MLP concept

Converteam picked for propulsion & power system; Ships named; Keel laid; Article updated. (Jan 19/12)

The Montford Point Class Mobile Landing Platform is intended to be a new class and type of auxiliary support ship, as part of the US Navy’s Maritime Prepositioning Force of the Future (MPF-F) program. They’re intended to serve as a transfer station or floating pier at sea, improving the U.S. military’s ability to deliver equipment and cargo from ship to shore when friendly bases are denied, or simply don’t exist. That’s very useful in disaster situations, and equally useful for supporting US Marines once they’re ashore.

It’s an interesting and unusual concept, one closely connected to the au courant concept of “seabasing”. The final MLP design changed substantially from the initial requirements, which lowered the platform’s cost along with its capabilities. Time will tell if the initial choices and tradeoffs were well-conceived or not. With contracts to build the ships underway, the remaining question is whether the ships can be built to meet the more limited promises that are being made now…

• Seabasing & MLP: Concept and Execution [updated]
  • The MLPs
  • Seabasing, Ancillaries & the MPF-F
• Contracts & Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings [updated]
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• Full 2011 financial results: Textron saw growth at Bell, revenue decrease at Textron Systems. At $7.3B, Bell’s backlog has recovered from a reporting error announced by the company last quarter.

• Meanwhile General Dynamics generated $32.7B of revenue last year. It has potentially almost 3 years worth of revenue in backlog depending on how its indefinite quantity contracts pan out. Aerospace revenue grew but combat, marine and IT systems lost ground, translating into an almost flat topline for the prime contractor.

• Raytheon wrapped up 2011 with slightly lower revenue ($24.9B) but higher bookings ($25.2B) than the previous year. Its backlog rose by $700M to $35.3B though most of that growth is not appropriated yet.

• The RAND Arroyo Center is rather bullish on the potential for UAV logistics applications such as convoy overwatch and other surveillance tasks, but reminds decision makers that bandwidth is going to be critical. Note: the study doesn’t cover the use of UAS for Army resupply, separate research that General Dynamics was tasked with.

• According to the Guardian the British government is considering selling its RAF Norholt to possibly be converted into a satellite of the nearby Heathrow airport. Philip Hammond was Secretary of State for Transport before he replaced Liam Fox last October.

• The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) notes that defense budgets in Latin America have been growing faster than institutional transparency on policy, let alone on spending.

• BAE Systems and Caterpillar Inc. have signed a 20-year supply agreement to integrate the Cat CX family of transmissions into its HybriDrive parallel propulsion system, and use it to outfit and retrofit heavy trucks. It’s a civilian deal – but the same technologies can be used on military armored vehicles, and the civilian sector is pioneering this technology.

• The German Bundeswehr has a video covering the Boxer MRAV wheeled 8×8 APC’s 1st combat deployment to Afghanistan.

• The US Army is concerned about Facebook use. Yes, it can endanger lives, they say. People in the security community need to use it responsibly, and they have some tips.

Breakthrough…

Add-on to MYP-III buy; MYP-III tracking. (Jan 25/12)

The US Navy flies the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet fighters, and has begun operating the EA-18G Growler electronic warfare & strike aircraft. Many of these buys have been managed out of common multi-year procurement (MYP) contracts, which aim to reduce overall costs by offering longer-term production commitments, so contractors can negotiate better deals with their suppliers.

The MYP-II contract ran from 2005-2009, and was not renewed because the Pentagon intended to focus on the F-35 fighter program. When it became clear that the F-35 program was going to be late, and had serious program and budgetary issues, pressure built to abandon year-by-year contracting, and negotiate another multi-year deal for the current Super Hornet family. That deal is now final. This entry covers the Super Hornet family’s 2010-2015 purchases, and has been updated to include all announced contracts and events connected with MYP-III, including engines and other separate “government-furnished equipment”....

• Hornet MYP: Aircraft Types
• The MYP-III Buy [updated]
• Contracts & Key Events [updated]
• GFE: Ancillary Contracts & Developments
• Future Hornets?
• Additional Readings
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• According to Bloomberg the FY13 President Budget submission date has been postponed from Feb. 6 to Feb. 13. Meanwhile House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is suggesting to chip at sequestration one year at a time if rolling back the whole 10 years proves too much of a hurdle.

