US military news, discussions and history

[AMDR]

Navy Builds Second America-Class Amphibious Assault Ship
Navy Builds Second America-Class Amphibious Assault Ship | DoD Buzz

The Navy and Huntington Ingalls are nearly one-third complete with initial construction of the soon-to-be USS Tripoli, the second new America-class amphibious assault ship slated for delivery in December, 2018.

The USS Tripoli, called LHA 7, is being built at a Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It is scheduled for launch in July, 2017, service officials said.

“LHA 7 is approximately 30% complete. Fabrication has started on 211 units, 97% of all units, and 84 grand blocks are erected — 47% of the total,” Navy spokesman Mathew Leonard told Military.com in a written statement.

The first America-class amphib, the USS America or LHA 6, was commissioned and delivered to the Navy last year.

“The Navy and Ingalls have identified lessons learned from design and construction of LHA 6 for incorporation into design and construction of LHA 7 to improve production and quality. These lessons learned were addressed at Unit Readiness Reviews prior to the start of fabrication of each unit, for incorporation into the LHA 7 build strategy,” Leonard said.

The America-class amphibs are engineered to carry more Marine Corps F-35B Short-Take-Off-and-Landing Joint Strike Fighters, MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, CH-53 Super Stallions and UH-1Y Huey helicopters.

Designed as aviation-centric amphibs, the first two America class ships do not have well-deck for amphibious vehicles but rather are engineered with a larger hangar for aircraft, increased storage for parts and support equipment and additional aviation fuel capacity to support a higher op tempo, Navy officials said.

Technical adjustments were made to the flight deck of LHA 6 to better enable the ship to withstand the heat generated by the take-off and landing of the F-35B; these changes are being built into LHA 7 earlier in the construction process, Leonard explained.

“LHA 7 is being built as a repeat of the LHA 6 with very limited changes to the design. After delivery of LHA 6, a group of significant changes to the ship’s flight deck structure and equipment were necessary to accommodate the F-35B aircraft. These improvements are being incorporated into the basic build of LHA 7, which is expected to yield a better overall technical solution at reduced cost,” Leonard added.

The flight deck modifications to LHA 6 entail adding intercostal structural members underneath flight deck landing spots numbers 7 and 9, Navy officials explained.

“With the added structure, these two landing spots will provide the capability to perform closely timed cyclic flight operations with the F-35B without overstressing the flight deck,” a Navy official explained.

There are also numerous minor changes that were made during LHA 6 construction that will be implemented on LHA 7 to improve production and quality, Leonard explained.

The LHA 7 design will incorporate a high-tech Navy ship-based computing network called Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services, or CANES, Leonard said.

Overall, the USS Tripoli will be 844-feet long and 106-feet wide and have a weight of more than 44,000 tons. A fuel-efficient gas turbine propulsion system will bring the ship’s speed up to more than 20 knots, a Huntington Ingalls statement said.

The ship will be able to carry a crew of 1,204 and 1,871 troops, meaning the ship is being engineered to carry a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the statement added.

America class ships are outfitted with a group of technologies called a Ship Self Defense System. This includes two Rolling Aircraft Missile RIM-116 Mk 49 l aunchers; two Raytheon 20mm Phalanx CIWS mounts; and seven twin .50 cal. machine guns, Navy officials said.

 

[AMDR]

LCS Hits Its Stride in Marinette
LCS Hits Its Stride in Marinette

MARINETTE, Wis. — A striking view awaited motorists this summer as they drove over the Menominee River — three littoral combat ships (LCS), all grouped together, pointed right at the Route 41 bridge between Wisconsin and Michigan. The Milwaukee (LCS 5) and Detroit (LCS 7) were already in the water, while the Little Rock (LCS 9) sat on shore poised for launch.

The group was shuffled a bit on June 18 when the Little Rock was christened and launched sideways into the river, where the three will sit alongside at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard until the Milwaukee sails away in the fall. But in only a few months the Sioux City (LCS 11) will be rolled out of an assembly building and placed in the launch position, to be followed later by the Wichita (LCS 13).

