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Training changes as US troops head to West Africa
Oct. 10, 2014 - 09:49AM |
By Will Weissert
The Associated Press
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Congress clears more money to support Ebola mission
U.S. troops build hospital in Liberia in Ebola fight
Troops fighting Ebola will earn up to $400 extra per month
Marines deploy from Spain for Ebola fight
U.S. troops' Ebola mission may last a year
FORT HOOD, TEXAS — Forgoing combat rifles and body armor, U.S. troops preparing to fight Ebola in Liberia were instead stepping gingerly Thursday into white germ-proof suits and pulling on thick, blue rubber gloves and gas masks.
About 500 soldiers were doing three days of infectious disease training inside a concrete-floored building on Texas’ sprawling Fort Hood — getting ready to join as many as 3,900 troops nationwide authorized to go to areas affected by the virus.
Army medical personnel will treat patients who have Ebola while engineers plan to build temporary medical centers. How long they’ll be deployed is unclear.
“It feels a bit like the … tire man, or a marshmallow,” trainer John McGuffin joked as a group of Army soldiers tottered about in suits resembling billowy hospital gowns.
Dispatched from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland, McGuffin offered tips on spotting Ebola symptoms, then had troops work in pairs to correctly don protective gear.
“We’re going to check each other,” McGuffin said. “If we have a tear in the suit, we’re going to first remain calm. We’re going to remove ourselves from a potentially infectious area, and then we’re going to hit everything with disinfectant.”
The soldiers learned they should step forward, not backward, when removing suits, and clean masks and rubber gloves with alcohol wipes. Duct tape, they were told, works well to seal sleeves to gloves.
Outbreak fears weren’t overt, but there was some nervousness. While Ebola-related training is similar to chemical warfare instruction many troops have had previously, it’s a far cry from battlefield or counterterrorism missions.
“I think there’s some apprehension here, of course,” said Col. Heath Roscoe, commander of the 36th Engineer Brigade, one of three Liberia-bound units from Fort Hood.
To assuage fears, he held a meeting Monday with troops and their families where surgeons fielded questions not only about safety in Liberia but potential risks to relatives once their loved ones come home.
“We’ve seen some other folks, American doctors who got it, were flown back, and I’m pretty confident that our leaders will make sure that happens with our soldiers” if they are stricken with Ebola, Roscoe said.
The disease has killed thousands globally, and a Liberian man in a Dallas hospital who became the first confirmed U.S. case of the virus died Wednesday.
U.S. troops build hospital in Liberia in Ebola fight
Oct. 10, 2014 - 12:22PM |
By Jonathan Paye-Layleh and Robbie Corey-Boulet
The Associated Press
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News
World News
Related Links
Training changes as US troops head to West Africa
Congress clears more money to support Ebola mission
Troops fighting Ebola will earn up to $400 extra per month
U.S. troops' Ebola mission may last a year
MONROVIA, LIBERIA — The vanguard of a U.S. military force set about building a hospital for stricken health workers as Liberian lawmakers debated Friday whether to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf more power amid the Ebola epidemic. One parliamentarian warned that the country could turn into a “police state.”
The arrival of 100 U.S. Marines on Thursday brings to just over 300 the total number of American troops in Liberia. The Marines and their aircraft will help with air transportation and ferrying of supplies, overcoming road congestion in Monrovia and bad roads outside the capital, said Capt. R. Carter Langston, spokesman for the U.S. mission. A priority will be transporting building materials to treatment unit sites. The U.S. has said it will oversee construction of 17 treatment units with 100 beds each.
The U.S. military on Thursday was also setting up a 25-bed hospital to treat health workers who may contract Ebola. Rear Adm. Scott Giberson, the acting United States Deputy Surgeon General, said the facility would be ready within weeks and would be run by the U.S. military.
“We’re in training right now. As you may know, not everybody is fully experienced in seeing Ebola-related care of patients,” Giberson said. “We have experience deploying in lots of medical settings. However, this is unique.”
The 101st Airborne Division is expected to deploy 700 troops by late October. The U.S. may send up to 4,000 soldiers to help with the Ebola crisis, though officials have stressed that number could change depending on needs.