• Sen. Claire McCaskill [D-MO] is pushing for FAA commercial certification of a civilian “BC-17” heavy transport aircraft. DoD Buzz doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a significant global market for outside cargo delivery, and that the C-17’s short takeoff & landing capabilities could be useful to industries like mining, that operate in austere locations with smaller airstrips.

• US Army installations get together to share progress toward “NetZero” energy & waste goals.

• The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) looks at [PDF] the tax revenue implications of defense acquisition choices and finds that “the tax revenues are significant; they can yield to the Exchequer [DID: i.e. Treasury] over a third of the value of the contract.”

• France just bought [in French] 29 small Cobra Mk2 robots from Eca Robotics in Toulon, for use in finding and detonating land mines.

• US SOCOM’s 75th Ranger Regiment deploys to Afghanistan with GD’s AN/PRC-154 JTRS HMS Rifleman Radio, and Android-based Itronix GD300 wearable computers.

• Even a dying satellite has lessons to teach. GPS-IIA satellite SVN-30 is doing just that for the USAF.

• The US National Weather Services’ Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) is now operational at the NWS Omaha Weather Forecast Office, the 1st of 135 forecast sites to upgrade. It’s a Raytheon system.

• The Australian National Audit Office released its 4th review [PDF] of selected defense acquisition projects. It finds that sticking to the schedule has been more difficult than remaining within budget or delivering promised capability. ”[T]he total time for the 28 Major Projects to achieve their Final Operational Capability date is expected to be almost one third longer than was originally planned.”

• The US State Department seems stalled in an investigation of sales of satellite tech by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) to China that the company says are “ITAR-free” (i.e. without export-restricted American components).

• The US GAO finds that the Navy and Marine Corps’s accounting still show significant discrepancies with Treasury accounts aka Fund Balance with Treasury (FBWT): “As of April 2011, there were more than $22 billion unmatched disbursements and collections affecting more than 10,000 lines of accounting.”

• US Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) Wastebook 2011 [PDF] first words: “Dear Taxpayer, Robot dragons, video games, Christmas trees, snow cone machines, and chocolate. This is not a Christmas wish list. These are just some of the ways the federal government spent your tax dollars this year.” At #3 is a $14M wind turbine project from the Air Force that didn’t quite work. Support, at least nominal, in unexpected places: the Office of Management and Budget. Coburn was one of the 13 Senators to vote against the FY12 defense bill and one of 32 to vote against the omnibus funding law that followed. Among Coburn’s objections: earmarks and bad accounting.

• Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) is developing the Container Unitized Bulk Equipment system (CUBE) to make fuel and water cheaper to deliver to the front lines, as well as switch to containers that are easier to retrieve and reuse once they’re empty.

• Will Boeing close its plant in Wichita, Kansas, and move KC-46A work elsewhere? Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo urges the company not to.

• The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA)’s board elected David P. Hess, President of Pratt & Whitney, as its new chairman.

• The Australian Department of Defence reviewed [PDF] redaction functionality in Adobe Acrobat Pro and found that it worked as intended.

• US Secretary of State Clinton and Assistant Secretary Andrew Shapiro gave an update on landmine clearance and weapons destruction efforts in the video below, after releasing the 10th edition of To Walk the Earth in Safety:
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• The US DSCA managed [PDF] $28.3 billion in Foreign Military Sales cases in FY 2011, and another $6.5 billion were made through Direct Commercial Sales, etc. Top 10 buyers were Afghanistan ($5.4 billion), Taiwan ($4.9 billion), India ($4.5 billion), Australia ($3.9 billion), Saudi Arabia ($3.5 billion), Iraq ($2.0 billion), the United Arab Emirates ($1.5 billion), Israel ($1.4 billion), Japan ($0.5 billion), and Sweden ($0.5 billion). Afghanistan is basically US donations, so it shouldn’t really count, but it’s an eye-opening figure.

• Another interesting turn of events in Afghanistan: the country has vast mineral resources (including copper and gold) that the US DOD and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have helped map. The Afghan Mining minister has just opened a tender process to tap these deposits.

