US military news, discussions and history

[Fenrir]

Credit to Military Photos

 

[Fenrir]

 

[Fenrir]

Credit to Military Photos

 

[Fenrir]

Credit to Military Photos

 

[James David]

@Technogaianist and @AMDR , i spent the whole of two hours looking at pictures of squids and flyboys!!! You guys are kinds biased arent you!? Lol but keep 'em comin' guys!! Nice pictures!!

 

[Fenrir]

You guys are kinds biased arent you!?

Maybe?

I'm partial to Air and Naval forces from my days in the RNoAF - maritime SAR. Add SvenSvensonov - PDF's Navy vet (currently on leave) and AMDR's contributions, also mainly Navy, and we've little to no Army contributions. PDF's resident Army vet Jhungary doesn't contribute too much in this thread.

We welcome you to contribution though. Perhaps you can help right the bias of this thread.

...

If you're looking my Army contribution, you'd find them here:

Nordic Defense News, pictures, videos and history | Page 27

Wrong nation though

 

[AMDR]

General Dynamics to Equip New Submarines, Surface Ships with Advanced DMR Radios
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

FAIRFAX, Va. — The U.S. Navy has ordered 56 AN/USC-61(C) Digital Modular Radios (DMRs) and related equipment from General Dynamics, the company announced in an Aug. 10 release.

The newly built DMR radios will be capable of using the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) waveform, the digital dial tone needed to make voice calls to the U.S. Department of Defense’s next generation, narrowband MUOS satellite communications system. The four-channel radios form the foundation of the Navy’s network communications aboard submarines, surface ships and on-shore locations. This order, valued at over $29 million, exercises option five on a contract awarded to General Dynamics in 2010.

“DMR is an extremely versatile radio and we continue to update its capabilities to ensure that Navy communications networks have the most advanced and secure technologies,” said Mike DiBiase, vice president and general manager of C4IRS Technologies for General Dynamics Mission Systems. “MUOS is an excellent example of an advanced capability that will provide smartphone-like connectivity among military personnel working in some of the toughest, most remote environments.”

Earlier this year, General Dynamics announced a software upgrade for existing DMRs that turns the radio’s four channels into eight virtual channels. This expanded communications capacity is available when Sailors are using high-frequency communication frequencies. As a software upgrade, the added capacity keeps the existing onboard DMR, saving the Navy the cost of replacing the physical radio or changing the configuration in space-constrained radio rooms.

The software-defined DMRs are one of the only military approved radios to communicate with Ultra-High Frequency SATCOM, Single-Channel Ground and Airborne Radio Systems, Line of Sight and High Frequency radios on Navy vessels and land locations. General Dynamics has delivered more than 550 DMRs since 1998.

 

[AMDR]

Ocean Aero Awarded DoD Contract for Long Range Unmanned Vessel

11 August 2015 - Ocean Aero has announced that it signed a multi-million dollar two-year contract with the Department of Defense under the Rapid Innovation Fund (DoD RIF) program.

Ocean Aero was selected to create a prototype Long Range Unmanned Underwater and Surface Vessel, similar to their current Submaran model. This contract is the result of a year of developing this exclusive concept, drafting and writing the proposal, as well as negotiating the contract with the DoD.

The Department of Defense’s Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) was created to implement small business technologies into programs designed for national security needs. RIF issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) early last year looking for firms who had the ability to produce a “long range, high endurance hybrid unmanned underwater/surface vehicle that can transit for long, open ocean distances on the surface with a relatively low signature and then submerge to avoid surface traffic; and conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations.”

CEO and President, Eric Patten, noted the magnitude and value this contract to the local San Diego business, “We are very excited about this opportunity to grow as a company and demonstrate how valuable the Submaran is to major organizations around the world. This contract further validates that our team is on the right path with our technology and vision.”

 

[Fenrir]

Navy's MUOS-4 Encapsulated for Launch on ULA's Most Powerful Atlas-V Rocket August 31

Navy’s MUOS-4 Encapsulated for Launch on ULA’s Most Powerful Atlas-V Rocket August 31 « AmericaSpace

MUOS-4, the next satellite scheduled to join the U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) secure communications network, has been encapsulated in its protective launch vehicle fairing for its August 31 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Photo Credit: ULA

The fourth in a Lockheed Martin-built, five-ship fleet for a next-generation, narrowband tactical military satellite communications system has been encapsulated in its 5.4-meter (17.7-foot) bullet-like payload fairing for an early morning nighttime liftoff atop a 206-foot tall United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station later this month.

