US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

The US has shot down a pro-Syrian regime armed drone that was attacking US-led coalition forces near At Tanf in Syria. In a briefing, US Army Col Ryan Dillon, Operation ‘Inherent Resolve’ spokesman, said the drone was ‘MQ-1 like’ and that it was shot down by a US aircraft after it fired upon coalition forces carrying out a patrol outside a de-confliction zone in southern Syria.

The drone had munitions and was seen as a threat, and ‘so it was shot down’.

The description suggests it could be a Shahed 129 unmanned combat aerial vehicle.

UPDATE: Various reportas stating that this was an shootdown by an F-15E Strike Eagle.

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Jura said:

I've been following here so called retirement of the Warthog for some time ...
May 24, 2017

now A-10 ‘Brrrts’ Another Retirement Volley: Here’s What’s Nextsource:

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Three squadrons of A-10 Warthogs will go out of service unless the Air Force comes up with funding to pay for new wings, the head of Air Combat Command confirmed in an exclusive interview with Defense News.

Although the Air Force fully funds the operations and maintenance of all nine A-10 squadrons in its fiscal 2018 budget request, Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service’s top uniformed acquisition official, and Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, its deputy chief of staff for plans, programs and requirements, committed in written testimony to Congress to retaining only six squadrons long term.

The crux of the issue, according to head of Air Combat Command Gen. Mike Holmes, is that new wing sets have been ordered for only 173 of 283 Warthogs, or about six squadron’s worth.

Exactly when the Air Force will drop down to six A-10 squadrons will depend on multiple factors, including operational tempo over the next few years and the buy rate of the F-35. But Holmes said the first planes could be phased out within five years, as their wings run out of service life.

“When their current wings expire, we have some flexibility in the depot, we have some old wings that can be repaired or rejuvenated to go on. We can work through that, so there’s some flex in there," he said in a June 8 interview. "We’re working on a long-term beddown plan for how we can replace older airplanes as the F-35 comes on, and we’ll work through to figure out how we’re going to address those A-10s that will run out of service life on their wings.”

The Air Force "can continue to provide close air support across the spectrum of conflict with those 173 airplanes,” he added.

Although an A-10 follow-on aircraft — sometimes called A-X — is still on the table, Holmes noted that decision would come further in the future as the Air Force contemplates whether to replace the remaining 173 A-10s with a purpose-built close air support platform in the late 2020s.

Confirmation of a move to eliminate even a portion of the A-10 fleet will likely inflame ardent supporters of the aircraft in Congress, who have in prior years prevented the service from retiring the aircraft.

Holmes noted that the Air Force’s current plan to mothball three A-10 squadrons adheres to the 2017 defense authorization bill, which mandates that the service maintain 171 A-10s until the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation conducts comparative tests between it and the F-35. However, he acknowledged that “Congress gets the final say on everything we do” and could try to prevent any divestitures.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., asked Bunch and Harris to explain the Air Force’s apparent decision to cut a third of its A-10 squadrons. McSally, an A-10 pilot herself, represents Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, which is home to five A-10 squadrons, according to Air Force data.

“From my view and my experience, if we need that capability until a proven, tested replacement comes along, nine squadrons is the absolute minimum,” she said. Due to House votes, the hearing was called to a close before McSally could receive an answer from Bunch and Harris.

The most obvious move Congress could make would be to fund the $103 million for A-10 wings included in the service’s unfunded priorities list, but that only covers a portion of the remaining 110 aircraft in need of rewinging.

“That would buy us time. Their wings don’t all run out of service life at the same time, it depends on the individual airplane,” Holmes said. “We have the money in the unfunded list to get another contract for wings and to get a batch that would help us work through a period and give us time to buy more wings for the rest of the fleet if we are unable to go forward to drop down to six squadrons.”

Boeing is under contract to provide the 173 wing sets, with an option for 69 more. The company has estimated that new wings would allow A-10s to remain in service into the 2030s.

At this point, the Air Force has not identified which A-10 squadrons would be phased out or which aircraft would replace the Warthog at selected installations, Holmes said. One option is to replace Warthogs with F-35s, but because the A-10 can operate on a shorter runway, not all bases would be able to host the Joint Strike Fighter. In that case, perhaps A-10 squadrons could adopt fourth generation fighters from squadrons moving to the F-35.

