US Armed Forces

[Khafee]

HII awarded $687M to modernize, maintain USS Gerald R. Ford
The first-in-class aircraft carrier is currently undergoing sea trials following years of delays and cost overruns.
June 13, 2019
By Allen Cone

View attachment 7986
The future USS Gerald R. Ford sails on its own power for the first time out of Newport News, Virginia on April 8, 2017. Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy
| License Photo

June 13 (UPI) -- Huntington Ingalls was awarded a five-year $687 million contract for early service life period work on the first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, which is undergoing sea trials after years of delays and cost overruns.

The contract, announced by the Department of Defense on Wednesday, includes five ordering periods for support of ship repair and modernization. The services include continuous incremental and planned incremental availabilities, full-ship shock trials, and continuous and emergent maintenance during the early service life period

Work on the initial delivery order will be performed at the company's shipyard in Newport News, Va., and is expected to be completed by June 2020.

Naval fiscal 2019 operation and maintenance in the amount of $1.8 million will be obligated at time of award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Work under all five delivery orders is expected to be completed by June 2024.

The nuclear-powered Ford, designated CVN 78, is the first new aircraft carrier designed in more than 40 years, and will replace the Nimitz-class ships.

The Navy plans to spend $43 billion on the three new ships in the class, including the Ford, the future USS John F. Kennedy and the future USS Enterprise, according to the U.S. Navy.

The Ford was formally commissioned into the Navy on July 22, 2017, is scheduled to be delivered in mid-October and deployed around 2020.

Last week, Raytheon announced the ship's integrated combat management system completed its final developmental test off the coast of California. Raytheon announced a U.S. Navy unmanned self-defense test ship simulated a scenario the Ford may encounter once deployed.

The Ford class includes significant quality-of-life improvements and reduced maintenance, as well as improve operational availability and capability compared with Nimitz-class carriers, according to the Navy.

The Navy and manufacturers have had difficulties with the advanced weapons elevators, none of which were functioning after christening. The new elevators are run with electromagnetic, linear synchronous motors, which allows for greater capacities and a faster movement of weapons than the Nimitz-class carrier elevators that utilize cables.

The Navy also is dealing with a propulsion problem. During trials one year ago, the situation caused Ford to return to port ahead of its scheduled post shakedown. The ship's main turbine generators are driven by the steam produced by Ford's two nuclear reactors.

HII awarded $687M to modernize, maintain USS Gerald R. Ford - UPI.com

Huntington Ingalls was awarded a five-year, $687 million contract for work on the USS Gerald R. Ford, which includes repair and modernization, as well as continuous and emergent maintenance, on the long-delayed first-in-class aircraft carrier.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

Boeing to deliver 7 Chinooks for U.S. special ops in $194.2M deal
June 13, 2019
By Allen Cone

Crewmen rig a boat to a MH-47G helicopter in a drill on May 21, 2014, in Moses Lake, Wash. Photo by Sgt. Christopher Prows/U.S. Army

June 13 (UPI) -- Citing increased needs, U.S. Special Operations Forces will receive seven additional MH-47G Chinook helicopters from Boeing at a cost of $194.2 million.

Boeing will deliver six renew-build and one new-build MH-47G rotary wing aircraft, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.

Because of increased operational demands, the Pentagon said in a news release "the order is required to sustain U.S. Special Operations Forces heavy assault, rotary wing aircraft and to mitigate the impact of the MH-47G aircraft availability."

A final delivery date was not specified.

Fiscal 2019 procurement, defense-wide appropriations in the amount of $77.4 million and Army fiscal 2019 aircraft procurement in the amount of $116.9 million were obligated at the time of award. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

In the past year, Boeing was contracted to supply eight additional special-use helicopters for the U.S. Army.

Last July, Boeing was awarded a $131.1 million contract for four additional Chinook special operations helicopters for the U.S. Army. That contract marked the start of a production run for the Block II Chinooks that is expected to last for about a decade, Boeing said.

And in November, Boeing was awarded a $43 million contract to build four MH-47G helicopters with the Pentagon citing an "urgent need" for special ops.

The U.S. Army has 69 of the special operations Chinooks. The first model was delivered to Special Operations Command in 2014.

The MH-47G is the special operations variant of Boeing's CH-47F Chinook multi-role, heavy-lift helicopter, containing a fully integrated, digital cockpit management system.

The CH-47 series has been in use since its introduction in 1962 and was used in Vietnam.

The Chinook is the Army's only heavy-lift cargo helicopter supporting combat and non-combat operations, including humanitarian roles, according to the Army. It is used to transport troops, weapons, vehicles and other equipment transportations.

Its troop capacity is 36 and its load maximum is 50,000 pounds.

Boeing to deliver 7 MH-47G Chinooks for U.S. special ops in $194.2M deal - UPI.com

Citing increased needs, U.S. Special Operations Forces will receive seven additional MH-47G Chinook helicopters from Boeing at a cost of $194.2 million.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

Boeing to deliver 7 Chinooks for U.S. special ops in $194.2M deal
June 13, 2019
By Allen Cone

View attachment 7988
Crewmen rig a boat to a MH-47G helicopter in a drill on May 21, 2014, in Moses Lake, Wash. Photo by Sgt. Christopher Prows/U.S. Army

June 13 (UPI) -- Citing increased needs, U.S. Special Operations Forces will receive seven additional MH-47G Chinook helicopters from Boeing at a cost of $194.2 million.

Boeing will deliver six renew-build and one new-build MH-47G rotary wing aircraft, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.

Because of increased operational demands, the Pentagon said in a news release "the order is required to sustain U.S. Special Operations Forces heavy assault, rotary wing aircraft and to mitigate the impact of the MH-47G aircraft availability."

A final delivery date was not specified.

Fiscal 2019 procurement, defense-wide appropriations in the amount of $77.4 million and Army fiscal 2019 aircraft procurement in the amount of $116.9 million were obligated at the time of award. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

In the past year, Boeing was contracted to supply eight additional special-use helicopters for the U.S. Army.

Last July, Boeing was awarded a $131.1 million contract for four additional Chinook special operations helicopters for the U.S. Army. That contract marked the start of a production run for the Block II Chinooks that is expected to last for about a decade, Boeing said.

And in November, Boeing was awarded a $43 million contract to build four MH-47G helicopters with the Pentagon citing an "urgent need" for special ops.

The U.S. Army has 69 of the special operations Chinooks. The first model was delivered to Special Operations Command in 2014.

The MH-47G is the special operations variant of Boeing's CH-47F Chinook multi-role, heavy-lift helicopter, containing a fully integrated, digital cockpit management system.

The CH-47 series has been in use since its introduction in 1962 and was used in Vietnam.

The Chinook is the Army's only heavy-lift cargo helicopter supporting combat and non-combat operations, including humanitarian roles, according to the Army. It is used to transport troops, weapons, vehicles and other equipment transportations.

