Archive: November 29, 2023

Pratt to start receiving F-35 engine upgrade contracts in early 2024

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon expects to start issuing early next year the first in a series of sole-source contracts to Pratt & Whitney to upgrade the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s engines.

In a notice posted online Monday, the government said the follow-on contract actions to RTX-owned Pratt & Whitney will begin in the second quarter of fiscal 2024, and continue through the end of December 2031.

The estimated value of the contracts was not immediately available, but Jen Latka,, vice president for Pratt’s F135 program, told reporters in December 2022 the ECU’s development would likely cost about $2.4 billion.

Pratt & Whitney, which makes the F135 engines that power all three version of the F-35, said in a separate statement Tuesday it expects to finish the preliminary design of its Engine Core Upgrade for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in December. The company added that it will be ready for the government’s official review of that design the following month.

The Engine Core Upgrade is intended to provide more power and cooling capabilities to the F-35 without requiring its current F135 engines to be replaced with a new design. Defense officials say the power and cooling boost will be necessary as the F-35 continues to be upgraded, particularly with a slate of improvements known as the Block 4 modernization, which will include greater weapons capacity, new sensors, and improved electronic warfare and target recognition capabilities.

“Pratt & Whitney has 600 employees fully dedicated to this effort, and we’re on track to deliver F-35 operators the power needed to enable Block 4 capabilities and beyond starting in 2029,” Jen Latka, vice president for Pratt’s F135 program, said in a statement.

The Pentagon’s sole-source notice said the upcoming contracts will cover work for the ECU’s engineering and manufacturing phase, including maturing its design, manufacturing and developing test articles and integrating weapon systems.

The notice did not say how much the contracts might be worth, but Latka told reporters in December 2022 the ECU’s development would likely cost about $2.4 billion.

The Pentagon had also considered a new engine design from General Electric Aerospace, dubbed the XA100, based on adaptive engine technology. The Air Force was keenly interested in GE’s XA100 and its greater power and cooling abilities for the F-35A jets it flies.

However, the Pentagon concluded GE’s design likely wouldn’t work for the Marine Corps’ vertical takeoff F-35B variant, and had doubts about its suitability for the Navy’s carrier-based F-35C. Those worries, as well as concerns over the GE adaptive engine’s potential costs, led the Pentagon to stick with and upgrade the F-35′s current engine in a big win for Pratt & Whitney.

Early Ford carrier maintenance costs lower than planned, Navy says

ARLINGTON, Va. ­— The first-in-class aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford may cost less over its life than planned because of reduced maintenance costs, a program manager said today at an American Society of Naval Engineers conference here.

Capt. Brian Metcalf said the new Ford carrier was designed with automation that allows for a smaller crew as well as improvements to the hull that will allow the ship to require three major docked maintenance availabilities during its lifetime, instead of the five required by the legacy Nimitz class.

In total, he said, the Ford class is now slated to cost about $5 billion per ship per year less than its predecessor, the Nimitz class. That exceeds the target of $4 billion per ship per year in savings.

He told Defense News lower maintenance costs account for the savings.

“The biggest difference between the target and what we’re witnessing is the maintenance that Ford has gone through so far,” he said. “I will caveat that to say, we’re 2% or less into the 500 years of aircraft carriers that we’re going to have with the Ford class.”

He said early numbers show that Ford’s recent carrier incremental availability did, and its upcoming planned incremental availability will, cost less than originally estimated.

Ford is the first carrier in its class. John F. Kennedy is more than 90% complete and will deliver to the Navy in 2025. Enterprise is about 35% complete and is “starting to look like a ship now,” Metcalf said. Doris Miller is at the earliest stages of its construction. And the Navy is eyeing plans to buy the next two carriers, CVNs 82 and 83, in a two-ship contract later this decade.

While it’s too early to know if the cost savings will hold, the revised estimate could mean the Navy would need less money in its operations and maintenance budget each year, freeing up dollars for other readiness or acquisition needs.

