US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

This summer, Brazilian aerospace giant Embraer will fly its A-29 Super Tucano in a demonstration for the U.S. Air Force, an event that could pave the way for a potential program of record and the company’s largest-ever sales opportunity with the U.S. military.

However, a lingering question is whether President Donald Trump’s continued push for “America first” policies could give a leg up to Embraer’s probable competition — the Wichita, Kansas-based Textron, which will fly its Scorpion jet and AT-6 turboprop plane in the demo.

During a June visit to Embraer’s business jet production line in Melbourne, Florida, executives told the company doesn’t see its Brazilian heritage as a problem for growing its defense business.

“We have a very, very strong U.S. presence,” said Gary Spulak, president of Embraer’s U.S. subsidiary, who pointed to the company’s growing footprint in the United States. Out of its $6.2 billion revenue last year, $1.4 billion came from Embraer’s U.S. business, including ongoing production of 26 Super Tucanos for Afghanistan and Lebanon under a contract with the U.S. Air Force.

Trump in April issued an executive order calling for a review of the 1933 Buy American Act, including how the Defense Department applies those standards. Whether the assessment ultimately opens the door to greater protectionism for U.S. prime contractors is still yet to be seen.

In the defense sector, the line that defines an “American product” has become ever more difficult to parse as foreign defense firms form U.S. subsidiaries and begin U.S. production lines, while U.S. defense companies do an increased amount of technological sharing with other countries.

For example, in the Air Force’s T-X program for new trainer aircraft, all four competing teams comprised a U.S. prime contractor partnered with an international defense company: Boeing and Sweden’s Saab worked together on a clean sheet design; Lockheed Martin will offer a version of Korean Aerospace Industries T-50; DRS Technologies is fronting the bid from Italian parent company Leonardo; and Sierra Nevada Corp. and Turkish Aerospace Industries have reportedly also entered the competition.

Jackson Schneider, Embraer’s executive vice president of defense and security, stressed that the Super Tucanos made in the United States are, by and large, American planes.

“We have a strong American component in the plane. We have some components that are imported from other countries, but a large part is American content, and it’s assembled in the United States in Jacksonville, [Florida],” he said June 2, adding that even more U.S. content could filter into the plane as the Air Force refines its requirements and determines what modifications could be needed.

Embraer had to prove its commitment to its U.S. footprint during the Light Air Support (LAS) competition, when the Super Tucano eventually beat out Textron’s AT-6 for a U.S. Air Force contract to supply light attack aircraft to the Afghanistan air force, Spulak said.

Much has changed since then. Spurred by growth in defense and commercial, revenues for Embraer’s U.S. business have almost doubled since the company was awarded the LAS contract in 2013. The company has a footprint in 31 states, and it has invested $105 million in its facilities since about 2009, he said.

The A-29 has also proven its worth in combat in the Middle East. So far, twelve Super Tucanos have been delivered by the Air Force to the Afghanistan military, with eight more to go.

“When we went into the original competition, we were saying we were present, we had our presence in many air forces, many combat orders,” Spulak said. “Now we have very specific evidence of the airplane in operation for this specific mission that the Air Force has designated, and the Afghans are doing this every day. So I think the product itself has to enter into the picture.”

For the light attack experiment this summer, Embraer will modify one of its A-29s with U.S. Air Force-specified communications equipment and mission systems, said Schneider, who declined to detail the configuration. Embraer’s demonstration is currently slated for August at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.

The Air Force hasn’t decided whether it will transition the experiment into a formal program of record, known as OA-X, or how many aircraft it would need to meet its current requirements. A white paper by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain floated 300 planes as a potential requirement.

If that level of output is needed, Schneider said Embraer may need to expand the production facilities in Jacksonville. The current orders for Afghanistan and Lebanon run through the end of this year.

“I hope that before the end of this year, I will have the possibility to announce other contracts and to guarantee the continuance of the operations in Jacksonville,” he said.