Its troop capacity is 36 and its load maximum is 50,000 pounds.

Boeing to deliver 7 MH-47G Chinooks for U.S. special ops in $194.2M deal - UPI.com

Citing increased needs, U.S. Special Operations Forces will receive seven additional MH-47G Chinook helicopters from Boeing at a cost of $194.2 million.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

U.S. House committee rejects low-yield nukes in defense bill
June 13, 2019
By Allen Cone

View attachment 7990
The W76-1 was first introduced into the stockpile for the U.S. Navy in 1978. The W76-2 is an upgraded version of the warhead under development. Photo courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory

View attachment 7991
A Trident II D-5 ballistic missile is launched from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS West Virginia during a missile test in 2014. Defense officials have proposed mounting a new low-yield nuclear warhead on the tip of Trident II missiles. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy


June 13 (UPI) -- The House Armed Services Committee rejected two Republican amendments to the defense appropriations bill for additional funding and deployment of low-yield nuclear warheads.

After a heated debate during markup of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, the committee voted to reject the amendments in two 30-26 votes. Democrats hold a 31-26 majority on the panel.

The marathon hearing ended about 7 a.m. Thursday as the $733 billion defense policy bill was approved and is headed to the full House. The committee voted 33-24 to approve the NDAA, with Republicans Elise Stefanik of New York and Don Bacon of Nebraska siding with Democrats in support of the bill.

The two amendments introduced by Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., would have removed a ban on deploying the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead above Trident II-D5 missiles aboard Ohio-class submarines and restore about $19.6 million in funding.

"What I fail to understand and find extremely troubling is that the majority's response to the growing instability and threat complexity we face around the globe is to disarm America," Cheney said during the hearing on defunding the W76-2 submarine launched low-yield nuclear missile.

Cheney and her fellow Republicans argued the United States needs a way to prevent Russia or other nations from using their own low-yield weapons, including selling them to rogue nations who might use a smaller nuclear warhead because they don't believe the U.S. military would respond with a larger one.

"Why we would want to take away options for ourselves when our adversaries have options does not make sense to me," the committee's ranking Republican member, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said at the hearing.

Democrats, however, believe use of a low-yield nuclear weapon by an enemy would trigger a nuclear war, regardless of the weapons size used the United States. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., said rejecting the traditional nuclear deterrence strategy would lead to a tit for tat that "is a god awful situation -- we should never go there."

But millions of dollars spent on development would be wasted, the Republicans argued.

The Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review reported in February 2018 that manufacturing of a new variant, W76-2, would commence.

The W76-1 was first introduced into the stockpile for the U.S. Navy in 1978, according to Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"We are calling back our nuclear weapons that, on a bipartisan basis, we have funded and authorized to be configured and placed on our submarines," said Rep. Mike Turner, the top Republican on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., countered: "If you look at the W76-2, it's such a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction [of an] overall nuclear force, it's not even a rounding error. So to make this the be-all and end-all of our nuclear arsenal is misleading."

In 2018, $22.6 million was set aside to help develop the warheads in fiscal 2019 and $48.5 million spread over the life of the future years defense program. That included $19.6 million in fiscal year 2020, DefenseNews reported.

The W76-1 has a yield of around 100 kilotons, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, an arms control advocacy group. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of about 15 kilotons.

U.S. House committee rejects low-yield nukes in defense bill - UPI.com

The House Armed Services Committee rejected two Republican amendments in defense appropriations for additional funding and deployment of low-yield nuclear warheads.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

The Marine Corps’ ‘No. 1 priority’ for the F-35 involves a rough landing in hot environments
13 June 2019

A Marine F-35B hovers as it comes in for a landing. The thrust from the engine helps steady the plane as it comes down. (Samuel King Jr./U.S. Air Force)

WASHINGTON — It was a hot day aboard the amphibious assault ship Essex when a pilot brought his F-35B in for what is known as a “mode four” flight operation, where the jet enters hover mode near a landing spot, slides over to the target area and then vertically lands onto the ship.

It’s a key part of the F-35B’s short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing capability, known as STOVL. And normally, everything in a “mode four” landing goes smoothly. But on this day, when the pilot triggered the thrust to slow his descent, something went wrong.

The engine, working hard on a day that temperatures cracked 90 degrees Fahrenheit while trying to lift a plane that was heavier than most returning to base, wouldn’t generate the needed thrust for a safe, ideal landing.

The pilot got the plane down, but was shaken enough by the situation to write up an incident report that would eventually be marked as “high” concern by the F-35 program office.

“May result in unanticipated and uncontrolled sink, leading to hard landing or potential ejection/loss of aircraft, particularly in the presence of HGI [hot gas ingestion],” reads a summary of the issue, which was obtained by Defense News as part of a cache of “for official use only” documents that detail major concerns with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The issue could impact future F-35B operations in the Middle East, where temperatures are climbing as summer approaches.

This could also be bad news for industry, as F-35 program head Vice Adm. Mat Winter indicated his belief that the fix, which he called the Marine Corps’ “No. 1 priority” for the F-35 program, should be paid for, at least in part, by the big contractors who designed the aircraft.

Still, Winter expressed confidence that the landing issue, which has so far proven to be a one-off incident, will be addressed by a series of fixes that should be in place by April 2020.

“We’re not done yet, and the Marine Corps will tell you we’re not done yet until we see the fix in the fleet, because that’s where we are,” Winter said. “That is the only way a STOVL aircraft lands on an L-class [amphibious] ship, so it’s important.”

Technical details
The issue seems to stem from two factors: the heat, and the fact that much of the testing for the “mode four” maneuver was done with planes that were lighter, as they weren’t armed with heavy stores of weaponry.

Feedback from the Marine Corps highlighted that while the average engine should not see this issue until around 750 flight hours, “several engines are at/near the point of concern,” and that number will continue to grow with the extended use of older planes.

Rebecca Grant, an analyst with IRIS Independent Research, said the issue seems to be a variant of the traditional “high-hot” problem, where hot temperatures make the air less dense.

“All engines are less efficient when super hot days reduce engine power and lift. Think of the helicopters and even tankers flying ‘high-hot’ mission parameters in Afghanistan or commercial jets out of Mexico City,” she explained. “Although air is dense at sea level, the heat surge slightly changed engine power.”

Winter said engineers have identified an issue in the design of the control software that the pilot uses to generate demand for thrust from the propulsion system.

“There’s no redesign of the engine [necessary]. The engine is doing what the engine is supposed to do,” Winter emphasized, before acknowledging that in addition to the software fix, the program office has worked with Honeywell to change how the company calibrates the throttle valve on the engine.

“We’ve identified the software fix for the control system, the calibration fix to the throttle valve and some near-term fleet actions that could be taken for very hot days to ensure that the pilot gets the performance he or she needs on those hot days,” he said.