Those five ships and parts of two more are visible around this small but bustling shipyard, where about 1,500 employees and 500 contractors daily come through the gates to produce the Freedom-class Lockheed Martin monohull variant of the US Navy's LCS. Along with the Independence-class produced by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, the LCS program is in full-rate production, and each variant is — at long last — hitting its manufacturing stride.

Not only has the LCS building program broken through from the fits and starts of its early years, but the shipyard itself has undergone a remarkable transition. When construction of the Freedom (LCS 1) began in February 2005, Marinette Marine was part of the privately held Manitowoc Marine Group. With well under a thousand employees, the yard's facilities were outdated and inadequate. Much of the shipyard was unpaved, and without enough storage space, ship components were stored in the open — buried in snow in winter, sitting in muck during summer rains.

"All steel stood outside in the dirt," said Chuck Goddard, a retired rear admiral who served as Program Executive Office Ships, the US Navy's top shipbuilder.

"We were spending more money on cleaning than we would've had to to pave the yard," said Joe North, Lockheed's vice president of Littoral Ships and Systems.

The yard's erection building wasn't big enough to contain the entire LCS hull.

"When we built LCS 1 and 3, the bows stuck outside" said Goddard, now a senior vice president with the shipbuilder.

The blast and paint shop was too small for big component modules. To paint, "we needed three days of good predictable weather," he said, and environmental controls were inadequate. Work would often come to a stop because of rain or snow, heat or cold.

Then in January 2009, the yard was acquired by Italian shipbuilding giant Fincantieri, the world's fourth-largest shipbuilder, in an all-cash $120 million deal, with Lockheed Martin as a minority owner. Thus began a major transformation of the yard into a modern manufacturing facility, staked by an initial $73.5 million capital expansion investment from Fincantieri.

One of the first steps, Goddard said, was to map out a new workflow plan. The old yard had no particular flow — ship components might move back and forth several times before being installed, up to eight miles of movement inside the shipyard. The backtracking now has largely been eliminated by a new layout and new and expanded facilities. The erection building was virtually doubled in size, and a new blast and paint facility was designed, with input from General Dynamics' National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego, allowing work to continue regardless of the weather.

A new steel panel line building was built for the initial process of cutting and bending flat steel plates to the forms needed for a ship, along with a new steel plate stockyard and storage facility to keep steel out of the weather. The state of Wisconsin kicked in to restore and improve a nearly unusable rail spur to allow train cars to come right up to the building to unload.

A new outfitting building was built, where modules are fitted out with piping, electrical wiring and numerous components, and finally a new grand module building went up, big enough to put together the big pieces of a ship. Amidst the construction, dirt disappeared under asphalt paving. Fincantieri expanded its investment to over $100 million.

And while the yard physically transformed, LCS construction was ramping up. The Milwaukee and Detroit were built even as the shipyard around them was reconstructed — and the workforce nearly doubled, from about 800 permanent employees to around 1,500.

"I called them my stumbling blocks," North said of the two ships. "[LCS] 5 and 7 were straddled half in the old process, half in the new, 7 more than 5. Five almost went through the whole yard and it shows."

Little Rock represents the first ship built since the shipyard was rebuilt.

"Nine is the first one that went through the entire new yard and that shows with its performance," North said July 17, a day before the LCS was launched. The Little Rock "had much better cost performance, especially over 5 and 7."

On the earlier ships, he noted, "I pushed a lot of work out onto the waterfront, which makes our costs go up," reflecting the absence of properly covered building areas. Now, he added, "Little Rock is in very good shape," 84 percent complete at launch. "She'll be in trials coming out of the ice period next year in April and May, and will be delivered in midsummer."

Both Milwaukee and Detroit are late in delivery due to the yard construction, but the rate of construction is improving. North is aiming for a building time averaging 36 months across the current 10-ship construction contract, which starts with the Milwaukee and ends with LCS 23. Milwaukee will come in close to 42 months, but Detroit, due for completion in 2016, looks like 37 or 38 months, North said.

When the next contracts are bid, North said, the shipyard "thinks they can get down to 32 with the new processes coming in. That is a lot of time. It's going to take a lot of hours, but there are ways to do that."

