Germany’s Ministry of Defence has officially ruled out the F-35 joint strike fighter as a choice to replace its aging Tornado fleet, Defense News has learned.Story here.
An official from the ministry confirmed that the F-35 is not a finalist in the competition, which seeks a replacement for the 90-jet fleet. The news was first reported by German site AugenGeradeaus.
First look: Our Sikorsky-Boeing #SB1 Defiant helicopter is advancing through its ground run tests at our Development Flight Center. #FVL @BoeingDefense pic.twitter.com/AqzP47LViF— Sikorsky (@Sikorsky) January 31, 2019
By 2023, the Marine Corps wants prototypes for a radically new scout unit they want to be the ground version of the F-35 — scouting ahead into hostile territory, killing key targets, and feeding data back to the rest of the force. Though called the Armored Reconnaissance Vehicle, the project has evolved well beyond a straightforward replacement for the aging Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) into a networked family of manned vehicles, ground robots, and drones, collectively capable of not only reconnaissance but also electronic warfare and long-range precision strikes.Story here.
Budget restraints and the possibility of a severely reduced fleet dampened the announcement of a long overdue future Armoured Reconnaissance Vehicle (ARV) programme for the US Marine Corps (USMC).I've been running this blog for a little while now and I can read the tea leaves. First the requirements are cut back, then an assessment is done, and then the decision is made that the current vehicle with modest upgrades will get the job done for the foreseeable future.
An RfI for a future amphibious ARV will be released in February 2019 kicking off the programme to replace the current Light Armoured Vehicles (LAV) fleet.
Yet, according to an official speaking at the International Armoured Vehicle conference in London, budget constraints mean that this might be too little too late.
A current road map for the project puts IOC at 4QFY30 and FOC at 1QFY34 meaning the 35-year-old LRV family will have to stay relevant for another 17 years.
The service indeed has a number of other priorities, such as fielding the JLTV and ACV increment 1.1, with funding at finite resource.
The project may also be overshadowed by a fleet reduction of 150 from the current 650 platforms to just 500. The USMC will perform an analysis to determine whether 500 vehicles would meet battalion combat requirements.
Ahead of the RfI the USMC has started putting together a list of requirements, although these too have been constrained by the budget. Predictably, water mobility remains the top priority with a focus on inland bodies of water such as rivers and lakes.
The USMC also wants the new ARV to keep the transportability of the vehicle it will replace and allow for the transport of four vehicles by Landing Craft Air Cushion, but will permit a 25% weight increase.
Other requirements are common to US DoD vehicle development programmes such as enhanced battle management systems, autonomous ability, unmanned and aerial ground systems and manned-unmanned teaming.
Durability testing data indicates service-life of initial F-35B short-takeoff-vertical landing jets bought by Marine Corps “is well under” expected service life of 8,000 fleet hours; “may be as low as 2,100″ hours Pentagon test office says in 2018 annual report obtained by Bloomberg that’s scheduled for release this week. That means some jets expected to start hitting service life limit in 2026.Story here.
Shanahan was also asked about allegation he's biased towards Boeing. He gave maybe his firmest answer today: "I am biased towards performance. I am biased towards giving the taxpayer his money’s worth and the F-35 unequivocally I can say has room for more a lot more performance."Just wow.
The Senior Division. The pressure mounts for PSBC 1803 students on Ex ROCK BOTTOM.
The one thing that makes me hesitate about Challenger 2 LEP is Rheinmetall's KF41 Lynx. Rumours abound that it isn't merely the basis for one of the best protected IFVs in its class, but also a radical new 50-tonne MBT with a 120 /130 mm SB. Crucially, both could be ready by 2025 pic.twitter.com/9sueW2N9B2— Nicholas Drummond (@nicholadrummond) January 29, 2019
The Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle program reached another milestone, proving the vehicle’s ability to deliver future combat power from ship to shore and follow-on objectives. Program Executive Officer Land Systems recently completed testing on the ACV, which proved the new vehicles' ability to not only take on challenging surf, but also complete a long swim from ship to shore and back.Track fans need to roll with this.
