(click to view full)

$95M in long-lead materials for FY 2010’s birds. (March 15/10)

Northrop Grumman’s E-2C Hawkeye is a carrier-capable “mini-AWACS” aircraft, designed to give long-range warning of incoming aerial threats. Secondary roles include strike command and control, land and maritime surveillance, search and rescue, communications relay, and even civil air traffic control during emergencies. E-2C Hawkeyes began replacing previous Hawkeye versions in 1973; they fly from USN and French carriers, from land bases in the militaries of Egypt, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, and Taiwan; and in a drug interdiction role for the US Naval Reserve. Over 200 Hawkeyes have been produced.

The $17.5 billion E-2D Advanced Hawkeye program aims to build 75 new aircraft with significant radar, engine, and electronics upgrades in order to deal with a world of stealthier cruise missiles, saturation attacks, and a growing need for ground surveillance as well as aerial scans. It looks a lot like the last generation E-2C Hawkeye 2000 upgrade on the outside – but inside, and even outside to some extent, it’s a whole new aircraft. This DID FOCUS Article covers the E-2D program, from the new platform and its capabilities to the budgets, contracts, and companies making it all fly.

• From E-2A Hawkeye to the E-2D
• E-2D Advanced Hawkeye: Program
• E-2D Advanced Hawkeye: Contracts & Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
  Continue Reading… »

MCTAGS on Various Vehicles
(click to view larger)

$74.1 million order for MCTAGS kits and turret assemblies. (March 17/10)

US Marines deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan face numerous hazards in close-combat urban environments. Certainly, small arms fire and fragments from IED explosions are high on the list.

To lessen those risks, the USMC turned to BAE Systems to develop a transparent, bulletproof shield that can be attached to gun turrets on a number of types of armored vehicles.

It is called the Marine Corps Transparent Armor Gun Shield (MCTAGS), and BAE Systems received a contract in 2005 to develop and produce MCTAGS to replace the Gunner’s Protection Kit used on most USMC armored vehicles…

Continue Reading… »

THAAD: In flight
(click to view full)

Budget figures, onging radar improvements. (March 16/10)

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is a long-range, land-based theater defense weapon that acts as the upper tier of a basic 2-tiered defense against ballistic missiles. It’s designed to intercept missiles during late mid-course or final stage flight, flying at high altitudes within and even outside the atmosphere. This allows it to provide broad area coverage against threats to critical assets such as population centers and industrial resources as well as military forces, hence its previous “theater (of operations) high altitude area defense” designation.

This capability makes THAAD different from a Patriot PAC-3 or the future MEADS system, which are point defense options with limited range that are designed to hit a missile or warhead just before impact. The SM-3 Standard missile is a far better comparison, and land-based SM-3 programs will make it a direct THAAD competitor. Thus far, both programs remain underway…

• The THAAD System: Further Details [updated]
• The THAAD Program
• Contracts and Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings & Sources
  
  Continue Reading… »

Night raid
(click to view larger)

Small business qualifier Oasys Technology secures $10.7 million contract to supply US Navy thermal binoculars. (March 17/10)

It was Christmas Eve 2007 and US Army Rangers were searching for suspected Al-Qaeda members in Mosul, Iraq. They were using their night vision goggles so they would have the element of surprise on their side. The story, detailed in a USA Today article, dramatically demonstrates the advantage night vision capabilities provide to US troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Rangers found 2 Al-Qaeda suspects who were holding an 11-year-old Iraqi boy hostage. Using their night vision capabilities, they were able to shoot the suspects without harming the boy. After that encounter, a firefight erupted between the Army rangers and Al-Qaeda insurgents, with 10 insurgents killed, including the head of an assassination cell, and no Army ranger losses. As former General Barry McCaffrey, commander of the US Army’s 24th Infantry Division in the 1991 Desert Storm conflict, commented: “Our night vision capability provided the single greatest mismatch of the war.” It still does.

This free DID Spotlight Article will examine how this technology works, how its military application has developed over years, how the technology is used by troops in the field, as well as major DoD contracts for procuring night vision devices.

• Night Vision Technology
• Generations
• Riding the Omnibus
• Thermal Weapon Sight II
• Multi-Functioning Aiming Laser System
• Helicopter Systems
• Panoramic Night Vision
• Contracts and Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
  Continue Reading… »

MK13 flash-bang grenade

American Rheinmetall Munitions (ARM), a Stafford, VA-based subsidiary of Germany’s Rheinmetall Defence, received a $28.8 million firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract from the US Navy for an improved flash-bang grenade.

ARM currently supplies the MK13 Mod 0 BTV-EL flash-bang grenade to US special ops forces and other US military customers. The MK13 is a stun grenade that produces a blinding flash and deafening noise levels sufficient to daze and disorient the target, without causing permanent injury, the company explains.

The MK13 uses a delay fuze that detonates the grenade 1.5 seconds after the fly-off lever is released…

Continue Reading… »

• Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries issues its Report on Military Procurement; recommendations include 1 minister to oversee it, rather than the current 3.

• F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet fighter rumored to have beaten the F-35A and JAS-39DK Gripen NG in Denmark.

• Indian interceptor missile test misses a Prithvi II target missile. RIA Novosti | Indian Express | Jakarta Post

• How The Hurt Locker’s bomb suit works.

• US Army fast-tracking GPS-guided 120mm mortar round to Afghanistan.

