VIDEO: F/A-18F Super Hornet with quad load-out of AGM-84 Harpoon Block 1C missiles

PHOTEX: “Into the blue!” US Navy blimp MZ-3A conducts orientation flight from Pax River

131106-N-PO203-262 PATUXENT RIVER, Md. (Nov. 6, 2013) The Navy’s MZ-3A manned airship, assigned to Scientific Development Squadron (VXS) 1 of the Military Support Division at the Naval Research Laboratory, conducts an orientation flight from Patuxent River, Md. The MZ-3A is an advanced flying laboratory used to evaluate affordable sensor payloads and provide support for other related science and technology projects for the naval research enterprise. (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released)

US Navy MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle completes first day of flying

131031-N-SW486-022 Point MUGU, Calif. (Oct. 31, 2013) An MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle takes off from Naval Base Ventura County at Point Mugu. The Navy’s newest variant of the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter completed its first day of flying Oct. 31 with two flights reaching 500 feet altitude. The MQ-8C air vehicle upgrade will provide longer endurance, range and greater payload capability than the MQ-8B. Initial operating capability for the MQ-8C is planned for 2016, with the potential for an early deployment in 2014. (U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman/Released)

NAVAIR awards $508 million contract modifcation for F-35 propulsion systems

US Navy awards $508 million contract modifcation for F-35 propulsion systems.

United Technologies Corp., Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, East Hartford, Conn., is being awarded a $508,214,419 modification to the previously awarded F-35 Lightening II Lot VI low rate initial production advance acquisition contract (N00019-12-C-0090). This modification provides for the procurement of 18 F135 conventional take off and landing (CTOL) propulsion systems for the U.S. Air Force; six short take-off and vertical landing propulsion systems for the U.S. Marine Corps; and seven carrier variant propulsion systems for the U.S. Navy. In addition, this contract procures three F135 CTOL propulsion systems for Italy; two CTOL propulsion systems for Australia; one F135 CTOL spare propulsion system for Italy; and one F135 spare propulsion system for Australia. This modification also provides for program labor, engineering assistance to production, non-recurring sustainment efforts, service and country specific requirements, depot activation efforts, and long-lead hardware. Work will be performed in East Hartford, Conn. (67 percent); Bristol, United Kingdom (16.5 percent); and Indianapolis, Ind. (16.5 percent), and is expected to be completed in June 2016. Fiscal 2012, aircraft procurement Air Force, fiscal 2012 aircraft procurement Navy, and international partner funding in the amount of $508,214,419 will be obligated at time of award, $422,680,150 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract combines purchases for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps ($211,858,131; 42 percent); the U.S. Air Force ($210,822,019; 41 percent); and the international partners ($85,534,269; 17 percent). The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.

PHOTEX: F-35B drops GBU-12 over Atlantic Test Ranges

130801-O-GR159-001 PATUXENT RVIER Md. (Aug. 1, 2013) Test pilot Capt. Michael Kingen flies BF-1, an F-35B Lightning II, during a 500-pound GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided weapon separation test. BF-1 dropped the GBU-12 over the Atlantic Test Ranges from an internal weapons bay. The F-35B is the variant of the Lightning II designed for use by the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as F-35 international partners in the United Kingdom and Italy. The F-35B is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings to enable air power projection from amphibious ships, ski-jump aircraft carriers and expeditionary airfields. The F-35B is undergoing flight test and evaluation at NAS Patuxent River, Md., prior to delivery to the fleet. (U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin by Dane Wiedmann/Released)

X-47B fails fourth landing aboard USS George H. W. Bush

It’s called testing. Lord forgive them for not having every test go 100% perfectly every single time.

X-47B Fails Landing Attempt – Again
Unmanned Jet Was Trying To Repeat Last Week’s Success

The X-47B unmanned jet successfully landed twice last week on the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush, but a third attempt was unsuccessful. Another landing attempt on Monday was aborted before the aircraft reached the carrier. (Christopher P. Cavas / Staff)

WASHINGTON — The X-47B unmanned jet, which successfully landed twice last week on an aircraft carrier, was unable to repeat the feat Monday, U.S. Navy sources confirmed July 16.

