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Brumby

Major
In more relevant news SEC DEF HAGEL has been canned, no clear vision, he really wasn't up to the job, nor is his boss, and now they will hire an Obama insider, expect the "stoopidity" to get deeper. With a Republican house and senate, they should insist on somebody with some depth, though Obama doesn't want somebody on the staff that will "outshine" his own limited knowledge and ability. This administration has micro-managed the DOD in a way that hasn't been seen since the Johnson administration. Time for the president to step up and appoint someone who has the stones to turn this mess around, everybody is in danger when "amateurs" are playing with the nukes?

The best you can hope for is they appoint someone who would not do too much damage to the military until there is a change in administration.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Why would we do that shen, and take options off the table, some opponents have only been deterred by our MAD policy, I see no reason to limit our options. In more relevant news SEC DEF HAGEL has been canned, no clear vision, he really wasn't up to the job, nor is his boss, and now they will hire an Obama insider, expect the "stoopidity" to get deeper. With a Republican house and senate, they should insist on somebody with some depth, though Obama doesn't want somebody on the staff that will "outshine" his own limited knowledge and ability. This administration has micro-managed the DOD in a way that hasn't been seen since the Johnson administration. Time for the president to step up and appoint someone who has the stones to turn this mess around, everybody is in danger when "amateurs" are playing with the nukes?

The best you can hope for is they appoint someone who would not do too much damage to the military until there is a change in administration.

I am still surprised about this news. He wasn't on the job for very long...was he?:confused: I'm curious as to what political wrangling been going on behind closed doors? That explains why he has been very active and busy the last three weeks with all sorts of announcements, meetings, and diplomatic negotiations around the world.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
I am still surprised about this news. He wasn't on the job for very long...was he?:confused: I'm curious as to what political wrangling been going on behind closed doors? That explains why he has been very active and busy the last three weeks with all sorts of announcements, meetings, and diplomatic negotiations around the world.

I am surprised also Equation, and no Sec Hagel hadn't been on the job very long, he was brought in to "back up the Pres" as we pulled the plug on Irag, kind of hoping that we could "lose in Iraq gracefully" and hopefully the damage wouldn't be to bad....

Let me say this, my criticism of the Pres has absolutely nothing to do with his race, party affiliation, religion, or his birth place, he is arguably the most powerful man on the planet?, and his people controlled the house and the senate the first two years of his administration. His policies and programs have been an abject failure, and our Department of Defense has suffered immeasurable, perhaps "irreparable" damage, materially and in personel. His biggest failure is not understanding that he is in well over his head and coming clean with the American people and asking for help.
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
Because the world changes on a constant basis. In the 1980s the US/NATO Did not have an overwhelming superiority especially in the European theater. As a matter a fact it is very likely NATO would lose huge swarth of land in Western Europe once the WP armor started rolling Westward. They would have had to resort to first strike tactical nukes once West Germany is gone or the battle of Fulda Gap has been lost. Luckily for the world that never happend.

A little wild in your own neighborhood tonight Eh? be safe, if it gets to crazy, I'll come down and do an "extraction", Greene Co is a little safer?
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Army aviation restructuring moves forward
By: STEPHEN TRIMBLEWASHINGTON DC Source: Flightglobal.com in 2 hours
The US Army has started executing a plan that will lead to a historic reshaping and downsizing of a war-weary aviation branch as it attempts to both upgrade its capabilities and cut more than $12 billion in spending over the next five years.

The aviation restructuring initiative (ARI) unveiled earlier this year is ambitious. Not since the cancellation of the Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 Comanche in 2004 has the army proposed as much change for the aviation branch.

ARI proposes to divest all of army aviation’s more than 800 single-engined helicopters. It retires the Bell Helicopter OH-58D Kiowa Warriors, used as armed scouts, with no replacement. A fleet of OH-58A/Cs assigned as advanced trainers also are retired. The TH-67 Creek primary trainer – the military designations for the Bell 206 JetRanger – will be sold as surplus equipment,a plan that has raised concerns from lawmakers over flooding the market with more than 180 cheap trainers.

More controversially, the army is seeking to rebalance active and reserve fleets. It would force the National Guard to transfer Boeing AH-64 Apaches, then receive active army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks in return. The army also would acquire 100 more Airbus Helicopters LUH-72A Lakotas for the National Guard, as it transfers more than 100 already delivered LUH-72As to replace the TH-67s as trainers.