The U.S. Navy’s 7.5-ton Mobile User Objective System-4 (MUOS-4) arrived in Florida on June 28 onboard a C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft via Lockheed’s Sunnyvale, CA facility and nearby Moffett Federal Airfield, courtesy of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base.

“Delivery of this fourth satellite for the U.S. Navy completes the initial MUOS constellation and provides near-global coverage for the network,” said Iris Bombelyn, vice president of Narrowband Communications at Lockheed Martin. “For our mobile forces, that means for the first time they will be able to have secure, high-fidelity voice conversations, networked team calls and data exchange, including video, with anyone around the world connected with a MUOS terminal.”

Launch is currently scheduled for Aug. 31 during a window from 4:07 a.m. EDT to 8:07 a.m. EDT.

MUOS operates like a “smart phone cell tower in the sky,” supporting a worldwide, multi-Service population of users in the UHF band, providing increased communications capabilities to smaller terminals while still supporting interoperability with legacy terminals. The new military SATCOM system will, for the first time, give MUOS Wideband Code Division Multiple Access technology users beyond-line-of-sight capability to transmit and receive voice and data using an Internet Protocol-based system, giving users greater mobility, higher data rates, and improved operational availability.

MUOS gives military users more communications capability over existing systems, including simultaneous voice, video, and data—similar to the capabilities experienced today with smart phones and providing users with 10 times more communications capacity.

MUOS-4 has been undergoing final testing and preparations for flight at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla. since arriving on the Sunshine State’s “Space Coast”, and now the time has come to transport the enormous flight-ready military satellite to nearby Space Launch Complex-41 (SLC-41) to meet its Atlas-V rocket, which will fly in its most powerful “heavyweight” variant (551 configuration) to deliver the enormous 15,000 pound MUOS-4 to a 22,000 mile high geosynchronous orbit.

In simple terms, that means the rocket will need the added power of five strap-on solid rocket boosters (supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne) to get MUOS-4 into space, something that the rocket has only done previously on 5 of its 55 flights over the last 13 years since the vehicle’s inaugural launch.

Three of those flights were the first three MUOS satellites; the other two were both NASA spacecraft to worlds in the outer solar system – New Horizons to Pluto in 2006 and JUNO to Jupiter in 2011.

The MUOS satellites represent the heaviest payloads ever to be launched by ULA’s Atlas-V.

The satellite will make its way to the launch pad this weekend, at which point it will then be hoisted vertical and integrated on top of ULA’s workhorse Atlas-V for final integrated testing and closeout preparations for launch. The rocket will then be rolled out from its Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) to the launch pad on Aug. 28.

ULA’s Atlas-V 551 rocket launches the NAVY’s MUOS-3 under cover of darkness on Jan. 20, 2015. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace

Although a total of five MUOS satellites will make up the MUOS fleet, only four will actually be required to put the whole system into action; the fifth and final MUOS to launch in 2016 will instead serve as an on-orbit spare, should any of the first four lose their capabilities.

Original plans called for the first MUOS to launch by 2010, but budgetary adjustments made in response to the Iraq war led to a two-year delay. MUOS-1 launched on Feb. 24, 2012, followed by MUOS-2 on July 19, 2013, and MUOS-3 on Jan. 20, 2015. In the time since they have demonstrated new capabilities, especially in the Arctic, an area previously beyond the coverage of UHF satellites and growing in interest for transportation and natural resources exploration above 65 degrees north latitude. In the past year MUOS successfully connected users near the Arctic poles during independent testing by Lockheed Martin, and during the U.S. Navy’s 2014 Ice Exercise (ICEX) and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Arctic Shield 2014.

The MUOS satellites seek to offer global satellite communications narrowband (64 kbits/sec and lower) connectivity for use by U.S. and allied forces, with an ultra-high frequency range from 300 MHz-3 GHz. When fully functional, it will replace the legacy UHF Follow-On (UFO) satellite network—the first of which was launched back in March 1993—before the latter system reaches the end of its operational service. MUOS will provide new capabilities and enhanced mobility, access, capacity, and quality of service, with particular emphasis upon mobile users, such as aerial and maritime platforms, ground vehicles, and dismounted soldiers.

By operating in the UHF frequency band, which is lower than that used by conventional cellular networks, MUOS will provide U.S. and allied warfighters with the tactical ability to communicate in “disadvantaged” environments, including heavily forested areas where higher-frequency signals would be otherwise impaired. Even troops in buildings with no satellite access are expected to see an increase in communications capability.

