I’m not sure how much notice this would ordinarily rate, but I worked on some issues with this, basically laying out some fixed basing concepts for allies who are trusted enough to operate the system.
Not sure who the client nation was.
I laid out THAAD, PAC-3, and Arrow cells.
While the parliament has placed conditions, including a meaningful competition with other fighters, with the Gripen N being the primary competitor, I see this as the nail in the coffin for the prospect of buying another fighter…at least until they find that the F-35 is 2.5x more expensive than promised.
They have made a 10% down payment (that likely will be closer to (3-5%) for two JSFs to use in IOT&E, and once that happens, I see the Dutch AF as committed.
Norway is deciding between the upgraded Gripen-N and F-135 for a replacement for its F-16 fleet, and it appears that the F-35 may be significantly larger and noisier than they would like(Paid Subscription Required).
Aircraft noise and politically sensitive basing options may become decisive factors in Norway’s selection process for a new fighter aircraft to replace the country’s Lockheed Martin F-16s.
New information received from the two remaining contenders (Lockheed Martin’s F-35A and Saab’s enhanced Gripen-N) indicates that one (understood to be the F-35) is “significantly more noisy” than the other, senior government and military sources here say.
The information could mean that Norway’s Bodo Main Air Station, located right outside a major population center, gets ruled out as a future operating base if the F-35 is selected. Bodo is one of two active fighter bases in Norway, the other one being Oerland, which is in a sparsely populated area 50 mi. from Trondheim.
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At Oerland, too, the F-35 appears to have one disadvantage compared to Gripen, which is that the U.S. jet is too bulky to fit inside the hardened aircraft shelters there (those at Bodo are larger). “The question is,” [State Secretary for Defense Espen Barth ]Eide allows, “does that really matter at a time when the trend is to no longer operate out of hardened facilities?”
Given that the F-35 is more than twice the gross weight, and roughly twice the thrust of the Gripen-N, basic physics say that it will be noisier.
As I’ve said before, the F-22 is a sort of roach motel for data. It collects data from its own sensors and other platforms, but nothing ever leaves, at least not in the current software drop.
It’s a legacy of its Cold War origins, where it was expected to operate in a post apocalyptic sky above a Europe in flames.
Well, it looks like the USAF is finalizing plans on how to rectify this problem (Paid Subscription Required).
They are looking at a number of different technologies to implement their, “IP-based advanced tactical data link (ATDL)”, “Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) wideband data link”, which transmits to ground stations for relay, the “Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL)”, which is more distributed and is slated for use in the F-35.
ATDL looks to be fielded somewhere in the 2014 time frame in any case.
It looks like Italy will sign a contract for 2 F-35s this month (Paid Subscription Required) as a part of the, “initial operational test and evaluation phases of the JSF program”.
This is no surprise. Italy has always been on board, though some questions remain, specifically it’s mix between conventional and STOVL variants, and whether final checkout prior to delivery will be done in Italy.
Sarkosy has indicated that France is likely to push back procurement of a second carrier by 2-3 years: (Paid Subscription Required) for budget reasons.
Bacically, he’s saying that the decision will be pushed back until 2011-2012, which means that service entry would be delayed until 2017-2018.
Despite what the moron pundits and bloggers who said that she wouldn’t, that’s what she did.
Well, now we know why Mugabe shut down the NGOs distributing food aid to Zimbabae: They are demanding voting cards in order to get food aid, and if the card does not say ZANU-PF member, they confiscate the card, preventing that person from voting.
So it’s give up your right to vote, or starve.
Howard Dean has spent much of the primary season trying not to be seen as favoring one candidate over the other. Now that Obama has clinched it, he feels free to say this:
“The wounds of sexism need to be the subject of a national discussion,” the chairman, Howard Dean, said in an interview. “Many of the most prominent people on TV behaved like middle schoolers” toward Mrs. Clinton.
I wholeheartedly agree.
So does the Women’s Media Center:
FWIW, I don’t debate their example, but the quotes and schmaltzy music make the clips less effective, not more effective.
You can get a good summary of the progress of the NLOS-C howitzer and NLOS-M mortar here, and things seem to be proceeding well, with the tube and the autoloader performing well.
Some pics of the NLOS-C:
FWIW, I don’t think that the FCS MGV (Future Combat System — Manned Ground Vehicle) is a particularly good idea. These platforms will be more expensive than their predecessors, but lighter weight, half the weight of a Bradley, 1/3 of the weight of an Abrams, so they will be more vulnerable to things like IEDs.
The systems they contain, communications and sensors, not the hybrid drive system, do have military value, and I expect them to see service, but it’s cheaper, and to my mind more militarily advantageous to retrofit the boxes on existing systems.
As to whether the military will buy any of these, I think yes, but only the NLOS-C, because the artillery folks at the military are currently using a vehicle first fielded in 1963, the M109 Paladin, and with the Crusader cancellation in the late 1990s, it’s still their turn.
I don’t think that the rest will be manufactured, though the ICV (Infantry Combat Vehicle) is in one very significant way, it carries a full infantry fire team of 9, as opposed to the Bradley’s 6, because of space freed up by making the turret remotly operated.