In a call with reporters on Wednesday, USAID assistant administrator Nancy Lindborg said six treatment units were operational in Liberia. She said about 250 beds had come online in the last ten days or so, and that beds would come online in waves until the end of November.
Liberia’s House of Representatives convened a special session Friday to discuss proposed measures outlined in an Oct. 1 letter that would give Sirleaf the power to restrict movement and public gatherings and appropriate property “without payment of any kind or any further judicial process” to combat Ebola.
The letter also says Sirleaf can “limit the right to assembly for any reason.”
Sirleaf’s government imposed a three-month state of emergency beginning Aug. 6, and a statement warned at the time that this would involve suspending some rights and privileges.
“I see a kind of police state creeping in,” said lawmaker Bhofal Chambers, a one-time supporter of Sirleaf who has since joined the opposition camp.
In August, a quarantine of Monrovia’s largest shantytown sparked unrest and was derided as counterproductive before being lifted. The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Sirleaf’s government of trying to silence media outlets criticizing its conduct.
Liberia has been hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak, recording more than 2,200 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The total death toll as of Wednesday was 3,865, with most other deaths in Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Frustration with Sirleaf is not limited just to Ebola. There have also been allegations of corruption and nepotism, especially the appointment of her sons to high-level posts.
When Justice Minister Christiana Tah announced her resignation this week, she accused the president of blocking an investigation of the country’s National Security Agency, which is headed by her son Fumba Sirleaf.
In Mali, a health ministry spokesman said two more people had begun participating in the first phase of a study for a possible Ebola vaccine. Mali has not had any cases of Ebola, but it borders the outbreak zone. University of Maryland researchers announced Thursday that the first study of a possible vaccine was underway, and that three health care workers in Mali had received the experimental shots developed by the U.S. government.
“Today, we are at five people vaccinated,” health ministry spokesman Markatie Daou said. “We envision vaccinating between 20 and 40 people for this first phase and the results are expected next month.”
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, meanwhile, visited the Madrid hospital where a nursing assistant infected with Ebola is being treated.
Teresa Romero was scheduled to start receiving the experimental anti-Ebola drug ZMapp, which is in extremely short supply worldwide, a spokeswoman for Madrid’s regional health agency said on condition of anonymity because of agency rules.
Romero contracted Ebola in Madrid while helping treat a Spanish missionary who became infected in West Africa, and later died. She is the first person known outside of West Africa to have caught the disease in the current outbreak.
Rajoy praised Spanish health care workers and said the World Health Organization thinks “the risk is very low that this disease will spread in the future” in Spain and Europe.
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Corey-Boulet reported from Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Associated Press journalists Wade Williams in Monrovia and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.
US Air Force moves ahead with F-16 service life extension
By: DAN PARSONSWASHINGTON DC Source: Flightglobal.com 16:55 9 Oct 2014
The US Air Force is pushing ahead with an effort to extend the service lives of 300 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D fighters as a stopgap measure until the F-35 Lightning II is operational in sufficient numbers.
The service announced on 2 October it would finalise the design of the aircraft within 18 to 24 months and wants to give prospective industry bidders a “first look” into the scope of work needed to extend the aircraft’s service life from 8,000 flight hours to between 10,000 and 12,000 flight hours.
The request for information (RFI) is seeking industry input into the production and deployment of modification kits for Block 40, 42, 50 and 52 aircraft.
“Much of the design remains under development.The purpose of providing this information now is to afford industry a ‘first look’ into SLEP and engage interested, but perhaps not fully capable, parties to support their development and foster industry partnerships to maximise competition,” the air force says.
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Photo by Lockheed Martin
Lockheed has completed a series of durability tests on an F-16 Block 30 and is nearing completion of full-scale durability testing (FSDT) on a Block 50 C-model aircraft that began in December 2012, a company spokesman says.
That testing should be complete with the first quarter of 2015. Lockheed is developing the SLEP design concurrently with the Block 50 testing in order to shorten to overall development time for the service life extension, he says.
FSD testing will also help the air force address longeron cracking that caused the grounding of 81 F-16Ds in September, he says. Lockheed and the air force already have identified a repair that will involve installing a strap over the cracked longeron, rather than replacing them, and are moving ahead because of the need to return those aircraft to flight, the Lockheed spokesman says.
