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Last week, we wrote that the Air Force Council, the blue suiters board of directors that advises the air chief, was considering deep cuts to force structure to meet aggressive savings targets laid out by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. One option they are reportedly considering is early retirement of all 66 B-1B Lancer bombers, last delivered in the late 1980s. Yesterday, the Lancer fleet got a hearty shout-out from new installed Afghan commander Gen. David Petraeus. “It is a great platform,” he told senators at his confirmation hearing. “It carries a heck of a lot of bombs… and it has...

The US Air Force could soon deploy a 226kg (500lb)-class guided bomb designed with a composite warhead to destroy targets while causing the least amount of collateral damage. The first 50 Precision Lethality Mk 82 bombs could be delivered by January 2011, with up to 750 carbonfibre-wound warheads designated as BLU-129/B to follow. The air force has issued a market survey seeking contractors that can deliver the composite warheads rapidly in response to an urgent request by Central Command, the US headquarters in the Middle East and parts of south Asia. The Air Armament Center could award a contract as...

An American amphibious ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard, has left California carrying two 1960s Czech jet trainers on its flight deck. These L-29s are 3.2 ton aircraft, rebuilt with American engines. The two L-29s will be used to simulate air-launched cruise missiles attacking American ships. While the original L-29s had a top speed of 655 kilometers an hour, the rebuilt ones with more powerful. J-60 engines, can moves as fast as 800 kilometers an hour. While the L-29s, which are supplied by a civilian contractor, are adequate for simulating the more numerous subsonic Chinese anti-ship missiles, they are obviously not...

The Missile Defense Agency and Lockheed Martin conducted a successful flight test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Weapon System at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, HI. This flight test was THAAD's seventh intercept to date and proved the system's ability to intercept a unitary target in the low endo-atmosphere. There were many THAAD flight test program "firsts" accomplished during FTT-14, including the lowest endo-atmospheric intercept to date; use of fielded THAAD ground segment hardware and software from the THAAD production program; and the first live mission to demonstrate automatic engagement coordination between THAAD and Patriot....

Missile Defense Agency officials are briefing lawmakers this week about the agency’s decision to cancel the competition for the Medium-Range Ballistic Missile Target class due to a lack of money. In a June 25 agency announcement posted on Federal Business Opportunities, MDA states that “sufficient funds are not available” to make a contract award for the MRBM Type 1 Target program. Consequently, “the solicitation was canceled,” the notice adds. In response to an Inside Missile Defense query, an MDA spokesman declined to comment in “advance of providing cancellation information to Congress.” “We’ve been receiving requests for info so I’m guessing...

Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (CSG) will relieve the Dwight D. Eisenhower CSG as Commander, Task Force 50 July 2, beginning a routine deployment to the U.S. 5th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR). Under Task Force 50, Truman CSG will conduct close air support missions in support of coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan while conducting Maritime Security Operations (MSO) in the AOR. Eisenhower CSG has operated in the 5th Fleet AOR since Jan. 25 with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 7 aircraft flying 2,970 combat sorties and 17,730 cumulative flight hours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)....

Minute Man II missile with a "replica" nuclear warhead was successfully launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, officials said. The National Nuclear Security Administration conducted the test in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force, an NNSA release said Thursday. The test was to evaluate the overall performance of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic weapon system, NNSA said. "This successful JTA (warhead) test illustrates NNSA's commitment to ensuring that all weapon systems perform as designed," said Brig. Gen. Garrett Harencak, NNSA Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Application. "The continued strong cooperation between the NNSA and (the Department of Defense) is...

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his American counterpart Barack Obama announced a three-year delay in Washington's transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to Seoul, citing the volatile atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula with North Korea's continued military provocations, most recently a deadly naval attack on a warship. The leaders also agreed to make concrete efforts to revive their long-stalled free trade agreement talks, as Obama set November as the deadline for completing necessary discussions. Obama began the summit with Lee with a show of his resolve to make North Korea pay a price for sinking a South Korean warship,...

The Air Force is seeking permission from Congress to shift $215 million out of lower-priority procurement accounts to stock up on spare engines for the F-22A Raptor fleet in the wake of concerns about future availability, according to a Pentagon budget document. This move is one of many fiscal year 2010 budget adjustments to Air Force, Army and Navy modernization accounts detailed in a 25-page reprogramming action that Robert Hale, Pentagon comptroller, sent to Congress on June 11, seeking to shift funds totaling $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2010 funds from lower- to higher-priority needs. “Funds are required to procure...

The Pentagon has signed off on low-rate initial production of the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP), kicking off the installation of the first 20 kits. The Pentagon is pursuing a mixed acquisition program owing to problems throughout the AMP program. Boeing, the incumbent contractor, will upgrade five C-130s with AMP under this phase, with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center performing 10 installations. The remaining five will be installed under a source familiarization program by a to-be-selected alternative contractor the government is bringing on because of Boeing’s program execution problems. Boeing says the first two C-130Hs will be inducted into the...