“I don’t think we’ve made a decision on any of that just yet,” he said. “I believe that will be a part of the ’19 budget process, and because most of that happens outside of the five year defense plan that we turn in, we still have options.”

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Jura said:

Apr 16, 2017

and Navy, Marines Still Struggling with T-45C Trainer Oxygen System Failures

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Nearly two months after the

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grounded its fleet of

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trainer jets due to cockpit oxygen problems, the aircraft have still not returned to service and the Navy is exploring alternatives, the service's top aviation commander said Wednesday.

"We have considered using other aircraft, potentially

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," Vice Adm. Paul Grosklags, commander of Naval Air Systems Command, told members of the House Armed Services Committee.

Some T-45 trainer jets have had a malfunction with their oxygen systems, affecting oxygen levels for pilots and causing severe disorientation during flights. An increase in the number of incidents forced the Navy to announce April 5 that the service was grounding all its T-45s. The service has 197.

The grounding, which affected Navy training bases in Kingsville, Texas, Pensacola, Fla., and Meridian, Miss., was lifted April 17, but only for instructor pilots, not students. Instructors have been allowed to fly the T-45s to maintain currency and become familiar with a modified oxygen mask that the Navy intended to use while it worked on a long-term solution to the problem.

Grosklags acknowledged Wednesday that the T-45s still cannot be used for training flights and the Navy was considering alternatives, including pushing some flight training into a later stage of the training program, such as when student pilots advance to their official training squadron, which is composed of actual fleet aircraft, such as

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jets, that students will eventually fly. But those aircraft are having their own readiness issues and the option would be a last resort, he said.

More so, Grosklags said a request to the Air Force to use some of its trainer aircraft could also have drawbacks.

"I don't think we've talked to the Air Force about that," he said. "But one of the key things we get out of T-45s is taking our new aviators, our new student aviators to the ship, which we can only do right now in the T-45 or in their next fleet aircraft."

The service is still reviewing what went wrong with the T-45's cockpit oxygen systems, Grosklags said. Two potential solutions are installing better warning systems in the cockpit or replacing the current oxygen systems.

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Jura said:

LOL I think in the past here I kinda criticized "A Raytheon-made Sea-Based X-band radar" mentioned below:
Homeland Missile Defense System Successful in Non-Intercept Flight Test

source:

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When the Sea-Based X-Band radar is dry docked for an overhaul in roughly the 2020 time frame, it won’t affect the U.S. capability to detect any missile threats in the Pacific, according to the Missile Defense Agency.

During a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, lawmakers raised concern that the SBX radar would be out of commission before the Missile Defense Agency is able to field a new medium-range radar for missile threat detection in Hawaii.

The MDA, in its fiscal year 2018 budget request, is asking for $21 million to begin a competition for a homeland defense radar to be positioned in Hawaii. MDA plans to compete and award a Pacific radar contract in FY18 and deliver an initial capability by FY23, according to budget documents.

While the SBX — the world's largest phased-array X-band radar on top of a mobile, ocean-faring, semi-submersible oil platform — will see longer days at sea in FY18, the expectation is it will need to be dry-docked for a major overhaul in roughly 2020. The MDA has requested $130.7 million for which part of the funds will cover extending its on-station time from 120 to 330 days at sea at the request of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Pacific Command in defense of the homeland.

There’s also a concern the Hawaii radar might not reach IOC by 2023 because a site for the radar has yet to be selected and would have to undergo an environmental impact study, which historically has a tendency to take longer than predicted and delay military construction schedules.

MDA Director Vice Adm. James Syring told lawmakers during the hearing that there are also opportunities to push back the schedule to dry dock SBX by a couple of years.

“We can work with operators and the military combatant commands in terms of what risk they are willing to accept and we will do underwater hull surveys to assess the life of basically how the vessel is doing,” Syring said. “There can be ways to not only take risk on when that dry dock appears or it’s conducted with periodic maintenance that can be done during the in-port period short of a full dry dock.”