“There will be some learning from the FSDT for the current issues however, due to the extreme urgency of the need for repairs, the analysis has already been accomplished and will provide a repair for the cracks that should be found in the unit under test in the FSDT,” he says.
According to the air force’s original SLEP schedule, the first modification kits will be purchased in fiscal year 2017 with installation beginning the following year. Until then, the service must perform structural testing on the kits it eventually develops, both on the ground and in flight, between 2014 and 2016.
“As the program and technical solutions mature over the next 18-24 months, our goal is to establish a collaborative relationship with industry to identify potential responsible sources; determine competitive and/or Small Business Set-Aside opportunities; and craft an effective acquisition strategy,” the air force says.
USAF pilot escapes UK F-15 crash
By: CRAIG HOYLELONDON Source: Flightglobal.com 17:20 8 Oct 2014
A US Air Force Boeing F-15 has crashed near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, the service has confirmed.
In a statement released via its Twitter account on 8 October, the 48th Fighter Wing said: “We can confirm that one of our jets went down north of the base, in Lincolnshire. The pilot ejected and is safe.”
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Rex Features
The USAF later identified the crashed aircraft as a two-seat D-model trainer, which it said had been "conducting a combat training mission". It confirms that "one person was on board the aircraft", which was not carrying any live weapons.
"An HH-60G Pave Hawk transported the pilot back safely. The pilot is now being evaluated at the RAF Lakenheath hospital," it says.
U.S. Army Testing More MUM-T Technology
Aviation Week & Space Technology
Amy Butler
Mon, 2014-10-13 04:00
U.S. Army Apache pilots may pair with unmanned air systems to release weapons remotely
Despite more than $1 trillion spent by Washington on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, debate continues at the Pentagon about what tactics—and technologies—from those battles will endure.
U.S. Army officials continue to debate the need, for example, for vehicles that dedicate substantial weight toward protection from roadside bombs.
However, momentum is solidly behind fielding manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) technologies for Army aviation platforms. Combining video feeds and weapons from manned and unmanned platforms provides significantly improved situational awareness to troops on the ground and dramatically improved efficiency in focusing weapons to support ground elements. This combination also could make Army ground units less reliant on aircraft from other services for overwatch and air support.
The MUM-T vision has taken its latest step with deployment of the first Boeing AH-64E Apache “Echo” attack helicopter units in Afghanistan this year; this is the first Army rotorcraft with purpose-built MUM-T technology fused into its avionics. The Echo includes software and systems that allow its pilot to fully remotely control a Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft’s sensor package, a capability hastily added to older models in fielded units to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The MQ-1C Gray Eagle’s standard payload includes the Raytheon Common Sensor Payload electro-optical/infrared sensor with a laser designator, Northrop Grumman STARlite synthetic aperture radar capable of tracking moving ground targets, a communications relay and signals-intelligence collector.
Echo pilots will be able to fully control the unmanned air system (UAS) flight path from the cockpit, extending the reach of the helicopter with the Gray Eagle’s long-range sensors and Hellfire weapons.
In testing, Army pilots were able to fire on targets outside the helicopter’s own targeting system range because the Gray Eagle, flying forward, designated them. This not only keeps Apaches farther from lethal airspace but allows for an extended time to engage and, if necessary, reengage, targets to insure a kill. Results of the tests an
d anecdotes from the field have been so dramatic that one Army officer says the Apache’s value increased substantially enough with the inclusion of Gray Eagle that the service could save money by buying fewer of the helicopters without compromising mission effectiveness.
Gray Eagle data also are piped to ground-based operators using the new One-System Remove Video Terminal (OSRVT), a fixed or mobile device that allows remote users to view video feeds and will enable them to control the UAS to gather intelligence.
The service is continuing to procure the Boeing Apache helicopter, dubbed “The Monster” by the Taliban, according to Army officials. And nearly half of the Army’s Gray Eagles have been delivered. Of 101 delivered, 17 are dedicated to the development program, says Steve Adamson, Gray Eagle program manager for General Atomics. Eighty-four of the aircraft, derived from the Predator air vehicle used by the Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency, have been delivered for operational use; the last is expected in fiscal 2018. The Army is fielding Gray Eagles for 15 companies, including 10 active Army divisions and special operations and Army intel units.
