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[Transhumanist]

17 Wacky Naval Aviation Terms You Never Knew You Wanted To Know

1. Ease Guns to Land: As soon as carrier pilots hit the landing area, the engines are at full military power (full power without afterburner). This is because in case the hook misses one of the wires, the plane has enough power to take off and continue flying. Ease Guns To Land is when a pilot pulls the throttles back in an effort to help set the hook for arrestment. This is a big no-no, and results in a stern debrief and probably a mandatory break from flying.

2. “Taxi One Wire” written as “T1W”: The ship has four arresting cables (CVN’s Reagan, Bush and Ford only have three), with the most aft wire being #1 and the most forward wire being #4. The target wire (what every pilot is trying to hit) is normally #3. While catching any wire can be considered “good”, you want to avoid the #1 wire because it is the closest to the back of the ship. Hitting the back of the ship is not recommended. Taking that thought a step further, pilot’s who land well before the #1 wire and “taxi into it” are on a very dangerous path.

3. Tower Flower: During the launch and recovery of aircraft, each squadron has to send a Junior Officer (JO) up to the tower (called Pri-Fly, short for Primary Flight Control) to provide the Air Boss and his team with a liaison for their aircraft and any problems (or stupidity) that may arise. Unfortunately for the JO, the Air Boss is not always in the greatest of moods, so communication tends to flow in only one direction. The poor soul on the receiving end of the Air Boss’s wrath is the Tower Flower.

4. Greenie Board: Each pass at the carrier is graded by Landing Signal Officers (LSO’s). The results for each pilot are displayed using colored dots on a “greenie board” displayed in their respective ready rooms for all to see. The green color represents the highest grade a pilot can receive. A fair is normally yellow and considered an average pass. Red represents the worst and is referred to as a “cut pass” (such as ease guns to land). A Brown dot is used for a pass called a “no grade.” This pass is considered safe but certainly below average and affectionately known as a turd. A rule to live by: Avoid the brown.

5. Foc’sle Follies: At the end of each grading period for landings (called a Line Period), the awards for Top Hook and other accomplishments are handed out during Foc’sle Follies. The name comes from the location on the ship where this ceremony takes place (Ships Foc’sle) and where crazy, funny, and sometimes straddling the line of political correctness skits are performed. It is a great camaraderie building event and normally happens before a port call or just prior to the end of a long cruise—so spirits are high.

6. Roll ‘em: A Roll ‘em is a term used for showing a movie in a squadron’s Ready Room. Roll ‘ems can be very formal events with set doctrine and mandatory attendance. The events might include a Call Sign Review Board where a new guy is formally blessed with a call sign, a “Stoning” where someone is brought before the crowd and stoned with paper rocks for performing a mildly dumb act that day, and an attempt to guess the movie about to be shown using drawings of the movie subject matter—kind of like charades. Roll ‘ems include popcorn, sodas, and as much candy as can be purchased from the ship’s store.

7. Mid Rats: Formally known as Midnight Rations. It’s one of four meals served on the ship and one of the most popular because the grill is open for orders. If you are a nightly attendee to Mid Rats, you better have a good workout program in place to keep the extra pounds off.

8. Mr. Hands: The ship has closed circuit television that is piped through to nearly every space that has a TV. Two of the most watched channels at night are the PLAT camera—(Pilots Landing Aide Television or PLAT), which shows landings from the perspective of looking aft on the ship and the Mr. Hands channel. Mr. Hands is a real time depiction of traffic in the pattern using small pucks symbolizing aircraft that move around a board. It gets its name from the sailor’s hand (sometimes in white gloves) that would pick up the pucks and move them around, placing them at the proper location as aircraft made it around the pattern. Mr. Hands has now been upgraded to a video depiction rather than someone’s actual hand, but old-timers still refer to it as Mr. Hands.

9. Dog Machine: If you’ve ever been to a Golden Corral or similar restaurant where they have soft serve ice cream, then you’ve seen a dog machine. Soft serve ice cream is known on the ship as “dog” because when it comes out of the machine it has a strong physical resemblance to dog poop. In the wardroom, pilots always know if there is a good batch of dog. If you hear someone exclaim, “That’s a good dog!” a rush to the dog machine ensues. I guess pilots don’t have much to do.

