US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

I knew I'd heard of Mr. Roper's ideas before ... Mar 7, 2019
now inside

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

:
"Instead of finalizing one design and then building hundreds of identical aircraft, you’d design a basic plane or satellite or other weapons system, build some, make improvements, build some of the improved model, improve that, and on and on. “You just keep spiraling,” Roper said."

into death spiral? LOL

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Apr 15, 2019
and Mr. Roper again:
Under Skyborg program, F-35 and F-15EX jets could control drone sidekicks

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

USAF Acquisition Head Urges Radical Shift For Next-Gen Fighter Program
and I facepalm

Click to expand...

zaphd said:

This is really interesting. According to that article, autonomous drone testing could begin in fiscal year 2019, which means in just a few months. The Kratos XQ-58, which had its first flight in March, is perfectly positioned to act as an autonomy testbed once its basic airframe properties have been validated. Another option which could fit the schedule are QF-16s. They have been previously used as surrogate UCAVs in testing, but I don't see them having the potential to be fielded as weapon systems like the XQ-58 Valkyrie.

On a related note, loyal wingman drones are also gaining traction in the house. Long way from an enacted budget, though.
House lawmakers propose $50M boost to develop LCAAT

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

7. Navy mulls frigate choices

sounds like I'll make it or break with the FFG(X) cancellation prediction Oct 30, 2018
LOL!

Click to expand...

The FFG(X) program is a Navy program to build a class of 20 guided-missile frigates (FFGs). The Navy wants to procure the first FFG(X) in FY2020, the next 18 at a rate of two per year in FY2021-FY2029, and the 20th in FY2030. The Navy’s proposed FY2020 budget requests $1,281.2 million for the procurement of the first FFG(X). The Navy’s FY2020 budget submission shows that subsequent ships in the class are estimated by the Navy to cost roughly $900 million each in then-year dollars.

The Navy intends to build the FFG(X) to a modified version of an existing ship design—an approach called the parent-design approach. The parent design could be a U.S. ship design or a foreign ship design. At least five industry teams are reportedly competing for the FFG(X) program. Two of these teams are offering designs for the FFG(X) that are modified versions of the two Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) designs that the Navy has procured in prior years. The other three industry teams are offering designs for the FFG(X) that are based on other existing ship designs. One of these three other industry teams is proposing to build its design at one of the LCS shipyards. The Navy plans to announce the outcome of the FFG(X) competition in July 2020. The LCS program is covered in detail in another CRS report.

The FFG(X) program presents several potential oversight issues for Congress, including the following:

• whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy’s FY2020 funding request for the program;
• whether the Navy has appropriately defined the cost, capabilities, and growth margin of the FFG(X);
• the Navy’s intent to use a parent-design approach for the FFG(X) program rather than develop an entirely new (i.e., clean-sheet) design for the ship;
• cost, schedule, and technical risk in the FFG(X) program;
• whether any additional LCSs should be procured in FY2020 as a hedge against potential delays in the FFG(X) program;
• the potential industrial-base impacts of the FFG(X) for shipyards and supplier firms;
• whether to build FFG(X)s at a single shipyard, as the Navy’s baseline plan calls for, or at two or three shipyards; and
• the potential impact on required numbers of FFG(X)s of a possible change in the Navy’s surface force architecture.

Download the document

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Click to expand...

U.S. Air Force scientists have demonstrated a technology that can be used to create secure communication links between satellites and the Earth and allow networking between quantum computers. The Starfire Optical Range (SOR) demonstrated quantum communication in daylight, overcoming the challenge of interference by background light, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) announced May 23.

Click to expand...

Brumby said:

U.S. Air Force Makes Quantum Leap

Source : Aerospace Daily & Defense Report May 23, 2019

Click to expand...

From

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

to 5G networks at Air Force bases, from developing software to mining

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, the Senate Armed Services Committee draft of the annual defense policy bill puts an extraordinary emphasis on high tech. Not only does SASC

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

— and add $1.4 billion to Pentagon R&D programs, it takes a broad look at the globa

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

“To keep up with our adversaries, we have prioritized investment in next generation equipment [and] weapons,” SASC Chairman Jim Inhofe said in a prepared statement that was read by ranking minority member Sen. Jack Reed. (Inhofe didn’t appear at the press briefing today because his wife broke her leg this morning).

Along with the usual lists of ships and aircraft the bill would fund, the executive summary SASC released today — the full legislation is still being finished — offers a lot of detail on technology investments and policies. (There’s a whole section headlined “Maintaining our technological advantage through innovation,” but relevant proposals are sprinkled through other parts of the bill as well). Echoing the Trump Administration, which launched

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and has

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, the SASC spends considerable energy on what could be called industrial policy, if that term hadn’t fallen out of favor.

The bill allocates additional funding — albeit with few specific figures — to a range of targeted tech efforts, such as

• producing rare earth elements — minerals crucial to modern electronics, on which China has largely cornered the market — from coal ash;
• building secure
  Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  — a technology today dominated by
  Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  –at two unspecified Air Force facilities;
• increasing Pentagon investment in “advanced manufacturing [technologies], materials and printed circuit boards” — another Chinese-dominated industry — by about $50 million.

(It’s worth comparing investments in similar areas by the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

).

