significant issue is having to train sailors on a number of different systems, which can prove time-consuming, inefficient and expensive.

“From a manned-machine teaming and sailor-integration perspective, we need a portfolio of systems to do a wide variety of things,” said Capt. Pete Small, the head of unmanned maritime systems at Naval Sea Systems Command. “We can’t bring a different interface for each platform to our sailors — from a training perspective but also from an integration perspective.

“We might have a destroyer that needs to operate an [unmanned surface vessel] and an [unmanned underwater vehicle] and they all need to be linked back to a shore command center. So we’ve got to have common communications protocols to make that all happen, and we want to reduce the burden on sailors to go do that.”

That’s driving the Navy toward a goal of having one control system to run all the unmanned platforms in the service’s portfolio: a goal that is a good ways away, Small said.

The end state is — future state nirvana — would be one set of software that you could do it all on,” he said. “I think that’s a faraway vision. And the challenges are every unmanned system is a little bit different and has its own requirements. And each of the integration points — a destroyer, a shore base or a submarine — has slightly different integration requirements as well.

“But the vision is that we can enjoy commonality as much as possible and share pieces of software wherever possible.”

The effort mirrors a similar endeavor in the surface Navy to develop a single combat system that controls every ship’s systems.

The goal here is that if a sailor who is trained on a big-deck amphibious ship transfers to a destroyer, no extra training will be necessary to run the equipment on the destroyer.

“That’s an imperative going forward — we have to get to one, integrated combat system,” Rear Adm. Ron Boxall, the chief of naval operations’ director of surface warfare, said in a December interview at the Pentagon with Defense News.

The US Navy’s unmanned dream: A common control system

The U.S. Navy is looking to streamline the number of systems that will control the ever-expanding portfolio of unmanned platforms.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

Carrier strike force heading to the Middle East to counter Iran threats
By Nicholas Sakelaris
MAY 6, 2019

An aerial view of the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers USS John C. Stennis and USS Abraham Lincoln, which are expected to meet in the Persian Gulf in response to Iranian threats. Photo by Kenneth Abbate/U.S. Navy | License Photo


May 6 (UPI) -- The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force are being deployed to the Middle East in response to threats to U.S. troops by Iran or their allies, American government officials said.

The United States is responding to "a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings," White House national security adviser John Bolton said. He didn't provide details but said the United States wants to send a "clear, unmistakable" message to Iran that "unrelenting force" would meet any attacks against U.S. troops or allies.

"The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the regular Iranian forces," Bolton said.

A Defense Department official told CBS News that U.S. intelligence has detected a "number of preparations for possible attack" on land and at sea.

"There is more than one avenue of attack or possible attack that we're tracking ... This has been moving pretty fast today (Sunday)," the official said.

In addition to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the strike force includes the guided missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and destroyers from the Destroyer Squadron 2. The group left the Naval Station Norfolk on April 1. The USS John Stennis aircraft carrier and its associated strike group has already been in the Persian Gulf since March.

Tensions with Iran have skyrocketed in the last week since the Trump administration ended waivers that allowed some countries to continue buying Iranian crude oil despite U.S. sanctions. That means China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey can no longer buy crude oil from Iran, putting increased pressure on Tehran.

The United States also officially designated the IRGC as a terrorist group recently, which prompted Iran to turn around and name U.S. forces as terrorists as well. It's been a year since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strike force deployment has been in the works for a little while.

"It is absolutely the case that we have seen escalatory actions from the Iranians and it is equally the case that we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests," Pompeo said. "If these actions take place, if they do by some third-party proxy, a militia group, Hezbollah, we will hold the Iranian leadership directly responsible for that."

Carrier strike force heading to the Middle East to counter Iran threats - UPI.com

The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force are being deployed to the Middle East in response to threats to U.S. troops by Iran or their allies.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

CNO: Navy's Response to Iran Proves New Unpredictable Deployment Model Works
6 May 2019
Military.com | By Gina Harkins

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) transits the Strait of Gibraltar, entering the Mediterranean Sea as it continues operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Clint Davis)

The Navy's quick response to "troubling and escalatory" warnings from Iran shows a new deployment model meant to keep adversaries guessing is working, the service's top admiral said Monday.