 

[Transhumanist]

Continued from above

10. The Smoking Lamp is Lit: This old Navy tradition is slowing fading away as the Navy encourages people to quit using tobacco. While there is no actual lamp, there are announcements made on the 1 MC establishing when folks can go smoke. The smoking lamp is out during refueling, drills, and ordnance loading. Kind of makes sense, I guess.

11. Six Pack: With more than six acres of usable space, the flight deck is divided into different sections with nicknames so people can figure out where your aircraft is parked. One of the most well known areas is the “six pack”, which can hold roughly six jets and is located just in front of the island. Tomcats were always parked on the fantail. In the later years of the Tomcat, that area was referred to as “Jurassic Park”.

12. Covey Launch: To help two aircraft expeditiously rendezvous sometimes the deck will perform what is called a “covey launch”. This is when two aircraft go down the catapults at the same time, typically catapults #1 and #3. It is a well-timed and coordinated event usually performed by a seasoned air department deck crew. Plus, it looks pretty cool!

13. Mark Your Father: This is a term used by aircrew and controllers to identify where an aircraft is in relation to the carrier using a radial and distance from the ship’s TACAN. It is normally an imperative statement and goes something like this:

Controller: “101, mark your Father” (In his best Darth Vader voice)

Pilot: “101, marking mom’s 230 for 25” (i.e. Southeast of the ship at 25 nautical miles)

The verbiage “marking mom’s XXX” is used to clarify the direction as “from the ship to the aircraft” and avoids having the reciprocal direction being interpreted as the position—albeit incorrectly. (The reciprocal would be “Mom bears 050 for 25” but then it just gets confusing and we try to keep directions to one way)

14. Clara: One of the first times coming down the chute at the ship, my pilot told me he was “Clara.” I had no idea what he was saying, so I quizzically asked him over the aircraft’s internal intercom system “Clara who?”

Clara is the term pilot’s use to tell the Landing Signal Officers that they cannot see the ball (the Fresnel lens landing aide). Clara is short for “clarification” or more bluntly “tell me where I am on glideslope, I can’t see the ball”. The LSO’s response after Clara is normally a position call. “Roger, you’re high”. In my case, the “Clara who” back to my pilot did not help our situation; he still had no idea where we were on glideslope and the LSO’s had no idea he was “Clara”.

15. Bolter: This is one of the most well known naval aviation terms. If a pass is made at the ship and the aircraft’s hook does not engage an arresting wire (typically because of being too high), then it is known a bolter. If the hook touches in the landing area but fails to catch a wire (several things could be a factor for this happening), it is known as a hook skip bolter. A hook skip bolter is shown on the event status board as a “B” with a circle around it, where as a bolter is simply shown as a “B.”

16. “Bingo on the Ball” aka “Trick or Treat”: During flying operations when there is a usable divert field within 200 nautical miles, the carrier is under what is called “Bingo Ops.” This means if an aircraft has a problem or is low on gas and cannot make an arrested landing, the pilot can divert—or bingo—to land at the divert field. When a pilot calls “Bingo on the Ball” (or “Trick or Treat”), it means this is his last pass before he has to bingo back to the pre-determined divert field. The aircraft shows up on the event status board as “BOB.” BOB always makes you nervous because you don’t want an aircraft to head back to the beach unintentionally.

17. Red Light: Each carrier has a Search and Rescue (SAR) helicopter that launches first before any other aircraft. This is in case an aircraft does go down, a rescue helicopter is in place to pick up the pilot. Before launching, the SAR helo gives a report on how long it can stay airborne and still perform the search and rescue mission. This is known as red light, and is normally given in hours and minutes: “610’s red light, 3+15.” Thus, 610 has 3 hours and 15 minutes where he can be SAR capable. Let’s hope he doesn’t have to use it.

 

[Transhumanist]

Northrop's battle command system brings down ballistic missile target

Northrop Grumman's new battle management system for ballistic missile defense downs a ballistic missile in its first flight test.

The integrated air and missile defense Battle Command System downed a ballistic missile in its first flight test by Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Army.

The test on Thursday was conducted using the IAMD BCS, a Patriot system radar and two adapted Patriot launchers connected at the component level to the IBCS integrated fire control network, Northrop Grumman said.


Using measurement data from the Patriot radar, the IBCS track manager established a composite track on the ballistic missile, the IBCS mission control software assessed the track as a threat and presented an engagement solution. The engagement operations center operator then used the IBCS mission control software to command the launches of two Patriot PAC-2 interceptor missiles to destroy the target in flight.