The infrastructure to both fly the MUOS satellites and control access of a user’s communications is managed from the ground. Operationally, information flows to the satellites via UHF WCDMA links, and the satellites then relay the information to one of four ground sites located in Hawaii, Virginia, Italy, and Australia via a Ka-band feederlink. These facilities identify the destination of the communications and route the information to the appropriate ground site for Ka-band uplink to the satellite and UHF WCDMA downlink to the correct users. MUOS will also provide users access to select Defense Information System Network voice and data services.

The MUOS network is expected to be operational by the end of 2015, and all four required MUOS ground stations are complete. According to Lockheed, over 55,000 currently fielded radio terminals can be upgraded to be MUOS-compatible, with many of them requiring just a software upgrade.

MUOS-4, the next satellite scheduled to join the U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) secure communications network, has been encapsulated in its protective launch vehicle fairing for its August 31 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Photo Credit: ULA

 

[AMDR]

US Wargame Pits Army Missile Defenses Against Russian Jamming

HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: US missile defenses can hit a bullet with a bullet, shooting supersonic weapons right out of the sky — when they can see them. But as the Russians are showing in their invasion of Ukraine, radar can be jammed.

That’s why the US Army conducted an unprecedented wargame this spring to test its new air and missile defense network against advanced electronic warfare techniques. The highly classified exercise at White Sands Missile Range produced a staggering 70 terabytes of data, twice the size of Wikipedia. It will take a year to analyze the lessons-learned and implement needed fixes to Army systems, Brig. Gen. Neil Thurgood, the Army’s Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Missiles & Space, said. Another such exercise will occur in 2017, Thurgood told the Space & Missile Defense conference here. Then the Army plans to hold them every other year.

The Army’s own electronic warfare arsenal is painfully thin, with offensive jammers not set to enter service until 2023. No wonder, then, that the White Sands exercise assumed the enemy was on the electronic offensive and tested how US air and missile defenses would hold up.

The exercise tested an early version of theIntegrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System, which links together sensors, launchers, and command posts. The idea is that a battery no longer has to rely on its own radar but can get targeting data from any radar in the system — even if the two weren’t originally designed to work together, for example a Patriot launcher and aTHAAD AN/TPY-2 radar.

The original inspiration for IBCS was simple efficiency. It will replace a half-dozen different command and control systems for air and missile defense, and it will allow the Army to mix-and-match elements from different weapons systems as needed. But the Army also realized that IBCS could help defeat radar jamming. If one battery’s radar is jammed, spoofed, or hacked, IBCS allows it to stay in the fight using data from radars that are in different locations and/or on different frequencies. Better yet, IBCS will combine data from different radars into a single “composite track” of a given target, allowing radars with an accurate picture to correct radars that are being spoofed.

“Today, we don’t hook all those together. We don’t see one single air picture, one composite track for one target,” Thurgood. But in the exercise, “we had the Patriot weapon platform, the Sentinel [radar], the Avenger weapon platform, [and others] all linked to IBCS, all making the composite track, one track from all the sensors, and we practiced engagements… against an electronic warfare adversary that mirrors what’s happening in theUkraine and what we project is happening with other potential adversaries around the world.”

Traditional analog jamming can be effective, but it’s pretty obvious, Thurgood said: It just blasts out interference in selected wavelengths in a given area. But the Russians, Chinese, and others are using advanced digital jamming which attacks specific frequencies and can spoof the radar. Essentially, they record an incoming radar pulse and play it back in distorted form, confusing the radar receiver.

The distorted return signals can cancel out the true one, “like a set of Bose noise-cancelling headsets,” Thurgood said, or they can create “multiple false targets.” US missile defense batteries might be tricked into firing scarce interceptors at empty air while the real threat slips through. That’s a problem the Army wants to figure out in wargames before it ever faces it in real life.

 

[Fenrir]

The Navy Built an Algorithm That Predicts Pirates' Behavior Before an Attack

The Navy is a veritable patent machine—it regularly beats all other government bodies when it comes to sheer volume, with 364 filed last year alone. One recent filing: Patent #US8838515, a “Method for predicting pirate attack risk.”

It’s no surprise that the Navy wants to use artificial intelligence to predict what a team of engineers and scientists behind the patent call “emergent pirate behavior.” Pirates are on the rise, operating largely unchecked as they prey on lucrative international shipping routes. Right now, the Navy uses a system that simply analyzes wind and wave data to show where the best conditions for attacks are located. That’s all well and good, since as the team behind the project notes, “pirates tend to operate in small vessels, they are particularly vulnerable to adverse winds and seas.”

But it’s purely environmental—all the intel about local pirate gangs has to be synthesized by humans. The Navy’s new software creates models combining the best known conditions for pirating plus all available intel on the pirates in question. The name for these models? “Pirate replicates.”

