US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

Sep 1, 2018
and
Air Force not considering new F-15 or hybrid F-22/F-35, top civilian says

10 hours ago

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

I think it's more a matter of if you are thinking in near or long term.
Heather Willson is probably only thinking in the Window of the Trump administration, that is now until 2020 possibly now until 2024. A Super Raptor wouldn't be until post Trump. That is the president after 2024 for sure. Right now the aim is Get The Panthers on the ramp now. We can deal with others later

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Air Force Brat said:

that's all True, but if the Japanese take LockMart up on their offer, we will want some of those Babies, fo sho! I mean, that's a hell of an airplane, NGAD is nowhere near ready...

Look at the B-21, fast tracked, the "Raptor Reboot" will be as well, and the B-21 is just B-2 light!

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Having flown beyond the 77

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authorized by the 2019 defense policy bill, congressional appropriators are adding another 16 for a total of 93.

Congressional conferees on Thursday

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a $674.4 billion defense spending bill for next year packaged with funding for the departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, or Labor-HHS — and a continuing resolution through Dec. 7 for some other parts of the government.

As usual, appropriators used their annual defense spending bill to offer tweaks to the existing shopping list for military hardware from the previous version, which President Donald Trump

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into law last month.

The new compromise spending bill, which trumps the authorization bill, buys three

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instead of two and 13

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instead of seven — among other differences.

The Navy and Marine Corps continue to invest in vertical takeoff aircraft and announced a $4.2 billion contract for dozens of new V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft just weeks ago.

But the Navy has been trying to cap its purchases of the LCS amid the program’s

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. In June, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told appropriators three ships were two too many.

“These two additional ships are not needed,” Mulvaney said in a memo. “One LCS in FY 2019, when combined with the three funded in FY 2018, will keep both shipyards supplied with enough work to remain viable for the Frigate competition.”

One LCS manufacturer is Austal, in Mobile, Alabama, which happens to be the home state of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby.

For that matter,

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Fort Worth, Texas, district includes the massive Lockheed Martin assembly plant for the F-35.

The House and Senate are expected to pass the measure before the start of the fiscal year, Oct. 1, to avoid the optics of a government shutdown ahead of midterm elections in November.

“We expect to have a good, strong support in this, looking at job base as well as military strength. And I'm proud of the bill, and I think those who voted for it will be proud of it too,” Granger said Thursday.

Appropriators otherwise took a special interest in weapons and munitions RDT&E, adding $482 million to the Trump administration request for $40 million in related categories. Lawmakers added another $508 million for hypersonic prototyping that the administration did not include in its budget submission.

Again, this looks like good news for Lockheed. The U.S. Air Force

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the defense giant last month to design a second hypersonic weapon prototype, setting it up as a hypersonic powerhouse.

On the flip side, the bill includes language echoing the FY19 National Defense Authorization Act’s pause on sales of F-35s to NATO ally Turkey, pending a new assessment of U.S.–Turkey relations. The move bucks Defense Secretary Jim Mattis who has

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this would cause an international supply chain disruption, as the aircraft is co-produced with Ankara.

The bill includes $606.5 billion in base discretionary funding, an increase of $17 billion above the FY18-enacted level, and it parks $67.9 billion in off-budget Overseas Contingency Operations account. Overall, it hews to the two-year spending deal that eases statutory budget caps to allot $716 billion to national defense in 2019.

Military personnel and pay totals $143.2 billion (which includes a 2.6 percent pay raise for troops); operations and maintenance totals $243.2 billion (about $3 billion less than the NDAA); research, development test and evaluation totals $94.9 billion; and procurement totals $148 billion.

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Jura said:

it's not F-35 inside, also the other "game-changer" and so on:
F-35 inventory soars in new Pentagon spending bill

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The US Air Force is researching alternative sources to produce the AGM-158 Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles-Extended Range (JASSM-ER).

The service is seeking capabilities statements from potential sources who could produce 360 units of the weapon and begin delivery approximately 27 months after the contract award date, which has not been announced, according to a notice online. This would be for the 17th production lot of the cruise missiles.

The USAF wants to know if potential alternative sources are capable of sustaining its inventory of missiles via supplying replacement parts, as well as demonstrating the ability to repair and properly store the missiles.

In total, more than 2,000 units of the air-launched cruise missiles, including the original and shorter-range JASSM, have been delivered from its current maker Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. The extended-range version of the missile is able to hit targets more than 500nm (926km) away, while the original variant had a range of more than 200nm (370km).

The JASSM is a low-observable cruise missile which flies at subsonic speeds and because of its range is able to be launched from outside an enemy’s air defenses. The JASSM-ER debuted in combat in April when two Boeing B-1B bombers released 19 of the missiles against alleged chemical facilities of Sryia’s Bashar al-Assad regime in retaliation to poison gas attacks on civilians.

JASSM is integrated on the USAF’s B-1B, Northrop Grumman B-2, Boeing B-52, Lockheed Martin F-16 and Boeing F-15E. The B-1B also carries JASSM-ER. Eventually, Lockheed Martin intends to integrate the weapon with the F-35 stealth fighter, though the cruise missile would have to be carried on the outside of the aircraft as it cannot fit inside the main internal weapon bays.