Meanwhile, the OH-58D mission will be absorbed by AH-64D/Es, which will team up with AAI Corp RQ-7B Shadows and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9 Gray Eagles to perform the armed scout role. These manned-unmanned teams have already been deployed in operations, says Col John Lindsay, director of army aviation operations and plans.

Speaking at the Federal City chapter of the American Helicopter Society recently, Lindsay defended the plan from critics in Congress and the National Guard.

In Lindsay’s view, the ARI is the best possible solution to a problem caused by sequestration budget policy, which removes $79 billion in planned outlays to the army’s budget over the next five years.

“The money is gone,” he says. “The structure must adapt to the money that is out there.”

Adaptation can take many forms. ARI seeks to reduce spending while protecting the army’s newest and most capable aircraft, he says.

But even Lindsay acknowledges ARI may not be enough. Right now, ARI allows the army to recapitalise its multi-engine fleet while investing in next-generation rotorcraft programmes, such as the joint multi-role technology demonstration (JMR-TD). If Congress does not repeal or reduce sequestration budget cuts in fiscal 2016, the budget cutting must go deeper.

“When I say we have to make some difficult choices we’re going to have to make some really difficult choices,” Lindsay says. “I’m not the decider. I’m just reading the tea leaves.”
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Unmanned And Manned Aircraft Will Have To Learn To Rely On Each Other
Nov 25, 2014Graham Warwick | Aviation Week & Space Technology
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Unholy Alliance
Unmanned aircraft are most often viewed as augmenting manned aircraft, perhaps eventually replacing some of them, but a more likely future lies in their becoming intimately essential to each other. Two new U.S. research notices give hints of such an outcome.

One envisions manned bombers and transports becoming flying aircraft carriers, launching and recovering small UAVs to extend their reach. The other imagines fleets of throw-away aircraft overwhelming and punching through anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) defenses to enable stealthy but scarce assets to engage the enemy.


Credit: Raytheon
These are requests for information (RFI)—market surveys, not programs yet—that appear to have been switched at birth. The “affordable, attritable aircraft” is the far-out vision of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), not the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). The concept of an airborne UAV carrier, meanwhile, seems somewhat prosaic for an agency that prides itself on tackling only “Darpa-hard” problems.

AFRL’s RFI seeks ideas for unmanned aircraft that could be produced and configured on demand at a cost low enough that the Air Force could afford to lose many of them in combat. The unit cost target is $3 million, compared with $100 million for a stealth fighter, with the goal that such cost be independent of order quantity and production rate.

That cost goal makes the concept closer to Raytheon’s under-$400,000 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy Jammer (pictured) or $1.4 million Tactical Tomahawk cruise missile—both unmanned and expendable—than to a light attack/reconnaissance aircraft such as Textron AirLand’s two-seat, twin-engine Scorpion, which costs $20 million but is not stealthy.

AFRL sees two key challenges. One is designing an aircraft that can actually perform an A2/AD mission while remaining modestly sized and affordably priced. The other is designing for commoditization, with manufacturing processes that enable rate- and quantity-independent production costs so the price is essentially the same for tens or thousands.

Low-cost, high-volume combat aircraft have been proposed before, but foundered on the fact that pilots are expensive and not attritable. And while production of a relatively simple design can be ramped up rapidly, combat pilots cannot be trained quickly. To overcome this, the attritable aircraft would be unmanned and air-launched from manned platforms, recovering to a base for reuse—if it survives.

AFRL makes some key assumptions: that there is no service-life requirement; airworthiness rules are relaxed; mission reliability is orders of magnitude less than for manned aircraft; there is no depot maintenance, and support is limited to component replacement and quick repairs in the field. Each vehicle has a single role, a unique configuration for each mission, and a family of systems aggregating into a combat capability. Crucially, mission types and performance are still undefined, AFRL says.

Nonetheless, the lab wants ideas on existing aircraft that could be easily and affordably modified for an A2/AD mission and flown in 12-18 months, and clean-sheet designs that could be demonstrated in 18-24 months. And it wants industry input on whether either could be produced for $3 million or less.

