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PanAsian said:

This IS cash depot won the "Powerball"!!!

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he Army aviation chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Lundy, wants to spend the service’s shrunken aircraft acquisition budget — down about 40 percent over the past three years — on manned rather than unmanned aircraft. After all, this is the Army.

“We’ve got a lot of unmanned stuff out there,” Lundy told an

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conference on aviation, responding to a question from the audience asking what Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) the Army needs and whether it could use a drone tailored to carry cargo —

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. Lundy quickly shot the latter idea down as too narrow a mission.

“The demand’s just not there,” he said. “Are there missions where we could use it? Yes. But would I give up manned aircraft to do it? No. I can’t have an unmanned cargo aircraft moving soldiers. We don’t have all the manned structure right now to do all the missions.”

In a hallway interview with Breaking Defense, Lundy added that, in his view, the Army has enough drones of all kinds for the moment. The service is still completing its original buy of

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, a derivative of the Predator that carries sensors and up to four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. The Army also plans to buy 36 improved versions of that General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. aircraft to enable it to contribute 16 daily intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance Combat Air Patrols to Central Command and other joint commands. The Army also flies a wide range of smaller drones.

“We’ve got thousands of UAS,” Lundy told BD. “We’ve got more unmanned systems than anybody else does in the world. You get too big and you start taking away from manned platforms” He added: “What we have to do is make sure the force is tailored properly. Unmanned systems clearly have a role. They’re a great enabling capability. But there are some missions right now that manned platforms are better at. If we’re going to move troops, we’re going to use soldiers to move troops. We’re not going to put soldiers in the back of unmanned aircraft. If we’re going to put soldiers in the back and fly them into harm’s way, we’re going to have soldiers flying them. Twenty or 30 years from now, who knows what that balance point’s going to be. But that balance point in the next 10 to 15 years, I think we’ve got the number of unmanned systems and the capabilities right.”

In his conference remarks, Lundy said that when the Army does buy or develop new drones, a key requirement should be the ability to take off and land without a runway.

“I don’t want to be on runways anymore” Lundy said. A future drone in the same class as the Gray Eagle, he said, “needs to have a VTOL capability. We’ve got to be able to push it forward with units. It can’t be sitting at an airfield four hours away.” He also listed two other key requirements: “It’s got to be survivable, so we’ve go to reduce the signature. And we’ve got to reduce how many people it takes to run it.” A future Gray Eagle replacement, he added, would need to carry similar payloads and have similar range. “I’m not real concerned about the speed,” Lundy said. “Those are the key requirements – both for our large UAS and for our tactical.”

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Raytheon Company completed a successful captive flight test of a seeker designed for the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile. The seeker will enable Tomahawk to engage moving targets on land and at sea.
Raytheon Company completed a successful captive flight test of a seeker designed for the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile. The seeker will enable Tomahawk to engage moving targets on land and at sea.
Using company-funded, independent research and development, the test was conducted with a modified Tomahawk missile nose cone mounted on a T-39 test aircraft and equipped with a seeker integrated with Raytheon's new, modular, multi-mode processor. Over a three-week period, the aircraft flew profiles that simulated the Tomahawk flight regime, aiming at moving targets on land and in the maritime environment.
"Tomahawk is evolving to meet the U.S. Navy's need to add offensive punch and expand the overall power of the fleet worldwide," said Mike Jarrett, Raytheon Air Warfare Systems vice president. "The seeker test has successfully demonstrated the superior capability and maturity of our seeker technology against a variety of targets that resemble today's threats."
U.S. surface combatants and submarines require a robust, long-range strike capability to defeat emerging mobile threats. Since 2005, Raytheon Missile Systems has invested heavily in seeker technology development for Tomahawk to detect, discriminate and engage moving maritime and land-based targets, in all-weather at significant tactical stand-off range.
In June, 2014, RMS successfully demonstrated seeker components in a similar captive flight test. The December, 2015, captive flight test of the seeker demonstrated Technology Readiness Level 6 (Prototype in Representative Environment) of the seeker components needed to meet the moving land and maritime strike requirements. These improvements enhance the current Tomahawk long-range precision strike/land attack role.