Each replicate combines all that wave and weather data with the good stuff: behavioral data about pirate groups, where they’re based and where they keep stations, how big their groups are, what sorts of craft they’re using and how fast they can move, and whether they use particular patterns to troll for prey on the open seas. The replicate is a three-armed model—the pirate leave from their hideout, they search for prey, and they return—that’s shaped by all of that data, changing over time, they explain in their application.

The model is actually borrowed from a similar prediction system—based on predators and prey in nature:

The model used for the pirate problem is based on a prey/predator game with a learned hunting model for a pirate group as predator. Unlike prey/predator games where the population oscillates based on evolutionary dynamics, the presence of pirates at sea fluctuates depending on intelligence information as well as current and past meteorological conditions.

But the Navy wouldn’t be spending all this time developing a nuanced algorithm for pirate attacks if it didn’t have applications to defense at large right? The patent does say that “one skilled in the art would understand that the methodology described herein can be used in many other areas,” including everything from “undersea warfare” to “anti-narcotics efforts.”

Yep—pirate predictor might be a catchy name, but it looks like it’s far from the only use case here.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

U.S. Navy Ordered to Put Costliest Carrier Through Shock Testing - Bloomberg Business

"Top Pentagon officials have ordered the Navy to conduct shock tests at sea for its new aircraft carrier over objections from the service, which says the requirement may delay deployment by as long as six months.

Navy officials have argued that postponing full shock testing of the $12.9 billion USS Gerald R. Ford, the costliest U.S. warship, until as late as 2025 is justified because its components are being fully tested, it’s designed to be hardened against combat shocks and it’s being evaluated through modeling and simulation.

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, the Defense Department’s No. 2 civilian official, decided otherwise and directed that the tests be completed before deployment of the ship designated CVN 78 and built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., according to a memo sent to the Navy and a spokeswoman for the service.

The test “will be conducted to ensure the survivability of the CVN 78 design is understood prior to beginning operational deployments,” Frank Kendall, the undersecretary for acquisition, wrote on Aug. 7 to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, conveying Work’s decision.

In a shock trial, underwater charges are set off to assess how well a ship can withstand them. A crew is on board, and the test isn’t intended to damage equipment. The results are used to judge vulnerabilities and design changes that may be needed.

Pentagon Debate
The decision ordering the testing by Work, a former Marine who served as Navy undersecretary, is part of continuing debate inside the Pentagon over testing the Ford carrier. It has pitted the Navy against the Pentagon’s director of combat testing and at least three other civilian officials who all pushed for the test.

The chief tester, Michael Gilmore, has said that if the carrier performs as the Navy maintains, the process should take no more than three months.

More broadly, the debate reflects tensions between the military services, which want to field new weapons systems as soon as possible, and testing specialists who have gained clout since Congress created the office of combat testing in 1983, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a June report.

Conducting tests on the Ford before deployment would delay the return to an 11-carrier fleet, the number mandated by Congress, the Navy has said.

The Navy has operated with 10 carriers with the retirement of the USS Enterprise in 2012. Extended deployments of the remaining ships have placed stress on crews, the service has said.

Potential Vulnerabilities
Pentagon leaders considered the test’s timing and implications and its impact on the deployment schedule, Kendall’s spokeswoman, Maureen Schumann, said in an e-mail.

After discussions with the Navy, the leaders “concluded that impacts on operational deployments did not outweigh the utility of obtaining information about potential vulnerabilities, which could be revealed through testing,” she said.

Work made “the right decision,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said in an e-mail.

McCain, an Arizona Republican, has pressed the Navy to do the testing that he said “will mitigate the risks of integrating several new technologies, improve the design of future carriers, and, most importantly, increase” the vessel’s survivability and the “ability of the crew to survive battle damage.”

Navy Notified
Commander Thurraya Kent, a Navy acquisition spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that the service “has been notified of the decision” and “will move forward as directed.”

James Thomsen, who was the Navy’s principal civilian deputy for acquisition, wrote Kendall on May 20 extolling the Ford’s progress as validating the service’s rationale for a test delay.

“These improvements significantly reduced the risk of mission-critical failures in a combat shock environment but don’t eliminate them completely,” Thomsen wrote. “While there is some risk of deploying in advance of the shock trial, the Navy considers that this is low-risk and acceptable.”

In its report on the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2016, H.R. 1735, the Senate Armed Services Committee said the Ford’s new catapult, arresting system and radar “as well as a reliance on electricity rather than steam to power key systems” mean “there continues to be a great deal of risk in this program.”