"IBCS is crucial to the Army vision for an IAMD C2 [command and control] capability across all echelons and AMD assets, including joint systems," said Brig. Gen. (P) L. Neil Thurgood, Army program executive officer, Missiles and Space. "The success of IBCS allows our ability to acquire needed radars and interceptors to plug into our architecture without having to buy entire systems and to optimize the sensor/shooter relationship to the target.

"Additionally, IBCS allows for a single AMD C2 that is tailorable at every echelon and reduces the training burden while enhancing mission success."

Northrop Grumman's IBCS is to replace seven legacy command-and-control systems to provide a single integrated air picture, reduce single points of failure and offer the flexibility for deployment of smaller force packages. The networking sensors and interceptors – instead of linking them -- provides wider area surveillance and broader protection areas.

IBCS's open systems architecture allows integration of current and future sensors and weapon systems and enables interoperability with joint C2 and the U.S. ballistic missile defense system.

From Battle command system for integrated missile defense successful - UPI.com

 

[AMDR]

Advanced Arresting Gear Delays Won’t Stop Ford From Delivering On Time
PEO Carriers: Advanced Arresting Gear Delays Won't Stop Ford From Delivering On Time - USNI News

Pre-Commissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) transits the James River during the ship’s launch and transit to Newport News Shipyard pier three for the final stages of construction and testing in November 2013. US Navy photo.

The program executive officer for aircraft carriers told USNI News he is confident the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) will deliver on time despite delays in the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) program.

Rear Adm. Tom Moore said Thursday that the AAG setbacks created about four to six weeks of schedule pressure to the ship, but he is striving to make up that time. Moore said in March that the General Atomics-built component had a design flaw, but the solution that has been implemented seems to be working well, he told USNI News.

“They put a winch, if you will, at the end of the water twister to rotate the entire assembly so they can wrap the cable around the purchase cable drum. That’s worked fine,” he said.

Most of the arresting system has been installed, and shipbuilders are now adding the final section, the cable shock absorbers – which Moore said are very large and go in a confined space. Newport News Shipbuilding is installing the cable shock absorbers now, at the same time workers put the non-skid coating on the flight deck, which Moore called “a kind of a ballet” to do simultaneously.

Moore said in March that the improved AAG design would have to be tested at Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst, but for scheduling reasons he couldn’t postpone installation while awaiting the test results.

“If Lakehurst uncovers something on the system that has to be fixed, the risk I’m taking is I’m installing it and then I have to go back and fix something that’s all ready installed, it’s more challenging. Really at this point, I don’t have a choice,” he said in March.

Despite that challenge, Moore said today that, “I’m a year out, my goal is to get everything done before we deliver, so that’s what we’re driving for right now.”

“I don’t know that we’ll retire all the risk here over the course of the next year. I will tell you that we will have the entire system installed prior to delivery next March,” he elaborated.
“There may be some testing that has to be completed [after delivery], we’re going to take a look at where it makes sense to do that testing. If the last of the testing on AAG is the only thing keeping us from going to sea – the sea trials on the ship does not, we don’t launch and recover aircraft, we don’t really do that until June. So we’ll take a look at it. And if we’re talking a handful of testers and it makes sense to get out to sea and test the rest of the ship and then maybe complete that [AAG] testing in the period between the end of March and June, which is when we’re supposed to launch and recover aircraft, we’ll take a look at that.”

The other new system on the flight deck, the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) “is probably one of the best news stories in the program,” Moore said. The Navy finished no-load tests on Catapult 2, including 22 shots in one day, and “it worked like a champ.”

Catapult 2 is set for dead-load testing next month, which involves catapulting large, wheeled, steel vessels weighing up to 80,000 pounds off the front of the ship to simulate the weight of an actual aircraft.

Catapult 1 will follow shortly behind, with no-load testing next week. Construction on Catapults 3 and 4 will wrap up soon so testing can begin shortly afterwards, Moore said.

Overall, the ship is 90-percent complete, with 53 percent of the compartments turned over to the ship’s crew – which is “significantly further ahead of where we were on CVN-77,” Moore noted. The crew will move aboard in August.

“We’re certainly not without our challenges,” Moore said, but “we’re in a good position. … We’re in a position we’d like to be [in] with 308 days to go.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fourth Submarine Forward-Deployed to Guam
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Defense Department’s rebalancing of forces to the Asia-Pacific area of responsibility took another step with the stationing of a fourth nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) to Naval Station Guam.