The Abraham Lincoln Strike Group was conducting training exercises in Europe during a planned deployment when it was ordered to pivot toward the Middle East, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said at the annual Sea-Air-Space conference outside Washington.

"I find it very encouraging that while the Abraham Lincoln Strike Group was out exercising in the European theater ... and national leadership requires, requests or orders that force package to go to a different theater, it's just a matter of … very fluidly and dynamically getting all of that power to move to that theater," he said.

The model, called dynamic force employment, was introduced in last year's National Defense Strategy. It calls for less predictable maneuvering and posturing "to shape proactively the strategic environment," the strategy states.

Moving the strike group out of the Mediterranean Sea and toward the Middle East came in response to "a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran, John Bolton, the White House national security adviser, said in a statement. An official told The Associated Press on Sunday that U.S. troops at sea and on land were believed to be the potential targets.

"The United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force," Bolton wrote.

The sea services in particular are well-suited for quick response, Richardson said. Strike groups, amphibious ready groups and Coast Guard cutters are "maneuver forces by design."

"They're designed to move around the globe very fluidly in response to changing security situations," he said.

This isn't the first time the Navy has used the dynamic force employment model. Last year, the Harry S. Truman Strike Group returned to its homeport in Virginia about five weeks after it deployed -- a big change from traditional seven-month deployments. It later deployed again after about three months at home.

CNO: Navy's Response to Iran Proves New Unpredictable Deployment Model Works

The Navy's quick response to warnings from Iran shows a new deployment model meant to keep adversaries guessing is working.

www.military.com

 

[Khafee]

US Navy’s Unmanned Boat Now Features 50-Caliber Machine Gun
06 May 2019
Military.com | By Richard Sisk

The Navy and Textron showed off for the first time a weaponized prototype of a small unmanned surface vessel (USV) designed to revolutionize sea warfare, May 6, 2019. (Military.com photo/Richard Sisk)

The Navy and Textron showed off for the first time Monday a weaponized prototype of a small unmanned surface vessel (USV) designed to revolutionize sea warfare.

Textron principal systems engineer Gary Hartman said the display of the 40-foot Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle, docked at the annual Sea-Air-Space Exposition at National Harbor, Maryland, is the first of the boat mounted with a 50-caliber machine gun and a housing for Hellfire missiles.

The weapons display is the outgrowth of the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement signed last year by Naval Sea Systems Command and Textron "to develop and integrate surface warfare payloads onto the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle."

According to the agreement, "the payloads will include various missiles, designators, sensors, and remote weapon stations."

The weapons are part of what Hartman called an "expeditionary warfare package" for the CUSV, but he stressed that the display is intended only to show possible future capabilities. "As an initial package, there's not a lot of appetite for it" currently, he said.

Hartman said the CUSV itself is a program of record with the Navy, but there is no timeline for when the systems will be deployed.

The CUSV was initially developed to be carried aboard Littoral Combat Shipsand launched to conduct countermine and surveillance operations. The missions can be programmed into the CUSV, and radars and other sensors aboard alert the mother ship to what the CUSV finds, Hartman said.

Hartman noted that the CUSV is programmed to be compliant with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs).
The CUSV, which is capable of 30 knots and has a range of 400 nautical miles, will independently pass behind an approaching vessel and then resume its original mission direction, he said.

During countermine activities, when it is programmed to stick to a given course, the CUSV will independently slow to allow the approaching vessel to pass and "then get back on track," Hartman said.

The CUSV's COLREG-compliant feature also has possible applications for manned Navy surface vessels, he said. "It doesn't lose focus; it doesn't lose attention," as sailors might.

Navy’s Unmanned Boat Now Features 50-Caliber Machine Gun

The small unmanned surface vessel is designed to revolutionize sea warfare.

www.military.com

 

[Khafee]

Navy, Marine Corps Aren't Ready to Commit Personnel to Space Force
06 May 2019
Military.com | By Richard Sisk

Navy and Marine Corps officials sidestepped questions Monday over whether they will commit their own resident experts to the new sixth branch of the military, Space Force.