Metcalf, in his remarks, also noted Ford is still progressing through some remaining test and evaluation events as the lead ship of its class.

During a short deployment in late 2022, the carrier flew 1,250 sorties — or aircraft missions off the flight deck — and sailed 9,000 miles on both sides of the Atlantic.

Today, Ford is in the Eastern Mediterranean, as war between Israel and Hamas is currently in a delicate, and likely short-term, ceasefire.

“They were supposed to be home for Thanksgiving, and now they’re not going to make it home for Christmas,” Metcalf said.

When the ship’s overarching test and evaluation plan was mapped out two and a half years ago, it called for the deployment to end in November and certain test and evaluation events to take place early in 2024. While the Navy is required by its own Operational Test and Evaluation Force and the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation to meet testing goals on time, “it’s pretty easy to explain, ‘hey, the ship was doing what the president wanted the ship to do,’” Metcalf said.

The remaining test events will be delayed and the schedule redrawn, the captain said.

Space Development Agency demonstrates Link 16 satellite connectivity

WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency demonstrated the ability to connect its satellites to radios on the ground through a signal known as Link 16, showing the potential for in-orbit sensors to network with military systems operating in multiple domains.

The agency conducted demonstrations from Nov. 21 to 27, transmitting signals from its satellites in Low Earth orbit — about 1,200 miles above Earth — to a test site on the ground, SDA said in a Nov. 28 statement.

According to SDA Director Derek Tournear, the demonstrations are a significant milestone for the agency, which is developing a space-based Transport Layer made up of small satellites and sensors designed to provide global connectivity for military users.

“I can’t underscore enough the significance of this technical achievement as we demonstrate the feasibility of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and its ability to deliver space-based capabilities to the warfighter over existing tactical data links,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in the statement.

The Defense Department established SDA in 2019 to build a constellation of low Earth orbit transport and missile tracking satellites on rapid timelines, augmenting constellations of large spacecraft with hundreds of small, relatively low-cost satellites. Those satellites make up what SDA calls its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

Link 16 is a tactical communications system that U.S. forces, NATO and international allies rely on for real-time data exchange. During the demonstration, SDA used three satellites from its Transport Layer, all built by Denver-based York Space Systems. The Air Force’s 46th Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., supported the mission from the ground.

The satellites used on-board radios to send signals to a test site located “within the territory of a Five Eyes nation,” SDA said, declining to disclose which country it partnered with for the effort. Besides the U.S., other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance include Australia, the U.K., Canada and New Zealand.

SDA’s goal had been to conduct the demonstration over U.S. air space. However, the Federal Aviation Administration requires certification to use Link 16 to broadcast signals from space through the U.S. National Airspace System, and has not yet granted approval for SDA’s systems. So, the agency opted to perform the test over international waters.

“SDA’s requirement remains to test over U.S. air space to fully demonstrate the feasibility of the [Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture] and its ability to deliver fire control information to the warfighter over existing tactical data networks,” the agency said.

The satellites that enabled the Link 16 demonstration were part of SDA’s first batch of spacecraft, dubbed Tranche 0, which includes 19 transport satellites and eight for missile tracking. Tranche 1 satellites are slated to start launching in 2024 and will feature 126 transport and 35 tracking spacecraft.

Software snags delay German Puma fighting vehicle upgrades

COLOGNE, Germany — The German army’s upgrades to the Puma infantry fighting vehicle will be late because of problems with the vehicles’ software, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

Officials at the Bundeswehr, Germany’s military, had previously planned to accept an initial batch of upgraded Pumas — 15 copies, according to local military-news website Augengeradeaus.net — by the end of 2023. But alterations to be performed by the manufacturer, a joint venture of Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, are now estimated to take until late February, defense officials said.

The Puma vehicles have been something of a white whale for the military here. Meant to catapult Germany’s analog ground forces onto the digital battlefield, their development and modernization has taken years longer than expected.