The Los Angeles-class SSN USS Toledo, formerly based in Groton, Conn., has joined three other SSNs staged to Guam, USS Oklahoma City, USS Chicago and USS Key West.

SSNs arrived in Guam beginning in October 2002, with the force built up to three by July 2007.

The basing of SSNs in Guam is a force multiplier for the shrinking U.S. submarine force. The submarines have a much shorter transit distance to operating areas than from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, or San Diego, and can spend more time on patrol in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean areas.

Based in the Pacific are 30 SSNs, compared with 22 SSNs in the Atlantic bases.

The submarines in Guam are supported by the submarine tender USS Frank Cable, which also services visiting SSNs and guided-missile submarines.

 

[AMDR]

UPDATE: DOD wants to block-buy 450 F-35 jets from Lockheed
UPDATE: DOD wants to block-buy 450 F-35 jets from Lockheed - 5/29/2015 - Flight Global

The Pentagon says it has enough confidence in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme to start planning for a three-year block buy that would purchase about 450 jets from prime contractor Lockheed Martin.

The block buy would include F-35s for programme partners and foreign military sale (FMS) customers, and would cover aircraft procurement for fiscal years 2018 to 2020. The deal needs the blessing of Congress to proceed, and those discussions will begin soon.

“We’re feeling optimistic enough about the programme that we’re going to proceed with the planning on that, and we’ll be talking to the Congress about it,” DOD acquisition chief Frank Kendall told reporters in a teleconference call from Oslo, Norway.

By bundling the orders into a single, three-year production contact, Kendall says he expects to see “double-digit savings”, with multiyear procurements historically achieving a 5% to 15% cost reduction. The block buy is not covered under the same statute as a multiyear procurement, but has the similar effect of guaranteeing production quantities several years out instead of having to negotiate single-year lots, or exercise options in a base-year agreement.

“It would include our international partners and it could also include FMS customers,” Kendall says. “It allows industry to plan with some confidence in the next few years of production.”

Flightglobal reported in April that the joint programme office intended to block-buy 477 Pratt & Whitney F-35 engines, and there has been general discussion about a multiyear purchase of some kind. But Kendall’s comments confirm that a three-year order is the preferred way ahead as production scales up. His comments come at the end of an annual F-35 Chief Executives Officers Conference in Norway.

Kendall says the block buy will help the programme achieve the “economies of scale” it needs to reduce the aircraft’s unit cost from about $110 million today to about $80 million. He says it would also incentivise international partners stick to their planned F-35 quantities and not cut orders.

“We want to set up an arrangement where there is a premium for people who stay in the program as planned, so people who commit to being in the block buy get a financial benefit from that,” he says. “If they weren’t, obviously they’d experience some cost increases.”

In another development, Kendall confirmed that the programme will shift from contractor logistics support for F-35 sustainment activities to a performance-based arrangement, where Lockheed and Pratt would guarantee a level of aircraft availability and readiness instead of being paid by the hour for support services.

“Our historical analysis shows 10% to 15% reductions roughly for performance-based logistics (PBL) over a transactional way of doing logistics support,” he says. “The idea is to go to a structure where we can do PBL at the system level. It won’t be instantaneous or overnight. We’re trying to do it as we go along as much as we can because it’s a preferred way of doing business when it’s available.”

 

[Techy]

Boeing's QF-16 Unmanned fighter test flight:

 

[Transhumanist]

This Navy Squadron's Cruise Video Includes A Terrifying Carrier Landing

U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet Squadron VFA-115 “Eagles” put together a pretty sweet WESTPAC cruise video. One clip in particular reminds us just how challenging landing a 25-ton, $50 million dollar fighter on a chunk of steel floating in the middle of the ocean can be, especially when visibility is near zero!

The Eagle’s legacy dates back to WWII, where the unit flew TBM Avengers. Today, they are forward deployed with the rest of Carrier Air Wing 5’s (CVW-5) elite squadrons to NAF Atsugi, Japan. This summer will be interesting for the Eagles, their Air Wing and their carrier, the USSGeorge Washington, which has already left its Japanese home port for the last time.