The Milwaukee had been aiming for a delivery date in August, but that's been delayed at least a month by a shipyard accident that took place in late May in the midst of builder's sea trials — a series of underway periods where the shipyard checks out the ship before the Navy runs acceptance trials. While most shipyards run sea trials over a three- or four-day period underway, with the ship packed with shipyard workers and contractors, Marinette prefers to hold the trials over about 10 days, coming back into port most evenings and embarking only those needed for the day's events.

The accident took place late one evening as the ship was pierside in Marinette, trying to get ready to head back out in the morning.

"We were basically looking at cleaning up a lube oil system," North explained. "We had an inadvertent start of the turbine that went to the gear that spun the starboard shaft in the machinery plant between the splitter gear and the forward gear." The shaft should have been decoupled so the turbine wouldn't turn it. "So with no lube oil there, that is not the way you want to run it. It was a very, very short time frame, less than a minute."

But it was long enough to damage the splitter gear, shaft bearings and other parts.

"We were actually pretty fortunate there wasn't a whole lot of damage in there," North said. "There were a lot of parts that might have been scored or something or marked. We had them remachined, brought back in, put the gear back together."

Repairs have been completed, he said, and crews were putting all the pieces back together to resume sea trials.

While the investigation is still being completed, North acknowledged the accident was the shipyard's fault.

"It was a procedural error, human error," he said.

The Navy is right in the middle of overseeing the repair work.

"We are pleased on the Navy side with the work we are seeing and the progress that is being made," Rear Adm. Brian Antonio, program executive officer for the LCS, said July 17 at the shipyard. "I actually went down into the space and things are being put back together again. The shipyard is doing the welding and the testing required to put the ship back to where it was prior to the casualty."

And while the accident has cost about a month in the testing schedule, North is optimistic the ship will be delivered to the Navy and leave Marinette in time to make it out of the Great Lakes before the ice season begins, when the lakes become unnavigable and close down.

"We will go out and finish the tests that are still incomplete from those trials, and hopefully a short period right after that go out on acceptance trials and we will still deliver in the fall," North said, meaning the ship will make its commissioning ceremony scheduled for November in the city of Milwaukee.

The accident, North added, will not cost the Navy any money.

"The cost is on us," he said.

 

[AMDR]

DARPA TRACE to tackle radar target recognition
DARPA TRACE program using advanced algorithms, embedded computing for radar target recognition

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio, Va., 24 July 2015. U.S. military researchers needed new ways of using computer algorithms and high-performance embedded computing (HPEC) for radar target recognition to identify military targets rapidly and accurately using radar sensors on manned and unmanned tactical aircraft. They found their solution from Deep Learning Analytics LLC in Arlington Va.

Officials of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, announced a $6 million contract this week to Deep Learning Analytics for the Target Recognition and Adaption in Contested Environments (TRACE) program. The Air Force awarded the contract on behalf of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va.

The DARPA TRACE program has three goals: military target recognition on low-power aircraft; low false-alarm rates for targets deployed in complex environments; and rapid learning of new targets with sparse or limited measured training data.

In a target-dense environment, the adversary has the advantage of using sophisticated decoys and background traffic to degrade the effectiveness of existing automatic target recognition (ATR) solutions, DARPA researchers explain.

Aircraft attacks on relocatable targets require pilots to fly close enough to identify the targets visually before firing their weapons, which puts the aircraft at risk from ground-to-air missiles and other kinds of anti-aircraft weapons.

Although radar can take images of ground targets at safe standoff distances, the false-alarm rate of human and machine-based radar image recognition is unacceptably high. Existing target-recognition algorithms also require impractically large computing resources for use aboard manned and unmanned aircraft.

The result has been either to move the processing to remote ground stations or drastically reduce system performance to fit legacy aircraft computers.

To overcome these challenges, the TRACE program will develop an accurate, real-time, low-power target-recognition system that can be co-located with the radar to provide responsive long-range targeting for tactical airborne surveillance and strike applications.

The TRACE project lasts for 42 months and consists of two phases that will culminate in the flight demonstration of real-time radar target identification of stationary ground targets using one-foot resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery.

In the first phase, Deep Learning Analytics experts will develop advanced radar target recognition algorithms and design a low-power, real-time radar target recognition system. The program's second phase will enhance the algorithms and provide a real-time flight demonstration on low-power processor architectures.