The aircraft nailed its first two landing attempts July 10 on the USS George H. W. Bush, but a third landing that day was aborted when the aircraft’s systems detected a problem with an onboard computer. Following its programming, the aircraft then flew to a “divert” field at Wallops Island, Va., where it remains.

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and Northrop Grumman engineers were back on board the carrier Monday to try for a third successful “trap,” this time using the other of two X-47B aircraft.

But it didn’t happen. The aircraft developed technical issues while in flight from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., to the ship and officials decided to abort the attempt before the X-47B reached the vicinity of the carrier, steaming off the U.S. east coast.

Nevertheless, officials have termed the tests “successful” in that the program’s objectives of demonstrating unmanned flight on and off an aircraft carrier were achieved. And at least in the case of the July 10 waveoff, the system’s ability to detect and respond to a problem was validated, if unintentionally. But the fact is that four times the Navy attempted to land the aircraft on the ship, and only two attempts were successful.

Officials point out that the program’s requirements called only for one successful landing, although testers targeted three at-sea traps.

“Initial parameters for the test required three traps on board the carrier,” a Navy official said Tuesday. “However, after two successful traps and two wave-offs, the Navy is confident it has collected the data necessary to advance this program and develop the requirements for UCLASS.”

The Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike Program is the follow-on effort to develop an operational unmanned aircraft using technologies and lessons learned from the X-47. Navy officials hope to field a UCLASS aircraft by 2019.

Underscoring the effort’s importance, the July 10 event was attended by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, and more than two dozen media representatives. The secretary and CNO were effusive in their praise for the program and the technological achievement, and of the historic nature of the events. The successful landing received extensive national and international media coverage, as did the first catapult launch from the ship on May 14.

With the failure of the July 15 test, the program’s flying days are all but over. The aircraft used on Monday, numbered 501, remains at Pax River, and no further X-47B flying tests are scheduled after 502 flies from Wallops Island to Pax River.

Funding for the X-47B, under the Unmanned Combat Air System Aircraft Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program, runs out at the end of September with the close of the fiscal year.

A statement was issued by NAVAIR late Tuesday afternoon about Monday’s incident, reproduced here in full:

“The Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) program successfully completed testing with the X-47B aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) July 15, culminating a decade of Navy unmanned integration efforts that show the Navy’s readiness to move forward with unmanned carrier aviation, says Rear Adm. Mat Winter, who oversees the Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons in Patuxent River, Md.

“On July 10, the X-47B completed the first-ever arrested landing of an unmanned aircraft aboard CVN 77. Shortly after the initial landing, the aircraft was launched off the ship using the carrier’s catapult and completed a second successful landing.

“ ‘We accomplished the vast majority of our carrier demonstration objectives during our 11 days at sea aboard CVN 77 in May,” said Capt Jaime Engdahl, Navy UCAS program manager. “The final end-to-end test of the UCAS including multiple arrested landings, flight deck operations, steam catapults, to include hot refueling procedures, was accomplished on July 10 and the procedures, the X-47B aircraft and the entire carrier system passed with flying colors.’”

“During its final approach to the carrier on July 10, the X-47B aircraft, “Salty Dog 502”, self-detected a navigation computer anomaly that required the air vehicle to return to shore, where it landed at Wallops Island Air Field. The X-47B navigated to the facility and landed without incident. Salty Dog 502 is scheduled to fly back to Pax River later this week.

“Aircraft “Salty Dog 501″ was launched to the ship on July 15 to collect additional shipboard landing data. During the flight, the aircraft experienced a minor test instrumentation issue and returned to NAS Patuxent River, where it safely landed. There were no additional opportunities for testing aboard CVN 77, which returned to port today.

“ ‘Completing the first-ever arrested landing with an autonomous, unmanned aircraft is truly a revolutionary accomplishment for the U.S. Navy,” said Winter. “This demonstration has successfully matured the needed critical technologies for operations in the actual carrier environment and has set the stage for Naval Aviation to blaze the trail for relevant unmanned, carrier-based warfighting capabilities.’”

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130716/DEFREG02/307160015

6th Gen. Naval Fighter Will Have Manned and Unmanned Versions

Please note the strong assertion that this is not to replace the F-35, but merely supplement it. Which, of course, means it will replace the F-35… and we’re all left wondering why we went ahead and spent so much money on it in the first place.