After a report a year ago that 18 Pumas broke down during an exercise, a ministry assessment portrayed the vehicle as revolutionary but error-prone. Still, the promise of a significant capability leap over the incumbent, decades-old Marder vehicle fleet kept government spending on the program coming.

German lawmakers in May approved a government request to buy 50 new vehicles for more than $1 billion. That is in addition to hundreds of million of euros spent on upgrading the 350-strong Puma fleet to an intermediate and, later, final configuration with the latest digital bells and whistles. That work has entailed improved driver situational awareness, a missile capability and networking features.

According to a defense ministry statement, the delay of at least two months is unlikely to affect core testing and training activities planned for the modernized Pumas. The success of those events, in turn, has a direct effect on pledges made to allies.

For example, defense officials plan to station Pumas in Lithuania, where designs are taking shape for a permanent German troop presence. The vehicles also will be a staple in Berlin’s future troop contributions to NATO.

AI can shore up federal cybersecurity overwhelmed by data, GDIT says

WASHINGTON — Artificial intelligence has the ability to help the federal government make sense of an unending flood of data now swamping defense, intelligence and other agencies, according to a study from General Dynamics Information Technology.

GDIT, a division of General Dynamics, this month made public the results of its defensive cyber operations research, which relied on a survey of 200 government leaders working in national security fields.

Some 41% of respondents found themselves “submerged in data,” with more than 30% saying they needed more skilled personnel and more-efficient analytics to handle it. More than one-quarter already see the value in AI for cybersecurity, namely for real-time threat detection and automated countermeasures. Human error was the most significant issue, the study found.

“There’s overwhelming volumes of data. I think that challenge only gets worse as we progress, because the threat landscape is ever-increasing,” Matthew McFadden, GDIT’s vice president of cyber, said in an interview. “One of the key findings is: How do we help cyber professionals work smarter, more efficiently? AI and automation is, really, a key way to do that.”

Potential applications of AI, automation and other pattern-recognizing tools are growing as the technologies mature and the public becomes aware of them. Their use for digital defense is gaining steam as hacking threats from small groups and world powers such as China and Russia evolve.

The Department of Defense and other federal civilian agencies consider AI a means to quickly parse piles of information and pass along useful insights, either on the battlefield or in furnishing public services. Machines and programs can also handle rote tasks, freeing up manpower already spread thin and sought after.

Pentagon CIO takes 5G reins amid focus on future networking tech

The GDIT study notes that robust cyber defenses comprise both trusted, well-defined capabilities and innovative technologies. Automation is a key piece of the Pentagon’s push to zero trust, a new cybersecurity paradigm. The approach assumes networks are jeopardized, requiring perpetual validation of users, devices and access.

“AI is, technically, providing better results to the defender than the attacker at this moment,” Matt Hayden, GDIT’s vice president of cyber, intelligence and homeland security, told C4ISRNET. “When you see responses like this, it’s recognized that all these customers see now is the time to make sure they’re getting the most out of what they’ve already invested in, and to put their chips to the middle of the table to get that defender’s advantage.”

The Pentagon requested $1.8 billion for AI in fiscal 2024. It is juggling more than 800 unclassified AI-related projects, the Associated Press reported.

While the military has led AI spending, funding for similar projects at other agencies, especially NASA, has similarly grown from 2020 to 2022, according to analysis by Deltek. Spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs on AI tripled in a two-year period, spurred by machine-learning and virtual-reality obligations, the software and consulting business said.

“We’re going to start to find that AI is not only in almost everything,” Hayden said, “but we’re going to have to start categorizing it as to how autonomous it is.”

What to watch as Congress negotiates final defense policy bill

WASHINGTON ― Congress will begin formal negotiations on a compromise defense policy bill this week, with final votes likely to occur before the holidays.

The annual bill is usually a bipartisan product, but conference committee talks over the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act may be trickier than usual this year. House Republicans added numerous partisan provisions from the right-wing Freedom Caucus to their version of the bill. The Senate version contains several of its own amendments that enjoy bipartisan – though not always unanimous – support.