Deep Learning Analytics experts have their work cut out for them, DARPA officials say. Despite significant military investments in radar target recognition over the past 30 years, few radar target-recognition systems have made it into widespread use in tactical applications.

Typically these systems have been too computationally complex for tactical aircraft. Algorithms have been too computationally complex or require too much run-time memory to fit onto legacy tactical aircraft computers.

Additionally, these kinds of systems have poor false-alarm performance such that they are inadequate for tactical surveillance applications. These systems also have not been adaptable. Learning to recognize new targets has taken too much time and computer power, and take a lot of operator and machine training with data and high fidelity models.

Deep Learning Analytics experts will try to overcome these limitations by exploiting recent advances in machine learning, low-power mobile computing architectures, and radar signature modeling. They will capitalize on the reduced runtime complexity of new recognition algorithms and increased computational efficiency of new mobile processors to reduce the run-time size, weight and power (SWAP) of radar target-recognition algorithms.

Company engineers will take advantage of emerging mobile computing architectures, including multi-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) systems combine general-purpose computing elements, such as multi-core ARM processors, with on-chip co-processors such as multi-core graphics processing units (GPUs) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), DARPA officials say.

 

[AMDR]

Navy Orders 200 JSOWs from Raytheon
By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

ARLINGTON, Va. — Raytheon Co.’s Missile Systems Division has been awarded a contract for the procurement of 555 Joint Stand-Off Weapons (JSOWs) for the U.S. Navy and the government of Saudi Arabia, the Defense Department announced in a 24 July release.

The Tucson, Ariz., company was awarded a $180 million firm-fixed-price contract from Naval air Systems Command for the procurement of 200 full-rate production Lot 11 AGM-154C-1 Unitary JSOWs for the Navy and 355 AGM-154 Block III C Unitary JSOWs for Saudi Arabia, the latter under the Foreign Military Sales program.

The Navy order is being made with fiscal 2015 funding.

Navy Names Littoral Combat Ship for Cooperstown
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

ARLINTON, Va. — Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the next Freedom-variant littoral combat ship will be named USSCooperstown (LCS 23), the Defense Department announced in a July 25 release.

The future Cooperstown will be the first ship to bear the name. It was named to honor the veterans who are members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame located in Cooperstown, N.Y. These 64 men served in conflicts ranging from the Civil War through the Korean War.

A fast, agile surface combatant, the LCS provides the required war fighting capabilities and operational flexibility to execute a variety of missions in areas such as mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare and surface warfare.

Cooperstown will be built with modular design incorporating mission packages that can be changed out quickly as combat needs change in a region. These mission packages are supported by detachments that deploy both manned and unmanned vehicles, and sensors in support of mine, undersea, and surface warfare missions.

The ship will be 388 feet long and will be capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 40 knots. The construction will be led by a Lockheed Martin industry team in Marinette, Wis.

Posted: July 27, 2015 4:54 PM

Navy Orders Six Blackjack UASs From Boeing’s Insitu
By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
SEAPOWER Magazine Online

ARLINGTON, Va. — Boeing’s Insitu Inc. has been awarded an order for six RQ-21A Blackjack unmanned aerial systems (UASs).

Insitu, based in Bingen, Wash., has been awarded a $78 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract for the procurement of six low-rate initial production Lot IV RQ-21A Blackjacks, the Defense Department announced in a July 24 release.

The order includes procurement of the air vehicles, ground control stations, launch and recovery equipment, spares, and system engineering and program management.

Funding is provided from the Navy’s fiscal 2015 funds and the Marine Corps’ fiscal 2013, 2014 and 2015 funds.

 

[AMDR]

Blending in

 

[Fenrir]

USAF Keeping Spare AC-130Us Gunships For Laser And 'Pain Ray' Tests

The AC-130 family is slowly morphing from cannon shell spraying aerial gunships to arsenal ships packed with a wide array of guided munitions and direct fire systems, and soon they will be carrying the most exotic weapons of all, those of the directed energy variety.