USN, Industry Seek New Concepts For 6th-generation Fighter

Boeing’s concept for the FA-XX strike fighter includes both manned and unmanned versions. (Boeing)

WASHINGTON — The makeup of the US Navy’s carrier air wings will start to shift in a few years as the F-35C joint strike fighter begins to enter service. The typical carrier flight deck will see both F-35s and F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets in operation. But thoughts already are turning to what lies beyond the F-35’s fifth-generation aviation technology, to the planes that in the 2030s will begin to replace the F/A-18s flying with US and international services.

Rear Adm. Bill Moran, the Navy’s director of air warfare in the Pentagon, offered his thoughts on the future aircraft, dubbed the F/A-XX, during an interview in the Pentagon.

Q. Where are you today on what you think the sixth-generation aircraft is?

A. We don’t talk in terms of generations of airplanes. It’s really ill-defined in my view, and mostly wrapped around stealth technology. So we are not in the business of trying to design and build a sixth-generation air wing. I do not even talk about sixth generation. But I do talk about where our aircraft quantities start to run out of service life.

The bulk of our force today are Super Hornets and they will be there for a long time, out until the end of the 2020s, early 2030s timeframe. But then that need starts to occur when the airplanes reach 9,000 hours of service life. When that happens, we are either going to buy a bunch more F-35Cs, or we are going to have to start looking at capability that we can replace the capability set, the mission set that the F/A-18 E/Fs do today.

We are taking an approach called FA-XX. We’ll [start a study] next year that would assess all those missions the F/A-18 E/F plugs into, in the air wing. How could we capture those capabilities in another way instead of buying another very high-end, very expensive platform replacement? Certainly there will be platforms involved, but do they have to be platforms that look and feel and operate much like an F/A-18 E/F or an F-35 does today? Could it be done differently? Could we do the mission sets different?

For example, we talk a lot to NAVAIR [Naval Air Systems Command] about future designs being more of a truck that has an open architecture design, so you can plug different sensors, different payloads and weapons into that for a specific mission, and be able to move those sensors and payloads around so you can do multiple different missions on different days, or different sorties, instead of trying to build everything into a jet — that becomes very expensive.

It is very much in line with [the direction of Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations], where he talked about payloads over platforms. In other words, the payload piece is what is important. Getting the right payload in the right place, at the right time is also critical. But what kind of truck that payload rides around on is what we are really after.

So we want to look holistically at all of the things that contribute to a mission. They include space-based. They include other platforms that are already part of the air wing — E-2D Hawkeyes, EA-18G Growlers — and the rotary wing component. How do we do a system-of-systems look across all of those platforms, and decide what capability gaps we need to cover as the F/A-18 E/Fs start to fall off?

Now we try to tell industry that we are just opening up the aperture to have a conversation about what they think the art of the possible is. I have had some great discussions with industry partners about this. Do not just look to walk in here with a new design, a sixth-generation aircraft. I am not interested in that conversation yet. I am interested in what are the technologies that you think you can bring? And specifically propulsion, which drives future capability. That is the timeline driver. If you are looking at a game-changing propulsion capability, whether it is long dwell, fast and high, all of those types of attributes to a propulsion capability, we have got to start working that now to lead to whatever the truck looks like.

And as you are developing that propulsion capability, then you can start to look at what kind of payloads? What kind of sensors? What kind of integrating capability that you want to develop across the air wing, so you continue to have the same effect of a different shape, a different mix of an air wing in the future.

Q. Do you think about unmanned aerial vehicles?

A. You could look at small UAVs launched off a truck that do different mission sets currently done by larger platforms that are very costly or expensive. There are lots of [concept of operations] questions that come into play as we study this. And of course, now you are trying to project a threat that is in the 2030s and ’40s and even in the ’50s — and what that threat could evolve to. That is going to drive a lot of how you view what the air wing ought to look like that far out.

So it really is our opportunity right now, while we are building F-35s, while we are continuing to mature F/A-18 E/Fs to deal with the ’20s and ’30s. What are we looking at beyond that?

When you look at normal development plans that take an average of 17 years for aviation, we are at that point right now if we are truly going to get to a 2030 capability. But we are not bought into [whether] it has to be a high-end fighter, or a high-end anything. What we do know is that we need to design it to allow us the most flexibility in how we operate that, whatever it is in the future.