The George Washington and her Air Wing will cruise around the Pacific along with her Carrier Strike Group escorts till late Summer. The ship will then head to San Diego, where about 2,000 of its sailors will board the USS Ronald Reagan. The Ronald Reagan will sail back to Yokosuka, Japan to take on the role of America’s forward deployed carrier while the George Washington receives a mid-life complex overhaul and nuclear refueling back in Norfolk, Virginia.

It sounds like a lot of uprooting and change, but that is what being the tip of America’s spear overseas is all about: adapting, overcoming and always being ready to fight.

Bonus! Check out VFA-115’s 2012 cruise video below:

 

[mike2000 is back]

This Navy Squadron's Cruise Video Includes A Terrifying Carrier Landing

U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet Squadron VFA-115 “Eagles” put together a pretty sweet WESTPAC cruise video. One clip in particular reminds us just how challenging landing a 25-ton, $50 million dollar fighter on a chunk of steel floating in the middle of the ocean can be, especially when visibility is near zero!

The Eagle’s legacy dates back to WWII, where the unit flew TBM Avengers. Today, they are forward deployed with the rest of Carrier Air Wing 5’s (CVW-5) elite squadrons to NAF Atsugi, Japan. This summer will be interesting for the Eagles, their Air Wing and their carrier, the USSGeorge Washington, which has already left its Japanese home port for the last time.

The George Washington and her Air Wing will cruise around the Pacific along with her Carrier Strike Group escorts till late Summer. The ship will then head to San Diego, where about 2,000 of its sailors will board the USS Ronald Reagan. The Ronald Reagan will sail back to Yokosuka, Japan to take on the role of America’s forward deployed carrier while the George Washington receives a mid-life complex overhaul and nuclear refueling back in Norfolk, Virginia.

It sounds like a lot of uprooting and change, but that is what being the tip of America’s spear overseas is all about: adapting, overcoming and always being ready to fight.

Bonus! Check out VFA-115’s 2012 cruise video below:

Ruling the world baby .

 

[Transhumanist]

The Blue Angels Roar Over Graduation At The U.S. Naval Academy

In what has to be one of the best graduation ceremony shots of all time, the Blue Angels are caught above the speaker’s podium, where Vice President Joe Biden and the Navy and Marine Corps Brass welcome the U.S. Naval Academy’s graduating class of 2015. Seconds later the stadium is filled with thunder:

Congrats to all!

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Another round of F35B Sea Trials completed on Wasp

 

[AMDR]

U.S. Paratroopers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, practice urban combat skills during Combined Joint Operational Access Exercise 15-01, at Fort Bragg, N.C.

 

[Transhumanist]

Watch And Hear The Last Time The Battleship Wisconsin Fired Its Big Guns

This awesome video, shot on May 16th, 1991, documented the last time the Iowa Class Battleship USS Wisconsin (BB-64) fired off its main battery. Watching her 16 inch guns going off in a crescendo and then ending in a full broadside is breathtaking, and the sound is ferocious.

Make sure to turn up you volume:

The Iowa Class’s Mark 7 16-inch guns and their huge turrets were like four-story rotating steel fortresses in their own right. Each massive 66-foot, 240k-pound rifled barrel had a life between 250 and 350 rounds before it needed to be replaced. They were capable of flinging shells weighing up to 2,700 pounds almost 25 miles at hunting rifle speeds. Each turret was operated by between 75 and 90 men, and they weren’t even attached to the ship. Their weight alone kept them seated, so if the ship were ever to rolled over, the gun turrets would have slipped out.

Even more impressive than the Iowa Class’s main battery was its fire control system. The Mark 38 Gun Fire Control System was one of the world’s first computers and included a director tower, plotting room, and data transmission system. The Iowa Class had plotting rooms and directors fore and aft for redundancy. The system could utilize optical or radar ranging and was tied to a series of gyros. When combined, the system was highly accurate and could take into account wind, Magnus Effect, gravity, the spin of the shell, the earth’s curvature, and coriolis effect.

Upgrades added during the 1980s Reagan-era refit infused a small portion of modern technology, such as a radar that tracked the prior round’s course, with the seemingly ancient WWII system. This, along with more consistent propellant and a ship-borne UAV to call out targets and asses the gun’s damage after each volley, made the big 16 inch guns nearly surgical weapons.