This is precisely why the USAF has retained some of its spare AC-130U “Spooky” gunships to be used as flying testbeds for emerging laser technologies. According to Lt. Gen, Bradley Heithold, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, the idea is that in the not so distant future not only will the new and ever evolving AC-130J Ghostrider be able to cook a single individual in a crowd from on high, or be able to disable vehicles with a high-powered laser, but it will also be able to disperse crowds via a powerful, non-lethal, “active denial system.

Such a system would use rapid bursts of microwave energy over a specific area, which makes individuals feel as if their skin is on fire, while at the same time having no long-lasting effects, if used correctly at least. Active denial systems, often referred to as “pain rays,” have been in development for well over a decade, and have even been tested in prisons here in the U.S., but such an evolved active denial capability would give one of the most deadly flying machines ever invented a true “less than lethal” option.

Once proven on the AC-130, an airborne active denial system could be deployed to other fixed-wing platforms, and domestic applications are not out of the question, something that will surely be controversial if it comes to pass.

Arming a C-130 with a laser has been a long-time ambition of the Defense Department. The Advanced Tactical Laser, which was in development in some form since the mid 1990s, cooked through the hood of a truck in 2009. Like its defunct bigger brother, the YAL-1 Airborne Laser, the Advanced Tactical Laser was a cumbersome chemical based system.

Now, with solid state lasers making huge strides, not just in output power but also in miniaturization, durability and usability, the goal of an operational AC-130 based laser system is totally feasible.

Because of its size, the C-130’s amazing adaptability, frequent use and the AC-130’s unique mission set, the AC-130J is a perfect place for the USAF to realize its growing directed energy weapons initiative operationally. What would be learned by AC-130J crews employing this new class of weaponry in combat could be migrated to tactical aircraft in the not so distant future as their more miniaturized and complex laser systems come on line. As a whole, directed energy weapons have the ability to change air combat in drastic ways, and the AC-130J Ghostrider could be the USAF’s first foray into this new combat reality.

The AC-130J Ghostrider is still in testing and there are serious kinks with the platform that are being worked out, but its additional performance, updated systems and wide array of potential armament, including lasers and microwave weapons, could enable it to be the most versatile combat aircraft in the entire USAF fleet. This is especially true for the wars we continuously find ourselves in, not the ones we love to fight “on paper.”

It may seem a bit ironic for an aircraft that is widely known as a brutal flesh slaying machine, but the next generation AC-130’s biggest accomplishment may be not having to kill at all, or if it does, being able to do so with laser like precision, literally.

 

[AMDR]

US Army eyes electromagnetic railgun as navy test plans unfold
US Army eyes electromagnetic railgun as navy test plans unfold - IHS Jane's 360

An artist's rendering of the USN's EMRG concept, shown here integrated on a JHSV, which will host the first EMRG firing at sea in 2016. Source: US Navy

The US Navy's (USN's) electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) programme is moving ahead through several lines of effort, and officials are considering ways to apply the system to land-based air defence.

In the near term, the USN's fifth and newest Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), USNS Trenton , is to host the first at-sea demonstration of the EMRG sometime in 2016, but the navy is also working to develop a GPS-guided Hypervelocity Projectile (HPV) that can be steered towards targets, and hopes to integrate a 'repetitive rate' firing the railgun for trials at sea in 2019, according to Rear Admiral Bryant Fuller, deputy commander for ship design, integration, and naval engineering at Naval Sea Systems Command.

He spoke during a 28 July Directed Energy Summit in McLean, Virginia.

During the event, Brigadier General Neil Thurgood, the US Army's programme executive officer for Missiles and Space, said his service is working with the navy and Pentagon on doctrine and techniques for the ERMG, a navy-led programme, to see how it might fit into the army's air defence structure.

Rear Adm Fuller noted that "in order to make [the land-based railgun] effective … we need to be able to steer the HPV and we need to close the fire control loop". To this end, the army, navy, and Pentagon are exploring various fire control solutions that could address more complex air defence missions, he added.

Meanwhile, although he praised the EMRG's capability, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus lampooned the navy's acquisition processes for taking so long to field the system.

EMRG "will finally be on board a US Navy ship in 2016, but only for testing, and only after several decades of development - that's too long", he said.