The Super Tucano line in Brazil is currently has orders for Mali, Mauritania , Brazil and an undisclosed country. Some of that production could be transferred to Jacksonville if needed to keep the line going, he added.

Click to expand...

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

began her first public speech as Air Force Secretary with a paean to technology, highlighting the service’s history of innovation from the B-29 to the F-117 to the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. It would have been an unambiguous signal of administration priorities, except the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

doesn’t really back her up.

Research and development funding is effectively flat, Wilson acknowledged during Q&A. Purchases of the F-35A won’t rise to the desired 60 a year unless Congress accepts last week’s “unfunded requirement” request to add $1.76 billion to the president’s budget. Even this August’s fly-off of candidates for the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

— a low-cost, lower-tech

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

for low-threat environments like Afghanistan — remains an “experiment,” not a “procurement,” she emphasized. The only part of the Air Force to get a lot of new hardware in the request for fiscal 2018 is space, which rises

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Don’t blame Wilson: She just got here. “Having been on the job all of four weeks now, I get to about three o’clock in the afternoon and my head feels like oatmeal,” she told the Capitol Hill Club crowd.

Self-deprecation aside, Wilson is the first of President Trump’s service secretary nominees to be confirmed after three withrew their names from consideration. An Air Force officer turned congresswoman, with experience on both the NSC staff and the House intelligence committee, she sailed through the Senate after outsiders

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, and

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

withdrew. Trump has now nominated Richard V. Spencer, a former Marine Corps pilot, for Navy Secretary; there’s no Army Secretary nominee at the moment.

With

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in position, the 2018 budget request was largely driven by the Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, who unequivocally

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

— training, spare parts, fuel — over long-term investments — R&D and procurement. Wilson herself made sure to emphasize readiness and associated increases in personnel.

“The first thing is readiness; we’ve got to restore the readiness of the force,” she told a gaggle of reporters when one asked what the Air Force needed to do. “The second is we’ve got to move forward on modernization.”

In keeping with those priorities, the budget adds

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

primarily in maintenance, pilot training, drone operations, and cyber. It also funds a new bonus system targeted at the most short-handed specialties, especially fighter pilots, where Wilson said “retention is at a crisis level.”

“Morale and readiness go hand in hand,” Wilson emphasized. Pilots who spend most of their time on the ground, waiting for their planes to get repaired, are likely to jump ship for the airlines, where at least they know they’ll fly. To help improve pilot morale, the Air Force is also trying to give them more time flying planes and less time flying desks, with administrative support to handle paperwork, maxed-out funding for flying hours, and nearly maxed-out funding for spare parts and other support.

Modernization? Maybe

“The reality is we are too small for what the nation expects of us,” Wilson said in her speech. “The fiscal year ’17 appropriations stopped the decline. This proposed budget for fiscal year ’18 starts to restore readiness and modernize the force.”

Restore readiness, definitely. Modernize? Not so much. The budget includes numerous upgrades for existing aircraft, but that doesn’t stop those planes from aging to unprecedented degrees: Air Force planes now average 27 years old, older than many of their pilots, and the number of new planes bought is too small to keep that average from rising steadily. For new fighters, the service is betting everything on the F-35.

“We only have so much money and so many priorities and so much mission, and we had to prioritize… within the budget that we had,” Lt. Gen. Bunch said. “We do want to get to 60 as quickly as we can.”

Wilson extolled the F-35, likening it to revolutionary past aircraft such as the F-117 stealth fighter and the B-29. The B-29 was the only World War II bomber long-ranged enough to hit mainland Japan, with both incendiaries and atomic bombs, and the most expensive development program of World War II, exceeding even the Manhattan Project. Just as the Air Force stuck with the B-29 through its painful early problems — including several fatal crashes — until it could field the revolutionary weapon, Wilson said, it has

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

despite cost overruns and schedule delays, and it’s now starting to

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

So, I asked her, what’s the next revolution? Wilson’s answer was surprisingly apologetic. “One of the things that we do increase in this budget is (

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

),” she said, “but…the amount of increase is really more on the test and evaluation end than it is on the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

end. The actual R&D end is pretty flat and has been for several years.”