These major accomplishments facilitated the program moving from what was originally envisioned as an incremental approach, to one that will be known as the ACV family of vehicles, without the nomenclature of ACV 1.1 or ACV 1.2.
In June 2018, Marine Corps Systems Command awarded BAE Systems a contract to begin low rate initial production of the amphibious vehicles. Since then, the Advanced Amphibious Assault program office at Program Executive Officer Land Systems has continued conducting a variety of robust swimming and other tests on the platform.
Most recently, the ACV program office successfully completed 1.2 anticipated requirement testing, and determined the ACV technologically capable of fully replacing the legacy AAV.
‘Significantly greater survivability’
“We’ve landed on a vehicle that is very comparable in the ocean or in the water to the current AAV, with respect to performance,” said Col. Kirk Mullins, program manager for Advanced Amphibious Assault at PEO Land Systems. “We have a vehicle that has significantly greater survivability and mobility than the current platform, and one that—through demonstrated operational tests—the Marines are very happy with.”
Several capabilities were evaluated during recent testing, including the vehicle’s ability to embark and deploy off of an amphibious ship, its ship-to-shore threshold and a high-surf test, which subjected the vehicle to aggressive surf zones with waves reaching over six feet, said Mullins.
“The program office tested the vehicle to all of the ACV 1.2 transition requirements, and even subjected the vehicle to 9-foot waves without issues,” he said. “Because of this, the Marine Corps now was the opportunity to combine the program into a singular ACV family of vehicles program.”
The platform met the 1.2 requirements earlier than anticipated, which the program office credits in part to the competitive process by which the vehicle was selected.
Competition drives innovation
“The success the program has achieved today has a lot to do with how the program was structured and how it’s been executed,” said Angelo Scarlato, ACV 1.1 product manager at PEO Land Systems. “The competition [between industry to produce the ACV] worked, from getting increased performance out of our industry partners and the vehicle at a reasonable price.”
Scarlato also noted with the ACV 1.1 meeting the 1.2 requirements ahead of schedule, the Corps is able to completely avoid the incremental engineering, manufacturing and developmental costs associated with developing a different ACV 1.2 vehicle.
With the completion of 1.2 transition requirement testing, the program office is shifting their focus to operational effectiveness and suitability, force protection and survivability, and logistical sustainability testing, said Scarlato.
“The two statutory tests we have to undergo are [Initial Operational Test and Evaluation] and [Full-Up System Level] live-fire testing,” he said. “For IOT&E, we’re looking at operational effectiveness and operational suitability of the platform. For FUSL, we’re looking at force protection and survivability.”
The ACV is intended to serve Marines for at least the next 20-plus years. With that in mind, Scarlato said the ACV would also undergo logistics demonstration testing.
“For this, we’re focusing more on the suitability and sustainment aspects of the platform,” he said. “We’re not just looking at how effective it is in a combat environment, but also how logistically supportable the platform is.”
Putting the Warfighter first
In an unconventional move by the program office, Marine operators who tested the vehicle were given the opportunity to interface directly with the platform’s program managers and engineers—from both the AAA program office and BAE Systems—in order to provide constructive feedback on improving the vehicle’s design.
“There are some things that you just can’t capture from test reports and surveys that Marines usually fill out after these operational assessments,” said Mullins. “I wanted Marines to have a chance to physically put the ACV engineers and project officers on the vehicle to point out their suggestions for improvements, so when the engineers go back to their offices to design the fixes, they’d have a first-hand experience of what the Marines experienced.”
Mullins credits the project team and vehicle manufacturer for taking robust efforts to incorporate some of the Marines’ suggested changes, many of which will be included in the first release of ACVs later on this year. So far, the team has incorporated seven of the top feedback items provided by Marines. However, Mullins also wants Marines to know their additional feedback and suggestions could still be addressed in later builds of the ACV.
Aiming for continuous improvement by soliciting feedback is something the program office plans to carry into the future.