The House passed 219-210 its $874 billion defense policy bill largely along party lines in July after Democrats defected when Republicans added the Freedom Caucus amendments. Later in July, the Senate passed 86-11 its $886 billion defense policy bill without the socially conservative provisions.

Both bills nonetheless have significant areas of overlap, some of which have generated opposition from the White House. These provisions include the procurement of an amphibious transport dock ship and language institutionalizing the sea-launched cruise missile nuclear program. Less controversial items in both bills include a provision to deepen counter-fentanyl cooperation with the Mexican military and require the Pentagon to coordinate with Taiwan on cybersecurity.

The conference committee must still sort through the differing provisions from each chamber as it hammers out a compromise bill that can pass both the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-held Senate.

Here are some of the key differences lawmakers will need to resolve to make that happen.

Freedom Caucus amendments: In order to secure Freedom Caucus support to pass the House bill, Republicans voted to add several of their amendments. These amendments would overturn the Pentagon’s abortion leave policy, restrict medical care for transgender troops, eliminate military diversity initiatives and block the Defense Department from implementing President Joe Biden’s seven climate change executive orders.

Democrats cited their opposition to these measures as part of their reason for joining Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., in his ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. While removing these amendments would restore Democratic support for what is usually bipartisan legislation, it remains to be seen whether House Republicans would allow a vote on such a compromise bill.

Ukraine Inspector General: A House provision added by Gaetz would establish an independent inspector general to oversee Ukraine aid. The White House opposes creating this position, and the Biden administration is almost out of money to continue arming Kyiv. The defense bill aside, it’s also unclear whether Congress will pass Biden’s separate $61 billion Ukraine aid request for FY24.

AUKUS: The Senate bill includes two provisions from Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., needed to implement AUKUS, the trilateral submarine-sharing pact with Australia and Britain. One authorization would allow the U.S. to begin training Australian private sector personnel to use nuclear-powered submarines while the other provision would allow the State Department to loosen export controls for Canberra and London.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, blocked two other key AUKUS authorizations from the bill: one that would allow the transfer of Virginia-class submarines to Australia and another that would allow the Biden administration to accept Australia’s $3 billion contribution in the U.S. submarine-industrial base.

Wicker has demanded more money for the submarine-industrial base before lifting his two AUKUS holds. While Wicker has spoken positively of Biden’s $3.4 billion request to expand submarine-industrial base capacity as part of a broader defense supplemental spending package, it remains to be seen whether he’ll allow the final two AUKUS authorizations in the final defense policy bill.

NATO: Senators adopted 65-28 an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that would require Senate approval if a president tries to withdraw the U.S. from NATO. Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, threatened to withdraw from NATO in 2018 if U.S. allies did not meet their commitments to spending 2% of GDP on defense.

Buy America: Senators unanimously agreed to an amendment from Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., mandating that 100% of components for all Navy ships be manufactured in the U.S. by 2033. Baldwin’s amendment would allow the defense secretary to wave those requirements under certain circumstances.

Chief Management Officer: A provision from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., would revive the Pentagon’s short-lived chief management officer, a position tasked with reforming defense business practices that ranked No. 3 in the Defense Department until Congress abolished it three years ago. The White House opposes reviving the office.

Cost assessment office: House Republicans included a provision in their bill that would abolish the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office and move its duties elsewhere, citing the office’s role in the Defense Department’s decision to pause amphibious ship purchases. The Senate bill would not abolish this office.

Space Command headquarters: Both bills include a now-dated provision intended to force the Pentagon to make a decision on a final location for the Space Command headquarters. The Biden administration announced in August that it wished to place the headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, revoking a previous decision to locate it in Huntsville, Alabama. The Republican House Armed Services chairman, Mike Rogers, is from Alabama. It remains to be seen if the final bill will include updated stipulations on the final location for Space Command after a years-long dispute.

L3Harris to sell commercial aviation unit to private-equity affiliate

WASHINGTON — L3Harris Technologies on Monday announced it will sell its commercial aviation business to a private-equity firm affiliate for as much as $800 million, in a move to pay down debt and focus more on national security and technology.

