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LEMV concept
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L-3 WESCAM wins electro-optics slot. (Sept 2/10)

The rise of modern terrorism, sharply increasing costs to recruit and equip professional soldiers, and issues of energy security, are forcing 2 imperatives on modern armies. Modern militaries need to be able to watch wide areas for very long periods of time. Not just minutes, or even hours any more, but days if necessary. The second imperative, beyond the need for that persistent, unblinking stare up high in the air, is the need to field aerial platforms whose operating costs won’t bankrupt the budget.

These pressures are forcing an eventual convergence toward very long endurance, low operating cost platforms. Many are lighter-than-air vehicles or hybrid airships, whose technologies have advanced to make them safe and militarily useful again. On the ground near military bases, Raytheon’s RAID program fielded aerostats, and then surveillance towers. Lockheed Martin has also fielded tethered aerostats: TARS along the USA’s southern border, and PTDS aerostats on the front lines. The same trend can be observed in places like Thailand and in Israel; and Israeli experience has led to export orders in Mexico and India. At a higher technical level, Raytheon’s large JLENS aerostats are set to play a major role in American aerial awareness and cruise missile defense, and its ground and air scanning ISIS radar was developed under a DARPA project, to pair with Lockheed Martin’s fully mobile High Altitude Airship.

The Army’s LEMV project fits in between RAID and HAA/ISIS, in order to give that service mobile, affordable, very long term surveillance in uncontested airspace. Its technologies may also wind up playing a role in other projects…

• The Army’s LEMV [NEW]
• Surveillance Options, and the Rise of the LTAs
• Contracts & Key Events
• Additional Readings [updated]
  
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Class 1 MAV
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LRIP contract for US Army. (Aug 24/10)

The USA’s Future Combat Systems Class I UAV is intended for reconnaissance, security and target acquisition operations in nearly all terrain, including urban environments. Each system of 2 vertical take-off and landing air vehicles, a dismounted control device, and associated ground support equipment. It will be carried by selected platforms and dismounted soldiers, and will use autonomous flight, navigation, and recovery.

The larger Class II and Class III UAV development programs were canceled in favor of existing options: the RQ-7 Shadow, and MQ-1C SkyWarrior. The planned Class IV MQ-8B Fire Scout was canceled by the Army in 2009, though it will see naval use. Despite excellent field reports for mini-UAV competitors like the RQ-11 Raven, however, Honeywell’s hovering RQ-16 “T-Hawk” avoided the axe, found a niche, and made the list for the US Army’s early increment 1 Brigade Combat Team Modernization fielding. It has even seen limited exports…

• The Class I MAV [updated]
• The MAV Program [updated]
• Contracts & Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
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$540M in contracts to SAIC and Graybar. (Aug 26/10)

Around 1997/98, the Defense Logistics Agency changed their business practices, and entered into Prime Vendor long term sustainment contracts with various suppliers to provide materials needed to support the maintenance, repair, and operation (MRO) of its facilities. Items such as plumbing, electrical components, heating/ ventilation/ air conditioning (HVAC), lumber, fixtures, other hardware supplies, etc. would be included. The Prime Vendors need not make these items; the idea is to use purchasing power and commercial purchasing practices to consistently get the US Department of Defense the best prices on these civilian items, delivering them quickly and with little overhead.

These contracts are not small; collectively, they represent billions of dollars each year. Unless otherwise stated, the contracts are issued by the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia (DSCP, now referred to as Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support) in Philadelphia, PA. Specific purchases then take place via orders under the overarching contracts described below, up to the limits mentioned. The USA is divided into a number of regions, and these contracts also include locations abroad; DID has used the same geographical groupings in describing these contracts over the past couple of years, and the firms receiving them.

• USA: Northeast Region [updated]
• USA: North Central Region
• USA: Northwest Region
• USA: Southeast Region
• USA: South Central Region
• USA: Southwest Region
• CENTCOM Region
• Pacific Region
  
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Guest article by Ian P. Wilson, Grant Thornton UK LLP

Given unprecedented fiscal pressures inherited by the new UK Government, there is an increasing recognition that the UK will have to reassess how it seeks to assert itself militarily. Given the poor condition of the country’s public finances, it is a widely-held view that the UK simply cannot afford to buy and support military assets to simultaneously project air, sea and land force capabilities on a global scale; nor can it expect to address several major conflicts while maintaining effective security at home.

As it proceeds with its promised 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), the new UK Government faces the dilemma of having to fund a fundamental realignment and upgrade of the country’s defence and security infrastructure, whilst seeking to reduce a record fiscal deficit. Inevitably, priorities will have to be determined and certain programmes will face cancellation or curtailment…

• 1. A Changing World
• 2. The Big Questions
• 3. Defence procurement priorities – our view
• Additional Readings
  
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GPS IIIA concept
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GPS-III passes Critical Design Reviews early; OCX sub-contract. (Aug 20/10)

DID’s FOCUS articles offer in-depth, updated looks at significant military programs of record. It’s hard to be more significant than the USA’s Global Positioning System (GPS), which is widely relied upon for civilian uses, including timing services for stock trades and credit card processing. At the same time, military class (M-code) GPS guidance can now be found in everything from cruise missiles and various precision-guided bombs, to battlefield rockets and even artillery shells. Combat search and rescue radios use it, and so does a broadening array of individual soldier’s equipment. Disruption or decay of of the the critical capabilities provided by this line of communication in space would cripple both the US military, and many aspects of the global economy.