That software fix will be a rolling target, as the first increment of the software release is due in June, followed by another at the end of this year or early next year.

“We’ve given them tighter tolerances to tune them more precisely, so that when it goes on the engine it’s no longer not giving the command the way it’s supposed to be,” Winter explained. “It wasn’t tuned correctly for this high-demand phase of flight. Now, we fixed that. That’s fixed. The software is going in to make sure that the pilot can command that thrust and understand the heat and the loading.”

Those fixes won’t be cheap, and when asked who would pay for them, Winter was blunt, saying it is his office’s belief the thrust issue is a “design deficiency” that merits “consideration” from industry.

“In this case it doesn’t matter that the design was done back in 2002, it’s still pragmatistic, so you owe consideration because we’re fixing it right now,” Winter said of industry.

Temporary solutions

The real test is going to be how the fixes perform in the field, given the F-35B’s 2018 deployment into the Middle East shows the jet will be used in a region known for lacking cool summer days.

When asked if the issue could impact operations in the region, Winter acknowledged it could during “very hot days.”

“I will not go on the record to say that there hasn’t been [an effect on operations]. There has been operational impact — that’s how we found this, and now we are implementing the fix to eliminate that operational impact, and the war fighter right now is mitigating that operational impact through the mechanisms and techniques we’ve provided them,” he said.

And until the fix is fully in place, pilots operating the F-35B can do a few things to mitigate the risk of a hard landing. First, make sure to wash the blades on the engine more frequently to avoid the buildup of salt or dirt that can make the system less efficient. Second, the squadron commander will need to think about load management, making sure aircraft aren’t returning too heavy with fuel and weapons.

“It’s wind over the deck. It’s aircraft stores loading. It’s those types of operational activities that a war fighter already takes into account,” Winter explained.

Richard Aboulafia, an aviation expert with the Teal Group, agreed weight matters, saying that high-hot issues can often “be dealt with easily, but often at the expense of weight, which can impact range and payload.”

Grant also noted that Marine pilots will be able to adjust how they land, now that the issue is a known problem, adding that in comparison to the old Harrier Jump Jets, “the F-35B actually does way better than the Harrier in controlling its heat downwash.”

Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report

The Marine Corps’ ‘No. 1 priority’ for the F-35 involves a rough landing in hot environments

When it's a hot one, the F-35B might struggle to land safely. And that could be bad news for industry.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The US Navy is seeking upgrades for the F-35 radar’s sea-search mode
By: David B. Larter and Valerie Insinna  
12 June 2019

An F-35B conducts weapons environmental testing along the Atlantic Test Range on July 22, 2015. (Michael D. Jackson/Lockheed Martin via U.S. Defense Department)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy wants more from the F-35 jet’s radar, which in sea-search mode is limited to what is directly in front of the aircraft, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

According to the documents, the radar, Northrop Grumman’s AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar, can either hone in on a sector based on a specific point on the ground, or work in what is commonly known as “snowplow mode,” which, as the name suggests, searches everything in front of the aircraft.

The Navy wants to be able to scan a wider area when in sea-search mode, something that the radar is currently not set up for, according to officials who spoke to Defense News.

Officials also said the problem is on track for a solution, but may not be implemented until as late as 2024 with the Block 4 upgrades, notably adding that a solution will not be in place before a full-rate production decision on the F-35 this year.

Ultimately, giving the Navy what it wants will be a matter of boosting computing power and upgrading software, officials explained.

The issue is listed as a category 1 deficiency, according to the documents, which further define the limitation as something that means “adequate performance [is] not attainable to accomplish the primary or alternate mission(s).” The issue dates back to 2012, according to the documents. In this scale, category 1 represents the most serious type of deficiency.

It’s unclear why the issue is listed as a deficiency. The system is working in accordance with design specifications, according to both the documents and a statement from a Lockheed Martin executive.

“The F-35’s current radar sea search function meets the enterprises’ expressed required specification," said Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin’s general manager of the company’s F-35 program. “As we modernize the F-35, we are bringing enhanced search capabilities, which represent an increase from the original requirements, and we stand ready to integrate the upgrade in the future, based on customer priorities and direction.”

In an interview with Defense News, the head of the Pentagon’s F-35 program office, Vice Adm. Mat Winter, said the issue was being resolved by software and computing upgrades, and there would be no requirement for a new radar.

“We’re not mechanically scanning, we’re electronically scanning,” Winter said. “And being able to accurately scan the maritime environment, it just takes increased computing power, and that’s what we’re doing. … It’s a software fix, and then an allocation of computing power.”

Winter may be referring to a planned bundle of computer upgrades called Tech Refresh 3, where the jet will get more modern computing systems that will increase the jet’s processing power and memory. According to one document obtained by Defense News, TR3 is a prerequisite for a future radar fix. Those TR3-equipped jets won’t roll off the production line until 2023.

Defense News submitted written questions to the Defense Department’s F-35 program office concerning these and other deficiencies, but it did not respond by press time, despite multiple follow-ups over a period of months.

A retired fighter pilot, who reviewed the documents for Defense News and agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, agreed with Winter’s assessment that the fix was likely software-based.

Early on in the F/A-18’s APG-79 AESA radar, there were glitches in the operation, but software updates smoothed out the system. Fixing the APG-81 should follow a similar track as the aircraft progresses, the pilot explained.

“As long as the array itself is technically sound, I suspect over time they’ll be able to find ways to continue to build out capability through software updates,” the retired fighter pilot said.

Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.

The US Navy is seeking upgrades for the F-35 radar’s sea-search mode

Giving the Navy what it wants will be a matter of boosting computing power and upgrading software. So where would that come from?

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

Amid ‘green glow’ concerns, another issue has emerged for pilots flying the F-35 at night
By: David B. Larter
12 June 2019

F-35 fighter jets conduct their first night flying trials off the United Kingdom’s warship HMS Queen Elizabeth. (Dane Wiedmann/F-35 Lightning II Pax River ITF)

WASHINGTON — Engineers and pilots continue to struggle with operating the F-35 jet in low-light conditions, with a new issue emerging that obstructs the horizon line for pilots when flying at night with below-average levels of starlight, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

The issue, which affects the feed from the night vision camera, appears to the pilot as wonky horizontal lines, or striations, in the night vision display, obscuring the horizon.

“During shore-based testing in overcast starlight conditions, [helmet-mounted display] symbology brightness and video contrast at the max settings and while adjusting video brightness, the pilots were unable to generate a reliable image of the horizon at any time, or to display a scene with texturing critical for peripheral motion cues,” the government document reads.

Fixing the glitch, which was first reported in November 2017, is a top priority for the U.S. Marine Corps, according to the documents. The issue is listed as a category 1 deficiency in the documents and is defined as something that “critically restricts the combat readiness capabilities of the using organization.” In this scale, category 1 represents the most serious type of deficiency.

