US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

anzha said:

NGAD!

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Just as the first Block III F/A-18E/F Super Hornets are rolling off the Boeing production line, the Navy is launching a new plan for what comes next, senior aviators told lawmakers Thursday.

The Navy is finalizing its analysis of alternatives (AOA), due within the next two month, Rear Adm. Scott Conn, the Navy’s director of air warfare (OPNAV N98), said during a House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee hearing.

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, the Navy had started an AoA requirements study for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program. The goal was to replace the capabilities of the Super Hornets and the electronic attack EA-18G Growlers. At the time, Navy officials said the study would evaluate manned, unmanned and optionally manned airframes as part of a family of systems.

The report, Conn said at today’s hearing, “will inform future choices reflected in future budget cycles in terms of what do we need to do to get after the lethality that we need at a cost that we can afford.”

The Block III Super Hornets are slightly more stealthy than Block II and,

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, have a greater range and can carry more weapons on a more durable airframe that is supposed to last about a decade longer – or up to 9,000 flight hours, compared to 6,000 for older aircraft. Two weeks ago,

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multi-year contract modification to build 78 Block III F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters.

“Anything beyond a Block III Super Hornet is a Next-Generation Air Dominance discussion, in terms of what is going to replace that aircraft,” Conn said.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps, which still flies older F-18 Hornets, is moving directly into fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters by 2030, Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, the Marine Corps deputy commandant for aviation, said during the hearing.

“We decided to stay with our legacy Hornets and skip right into a fifth-generation,” Rudder said.

By 2030, Rudder said the Marine Corps mix of fighters will be 100-percent F-35. Most will be the short take-off and vertical landing F-35B variant. The Marine Corps will also fly some F-35C variants, designed use aboard carriers, to support Navy operations.

“Our strategy has always been to go down to one type of aircraft,” Rudder said. “One type of aircraft is efficient and affordable.”

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A new report shows a decline in Middle Eastern nations’ share of overall exports.

As the U.S. military shifts its focus to Russia and China, American arms exports are expected to make a similar shift to allies in Europe and Asia, experts say.

Arms export data already shows a shift away from the Middle East, where Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE have been scooping up American weapons.

“I would imagine that this year and next we would see an uptick in sales to Asia, but it hasn’t shown up yet,” William Hartung, director of the Arms Security Project at the Center for International Policy, said Thursday.

The total value of arms-export deals approved by the Trump administration declined from $82.2 billion in 2017 to $78.8 billion last year, according to a new

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by Hartung and Christina Arabia, director of the

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with countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, two regions of intense focus in the past two decades of counterinsurgency- dominated wars.

“Deals with countries in the Middle East and North Africa dropped from 36.6% to 21.9%,” the report states. “And offers to East Asia and the Pacific dropped from 23.6% to 14.3%.”

Meanwhile, the share of deals approved for countries in Europe and Eurasia nearly doubled from 29.5 percent in 2017 to 55 percent last year.

“Europe was actually the biggest recipient of new offers in 2018, out pacing the Middle East,” Hartung said. “Some of that may be related to concerns about Russia, although the biggest deal was the $10 billion for Italy to produce F-35s, which is a program that’s been going on for many years.”

He pointed to Slovakia’s purchase of

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; Arabia noted the Polish and Romanian orders of U.S.-made missile defense systems.

A number of European nations are

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buying Lockheed Martin F-16 or Boeing F/A-18 warplanes.

So why are arms sales down in the Middle East?

“Part of it is just saturation of the market,” Hartung said.

Another key may be the Pentagon’s year-old

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, which prioritizes preparation for great power competition with Russia and China.

Just months after arriving in the White House, Trump announced a

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with Saudi Arabia that includes warships, helicopters, tanks, bombs and missiles.

“These things take a long time to work through the system and a country is not going to buy fighter planes every year, they’re going to do it periodically,” Hartung said.

Lawmakers have also voiced opposition

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to Saudi Arabia and UAE because of

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. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has also prompted an outcry against Saudi Arabia.