That said, Wilson went on, “one of the things that we do kind of foreshadow in this budget is a desire to increase basic and applied research.” (Desire and foreshadowing, while meaningful terms in romance novels, are awfully vague for a budget discussion).

“The other thing that is in the budget at a significant level is future penetrating air defense capabilities,” Wilson said, presumably referring to the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

initiative to develop a next-generation fighter capable of slipping deep into defended airspace, such as the so-called

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

defenses being developed by

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

China. Overall, Wilson said, “we’ll be looking at a lot of different technologies so we can win the high-end fight long term” — but she’s definitely not going to talk about any details in public.

Click to expand...

bd popeye said:

1) I'm no submariner.
2) I don't know what happened to Seawolf. First I've ever heard of it.
3) I do not think the Russian helo found Seawolf by sub hunting or any other detection method.
4) I think the Russian helo was on patrol and captured Seawolf surfacing by chance.
5) I've no clue what happened to Seawolfs sail.
6) Since I'm no submariner I could be 100% WRONG.

Click to expand...

Air Force Brat said:

The sail is of course extremely strong and part of the subs superstructure, the radar antennae on the other hand is likely fiberglass or possibly carbon fiber or some other non-ferrous material, hence much weaker.... popping your sub up through the ice is no doubt fun, but boys having fun often break expensive stuff.

While everybody does it that can, if you watch the movie K-19, that will give you a little bit of the flavor of driving your boat up through the ice, the Seawolf is a very strong vessel designed to withstand the pressure of "going deep"! not for the feint of heart!

"Take her down", make your depth 900ft,,, all ahead one third!

sadly there are only 3 Seawolfs, one being the Carter, maybe we could do like the Russians and Change her name, to the "Trump"!

Click to expand...

Ships gathered around the U.S. Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS America got underway from San Diego to start their final certification exercise (CERTEX) on May 31.

The amphibious ready group (ARG), composed of amphibious transport dock ship USS San Diego (LPD 22) and the amphibious dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52) in addition to USS America, is currently entering the final portion of an extensive pre-deployment training period in preparation for the upcoming deployment.

CERTEX is the last in a series of training exercises, which included nearly three months of integrated training at sea, certifying the team for deployment.

“For the 15th marine expeditionary units (MEU) and America amphibious ready group (ARG), CERTEX represents the culmination of over a year’s worth of preparation to deploy as one cohesive Navy and Marine Corps force capable of doing what no other nation can,” said Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Burgi, operations officer, Commander, Amphibious Squadron 3.

Throughout the CERTEX training period Marines and Sailors react to scenarios within a six-hour window using the Marine Corps’ Rapid Response Planning Process (R2P2), simulating real-world challenges and processes that will yield success during deployment.

“We are being graded on our ability to operate together as a MEU/ARG team in support of missions that defend our nation and our allies,” said Lt. Col. Patrick Byrne, 15th MEU operations officer. “Conducting warfare and operating from the sea is complex, but it is a capability we together [MEU/ARG] provide to our nation,” he added.

More than 1,800 sailors and 2,600 marines are assigned to the America ARG and the 15th MEU in preparation for deployment later this year.

Click to expand...

nicky said:

Click to expand...

Jura said:

yeah

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

source:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

During her first speech as the civilian head of the Air Force on Monday, Secretary Heather Wilson reiterated a plea to Congress to remove mandatory budget caps that she argued hampered the service’s plans to boost the structure, improve readiness and modernize its aging aircraft inventory.

“More than anything else, we need predictability. The United States Air Force needs predictability.” she said during an Air Force Association breakfast event. “If you don’t provide relief from the Budget Control Act, we will hollow out the force and set ourselves back years. We have to get beyond the Budget Control Act.”