You could retrofit a Bradley with a new turret for the same effect though.
Specifically, the Washington, D.C. City Council, which has voted to double the property tax on vacant properties, to $10/$100 evaluation (that’s right 10%, it had been 5%, as compared to $1.85/$100 for commercial properties, and $0.85/$100 for residential properties).
Additionally, the Council has made it more difficult to get an exemption, cutting back on the numbers of exemptions granted, though there is still a 3 month exemption for a property for lease, a 1 year exemption for residential property for sale, and a 2 year exemption for commercial property for sale.
In many inner cities, vacant properties blight the landscape, and this is a very good way of dealing with it.
Demand for the services of the An-124 Ruslan airlifter has been growing by leaps and bounds, and now Russia and the Ukraine appear to be on the verge of restarting productions(Paid Subscription Required).
It’s not surprising. The aircraft offers an absolutely unique capability in terms of outsized and heavy lifting, and VolgaDnepr charter service for the aircraft has been doubling turnover annually.
It would be significantly upgraded:
The upgrade, known as the An-124-150, includes a glass cockpit capable of reducing the flight crew to four from six, along with airframe improvements, digital brake control, improved thrust reversers and major improvements in the aircraft’s Motor Sich D18-T engines. The 124-150 will have a maximum lift capacity at nominal range of 150 metric tons, compared with 120 tons for the basic aircraft. It will permit 10,000 flights and 45,000 flight hours with a first A-check required only after 500 hr. on the wing.
One item of note, is that this would theoretically mean that two, rather than one MBTs could be carried.
Since their twin engine 6 passenger Eclipse 500 is already a VLJ, should we call the Eclipse 400 a teeny-tiny jet instead?
FWIW, I noted that they showed a prototype almost a year ago, here are the pix from that prototype:
It’s going to sell for $1.35 million, and Eclipse is raising the price of it’s 500 by 33% to 2.15 million.
My guess is that this is being driven by two things, that the E-500 is costing more to build than they had hoped, and that there are some single engine VLJs our there, and they are attracting a lot of interest.
Active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars look to be approaching some major reductions in cost as the technology matures(paid subscription required). They are looking at the cost to drop from $5 million/m2 to $500K/m2 so “cheap” is a relative term.
Additionally, the use of an AESA with a parabolic reflector setup can give a much larger effective aperture, and hence resolution. It’s called AESA-fed reflectors (AFR), and it’s less agile than pure AESA, but a lot cheaper.
In an attempt to cut costs, and deal with the falling US dollar, EADS is looking at aggressively outsourcing to the US and cheap overseas countries, and the governments that generally back Airbus are saying that their backing is contingent on local manufacture (Paid Subscription Required).
This is not surprising. Boeing and its partners aggressively pursued all sorts of tax abatements and set asides with the 787, and you would never expect (for example) Georgia to pay for a plant in North Carolina.
I would also add, as Peter Hintze, the German aerospace secretary, that Boeing’s distributed base has thus far proved a major disappointment.
Gen. Arthur Lichte wants to boost annual production from 15 to 26 per year (Paid Subscription Required) so that he can get the increasingly maintenance intensive KC-135s out of service.
I guess that it will depend largely on how Boeing’s protest of the tanker award is handled.
The MDA is looking about upgrading its interceptors to handle a missile penetrating with decoys and other penetrating aids.
While this technology sounds difficult and complex, basically it’s just this:
Aluminum coated mylar balloons. What’s more, it’s entirely possible to put the warhead inside balloon, as was stated by a WMD experts years ago (can’t dig up the link, I think that he was from MIT).
Lockheed and Raytheon are competing for the contract. (Paid subscription required) They are taking two different design approaches.
Raytheon is developing multiple vehicles that are largely autonomous, and the number can be therefore be taylored to the size of the payload bay, with the first vehicle ejected serving to direct the others:
Lockheed has a “bandoleer” of smaller interceptors grouped around a central “mother ship”, which, while less flexible as to payload size, allows for a better sensor, and more maneuverability, for the initial contact and tracking with the kill vehicles being dispensed relatively closer to the interception point:
According to this article(paid subscription required), Lockheed’s sensor on the carrier will have 4x the resolution, 512×512 pixel staring array, as versus Raytheon’s 256×256 staring array.
Of course, these things look to cost a few hundred thousand bucks a pop, and I can get a silver mylar balloon for a buck fifty from the party store.
Saudi financier Gaith Pharaon, “an FBI fugitive indicted in both the BCCI and CENTRUST case”, was awarded a $80 million contract for Jet fuel to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush’s first business venture, Arbusto Energy.
Funny how that all works out, isn’t it.
This is not unexpected. Those guys will never admit that Al Gore was right.
Maybe next congress we will get 60 votes.
He says that it will be a breach of their friendship treaty.
As I’ve said before, the westward expansion of NATO, in violation of our promise to Gorbachev in the 1990s, is a big mistake, and a large reason for recent Russian paranoia and bellicosity.