AN-32, Arrival
(click to view full)

In the above Jan 10/08 photo, an Afghan soldier with the Afghan National Army Air Corps directs a newly delivered AN-32 light tactical transport plane to its spot on the ramp of Kabul Air Base in Kabul, Afghanistan, just 65 days from receipt of original tasking from the Navy International Program Office. This plane was the first of 4 refurbished AN-32s that were purchased from the Ukraine by the ANAA, which now has 7 An-32s in inventory. The ANAA also flies 2 related AN-26 transports.

US Naval Air Systems Command’s (NAVAIR) Support and Commercial Derivative Aircraft Program Office bought the AN-32s from Ukranian commercial firms, after inspecting the aircraft. Recent stories shine light on some of the credit for their early delivery, including soldiers like PMA-207’s C-26 and UC-35 Assistant Program Manager for Systems Engineering Mr. Roman Hnatyshyn, a first-generation U.S.-born citizen fluent in the Ukrainian and related Slavic languages. Air Force Lt. Col. Stephen Petters worked the other end, and was deployed from the Pentagon to Afghanistan to help rebuild the ANAAC’s ability to support itself and the planes it would be getting. NAVAIR release | Photo and initial delivery information from the Pentagon’s DefenseLINK.

AN-32, Airborne
(click to view full)

The AN-32’s high placement of the engine nacelles above the wing allow bigger propellers, driven by 5,100 hp AI-20 turboprops that almost double the output of the related AN-26’s engines. As a result, the AN-32’s 14,750 pound/ 6900 kg load capacity is almost 50% better than its AN-26 cousin’s. Most important to the ANAAC, it can take off with much better load fractions in hot and/or high-altitude conditions, whose thin air could be a problem for other aircraft. India also operates AN-32 “Cline” aircraft for that very reason, and some of those IAF AN-32s are currently flying supplies into Myanmar.

Raytheon: C4ISR Future?
(click to expand)

As video communications is integrated into robots, soldiers, and UAVs, and network-centric warfare becomes the organizing principle of American warfighting, front-line demands for bandwidth are rising sharply. The Transformation Communications Satellite (TSAT) System is part of a larger effort by the US military to address this need.

The final price tag on the entire TSAT program has been quoted at anywhere from $14-25 billion through 2016, which includes the satellites, the ground operations system, the satellite operations center and the cost of operations and maintenance. By mid-2007, the U.S. Air Force was scheduled to make a key decision: build the TSAT system on its current schedule and launch in 2013-2016, or postpone TSAT, take stopgap measures and add Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites 4 & 5 to the three slated for launch from 2009-2012.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing have won a total of $514 million each in risk reduction contracts for the TSAT SS satellite system, in hopes of making that Plan B unnecessary. The bids are in, and both teams await a decision. TSAT’s $2 billion TMOS ground-based network operations contract is already underway.

The TSAT constellation of satellites, receivers, and infrastructure has seen a recent resurgence of news coverage, and its central role in next-generation US military infrastructure makes it worthy of in-depth treatment. Yet its survival is not assured by any means. Outside events and incremental competitors could spell its end just as they spelled the end of Motorola’s infamous Iridium service. This updated DID Special Report looks at the TSAT program, its challenges, and the potential future(s) of U.S. military communications – with new additions highlighted in green for your convenience. The latest item is a $336 million TMOS contract….

• Key Background – Why TSAT Is Thought to be Necessary (i.e. continue reading…)
• Key Background – The Big Picture: TSAT and the Transformational Communications Architecture
• Briefing – What Is TSAT?
• Briefing – TMOS: TSAT’s Ground Component
• Briefing – The AEHF Alternative, and Lessons Learned for TSAT
• Analysis – TSAT Program: Issues & Decisions
• Analysis – TSAT’s Competitors – and Its Fate
• News – TSAT: Timeline and Ongoing Developments [updated]
• Appendix A – Additional Readings & Sources
  
  Continue Reading… »

(click to apply)

The December 2007 issue of Britain’s Soldier Magazine highlights some recent winners under the UK MoD’s Gems program, which provides cash rewards for clever solutions to operational problems.

Royal Engineers LCpl Tom Glinn, Spr “Cookie” Cook and Spr Jay Coombes needed to cool Basra’s Cobra radar system when it began to fail in Iraq’s heat. The unit’s initial solution of placing the unit in an inflatable tent has a structural and thermal failure – but a crude sketch, some scrap wood, discarded plastic tubing and even cling film worked, drawing air from an air conditioning unit and feeding it to the radar via a set of insulated tubes. Cost GBP 20 (about $41). Winner, one Gems cash prize.