“So much has been sold year after year, after year, it strikes me as perhaps a bit of a pause and not necessarily an indicator of things to come,” Hartung said.

Halfway through fiscal year 2019, the $23 billion arms sales approved by the State Department are lagging behind the pace of the past three years, Roman Schweizer, an analyst with Cowen and Company, wrote in an April 3 note to investors.

“While the Trump Administration has made foreign military sales a priority, there could be other Trump foreign and economic policies working against U.S. sales,” Schweizer said. “We have previously expressed concern that President Trump’s comments about NATO, France and Germany could encourage those countries to spend more but within their own domestic defense economies rather than on U.S. hardware.”

The government shutdown in December and January may also have partially caused the slowdown.

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Jura said:

hey
Navy’s Next-Generation Fighter Analysis Due Out this Summer

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anzha said:

posted already in the FA-XX/F-X thread Deino revived.

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/us-f-a-xx-and-f-x-6th-gen-aircraft-news-thread.t7126/page-34

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

... jump.

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The US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has started work on a $21bn project to modernise four public naval shipyards to support the combat readiness of the navy.

NAVSEA established the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP) Program Office, PMS-555, in June last year to coordinate the plan to recapitalise the shipyards.

PMS-555 programme manager Steven Lagana said: “The SIOP articulated a vision that shipyard infrastructure has three interdependent components: the dry docks, the facilities, and the capital equipment; and that these configurations are fundamentally linked to the shipyards’ ability to execute the mission they are tasked to do.

“We are utilising modelling and simulation as a tool to integrate these components to better inform the desired infrastructure layout. Through this, the navy will be in a better position to make meaningful, long-lasting investments that not only address the condition of the facilities and equipment but also change the way the work is conducted. Once we’re finished, the navy will recover more than 300,000 work days per year, every year.”

Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC) and Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) will support SIOP in the project.

Infrastructure modernisation works at the four nuclear shipyards will include critical dry dock repairs, restoring needed shipyard facilities and optimising their placement, and replacing ageing and deteriorating capital equipment.

The initiative is aimed at enhancing productivity and maintenance throughput of the naval shipyards.

The navy also stated that the upgrades are part of efforts to enable the shipyards to meet the fleet’s

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and submarine depot maintenance and inactivation requirements looking out through 2040.

NAVSEA commander vice admiral Tom Moore said: “The navy relies on NAVSEA to deliver combat-ready ships and submarines out of planned maintenance availabilities on time. Modernising our four naval shipyards, a massive task under any circumstance, is critical because it’s the only way we will be able to meet our future mission requirements.”

“This is a comprehensive plan developed in partnership with NAVFAC and CNIC, that will allow the navy to bring it’s organic shipyards into the 21st century to fully support the navy the nation needs.”

The four US Navy public shipyards to receive the upgrades include Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia; Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine; Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Bremerton, Washington; and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

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Lockheed Martin and Israeli radar company

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a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries, are teaming up for the U.S. Army’s upcoming

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for its

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.

Lockheed confirmed via a spokesperson that it is in discussions with Elta as the companies finalize an optimal solution for the demonstration.

Elta was one of the companies on the Army’s bidder list for the sense-off, the spokesperson said, and therefore Lockheed and Elta decided to participate together “to bring the best technology from both companies.”

For Lockheed, the partnership made sense because “we saw mature technology with Elta that complemented the very mature technology that Lockheed Martin has developed,” the spokesperson said. “When the Army chose to move faster and accelerate the program, it made perfect sense for us to work with Elta.”

The Army has for years sought a radar capable of detecting threats from 360 degrees to replace its aging Patriot radar (although the service appears to be moving away from requiring that capability in a new radar).

Originally, an entire system was meant to replace Patriot, but the Army walked back on those plans roughly a decade ago to separately develop components of a new Integrated Air and Missile Defense system to include an advanced, next-generation radar.

Critics over the years have said the service

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as several next-generation radar offerings are reaching high levels of technology readiness. Congress has also urged the Army to speed up the process, mandating that it procure something in the next five years.