GPS-III satellites are a key part of this PTN (Positioning, Timing & Navigation) system’s future plan, offering several improvements over the existing GPS II family. When fully deployed, the current vision for GPS-III is that the new satellites will feature a new L1C civil signal; a cross-linked command and control architecture that allows the entire GPS constellation to be updated from a single ground station; and a spot beam antenna that provides resistance to hostile military jamming while improving accuracy and integrity. GPS III will also have limited interoperability with Europe’s ongoing Galileo GPS-type satellite constellation, per a 2006 agreement involving Lockheed Martin and EADS.

• The Existing Array
• The GPS III Program [updated]
• Contracts and Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
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WGS-3 formally enters service; FY 2006-2011 budgets; April 2010 SAR & program changes; WGS-7 contract. (Aug 20/10)

The WGS program is actually a set of 13-kilowatt spacecraft based upon Boeing’s model 702 commercial satellite. These satellites will support the USA’s warfighting bandwidth requirements, supporting tactical C4ISR (command, control, communications, and computers; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance); battle management; and combat support needs. The program name has been changed for some reason from “Wideband Gapfiller Satellite” to “Wideband Global SATCOM,” presumably to avoid the (correct) suggestion that it fills an emerging gap. Readers should be aware that references to either title in documents, archives, or the media denote the same program.

Upon its first launch into geosynchronous orbit, WGS Flight 1 became the U.S. Department of Defense’s highest capacity communication satellite. This is DID’s FOCUS Article covering the WGS program…

• WGS: Capabilities & Role
• The WGS Program & Schedule [updated]
• WGS Program: Contracts & Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings [updated]
  
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Night raid
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ENVG contracts to ITT, L-3, DRS. (Aug 12/10)

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 contracts for procuring night vision devices.

• Night Vision Technology
• Generations
• Riding the Omnibus
• Night Vision Limitations
• The Way Ahead
• Contracts and Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
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BCTM B-Kit in Hummer
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LRIP order for RQ-16 T-Hawk UAVs (Aug 24/10)

Concerns about cost overruns, vehicle design, and contract structure prompted the Pentagon to cancel the US Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) program in June 2009.

Instead of a single FCS contract, the Pentagon directed the Army to set up a number of separate programs to undertake parts of the FCS program. One of those programs is the Brigade Combat Team Modernization (BCTM) Increment 1. The BCTM Increment 1 capabilities – which include ground robots, UAVs, ground sensors, and vehicle (B-Kit) network integration kits – are planned to be fielded to up to 9 Infantry Brigade Combat Teams beginning in 2011.

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Four teams get up to $100 million in DARPA funding to develop superfast supercomputers. (Aug 6/10)

The US Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) was set up in 1992 to modernize DoD’s supercomputing capabilities. The HPCMP was assembled out of a collection of small high performance computing departments run by the services, each with supercomputing capabilities independent of the others.

The HPCMP brings these capabilities together. The program provides supercomputer services, high-speed network communications, and computational science expertise that enables the DoD labs to develop new weapons systems, prepare US aircraft for overseas deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and assist long-term weather predictions to plan humanitarian and military operations throughout the world…

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Ultra APV demonstrator
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New Army plan bad news for JLTV? Aug 17/10)

In an age of non-linear warfare, where front lines are nebulous at best and non-existent at worst, one of the biggest casualties is… the concept of unprotected rear echelon vehicles, designed with the idea that they’d never see serious combat. That imperative is being driven home on 2 fronts. One front is operational. The other front is buying trends.

These trends, and their design imperatives, found their way into the USA’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program, which aims to replace many of the US military’s 120,000 or so Humvees. The US military’s goal is a 7-10 ton vehicle that’s lighter than its MRAPs and easier to transport aboard ship, while offering substantially better protection ad durability than existing up-armored Humvees. They’d also like a vehicle that can address front-line issues like power generation, in order to recharge all of the batteries troops require for electronic gadgets like night sights, GPS devices, etc. The end of October 2008 saw 3 contract awards out of 7 qualifying submissions, which are being developed into rival designs for the JLTV’s systems design and development phase.

DID’s FOCUS articles offer in-depth, updated looks at significant military programs of record. JLTV certainly qualifies, though its future remains cloudy due to expected spending cutbacks and the possible presence of “good enough” substitutes…

• JLTV: Program & Risks
• JLTV: Goals and Constraints
• JLTV: Participants and Platforms
• JLTV: Contracts and Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
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