Do not wait for us to tell you line by line what the requirement is. We are way too early in that. I need to understand what you think are the possibilities in propulsion, sensors, networks, architecture. All of those things have to be designed into whatever this thing might look like in the future.

Q. You issued a request for information (RFI) about a year ago for the next fighter. What were the responses?

A. Official responses are highly classified; we are parsing through with a team at NAVAIR and in our Special Programs branch. And they are intriguing. They run the gamut of, here is our aircraft design of the future, to here is a capability design of the future. And somewhere in there is our trade space and how we are going to view this.

But again, it just opens up the conversation. We are very early in this. And what we hope to do is now take that process into an analysis of alternatives, a formal AOA, that will take a couple of years to complete because it is very complex. We hope to get it started in 2014.

Q. The logical responders to the RFI would be Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman. Are you interested also in hearing from conceptual groups, not necessarily aircraft manufacturers?

A. The major folks have all jumped in, and to the degree to which we have maybe some others that might want to contribute in a different way, I could not tell you right now. But I want to hear from people who think completely outside our normal acquisition process.

Q. What is your thinking about a manned versus unmanned fighter?

A. What we said in the RFI was, we want you to think manned, unmanned and optionally manned. We are not trying to drive a solution here. And we recognize there might be different mixes of those options that are more effective in the ’30s and ’40s than what we have today. But we want to understand why you think that. What are the capabilities they bring? And then let’s have a discussion.

Q. Are you driving to introduce an aircraft around 2030?

A. Yes. See, everybody wants to dive right back into, do you want a platform? And my answer is, I know I am going to start to lose the capability set that Super Hornet brings to the air wing today, starting in the late ’20s or early ’30s. So what capabilities can we start designing that replace that, the mission sets that the Super Hornet does today? When you think there are at least nine or 10 different missions the Super Hornet contributes to today, does it have to be done by the same very advanced, complex capable airplane platform?

Q. Do you envision that say, in 2040, the FA-XX will completely replace the F-35 along with the Super Hornets? Or will it serve alongside the F-35?

A. This effort is not at all to replace the F-35 — it is almost if you flip it upside down. When you look out in the ’30s and ’40s, what we are aiming to do is to complement what the F-35 brings, much like the F-35 will complement what the F-18s currently bring and deliver in the air wing. Today, there is a graceful, gradual replacing of legacy Hornets with F-35s. As the F-18 population starts to run out of service life, we have got to bring in a new capability that complements what the F-35 brings.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130710/DEFREG02/307100015

P-8A Poseidon “operationally effective, operationally suitable and ready for fleet introduction”

The US Navy’s new P-8A Poseidon aircraft are “operationally effective, operationally suitable and ready for fleet introduction.”

NAVAIR: P-8A Poseidon Ready for Deployment

P-8A Poseidon, operated by Patrol Squadron (VP-16) in February, 2013. US Navy Photo

The Navy’s next-generation manned maritime information, surveillance and reconnaissance has been certified to enter regular service, according to a Naval Air Systems Command statement issued late Monday.

The P-8A Poseidon passed an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation that found the aircraft, “operationally effective, operationally suitable and ready for fleet introduction.”

“We are proud to add the P-8 to the Navy’s weapons inventory and the deployment cycle later this year,” said Capt. Scott Dillon, Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft Program Office (PMA-290) program manager in a NAVAIR statement.

Six Poseidons assigned to Patrol Squadron Sixteen (VP-16) “War Eagles” are planned to deploy to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan in December.

Based on the Boeing 737 airframe, the P-8 is slated to replace the P-3 Orions the navy currently uses for the ISR role. The Navy plans to buy 117 of the aircraft.

In addition to the surveillance role, the P-8 is an armed platform capable of firing missiles and deploying torpedoes.

On June 24, a P-8 successfully fired a Harpoon AGM-84D Block IC anti-ship missile in a test, according to NAVAIR.

A Harpoon AGM-84D Block IC missile, which was released from a P-8A Poseidon (not visible), directly hits a Low Cost Modular Target (LCMT)at the Point Mugu Sea Test Range in California June 24. Bottom photo: A LCMT at the Point Mugu Sea Test Range is shown after the Harpoon successfully strikes it. US Navy Photo

http://news.usni.org/2013/07/09/navair-p-8a-poseidon-ready-for-deployment