Boeing eyes international orders for P-8A Poseidon

Boeing has not signed any extra customers for its P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, but the company expects to sign addition nations on after the aircraft becomes operational with the US Navy.
The P-8A is set to become operational in 2013, says Chris Chadwick, president of Boeing Military Aircraft. The programme is on schedule and on budget, he adds. The first few aircraft are already being used to train new aircrews in Jacksonville, Florida.
The US Navy plans to buy a total of 117 of the aircraft. India has ordered 12, but could buy more. Meanwhile, Chadwick says there has been strong interest in the aircraft from other foreign buyers.

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How To Calculate F-35 Unit Cost And Operating Costs—Vexed Questions

According to the latest GAO report, the program acquisition unit cost (PAUC) of the F-35 will be $161 million. That figure includes amortization of the development cost across the expected production run. But how much should acquisition officials reckon to pay for their F-35s, going forward? Of course, that will depend what F-35 variant they buy, in what quantity and when.
The GAO report also gives a forecast for the average production unit cost (APUC): $137 million. This includes the amortized cost of support equipment, plus initial spares and training, and various other costs that a customer will incur before its shiny new jets are ready to fly in operations. Again, the APUC assumes that very large production run.
But Lockheed Martin maintains that the unit recurring flyaway cost (URFC) is the best yardstick. The company told AIN: “Each customer has a unique set of requirements and options for their aircraft and the way they intend to support and use them. Since not all customers want the same options, the best place to begin and compare to other aircraft is the basic cost of the aircraft, which is established through the URFC.”

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No parts available for C-130 wildfire tankers

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The demise of the only company that manufactured a device specially designed to spray fire retardant from the back of U.S. military C-130 cargo planes has some experts worried about the future viability of a program that has helped fight wildfires for 40 years.
The Modular Airborne Firefighting System is a bus-sized device that can be shoved into the belly of a cargo plane and then used to spray retardant, or slurry, at 3,000 gallons in less than 5 seconds. The $4.9 million device’s only manufacturer, Sacramento, Calif.-based Aero Union, went out of business in August, and no other company has replaced it. Critical spare parts also are no longer being made.
The MAFFS C130s are operated by three National Guard units and one Air Force Reserve unit in Wyoming, Colorado, North Carolina and California. Wyoming’s MAFFS have been deployed as far away as Indonesia. Last year, MAFFS C-130s flew to wildfires in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon and Mexico. They’ve been critical again this year against wildfires in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota.
“Thank God we have them. Can you imagine if we didn’t have them?” said Tony Morris with the Wildfire Research Network, a Pacific Palisades, Calif., group that advocates for improved means to fight wildfires.

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US Court Fines Iran $813M for 1983 Lebanon Attack

A US federal judge has ordered Iran to pay more than $813 million in damages and interest to the families of 241 US soldiers killed in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon.
"After this opinion, this court will have issued over $8.8 billion in judgments against Iran as a result of the 1983 Beirut bombing," Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in a ruling this week, a copy of which was seen Friday by AFP.

"Iran is racking up quite a bill from its sponsorship of terrorism," the Washington judge added, noting that "a number of other Beirut bombing cases remain pending, and their completion will surely increase this amount."
On October 23, 1983, 241 American soldiers, including 220 Marines, were killed in Beirut when a truck packed with explosives rammed through barricades and detonated in front of the US barracks near Beirut's international airport.
The attack was one of the deadliest ever against Americans.
The same day, in a coordinated attack, 58 French paratroopers were killed by a truck bomb at the French barracks in Beirut.

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US Navy fits Raytheon MALD-J onto Super Hornet

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The US Navy is integrating the Raytheon-built Miniature Air Launched Decoy-Jammer (MALD-J) onto the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighter.
"MALD will save sailors' lives because it saturates enemy integrated air defense systems, causing them to attack the wrong target instead of attacking our aircraft," says Harry Schulte, vice president of air warfare systems at Raytheon (H3/D10, OE5, chalets A20-21 and B1-6).
The 300lb (136kg) miniature air-launched drone, which has a range of about 500 nautical miles (926km), replicates the flight profiles of friendly aircraft in order to confuse enemy defences. The MALD-J adds a jamming capability to the basic decoy.