Nor are they alone. Royal Engineer Sgt Jim Randall designed a metal hook attached to an adjustable metal pole, that can be dragged along the ground to identify command wires leading to roadside IED land mines. It worked so well that explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams use them now. Craftsmen Steve Whiting and Phil Ashby noticed that ISO containers on the back of some of the Army’s larger trucks were snagging power lines and creating power outages. Locals not happy. Army not happy. Response? An angled metal frame that allows the cables to glide over the containers. Simple, effective little… Gems.

Baroness Taylor
(click to view full)

Lord Paul Drayson was an accomplished man when he entered government. The founder of the needle-free vaccination firm PowderJect reaped over GBP 80 million, rose to a seat in the House of Lords, and went from an under secretary position to a full Ministry. He then went on to accomplish a great deal over 30 months as Britain’s Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support. Britain has become the world’s leading practitioner of availability-based support contracts for a wide range of weapons systems, major mergers of government departments have been undertaken to move that approach forward, and NAO audits have confirmed the effectiveness of the new approach. A Defense Industrial Strategy has been put in place that outlines key technical skills Britain believes it must retain, and industry consolidation and changes have followed in its wake as the industrial base moves to adjust. The country is now on track to buy full-size aircraft carriers for the first time in decades, and other shifts have begun, albeit slowly, in the land sector.

How do you top that? How about by submitting the most unusual, way-out, and flat-out interesting senior official government resignation letter we’ve ever seen. Or are likely to see in our lifetimes…

Continue Reading… »

“Killer Chick”
(click to view full)

The American Office of the Secretary of Defense sent this on to DID, and we thought we’d pass it on to all of our readers in the Washington area. The American Veteran Center’s 10th Annual Conference begins today, and will take place November 8-10 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel. there is still time to register and attend.

The AVC conference is one of the largest annual gatherings of decorated military combat veterans, and will host some of the greatest heroes of WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan. It features 3 days of speaker panels, wreath laying ceremonies at the World War II, Korea, and Vietnam memorials and an awards banquet. The conference also features salutes to Medal of Honor recipients and service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the participants include:

Continue Reading… »

(click for magazine)

“The characteristics of Small Wars have evolved since the Banana Wars and Gunboat Diplomacy. War is never purely military, but today’s Small Wars are even less pure with the greater inter-connectedness of the 21st century. Their conduct typically involves the projection and employment of the full spectrum of national and coalition power by a broad community of practitioners. The military is still generally the biggest part of the pack, but there a lot of other wolves. The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” —- Small Wars Journal

Firms like Proctor & Gamble, Bank of America, and Boeing are leveraging the Web 2.0 trends described by business gurus like Don Tapscott [PPT format w. speaking notes] to improve information flow in their organizations. So is the General in charge of the USA’s nuclear deterrent. Armed Forces Journal praises the Small Wars Journal as another example that takes articles from field practitioners, and works to build an international body of counterinsurgency knowledge as fast or faster than civilization’s enemies can use the same technologies to build their movements. AFJ writes:

“The SWJ is one of the finest resources on the Internet for the student of counterinsurgency, and has attracted…. a who’s who of the debate on counterinsurgency theory, including Kilcullen, Nagl, Frank Hoffman, Malcom Nance, Bing West and Lt. Col. Paul Yingling. The addition of SWJ contributors in recent months is especially impressive. For example, following his controversial May 2007 Armed Forces Journal essay, “A failure in general¬ship,” Yingling joined the SWJ blog as a contributor to address some of the response his article had received…. The site also offers the digital SWJ Magazine, which principally pub¬lishes articles by the captains and majors who are fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and provides another excellent venue for expanding and enhancing the debate on the war. After so many articles about how the milblogging phenomenon has threatened chains of command, engendered violations of soldiers’ civil liberties and fueled a digital propaganda war, it is refreshing to note that the [digital medium] can also serve as a virtual graduate seminar for the practitioners of war.”

Etter exits MRAP
(click to view full)

Dr. Delores Etter, the U.S. Navy’s senior acquisition official, submitted her resignation Oct 5/07. “I have held the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition for almost two years… We have accomplished a great deal in that time, but after deliberating with my family and staff, I have decided to resign from my position. This decision allows me to return to my teaching post at the United States Naval Academy in time for the spring academic semester there.” Alabama Press-Register | Defense News.