Rear Adm. Christian Becker, commander of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), said decisions on shifting personnel to Space Force are above his pay grade and have yet to be finalized.

He said the Defense Department is still studying "how best to support that Space Force" and "how to meet the mission needs of the Space Force."
Until the DoD decides, his personnel are involved in other missions, Becker said.

Brig. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, the first African-American woman to be nominated to one-star rank in the Marine Corps and now the deputy commandant for information, was equally non-committal, saying it is a "little premature to have that discourse" on Marine Corps involvement in the Space Force.

The Coast Guard's chief of naval research, Capt. Greg Rothrock, said only that his service "certainly was not a leader" on the Space Force issue and is focused on being a "smart user of the capabilities that are available" from advances in space technology.

Becker, Mahlock and Rothrock were on a panel at the Sea-Air-Space exposition at National Harbor, Maryland, to discuss space as the military's new frontier.

In June 2018, President Donald Trump directed the DoD to begin planning for a Space Force; in February, he signed an order directing all military space functions to come under a new Space Force, to be overseen by the Department of the Air Force.

However, Congress is still debating its size, composition and costs, and questioning what the Space Force will do that the Air Force isn't doing already.

At a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in March, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said that he expects 15,000 to 20,000 personnel to be assigned to Space Force. According to his Navy biography, Becker has about 10,500 military and civilian personnel in SPAWAR.

On Sunday, 43 former DoD, Air Force and intelligence officials signed an open letter to express "strong support" for the creation of a Space Force.

The letter said in part that a Space Force would "develop military space culture and ethos" and "recruit, train, educate, promote and retain scientists, engineers and warriors with world-class space skills and talent."

Navy, Marine Corps Aren't Ready to Commit Personnel to Space Force

Rear Adm. Christian Becker said decisions on shifting personnel to Space Force have yet to be finalized.

www.military.com

 

[Khafee]

Navy Test-Fires Ship Variant of Army's Excalibur Precision Artillery Shell
06 May 2019
By Hope Hodge Seck


The Navy quietly conducted a ground test of a precision-guided projectile the Army fires from cannons, manufacturer Raytheon revealed this week.
The test of the N5 naval variant of the Excalibur projectile took place in September at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, John Hobday, senior manager for advanced programs with Raytheon's Land Warfare Systems division, told Military.com on Monday.

"What we have done is leveraged and reused the components ... in a round that can be fired from the Navy 5-inch gun," Hobday said. "Part of [the test] was to establish the fact that it did work with the existing 5-inch rounds."

The N5 round was previously fired from a naval 5-inch gun in a 2015 test at Yuma. The follow-on test indicates the Navy's continued interest in the technology, although a timeframe for moving forward has not been made clear.

"What comes next is the Navy deciding where their priorities lie," Hobday said. "It's a positive indicator that they have allowed us to release this information."

The Excalibur projectile offers double the effective range of the conventional shell currently used with the MK-45 5-inch gun aboard Navy destroyers and cruisers. It can fire out to 40 kilometers, or almost 22 nautical miles, compared with the current range of just over 20 kilometers. The projectile also offers accuracy inside two meters.

And, Hobday said, it would be a smart investment for the Navy because the service will be able to "leverage other people's money" by taking advantage of an existing program. Testing, he said, shows the projectile could be used in the existing 5-inch gun without major changes being required.

If the Navy does invest in the N5, Hobday said he expects costs to stay pretty steady at roughly $70,000 per round.

The service might also be able to take advantage of an update Raytheon is developing for the Army: a laser-guided variant known as the Excalibur S that allows the round to seek and engage moving targets.

"What this becomes is almost, for the Marine Corps, an adjunct to close-air support," Hobday said.

Raytheon's announcement came on the first day of the Navy League's Sea Air Space expo near Washington, D.C., where the company conducted a briefing on the technology.