The Wisconsin, like her sisters, is now a museum. She now rests in Norfolk, Virginia. Although it is extremely unlikely that she will ever sail operationally again, the Iowa and Wisconsin have been ordered to be kept under the following conditions under the 2006 Defense Authorization Act, just in case their high-volume shore bombardment capability is ever needed again:

1. Iowa and Wisconsin must not be altered in any way that would impair their military utility;
2. The battleships must be preserved in their present condition through the continued use of cathodic protection, dehumidification systems, and any other preservation methods as needed;
3. Spare parts and unique equipment such as the 16-inch (410 mm) gun barrels and projectiles be preserved in adequate numbers to support Iowa and Wisconsin, if reactivated;
4. The navy must prepare plans for the rapid reactivation of Iowa and Wisconsin

Still, many Iowa Class components, like spare gun barrels that were destroyed for no reason, have no manufacturer today, so the ship’s antique mechanical and electrical components would be very hard to replace or even service. As a result, actually returning these ships back wartime condition would be a challenging process to say the least. That being said, having even one of these sailing the high-seas as America’s flagship would be a very expensive but awesome display of American power projection.

 

[F-22Raptor]

Army Tests New Missile Defense Brain, IBCS; Navy, MDA Intrigued

The Army’s missile defense force is getting a new brain. That’s the real meaning of a successful test yesterday of something called the Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System, or IBCS for (mercifully) short.

IBCS doesn’t blow stuff up. A Patriot missile destroyed the target in last week’s test at White Sands Missile Range. ICBS doesn’t detect the target: A Patriot radar did that. (Even the target was a Patriot, simulating an inbound ballistic missile). So what does ICBS do? It links the radar, the launcher, and the human decision makers — and in more flexible ways that ever before.

“The ultimate long range goal is to be able to engage any target with any weapon with data that comes from any sensor,” said Northrop Grumman vice president Dan Verwiel.

Last week’s test demonstrated that IBCS software, network, and command post function as well as the existing command system. The next IBCS test will attempt something the current systems cannot do, connecting a radar and a launcher that were never designed to work together.

That first test will be a Patriot launcher and a Sentinel air defense radar, Verwiel told me. The ultimate goal is to mix and match freely: not just among Army missile defense systems, but between the four armed services, and not just among existing systems, but with easy plug-and-play for any future system, including exotica such as laser weapons. The program has already gotten IBCS to talk to the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) — albeit in a lab, not in a field test — and it will eventually link up to the Missile Defense Agency’s command network for continental defense, C2BMC (Command & Control, Battle Management, & Communications). Of course, just getting all the Army’s systems to work together will be challenge enough to start with.

That flexibility is what makes IBCS — not new missiles, not new radars, not even lasers — the “Number 1 priority” of the Army’s air and missile defense force, Space and Missile Defense Command’s Gen. David Mann said at a February conference.

“Many folks can just dismiss it as a network,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Spillman, commander of the Air Defense Artillery School, at the same Association of the US Army conference. “It’s much more than that.”

Currently, each anti-aircraft weapon or missile defense system comes with its own launchers, its own command-and-control, and its own radar. That’s straightforward as long as you only deploy one thing. But each system is best against a different kind of threat — that’s why the military buys more than one thing in the first place — so the best defense is a layered defense. When you try to use more than one system at once, however, some human being has to look back and forth between two screens (or three, or four, or however many systems you’ve deployed) to try to figure out if the threat that (say) the Patriot is seeing is the same incoming missile the THAAD radar has picked up. If the human gets confused, you might take multiple shots at one threat while letting another get through unhindered. Or you might blow a friendly aircraft out of the sky, as happened twice in 2003, killing two British air crew and one American.

To prevent these tragedies, IBCS is designed to create “a single integrated air picture” fusing data from all available sensors into a coherent and consistent whole. All told, IBCS will replace seven separate command-and-control systems currently in service.

That means IBCS has to talk to all the software and hardware those seven systems currently control, software and hardware that was designed at different types to different standards by different companies. Most also predate the current push for open architecture, which means they rely on proprietary technology jealously guarded by the original manufacturers. Just getting everything to work together without violating anyone’s intellectual property was a major effort, Verwiel told me.

The need to plug into all these existing systems also led to a “tremendous number of requirements,” Verwiel said. (Requirements is an acquisition term of art for specific things the government says the product must be able to do).

There were “literally many thousands of requirements,” he said, “which is an order of magnitude greater than anything we’d ever dealt with with this customer before.” Those requirements also grew over time as the military became more conscious and more stringent about protecting its networks from cyber and electronic warfare (i.e. hacking and jamming).