• Meanwhile a German government report [PDF in German] points to record weapons exports of 2.1 billion euros (about $2.8B) in 2010. Sales to EU/NATO countries amount to 77% of the total with more than half for submarine sales to Portugal and Greece alone. But with these countries threatened with being U-booted out of the Euro, Germany will probably have to look elsewhere in the future. This might be easier said than done. German parliamentarians are unhappy [in German] about the delayed, partial data they get from the executive about armament sales, especially when they involve countries where human rights abuses are committed. The Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) and the Joint Conference on Church and Development (GKKE) have both produced research [PDF, nochmal auf Deutsch] on this topic. Still, this is a drop in the bucket for the 1 trillion euro export powerhouse that Germany has become.

• Hackers are using a vulnerability in Adobe Reader 9.4.6 for Windows to target defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, reports Reuters. Attack emails embedded a bogus “contract guide” PDF attachment.

• Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford said the FY13 President Budget should preserve USMC procurement but will see a smaller number of troops.

• RAND’s Arroyo Center has looked at how to optimize truck logistics within the continental United States (CONUS).

• Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith will speak at an event organized by the Asia Society tomorrow in Mumbai. Beyond allowing uranium sales to India, will this lead to strengthened military ties between the two countries?

• UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond spoke at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) earlier today. He announced that the final cost of operations in Libya was £212 million (about $330M) – 68% operations costs / 32% ammo.

• The Canadian Army is hosting a counter-IED symposium this week, arguing that improvised landmines are not going away neither will dealing with them. Videos in English and French embedded below:
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New dawn?

How available are the RAF’s Typhoons? (Dec 6/11)

Implementation of Britain’s “future contracting for availability” approach of paying for machines in service, rather than parts and hours, generally involves a phased set of contracts and agreements. As each party’s understanding the risks and demands grow, the contract’s complexity and comprehensiveness grow as well, and the framework moves closer and closer to the desired goal of a full availability contract. “Britain Hammers Out Through-Life Support Framework for Tornado Fleet” described how this approach works on the ground, and talked about some of the keys to success. “UK’s “Contracting for Availability” Adds Hawks, Looks Ahead” mentioned the MoD’s March 2007 Long Term Partnering Agreement Foundation Contract with BAE Systems, which aims to place all British military aircraft under this kind of framework.

In late 2007, the UK’s Eurofighter Typhoon fleet entered Quick Reaction Alert service with the RAF, and began flying with new ground-attack capabilities. In step with its growing operational responsibilities, the UK MoD began moving toward an availability contracting maintenance model. A 5-year contract signed in March 2009 accelerated that shift, and the Typhoon Availability Service has begun operations. Recent reports have raised the question: how successful has it been?

• The US Senate unanimously approved the Combating Military Counterfeits Act (S 1228) as an amendment to the FY12 Appropriations bill. It involves criminal penalties and is part of a broader effort to tighten the military supply chain after the revelation that suspect electronic parts from China had been installed on a variety of military systems. Another approved amendment (S 1025) intends to give the National Guard a seat at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Similar language is already in the House’s version of the bill so this has significant chances of making it through reconciliation, whenever that will finally happen. CJCS Martin Dempsey thinks it’s a bad idea.

• Michele A. Flournoy, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, published DoD procedures on how to share information with the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security (DoDI 3025.19 PDF).

• The US Government Accountability Office finds there’s too much overlap and not enough coordination between the 5 federal agencies with cybersecurity personnel. That’s what happens when everyone think they’re in charge.

• Can the US government lease to own? Sure. See also the primer [PDF] on aircraft leasing published by the Defense Acquisition University in 2005. As an aside, in 2006 DoD categorized rent-to-own loans to servicemembers as predatory lending but reverted that position the next year.

• Quartermaster soldiers at Contingency Operating Base Adder, Iraq are packing the last pallets of nonrolling stock out of the country, either back home or to Afghanistan. That includes computers, radios, or even medical equipment. See this entry from early November for a video of rolling stock logistics shot in the same location.

• Australia formally decommissions HMAS Kanimbla. With typhoon season beginning, the event underscores the importance of RMAS Choules’ (ex-Largs Bay) planned mid-December arrival.