The Army has made air and missile defense one of its top modernization priorities, so the service decided the best way to move quickly on a new radar was to hold a sense-off demonstration to reassess what is available, technologically speaking, ahead of a competitive acquisition program.

The sense-off is expected to take place between May and June this year at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Each vendor with a radar will have roughly two weeks on the range to demonstrate capabilities.

The sense-off is a separate effort to the technology-development program already in the works, in which

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As the result of the sense-off, the Army plans to choose one vendor to build six prototypes by the end of fiscal 2022 to prove whether the radar can be manufactured. A follow-on contract for additional radars is expected.

Elta is known for its multimission radars, and recently supplied Finland with its ELM-2311 compact MMR, but it has sold more than 100 systems globally.

In addition to its Compact MMR, Elta supplies the MMR for Iron Dome —

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— and David’s Sling, both air defense systems in Israel.

The company’s radars have been battle-tested, having seen thousands of rockets and missiles in the last five to 10 years on the borders of Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

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Jura said:

May 12, 2018
while now
Two-star general, Green Berets punished for deadly Niger ambush that killed 4 US soldiers

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Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has appointed a four-star officer to take another look at the military's investigation into the 2017 attack in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers, and review whether additional punishments should be meted out.

In a statement Thursday, the Pentagon said the investigating officer will do a "new, narrowly-scoped review" and give Shanahan recommendations on whether the reprimands already made were appropriate. The officer's name was not released.

Officials have said that nine individuals have been held accountable for lapses in training and other mission preparedness. The punishments have largely been letters of reprimand. But officials and members of Congress have questioned whether more senior officers should be disciplined. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel actions.

The initial investigation found multiple failures leading up to the October 2017 attack, but determined that none of those shortfalls directly caused the overwhelming enemy ambush and firefight, which also killed four Nigerien troops, wounded a number of forces from both countries, and sent troops running for their lives.

That investigation report came out last May, detailing a series of "individual, organizational, and institutional failures and deficiencies that contributed to the tragic events." But it concluded that "no single failure or deficiency was the sole reason" for what happened.

It said the U.S. forces didn't have time to train together before they deployed, and did not do preparatory battle drills with their Nigerien partners. And the report said lax communication and poor attention to details led to a "general lack of situational awareness and command oversight at every echelon."

Since then, administrative actions — mainly the letters of reprimand — were taken against nine individuals, including Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, who was serving as the commander of special operations forces in Africa at the time. He was the most senior officer punished, leading some to question whether other more senior leaders had unfairly escaped unscathed.

In addition, a number of troops, including those killed, have been recommended for valor awards, mainly Silver Stars and Bronze Stars. But none of those have been announced either.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., peppered Shanahan with questions about the lengthy delay in any announcements and when final decisions would be made.

Shanahan said he was aware that his predecessor, Jim Mattis, had received final recommendations and had been reviewing them. But, Shanahan said, "I did not find that sufficient. So, I convened my own review so I can insure from top to bottom as the appropriate accountability."

Gallego said he wanted to be sure the Pentagon review didn't simply place all the blame on junior officers and let senior officers "off the hook."

"These families and the American public deserve to know exactly what happened, and the junior officers that are being reprimanded right now should know that there's going to be equal reprimands, especially for general officers, should they have done anything wrong," said Gallego.

Shanahan responded that the fundamental reason he is doing his own review is to be certain there is a full accounting, from the troops on the ground to the most senior officer.

The U.S. military in Africa has taken a number steps to increase the security of troops on the ground, adding armed drones and armored vehicles and taking a harder look at when American forces go out with local troops. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command, has said that the U.S. has cut the response time needed for medical evacuations.

U.S. Special Operations Command has made changes in pre-deployment and readiness training, and addressed other staffing and decision-making shortfalls. The changes include insuring that forces conduct training together before they deploy and the exercises must be evaluated by a senior officer.

The review found that a large personnel turnover after training but before deployment led to some of the problems with the team in Niger.

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