Army officials are continuing tests to improve MUM-T. Apache crews and OSRVT users will be able to remotely control both the Gray Eagle’s flight and payloads—including the Army’s small Shadow system (see page 48)—under the supervision of the unmanned systems’ operators beginning in 2015, says Doug Wolfe, interoperability lead in the Common Systems Integration Product Office for the Army. “We have been performing a limited form of MUM-T on the battlefield for some time now. Specifically, the UAS provide video and metadata to Apache D model and OSRVT,” he says. “The Apache E model is in theater today and can do some payload and aircraft control, but t
he testing that we are doing now is maturing that capability.”
This work builds on the Army’s earlier Manned/Unmanned System -Integration Capability demonstrations in 2011, which proved that remote payload control was possible (AW&ST Aug. 25, 2011, p. 57).
Even as this is being tested, Wolfe is eyeing more improvements in MUM-T. Among the optio
ns for future fielding are sensor control for infantry commanders riding in the backs of UH-60 Black Hawks or CH-47 Chinooks to provide improved situational awareness as they approach landing zones. Wolfe also suggests that sensors on the Army’s bevy of fixed-wing intelligence collectors can be fed into the terminals. “All this is possible because we put the standards and requirements on how to do this in the Army’s interoperability profiles, and everyone follows those to implement the capabilities,” he says. Eventually, Apache pilots could control weapons on the Gray Eagle from afar, expanding and extending the helicopter’s lethal magazine, he adds.
This is a very tactical mode of using the UAS; the Air Force’s Reaper, by contrast, is controlled via satellite link from operators in Nevada. Capable of higher altitudes and longer endurance, Reapers are included in the Combined Air Operations Center’s highly coordinated daily air tasking order (ATO) to support a variety of intelligence needs. Gray Eagles are only sometimes included in the ATO and are more often under direct control of brigade-level commanders.
Even as the Gray Eagle, first deployed in 2011, is being produced, the Army is eyeing improvements to it. On its own dime, General Atomics has begun flight-testing the Improved Gray Eagle (IGE), which features new comp
osites and a wider fuselage to roughly double endurance to more than 50 hr. with an external fuel pod; payload is slated for a 50% increase. Based on experience with the Predator and Reaper, “we made an assumption that everybody wants increased endurance,” says Adamson.
General Atomics has briefed the Army on this and an improved tail for the aircraft that could be included on either the standard or improved model. The “fault-tolerant” tail is designed to address reliability issues, including problems that contributed to a 2009 crash. It can be retrofitted onto existing Gray Eagles or included in new IGE buys, says Chris MacFarland, strategic development director for Army programs at General Atomics.
The company recently received approval from the Army to produce engine blocks, and it is refurbishing and repairing existing Thielert 160 HP engines. They are made to employ heavy fuel used by Army vehicles and were originally selected for use on the aircraft. Thielert, however, declared insolvency in 2008 and was later purchased by China’s Avic. General Atomics’ capability is largely designed to support existing engines in the field, though it will have production capacity if needed.
Meanwhile, General Atomics is also qualifying a Lycoming DEL-120 as a second Gray Eagle engine option. The Army will decide next summer whether to employ the Lycoming engine, says Jeff Crabb, deputy product manager of medium-altitude endurance unmanned aircraft for the Army.
Army officials are also working on nonproprietary universal armament and payload interfaces to allow for new weapons and payloads to be integrated onto the aircraft cheaply and quickly. “We look at the Gray Eagle kind of like a truck,” Crabb says, adding that these interfaces are estimated to reduce the price of integrating future systems by about 50%. Though unfunded, development cost of the universal armament interface would be about $4.3 million and the cost to retrofit the fleet $47 million. Development of the universal payload interface is estimated at $10.3 million;fleetwide installation would cost about $10 million, Crabb says.The MQ-1C program is slated to cost about $4.4 billion.
Video For more on the Gray Eagle, tap here in the digital edition, or go to AviationWeek.com/GrayEagle
A version of this article appears in the October 13 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology.
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Darpa Seeks Options To Heavy Armor For Vehicle Survival
Aviation Week & Space Technology - Defense Technology Edition
Graham Warwick
Mon, 2014-10-13 04:00
Darpa sees agile vehicles as key to battlefield survival
In nearly 60 years as a byword for high-risk, high-payoff technology development, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) only occasionally has been involved in pushing the state of the art in ground combat vehicles.