After her speech, Wilson told reporters that the service is “trying to make a shift to a force structure that is driven by threat and strategy” instead of by budget constraints — a change in decision making that she said resulted in the fiscal year 2018 request to keep the A-10 for the foreseeable future.

Wilson noted that priorities could change once the Trump administration solidifies its defense strategy, but in the meantime, the service appears to be staying the course. For instance, the Air Force continues to see the F-35, B-21 and KC-46 as its top modernization programs, and Wilson restated her support for recapitalizing the service’s nuclear weapons and investing in space capabilities.

For the most part, her speech exposed that without help from Congress to lift spending caps, the Air Force will remain limited in investments it can make. Air Force officials weighed in on a couple key programs on Monday.

The F-35

The Air Force requested 46 F-35As in its fiscal year 2018 budget request and included an additional 12 aircraft in its annual unfunded priorities list it. If both are fully funded, the service will be able to meet its goal buy rate of 60 aircraft for the first time.

So why didn’t the Air Force request 60 F-35As to begin with this year?

It came down to available funding, said Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service’s top uniformed acquisition officer.

"We only have so much money and so many priorities and so much mission, and we had to prioritize … what we could do within the budget that we had and the topline that we had,” he told reporters after Wilson’s speech.

“We do want to get to 60 as quickly as we can, and the emphasis area for us is to continue to see the price per aircraft continue to come down, and we want to see the sustainment costs continue to come down so that we can not only afford to buy them, but we also got to be able to operate them and employ them."

Without the additional 14 aircraft, it will take longer for the service to build up the inventory and trained operators needed to fight against near-peer competitors, he added.

Although the Air Force projected last year that it could begin buying 60 F-35As per year in fiscal year 2021, current budget predictions push that out into at least past 2022. Bunch said that current levels of funding, again, forced the service to delay its goal.

"There's only so much we can do within the dollars that we have based upon the priorities as we've got,” he said. "We had to prioritize and draw the line, and that's where we drew the line."

The KC-46

The Air Force requested 15 KC-46As in its fiscal year 18 budget but added another three tankers to its wish list to accelerate the pace of procurement. Bunch explained that the service wants to buy the KC-46 faster to be able to phase out its aging KC-10 tankers.

"The program is progressing, but it is going slower than we anticipated and slower than we would like,” he said.

Darlene Costello, the service’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, will meet with KC-46 manufacturer Boeing on June 6 to discuss whether the company will be able to meet current test and production milestones, including an October 2018 deadline to deliver 18 tankers and 9 refueling pods.

"Boeing still believes they can make that date that they've got out there as a schedule. We believe it's a little to the right of that,” Bunch said. However, even if the program encounters further delays, the service believes an additional three aircraft in fiscal year 18 will have moved past current problems by the time production is set to start.

“If you look at when those aircraft that we would be procuring would deliver, we will be beyond the test program; we will have resolved the issues that we're challenged with right now; and it will get us to a more modern fleet in a more timely matter,” he said.

The A-10

According to the current posture, the A-10 Warthog will be safe for the next five years, but the aircraft is not fully in the clear, as it will need further upgrades in the near future to extend its life.

“At some point, there are about 134 A-10s that are going to have to get their wings redone if we're going to keep them longterm, but when we look out five years they are still in the Air Force inventory,” Wilson said.

Overall, Wilson seemed supportive of retaining the Warthog, saying that even though other platforms can perform the close air support mission, it “does a lot of things that other aircraft don't do,” such as its ability to loiter over targets for extended periods of time.

Asked whether an A-10 replacement would eventually be needed, she deflected.

“There are a lot of other things that will fall out of the sky probably before an A-10,” she joked.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Jan 21, 2017

Jura said:

DefenseNews ranting about The Army Handgun: A New Poster Child for Acquisition Malpractice?

source:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

somehow related:
Glock is protesting the Army's choice of Sig Sauer for its new handgun

source is ArmyTimes

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

The Government Accountability Office has denied a protest from firearms manufacturer Glock that sought to have the government reconsider its award of a 10-year, $580 million contract for the Army's new handgun to a competitor.