• European Defense Ministers have their semiannual meeting today. Bruxelles2 covers the agenda [in French] which should span sea piracy (a topic that seems to concern Europeans much more than Americans) and the escalation of the spat between Great Britain and Iran. The momentous issue in the background though is sovereign debt and government funding stability over the years to come.

• Also in French (aren’t you happy DID makes you practice your rusty foreign languages?), the fun video below by Swiss TV channel TSR on the country’s ongoing fighter competition:
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• Still no progress in India’s long negotiations with France’s SNECMA, to develop a Kaveri jet engine successor as an alternate engine for India’s Tejas LCA Mk.2 fighter. GE’s F404 equips the Mk.1 variant, and their F414 has been picked for future versions.

• US Senators Carl Levin and John McCain (Chairman and Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee, respectively) cowrote a defense of their position on how to handle detained terrorist suspects. This is the sticking point between the Senate and the Obama administration that has been delaying the FY12 defense authorization bill – the latter threatens a veto.

• Since the US Senate has been unable to vote on regular spending bills in a timely fashion, majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to lump everything into a $1T “omnibus” appropriations bill next month instead of passing another continuing resolution.

• USMC Sgt. and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer sues his former employer BAE Systems in a Texas state court, reports the WSJ.

• It is recommended to post Sole Source Justifications on FedBizOps prior to contract awards rather than after the fact.

• The transfer of munitions squadrons responsible within the US Air Force for nuclear mission support from Air Force Materiel Command to Air Force Global Strike Command should be complete next month.

• Thales intends to increase its share in DCNS from 25% to 35%, according to La Tribune [in French]. Thales acquired this option back in 2009 and must exercise or lose it by next March.

• The British Royal Navy is deploying HMS Protector, its new ice patrol ship, to to the Antarctic Peninsula. The ship has been leased by Norway to the UK for 3 years.

• The video below shows what a supply air drop using JPADS looks like:
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• The Institute for the Study of War offers a good snapshot of the Libyan revolution and operations by the numbers. This week Libya was also on the mind of the UK’s House of Commons Defence Committee in a Q&A session with the Minister for the Armed Forces, and France’s Assemblée Nationale in one of several hearings [in French] focused on the 2012 budget. One outcome: Britain and France’s navies plan a major joint exercise next year.

• According to the Washington Post the US Air Force is now flying armed UAVs out of the Arba Minch airport in Ethi­o­pia.

• DAPRA has a $50K prize set aside for the team coming with a way to “unshred” documents. 12/02/11 update: solved!

• Project Manager Soldier Sensors and Laser’s (PM SSL) logistics team won the US Army Acquisitions Excellence “Transforming the Way We Do Business Award” FY11 earlier this month because it came up with a system to improve inventory accountability.

• Mantech to buy IT provider Worldwide Information Network Systems, Inc. for $90M in cash.

• The US Defense Science Board researched early intercept (EI) ballistic missile defense feasibility [PDF] and found that “EI in and of itself is not a useful objective for missile defense [...] Intercept prior to the potential deployment of multiple warheads or penetration aids [...] requires Herculean effort and is not realistically achievable”. But this doesn’t necessarily undermine regional missile defense plans, if they don’t rely too much on EI.

• US DoD undersecretary for personnel and readiness Clifford L. Stanley resigned. DoD’s Inspector General was investigating allegations of incompetence and waste sent by anonymous Pentagon employees last summer. JoAnn Rooney, Stanley’s principal deputy since last June, will take his job on an acting basis in 2 weeks and until a replacement is formally announced.

• The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) compares the emerging Democratic and Republican positions within the Super Committee.

• US Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO) asks [PDF] the Secretary of Defense to look into how the infamously bankrupt Solyndra LLC was selected as a finalist for a contract via the Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative (DeVenCI). Note that in the end Solyndra did not get a DoD contract award.

• The Readiness Subcommittee in the US House of Representatives held a hearing yesterday on the effects of “austerity” on readiness with witnesses from the 4 services. Exec summary: budget cuts affect readiness. 1st video embedded at the bottom of this entry.

• Another HASC hearing took place to review the state of DoD ERP systems. In its testimony the GAO highlights schedule slippages, cost increases and functionality gaps.

• The 2nd video below shows a quick glimpse of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s work on micro-UAVs looking like birds or even insects.
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