Darpa, meanwhile, believes bombers or transports launching and recovering fleets of small UAVs could enable new missions involving distributed operations by collaborating platforms. Small unmanned aircraft could reduce the risks faced by expensive manned aircraft, but lack the speed, range and endurance required. A blended approach, in which large aircraft deploy multiple cooperating small UAVs, could extend range, increase safety and cost-effectively enable new capabilities, Darpa says.

The agency is seeking concepts and technologies for airborne launch and recovery of low-cost reusable UAVs involving minimal modification of existing large aircraft types, such as B-52 and B-1 bombers and C-130 and C-17 airlifters.

In the mid-2000s, the Air Force studied a concept called Just-in-Time Strike Augmentation that involved launching large numbers of a networked long-endurance weapon, the Area Dominator, from C-17s to break the back of enemy operations. A C-17 was to carry 600 weapons on pallets, 60 of which would act as network gateways for the strike vehicles. Boeing built and flew Dominator demonstrators.

The agency also is seeking proposals for full-system flight tests within four years, “to assist in planning for a potential future Darpa program,” and to demonstrate functionality to potential service partners that could transition the system to operation. That may prove the Darpa-hard part.



A version of this article appears in the November 24 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology.
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Army mariners highlight capabilities, impact in Pacific for Under SecArmy Carson
November 19, 2014

By 8th Theater Sustainment Command Public Affairs


Chief Warrant Officer 4 Francis Lloyd (left), the skipper of the U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistic Support Vessel-4), discusses the joint and multi-national role Army watercraft play across the Pacific Theater with Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson (center) and Maj. Gen. Edward F. Dorman III (right), commander of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, during a tour of the vessel, Nov. 15, 2014, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The vessel is one of the Pacific's 26 Army watercraft assets, and it averages 210 days at sea per year, providing over-the-water equipment and personnel transportation options to increase maneuverability and readiness throughout the region.
Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson follows Chief Warrant Officer 4 Francis Lloyd, the skipper of the U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistics Support Vessel-4), aboard the vessel for a tour and discussion about Army watercraft capabilities, Nov. 15, 2014, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. Maj. Gen. Edward F. Dorman III, commander of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, joined the tour, and highlighted the critical role Army watercraft play in supporting readiness and maneuverability across the Pacific Theater's joint and multi-national environment.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 Francis Lloyd (right), the skipper of the U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistic Support Vessel-4), discusses the joint and multi-national role Army watercraft play across the Pacific Theater with Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson (center) and Maj. Gen. Edward F. Dorman III (left), commander of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, during a tour of the vessel, Nov. 15, 2014, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The vessel is one of the Pacific's 26 Army watercraft assets, and it averages 210 days at sea per year, providing over-the-water equipment and personnel transportation options to increase maneuverability and readiness throughout the region.
Army mariners from the 8th Theater Sustainment Command highlight their unique capability and the joint and multi-national role Army watercraft play across the Pacific Theater during Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson's tour of U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistic Support Vessel 4), Nov. 15, 2014, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The vessel is one of the Pacific's 26 Army watercraft assets, and it crew averages 210 days at sea per year, providing over-the-water equipment and personnel transportation options to increase maneuverability and readiness throughout the region.
Army mariners from the 8th Theater Sustainment Command highlight their unique capability and the joint and multi-national role Army watercraft play across the Pacific Theater during Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson's tour of U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistic Support Vessel 4), Nov. 15, 2014, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The vessel is one of the Pacific's 26 Army watercraft assets, and it crew averages 210 days at sea per year, providing over-the-water equipment and personnel transportation options to increase maneuverability and readiness throughout the region.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 Francis Lloyd (right), the skipper of the U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistic Support Vessel-4), discusses the joint and multi-national role Army watercraft play across the Pacific Theater with Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson (left) and Maj. Gen. Edward F. Dorman III (center), commander of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, after a tour of the vessel, Nov. 15, 2014, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The vessel is one of the Pacific's 26 Army watercraft assets, and it averages 210 days at sea per year, providing over-the-water equipment and personnel transportation options to increase maneuverability and readiness throughout the region.
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JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (Nov. 19, 2014) -- Army mariners from the 8th Theater Sustainment Command shared their unique capability and the joint and multi-national impact Army watercraft has across the Pacific Theater with Under Secretary of the Army Brad R. Carson during his tour of U.S. Army Vessel Lt. Gen. William B. Bunker (Logistic Support Vessel 4) here, Saturday.