In contrast, Darpa has sponsored a long line of experimental aircraft, from the forward-swept-wing Grumman X-29 to the scramjet-powered hypersonic Boeing X-51. Now the agency wants to apply the X-plane model to armored fighting vehicles.
The new Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T) program is a planned precursor to experimental vehicles that would demonstrate improved survivability by means other than added armor, by simultaneously increasing mobility and agility, reducing detectability and avoiding engagement.
“GXV-T’s goal is not just to improve or replace one particular vehicle, it’s about breaking the ‘more armor’ paradigm and revolutionizing protection for all armored fighting vehicles,” says Program Manager Kevin Massey.
Darpa’s land warfare accomplishments are not as many as in other domains. One of the biggest is the Cold War-era Armor/Anti-Armor program of the late 1980s, which led to lightweight ceramic-metallic vehicle armor and shaped-charged weapons to penetrate advanced armor.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan brought a different threat and saw deployment of the Boomerang gunfire-detection and Crosshairs counter-shooter systems on ground vehicles, as well as the fielding of net armor systems to defeat rocket-propelled grenades and testing of the Iron Curtain active anti-RPG protection system. All were developed under Darpa programs.
Lately, the agency’s focus has been affordability, and the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) program was intended to develop design tools and manufacturing paradigms to speed the development of weapon systems. The intent was to validate them by staging crowd-sourced design challenges that would produce a prototype amphibious fighting vehicle in a fifth of the time required using conventional methods.
The first of three planned FANG (Fast Adaptable Next-Generation Ground Vehicle) challenges, to design a drivetrain using the new tools, was won in April 2013. The power pack was built and tested, proving the tools can produce viable designs that can be manufactured correctly and rapidly, Darpa says. But in February the agency announced it was ending the AVM program prematurely, declaring it a success and transitioning the meta design tools to industry years earlier than planned without building and testing a complete vehicle.
The GXV-T goals look ambitious. The ability of weapons to penetrate armor has advanced faster than armor’s ability to withstand penetration, says Darpa. Achieving even incremental improvements in crew survivability has required significant increases in weight and cost. Increasingly heavy and less mobile armored vehicles limit the ability of forces to deploy and maneuver, and make their development, acquisition and operation more expensive, the agency argues.
Darpa’s vision calls for a smaller, lighter, more agile vehicle that protects its reduced crew by autonomously avoiding incoming threats. A concept video shows an advanced, lightweight wheeled vehicle that actively repositions its armor toward the threat on detecting a weapon launch, puts on a burst of acceleration to avoid an incoming RPG and hunkers down on an adaptive suspension to dodge an incoming tank shell.
GXV-T program goals include reducing armored fighting vehicle size and weight by 50%, halving the onboard crew and doubling speed while enabling access to 95% of terrain. Today’s armored vehicles are limited by weight to roads, but Darpa wants to drive off-road and traverse slopes. Reducing vehicle signatures is another goal.
The program will cover four technical areas:
•Radically enhanced mobility, including advanced suspensions, novel track/wheel configurations and the ability to make rapid omnidirectional movement changes.
•Survivability through agility, including autonomous dodging and active armor repositioning.
•Crew augmentation, including improved situational awareness, semi-autonomous driver assistance and automation of crew functions.
•Management of visible, infrared, acoustic and electromagnetic signatures to reduce detectability.
Industry was briefed Sept. 5 on the GXV-T program in Washington, and Darpa plans to develop the technologies over 24 months following initial contract awards, expected by next April. The program will design and test major subsystem capabilities in multiple technology areas, with the goal of integrating these into ground X-vehicle demonstrators.
Recent Darpa ground-vehicle programs have not reached the prototype stage, so expectations for the GXV-T effort must be measured. The program may not result in the kind of advanced, agile, armored-vehicle demonstrator the agency uses to illustrate the concept. But bringing X-plane thinking to bear could shake up combat-vehicle design by showing that unconventional alternatives to more armor are viable.
This article appears in the October 13 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology’s Defense Technology International. To read more about the critical role of defense technologies globally, click here to subscribe.
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