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T-6C Chases Trainer Deals As Light Attack AT-6 Awaits U.S. Air Force Rethink

The Hawker Beechcraft T-6C here at the Farnborough International Airshow flew across the Atlantic Ocean to join the company’s static display, demonstrating the single-engine turboprop trainer’s versatility. Its appearance at the show happens against the backdrop of the still unresolved question of whether the U.S. Air Force (USAF) will reverse its contentious, earlier decision to select Embraer’s Super Tucano for its light-air-support requirement in preference to the T-6’s AT-6 sibling.
More than 760 T-6 Texan IIs have been delivered to the U.S. Navy and Air Force and six other countries’ military forces since deliveries began in 2000. The T-6 was originally developed for the USAF and Navy Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) in the early 1990s, competing and winning against six other airplanes, including Cessna’s twin-engine CitationJet and Embraer’s Super Tucano.
“It is a marvelous airplane,” said Derek Hess, vice president of light attack programs for Hawker Beechcraft Defense. “The training capacity that it offers young students in the [U.S.] Air Force far exceeds what I’ve learned on.” As a former military pilot, Hess trained in a Cessna T-37.

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US rocket launches carrying secret satellite

The Delta IV-Heavy rocket lifts off with the secret payload. A United Launch Alliance photo

CAPE CANAVERAL (AP): A new US clandestine satellite rocketed into space on June 29.

An unmanned Delta IV-Heavy rocket lifted off Friday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It carried a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The office did not disclose the satellite's purpose.

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U.S. Firms Spending More On Lobbying

The U.S. Capitol. (File photo / Getty Images)

U.S.-based prime contractors may be looking for ways to cut costs in a difficult defense market, but they’re not skimping on lobbying.
The top five U.S. defense contractors increased spending on lobbying by a combined 11.5 percent in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same quarter in 2011, a review of lobbying disclosure forms by Defense News found.
The increase, following a down year in 2011, brought lobbying investment for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman to a combined total of $15.9 million for the quarter ending March 31. The number represented a new combined high in the four years that all five companies have been filing disclosures.
Lobbying disclosure filings are required under the Open Government Act of 2007, with quarterly data available going back only to 2009. The forms represent lobbying on Capitol Hill, as well as the Defense Department and the White House.

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Lockheed Martin Answers Critics Of F-35 Program

“We live in a goldfish bowl,” sighed Lockheed Martin F-35 vice president customer engagement Steve O’Bryan. Speaking in London last March, he was referring to the stream of official reports, testimonies and comments that examine the Joint Strike Fighter program. This year alone, five major documents on the F-35 have reached the public domain. In January, a Pentagon operational test and evaluation report surfaced. In March, the latest selected acquisition review was released. Also in March, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified to Congress. In April, there was a report by Canada’s Auditor General on that country’s acquisition of the F-35.
Then came last month’s latest report by the GAO to Congress. Its title–“DOD [Department of Defense] Actions Needed to Further Enhance Restructuring and Address Affordability Risks”–set the downbeat tone that prevailed throughout the 50-page document. The GAO described the “relatively poor cost, schedule and performance outcomes” that have dogged the F-35 program. It claimed that recent DOD reviews had endorsed the GAO’s oft-repeated warnings about the concurrency of development and production. A new program baseline was established in March of this year, the GAO reported. A total of 2,457 aircraft are to be acquired by the U.S. through 2037, but the total investment is now $395.7 billion. That is a 42-percent increase over the previous 2007 baseline, the GAO said. It said that affordability is a key challenge as pressures on the overall U.S. defense budget increase.