The U.S. Pacific Command area of responsibility stretches 9,000 miles, and more than one third of the region's 36 nations are small islands, with the majority of the population living within 200 miles of the coast. When it comes to flexible logistics for the region's joint and multi-national forces, the theater's geography and size demand a team effort maximizing and preparing every available transportation option.

The logistic support vessel, or LSV, that Carson toured is one of the Pacific's 26 Army watercraft assets and its crew averages more than 210 days at sea per year, providing over-the-water transportation of equipment and personnel to increase maneuverability and readiness throughout the region.

The vessel's cargo deck is designed to hold any vehicle in the U.S. Army inventory and comparable vehicles in sister services' and partner nation militaries. The flat bottom boat can carry up to 15 M1 Abrams main battle tanks, or 82 standard containers, which is the equivalent of 17 C-17 aircraft loads. The boat has both bow and stern ramps for roll-on and -off operations and can beach itself to load or discharge cargo over the shore, in as little as four feet of water.

The vessel and other Army watercraft assets provide capabilities that enable access to unimproved ports in austere environments, a potentially critical contribution during humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations.

In addition to routine personnel and equipment movement missions, LSV-4 also joined 22 other nations and sister service counterparts during the world's largest international exercise, Rim of the Pacific 2014, playing a major role in surface/vertical cargo lifts, casualty evacuation training, and Logistics over the Shore operations.

Other Pacific-based Army watercraft elements are set to participate in exercise Combined Joint Logistics Over the Shore 2015, and future Pacific Pathways rotations, and are currently executing Pacific Utility and Logistics Support Enabler-Watercraft II, or PULSE-W II, providing flexible, cost-effective, and tailored cargo delivery options throughout the region in support of joint and multinational exercises and missions.
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Aviation Week
Lockheed Updates Unmanned U-2 Concept

Aviation Week & Space Technology
Amy Butler
Mon, 2014-11-24 04:00
U-2 advocates push optionally manned variant as a rival to Global Hawk
The fat lady has not necessarily sung on the fate of the U.S. Air Force’s high-flying U-2 intelligence aircraft.

Lockheed Martin has crafted a reduced-cost plan to “optionally man” its U-2, throwing a new possibility into the mix as Congress weighs whether to shift to an all-Northrop Grumman Global Hawk unmanned aircraft fleet for high-altitude reconnaissance. With an optionally manned U-2, advocates for the so-called Dragon Lady say the venerable aircraft finally can match the endurance offered by the RQ-4B Global Hawk. Convincing lawmakers and the Pentagon likely will be an uphill battle, though.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense finally opted after more than a decade of waffling to commit to a U-2 retirement path in its fiscal 2015 budget request, carving a path for an all-Global Hawk fleet. But U-2 advocates are continuing to argue that its attributes—including a 5,000-lb. payload—are superior to those of the Global Hawk, a high-flying unmanned aircraft capable of lofting 3,000 lb. of sensors. The U-2 operates at 70,000 ft. while the Global Hawk is limited to 60,000 ft., reducing its slant angle—or sensor range—for targets. It also lacks defensive systems that the U-2 carries.

Advocates of the two programs have been in a tit-for-tat funding dispute for nearly 15 years, each annually attempting to raid the other’s budget and gain support from combatant commanders. The Pentagon’s final ruling this year calls for a $1.8 billion upgrade for the Global Hawk to achieve near-parity with the U-2, with the main focus to improve the reliability and sensor performance of the unmanned aircraft. Based on an April report to Congress, the Air Force is spending $9.1 billion on the Global Hawk program to develop and buy 45 aircraft, including seven baseline Block 10s, six Block 20s (some outfitted with the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node relay), 21 Block 30s capable of imagery and signals intelligence and 11 Block 40s operating the radar payload.

Originally the product of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency experiment to design an inexpensive unmanned aerial system, Global Hawk was thrust into operation to support a spike in reconnaissance requirements after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It has been supporting operations in the Middle East and Asia since then, gaining operational experience it likely never would have received had the U.S. not conducted operations in Afghanistan. And, eventually, Global Hawk earned a place as a potential replacement for the U-2.