“We imagine doing something very similar with IOT&E, too,” said Scarlato. “It’s a continuous loop, soliciting feedback from your customer and designing changes to meet the customer’s needs.”
Fortunately, President Trump is not easily deterred. In Northeast Asia, the president is pursuing a strategy aligned with Nixon’s strategy in 1972. It’s designed to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate the potential for armed conflict between China and the United States.Wow.
Trump’s determination to move forward with a new summit is based on much more than the president’s perception of North Korea as the poster child for the failure of state socialism, a Northeast Asian State with a sub-Saharan African economy and a dying society sinking deeper and deeper into despair. President Trump also knows that half of China’s investment in national defense is committed to internal security.
The true rationale behind President Xi’s being granted exceptional authority is the real potential for nation-wide unrest if the Chinese economy’s slowdown results in a potentially destabilizing “hard landing.” It’s an open secret that Xi has chosen Seoul to manage North Korea’s decline. Thus, President Trump knows what Nixon knew: The United States and China have no compelling reasons to be enemies.
In Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, President Trump confronts a different challenge: A legacy of American military and political disaster that even the launching of U.S. military operations on the scale of Desert Storm could not reverse. After 9/11, Americans went abroad in search of a new enemy—Islamist Terrorism—to destroy. Trump knows these military operations failed.
President Trump is well aware that the American military supplanted a secular Arab dictatorship only to replace it with Iranian political, military and economic domination of Iraq. Having lost 800,000 soldiers in its fight with U.S.-backed Iraqi Forces in the 1980s, It’s painfully clear to Trump that Tehran will now fight any attempt by any foreign power to install an anti-Iranian regime in Baghdad—an Iranian version of the Monroe Doctrine.
In Ankara, Trump knows that Turkey’s membership in NATO is about as nominal as that of Greece or Bulgaria, but the president sees no benefit to the United States in cultivating conflict with Turkey. Like everyone else in the West, Trump knows that President Erdogan’s Turkey is a Sunni Islamist Republic, much as Iraq is a Shiite Islamist Republic.
President Trump knows that when U.S. forces withdraw from Syria, then Moscow, Damascus, Tehran and Ankara will try to craft a solution to the civil war’s devastation. Yet, Trump knows that solution will remain vulnerable to the violence of ruthless groups across the region. He also knows that Iran and Turkey will both compete for regional hegemony, but, like Russia, Iran and Turkey lack the economic strength and societal cohesion to bear the heavy burden that the competition will impose.
Another option is to save $16 billion per year by not buying any more F-35s, and instead using older designs. “Under this option, DoD would halt further production of the F-35 and instead purchase the most advanced versions of older, non-stealthy fighter aircraft that are still in production,” CBO explained. “Through 2028, the Air Force would purchase 510 F-16 Fighting Falcons, and the Navy and Marine Corps would purchase 394 F/A-18 Super Hornets. Those purchases would occur on the same schedule as that currently in place for the F-35s. The services would continue to operate the 429 F-35s that have already been purchased.”Story here.
“An advantage of this option is that it would reduce the cost of replacing DoD’s older fighter aircraft while still providing new F-16s and F/A-18s with improved capabilities—including modern radar, precision weapons, and digital communications—that would be able to defeat most of the threats that the United States is likely to face in the coming years,” CBO added. “The F-35s that have already been purchased would augment the stealthy B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters that are currently in the force.”
Another $18 billion would be saved ff the Navy stops building Ford-class aircraft carriers after the third vessel in the series is completed. CBO points out that the existing fleet and the carriers under construction would maintain the current size of the carrier force for a long time because the ships are designed to operate or 50 years,” CBO said. “Three Ford class carriers, including the Enterprise, have been delivered or are under construction. They will replace the first three Nimitz-class carriers when they are retired in the 2020s and early 2030s; so as late as 2036, the Navy would still field 11 carriers under this option.”
Other options include canceling development of the B-21 stealth bomber, slashing the Navy’s ambitious plan to buy 301 ships over the next 30 years, and reducing the number of nuclear weapons.