The Senate version of the bill, now in negotiation in a House-Senate conference committee, would add $79 million for the shock test and a requirement for the Navy to certify that it will be performed no later than Sept. 30, 2017.

It also would hold up $100 million in procurement spending on the second carrier in the new class, the USS John F. Kennedy, until the Navy submits its certifications. The House version doesn’t have those provisions.

The Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, unlike its House counterpart, also would provide the $79 million for testing in its proposed fiscal 2016 spending bill."

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USS Theodore Roosevelt shock test

 

[AMDR]

US Navy to activate additional P-8 workstation for high-tempo ASW and ASuW missions
US Navy to activate additional P-8 workstation for high-tempo ASW and ASuW missions - IHS Jane's 360

The US Navy (USN) is to activate an additional mission station aboard the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime multimission aircraft (MMA) to alleviate elevated workload levels during high-contact anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASuW) missions, a service spokesperson told IHS Jane's on 13 August.

This disclosure comes on the back of a 7 August notification posted on the US government's Federal Business Opportunities website (FedBizOpps), in which the navy said it had awarded Boeing a cost-reimbursement-type contract for the procurement of design, development, and testing of supplies and services to integrate an additional workstation into the P-8A.

According to the notification, the contract began in June and will run through to December. The P-8A is currently fitted with five fully functioning mission crew workstations, but has space for an additional sixth already set aside. This additional station is already fully 'plumbed in', and requires only the mission system controls and consoles to be fitted.

"The addition of the sixth workstation will be activated across the entire [US Navy] fleet," the USN spokesperson said. "The first modification will be done in the production line, with retrofit modifications to be executed during opportune depot-level maintenance events."

The spokesperson added that the additional workstation will be extended to Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) P-8A aircraft as part of the standing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Defence of Australia. The official was unable to comment as to whether it would be rolled out to India and its P-8I Neptune, as that was a direct commercial sale between Boeing and the Indian government. Boeing had not responded to IHS Jane's at the time of writing.

With the P-8A set to fully replace the Lockheed P-3C Orion in USN service by the end of 2019, the Boeing platform is being rolled out in a series of capability increments (previously referred to as spirals). Increment 1, currently fielded, was rolled out from 2013 to add P-3 capabilities to the P-8A. Increment 2 will add multistatic active coherent (MAC) technology for undersea surveillance from 2016; while Increment 3, which is still being defined, will be introduced in 2020.

The sixth workstation is being activated to correct a deficiency in the baseline Increment 1 capability standard, while Increment 3 will capitalise on the addition to facilitate the addition of new capabilities in line with the P-8A Incremental Acquisition Strategy. One Increment 3 capability set that might necessitate the installation of a sixth mission station is the operation and teaming of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Boeing has been testing the MagEagle Compressed Carriage (MECC) UAV since 2010, with a view to deploying the system from the P-8.

The term 'compressed carriage' refers to the UAV's wing, control surfaces, and propeller being foldable. This design will enable it to be carried and deployed initially from the underwing pylon of the P-8A, or latterly from its internal weapons bay. It is envisioned that the MECC, which is based on the unarmed Insitu ScanEagle Compressed Carriage (SECC) UAV, would be launched from a P-8A to localise and track surface and subsurface vehicles, before being recovered aboard surface ships or shore stations. With an endurance of between 14 and 24 hours and a cruise speed of 80 kt (with sprints up to 115 kt), the MECC, and other systems like it, would greatly enhance the P-8's area of coverage.

The US Navy is to receive 109 P-8As in all, although an original requirement for 117 aircraft remains.

 

[AMDR]

SeaRAM set for Rota-based DDG 51 destroyers
SeaRAM set for Rota-based DDG 51 destroyers - IHS Jane's 360

The US Navy (USN) is moving ahead with a fast-track programme to install Raytheon Missile Systems' Mk 15 Mod 31 SeaRAM inner-layer missile system on four DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyers forward deployed to Rota, Spain.

Using funding reprogrammed from fiscal year 2015 (FY 2015) appropriations, the navy will acquire four SeaRAM systems for installation on USS Carney (DDG 64), USS Ross (DDG 71), USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) and USS Porter (DDG 78). It has also provisioned funds for Aegis/SeaRAM integration, and combat system hardware/software modifications.

The Mk 15 Mod 31 SeaRAM is an adaptation of the Mk 15 Block 1B close-in weapon system (CIWS) that replaces the 20 mm M61A1 Gatling gun with an 11-round guide for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM).

 

[Fenrir]

US Special Missions Aircraft Squadrons. Make sure to resize the images for a more clear picture.

US Tanker force

Can't wait to see the KC-46 added to this list

full resolution versions here and here.