Navy Test-Fires Ship Variant of Army's Excalibur Precision Artillery Shell

The Navy conducted a ground test of a precision-guided projectile the Army fires from cannons, manufacturer Raytheon said.

www.military.com

 

[Khafee]

Top Marine Aviator Defends 'King Stallion' Heavy-Lift Helo Despite Setbacks

06 May 2019
By Gina Harkins

The Marine Corps' next-generation heavy-lift helicopter program has long been delayed by technical problems and other flaws, but Lockheed Martin Corp.'s CH-53K remains the only aircraft that can meet the service's' battlefield needs, a three-star general said.

The Corps will not pursue buying Boeing's CH-47 Chinook in place of the King Stallion, Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder said Monday at the annual Sea-Air-Space conference near Washington, D.C.

"We have not found another platform that can accomplish everything we can off of a ship at the distances and the weight that we're asking it to do," said Rudder, head of Marine Corps aviation.

The Marine Corps' plan to spend $31 billion on 200 CH-53Ks has come under scrutiny from lawmakers. Even with the high price tag -- about $155 million per aircraft -- there have been more than 100 deficiencies found during testing.

The service got its first King Stallion a year ago, but setbacks have delayed the date the aircraft is expected to become combat-ready to as late as September 2021, Bloomberg News reported.

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, has instructed the Pentagon to review the buys and make sure the service can't get an aircraft with similar capabilities from another supplier, Rudder said.

"They were going to take a look at other alternatives -- not only the 47 but many other platforms ... as directed by the [congressional] committee," he said.

But the service needs an aircraft that can carry immense weight for long distances as Marines operate in more distributed environments, Rudder said. As of now, the CH-53K is the only helicopter "that can do what we're asking it to do," he added.

The general told lawmakers last month that all of the problems with the aircraft could be addressed.

"I think we're on the right track," he told the committee. "... If you let us continue on with the money we've asked for this year [and next year], we're going to fix this and we're going to deploy in 2024."

Rudder said Monday that Lockheed Martin will lower the Corps' bill for CH-53K fixes by "sharing the risk on some of the deficiencies."

US Armed Forces

May 1, 2019 Northrup Grumman to integrate countermeasures system on aircraft for U.S., allies By Ed Adamczyk The Navy's Large Aircraft Countermeasures system, seen here on a KC-130, will be integrated onto other aircraft of the Navy...

world-defense.com

 

[Khafee]

Marines experiment with ‘mini-carriers’ for their stealthy fighters
By: Shawn Snow  
07-May-2019

The amphibious assault ship Wasp transits the South China Sea on April 2. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Daniel Barker/ Navy)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The F-35B Lightning II joint strike fighter is still a bit of a boot to the Marine Corps’ jet fleet, despite notching three deployments and conducting strike missions in the Middle East.

But that hasn’t slowed the service’s experiments with its high-tech fighter. Sailing the South China Sea in the early months of 2019, the amphibious assault ship Wasp hauled 10 of the stealthy planes on its flattop flight deck — four more than is typically embarked on a big deck amphib.
The “mini lightning carriers” provide another “tool in the toolkit" for combatant commanders, Marine Lt. Gen. Steven R. Rudder, the deputy commandant for aviation, said at the 2019 Sea-Air-Space exposition here on Monday.

“We were able to turn sorties off that like you would mini lightning carriers," Rudder told the expo audience.

Marines found that increasing the sorties of combat fighters risks reducing lift capacity. To fit the four additional F-35Bs on board, crews had to leave behind six MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

A Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, typically plans on carrying six F-35s or other fighter aircraft, plus about 10 MV-22s.

To Rudder, it all depends on what the mission will be and which tools commanders need to pull from the kit to accomplish it.

He pointed to a scenario where an assault force or its rotary wing aircraft already have been positioned ashore and the commander needs more combat air power.

The mini-carrier concept is not something a commander would use in every situation, but it provides another option to battle an enemy, Rudder said.

It’s also not the first time the Corps has experimented with the concept.

During the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Navy positioned two big deck amphibs off the coast, each boasting more than 20 AV-8B Harrier II jump jets, Rudder told Defense News.

That turned them into essentially Harrier carriers and the Corps used them for combat sorties.

The Marines had pushed their rotary wing and lift capability ashore, allowing for additional Harriers on the deck.

The fighter conducted its first combat strikes against targets in Afghanistan with the 13th MEU, traversed the Indo-Pacific command theater with the 31st MEU, and participated in last month’s Balikatan bilateral exercise with the Philippines.