The agreement to sell L3Harris’ Commercial Aviation Solutions unit to New York-based private-equity firm TJC comes four months after L3Harris closed its $4.7 billion purchase of engine and propulsion firm Aerojet Rocketdyne.

L3Harris chief executive Christopher Kubasik said in a statement the deal will speed up how quickly the company can reach its desired debt load.

“Today’s announcement is consistent with our multi-year strategy to optimize our national security, technology-focused portfolio,” Kubasik said. “Aligned with our capital allocation priorities, we plan to use the proceeds from this transaction to repay debt, which will accelerate our timeline to reach our debt leverage objective.”

L3Harris said in a statement it expects to close the deal in the first half of 2024, if regulators approve.

The company declined to comment further beyond the information in its release. TJC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

About 1,450 people work at L3Harris’ commercial aviation business, whose offerings include pilot training courses and technologies, flight data analytics, avionics and advanced air mobility solutions.

TJC is a middle-market private-equity firm previously known as The Jordan Company.

L3Harris said in its statement the deal could include its surveillance joint venture, and the sale would be subject to a right of first refusal. If that is exercised, the TJC affiliate would acquire the remainder of the commercial aviation business, L3Harris said.

As part of this deal, L3Harris said it would receive $700 million in cash, and a $100 million earnout based on financial performance targets in 2023 and 2024.

Ice Ice Baby: Raytheon uses diamonds to keep radars cool

WASHINGTON — Diamonds may be forever and a girl’s best friend. They may be the centerpieces of crowns and countless heist films. They may even motivate treasure hunters to plumb the icy grave of the RMS Titanic.

But can they revolutionize battlefield sensors? Raytheon thinks so.

The company, a division of RTX, said it won $15 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to improve gallium nitride semiconductors utilizing the gemstones. Used in radars, gallium nitride components boost power and sensitivity. Temperature management, though, can prove tricky.

To combat overheating, Raytheon is looking to pair lab-grown diamond — a substance known for its incredibly high thermal conductivity — with military transistors and circuits. The company is collaborating with the Naval Research Laboratory, Stanford University and Diamond Foundry to grow the crystal with a particular pattern, or lattice.

“Our engineers have unlocked a new way to produce gallium nitride, where thermal management is no longer a limiting factor,” Colin Whelan, Raytheon’s president of advanced technology, said in a Nov. 16 statement. “These new system architectures will result in sensors with enhanced range.”

RTX sells cybersecurity, intelligence business unit for $1.3 billion

The four-year prototyping contract was inked as part of DARPA’s Technologies for Heat Removal in Electronics at the Device Scale program. THREADS, as it’s known, aims to overcome the thermal limitations of electronics and circuitry while also enhancing the efficacy of radio-frequency equipment.

“If we can relax the heat problem, we can crank up the amplifier and increase the range of radar,” Thomas Kazior, a DARPA program manager, said in a statement announcing THREADS late last year. “If the program is successful, we’re looking at increasing the range of radar by a factor of 2x to 3x.”

RTX has long invested in and used gallium nitride. It’s found in the company’s SPY-6 family of radars, deployed by the U.S. Navy for overhead defense; the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, expected to replace the Army’s original Patriot air-and-missile defense radar; and more.

RTX is the second-largest defense contractor in the world when ranked by defense-related revenue, earning $39.6 billion in 2022, according to the Defense News Top 100 list.

German air force plans major Asia-Pacific tour in 2024

COLOGNE, Germany — The German air force is planning an exercise tour through the Asia-Pacific region in 2024, accompanied by aircraft from France and Spain, the partners in the trinational Future Combat Air System, according to defense officials.

The weekslong deployment next summer, which also involves at least one German navy ship, follows Berlin’s logic that Germany must help stabilize an economically important region as China looks to grow its influence.

“We recognize that the region’s interests touch on ours, at least, or even are the same as ours,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Nov. 16 at event in Berlin organized by the Women in International Security network. “We are coming to stay.”