Mabus said the testing "will shoot 20 projectiles, five of them GPS-guided Hyper Velocity Projectiles, or HVPs, at targets 25-50 miles away".

Still, the 32 mega joule weapon marks a notable increase in capability. It will launch projectiles out to 100 miles, whereas the USN's current 5-inch gun can only reach out 13 miles. EMRG could also, potentially, result in savings because its rounds "cost about USD25,000 compared to USD500,000 to USD1.5 million for missiles", Mabus noted.

 

[Fenrir]

Photo credit:

U.S. Air Force photographer Staff Sgt. Jodi Martinez,
U.S. Air Force photographer Master Sgt. Jeffrey Allen,
U.S. Air Force photographer Staff Sgt. Vernon Young.

 

[Fenrir]

Is This Semi-Autonomous Mini Submarine The SEALs' Next Super Weapon?

U.S. Navy SEALs have to infiltrate and exfiltrate from some of the most hostile areas on earth, and often times they travel underwater to do so. The Mark 8 SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV) has been used in various configurations for decades for this mission, and after previous tries to replace it, a group with an incredible maritime tech pedigree thinks they have the solution.

Meet Proteus, the brainchild of Huntington Ingalls Underwater Solutions Group, Bluefin Robotics and Battelle. This streamlined mini-sub goes far beyond being just another swimmer delivery vehicle, it is a “dual-mode” vehicle that can operate manned or unmanned for a wide array of missions.

The concept came out of a previous Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV) imitative that the Office Of Naval Research was, and still is working on. As the large underwater drone developed, it became clear to Huntington Ingalls that is was big enough to be turned into an optionally manned platform similar in size to the Seal Delivery Vehicle that had been built for years.

Because of its similar size and ‘wet’ configuration as the long-used SDV, a Proteus like design could allow U.S. fast attack and guided missile Submarines equipped with dry-dock shelters to be able to carry a large unmanned submersible and a frogman delivery vehicle in one package, not having to choose between one or the other.

Proteus weighs just over 8,000 pounds, and can deliver six (possibly more) fully equipped frogmen to their destination over a range of 350 to 700 miles depending on the batteries used. It has a top speed of 10 knots and cruises at 8 knots, and is equipped with multi-beam sonar for avoidance and navigation. It operates at a disclosed maximum unmanned depth of 200 feet, or 150 feet with divers on-board.

The slick little sub is equipped with a pair of low-profile masts that fold down onto its dorsal spine. These can be equipped with imaging sensors, communications antennas and navigational arrays, or they can be outfitted for with advanced eavesdropping and spying equipment. The center section of Proteus can be equipped with a large bay that can hold 3,600 pounds of equipment and can lower that equipment to the seafloor.

What is interesting about Proteus is that it takes the same proven and relatively simple “wet” design concept as the SDV, but packages it into a more streamlined and much more adaptable package. In the past, attempts to replace the SDV have been made, largely focusing on creating a complex “dry interior” design, where SEALs would basically board the mini-submarine and exit through an airlock. This greatly increased complexity and cost and changed the already established logistics footprint used by the proven SDV.

Years of development led to the Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) in the 2000s, an ambitious mini-sub that would provide a massive increase in capability over the SDV, but at a huge cost. The comparatively huge, 16 man ASDS was plagued with issues during testing, and its cost skyrocketed. Eventually a catastrophic fire led to the program’s final demise in 2008. Meanwhile, the ever upgraded Mark 8 SEAL Delivery Vehicle soldiered on.

Seeing the embarrassment of the ambitious ASDS program, Proteus may just be the right mix of new capability and low-risk, proven design and operations philosophy for it to make sense for the Navy to buy. Keep in mind this doesn’t even account for the submersible’s unmanned capability, which could be game changing.

The fact that Proteus can operate autonomously is an amazing capability to ponder as it opens up a wide new concept of operations while still utilizing the same logistics footprint as the SEAL Swimmer Delivery Vehicle. While even the Mark 8 SDV has some unmanned functions, where it can loiter in wait for the SEALs to return from a mission, Proteus is a much smarter and more adaptable machine, able to be outfitted for a variety of missions. These include transporting and installing equipment on the sea floor, mine detection, inspecting undersea infrastructure, spying and transporting divers and bulk cargo. Basically, it can go from driving SEALs into combat to becoming a autonomous sensor truck and equipment truck. This means not only can Proteus resupply SEALs on a mission, or pick them up at a different location than where they departed, but it can also turn into pretty much anything it needs to be depending on the mission.