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Navy moves ahead on biofuels despite congressional ire

(Reuters) - The Pentagon is pushing ahead with a $420 million effort to build refineries to make competitively priced biofuels, despite anger in Congress over the price the Navy paid for alternative fuel to test a carrier strike group this month.
The government plans provide $210 million in matching funds to help firms build three refineries, each able to produce at least 10 million gallons of biofuel a year for military jets or ships, according to documents released this week. The Navy would supply $170 million and the Energy Department $40 million.
The military's spending on alternative fuels has drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers, with Senator Jim Inhofe charging that President Barack Obama's priorities are "completely skewed" and Representative Mike Conaway accusing Navy Secretary Ray Mabus of "squandering precious dollars."
But Mabus warns that U.S. dependence on foreign oil is a strategic vulnerability that can only be addressed by reducing the military's reliance on petroleum as the sole source of fuel to power its jets, ships and tanks
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US defense research agency announces new phase of hypersonic flight program

LOS ANGELES — The Defense Department’s research arm will seek proposals next month for solutions to technology hurdles in super high-speed flight with a goal of testing a full-scale hypersonic X-plane in four years.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said Friday it will host a so-called Proposers’ Day on Aug. 14 to lay out technical areas for which proposals are being sought.

 

 

DARPA has tested highly experimental versions of a rocket-launched unmanned glider designed to fly at speeds 20 times the speed of sound, or Mach 20. The goal is to give the U.S. a defense capability of reaching any spot on Earth in an hour.
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U.S. army takes delivery of last PTDS surveillance aerostat which is already in use in Afghanistan.

The Army accepted the last ordered Persistent Threat Detection System on May 29, 2012. Many of the systems are currently providing a situational awareness for Soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
(Photo credit U.S. Army)

The Persistent Threat Detection System entered its next chapter, May 29, as Lt. Col. Michael Parodi, product manager Meteorological and Target Identification Capabilities, was on hand at the Lockheed Martin facility in Akron, Ohio; to accept the delivery of the last PTDS ordered. Since its original introduction as a quick reaction capability the Army has procured 66 systems that have been used in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Americans Have Most Confidence in Military

Most Americans have the highest confidence in the U.S. military and practically none in Congress, according to a new Gallup poll.
The military, small businesses and local police generally enjoy the confidence of a majority of Americans but the rest can't even hit the 50 percent mark on the latest Gallup poll. And even those institutions have seen their ratings decline a bit for last year.
In all, seven institutions have lower confidence ratings this year than in 2011, five had slight upticks and four were unchanged. But "none of the 16 institutions tested this year saw significant increases in confidence compared with last year," Gallup said. "The biggest declines were for television news, the public schools and organized religion."
In fact, confidence in public schools hit a new low with a five percentage point drop in one year, Gallup said.

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USS Ponce Assumes Duty in Bahrain

The U.S. Navy’s first afloat forward staging base-interim, USS Ponce (AFSB-I), arrived in Bahrain for duty in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR), July 6.
Prior to arriving in theater, Ponce, formerly designated as an amphibious transport dock (LPD), was converted and reclassified as an AFSB(I) in April to fulfill a long-standing U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) request for an AFSB to be located in its AOR .
“Ponce’s role as an AFSB provides us with an enhanced capability to conduct maritime security operations, and gives us greater flexibility to support a wide range of contingencies with our regional partners,” said Vice Adm. John Miller, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT).
Ponce’s primary mission is to support mine countermeasures (MCM) operations and other missions, such as the ability to provide repair service to other deployed units, including electrical, diesel engine, piping, and machinery repairs. Additionally, Ponce also has the capability to embark and launch small riverine craft.

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Lockheed Martin Reports Progress on F-35 Helmet Display

Lockheed Martin reported progress on fixing night-vision, latency and jitter problems associated with the F-35 helmet mounted display. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)

July 6, 2012, 11:15 AM

A Lockheed Martin executive reported “lots of progress” in fixing problems associated with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter helmet-mounted display system (HMDS). But the company continues developing an alternate helmet display in case the existing system fails to meet requirements. Critical design reviews of both systems are planned in the fourth quarter.

In a briefing in mid-June, Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed Martin vice president for F-35 program integration and business development, described progress with three fixes aimed at mitigating night-vision, latency and jitter problems with the Gen II HMDS supplied by Vision Systems International (VSI), a joint venture of Elbit Systems of America and Rockwell Collins. Those problems identified by pilots led Lockheed Martin to award a contract to BAE Systems last September to develop an alternate HMDS with detachable night-vision goggles.