Also part of the government’s calculus is that any German engagement on the other side of the globe will save the United States from having to get involved there, freeing up American forces to remain focused on Europe, Pistorius added. “You can see the cascading effect.”

Next year’s deployment of aircraft will be “much, much bigger” than the air force’s initial foray to the Asia-Pacific region in 2022, service chief Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz said in an interview. That deployment aimed to prove that a smattering of aircraft — six Eurofighters, four A400M multirole aircraft and three A330 tankers — could reach Singapore in 24 hours and join various training activities from there.

The upcoming trip will take the opposite direction, flying across the north Atlantic to Alaska for a first stop. According to Gerhartz, the idea is to show up in the region with a “European face,” consisting of the three FCAS partner nations and possibly also involving aircraft from the U.K. and Italy along the way.

Air National Guard Director Lt Gen. Michael Loh, whose pilots will train with German counterparts during the Arctic Defender drill in July, lauded the Europeans’ exercise plans. “It is critically important that Europe comes over to the Pacific to show interoperability and support with the U.S. and other members of the region,” he said in an interview.

As of last month, the following contingent of European warplanes was set to partake in various drill elements during the summer: eight German and four Spanish Eurofighters, 12 German Tornados, six French Rafales, four German and four French-Spanish A400Ms, and four German and three A330s, according to a Luftwaffe briefing slide.

Parts of the formation will aim to participate in the Hawaii-based Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, exercise in late July, following a pit stop in Japan for a few days of what the German air service dubs “local flying” with Japanese crews there, the slide states. While in Hawaii, the German air force aims to rendezvous with a Germany Navy frigate, the plan goes.

Next on the calendar is exercise Pitch Black in Australia in late July, followed by a stop either in Indonesia or Malaysia before ending the deployment in India, a country defense and foreign policy leaders in Berlin have been eying as a particular anchor in the region.

In India, the European contingent will aim to partake in the country’s international Tarang Shakti exercise, if the timing works out, or perform “local flying” activities outside of that drill, according to the Luftwaffe.

Romania plans to spend $2 billion on short-range air defenses

MILAN — The Romanian government has solicited bids from defense manufacturers for short-range air defense systems at a cost of up to $2.1 billion, setting up a race between between French and Israeli suppliers with longstanding ties to the European country.

Per a tender notice published by the the Romanian Ministry of Defense earlier this month, the country is seeking so-called short-range air defense and very short-range air defense systems, known, respectively, by the acronyms of SHORAD and VSHORAD.

Romania’s quest to procure these weapon systems predates Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, with improved defenses against short-range aerial threats identified as a priority for the air force as early as 2019.

Bucharest has bought the U.S.-made Patriot system for the longer-range segment. All air and missile defense system will plug into the emerging NATO-wide network, known as the alliance’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense concept.

“We intended to launch this tender last year, but only managed to do so now,” a Romanian defense ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told Defense News.

A spokesman for pan-European missile maker MBDA told Defense News that the company is interested in Romania’s SHORAD-VSHORAD business.

“MBDA will respond with the most suitable solution for the Romanian Armed Forces, notably allowing increased efficiency with the Mistral currently offered to the customer. This makes the VL Mica system a most relevant candidate in this context,” spokesman Julien Watelet wrote in an email.

The reference to the Mistral missile touches on a separate missile-defense acquisition eyed by Romania, explained the Romanian defense official.

“There are two courses of action currently: The SHORAD-VSHORAD program has a strategic dimension, as indicated in our Defense White Paper, and was approved by Parliament so it already has a dedicated budget line,” the official said. “However, the [joint] Mistral procurement is also being considered taking into account our privileged relationship with France.”

Issue experts believe Israel’s Rafael, with the Spyder air defense system, could also join the race, though the company declined to comment on its plans.

The Haifa-based company signed an agreement in 2018 with Romaero, a Romanian aerospace company, to launch an industrial partnership aimed at locally producing air defense weapons.