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MwRYum said:

If I'm a Brit I'd joke about what you can do with "4000 pounds"…

Seriously now, what the heck is a "cash depot ", thought something like that called a "bank vault" or something?

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US Army forging ahead with OH-58D and TH-67 retirements

The US Army says it has divested all but two of its Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior squadrons under its sweeping aviation restructure initiative, which handed the armed aerial scout role to unmanned RQ-7 Shadow UAVs.

The service is also “on track” to divest its Bell TH-67 Creek training helicopters, with Airbus Helicopters UH-72As supporting initial-entry rotary wing training at the army aviation centre in Fort Rucker, Alabama, for the first time this week.

“The OH-58, it breaks my heart but we’ve got to do it,” says Maj Gen Michael Lundy, who heads the aviation centre of excellence at Fort Rucker, at conference in Washington DC today. “It’s the right thing to do and we will finish divestiture here during 2016.”

Lundy says five combat aviation brigades have been reconfigured so far, with Shadow units now pairing with Boeing AH-64E Apache gunships, providing unmanned surveillance, targeting and strike support via manned-unmanned teaming.

Lundy says 2015 laid the groundwork for things to come in 2016, particularly as more UH-72s report for training, and additional Shadow units stand up.

The commander is also pushing replacement of the remaining A-model Sikorsky UH-60 Block Hawks in the US Army National Guard, with UH-60s converted to the L and V configurations taking over.

Lundy says the process is taking longer than hoped, mostly because of budget constraints. “It’s still going to be slower than I want; probably 2023 by the time we finish the full divestiture of that model,” he says.

In February, the Pentagon will unveil its fiscal year 2017 budget submission. Statements made at the conference suggest no major policy shifts and that key technology investments will be protected.
Lundy pointed to the Block II Chinook, improved turbine engine programme (ITEP), joint air-to-ground missile (JAGM), and aircraft self-protection and “degraded visual environment” upgrades.
“A lot of these programmes were at risk or were just good ideas, but I’ll tell you, they’re all in pretty good shape right now, even though they’re coming in slower than we wanted because of budgetary concerns,” he says.

There was widespread support for the Future Vertical Lift at the conference, although the requirements are far from firm, and there won’t likely be any major acquisition decisions before the Bell V-280 and Boeing-Sikorsky SB-1 joint multi-role technology demonstrators take flight in 2017.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

IS and AQ as well as other Terror Groups can use traditional banks from time to time but have to be careful when doing so as the Big nations like the US like to freeze and seize identified Terrorist bank accounts, Intelligence agencies and also use those to potentially back track and map a terror group. As such Terror groups have to be fairly wary of traditional banks and as such they tend to Pay in cash.
Because they cannot trust banks they will likely store there cash on there own. It's not a proper Valt, It's just a building that they control, And it's not a treasury as that could be mistaken for recognition of statehood. It's just a really big mattress stuffed with Cash waiting for a incendiary bomb.

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MwRYum said:

If I'm a Brit I'd joke about what you can do with "4000 pounds"…

Seriously now, what the heck is a "cash depot ", thought something like that called a "bank vault" or something?

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MwRYum said:

thus they hate to be called "Daesh"

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asif iqbal said:

C17 Globemaster update

Boeing said it would build 13 "white tail" units for export after USAF orders are filled

They finally built only 10

4 went to Qatar
4 went to UAE
2 went to Aussies
1 went to Canadia

That leaves 1 unit not sold but confirmed purchase by a export buyer tail number 14-0003 stored at Kelly airfield

This final puzzle should be solved soon my guess is it's a middleast customer but I get a feeling Turkey is getting it let's wait and see

If C17 production was open i am sure after recent event Turkey would seriously consider this aircraft I think they missed the boat in this one and left it too late

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