Glock filed the protest in February after the Army announced in January that it would award the Modular Handgun Contract to Sig Sauer for the company’s P320 to replace the M9 Beretta, the soldier’s sidearm for more than 30 years.

Monday was the deadline for the GAO’s decision.

Glock challenged the Army’s “interpretation of the solicitation regarding the minimum number of contract awards required by the” Request For Proposal, said Ralph White, managing associate general counsel for procurement law at GAO, in an emailed statement.

GAO denied the challenge, finding that the RFP allowed the Army to make only one award, although three were permitted under the proposal’s terms, he said.

Glock also alleged in its protest that the Army improperly evaluated its proposal. The GAO also denied that challenge, finding that "any errors did not prejudice Glock in the competition," according to White's statement.

Either Glock, Sig Sauer or the Army can request reconsideration from GAO. Each entity has 10 days after the basis for reconsideration, in this case the denial, is known to file the request, according to GAO regulations.

The original protest did not stop Sig Sauer and the Army from moving forward with the project, in part because Glock filed the protest after the official deadline, GAO officials said previously.

In April the Army announced that soldiers with the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

would be the first in the Army to field the new handgun later this year.

The company released the P320 in 2014. It is adaptable to fire 9 mm, .357 SIG and .40 S&W ammunition. The Army will use the 9 mm variant.

The P320 is a polymer striker-fired pistol that can be adjusted in frame size by the user and has interchangeable grip modules.

Click to expand...

Jura said:

now I read US Navy Sends Congress $5.3B Wishlist of Planes, Ships and More

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Jura said:

... Air Force’s $10.7 billion wish list includes more F-35As, KC-46s
source:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Jura said:

...
US Army’s FY18 wish list would grow force by 17,000 soldiers

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

...

Click to expand...

New fighters, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles topped the $3.18 billion unfunded wish list of the Marine Corps to Congress, according to a copy of the document obtained by USNI News on Monday.

The service’s Fiscal Year 2018 unfunded priorities list was topped by $2.36 billion in new aircraft and aviation systems.

Occupying the top of the list is two Sikorsky CH-53K Super Stallion heavy lift helicopters for $287.7 million, followed by four Lockheed KC-130J transport planes for $355.5 million and 876.6 million for six Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The Marines also looked for two more Bell-Boeing MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft for $180.5 million and $220 million for seven Bell AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters.

The inclusion of two Marine F-35Cs in the unfunded list appear to restore two that were cut from the larger Department of the Navy budget to buttress readiness and logistics accounts.

“We had to make hard choices. We maintained the readiness accounts and we had to balance somewhere,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Budget Rear Adm. Brian Luther said last month.
“We tried to hold the line the best we could in our procurement accounts… but reducing two F-35s allowed us to maintain the IOC in ’18 for the F-35C.”
Specialty aircraft, radar upgrades and new electronic warfare systems rounded out the aviation component.

The Marines have a much more modest $482.7 million ground forces list that puts a long-range small UAV for Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) at the top of the priority list for $16.6 million and $42.5 million for 155m artillery, 60mm and 81mm mortars training rounds for slots two through four.

The largest ask in the ground line, but lower down the priority list, is a $122.4 million line item to accelerate the Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) for aviation command and control.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

(JLTV) to route money to G/ATOR.

In addition to the aviation and ground items for the Marine Corps, the list included three items that would come from the Navy’s budget.

Those included five Ship-to-Shore Connectors for $312 million, $3 million for research and development to link the Common Aviation Command and Control System (CAC2S) to the service’s Ship Self Defense System (SSDS) and one Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle for $17 million.

The Navy’s own unfunded list calls for the same number of Ship-to-Shore Connectors and two MCM USVs.

Click to expand...