Lockheed Martin was awarded a $51 million contract from the USAF on 10 September to develop an even longer range version of the cruise missile, called Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extreme Range, which is reportedly designed to have a range of more than 1,000nm (1852km).

The USAF and US Navy are jointly developing AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), which is based on the JASSM. Lockheed Martin was also awarded a contract of an undisclosed amount on 10 September to update the range, targeting, survivability and launch capability of the LRASM, according to a notice online.

The USAF and Lockheed Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Complex

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make it much easier to sell a high-tech weapons system labeled “Made In The USA” than one marked “Made In Israel.” So it’s significant that

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, the US subsidiary of

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(IAI), Mississippi-based

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, ceremoniously delivered the first US-built canister for IAI’s Arrow-3 missile defense interceptor.

While IAI and Stark, and Boeing – also deeply involved in the Arrow – didn’t point this out publicly, a source close to the Arrow program told me that producing such key components in the US could make it possible to

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.

Arie Herzog, former head of Israel’s missile defense directorate, agreed: “The transfer of production of the system’s components to the US will, without any doubt, make it easier to offer the Arrow to the countries that want it. This will be a complicated process, but a door was certainly opened last week.”

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,

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, and other countries have already shown great interest in the Arrow system. But US involvement in this program prevented even preliminary discussions about an export deal. Why? Because when the US helps fund development of an Israeli weapons system, it gets a veto over any exports of that system – a veto which Washington uses to prevent Israeli competition with US products in the global market.

What’s more, the US is imposing

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to Israel, which Tel Aviv traditionally converts in large part from US dollars to Israeli shekels so it can pay Israeli companies. The new rules steadily reduce the amount of aid Israel can convert this way, ultimately cutting it to zero – which means all the aid has to be spent in dollars. That will affect $500 million a year in US Foreign Military Funding (FMF) grants for

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alone.

So IAI, like many other Israeli companies, is reacting by turning to US affiliates, subcontractors, and partners. And spending the money back in the US not only helps IAI comply with the new rules, it builds a domestic US constituency for the program. Attending last week’s delivery ceremony at Stark, along with officials of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, were

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and several members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation.

IAI, Arrow, & Boeing

IAI is the prime contractor for the Arrow Weapons System, the upper tier of Israel’s multi-layered missile defense. Arrow defends against ballistic missiles;

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is the middle tier, defending against cruise missiles, some ballistic missiles, and larger rockets; and the famed

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is the

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, defending against relatively short-ranged artillery rockets. Indeed, Israeli proudly call this combination the world’s first truly national missile defense system, noting that America’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) doesn’t cover the entire US.

ississippi’s Stark builds the canister for the

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, which engages incoming missiles at very long range and very high altitude, outside the atmosphere. IAI also builds the complementary

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, an earlier model that takes on lower-altitude threats.

Boeing has been deeply involved in the Arrow program for years, providing components for the Arrow-2 and co-developing and co-producing the Arrow-3.

In

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, Boeing missile experts were present in the IAF’s

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, where the second

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of the Arrow-3 missile was conducted jointly by the Israel Ministry of Defense and the US

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. The system passed its first full interception test over the Mediterranean sea in 2015 and was deployed in Israel in 2017.

A live intercept test in Alaska was planned for 2018, but it was postponed “to improve the system’s readiness,” the Israeli Defense Ministry said. No new date was given. But sources told me that the Alaska test is still in the works, and it will evaluate some significant advancements to the Arrow-3 to better

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against “new, evolving” threats.

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Jura said:

because Feb 2, 2018

this thread for Japanese destroyer shoots down ballistic missile off Hawaii

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The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) has successfully tested an upgraded Aegis combat weapon system from on-board the service’s Atago-class-guided missile destroyer JS Atago (DDG-177).

Supported by the US Navy, Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Lockheed Martin, the Japanese Flight Test Mission-05 tested the ballistic missile defence (BMD) capability of JMSDF for the first time.

Conducted off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii, US, the exercise successfully demonstrated the organic engagement of a simple separating target.

Under modernisation effort of DDG-177, the navy vessel’s Aegis weapon system combines the JMSDF’s BMD capability with an integrated air and missile defence capability using commercial-off-the-shelf and open architecture technologies, including the Aegis Common Source Library (CSL).

Lockheed Martin Aegis International Programmes Integrated Warfare Systems and Sensors director Mary Keifer said: “I commend the JMSDF for their commitment to affordability and innovation.

“This baseline modernisation effort streamlined their lifetime support costs and provided a means to gain advanced BMD capability.”

The successful completion of the Aegis flight test builds upon joint research investments made by the US and Japan.

Lockheed Martin is currently developing a Baseline 9 variant computer programme to be used on the newest Aegis destroyers being constructed for the Japanese maritime force.

The 560ft-long JS Atago is the first international vessel to benefit from the CSL, which ensures enhanced interoperability across the JMSDF fleet, reducing development training and sustainment costs while increasing flexibility in crew assignments.

Developed by Lockheed, the weapon system can be deployed to simultaneously attack land targets, submarines and surface vessels while automatically safeguarding the fleet against aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

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