The issue affects all versions of the F-35, the documents point out.

The problem is separate from ongoing concerns about “green glow” emitted by the helmet-mounted display’s LED lights, which can obstruct a pilot’s view of an aircraft carrier’s deck lights during night landing operations at sea in very low light.

The glow issue is also listed as a category 1 deficiency, according to the documents. But while it is a separate issue, a Lockheed Martin executive in a statement pointed to a common solution for both low-light issues: the improved Generation III F-35 helmet currently being fielded.

“The improved Gen III helmet has already been designed, tested and is now being qualified for use,” said Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin’s general manager of the F-35 program. “The first few of these new helmets have been delivered and we anticipate the upgraded helmets will resolve both the green glow and night vision conditions identified.”

Furthermore, the Navy is looking to “organic light-emitting diode” technology in its displays to permanently solve its “green glow” issue. That potential solution is expected to be deployed this year. In short, rapidly advancing technology should solve both the issue with the night vision camera as well as the the sticky “green glow” problem.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Edwin Portan inspects the coaxial cable on a helmet-mounted display at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Feb. 29, 2016. These cables plug into the F-35A Lightning II. (Senior Airman Andrea Posey/U.S. Air Force)

“As camera and OLED technology advances rapidly, we expect the F-35 helmet to continue to deliver unprecedented levels of situational awareness for pilots and only improve further over time,” Ulmer said.

Defense News submitted written questions to the Defense Department’s F-35 program office concerning these and other deficiencies, but it did not respond by press time, despite multiple follow-ups over a period of months.

Workarounds and solutions
A source familiar with the program and the efforts to fix its deficiencies said that solving the green glow issue may, in fact, improve the night vision issue because the display settings will be better optimized for the night vision camera feed.

“If you imagine you have a camera that doesn’t have the contrast that you would really love to have and you have the green glow, the two together don’t make you happy," the source said. "If you take the green glow away and you change the contrast on the camera, the two of them together start looking a lot better.

“We’ll need to wait and see because the green glow was a big driver in making that [night vision camera] objectionable. So I’m not trying to exonerate the camera. What I’m saying is I don’t think we had the system to be able to differentiate: Is it the camera or the green glow that was causing the problem?"

Issues with low-light operations have pushed the Navy to only allow experienced pilots to fly the F-35 in conditions that elicit the green glow issue. For now, if the conditions for green glow obstruction are in play, only pilots with 50 or more night carrier landings can fly the plane.

Last year, the commander of the Navy’s strike fighter squadron told reporters that the green glow issue forced a number of actions from the pilots in order to make sure they could land safely, and for the time being that was best left to more experienced fliers.

"There are some complexities with the green glow that we deal with right now, but we only do it with experienced pilots,” said Cmdr. Tommy Locke, according to Military.com. “In that really dark environment, you can’t get the display down low enough where you can still process the image on the display, and once you bring the display up high enough where you can, that information — it conflicts with the outside world.”

Locke also said OLED technology was going to make a big difference.

“It reduces the green glow; there’s a much crisper picture that will allow us to avoid the disorientation with the green glow,” he said.

Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.

Amid ‘green glow’ concerns, another issue has emerged for pilots flying the F-35 at night

During low-light conditions, the F-35's night vision camera display starts showing wonky horizontal lines across the screen that obstruct the pilot's view of the horizon.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

When US Navy and Marine F-35 pilots most need performance, the aircraft becomes erratic
By: David B. Larter
13 June 2019

U.S. Marines and sailors aboard the Wasp-class amphibious ship Essex watch an F-35C fly over the ship on March 28, 2018. (Cpl. A. J. Van Fredenberg/U.S. Marine Corps)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s and Marine Corps’ F-35s become unpredictable to handle when executing the kind of extreme maneuvers a pilot would use in a dogfight or while avoiding a missile, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

Specifically, the Marine short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variant and the Navy’s carrier-launched version become difficult to control when the aircraft is operating above a 20-degree angle of attack, which is the angle created by the oncoming air and the leading edge of the wing.

Pilots reported the aircraft experiencing unpredictable changes in pitch, as well as erratic yaw and rolling motions. The documents identify the issue as a category 1 deficiency and define it as something that limits the aircraft’s performance in such a way that it can’t accomplish its “primary or alternate mission(s).” In this scale, category 1 represents the most serious type of deficiency.

A Lockheed Martin executive told Defense News in a statement that he expects the issue to be resolved or downgraded soon as a result of software fixes.

“We’ve implemented an update to the flight control system that is planned for integration in the third quarter of this year — and we expect this item to be resolved or downgraded,” said Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin vice president and general manager of the company’s F-35 program.

The Pentagon’s F-35 program office did not respond to written questions from Defense News by press time, despite repeated follow-ups over a period of months.

In a deficiency report from the fleet, aviators said the issue "will cause modal confusion, prevent precise lift vector control, and prevent repeatable air-to-air combat techniques, resulting in mid-air collisions during training, controlled flight into terrain, and aircraft loss during combat engagements with adversary aircraft and missiles," according to the documents.

“Fleet pilots agreed it is very difficult to max perform the aircraft” in those circumstances, the document notes.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as well as the United Kingdom have noted the deficiency as a leading priority.

The fleet will, in the near term, mitigate the issue by enforcing minimum separation rules between aircraft in flight, the documents said.

‘That ain’t working’
A retired Navy fighter pilot who reviewed the documents for Defense News said the ability to maneuver the aircraft above a 20-degree angle of attack is important if the aircraft needs to quickly maneuver to avoid a missile or during aerial combat with another aircraft.

“You’re telling me that the latest, greatest, $100 million aircraft can’t perform?” the aviator said.

The issue, if left unresolved, would dovetail in the worst way when combined with another issue reported by Defense News: At extremely high altitudes, the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time without risking structural damage and loss of its stealth capability, a problem that may make it impossible for the Navy’s F-35C to conduct supersonic intercepts.

“It has random oscillations, pitch and yaw issues above [its] 20-[degree angle of attack]," the aviator said. "[So] if I had to perform the aircraft — if I had to maneuver to defeat a missile, maneuver to fight another aircraft, the plane could have issues moving. And if I turn around aggressively and get away from these guys and use the afterburner, [the horizontal tail and tail boom] start to melt or have issues.”

The issue with control above 20-degrees AOA gets to one of the main debates about the aircraft: What if it needed to get into a dogfight? The F-35 is supposed to detect and kill its prey at range with missiles — either its own or from another platform in the network. But history has taught naval aviation that ignoring the possibility of close combat with another aircraft can prove deadly.

“This was not designed as a [traditional] fighter,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired naval flight officer and analyst with Telemus Group. “This was meant to fight at distance with missiles. If you got in close, if you had to go to guns, that ain’t working.”

In a statement addressing a broad range of issues reported exclusively by Defense News, Ulmer, the Lockheed executive, defended the performance of the jet.