So Verwiel is understandably chuffed that his baby’s first test went off without a hitch. Three more flight tests will follow over the next 12 months — he declined to give details — and the official Limited User Test will begin next spring. Then in comes the big one, the Pentagon’s Milestone C decision in August 2016 about whether the program is ready to move from development into production.

How’s that coming? “The IBCS program [was] identified by OSD as an exemplar program for should-cost and Better Buying Power,” said Barry Pike, the Army’s deputy program executive officer for missiles and space, speaking at the February conference.

In particular, Pike said, IBCS should allow Army missile defense to keep pace with the threat at a price we can afford. Under the old model, if you needed to replace an obsolescent radar (for example), you needed to upgrade — or replace — the weapon and command system that went with that radar as well. Under IBCS, which allows components to plug and play, you just need to replace the obsolescent piece, without having to touch anything else– a major cost savings. That’s the kind of modest, incremental modernization that the cash-strapped and chastened Army sees as its best path forward.

Army Tests New Missile Defense Brain, IBCS; Navy, MDA Intrigued « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary

 

[Transhumanist]

Navy Responds To Claim Ship Was Scared Off By Russian Jets With Video

Media outlets in Russia began crowing last week about an incident in the Black Sea, off the coast of the contested Crimean Peninsula. Russian fighters buzzed an American destroyer, sending it running scared after it entered Russian waters, they said. But the US Navy just verbally struck back, with video of the encounter.

The story seemed fairly outlandish when it first came out, with Russia claiming its Su-24 Fencers had actually even come close to making the USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, feel threatened. Nor did it sound likely to us that the Ross would act provocatively or enter Russian waters while operating in the Black Sea after leaving the Romanian port of Costanta, something US Navy ships have done for years now.

But today, the US Navy released the video below, which shows a Russian Navy Su-24 Fencer,many of which have been posted on the Crimean Peninsula for decades, making a low pass abreast the USS Ross.

This is hardly something that the Ross could not defend against. Quite the contrary actually.

But Russian state media outlet Sputnik quoted an unnamed source in “Crimea’s security forces” saying that really, it was the Americans being the bullies:

The ship’s crew acted provocatively and aggressively, which caused alarm among operators of monitoring stations and Black Sea Fleet ships carrying out assignments in the Black Sea. Scrambled Su-24 attack jets demonstrated a readiness to forcibly suppress border violations and defend the country’s interest.

It seems that the Americans did not forget the April 2014 incident when one Su-24 actually shut down all equipment on the new USS Donald Cook American destroyer with anti-missile system elements.

The “source” is referencing a highly questionable electronic attack event and flyby that took place against another US Navy surface combatant, the USS Donald Cook, that was operating in the Black Sea last year during the opening stages of Russia’s Ukraine campaign.

Is an Su-24 a threat? Sure it is, in that they can carry some fairly wicked anti-ship missiles. But these attacks occur at standoff ranges, not within visual range. If anything, the Russian jet’s offering of free target practice was good training for the Ross’s crew, and passes like this one occur in international waters fairly regularly. And many of those, too, can carry anti-ship missiles like the Su-24.

And just as well, no electronic warfare or jamming was reported during the event. The full US Navy statement goes as such:

USS Ross (DDG 71) observes the flight by a Russian SU 24 aircraft while both were operating in international waters and airspace. Ross continued on her mission after observing the aircraft return to base. At no time did Ross act aggressively nor did she deviate from her planned operations. The conduct of her crew has been and continues to be professional. Ross’ Sailors observed that the SU 24 carried no weapons – wings were “clean.” The U.S. Navy operates ships in the Black Sea on a routine basis, consistent with the Montreux Convention and International Law.

Like everything else involving Russia and the US right now, you have to take these initial reports with the proverbial grain of salt. Russian media is highly inconsistent when it comes to these types of stories and some claims are just not worth re-printing with corroboration or waiting for the other side’s story first.

This is just one of those instances.

Yet when you look at it from a propaganda perspective, considering that throngs of international headlines reposted the initial story blindly, with headlines like “Russia Chases Off US Destroyer” and other variations, the initial story probably did its job as far as Russian interests are concerned.

 

[AMDR]

A fuel intake that flips

It seems that the Americans did not forget the April 2014 incident when one Su-24 actually shut down all equipment on the new USS Donald Cook American destroyer with anti-missile system elements.