• Venezuela receives first 6 of 18 Chinese K-8 Karakorum trainer/ light attack jets.

• EADS aims to sell 210 A400M military transport planes to US Department of Defense. Good luck with that.

• Qatar’s C-17s flying aid missions to Haiti, and Chile.

• Lockheed Martin delivers 1st Hawk-T Mk.2 simulator to the winning Ascent consortium, for future use with the UK’s new Hawk Mk.128 LIFT jet trainers.

• DARPA looks to tap quantum mechanics for military application.

• Frost & Sullivan: Aging land military equipment in Asia Pacific countries fuels growth in upgrades and replacements.

B-2 drops JDAM
(click to view full)

$46.3 million to Kaman for 12,994 JPF fuzes for JDAMs. (March 15/10)

DID’s FOCUS articles offer in-depth, updated looks at significant military programs of record. This DID FOCUS Article looks at the transformational history of the JDAM GPS-guided bomb program, the ongoing efforts to bring its capabilities up to and beyond the level of weapons like Israel’s Spice and Raytheon’s Enhanced Paveway, and the contracts issued under the JDAM program and its derivatives.

Precision bombing has been a significant military goal since the invention of the Norden bomb sight in the 1920s, but its application remained elusive. Over 30 years later, in Vietnam, the destruction of a single target could require 300 bombs, which meant sending an appropriate number of fighters or bombers into harm’s way to deliver them. Even the 1991 Desert Storm war with Iraq featured unguided munitions for the most part; the US Air Force did use some laser and TV-guided weapons like Paveway bombs and Maverick missiles, but they were very expensive and only effective in good weather. If precision bombing was finally to become a reality throughout the Air Force, a new approach would be needed. The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) became that alternative, an engine of military transformation that was also a model of procurement transformation.

• JDAM: A History of Transformation
• JDAM: Program & Variants [updated]
• JDAM: Contracts and Key Events, 1996 – Present [updated]
• Additional Readings & Sources
  
  Continue Reading… »

MEADS: air view
(click to view full)

MEADS gets NSA approval to use Italian crypto/IFF, and German T/R modules pass testing, but US Army reportedly doesn’t want it any more. (March 10/10)

The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS program aims to replace Patriot missiles in the United States, the older Hawk system in Germany, and Italy’s even older Nike Hercules missiles. MEADS will be designed to kill enemy aircraft, cruise missiles and UAVs within its reach, while providing next-generation point defense capabilities against ballistic missiles. MBDA’s SAMP/T project would be its main competitor, but MEADS aims to offer improved mobility and wider compatibility with other air defense systems, in order to create a linchpin for its customers’ next-generation air defense arrays.

The German government finally gave their clearance in April 2005, and in June 2005 MEADS International (MI) formally signed a contract worth approximately $3.4 billion to design and develop the tri-national MEADS system. This DID FOCUS Article covers that program…

• MEADS: The System
• MEADS: Mobility and Employment
• MEADS: The Program [updated]
• Contracts & Key Events, 2004 – Present [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
  Continue Reading… »

GBU-39: Gotcha.
(click to see results)

March 10/10: Boeing subsidiary McDonnell Douglas Corp. in St. Louis, MO won an $8.8 million contract for 100 “focused lethality munition” variants of the GPS-guided Small Diameter Bomb Phase I. At this time, the entire amount has been committed by the 681th ARSS at Eglin Air Force Base, FL (FA8672-10-C-0013, P00002).

The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb is a specially shaped 250-pound bomb. Its thin and pointed shape gives it extra punch against buildings and hardened targets, its pop-out wings give it very good glide range, and its JDAM-like GPS/INS guidance kit gives it precision. GBU-39 Phase II bombs will add the ability to strike moving targets.

While there have been true stories of “cement bombs” designed to lower collateral damage, “Focused Lethality Munitions” take a higher-tech tack. This Small Diameter Bomb variant changes the bomb’s casing and internal fill, in order to produce more devastating effects within a smaller area. A carbon-fiber bomb body disintegrates instead of fragmenting, which adds explosive force nearby but largely removes sharpnel issues beyond. Inside, metal particles turn the explosive material into short-range projectiles. The result is especially useful in urban areas, in situations where friendly elements are close to the impact zone, and in campaigns fought using contemporary American counter-insurgency doctrine.

• EU warns US about protectionism in KC-X tanker RFP. EU release

• London Times covers China’s escalating cyberwarfare against western military and civilian targets. USNI Blog asks the logical question.

• China launches Yaogan-9 military reconnaissance satellite.

• Brazil’s president has “not yet decided” what fighter to buy, as his government disputes a bid pricing leak.

• The US military is looking for a few good ideas. Beginning in battlefield forensics.

• Seapower chair Rep. Gene Taylor [D-MS] asks: What’s going on with Northrop’s shipbuilding contracts?

• US MSC describes use of pre-positioning ships, joint crewing, and even INLS lighterage in response to Haiti disaster.

• Raytheon gets $152 million order to provide engineering services for the Patriot anti-air missile defense system.

• Raytheon mourns Space and Airborne Systems (SAS) President John C. Jones.

• Pentagon Channel on Hurt Locker’s Oscar win. Meanwhile, CNN talks to EOD techs about the reality.

• USJFCOM ready to deploy commercial-off-the-shelf technology to improve access to large data files for US troops in Afghanistan.