Its strongest edge over the U-2 remains its endurance; the Global Hawk can stay aloft for 24 hr. or more. The U-2 is constrained by regulations restricting pilots to 12 hr. in the cockpit. U-2 pilots also are required to wear pressure suits and have reported increased instances of the “bends” after long-duration missions supporting Afghanistan operations. Without hydraulics, the U-2 is notoriously complex to fly, with pilots having to muscle against strong winds to and from altitude. Landing the aircraft, which was designed with extreme lift qualities, is treacherous.

But Lockheed Martin says it can “unman” the U-2 for far less than the cost of the Global Hawk upgrade program. A newly crafted design (see image) will cost about $700 million, to optionally man three U-2s and provide two ground stations. The ground stations are compact racks and processors, so they can be operated virtually anywhere, according to a Lockheed Martin official. Once developed, flyaway cost is $35-40 million.

This design calls for the addition of a new center wingbox that will fit between the metal wings and extend each by 10 ft. It also will provide space behind the cockpit for connecting cables into the aircraft’s actuators. “The pilot could electronically turn off the actuators and it is just like you have today, it is flying by cable,” the Lockheed official says. The design is intended to leave the cockpit untouched to allow for manned operation.

Landing could be made more predictable with the unmanned system. “As a prior U-2 pilot, I always thought this was going to be an aviation challenge. When I looked to our avionics engineers, they almost scoffed at me. . . . They said, ‘We’ve already done it—landing [an unmanned aircraft] on a pitching and rolling carrier,’ . . . and this is far easier,” the Lockheed official says. “This would be more safe, the reason being the failure modes.”

For example, in cases where pilots encounter full nose-up or down trim, they are required to apply roughly 75 lb. of pressure to the stick to maintain flight, which can be challenging for pilots in pressure suits, especially toward the end of a long mission. “Even if you are a pilot in the airplane and you have a full nose-up or a full nose-down trim failure, you can engage the autopilot and let it fly all the way down and to the landing,” the Lockheed official says. “The actuators would handle those loads easily.”

The additional space offered by the center wingbox also could house a full-motion video sensor, the official says. Use of the wingbox will avoid a redesign to the tail that a wing extension could require. This design has been updated since Lockheed submitted a concept in 2012, which called for 140-ft. composite wings optimized for fuel carriage.

To date, Lockheed has simply completed preliminary design work. However, the proposal could whet the appetite of some lawmakers leery of retiring the U-2; with the last of the aircraft rolling off the production line in 1989, their structural lives are intact. And there is some risk associated with upgrading the Global Hawk.

Still, the Pentagon has been fickle in its high-altitude reconnaissance plan; in 2012, it proposed killing the Global Hawk Block 30 and keeping the U-2 as the workhorse intelligence collector. That was overturned this year. “I don’t see DOD reverse-reversing themselves,” said one congressional staffer, noting that another switch would likely irritate lawmakers.

Whichever platform wins out to handle the Air Force’s high-altitude reconnaissance needs, it will only be one element of a larger architecture. Both U-2 and Global Hawk are standoff platforms.

A version of this article appears in the November 24 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology.

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Equation

Lieutenant General
I am surprised also Equation, and no Sec Hagel hadn't been on the job very long, he was brought in to "back up the Pres" as we pulled the plug on Irag, kind of hoping that we could "lose in Iraq gracefully" and hopefully the damage wouldn't be to bad....

Let me say this, my criticism of the Pres has absolutely nothing to do with his race, party affiliation, religion, or his birth place, he is arguably the most powerful man on the planet?, and his people controlled the house and the senate the first two years of his administration..

Oh we know that Brat, you are a good man, we do suspect it's the President's group of inner circle that's doing all the micro-(mis)managing of world diplomacy. But to be fair, President George W. Bush also has his own groupies that decides on a lot of the foreign policies from the past as well. What's are the differences between the two groupies is anybody's guest.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Secretary Hagel was not exactly a groupie, particularly lately he has been pushing back against the Obama Disarmament program. he has also ironically been a major pusher for good relations with israel. He seems to have been less of a inner circle player then previous secdefs. this combined with the major blow the admin took form the midterms was probably the final push for the Obama inner circle who are now looking to pressure out any and every player who was not willing to tow the fundamental transformation of America Obama line.
 
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