“The F-35s today are meeting or exceeding performance specifications and delivering unprecedented capability and safety compared to legacy fighter aircraft. These issues are important to address, and each is well understood, resolved or on a path to resolution," Ulmer said. “We’ve worked collaboratively with our customers and we are fully confident in the F-35’s performance and the solutions in place to address each of the items identified.”

An active-duty naval aviator who reviewed the documents for Defense News said the issues are reflective of an aircraft that packed in a lot of new technology, adding that, historically, all new jets have had problems.

“That document looks like growing pains for an aircraft that we tried to do a whole lot to all at once,” the aviator said. “You’re going to see that if you dig back at what Super Hornets looked like for the first few years. Go back in the archives and look at Tomcat — think about that with the variable sweep-wing geometry, the AWG-9 Radar.

"There was a lot of new technology incorporated into the aircraft, and there are always going to be growing pains.”

Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.

When US Navy and Marine F-35 pilots most need performance, the aircraft becomes erratic

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ F-35s become unpredictable to handle when executing the kind of extreme maneuvers a pilot would use in a dogfight or while avoiding a missile.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

When the F-35 blows a tire, it can set off a chain reaction of potential failures
By: Valerie Insinna  
13 June 2019

Staff Sgt. Mark Freeman, 33rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, performs a post-flight check on an F-35A Lightning II tire before refueling it at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. (Samuel King Jr./U.S. Air Force)

WASHINGTON — The F-35 jet’s design puts it at risk of losing both of its hydraulic brake lines when a tire is blown upon landing, and although the issue has been corrected in the F-35C carrier version, the "A" and "B" models may not ever get a full fix.

The issue came to light in documents exclusively obtained by Defense News, in which the problem is labeled as a category 1 deficiency by the U.S. Defense Department, the designation given to serious technical problems that affect safety, mission effectiveness or some other requirement.

But not all such problems are created equal, and the Pentagon may be able to downgrade the deficiency to category 2 status without a fix in place.

According to the documents, the concern is that a blown tire “will result in the loss of one or both hydraulic systems, which may degrade directional control during landing rollout and could lead to runway departure,” presenting a loss-of-aircraft risk.

The integrated test force at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, which documented the deficiency in 2014, was originally “highly concerned” that the proximity of hydraulic lines could make the probability of a dual failure "nearly as likely as a single failure,” the documents state.

As a result, the brake lines were relocated in the F-35C, starting in the tenth lot of aircraft.

The F-35 Joint Program Office did not respond by press time to a detailed list of questions about the problem, submitted months in advance of publication, including why the issue has been corrected in the "C" variant and not the A and B models.

However, a risk assessment is ongoing that will help determine whether the problem can be downgraded to a category 2 deficiency, and whether further modifications are needed.

Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program head, said that having two hydraulic lines provides redundancy if one line is ruptured, and that there has never been a case of both lines being impacted.

He also noted that the Defense Department’s program office has instituted some workarounds that have decreased the probability of blowing a tire.

“Brake control software updates and pilot training have alleviated this concern and resulted in a significant drop in blown tire events,” he said. “Additionally, we made minor adjustments to the location placement of hydraulic lines on the F-35C that has resolved the potential for line breaks. We believe the item is resolved and are standing by for additional customer feedback.”

Another source familiar with the program said while the frequency of blown tires made this a concern about four years ago, the rate of such events has slowed down “and it’s really been very quiet ever since, which shows good progress.”

In the past, when there has been a failure of a single hydraulic line, the incident has resulted in no injuries and less than $50,000 worth of damage to the aircraft, according to the documents.

Usually “such an event requires some repair work to the landing gear,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office explained in an April 2019 report, which added that both Lockheed and the government’s program office do not consider the issue a safety concern.

Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis and a former B-52 pilot, said the problem was a common one across military aircraft.

“I’ve broken hydraulic lines. I’ve blown tires,” he said. “It’s no fun, but it seems like they’re doing the right thing.”

When the F-35 blows a tire, it can set off a chain reaction of potential failures

The problem has been fixed in the carrier variant, but why aren't the "A" and "B" models getting the same correction?

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The F-35 has to keep landing in cold weather. Here’s the plan to fix it.
12 June 2019

A U.S. Air Force F-35A takes off at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The cold around Eielson AFB forced some F-35s to the ground when it triggered a battery warning sensor. (Isaac Johnson/U.S. Air Force)


WASHINGTON — Amid the cold winds and snow, a ghost is haunting F-35 jets in the far north, and it’s causing pilots to divert flights and land immediately.

The good news: This ghost is digital.

In early 2018, multiple F-35A flights out of Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska were disrupted when pilots received warnings that a key battery in the plane was failing mid-flight. The pilots were forced to land as quickly as possible and switch out the battery, wiping out flying hours and raising costs for maintenance — and raising the fear that in an emergency, the U.S. would be unable to scramble its high-end fighter.

After studying the issue, the Air Force discovered the problem was a result of extreme cold entering the plane when the doors to the jet’s nose landing gear were open, setting off alarm bells, according to “for official use only” documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

The cold would enter the plane and overwhelm the battery heater blanket, which is installed to keep a 28-volt battery running at peak condition. The battery would not shut down, but because of the cold, the blanket could not heat the battery as quickly as intended, triggering warning lights in the cockpit that the battery was going to fail.

Although the plane is equipped with another 270-volt battery that serves as the main power, the redundant system is considered vital for backup power in case of a glitch, and safety protocols dictated that the pilots had to immediately land the plane, even if the battery ultimately would have heated up.

The pilots then had to go to “cold iron” to reset, or turning the engine and restarting the whole plane.

The battery challenge “critically restricts the combat readiness” of the Air Force, the document warned, adding that it is “expected to prevent launch of mission on very cold days.” It also leads to unnecessary maintenance performed on the batteries.

The issue is particularly important for the F-35, which is expected to spend a lot of time in the coldest parts of the globe. In addition to partner nations like Norway and Denmark, who plan to use the fifth-generation fighters beyond the Arctic Circle, the U.S. Air Force has plans for the F-35 to be the core of its Arctic operations.

In a January op-ed for Defense News, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein and then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson wrote that the Arctic represents both a northern approach to the United States as well as a critical location for "projecting American power, its geo-strategic significance is difficult to overstate. Key defense assets dot the landscape. ... One way to view the region’s growing importance: By 2022, Alaska will be home to more advanced fighter jets than any place on Earth.”

However, Rebecca Grant of IRIS Independent Research says there is “no way” the Air Force would let this issue scuttle missions if needed.

“The USAF is not going to accept ‘no-go’ for cold weather launches,” she said. “The F-22 and plenty of other aircraft have flown out of Alaska just fine for decades. The F-35 should have had all that sorted out in the climatic lab.”

Cold as ice
Indeed, the F-35 Joint Program Office seems to have found a solution, one that lets the flights go on, even if it is more of a workaround than a full solution.