The Navy commander of Amphibious Squadron 1, Capt. Gerald Olin, told Marine Corps Times that F-35Bs defended the task force, something they weren’t able to do with Harriers.

The 13th MEU experimented with the F-35B as both a deck-launched interceptor and in anti-air and anti-surface roles.

The aircraft’s sensors painted a detailed picture for commanders and generated intelligence of the battle space, allowing planners to distribute and decentralize the warships, he said.

Marines experiment with ‘mini-carriers’ for their stealthy fighters

The amphibious assault ship Wasp traversed the South China Sea with 10 F-35Bs parked on the deck.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The US Navy is eyeing a big change to its new stealth destroyers
By: David B. Larter  
07-May-2019

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy is considering a significant change to its new stealth destroyers, one driven by the change of mission announced in last year’s budget documents, the head of the program said May 7 at the Sea-Air-Space conference.

The service has been struggling to find a use for the ship’s advanced gun system — the largest of its type fielded by the service since World War II — and now is considering stripping them off the platform entirely, said Capt. Kevin Smith, the DDG-1000 program manager at Program Executive Officer Ships.

The Navy sidelined the guns after the service truncated the buy to just three ships, and after the ammunition, called the Long-Range Land-Attack Projectile, ballooned in price to more than $800,000 per round.

"The guns are in layup,” Smith said. “We're waiting for that bullet to come around that will give us the most range possible. But given that that is offensive surface strike, we're going to look at other capabilities potentially that we could use in that volume.”

The ships shifted missions from land attack to ship-hunting and -killing last year. The Navy is integrating the SM-6 missile, which has a surface-attack mode, and are integrating the maritime strike Tomahawk to fill out the new capabilities.

In April testimony, the Navy’s top requirements officer, Vice Adm. William Merz, told Congress that the slow development of the Advanced Gun System was holding back the Zumwalt.

“Even at the high cost, we still weren’t really getting what we had asked for,” he said. “So what we’ve elected to do is to separate the gun effort from the ship effort because we really got to the point where now we’re holding up the ship.”

The Navy has touted the ship’s excess space, weight, power and cooling as advantages the service would want throughout the ship’s life. Everything from directed energy and electromagnetic rail guns to electronic warfare equipment has been floated as add-ons to the Zumwalt-class destroyers.
The Navy got in its present pickle with the 155mm/.62-caliber gun with automated magazine and handling system because the service cut the buy from 28 ships, to seven, and finally to three.

The AGS was developed specifically for the Zumwalt class, as was the LRLAP round it was intended to shoot. There was no backup plan, so when the buy went from 28 to three, the costs remained static, driving the price of the rounds through the roof.
The program itself is coming along, said Smith.

The Zumwalt is going through trials as its combat system installation wraps up; the Michael Monsoor is heading into the yards for its combat system installation; and the Lyndon B. Johnson is nearly 85 percent complete.

The remaining work on Johnson involves running cables, painting spaces and otherwise putting the finishing touches on the ship. The ship will then leave Bath, Maine, and head toward its home port of San Diego, California.

“We’re going to energize high voltage in September, lighting off the generators in the spring, then we’ll be going to test and activation for the [hull, mechanical and electrical systems], trials in the fall, then delivery.”

The US Navy is eyeing a big change to its new stealth destroyers

The Navy is contemplating cutting bait once and for all on the Zumwalt's big gun system.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The Air Force’s new trainer jet is attracting the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ interests
By: Valerie Insinna  
07-May-2019

Boeing-Saab's T-X trainer design won the Air Force's T-X competition in September 2018. (John Parker/Boeing)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are monitoring the development of the Air Force’s T-X training jet, but it may be years before they can launch their own competitions to replace the T-45, officials said Monday.

“We’re watching the T-X. Obviously the Air Force is going through that process,” Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation, said during a panel at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference.

“At some point, we’re going to have to replace the T-45. We’re going to have to replace the F-5,” he said, referring to the T-45 Goshawk (used by the Navy and Marine Corps to train fighter pilots) and the F-5 (used to simulate adversaries during exercises).