Dr. Etter’s has made a significant but under-appreciated contribution via the mainstreaming of “open architecture” ship electronics into current and future combatant classes. The difficulty and expense involved in upgrading their electronic systems for modern threats was part of the motive behind the early retirement/sale of many US Navy FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry Class frigates. Open architecture systems promise to alleviate many of those issues in the future fleet, which relies on platforms with a generational lifespan of 50 years, vs. a generational lifespan of about 3-5 years for their electronics.

On the other hand, the US Navy’s current problems stem from shipbuilding costs, not the R&D issues which have always been Dr. Etter’s strength. The new CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford Class carriers and DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class ‘destroyers’ have both been on the receiving end of well-grounded and pessimistic reports from the GAO and Congressional Research Service, doubting their ability to meet their cost targets. The Littoral Combat Ship program, meanwhile, has experienced cost growth to a point that is threatening the program. The emerging worst-case future is a US Navy that finds itself unable to build enough high-end ships to fill key roles due to stratospheric costs, while building low-end ships at a medium-tier price that can’t perform key naval functions like fleet anti-air defense or anti-ship combat. Forestalling that future will be job #1 for Dr. Etter’s next 2 successors, as force-shaping decisions are made for the US Navy over the next 5 years.

The Price is right
(click to view full)

Allied Trades Section engineers display their creativity and inventiveness by making new tools to help warfighters in the field. Michael Price, shop supervisor with Allied Trades at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, and a retired Army mechanic, is no exception. His shop’s creation is an improved vehicle weapon mount for 5.56mm M249 SAW or 7.62mm M240B machine guns that has gone a long way to provide better small-arms fire protection in Afghanistan.

“It was heavy, and they wanted to know if we could do something different for them; we came up with an idea to make them out of steel, but lighter. There are not as many supports in it, but it’s all welded together instead of bolted together. So it’s a lot better piece of equipment.”

Price’s shop has produced about 400 of them, out of about 700 requests so far. The new design apparently enables better protection for service members in vehicles, and they were able to save about $1,100 per mount by producing it on site. US DoD story.

WANTED: stuff like this…
(click to view full)

On July 25, 2006 Al-Anbar commander and U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer submitted an MNF-W priority 1 request pointing to the hazards inherent in American supply lines, and noted that the up to many of the supply convoys on Iraq’s roads (up to 70%, by some studies) are carrying fuel. Much of that fuel isn’t even for vehicles – it’s for diesel generators used to generate power at US bases et. al. In response, the document requests alternative energy solutions to power US forward operating bases… and the US military looks like it will act on the request.

DID has covered a number of Pentagon projects to use alternative energy at various installations, but Zilmer’s request is believed to be the first formal request from a front-line commander. Not to mention the first formal request that acknowledges the security dimension of alternative energy sources in response to the growth of “systempunkt” terrorism and the non-linear battlefield. This is also an issue of cost, and reports indicate that foresighted CIA venture funding has even produced a front-runner for the coming contracts. Now, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has denied Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer’s request – but evaluation by the US Marines and Army Rapid Equipping Force continues…

Continue Reading… »

(click for origins)

As a military becomes more professional, and the level of skill required to be a soldier rises, the issue of retention becomes extremely important to a military’s force structure and effectiveness. In the midst of a war, retaining soldiers who have experienced the lessons of combat becomes even more critical. Hence the significant bonuses offered to US soldiers who re-enlist. The US Army has done extremely well on the re-enlistment front, but the financial commitment involved is substantial – and so are the stakes. Could the Army do better?

As an operations manager for Procter and Gamble, Jack Stultz was responsible for recruitment, training, and retention. Now that the veteran of operations in Iraq, Panama, and Afghanistan is on a 4-year leave of absence as US Army Reserve Chief, Lt. Gen. Stultz is bringing some new thinking from his corporate job to the issue of troop retention. Stultz notes the importance of more predictability and reasonable deployment expectations per rotation, but he also adds concepts like taking a life-cycle approach. “At Proctor and Gamble, when you talked to an employee you were trying to retain, you looked at where they were in their life. And the same thing really does apply when you think about retaining a soldier.” His efforts could lead to better-tailored retention packages and changes to the way the Army Reserve operates on several fronts, from health-care benefits (currently a major future expense issue), to a different structure for retention bonuses, to changes in the retirement system. The DefenseLINK article “Army Reserve Chief Applies Business Lessons to Military Force” offers more details.

The Army is also implementing many of Maj. Vandergriff’s reforms [2003 summary | 2004 progress report | AEI 2005 panel – The Future of the US Army | 2004 HASC PPT briefing – PDF | Book – The Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs] which should help as well.

Continue Reading… »