Take a surveillance mission for instance. A Virginia Class submarine could launch Proteus hundreds of miles off an advanced enemy’s coastline, where it would approach that coast and conduct surveillance for a prolonged period of time (days) before returning to the Virginia Class submarine. Under such a concept of operations, if the submarine is detected and attacked, you only lose Proteus, not a multi-billion dollar state of the art nuclear fast attack submarine with a hundred and fifty people on-board.

Mine detection, planting explosives or listening devices on the sea floor and even hunting for other submarines are all potential roles Proteus could undertake while working from a Nuclear Submarine or even a ship. In such a role, you can’t think of Proteus as a SEAL Delivery Vehicle but more as a drone that is also capable of the SEAL Delivery Vehicle mission set.

Proteus first entered the water in 2012 and the Navy has since leased it to support “payload development programs.” Since then it has been evaluated by the Naval Research Laboratory, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, the Naval Special Warfare Command and the Space and Warfare Systems Command. In the meantime, its makers have worked out the kinks and as such they say the adaptable little “wet-sub” is ready to go to work.

Now we will have to see if the 26 foot long Proteus provides enough capability to warrant its $10-12M price tag (depending on the sensors) and how it will compete for cash with the Navy’s initiative to field two new special operations submersibles by the end of the decade. These shadowy programs supposedly include the Shallow Water Combat Submersible and the Dry Combat Submersible, the latter of which is similar but smaller than the defunct Advanced SEAL Delivery Vehicle.

In a time of restrictive defense spending, where platforms capable of multiple missions are a major selling point to Congress and the Pentagon, and considering that you get a new SEAL Delivery Vehicle and a massive unmanned underwater vehicle capable of a whole slew of missions with one purchase, Proteus’s price tag seems like a bargain. This is especially true considering new anti-access and area denial strategies that our potential foes are putting in place in the maritime environment.

If anything else, when purchasing Proteus, you get a robot that can deploy from all of America’s non-ballisitic missile nuclear submarines today and go hundreds of miles while carry a payload the weight of a Honda Accord. It doesn’t get much more tactically exciting than that and seeing how disastrous the Navy’s last attempt to build a dry-submersible for special operations was, Proteus may be the off-the-shelf, low-risk solution the Navy’s special warfare community needs today. At the very least, it could buy the Navy some time, and save some money in the process, until its next generation advanced SEAL delivery vehicles are ready for prime time.

 

[AMDR]

USAF unveils roadmap for microwave weapons use
USAF unveils roadmap for microwave weapons use - 7/29/2015 - Flight Global

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has unveiled a technology roadmap for its cruise missile-based “CHAMP” high-power microwave (HPM) weapon, which successfully fried banks of computers at a test range in October 2012.

The organisation says it is working on an improved, second-generation “multi-shot, multi-target HPM cruise missile” that builds on the mature counter-electronics high-power microwave advanced missile project payload previously demonstrated.

Based on past comments by AFRL officials, this next iteration of the Boeing and Raytheon-built system will probably be carried on an extended-range Lockheed Martin AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM-ER).

The laboratory is also eyeing an “HPM advanced missile” in the longer term with a more sophisticated CHAMP-like payload, and then eventual integration with a manned or unmanned aircraft.

“We’ve already demonstrated the military utility of a high-power microwave system at a sufficient technology maturity level to be fielded,” AFRL commander Maj Gen Tom Masiello said at a 28 July directed energy summit in Washington DC.

“Where we’re going next is improving a CHAMP-like payload to increase the overall effectiveness and maybe even the ability to steer it more precisely than the original CHAMP. Next would be looking at various other platforms other than the air-launched cruise missile. And finally, everybody recognises the utility of having a reusable platform, maybe a manned or unmanned aircraft.”

Masiello describes the demonstration in 2012 with a repurposed Boeing conventional air-launched cruise missile as very successful.