“Our adversary requirement is not going away. It only increases. That’s another one that with our Air Force counterparts we’re watching closely on many different fronts,” he added.

Last year, the Air Force chose a Boeing-Saab team to build a new, clean-sheet trainer, awarding the firms a contract worth up to $9.2 billion. Although the service’s program of record is 351 T-X jets and 46 simulators, the agreement gives it the flexibility to buy up to 475 aircraft and 120 simulators. A Navy and Marine Corps buy would add several hundred aircraft to the Air Force’s eventual order — a massive financial win for Boeing, which bid extremely low on the T-X solicitation with the expectation of raking in big profits during the production stage.

Boeing is set to deliver the first simulators to Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, in 2023. In fiscal 2024, the Air Force will have enough simulators and trainers to declare its first squadron as operational.

Angie Knappenberger, the Navy’s deputy director of air warfare, said the timing of a T-X buy could be “problematic” because of the current schedule of the TH-57 replacement, which is taking priority over a new jet trainer.

“Once we’re able to accomplish that — the helicopter trainer replacement — then we’re going to look more forward to something like the T-45 replacement. T-X would certainly be in the running as a candidate for something like that,” she said.

The Navy in January released a request for proposals for the TH-57 replacement, kick-starting a competition with Airbus, Bell and Leonardo that could potentially lead to a contract awarded this year. The service wants to buy 130 helicopter trainers from FY20 to FY23.

Knappenberger did not elaborate on why the timing of the T-X program could be challenging for the Navy, but the service plans to finish purchasing new helicopter trainers just as Boeing starts producing and delivering T-Xs to the Air Force. Another key factor may be whether the T-X can be outfitted with the gear necessary for taking off from and landing on aircraft carriers, and how quickly Boeing could complete the engineering work involved.

Like Rudder, Knappenberger noted the appeal of buying enough T-X trainers to fill the service’s adversary air requirements, saying she’s “curious to see” the jet’s red air capabilities.

The Air Force is also assessing the T-X’s ability to conduct other mission sets.

“You could imagine a version of the airframe that could be equipped as a light fighter. You can imagine a version that is equipped as an adversary air-training platform,” Air Combat Command head Gen. Mike Holmes told reporters in March.

The Air Force’s new trainer jet is attracting the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ interests

As a number of armed services eye the T-X trainer program, one might wonder if the jet will be able to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier in the future.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

Raytheon tests motor for DARPA's MAD-FIRES self-defense interceptor
MAY 7, 2019
By Allen Cone

May 7 (UPI) -- Raytheon Company successfully tested a hot fire rocket motor for DARPA's Multi-Azimuth Defense Fast Intercept Round Engagement System.

The test for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was conducted on an undisclosed date at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, Raytheon announced Monday.

The MAD-FIRES interceptor is designed to provide self-defense capability that defeats multiple waves of anti-ship missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, small planes, fast in-shore attack craft and other platforms that "pose a perennial, evolving and potentially lethal threat to ships and other maritime vessels," according to the agency.

The system can combine the speed, rapid fire and depth of a close-range gun weapon system with the precision and accuracy of guided missiles -- including from different directions -- DARPA says.

"The Navy is asking for leading-edge capabilities that can take out rapidly approaching targets, and Raytheon's interceptor for the MAD-FIRES program will deliver," Dr. Thomas Bussing, Raytheon Advanced Missile Systems vice president, said in a company news release. "This test shows Raytheon is right on track to provide an affordable, advanced technology to the fleet."

DARPA said it envisions decreased per-engagement costs by a factor of 10 or more, improved real-time defense against evolving air and surface combat threats with extreme precision, and potential future applicability to air and ground platforms.

In 2017, Lockheed Martin received an $8 million contract modification to support the second phase of MAD-FIRES. The modification brought the contract value to more than $18 million.

Raytheon tests motor for DARPA's MAD-FIRES self-defense interceptor - UPI.com

Raytheon Company successfully tested a hot fire rocket motor for DARPA's Multi-Azimuth Defense Fast Intercept Round Engagement System, or MAD-FIRES.

www.upi.com