The decision to dry dock SBX in 2020 or later could be based on how the Hawaii radar is progressing as well as the fielding of the Long-Range Discrimination Radar in Alaska, Syring said, but it would be up to the combatant commanders.

The LRDR is a midcourse sensor that will improve ballistic missile defense system target discrimination capability while supporting more efficient use of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System interceptor inventory. The GMD system consists of 44 interceptors in Alaska and California ready to fire against an incoming Intercontinental BMD threat from North Korea or Iran.

The LRDR is scheduled to begin operation in 2020.

But even if the SBX is dry docked and the Hawaii radar is not yet in place, Hawaii and the continental U.S. are still protected from current ICBM threats by the GMD system in Alaska and California, ground-, sea- and space-based sensors and redundant command, control and communications systems, according to MDA.

The Hawaii radar is not being built to replace any system, but as an added layer of defense, the agency emphasized in a statement to Defense News.

Meanwhile, MDA is looking at six or seven locations in Hawaii for the radar but has not yet determined which site would be the most appropriate, according to Syring.

The Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai is on the table as a possible site. “The Navy completely understands the need for the radar and we are looking closely with them on what operational restrictions would have to be in place at PMRF,” Syring said.

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Jura said:

May 31, 2017

and
Air Force to cut three A-10 squadrons unless funding for new wings emerges

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The good news: The

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will keep flying for at least five more years. The bad news: That may not apply to all of the

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283 Warthogs in the fleet.

In a House Armed Services Committee hearing this week, officials said the service is committed to maintaining a minimum of six A-10 combat squadrons through 2030.

Why so few? The Air Force may not have enough money to fund an ongoing wing replacement for a full nine squadrons worth of aircraft.

The head of Air Combat Command, Gen. Mike Holmes, on Friday said in an interview with Defense News that reducing the number of squadrons is a possibility. Holmes “explained that we currently only have funding to replace the wings of 173 A-10s,” ACC spokeswoman Capt. Carrie Volpe told Military.com on Friday.

“Gen. Holmes didn’t confirm that we are indeed retiring three A-10 squadrons,” Volpe said in an email. “The plan for how those wings will be specifically allocated to some or all of the squadrons has not been finalized.”

Volpe stressed the service is aware that the National Defense Authorization Act restricts any A-10s from being divested “until the F-35/A-10 comparative testing is complete and all reports to Congress are delivered.”

The A-10 is a Cold War-era ground-attack plane known for its iconic gun designed to shred tanks and its tough titanium armor designed to take hits and keep flying.

Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., an avid A-10 supporter and former ‘Hog pilot herself, this week questioned — once again — the Air Force’s motives.

“From my view and my experience, if we need that capability until a proven, tested replacement comes along, nine squadrons is the absolute minimum,” she said.

McSally was addressing Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the Air Force’s military deputy for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition at the Pentagon, and Lt. Gen. Jerry D. Harris, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, at the panel’s hearing on Wednesday.

“So I really would like to know — I think this is the first time you guys have publicly said — although I have a pretty good intel sources with my buds in the A-10 community — but it’s the first time you’ve publicly said that you’re going to go down to six squadrons. I’d really like to know what those planning assumptions are of the six squadrons,” she said.

Bunch and Harris took questions for the record, as the hearing was cut short so members could get to a vote.

But it seems officials once again are struggling to decide the fate of the A-10.

To recap: The service — facing financial pressure driven by spending caps known as sequestration — made multiple attempts in recent years to retire the Warthog to save an estimated $4 billion over five years and to free up maintainers for the

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, the stealthy fifth-generation fighter jet designed to replace the A-10 and legacy fighters.

In 2016, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the A-10 retirement

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until 2022 after lawmakers complained that doing so would rid the military of a “valuable and effective” close-air-support aircraft.

However, fiscal 2017 budget request documents showed the Air Force still planned to remove A-10 squadrons in increments between 2018 and 2022 to make room for

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squadrons coming online.

McSally and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, a former

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pilot, fiercely opposed the move, and included language in the bill that would prohibit retirement of the Warthog until the Air Force could prove the F-35 is able to perform similar missions as effectively on the battlefield.

The Air Force’s fiscal 2018 budget request released last month still calls for keeping its fleet of A-10s — which stood at 283 as of Sept. 30 — in service for at least five more years.