“It flew against two major targets, but was able to conduct several different runs,” he says. “That demonstrated the maturity level of a high-power microwave weapon sufficient to go into a programme of record at a sufficient risk level if the decision was made to go there.”

Exactly when the technology derived from CHAMP will transition to a programme of record is a point of contention in Washington.

Congress has been pushing the air force to make a deployable weapon available to operational military units, but there has been considerable “inertia”.

The USAF's Air Combat Command (ACC), which trains and equips combat forces, says it is still considering how the HMP weapon fits into its missions and war plans.

“In an unclassified format, you can’t say too much about that, other than we recognise the capabilities, but until we work it into our war plans, we are still trying to study how that weapon system would impact some of the threats we’re looking at,” says ACC vice-commander Maj Gen Jerry Harris. “Yes, we are looking at it, and we think the technology will make a viable weapon in the future. We’re trying to bridge that gap from just a technology to bringing it into production for the warfighter.”

Some lawmakers, though, think the air force is dragging its feet, since it has already been given extra funding and congressional direction to pursue both “near and far-term” counter-electronics capabilities.

Directed energy caucus co-chair congressman Jim Langevin says the military faces a constant conundrum where the laboratories are only interested in the science and the operational forces are slow to adopt new technologies.

“The scientists and researchers want to keep this stuff in the labs and research it to death in many cases, so we have to be constantly pushing the labs when it’s ready to make sure there’s a path forward,” he says. “[Unmanned air vehicles] when they first came online, there was a resistance within the traditional air force to adopt all these technologies, and now we realise they’re indispensable.”

Boeing, for its part, is keen to move the CHAMP technology forward. Phantom Works president Darryl Davis said in May that the focus now is on miniaturising the payload for possible integration with new cruise missiles and UAVs. The Long-Range Standoff cruise missile that the USAF plans to buy is one possible candidate.

 

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A series of photographs taken by reporter Jacobus Rentmeysterom during the battle of American and Vietnamese government troops against the forces of the Viet Cong in the valley Aschau, held in April 1968

more pictures/sorce 477768 - Вьетнамские будни

 

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How Did This Airstrike Hit Six Areas Of A Single ISIS Compound At Once?

While watching the latest air strike videos coming out of Syria and Iraq I noticed this unusual targeting FLIR imagery of a compound being obliterated by six nearly simultaneous precision strikes, each hitting a defined area of the complex. Targeting tags appear on the exact spots that are struck.

This is something different. Such a capability is a far cry from using one or two laser guided bomb of much higher yield, or multiple smaller guided bombs over the course of a much longer attack on a similar target. So what exactly is going on here?

Be advised that this video shows an air strike on a militant compound, we cannot confirm if there were casualties or not.

Although we do not know if the targeting platform is the same as the “shooter” platform, the upside down triangular tags with lines through them appear to be targeting coordinates derived by the sensor platform. For laser guidance, aircraft are limited to targeting one single point at a time.

With this in mind, and seeing as the there is no sign that the targeting system is lasing the target at all, these symbols look like individual coordinates most likely derived by “squirting” the targeting aircraft’s laser onto strategic parts of the structure, then taking those coordinates and loading them into GPS guided weapons. The coordinates could have also been derived via using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and are then visually overlayed on the targeting system’s imagery, although I cannot confirm if such a high level of sensor integration is widespread on America’s combat aircraft today.

Targeting pods on American fighter and bomber aircraft and sensor balls on unmanned aircraft have become amazingly capable over the last decade and a half. Is the ability to “tag” coordinates via laser ranging (or possibly SAR) and loading them into GPS weapons a new capability? No, but the amount of closely positioned points of impact and the speed and synchronization of the attack is remarkable if the building was indeed targeted and attacked “on the fly.”

If nothing else, this video is a reminder of just how far we have come when it comes to employing tailored precision guided weaponry in complex ways onto complex targets. All of which increases the effectiveness of an attack, while also hopeflly limiting the loss of innocent lives nearby.

I would guess that this is video originated from either an unmanned system which did the targeting, with the munitions (probably 500lb JDAMs) coming from another aircraft entirely or the entire thing is via a flight of F-15Es Strike Eagles. The B-1B is also a possibility.