One small step involves a recommendation that when the jet flies in particularly cold conditions — something fairly easy to predict, thanks to modern weather stations — the heater blanket be activated earlier than normal.

The bigger step involves changing how the alert system recognizes a failure, through a software change. Essentially, because the battery ultimately was going to be OK if the warning light had not gone off so easily, the JPO and prime contractor Lockheed Martin agreed to change the levels at which the warning activates.

“Bottom line, it was just saying: ‘Your battery is not good to go,’ ” according to a source familiar with the matter. "And we needed to change the logic so that the battery will be like: ‘Yep, we’re good to go.’ It’s changing the whole heater logic and how the heater works.”

How to do that without creating a situation where the battery really will fail but pilots won’t be alerted to it took “several years” of work and testing from Lockheed engineers, the source added, noting the software fix will be available to retrofit on existing planes later this year, and it will be incorporated into all new planes by 2021.

“That verification work is what typically takes a long time doing things like this, because you can’t just go change stuff because often, if you do it wrong, you could mess it up,” the source said.

Greg Ulmer, Lockheed’s vice president and program manager for the F-35, told Defense News that the issue was “identified during extreme cold weather testing at negative 30 degrees or below at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska in February 2018. The probability of the issue reoccurring on aircraft in the operational fleet is very low and with minimal impact to safety of flight or operational performance.”

Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.

The F-35 has to keep landing in cold weather. Here’s the plan to fix it.

The F-35 battery is getting too cold to operate in Alaska — or it at least thinks it is.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

Inventory management failures are grounding F-35 jets
12 June 2019

The F-35 relies on a key piece of software for maintenance, but that system isn't working the way it should. (Staff Sgt. Chris Drzazgowski/U.S. Air Force)

WASHINGTON — Issues with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s inventory management system has led to unexpected groundings of the fifth-generation jet, and a fix doesn’t appear to be on the horizon.

Keeping track of inventory is certainly not an exclusive issue to the F-35. The first-ever audit of the U.S. Defense Department, completed in late 2018, found a running series of inventory issues, with databases featuring incorrect information that led to the department losing everything from weapon motors to whole buildings.

But the F-35 is different because it comes with a software system called ALIS — or the Autonomic Logistics Information System — which was designed in part to address specific inventory-tracking challenges identified by the F-35 Joint Program Office in a series of “for official use only” documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

ALIS is a data system for documenting maintenance, technical manuals and ordering parts, something Rebecca Grant of IRIS Independent Research says lets the F-35 “report its maintenance status like R2-D2 talking to the Millennium Falcon.”

“But, it’s a big piece of software and the Air Force is trying to update it and shift part of ALIS to new apps,” she said.

The logistics issue, which has continued to occur in ALIS version 3.0.1, involves supplies or components that, upon installation, are not actually listed and tracked in ALIS as designed. Those require specific requests to software engineers to have data corrected in the system. While those requests can catch some problems, the issue is not always detected by the user. These requests appear to be coming in on a daily basis, a sign of how widespread the issue is.

That issue leads to a second impact: These “holes,” as the F-35 Joint Program Office calls them, do not collect data on how parts are used after installation, which means a part might be breaking down from heavy use, yet that part won’t be flagged by ALIS as an at-risk piece.

As a result, it’s less likely that issues developing from wear and tear or that there’s a lack of replacement parts will be discovered until such an issue has become an acute problem, possibly leading to a grounding of the aircraft.

The JPO document hints that part of the issue stems from the fact that F-35 and ALIS manufacturer Lockheed Martin was not using the system at its Fort Worth, Texas, facility, where it would’ve identified information gaps early on.

The company this year rectified that issue, but has yet to implement a process to check whether a supply is entering the ALIS system at its first point of potential failure: a Lockheed-operated location.

Notably, the document also points the finger at Lockheed for not establishing “a single point integrator to manage” these issues, “which is a roadblock to better software and data integration.”

On that front, the company is working on an automated procedure that should smooth things over, according to a source familiar with the program, who said Lockheed was “letting things go out to the field that was hurting” the operational pace, but that the company is “putting automation in place to prevent that” in the future.

“Part of the corrective action here is that automation within our computer systems, our software, that says to not send the part out to the fleet if it doesn’t have electronic equipment logs,” the source said. "And then it triggers a flag for us to go figure out why the supplier didn’t send that to us, so we can put it in the ALIS system so when we send the part, they’ve got the part, they’ve got the log, everything works the way it’s supposed to.”

Greg Ulmer, Lockheed’s vice president and general manager of the company’s F-35 program, told Defense News that the issue is a “major focus” for the firm, adding that the use of automation has resulted in better data vetting that has reduced these issues by 50 percent since 2017.

ALIS has been a challenge for the F-35 program from its earliest days, and there are no signs of it being fixed in the near term. The most recent report from the Pentagon’s test and evaluation office notes that users “must employ numerous workarounds due to data and functionality deficiencies”; that “most capabilities function as intended only with a high level of manual effort by ALIS administrators and maintenance personnel”; and that manual workarounds that are “complex and time-consuming” are needed to finish tasks designed for automation.

That same report noted that ALIS issues routinely cause IT challenges when the F-35 arrives at a new operating location, and that those challenges “delay the unit’s ability to start generating sorties. Often, the timeframe to start flight operation is longer than that with legacy aircraft.”


Meanwhile, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report from April says the “F-35 supply chain does not have enough spare parts available to keep aircraft flying enough of the time necessary to meet warfighter requirements.” From May through November 2018, F-35 aircraft across the fleet were “unable to fly 29.7 percent of the time due to spare parts shortages,” the GAO found.

Grant believes the ALIS issues should start to be addressed more quickly now that it resides under Lockheed Martin Aeronautics leadership, as opposed to being split across a number of different units at the company. And, she noted, there is another issue for ALIS that the system can’t take credit for: making sure there are enough pieces available for it to track.

“ALIS can’t track spare parts if the JPO didn’t fund them in the first place. No doubt ALIS needs improvements, but this is also a small-fleet management issue and yet another example of why the Air Force and Navy should take F-35 logistics management back in house,” Grant said.

“This won’t be the last time F-35 users want to update and improve that system. But remember, the F-35 is still a long way from system maturity, and the spare parts ordering problem should look much improved when 1,000 jets are in the field.”

Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.

Inventory management failures are grounding F-35 jets

The F-35 relies on a key piece of software for maintenance, but that system isn't working the way it should.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

A fix is coming for a problem that left two F-35 pilots in ‘excruciating’ pain
By: Valerie Insinna  
12 June 2019

A pilot from the 388th Fighter Wing’s 421st Fighter Squadron prepares to launch an F-35A during night flying operations at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, on March 26, 2019. (R. Nial Bradshaw/U.S. Air Force)

WASHINGTON — In at least two cases, sudden spikes in cockpit pressure have left F-35 pilots with searing ear and sinus pain, Defense News has learned.