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Guantanamo upgrade: US to spend $40 mil on renovation

Despite promises to close Guantanamo Bay, Washington is now preparing to invest tens of millions into renovating the controversial facility's infrastructure.
­The Pentagon is planning to install a $40-million fiber optic cable at Guantanamo, and the base's commanders say such a long term investment in infrastructure makes sense only if the US intends to continue operating the base.
"It only makes sense to do if we're going to be here for any period of time," Navy Capt. Kirk Hibbert told the Miami Herald.
The goal of the project is to bring the infrastructure of the naval base up to par with other government agencies, said Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the Guantanamo military commissions. The base currently relies on a single satellite, which is prone to interference during bad weather, for its communications.

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Boeing Confident on KC-46 Tanker Production

Boeing revealed new details of the KC-46A tanker for the U.S. Air Force, and said it is on time and budget. (Photo: Boeing)

July 6, 2012, 11:20 AM

The recent comprehensive preliminary design review for the KC-46 tanker uncovered no significant issues beyond what was known from the three reviews already conducted since the engineering manufacturing and development (EMD) contract was signed in February 2011, according to Chuck Johnson, Boeing vice president for mobility. “We are a low-risk program being managed as moderate risk,” he told journalists in Washington last month.

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U.S. Warships in Gulf ‘Sitting Ducks’ Says Iran

Iran conducted a three-day missile drill, codenamed Great Prophet 7

U.S. naval ships in the Persian Gulf are within reach of Iranian missiles should the United States consider an offensive against the Islamic Republic, an Iranian expert said on Wednesday.
“The United States knows that its ships in the Persian Gulf are sitting ducks when it comes to Iranian missiles,” Dr. Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University, said in an interview with Press TV.
“If missiles are fired at American naval ships they will hit their targets very quickly.”
He warned that Western countries would face severe consequences in case of a military attack against Iran.

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Taiwan close to sealing F-16 A/Bs upgrade deal with US

Taiwan's F-16 fighter jets patrol in the skies of Hualien. (Photo/Hsu Chih-chien)

Taiwan will send back a proposal by the United States to overhaul the country's aging F-16 A/B jet fighters to seal the arms sales deal by the end of next week, Taiwan's military said Thursday.
The Ministry of National Defense has recently completed its review of the letter detailing a refit package for Taiwan's 145 F-16A/B fighters, and will send back a reply to the US by mid-July, the military told CNA.
The proposal, which was sent to Taipei by Washington in early May, contained listed prices totaling some US$3.8 billion that were in line with the budget approved by Taiwan's cabinet, military officials said.
Included in the refit of Taiwan's A/B fighters is the installation of Active Electronically Scanned Array radar. Equipping the fighters with AESA radar is a new initiative, officials said. Other items on the list include AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits, according to the officials.
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Philippines Downplays Request for U.S. Surveillance Drones

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MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines on July 3 said the deployment of U.S. spy planes, suggested by President Benigno Aquino, was just one option to monitor the country’s territory, as China appealed for stability in the region.
“If they happen at all, they are surveillance flights, they are not meant to be provocative. There’s no offensive capability here,” said Ricky Carandang, the president’s spokesman.
China’s foreign ministry, in an embassy statement quoting spokesman Liu Weimin, called on all parties to maintain “peace and stability” in the South China Sea.
“We have noticed the reports,” the spokesman said. “It is the hope of the Chinese side that peace and stability can be maintained ... and parties concerned do things conducive to regional peace and stability.”
It did not specify the Philippines or the United States or mention the three-month long dispute between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. The dispute began after Chinese government vessels blocked Philippine ships from arresting Chinese fishermen near the shoal April 10.
Both countries have been pressing their respective claims to the area, with the poorly equipped Philippines seeking the support of the U.S., its main defense ally.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters close to the coasts of neighboring countries. The Philippines says the shoal is well within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.
The shoal sits about 140 miles (230 kilometers) from the western coast of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon. The nearest major Chinese land mass is 1,200 kilometers northwest of the shoal, according to Philippine Navy maps.

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AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE