US military news, discussions and history

[AMDR]

Navy Orders 53 Raytheon Radars for P-8A Aircraft
By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor

ARLINGTON, Va. —Raytheon Co. has been awarded Navy contract to build and deliver 53 APY-10 radar kits for the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.

Naval Air Systems Command awarded Raytheon a $152.9 million contract on June 11 for 46 radar kits for the U.S. Navy and seven for the Royal Australian Air Force. The radars will be installed on P-8As built by Boeing in full-rate production lots 2 through 6.

The APY-10 is a multi-mode imaging maritime, littoral and overland surveillance radar evolved from the Raytheon APS-137B(V)5 radar used on the P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft being replaced by the P-8A. A version of the APY-10 also is installed on the Indian Navy’s P-8I aircraft.

 

[Indus Falcon]

Officials: Second Hack Exposed Military and Intel Data
Associated Press | Jun 13, 2015 | by Ken Dilanian and Ted Bridis

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hackers linked to China have gained access to the sensitive background information submitted by intelligence and military personnel for security clearances, U.S. officials said Friday, describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged.

The forms authorities believed may have been stolen en masse, known as Standard Form 86, require applicants to fill out deeply personal information about mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies. They also require the listing of contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant's Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant is required.

In a statement, the White House said that on June 8, investigators concluded there was "a high degree of confidence that ... systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated."

"This tells the Chinese the identities of almost everybody who has got a United States security clearance," said Joel Brenner, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official. "That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer. The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That's a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies."

The Office of Personnel Management, which was the target of the hack, did not respond to requests for comment. OPM spokesman Samuel Schumach and Jackie Koszczuk, the director of communications, have consistently said there was no evidence that security clearance information had been compromised.

The White House statement said the hack into the security clearance database was separate from the breach of federal personnel data announced last week — a breach that is itself appearing far worse than first believed. It could not be learned whether the security database breach happened when an OPM contractor was hacked in 2013, an attack that was discovered last year. Members of Congress received classified briefings about that breach in September, but there was no public mention of security clearance information being exposed.

Nearly all of the millions of security clearance holders, including some CIA, National Security Agency and military special operations personnel, are potentially exposed in the security clearance breach, the officials said. More than 4 million people had been investigated for a security clearance as of October 2014, according to government records.

Regarding the hack of standard personnel records announced last week, two people briefed on the investigation disclosed Friday that as many as 14 million current and former civilian U.S. government employees have had their information exposed to hackers, a far higher figure than the 4 million the Obama administration initially disclosed.

American officials have said that cybertheft originated in China and that they suspect espionage by the Chinese government, which has denied any involvement.

The newer estimate puts the number of compromised records between 9 million and 14 million going back to the 1980s, said one congressional official and one former U.S. official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because information disclosed in the confidential briefings includes classified details of the investigation.

There are about 2.6 million executive branch civilians, so the majority of the records exposed relate to former employees. Contractor information also has been stolen, officials said. The data in the hack revealed last week include the records of most federal civilian employees, though not members of Congress and their staffs, members of the military or staff of the intelligence agencies.

On Thursday, a major union said it believes the hackers stole Social Security numbers, military records and veterans' status information, addresses, birth dates, job and pay histories; health insurance, life insurance and pension information; and age, gender and race data.

The personnel records would provide a foreign government an extraordinary roadmap to blackmail, impersonate or otherwise exploit federal employees in an effort to gain access to U.S. secrets —or entry into government computer networks.

Outside experts were pointing to the breaches as a blistering indictment of the U.S. government's ability to secure its own data two years after a National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, was able to steal tens of thousands of the agency's most sensitive documents.

After the Snowden revelations about government surveillance, it became more difficult for the federal government to hire talented younger people into sensitive jobs, particularly at intelligence agencies, said Evan Lesser, managing director of ClearanceJobs.com, a website that matches security-clearance holders to available slots.

"Now, if you get a job with the government, your own personal information may not be secure," he said. "This is going to multiply the government's hiring problems many times."

The Social Security numbers were not encrypted, the American Federation of Government Employees said, calling that "an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce."

"Unencrypted information of this kind this is disgraceful — it really is disgraceful," Brenner said. "We've had wakeup calls now for 20 years or more, and we keep hitting the snooze button."

The OPM's Schumach would not address how the data was protected or specifics of the information that might have been compromised, but said, "Today's adversaries are sophisticated enough that encryption alone does not guarantee protection." OPM is nonetheless increasing its use of encryption, he said.

The Obama administration had acknowledged that up to 4.2 million current and former employees whose information resides in the Office of Personnel Management server are affected by the December cyberbreach, but it had been vague about exactly what was taken.

J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter Thursday to OPM director Katherine Archuleta that based on incomplete information OPM provided to the union, "the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree and up to 1 million former federal employees."

Another federal employee group, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said Friday that "at this point, we believe AFGE's assessment of the breach is overstated." It called on the OPM to provide more information.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, one-time chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said last week that he believes China will use the recently stolen information for "the mother of all spear-phishing attacks."

Spear-phishing is a technique under which hackers send emails designed to appear legitimate so that users open them and load spyware onto their networks.

Officials: Second Hack Exposed Military and Intel Data | Military.com

 

[AMDR]

Admirals: New Carrier Launch, Recovery Systems Will Expand Aircraft Design Options, Reduce Stress
By RICHARD R .BURGESS, Managing Editor
SEAPOWER Magazine Online
ARLINGTON, Va. — The new aircraft launch and recovery equipment being installed on the Navy’s new class of aircraft carrier will expand the design options for future aircraft and reduce the structural stress on aircraft, thereby increasing aircraft service life and reducing total ownership cost.

Speaking to reporters June 15 at the Pentagon, RADM Michael C. Manazir, director for air warfare for the chief of naval operations, and RADM Thomas J. Moore, program executive officer for aircraft carriers, said the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), both built by General Atomics, not only will provide advantages for the aircraft carrier but will be gentler on the aircraft that operate from its flight deck.

“The EMALS and AAG are both going to be designed so that we can recover and launch aircraft that are outside the normal envelope of our current manned aircraft,” Manazir said. “That facilitates our investment in the future.

The EMALS replaces steam catapults in the design for the Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear-powered carrier, eliminating the need for an extensive infrastructure of steam lines and accumulators. The EMALS has more accurate end-speed control than a steam catapult and smoother acceleration at both high and low speeds. The linear acceleration over time, rather than the more sudden acceleration of a steam catapult, places less stress on the aircraft structure, including the nose strut to which the catapult sled is placed for launch.

Moore explained that the AAG replaces a complex hydraulic system with motors and water twisters — one on each side of the cross-deck pendant for each wire — that are adjusted for each landing aircraft according to type and weight, and allow for a smoother landing and less stress on the aircraft as it traps the wire. The AAG is more flexible and easier to precisely tune to the characteristics of the landing aircraft. This feature will reduce stress on the airframes of the aircraft and thus reduce total ownership cost.

Together the two systems are both controlled by software. The AAG spaces below the flight deck also are unmanned, unlike the older Mk7 Mod4 arresting gear.

Manazir said the EMALS and AAG will enable the Navy to “start to do things with aircraft design you couldn’t do before … [allowing] us to open the envelope in aircraft design.”

On June 12, the Navy awarded to General Atomics a $737 million contract for the EMALS and AAG shipsets for the second Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, CVN 79, the future USS John F. Kennedy. That week, the Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard conducted the first dead-load tests on Gerald R. Ford’s EMALS catapults. A dead-load is a large wheeled vehicle than can weigh up to 80,000 pounds and is launched to simulate an aircraft during catapult tests.

Admiral: CVN 79 ‘Probably Best Ever CVN Fixed-Price Contract’
By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
SEAPOWER Magazine Online
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s admiral in charge of aircraft carrier construction said the contract for the second Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier will represent a cost reduction of the ship by $1 billion.

On June 5, the Navy announced the award of a $3.35 billion Detail Design and Construction (DD&C) contract for the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), parent company for Newport News Shipbuilding, the builder of the carriers, and a $941 million modification to a previously awarded contract.

RADM Tom Moore, program executive officer for aircraft carriers, speaking to reporters June 15 at the Pentagon along with RADM Mike Manazir, director for air warfare for the chief of naval operations, said, “We were able to get Newport News under contract for what is probably the best CVN fixed-price contract we’ve ever had in terms of the target fee in the contract, the steepness of the share lines, the ceiling price of the contract, all reflective of the fact that the shipbuilder and us have a very solid understanding of where we are in the ship and the cost we are able to take out.”

“This DD&C contract is the result of a dedicated effort over the past three years by our government-industry team to drive affordability into CVN 79,” said Moore, quoted in a June 5 HII release. “With a stable design, mature requirements and an improved build process we will reduce construction hours by 18 percent, lower the cost to build the ship by almost $1 billion in real terms compared to CVN 78 and meet the cost cap. Importantly, this contract also represents the first step in an ongoing process that will continue to reduce the cost of future ships of the class starting with CVN 80.”

The contract “is the lowest ceiling price we’ve ever had,” Moore said June 15. “Newport News recognized they’ve got to get cost out of the ship.”

Newport News is investing in new construction sheds in which more carrier sections will be built away from weather and will feature equipment to simplify construction.

“We build the CVN 78 class to be of less cost than the Nimitz,” Manazir said. “I expect that when we operate the Ford-class carrier over its 50-year service life it will cost $4 billion less than the Nimitz class. That’s primarily due to a reduction in manpower. We will have a synergistic capability between the Ford class and the future air wing.”

Moore said the CVN 79 contract was “just Step 1” in the effort to reduce carrier costs. He wants to further reduce cost in the CVN 80 and 81 carriers by investing if a Design for Affordability (DFA) initiative modelled on the successful DFA of the Virginia-class attack submarine.

Moore is going to request $25 million in research and development funds in the 2017 budget for the DFA initiative, saying that it will accrue a 2 to 1 return in investment in driving down the cost of CVNs 80 and 81.
One cost-reduction feature planned for CVN 80 is the replacement of hydraulics for the aircraft elevators with electrical systems.

Manazir said that in addition to the $25 million in R&D DFA funds, he is going to look for alternate R&D funds to explore warfighting technology improvements. The Ford class generates three times the electrical power of a Nimitz-class ship.

The CVN is “a wonderful platform for the integration of directed energy weapons,” he said.

Moore said the Gerald R. Ford’s crew will move aboard the ship in August. The carrier is scheduled for commissioning in March 2016 and to begin operating aircraft in June 2016.

 

[AMDR]

Dug this up while researching the SM-6. Basically the Block IA variant will include GPS guidance so it can also attack land targets.
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Navy, Raytheon Ready New Satellite-Guided SM-6 Variant

Posted: Jul. 01, 2014

The Navy is preparing to pack more punch into the Standard Missile-6, giving it an offensive capability by equipping the weapon to utilize satellite-provided location information and providing the Raytheon built-system the ability to strike targets ashore.
The Navy said the proposed new variant, designated the SM-6 Block IA, is scheduled to be flight-tested this summer and -- if successful -- would become the new baseline version of the missile, originally fielded to provide ship terminal defense against enemy aircraft and anti-ship cruise missiles. The previously unreported upgrade would be accomplished by "cutting in" the SM-6 production line and incorporating the new capabilities as part of an engineering change proposal.

"Production cut-in decision is anticipated summer 2014 following successful development and flight test," Colleen O'Rourke, a spokeswoman for the Navy program office manages SM-6 development and acquisition, told InsideDefense.com in a June 20 statement.

The current SM-6 is a surface-to-air supersonic missile that utilizes an active seeker to find its targets, incorporating the capabilities of two established Raytheon products: the Standard Missile-2 and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile. In May 2013 -- after two years of delays and technical challenges -- the Navy received the green light to proceed with full-rate production; in November, the service declared initial operational capability for the SM-6.

While deploying the weapon on Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis air defense system to help defend the fleet, the Navy plans to improve the weapon through spiral development, with follow-on block upgrades to address threats as they arise.

"SM-6 Block IA is an enhanced version of SM-6 Block I with guidance section hardware and software modifications, and [Global Positioning System] added to achieve common coordinate reference to enable SM-6 to continue to pace the threat," O'Rourke said.

The SM-6 Block IA "is a way of increasing the fleet's offensive striking power at a relatively low cost," said a former senior Pentagon official.

In April, the Navy reported to Congress that plans to begin cutting in SM-6 Block IA production in FY-18 would add $195 million to the program's cost, which would be almost entirely offset by unit cost efficiencies realized during fiscal year 2013 contract negotiations, according to a 33-page SM-6 Selection Acquisition Report sent to Congress on April 16.

The upgraded SM-6 would give commanders another option for striking targets at sea or on land, augmenting current inventories of Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as the planned Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, said the former official.

Navy leaders last year directed a major expansion of the SM-6 program, adding 600 missiles to the total planned acquisition (DefenseAlert, Sept. 6, 2013). The new $3.3 billion commitment raised total planned spending on the program through 2026 to an estimated $10 billion.

In 2013, the deputy defense secretary directed an SM-6 "future capability demonstration," which is expected to involve an at-sea demonstration in FY-16 and operational deployment by FY-18, according to Navy budget documents.

Capt. Michael Ladner, the SM-6 program manager, confirmed the future capability demonstration through a Navy spokesman on May 1, noting "plans are still being finalized within the department of the Navy." However, he declined to elaborate, citing "pending classification guidance."

Congress allocated $25 million for the future capability demonstration project in FY-14 and the Navy is seeking $36 million for it in FY-15. In total, the Navy plans to spend $167.5 million for SM-6 development through FY-19, according to service budget documents.

Congress appropriated $367 million for SM-6 procurement in FY-14, allowing the Navy to purchase 93 missiles, according to O'Rourke.

 

[AMDR]

USAF contracts Raytheon to start SDB II low-rate initial production
USAF contracts Raytheon to start SDB II low-rate initial production - Airforce Technology

Raytheon has received a $30.94m fixed-price incentive firm contract from the US Air Force (USAF) for the small diameter bomb II (SDB II), following its achievement of Milestone C.

Under the contract, the company will deliver low-rate initial production for 144 SDB II Lot 1 munitions, 156 SDB II Lot 1 single weapon containers, eight SDB II weapon load crew trainers and conventional munitions maintenance trainers.

In addition, the firm will supply four SDB II Lot 1 practical explosive ordnance disposal system trainers, and data.

Work under this contract will be conducted in Tucson, Arizona, US, and is scheduled for completion by May 2017.

SDB II is an air-launched precision-strike weapon designed to destroy armoured targets from a range of more than 40NM from in adverse weather conditions, with minimal collateral damage.

The bomb is equipped with a dynamic warhead that can destroy both soft and armoured targets. It employees a tri-mode seeker, which operates in three modes, namely millimetre-wave radar, uncooled imaging infrared, as well as a semi-active laser.

The missile is developed under a five-year engineering and manufacturing development phase contract awarded by the USAF in August 2010. It can peer through storm clouds or battlefield dust and debris for engagement with fixed or moving targets.

Having validated SDB II as a weapon that address a critical warfighter need, the US Department of Defense has invested more than $700m in the SDB II programme.
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Major U.S. Army Network Modernization Program moves to full-rate production
Major U.S. Army Network Modernization Program moves to full-rate production | Article | The United States Army

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (June 8, 2015) -- The Army has received approval to proceed to full-rate production, or FRP, and fielding of its mobile tactical communications network backbone, Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, or WIN-T, Increment 2.

The approval was the result of a Defense Acquisition Board, or DAB, review of the program conducted in May.

Obtaining the FRP decision means that the program has been deemed mature, has met all its basic requirements and reduced its risk to the point, where the program can proceed with fielding for the duration of the program lifecycle. The FRP decision enables the program office to procure and field the capability to all remaining Army units, which are projected to receive WIN-T Increment 2 through FY2028.

"In support of Operation Enduring Freedom [OEF], divisions and brigade combat teams, deploying to Afghanistan, have utilized WIN-T Increment 2 capabilities to provide connectivity while on the move in remote areas, support regional advise and assist missions and to provide vital network reach back connectivity in a variety of missions," said Col. Ed Swanson, project manager WIN-T. "With this Defense Department decision, we can proceed into full-rate production, fielding WIN-T Increment 2 in accordance with Army staff prioritization."

WIN-T Increment 2 is a critical part of the Army's tactical network modernization strategy and the backbone of its network capability sets. Combat vehicles integrated with WIN-T Increment 2 provide the on-the-move communications, mission command and situational awareness, which commanders need to lead from anywhere on the battlefield.

WIN-T Increment 2 enables deployed Soldiers, down to the company level operating in remote and challenging terrain, to maintain voice, video and data communications while on patrol, with connectivity rivaling, which is found in a stationary command post.

To best support unique operational requirements, WIN-T Increment 2 has been integrated onto different platforms including mine-resistant, ambush-protected, or MRAPs, high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle, or HMMWVs, and Stryker platforms.

To date, the Army has fielded WIN-T Increment 2 capability to 12 brigade combat teams and four division headquarters, from the 10th Mountain Division, 82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Infantry Division, and the 1st Armored Division.

U.S. Soldiers have already deployed with and utilized the system in Afghanistan, where commanders referred to it as their "digital guardian angel." As fixed network infrastructure was dismantled and forward operating bases closed down during retrograde operations, security force assistance brigades were still able to conduct their missions and effectively communicate by employing the satellite and terrestrial communication and mission command capabilities of WIN-T Increment 2.

The program will continue to improve, enhance and simplify WIN-T Increment 2 capability through technical refreshment and engineering change proposals.

 

[AMDR]

Navy Wants To Work With Air Force On New Nukes: VADM Benedict

CAPITOL HILL: As the Air Force train pulls out of the station, the Navy’s running alongside asking to be pulled aboard. Both services will need to replace aging nuclear missilessometime ca. 2030. They could save money by coordinating their modernization programs — but the Air Force is on a tighter schedule and the window of opportunity is starting to close.

“Commonality [is] a topic that I’ve been pretty aggressively shopping around town to anyone who will listen to me,” said Vice Adm. Terry Benedict, the Navy’s director of Strategic Systems Programs. But while the Navy’s not officially launched an effort to replace itsTrident submarined-launched ballistic missile, the Air Force’s Minuteman ICBM replacement, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, already issued a Request For Information back in January. “Because of the urgency of the GBSD effort,” Benedict said, “we need to begin this assessment now.”

“There’s absolute consensus at the leadership level to begin that work,” Benedict said at Peter Huessy breakfast hosted by the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute. “I think the direction to formally proceed on that work is imminent.”

In the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon’s top buyer, Undersecretary Frank Kendall himself, is conducting a Strategic Posture Review that addresses the commonality question. Benedict has also spoken to the Air Force’s top buyer, Assistant Sec. Bill LaPlante, and to the service’s program executive officer for weapons, Maj. Gen. Scott Jansson. Strategic Command chief Adm. Cecil Haneyeven got Benedict to address a meeting of “basically every flag officer in the United States Air Force associated with ICBMs.”

“It’s hard to argue with [commonality]: I mean, who doesn’t want to save money?” Benedict said. “But, rightfully, they have a requirement that they have to meet to replace the Minuteman III, and so there are concerns that this does not distract them or derail them from meeting that requirement, and I respect that.”

The Air Force and the Navy also need their missiles to do different things. At the most basic level, launching from a silo underground is very different from launching from a submarine underwater. A component that works for both may not be optimal for either.

Reconciling those requirements will require extensive study: Where can the Air Force and the Navy do things the same way to save money without compromising eithers’ mission, and where do they still need distinct approaches? Then, once that difficult technical and tactical analysis is done, the often balky Pentagon acquisition processes actually has to do something with it.

To do this right, “you ensure that this is not just a Navy or an Air Force initiative,” Benedict said. “That’s the reason whySTRATCOM has to be intimately involved with this as well as OSD [the Office of the Secretary Defense] and the Joint Staff… As we look at potential requirements impacts, then those who own those requirements are going need to [say whether] they can still meet their mission with a compromise in the requirement.”

There’s a wide range of options for just how intimately intertwined the Navy and Air Force programs need to be, Benedict said. At the low end would be “resource commonality,” such as the two services jointly buying rocket fuel constituents but then mixing them in different formulas for different engines. They could coordinate manufacturing, because even if they don’t buy the same parts, they’re buying them from the same small set of specialized companies. Or they could design their missiles to use some common components or even entire subassemblies.

At the far end is a single common missile procured for both services by a joint program office, though Benedict downplayed that possibility: “I’m not going there,” he said. “[That’s] the far end of the spectrum.” The admiral’s preferred examples of commonality were a little less dramatic.

“I would say that the common fuse effort that’s ongoing, that’s on schedule and on cost for a ’19 IOC [Initial Operating Capability], is a perfect example of how…the two services were able to sit down and work through these technical issues and find the acquisition strategy,” Benedict said. “We compromised requirements to get that out of design and into development and into production.”

That fuse is specifically for the Trident and the current Minuteman III. Benedict’s drive for greater commonality presumes the Minuteman replacement goes ahead, but that’s not guaranteed.

The Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent is under fire on grounds of both cost and necessity. Arms control advocates say a ground-based deterrent of any kind is no longer necessary. ARAND report — one the Air Force itself commissioned — recommended further extending the life of the Minuteman III rather than replacing it.

“Organizational inertia is going to push us back to the status quo, and in my opinion, that’s not going to be affordable in the long term,” said Benedict. Trying to extend the service life of the Navy’s Trident until 2084, when the planned Ohio Replacement Program sub goes out of service, would require an ever-more expensive series of expedients.

It would also allow the highly skilled and highly specialized industrial base to decay, he said, to the point where we couldn’t later change our minds and decide we wanted a new missile after all. “We simply do not produce enough ICBMs, SLBMs [submarine-launched ballistic missiles] to keep the industrial base viable with these long stretches in between [programs],” Benedict said. “With a reduced industrial capability…we place ourselves at risk.”

 

[AMDR]

US Marines resurrect historic Raiders name for Special Ops
US Marines resurrect historic Raiders name for Special Ops - CSMonitor.com

The Raiders are back. After years of controversy and dispute, an elite branch of the US Marine Corps will officially be known as Raiders.

The Marines will rename Marine special operations battalions as Marine Raiders at a ceremony on Friday, in honor of World War II units that were engaged in special operations.

The name will be given to eight branches of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, known as MARSOC. Active since 2006, the command is part of the global fight against terrorism and has more than 2,700 Marines.

Ben Connable, a military and intelligence analyst at the nonprofit research agency RAND Corporation told The Associated Press that while most people in the US would not know what MARSOC stands for, “Raider will jump off the page.”

World War II Raiders were organized in response to President Franklin Roosevelt’s desire to have a commando-style force to conduct special amphibious light infantry warfare.

In April 1942, 80 raiders flew 16 bombers over Tokyo to conduct America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Raiders also participated in some key battles during World War II, including Guadalcanal and Bougainville.

They were disbanded toward the end of the war and so was the Raider name, but since the Iraq war some Marines have worn the Raider emblems unofficially.

In 2011, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos rejected a proposal to rename Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command for the Raiders. David Berger, director of operations at Marine Corps headquarters, said at the time that General Amos denied the proposal because “your allegiance, your loyalty … is to the Marine Corps, based on the title you have on your uniform.”

However, three years later in August 2014, after being heavily lobbied by the Marine Raider association to make the change, Amos agreed to rename MARSOC units to the Marine Raiders.

Members of the original World War II Raider companies will be present at Friday's ceremony, according to Marine Corps Times.

MARSOC spokesman Barry Morris says by June 22, all eight units’ web pages will reflect the name change.

 

[AMDR]

Simultaneous intercept of a SRBM and 2 cruise missiles

 

[AMDR]

USAF wants improved day-night F-22 Raptor helmet by 2020
USAF wants improved day-night F-22 Raptor helmet by 2020 - 6/23/2015 - Flight Global

A long-running effort to provide F-22 Raptor pilots with a day and night helmet-mounted display and cuing system has taken a significant step forward, with the US Air Force publishing a draft programme schedule and requirements list that would “deliver a HMD system by 2020”.

Once installed, a Raptor pilot can visually control sensors and weapons at high off-boresight angles, particularly the latest version of the Raytheon AIM-9X dogfighting missile.

The helmet mounted display and cueing system has been a validated requirement of the F-22 programme as far back as 2007, and is a capability that is already inherent in some older fighters. But cost pressures and sequestration have set the acquisition back time and again.

US Air Force

A set of documents published this month say the F-22 programme office wants a mature helmet system that would be ready to enter a four-year development and test period starting in 2017. Laboratory and simulator testing would take place in 2018 ahead of flight trials in 2019, according to the draft programme plan.

An earlier demonstration of the Visionix-Gentex Scorpion helmet-mounting cueing system was terminated in 2013 due to automatic government spending cuts known as sequestration.

According to the 1June draft requirements document, the air force will accept an F-22 helmet assembly that uses the existing Gentex HGU-55/P helmet – either modified or in its current form – or a new design. However, the programme won’t accept a reduced field of view or any degradation in performance across the Raptor flight envelope, to include high-G manoeuvres, crash, ejection, bailout or water entry.

US Air Force

Key functions include day and night cueing of weapons and sensors at high angles off the nose of the aircraft (high off-boresight), as well as the ability to process and display data and videos feeds from those devices. “It will also be able to receive and display target, weapon and flight data for aircraft state, navigation and air-to-air/air-to-ground weapon delivery while maintaining visual contact with the target,” the document says.

The latest versions of the Raytheon AIM-9X Block II and AIM-120D AMRAAM will be fully available on the F-22 by 2017 as part of the Increment 3.2B upgrade. In February, an F-22 test fired two AIM-9X weapons for the first time against a BQM-34 Firebee drone.

 

[AMDR]

Report Urges Pentagon To Arm F-35Cs With Tactical Nuclear Weapons

A report from Center for Strategic and International Studies called “Project Atom” urges the Department of Defense to make the Navy’s F-35Cs “dual role capable.” In other words, they want to make sure the jet can drop conventional munitions and nuclear ones, all in an effort to surround potential enemies with a more “neighborly” nuclear deterrent.

According to our friends over at Flightglobal, the Pentagon has only committed to making theUSAF’s F-35As nuclear capable. The CSIS’s report claims that adding a carrier-based nuclear deterrent would be a “visible manifestation” of the U.S. honoring its commitment to defend its allies around the globe. Such a strategy emanates from the idea that a deterrent is more effective when it’s forward deployed to positions in and around an ally’s geographical area. Basically, a much closer proximity manifestation of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

The U.S. has relied more and more on long-range nuclear deterrents, include land-based ICBMs, submarine launched SLBMs and heavy bomber delivered nuclear bombs and cruise missiles, with only a small fraction of the American nuclear arsenal being tactical in nature and deliverable via fighter aircraft.

The nuclear weapon of choice for the F-35 will be the upgraded “smart” B61-12 thermonuclear guided bomb, a program that has had to struggle for funding, but is seen as essential for maintaining an air-dropped tactical nuclear capability.

Currently, only the USAF’s F-35A is due to become nuclear capable, with the fully developed B61-12 around 2024 if everything goes as planned.

Clark Murdock, a key player behind the report, told Flightglobal:

We had 7,000 nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe at the pinnacle of the Cold War... In Asia, we had almost 1,000 deployed on the Korean Peninsula. About 3,000 total were in the Asia Pacific theatre.

When the Soviets looked out at their borders, they didn’t just see a ring of American men and women in uniform, they saw a ring of nuclear weapons. They knew that any major, conventional aggression on their part would go nuclear because all the weapons were there.

The report also adds that scaled response options need to be made available by fielding smaller yield, highly targeted nuclear weapons. Currently, the U.S. nuclear force is organized around a massive nuclear response, which limits flexibility to certain lower-level scenarios where tactical nuclear weapons or even exotic versions of tactical nukes built for hitting deep buried bunkers or to cause maximum electromagnetic pule destruction could be used instead of high-yield strategic nuclear weapons as a way to limit escalation.

You can read the entire report here.

The CSIS report and Mr. Murdock’s suggestions are an eye-opening reminder of the times we are now living in. Although they seem quite extreme, and even mimic America’s nuclear posture during the the Cold War, they do have some merit.

The sad truth is that there seems to be a heavy amount of denial out there as to just how precarious things have become geopolitically around the globe in over the last 15 months. Nobody wants to admit that a new Cold War has sprung, especially considering all the other problems that need fixing, including a rising and more stubborn China and their extra-territorial ambitions and the spread of Islamic Extremism that features a whole new level of brutality in the Middle East. This is not to mention a cascade of failed states that have occurred since the once naively hopeful Arab Spring began. A potential nuclear arms race around the Persian Gulf, increasing tensions between India and Pakistan, a psychopathic kid running a nuclear armed North Korea, massive cyber vulnerabilities and global warming can all be added to that list.

All this has been factored into the Bulletin Of American Scientists historic Doomsday Clockrecently, which has been pushed forward from its 2012 index of five minutes to midnight, to three minutes to midnight as of last January. This is the closest it has been to the Armageddon mark since 1984. The only other time it has been three minutes to midnight or less was in 1953.

The Bulletin’s justification for the move is as such:

Unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth. Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia have embarked on massive programs to modernize their nuclear triads—thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties. The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty—ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization.

Will we see the widespread deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as an attempt to limit the possibility of a mutually assured destruction (MAD) strategic nuclear weapons exchange in the coming years? It is quite possible. The new military reality for the U.S. will be one of wars not of choice but of necessity, ones we do not start, but are obligated to end. Should such conflicts occur, they will not be limited to small-time rogue regimes and third world failed states, but could very well include nuclear capable near peer-state actors. These wars will most likely be characterized by limited but rapid and violent exchanges as the result of territorial disputes. Although these exchanges will begin conventional in nature, escalation is a squirmy thing to predict, and there is no telling if, or when, a nuclear option could be introduced by either party.

As such, introducing throngs of tactical nukes into such a mix may also be a form of introducing what could end up being a rapidly escalating nuclear exchange just as much as they could represent an option for a limited nuclear response.

This perilous nuclear tightrope was walked throughout the Cold War, at least before MAD became the unofficially agreed upon policy of the USSR and USA, and it is very sad, if not terrifying, seeing that metaphorical tightrope being strung up once again.

 

[AMDR]

Navy boosts Raytheon's contract for Next Generation Jammer
Navy boosts Raytheon's contract for Next Generation Growler -- Defense Systems


The Navy has added $13 million to the pot for developing the Next Generation Jammer, a which will boost aircraft’s electronic warfare capabilities while replacing an outdated, nearly 50-year old radar and jamming system.

The Naval Air Systems Command awarded the contract modification to Raytheon, which had been awarded the initial $279 million contract in July 2013, then survived a protest by bidder BAE Systems and some budget reductions expected to delay its initial operating capability from 2020 to 2021.

The Next Generation Jammer will replace the ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System, which dates to the late 1960s, on EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft. The NGJ, which integrates electronic countermeasures, cyber operations and signals intelligence, reportedly performed well in its first airborne tests in October 2014. The tests, held at the China lake test range in California, were conducted against advanced radars similar to those operated by China and Russia.

Despite its promising tests, the Chief of Naval Operations’ 2014 Position Report said reduced funding would slow down NGJ’s development a bit.

The contract modification covers work through February 2016.

 

[Faizan Qadeer]

What if US Military is just concentrated on only US Problem what ?

 

[AMDR]

New Fuel Cell Technology Shows Safety, Endurance Potential for UUVs
SEAPOWER Magazine Online
By RICHARD R. Burgess, Managing Editor

ARLINGTON, Va. — A new battery fuel cell technology shows promise in providing more power and endurance to unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) and other platforms as well as less potential for fire.

An aluminum-seawater fuel cell technology, being developed by Open Water Power of Somerville, Mass., is able to “safely store about 10 times as much energy as lithium-ion batteries,” said Dr. Tom Milnes, president and chief executive officer of Open Water Power.

Milnes’ company is developing the technology for a variety of uses for defense and commercial applications, such as UUVs and the oil and gas industry. Exploration of the technology was conducted by a joint team, of which Milnes was a member, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Open Water Power has taken the technology further from “beaker-level science,” in Milnes’ characterization, with a $450,000 in funds of from the Rapid Response Technology Office of the Defense Department, the Office of Naval Research, and the Naval Air Systems Command, delivering a developmental model of an aluminum-seawater cell to the Office of Naval Research in December.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division in Maryland put the first cell in an inactive state through pressure, temperature and fire testing this spring and released a report on its performance in June. The testers concluded that “early tests indicate that a reactor [battery] — when in an inactive state — does not generate hazards when exposed to extreme storage temperatures, low pressures, or fires,” according to a Navy briefing.

Open Water Power will be delivering two more cells to the Navy for testing. The next steps for testing by the Navy include a short-circuit test, a water-exposure test and performance tests “to determine energy density and characterize operational behavior,” the briefing said.

Milnes said the aluminum-seawater concept is an old idea but only recently have the barriers to making it operational been overcome. The technology was explored for primarily for its energy density but the safety of the technology also has become evident.

The Navy has had a need to develop a safer battery technology for undersea vehicles since the 2008 fire on the Advanced SEAL Delivery System submersible.

Military Tests New Comsat With 300 Times The Bandwidth
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on June 30, 2015 at 4:00 AM

The military has tested a new commercial communications satellite system by that potentially offers 300 times the bandwidth of current satellites. O3b Networks has demonstrated the technology both at sea, aboard the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship Fort Worth in the Pacific, and and on land, for unspecified “members of the armed forces” at MacDill Air Force Base, which just happens to be the headquarters of the publicity-shySpecial Operations Command.

How does this work? It’s all about the altitude. The higher the satellite, the larger the area it covers and the slower it orbits. At 22,000 miles up, geostationary (GEO) satellites effectively stand still over a single point on the earth’s surface and can cover a whole continent, making them the standard for communications. But altitude comes at a cost. There’s a literal financial cost, because a rocket powerful enough to get you there is expensive. There’s also a cost in time, because even at the speed of light it takes your message half a second to get to GEO and back.

That’s a long enough lag that even a human brain can notice it. For high-bandwidth applications like streaming video — say, from military drones — the delay makes for major slowdowns. For high-speed software like cloud computing, it’s a dealbreaker.

So O3b puts its satellites only 5,000 milesup. That’s considered MEO, Medium Earth Orbit. (Protip: Never say “Middle Earth Orbit” unless you’re talking about Tolkien). 2,000 miles and below are Low Earth Orbit (LEO), favored by commercial imagery satellites and spysats, but at those altitudes satellites whip around the planet and can cover very little area at a time, making them impractical for most communications. MEO is a happy medium.

Since a 5,000-mile MEO orbit is a quarter of a 22,000-mile GEO orbit, the lag is likewise only a quarter as much: about 150 milliseconds, instead of 500. That shorter lag combined with a high-throughput Ka-band signal allows bandwidth that’s 300 times higher, 1.6 gigabits per second instead of the current standard of five megabits.

Meanwhile, each satellite is still high enough to cover a decent swath of the planet. (See the video above for how they hand off to one another). O3b has 12 in orbit currently and plans to launch at least another four. But eight birds were enough for continuous coverage of everything between 45 degrees north and south — roughly from Minneapolis to southern New Zealand. Some equatorial areas could get by with just four, such as the Cook Islands, home to some of O3b’s first customers.

In fact, O3b originally created its year-old network with the developing world in mind. The company’s name is an acronym for the “other three billion,” the estimated portion of the world’s population that lacks access to landline Internet. But it also has a contract with Royal Caribbean, since cruise ships have lots of Internet-hungry passengers and no way to reach a fiber optic cable. Navy warships are in the same boat, as it were, although they want bandwidth for intelligence and targeting data rather than Facebook. Special Operations teams, meanwhile, are often in the same position as O3b’s original target audience: scattered in remote places where poverty, geography, or both make fiber unavailable.

Neither SOCOM nor the Navy has gone beyond demos to a permanent contract with O3b, yet. But with budgets tightening while bandwidth demands increase, the company has some cause for optimism.

Austal USA Lays Keel for Littoral Combat Ship Manchester
Austal USA Lays Keel for Littoral Combat Ship Manchester - USNI News

Shipbuilder Austal USA laid the keel of the seventh Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) at its Mobile, Ala. yard, the company announced on Monday.

The initials of sponsor Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) were welded into the aluminum keel of Manchester (LCS-14) in the ceremony at the yard.

According to the company, 36 of the 37 modules that make up the 3,100-ton ship have already started construction.

“For Austal, keel laying marks the beginning of final assembly. Nineteen modules have been moved from Austal’s module manufacturing facility and erected in the final assembly bay in their pre-launch position, read a statement from the company.
“The remaining 18 modules will follow over the coming months.”

The ship is the fifth ship of a ten-ship multiyear $3.5 billion contract with Austal USA issued by the Navy 2010 as part of a larger $7 billion block buy for — including ten Lockheed Martin Freedom-class LCS — for 20-ship total.

The first four Independence-class LCS were built under a contract to General Dynamics in which Austal USA was a subcontractor before GD elected not to compete for the multiyear.

Work in the yard is proceeding on other ships.

“Modules for the future USS Tulsa (LCS-16) and the future USS Charleston (LCS-18) are in the early phases of construction,” read the Austal statement.

Earlier this month, LCS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10) was christened at the Mobile yard.

In addition to the Independence-class ships, Austal is building ten Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSV) for the Navy.

 

[AMDR]

MUOS-4 Satellite Shipped For August Launch
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. — Delivered by the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin, the fourth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite arrived at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station June 28 prior to its expected August launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, Lockheed Martin said in a June 29 release.

MUOS-4 is the latest addition to a network of orbiting satellites and relay ground stations that is revolutionizing secure communications for mobile military forces. Users with operational MUOS terminals can seamlessly connect beyond line-of-sight around the globe. MUOS’ new smart phone-like capabilities include simultaneous crystal-clear voice, and video and mission data, on a high-speed Internet Protocol-based system.

Traditional UHF satellite communication systems allow users to “talk” as long as they are geographically close enough to be under the coverage footprint of the same satellite.

“MUOS allows troops all over the world to talk, text and share mission data seamlessly, while traveling, like a cellular network, without having to worry about where they are in relation to a satellite,” said Iris Bombelyn, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for narrowband communications. “MUOS-4 will complete our near global coverage, reaching further north and south toward the poles than ever before.”

Manufactured at Lockheed Martin’s Sunnyvale, Calif., facility, MUOS-4 was shipped from nearby Moffett Federal Airfield, where the 60th Air Mobility Wing of Travis Air Force Base loaded the satellite aboard a C-5 Galaxy aircraft for delivery. In Florida, Astrotech Space Operations, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, will complete MUOS-4’s pre-launch processing.

The MUOS network is expected to be operational by year-end. MUOS-1, MUOS-2 and MUOS-3 launched respectively in 2012, 2013 and last January. All four required MUOS ground stations are complete. More than 55,000 currently fielded radio terminals can be upgraded to be MUOS-compatible, with many of them requiring just a software upgrade.

HX-21 Completes First Flight with Developmental Electronic Warfare Pod
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

PATUXENT RIVER Md. — A UH-1Y from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (HX) 21 completed the first test flight with a developmental electronic warfare (EW) pod on June 8, Naval Air Systems Command said in a June 29 release.

The EW pod will represent a new tactical capability for U.S. Marine Corps rotary wing aircraft, and allow for changing mission requirements mid-flight.

HX-21 conducts developmental flight test and evaluation of rotary-wing and tiltrotor aircraft and airborne systems in support of all Navy and Marine Corps training, operational combat and combat support missions. HX-21 is headquartered at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.

 

[AMDR]

Stennis, SPAWAR Prepare for First Carrier Deployment with Next Generation CANES Network
Stennis, SPAWAR Prepare for First Carrier Deployment with Next Generation CANES Network - USNI News


As USS John C. Stennis has gone through its pre-deployment certifications and workups, it is the first carrier to do so using the CANES network environment. USNI News photo.

Navy communications at sea will take a big leap forward in capability and capacity later this year. The service’s next-generation IT infrastructure, which promises faster connections and greater cyber security protections, will be tested and deployed for the first time on an aircraft carrier, USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74).

Stennis is preparing for both a deployment in the fall and its five-year Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) examination in late July, and it will be the first aircraft carrier to do either with the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES).

Sailors aboard Stennis may notice faster and more reliable connections, but the real advantages of CANES are behind the scenes. It combines five legacy networks into a single environment that the Navy says is easier to defend from cyber attacks. It will eventually be put on surface combatants, amphibious ships and submarines, standardizing the computing environment across platforms to make upgrades easier and ownership costs lower.

The new IT backbone has been installed on 24 ships, with another eight in progress now, but Stennis – being the first aircraft carrier – was orders of magnitude more complex and challenging than the guided missile cruisers and destroyers that came before it, officials said.

Stennis began the CANES installation process in late 2013, when crews started ripping out the old network hardware. In February 2014 they began installing new firmware and servers, along with more than 30,000 feet of fiber optic cable and 100 miles of shielded Category 5 network cable, Stennis commanding officer Capt. Mike Wettlaufer told USNI News on June 18. In October, the installation was certified complete.

Wettlaufer said being the first carrier to go through the installation process has both perks and challenges. On the one hand, shore-based technical support and the training pipeline are still not fully developed, he said. But his crew has been part of the feedback loop meant to mature and improve those services, and therefore his crew has a more intimate knowledge of CANES than a typical crew might otherwise have.

“Our sailors are part of the development and the certification – it’s still ongoing – of the maintenance procedures for CANES. This is really unique in that our folks onboard are working very closely with the CANES support entities… to develop the preventative maintenance processes and the ongoing health-checking processes for CANES onboard the ship,” he said.
“They have been absolutely, totally involved in that. Our ITs, they know the system really very, very well. And we’re in the process, we just completed the maintenance evaluation by the program office, and with some other Department of Defense support, to evaluate our ability to maintain the system at the first basic level.”

In August, the ship will undergo an operational evaluation – conducted during the carrier strike group’s pre-deployment Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX) – as a final and more robust test of their ability to operate, maintain and defend CANES.

Despite the challenges associated with being the first carrier to deploy with CANES, Wettlaufer said the ship was at-sea from March to early May and conducted a group sail with its strike group, part of which involved helping USS Freedom (LCS-1) and USSHiggins (DDG-76) certify for upcoming independent deployments.

“Based upon that, I think you could probably say we’re well on the way to getting ourselves certified to deploy with the first operational CANES installation,” he said.

Installation challenges

Cmdr. Steve Shedd, then-commanding officer of the guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69), discusses blueprints for the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program with Space and Naval Warfare Systems (SPAWAR) engineers in January 2013. US Navy photo.

Whereas installing CANES on a destroyer averages about 158 days, Wettlaufer said the first carrier installation took “the better part of that whole 16 months” Stennis was in the shipyard for a maintenance availability. Some of the testing had to be completed after the ship left the yard, he added.

He noted that the aircraft carrier, which hosts the carrier strike group staff, the destroyer squadron staff and other organizations, requires a significantly larger infrastructure than any of the other ships.

Wettlaufer called his ship a communication hub “for both the goes-ins and goes-outs – the stuff we need to operate, information-wise, communication-wise, and the stuff we have to distribute from us to the rest of our strike group assets as well as to the fleet commanders and beyond.”

“There’s a significant scale difference between the two types of installs,” he added.

Rear Adm. John Neagley, Fleet Readiness Director at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), said the Stennis installation took the longest so far but also taught his staff numerous lessons learned to apply to the next carriers. The second carrier installation, on USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), took only eight months. The fourth carrier installation, on USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), begins this week and is expected to take just seven months.

“You always learn a lot after the first one, and I think Reagan was a good example of really bringing a lot of the lessons learned from Stennis down to Reagan,” said Neagley, who oversees both installation and in-service support for CANES.

A successful installation starts with good planning, he said. The workers doing the installation need accurate drawings and other documentation, he said, and “once you do that once, you have the opportunity to refine the documentation based on those lessons learned from the first ship, make it easier for the second ship. So in the planning phase we were able to capture a lot of those kinds of lessons learned. There may have been something in the drawing where we got to the ship and it was a little bit different, so we changed the drawing to reflect the actual configuration. So all of those changes got captured for the next ship.”

Neagley’s team also learned that a lot of work could be done before getting to the ship – where there are lots of confined spaces, as well as numerous other teams trying to do other maintenance and modernization work in those same confined spaces. The more components that can be pre-fabricated on land, the better, he said.

“For example, some of the ventilation systems – we had the drawings, we could go pre-fab those in the shop, have them all ready to go, not have to do that work on the ship. So after we did the rip-out we could bring that pre-fabbed ventilation and ducting and just tack it up and be ready to go,” Neagley said.

The installation crew also learned how to more efficiently sequence the work, as well as when it was okay to have other crews working nearby and when they needed the space to themselves.

“On Reagan in particular, we added an extra planner down there to help us coordinate the schedule with all the other work that was going on onboard, and that was pretty beneficial for us so we could keep track of the overall ship schedule and where we fit in the overall ship schedule to make sure that we deconflicted anytime – if two or three entities had to be in one space, that was coordinated ahead of time,” Neagley said.

Testing lessons

AMSEC contractors remove ventilation in the radio room onboard the Navy guided missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) in March 2013. US Navy photo.

Neagley said the biggest time-savers came on the software loading and testing side of the effort.

“Probably one of the most significant differences between Stennis and Reagan was our ability to do more of the software loading inside the lab here at SPAWAR,” he said.
“So we were able to load more of the software in-house and do some more of that testing in-house before we got to the ship, and so that allowed our software team to work in this environment and make sure they got out all the bugs in the environment here before we loaded it up on the ship.”

Additionally, the team learned how to sequence the software uploads and tests more efficiently, too.

“As you can imagine, when you have all these systems that are connected to CANES, the order that you bring them up in and the order that you test them [matters]. We kind of optimized that on the second ship I think a little bit better,” Neagley said.
“That bought us probably the most time out of everything we’ve done.”

He added that sailors from Reagan were brought to the SPAWAR lab to watch and learn during the test phase. Getting their hands on CANES early helped, and he said he hopes to do that going forward when the ship’s crew is available.

Future opportunities

CANES units bound for installation aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) are loaded and tested in the SPAWAR Network Integration and Engineering Facility prior to fleet delivery in June 2014. US Navy photo.

Wettlaufer, the Stennis commanding officer, said the CANES infrastructure – the training pipeline, the technical support ashore and even the logistics – won’t be fully ready when he deploys this fall, but he’s confident his sailors will be ready to go.

“Before we left the shipyard, we turned on the system I guess a little over a year ago. And from turning on the system and powering it up to operating at sea, we’ve certainly found areas where things didn’t work exactly right, but we’ve had very good support from SPAWAR and all the supporting organizations,” he said.
“When you’re the first one …. there’s going to be challenges in the supply system, whether or not it’s up to speed to support everything you need and all the other installations that are going on. Certainly that’s always a challenge. There’s going to be something we’re going to find – like, hey, we never interacted these two things together, oh my gosh there’s going to be a hiccup there.”

But Wettlaufer said that’s all okay. He said the training and shore support would get better as his crew helped inform them, and the installations would continue to get easier – and despite being the first, he wouldn’t have asked the Navy to do it any other way. Ramping up too quickly to try to have everything in place for the first ship is fiscally irresponsible, Wettlaufer said, since lessons learned still would have dictated changes.

Wettlaufer said CANES hosts more than 120 different systems that perform functions from warfighting to supplies and maintenance records management to pay and administrative functions. From a user perspective, he said the CANES environment would feel the same as any other information technology set-up when connecting to outside entities via the Internet, but the CANES intranet capability is vastly improved compared to the legacy network. Going forward, he said he looked forward to his crew and others learning how to “[use] the system to its utmost to internally communicate.”

These kinds of advancements – both finding new capabilities and addressing any newly discovered flaws – will be addressed in CANES’ “built-in tech refresh and obsolescence cycle,” Neagley said. The software will be updated every two years and the hardware every four years to keep up with new cyber threats and new capabilities that come along.

F-35 Training, Logistic Systems Ready for Operations
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

YUMA, Ariz. — The U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35 program took another step forward as two key capabilities were delivered to support the service’s first operational squadron, a Marine Corps spokeswoman said in a June 30 release.

Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 121, also known as the “Green Knights”, received the latest version of support software for the F-35 and all four of their Full Mission Simulator trainers became ready for operational use with Block 2B Initial Warfighting software, June 22.

The Autonomic Logistics Information System also called ALIS, functions as the primary nerve center for F-35 fleet management, according to James Sprang, ALIS field lead for Lockheed Martin.

“ALIS is absolutely integral to maintaining and operating F-35s,” said Sprang. “[It] turns a vast amount of data into actionable information that enables pilots, maintainers and military leaders to make proactive decisions and keep jets flying.”

The F-35 Lightning II Training System consists of academic, live-flight and simulation training. Now, pilots aboard the air station can train together in the same virtual environment with four simulators linked together and running the latest aircraft software, Block 2B. The simulators constantly receive updates to further enhance the training experience for pilots and maintainers.

“The biggest change to the simulator relative to us is the software in the simulator matches what’s in the plane,” said Maj John Price, an F-35B pilot and executive officer of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 121. “The capabilities I see in the jet every day are the same things I see when I go over to the simulator.”

Both systems increase Marines’ proficiency with the F-35B, according to Price.

ALIS 2.0.1 is the latest release of the software and has been released to the USMC on new mobile equipment. Aircraft maintenance, mission planning and debrief capabilities continue to be enhanced under an incremental development approach

“[Pilots] create missions that go on hard drives that plug into the jets,” said GySgt Brian Erline, VMFA-121 aviation logistic information management specialist. “Once it’s plugged in, they conduct their missions. That same hard drive that had the mission is capturing required maintenance actions for that jet. This tells the maintainers which parts are reaching their life limit and which [parts] require attention.”

According to Sprang, the latest modular hardware provides rugged durability and mobility. The system is disassembled, transported and re-assembled at the deployed site. Prior to the introduction of this hardware, ALIS consisted of typical stationary ‘server’ racks kept in the computer room.

“With more than two years left to go in the development phase of the program, capabilities continue to be added to ALIS,” said Erline. “However, the Marine Corps has everything it needs today in terms of functionality to have an initial operating capability.”

Similarly, the F-35 Training System’s simulator holds truer to its real-life counterpart, thanks to the latest Block 2B software. The software is used in the actual jets and in the simulators, providing the most accurate information possible.

“It’s very accurate in regards to the visuals and the types of simulations that can be done,” said Capt John Stuart, an F-35B pilot with VMFA-121. “Getting training in division and sections is something that is a very high value with regards to saving money and getting good, real-time debriefing capabilities from a pilot at the console who is monitoring the simulator.”

ALIS and the F-35 Lightning II Training System will continue to advance over time, improving the capabilities of the F-35 series as a whole, from the mission capabilities of the aircraft and the pilots to the maintainers on the ground.

The systems will help the Marines of VMFA-121 declare Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in July. The aircraft will be ready for future deployments aboard U.S. Navy amphibious carriers following the declaration of IOC.