But F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin is confident that is has a fix ready for flight test that will correct the problem, which has been known since 2014 and categorized as the most serious type of technical deficiency by the U.S. Defense Department.

“There is no indication from the fleet that this ear and sinus pain issue is widespread,” read one document obtained exclusively by Defense News. Only two Air Force test pilots using early versions of the F-35 have experienced extreme incidents of barotrauma — the word given to ear injuries that occur due to changes in air pressure.

“[The] pain has been described as excruciating, causing loss of in-flight situational awareness, with effects lasting for months,” the document states.

Incidents of barotrauma aren’t unique to the F-35 fighter jet and could occur in any aircraft. The seriousness of such events can vary widely, with symptoms ranging from sinus pain and headaches to ruptured eardrums and hearing loss.

The pressure spikes in the F-35 seem to be of a more serious nature, forcing both pilots to abort test missions and inflicting “lingering symptoms” of “significant ear and sinus pain,” the document revealed. This presents the services with risks not only to pilot safety but to its own mission effectiveness, and all variants of the aircraft are susceptible to the problem.

The F-35 Joint Program Office believes it has identified the root cause of the problem: Sensors on the outer mold line of the aircraft are detecting “rapidly changing static pressures” that, in turn, drive very quick changes of the cockpit pressure regulator valve.

While there is no workaround for dealing with pressure spikes, the problem will eventually be addressed with a hardware modification to the cockpit pressure regulation system, with a proposed design change expected in 2019, a second document states.

The fiscal 2018 budget funded the development of a test rig to evaluate the proposed fix.

“We have an update that performed successfully in lab testing and will now be flight tested for future integration, based on customer timing priorities,” said Greg Ulmer, Lockheed’s vice president for the F-35 program manager.

One source close to the issue told Defense News that the program is working to identify exactly when the fix can begin flight testing.

“My goal would be to try and get it done if not this year, very early next year. And it is mostly a scheduling issue more than anything,” the source said. From there, the fix can either be rolled into the production line or delivered via retrofit kits for military maintainers to install.

Vice Adm. Mat Winter, the Defense Department’s F-35 program executive, said the government’s program office has taken “incredible steps” to ensure the jet’s life support system is robust.

“The other elements are canopy seals, the air system, ventilation system that allows the continued flow of air — all of those have been checked, rechecked and triple checked to ensure that we do not have a design issue that will have a systemic pressurization change,” he said. Pilots have also been given training on various physiological events that could occur in the cockpit “so that in an event that there is an overpressurization, they’re fine, they can handle it.”

A history of trauma
The documents reviewed by Defense News state that an informal safety assessment concluded there is low risk of the problem occurring more frequently, and no formal risk assessment ever occurred. The Defense Department also discussed flight restrictions that would limit the maneuvers that pilots may conduct while in the F-35, but these measures were not pursued.

Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said it was telling that the services had not imposed flight restrictions across the F-35 fleet. He characterized the problem as “certainly distracting, certainly not optimal, could certainly cause mission abort.”

“But the fact is it doesn’t appear to be a huge safety of flight problem, and it seems to meet requirements today,” he said. "If this was more endemic, if many more episodes occurred out in the force itself, I would be concerned. But this happened in a pretty significant flight regime. It’s not something you would probably do in day-to-day, real-world operations.”

One Air Force F-35 pilot, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the barotrauma problem wasn’t something that was causing anxiety among F-35A operators.

“I’ve been flying the airplane for three-plus years and haven’t had any issues with cabin overpressurization,” the pilot said.

While incidents of barotrauma occur throughout the military’s aircraft inventory, they are not as common or well-known in the public compared to other physiological conditions such as hypoxia, the medical term for oxygen deprivation.

According to data provided by the Air Force Safety Center, there have been 37 incidents of barotrauma in the service’s test, training and operational fleets between 2010 and 2018. Only one of those documented events involved an F-35A — an episode in 2018. It was unclear why the inciting incident in 2014 was not recorded, but a spokesman for the Office of the U.S Air Force Surgeon General said that if it was not reported to the flight surgeon, it may not have been recorded.

In terms of which platforms were most responsible for symptoms of barotrauma, the phenomenon appeared more common among older aircraft. There were multiple occurrences noted for a wide variety of legacy platforms, including the U-2 spy plane, KC-135 tanker, F-15 and F-16 fighters, A-10 Warthog plane, and C-130H military transport aircraft.

But barotrauma does not always occur due to a flaw in an aircraft. From fiscal 2003-2007, the Air Force reported 143 physiological incidents related to ear and sinus pressure issues, according to a December 2007 article in Air Force Flight Safety Magazine. Forty-three percent of those cases involved pilots who acknowledged preexisting cold symptoms or congestion, which can exacerbate symptoms.

These incidents of barotrauma aren’t the only physiological episodes that have been experienced by pilots while flying the F-35. In June 2017, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona — where all U.S. Air Force and international F-35 pilots train — temporarily stood down operations due to incidents where five pilots reported symptoms of oxygen deprivation. One additional hypoxia-related incident occurred at Luke AFB during the summer of 2017.

Investigations into the F-35′s life support systems and maintenance practices at Luke never produced a single root cause for the physiological episodes. However, a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office laid out several problems with life support systems that were discovered during evaluations.

Aside from the barotrauma problem, the GAO noted that a breathing regulator on the pilot’s seat is failing at a higher-than-expected rate, which could increase the risk of oxygen deprivation. The unnamed supplier has made “slow progress” on improving that component, so alternative manufacturers are being considered by the program office.

When that breathing regulator fails, an anti-suffocation valve is supposed to open to allow the pilot access to air. That does not happen on a consistent basis, “creating a risk that unconscious pilots ejecting over water may drown,” the GAO stated in June 2018.

The valve’s manufacturer is assessing how it can improve the valve. But in the meantime, F-35 units have been directed to periodically inspect and clean that component.

To address these issues, the F-35 program office has made updates to change how air moves up the seat and to the pilot, Winter said. It also implemented a carbon monoxide filter and made adjustments to the onboard oxygen generating system, he added.

“Our previous software would allow the oxygen concentration to vary between an upper limit and a lower limit, and what's recommended by the air and medical community was to tighten that tolerance to keep a more consistent concentration of oxygen, and so we've done that,” he said.

Winter is confident the barotrauma problem will be downgraded from the most serious category 1 designation to category 2. However, the deficiency will stay on the books forever, as there’s no way to prove without a doubt that the issue is fixed, he said.

“The problem is that I’ll fly this jet all the way to 2077, for another 50, 60 years, and never have one [barotrauma incident], and there will be people saying: ‘Yeah, but you could have one tomorrow,’ ” he said. “There’s no way to prove the negative.”