The request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes modest funding for A-10 modifications in coming years, such as the wing modifications as well as procurement funding to upgrade the A-10 with the

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, known as ADS-B Out, and millions in research and development funding to test the ADS-B Out software on the A-10 squadrons through 2022,

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.

This work “extends the viability and survivability” of the aircraft, according to an Air Force spokeswoman, Capt. Hope Cronin. “As long as we can continue to fund these fleets, they will be survivable and lethal.”

Cronin added, “This is exactly why we need long-term budget stability and flexibility — no longer reacting to make tradeoff decisions year to year,” she said. “We’re not in the position right now, but we don’t know” what could happen next year.

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Jura said:

until now I didn't know (dated June 8th, 2017)
US shoots down pro-Syrian regime drone - UPDATE F-15E KILL

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Syrian Drone Destroyed by Strike Eagle After It Engaged Anti-Assad Coalition Ground Forces. Second air-to-air kill for the Strike Eagle since Gulf War.

U.S. Special Operations advisors leading anti-Assad Syrian forces came under fire from an Iranian built Shahed 129 drone operated by Syrian pro-government forces on Thursday according to the U.S. Army.

A

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shot the drone down.

The incident occurred outside Al-Tanf, southern Syria close to the Jordanian border. An installation in Al –Tanf serves as a forward operating base for British and U.S. special operations teams assisting the anti-ISIL Syrian guerilla group Maghawir al-Thawra or “Commandos of the Revolution”. Maghawir al-Thawra is regarded as an indigenous special operations group who have received training and support from coalition forces to fight the Assad regime.

The U.S. reacted to the drone attack by tasking an

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to locate and destroy the Syrian drone. It was officially the first time U.S. forces had come under air attack by a hostile nation in nearly 20 years and the second air-to-air kill for the

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.

According to U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the Assad government Syrian drone strike on U.S. advisors and Syrian revolutionary commandos “did not have an effect on coalition forces,”

“The pro-regime UAV, similar in size to the U.S. MQ-1 predator, was shot down by U.S. aircraft after it dropped one of several weapons it was carrying near a position occupied by coalition personnel who are training and advising partner ground forces in the fight against ISIL,” CJTF-OIR’s public affairs office released in a statement. “The shoot down follows an earlier engagement in the day in which Coalition forces destroyed two pro-regime armed technical vehicles that advanced inside the well established de-confliction zone threatening Coalition and partner forces.”

A 34-mile region around Al-Tanf has been declared a “de-confliction zone” by coalition forces for the past several weeks. This buffer was established to safeguard U.S. and British supported anti-Assad forces. Several incidents have taken place recently inside this de-confliction zone that have prompted a U.S. response. On Tuesday, a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet dropped four bombs killing an estimated 10 pro-Assad combatants and destroyed several of their vehicles.

It is also likely the pro-Assad forces controlling the

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drone were in close proximity to the drone itself at the time it attacked U.S. advised anti-Assad forces. The Shahed 129 can be controlled by satellite guidance from a remote ground station, but this example was almost certainly controlled by a local ground controller with line-of-sight to the Syrian Shahed 129 when it was destroyed by the U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle.

The incident is significant since U.S. ground forces in the region and, in the entire history of the Global War of Terror, have been largely immune from air attacks. The Iranian-made

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was also employed by Hezbollah in a 2012 operation over Israel. The Israelis downed the Iranian-made, Hezbollah-controlled drone but the incident marked a dangerous escalation in terrorist capabilities.

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President Trump has picked his Navy secretary, and this time it's likely going to stick. That means the herculean task of fulfilling Trump’s promise of building a 350-ship Navy will finally have someone's shoulders to rest upon.

Richard Spencer, a former Marine pilot and career investment banker, is Trump's second nominee. The first, Philip Bilden, was withdrawn because Bilden said he was unable to arrange his financial assets in a way that would comply with government requirements.

Spencer already went through the process of untangling a career in finance before the formal nomination, meaning he’ll probably sail through the confirmation process. But now he’s going to be on the hot seat to fulfill Trump’s promises, with plenty of headwinds both internally and on the Hill.