A senior committee staffer told reporters that “in general, we are very concerned about the [electromagnetic] spectrum” and DoD access to it for its missions. He said that the SASC “would have addressed it more robustly if we were able,” but point out that the issue of access to radio frequency spectrum comes under shared jurisdiction, withe Senate Commerce Committee in the lead.

There are plenty of R&D plus-ups for military-specific programs as well, with the bill adding:

• $108 million to develop new satellites to detect and track incoming missiles, the so-called space sensor layer for missile defense;
• $125 million to research technologies for future warships;
• $66 million for US Cyber Command;
• $57.5 million for “cyber basic and applied research”;
• $9 million for
  Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  (aka additive manufacturing) technologies; and
• unspecified increases in research, development, and deployment of hypersonic weapons, missile defenses, and artificial intelligence, some of it through the Defense Innovation Unit (by contrast, the House Appropriations Committee would slash funding for DIU).

There are also policy moves that, while not requiring significant funding, might have a major long-term impact. The bill orders the Pentagon to:

• create a special,
  Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  ;
• compile a list of academic institutions in China and
  Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  that do research for their militaries, with an eye to monitoring those universities’ contacts with the US;
• monitor “foreign ownership, control, or influence within the defense industrial base” and work on “mitigation of the risks” such foreign investment poses;
• add an assessment of Chinese investments overseas to the annual report on Chinese military power; and
• follow the committee’s new strategy to secure a “trusted supply chain” of microchips and other advanced electronics — which Chinese manufactures at least sometimes ship with spyware — for both the US and its partners.

“There were a number of areas where there are challenges to the defense industrial base that we wanted to address,” a staff member explained. “One thing we wanted to do was mitigate risks from foreign ownership.”

Now, not all the bill’s investments are cutting edge technology. Even as it adds 16 more high-tech F-35s than the administration requested — for a total of 94 planes at a cost of $10 billion — the bill also finds $948 million for eight F-15X fighters, an upgraded version of a venerable aircraft, and even $50 million for low-cost Light Attack aircraft. (

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

).

“We don’t to want to buy so many [F-15Xs] to try to replace the F-35s. Not at all,” one senior staff member explained. But the current F-15 is no longer fit for its dogfighting purpose, and there is a need to supplement the F-22s that were never bought in the full amount envisioned by the Air Force, the staffer said.

Reed noted that one “area where disagreement continues” within the SASC was President Donald Trumps request to move military construction money “to build the wall” at the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. The SASC did not authorize the extra $3.6 million the administration had asked for.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

if Saudis ran The Consulate Chainsaw Massacre in the consul's office (and I saw mainstream links saying this is what basically happened, "allegedly" of course),

then they should be asked not to go for The Consulate Chainsaw Massacre remake, as it wouldn't be the primary use of diplomatic facilities

Click to expand...

The rare decision, a fallout of last year’s Khashoggi killing, comes as tensions rise with Iran.

Trump administration officials told lawmakers they would bypass Congressional approval and invoke a rarely used provision in the Arms Export Control Act to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Senate Foreign Relations Committees top Democrat

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Friday.

The move would green-light 22 arms deals currently blocked by Congress. The weapons under scrutiny include helicopters and other aircraft, precision-guided munitions, and intelligence equipment , a U.S. official said Friday afternoon. Those include RQ-21 Blackjack surveillance drones and Javelin anti-tank missiles, CNN

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Training for Saudi and UAE military personnel is also part of the 22 deals, the U.S. official said. Collectively, the sales and training are worth about $8 billion, according to the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

The administration told lawmakers that threats from Iran prompted it to use emergency measures to advance the stalled arms sales,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Sen, Robert Menendez, D-N.J., ranking member of committee.

Lawmakers have opposed the deals amid reports of widespread civilian deaths from the U.S.-assisted Saudi and UAE bombing campaign in Yemen against Iran-backed insurgents, and the Saudi regime’s role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“I have kept the Trump administration from selling tens of thousands of precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates until they could prove that U.S. assistance and arms sales were improving Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s respect for human rights in Yemen and were in line with U.S. national security interests and values,” Menendez said.

The State Department, which approves the executive branch’s foreign military sales, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Since Trump took office, his administration has approved

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and nearly $5 billion to UAE. The State-approved sales include munitions, missile interceptors, surveillance aerostats, maintenance, spare parts and training.

This is not the first time the executive branch has sidestepped Congress’ attempt to block a foreign arms sale. The Carter administration used the provision in 1979 to sell arms to Yemen and the Reagan administration in 1984

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, said Rachel Stohl, head of the Conventional Defense Program at the Stimson Center. It’s

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, but often they can slow them, much like they’ve done with recent sales to Saudi and UAE.

“[Congress] might have the votes for a resolution of disapproval for the Saudi sale, [but] they probably would not for a UAE sale,” Stohl said.

Politically, the Trump administration going around lawmakers “is bigger than the arms sales,” she said, and represents the policy power struggle between the White House and Congress over two key Middle East allies.

“There is no new ‘emergency’ reason to sell bombs to the Saudis to drop in Yemen, and doing so only perpetuates the humanitarian crisis there,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Friday. “This sets an incredibly dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to sell weapons without a check from Congress.”

Click to expand...