The 2006 QDR called for the Air Force to develop a next generation bomber to be ready by 2018; an initiative that promptly went nowhere. Now, the very term “next generation bomber” is “dead” in the halls of the Pentagon, reports John Tirpak, citing comments made yesterday by Air Force Lt. Gen. Philip Breedlove, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and requirements. Breedlove says what is being discussed is something much smaller than the NGB would have been, and though stealthy, it will not be designed to penetrate dense SAM belts like the NGB. It will be more of...

Despite an ongoing Defense Department review of potential follow-on options for the Air Force's premiere intercontinental ballistic missile program, development of a new ICBM system will not be one of those options, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said today. While the final results and subsequent recommendations from the Minuteman III ICBM review are not due for months, the service is not ready to dedicate funding or other resources toward the development of a new nuclear missile, Donley said during a breakfast in Washington. “We have already taken steps to get [the Minuteman III] to 2020; now we are focused on...

The chief of naval operations said last week that the U.S. Navy is the smallest it has been since 1916 despite being asked to do multiple missions and that further cuts in naval forces are likely. , the CNO, said in a speech to a strategy conference at the Naval War College that he continues to seek a strategy of “cooperation” despite the fact that China’s navy is a growing threat and Beijing has shown no willingness to cooperate with the U.S. Navy. In fact, Chinese naval vessels have stepped up harassment of U.S. survey ships in recent years in...

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a fifth-generation jet fighter that has even more sensors than the F-22 Raptor. The program, led by Lockheed Martin, uses that state-of-the-art avionics with as much commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software as possible, says Eric George, director of mission systems and software for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, in the interview below. George will discuss the F-35 avionics suite in a keynote address to the Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum on 3 June 2010 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego. Register for the event online at www.avionics-usa.com/index/registration-information.html Q: What is...

Boeing has revealed more details about the timeline, plans and capabilities of the high-altitude long endurance Phantom Eye unmanned aircraft system. Phantom Works President Darryl Davis says the hydrogen-powered, subscale demonstrator is on track to fly in January 2011. Schedules posted inside the Phantom Eye production hangar during a press tour on 24 June narrowed the date to around 20 January. Final assembly of the Phantom Eye fuselage is within weeks of completion. One of two 2.4m (8ft-)diameter fuel tanks has already been installed inside the exposed frames of the centre fuselage. The tail of the Phantom Eye was scheduled...

Computer scientists at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., are asking industry for novel technologies and approaches that offer dramatic advances in high-performance military computer performance, and enable so-called extreme scale computing -- the notion of exceeding today's peta-scale computing to achieve one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. DARPA released a broad agency announcement Monday (DARPA-BAA-10-78) for the Omnipresent High Performance Computing (OHPC) program to help develop tomorrow's high-performance computers to meet the relentlessly increasing demands for greater performance, higher energy efficiency, ease of programmability, dependability, and security in aerospace and defense computing for military...

U.S. Air Force researchers are asking industry to develop autonomous control technologies that will enable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to operate together with piloted aircraft in congested airport terminal areas, and to achieve what the Air Force calls "same base, same time, same tempo" operations. Scientists at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, released a broad agency announcement (BAA-10-05-PKV) this week for the Autonomous Control of UAS Ground Operations in the Terminal Area program to enable UAVs to operate with manned aircraft by equipping unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to act autonomously and react like a...

USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) successfully fired two Evolved NATO Sea Sparrow missiles and two Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) for the first time, to conclude its first Combat Systems Ship's Qualification Trials (CSSQT), June 23. CSSQT is part of the series of qualifications and certifications the aircraft carrier must undergo in preparation for her upcoming maiden deployment. According to Combat Systems Officer, Cmdr. John B. Vliet, CSSQT is a combined effort between the Combat Systems, Operations and Weapons departments to test the aircraft carrier's self-defense systems. "It's an end-to-end testing of the Combat Systems Suite, to include tactics, techniques,...

Back to the Title 10 side of the house for a moment; the Air Force Council meets today to consider further cuts in aircraft to meet aggressive savings targets laid out by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. One option on the table: early retirement of all 66 B-1B Lancer bombers (the last delivery of which came back in 1988). Force structure cuts might also extend to the air arm’s much cherished but currently under-utilized fighter force. The service already plans to early retire 250 fighters this year, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said last month; gone are 112 F-15s, 134 F-162,...

Northrop Grumman has surpassed Phase I goals for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Revolution in Fiber Lasers (RIFL) program that seeks to mature fiber laser technology. As a result, the company has received a contract for Phase II. "This is an important step in the maturation of fiber laser technology," said Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector. "By surpassing Phase I goals, we are in an excellent position for success in Phase II. Success in Phase II will create a powerful springboard for scaling fiber lasers to weapons-class performance levels."...