Budget experts who have looked carefully at the financial trajectory set out by the Trump administration — Trump has also pledged to balance the federal budget in 10 years — say the promised buildup is increasingly unlikely, even though the Navy has said it needs 355 ships to fulfill its requirements. Moreover, Defense Secretary James Mattis has made it clear that he is prioritizing readiness over major expansions of the services, including the Navy.

Spencer will be pressed from all sides to try and balance keeping the president’s campaign promise of a buildup while helping the Office of the Secretary of Defense ensure force readiness for major combat operations in the near term. That balance between being ready to “fight tonight” and building a fleet for the future soured the relationship between the Navy and the defense secretary during the Obama administration, when Navy Secretary Ray Mabus was openly defying Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s orders to cut shipbuilding and spend on capabilities.

The current fleet includes 277 ships. Adding over 75 more to the inventory doesn't appear feasible, according to budget experts who say the messages coming from Trump’s budget don’t offer much hope.

“It’s going to be hard to get on a trajectory to a 350-ship plus Navy, which was the explicit campaign promise and what the Navy says it needs to fulfill its operational commitments,” said Todd Harrison, a budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The budget blue prints the White House released include a goal of balancing the budget in 10 years, and that creates difficult choices for the services, Harrison said.

“You could get to 350 ships but you’d have to rob a lot of money from the other services to do it,” Harrison said. “The other option is to make even deeper cuts to the non-defense programs, and there is virtually no chance Congress would cut non-defense programs even as much as already proposed.

“I think the projections were overly optimistic,” Harrison said.

Readiness or ships?

What complicates the matter even further is that the 2018 budget request the Pentagon unveiled in May did not make expansion of the fleet a priority.

Navy leaders have been outspoken about the need to stop a cycle of robbing readiness to pay off other things in the budget.

Under Mabus, the Navy made a policy of directing money away from operations and maintenance to continue funding shipbuilding, an effort to arrest the precipitous decline of the fleet’s size, which has dropped substantially since numbering more than 500 ships at the end of the Cold War. Those decisions, however, became increasingly detrimental over the years, as across-the-board budget cuts in 2013 began eating into the available money the Navy had to train its sailors and maintain its equipment.

In 2016, the Navy shorted its operations and maintenance budget by nearly a billion dollars, postponing much-needed maintenance for a number of ships. In January, the Navy’s number two officer said those decisions were “insidious.”

“This long war we’re in and emerging or re-emerging threats have raised the stakes and kept us on the field longer than our bullpen is able to stay healthy,” Adm. Bill Moran, vice chief of naval operations said. “Deferred maintenance is insidiously taking its toll on the long-term readiness of our fleet.”

Harrison said it’s clear where Mattis is focused most, and that likely that stems from his experience as the head of U.S. Central Command.

“Mattis is focused on near-term readiness and the potential conflicts in the two or three or four years, and that’s from his time as a Combatant Commander,” he said. “That’s what COCOMs do, they ask, ‘What do I have to deal with on my watch?’”

But simply readying the force isn’t what Trump's ticket ran on. Advocates of a larger fleet have been banging the drum to hold Trump to his word since he took office.

Spencer should resist the pressure to focus too heavily on readiness in the near term at the expense of a larger, more powerful fleet in the long run, said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer skipper and defense consultant with the Ferrybridge Group

“[Spencer] should remember who he serves: He is the president’s man,” McGrath said. “The president campaigned on building a larger Navy and his job is to build that larger Navy…Trump did not get elected saying he wanted to fill readiness holes, those were Secretary Mattis’ priorities. And so far the Pentagon is off to a slow start in building a larger Navy.”

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Press Operations

Release No: CR-104-17
May 31, 2017


CONTRACTS


AIR FORCE


Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., Linthicum Heights, Maryland, has been awarded a $243,873,277 predominantly fixed-price contract with cost-plus-fixed fee and fixed-price incentive portions for 72 Active Electronically Scanned Array radars, spares and support services. Work will be performed at Linthicum Heights, Maryland, and is expected to be complete by Jan. 31, 2019. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition with one offer received. Fiscal 2016 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $30,714,025 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8615-17-C-6047).

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