A fix is coming for a problem that left two F-35 pilots in ‘excruciating’ pain

Oxygen deprivation isn't the only issue known to cause physiological episodes among F-35 pilots.

www.defensenews.com

 

[Khafee]

The Sort of Secret $34 Billion Deal That Gives the Air Force 450+ F-35 Fighters
June 14, 2019

We have a few of the details.
by WarIsBoring

A new lot of F-35s have been ordered for the Air Force and it’s thanks to a record $34 billion deal between Lockheed Martin and the Department of Defense.

The multi-year contract covers multiple production lots, with the first set giving the Air Force 157 new jets. The layout of the deal will lower the cost of a conventional F-35A to around $80 million, a savings of $9.2 million per aircraft.

“This is a historic milestone for the F-35 enterprise, and marks the largest procurement in the history of the department,” Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ellen
Lord said in a statement.

According to Air Force Magazine, the program’s cost savings are incredibly noteworthy.
“I am proud to state that this agreement has achieved an estimated 8.8% savings from Lot 11 to Lot 12 F-35As,” Lord said, noting an average cut slashing of 15 percent “across all variants from Lot 11 to Lot 14.”

In all, the deal will give the Air Force more than 450 new F-35s to add to its fleet.
While the details are mostly a secret, it is known that new blocks will feature some performance and electronic upgrades, as well as a new weapon, known as the Small Diameter Bomb II.

The Sort of Secret $34 Billion Deal That Gives the Air Force 450+ F-35 Fighters

We have a few of the details.

nationalinterest.org

 

[Khafee]

Air Force tests hypersonic weapon aboard B-52 for first time
June 14, 2019

A sensor-only prototype of the AGM-183A air launched rapid response weapon was carried externally by a B-52 to gather environmental and aircraft handling data as the ARRW is developed.

This is an artist's conception of a hypersonic missile during its launch phase. Photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin

June 14 (UPI) -- For the first time, the U.S. Air Force successfully tested its hypersonic air-to-ground weapon on a B-52H Stratofortress bomber from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

On Wednesday, a sensor-only prototype of the AGM-183A air launched rapid response weapon, or ARRW, was carried externally by a B-52 during the test to gather environmental and aircraft handling data, the U.S. Air Force said Thursday in a news release.

Hypersonic denotes a speed of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound or higher.

The missile prototype didn't have explosives and it was not released from the B-52 during the flight test. The Air Force did not release images of the AGM-183A.

Data were gathered on drag and vibration impacts on the weapon itself as well as the external carriage equipment of the aircraft. This type of data is required for all Air Force weapon systems undergoing development.

"We're using the rapid prototyping authorities provided by Congress to quickly bring hypersonic weapon capabilities to the warfighter," said Dr. Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. "We set out an aggressive schedule with ARRW. Getting to this flight test on time highlights the amazing work of our acquisition workforce and our partnership with Lockheed Martin and other industry partners."

The ARRW is set to reach early operational capability by fiscal year 2022. Another rapid prototyping system is also being developed, the hypersonic conventional strike weapon, or HCSW. On top of this, the Air Force also is developing the hypersonic air-breathing weapon concept, or HAWC.

The B-52 will launch all three platforms.

"This type of speed in our acquisition system is essential -- it allows us to field capabilities rapidly to compete against the threats we face," Roper said.

Russia and China have also been developing hypersonic weapons, which has led the Pentagon to speed development of the munitions -- more than $1.2 billion has been earmarked through 2024 on experimental hypersonic prototypes of the weapon for the Air Force, as well as the Army and Navy.

The Drive reported the ARRW is likely an evolution of the Defense Advanced Research Project's Agency's Tactical Boost Glide effort.

In August 2018, Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract worth up to $480 million to begin designing the AGM-183A.

Then last November, Lockheed received another contract, valued at $928 million, for critical design review, test and production readiness support to facilitate fielded prototypes of the HCSW.

Last November, DARPA released proposals for the development of Glide Breaker, which is designed to intercept the hypersonic vehicles of other nations.

Raytheon in March was awarded a $63.3 million contract to further develop the tactical boost glide hypersonic weapons program, which includes the payload separating from the rocket and glides unpowered to its destination.

In 2016, Raytheon was awarded a $174 million contract for the United States for the hypersonic air-breathing weapon concept program.

The Army also plans to field combat vehicles with 50 kilowatt lasers on them sometime in 2022, Pentagon officials told reporters on June 4.

Air Force tests hypersonic weapon aboard B-52 for first time - UPI.com

The U.S. Air Force ran the first test of a hypersonic weapon on a B-52H Stratofortress, flying a sensor-only prototype of the AGM-183A to gather environmental and aircraft handling data for development.

www.upi.com

 

[Khafee]

Boeing awarded $30.7M for MH-47G components for U.S. special ops
By Ed Adamczyk
14 June 2019

The contract is the second issued in as many days for Chinook helicopters or parts for the U.S. Special Operations Command, and is said to be urgently needed to sustain operational demands.

Boeing Co. received a $30.7 million delivery order for MH-47G Chinook helicopter components, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.
Photo by Teddy Wade/U.S. Army | License Photo

June 14 (UPI) -- Boeing Co. received a $30.7 million order to build Chinook helicopter components for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Defense Department announced.

The new delivery order comes after an announcement earlier this week of a $194.2 million contract to deliver six renew-build and one new-build MH-47G helicopters for the Command. The Pentagon cited an increased need for the aircraft in a statement.

"The order is required to sustain U.S. Special Operations Forces heavy assault, rotary wing aircraft and to mitigate the impact of the MH-47G aircraft availability," the Pentagon said.

Boeing has been contracted to supply eight additional special-use helicopters for the U.S. Army in the past year, bringing the Army's total to 69 special operations Chinook aircraft.

In July 2018, Boeing was awarded a $131.1 million contract for four additional Chinook special operations helicopters for the U.S. Army. That contract marked the start of a production run for the Block II Chinooks that is expected to last for about a decade, Boeing said.

"The MH-47G is the world's best, most reliable heavy-lift helicopter and will help Special Operations execute their difficult missions," Chuck Dabundo, Boeing MH-47 program manager, said in a statement on Thursday. "Nearly a quarter of the Special Ops fleet is now on contract for Block II, and we look forward to delivering this capability to them on schedule."

The delivery order announced Thursday for components and parts includes orders for the United Kingdom, supplying $10 million in funding to acquire long-lead components and parts for its own part of the MH-47G Block II program.

The majority of the work will be performed at Boeing facilities in Ridley Park, Pa. The U.S. Special Operations Command Headquarters in Tampa is the contracting agent.

Boeing awarded $30.7M for MH-47G components for U.S. special ops - UPI.com

Boeing Co. received a $30.7 million order for Chinook helicopter components for the Army's Special Operations Command, the second contract in as many days meant to satisfy urgent needs to meet operational demands.

www.upi.com