Israel’s Arrow Theater Missile Defense

In a dawning age of rogue states, ballistic missile defenses are steadily become a widely accepted necessity. Iran is widely believed to be developing nuclear capabilities, and Israeli concerns were heightened after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged that Israel be “wiped off the map” (the fact that America was also placed in that category went largely uncovered).

Because missile defenses are so important, states like India and Israel have taken steps to ensure that they have the ability to build many of the key pieces. The Arrow project is a collaboration between Boeing and IAI to produce the missile interceptors that accompany the required radars, satellites, command and control systems.

NOTE: Article capped and coverage suspended in 2011.

LAS in, LAS out: Counter-Insurgency Planes for the USA and its Allies

The USA needs a plane that can provide effective precision close air support and JTAC training, and costs about $1,000 per flight hour to operate – instead of the $15,000+ they’re paying now to use advanced jet fighters at 10% of their capabilities. Countries on the front lines of the war’s battles needed a plane that small or new air forces can field within a reasonable time, and use effectively. If these 2 needs are filled by the same aircraft, everything becomes easier for US allies and commanders. One would think that this would have been obvious around October 2001, but it took until 2008 for this understanding to even gain momentum within the Pentagon. A series of intra-service, political, and legal fights have ensured that these capabilities won’t arrive before 2015 at the earliest, and won’t arrive for the USAF at all.

The USA has now issued 2 contracts related to this need. The first was killed by a lawsuit that the USAF didn’t think they could defend successfully. Since February 2013 they have a contract that they hope will stick. The 3 big questions are simple. Will the past be prologue for the new award? Will there be an Afghan government to begin taking delivery of their 20 planes much beyond 2014? And will another allied government soon need to use this umbrella contract for its own war?

Missile Defense: Next Steps for the USA’s GMD

The USA’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program uses land-based missiles to intercept incoming ballistic missiles in the middle of their flight, outside the atmosphere. The missiles are currently based at 2 sites in the USA: 4 at Vandenberg AFB in California, and 20 (eventually 26) at Fort Greely in Alaska.

The well-known Patriot missiles provide what’s known as terminal-phase defense options, while longer-reach options like the land-based THAAD perform terminal or descent-phase interceptions. Even so, their sensors and flight ranges are best suited to defense against shorter range missiles launched from in-theater.

In contrast, GMD is designed to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It depends on tracking that begins in the boost phase, in order to allow true mid-course interception attempts in space, before descent or terminal phase options like THAAD and then Patriot would be tried. In order to accomplish that task, GMD missiles must use data feeds from an assortment of long-range sensors, including satellites like SBIRS and DSP, some SPSS/BMEWS huge early-warning radars, and even the naval SBX radar.

Hydra, Awakened: Guided Air-Ground Rockets

Sen. Leahy’s [D-VT] worked in the mid-2000s to keep the Hydra 70mm rocket family alive through special appropriations, just in time for the Hydras’ potential on the battlefield to rise again. The key was the addition of low-cost precision guidance, which would expand the number of precision weapons carried by helicopters, aircraft, and even UAVs.

Over the last few years, the US Army’s 2nd attempt at an APKWS 70mm guided rocket had a near-death experience, before righting the program with Navy funding. Meanwhile, private development efforts are introducing new competitors into the precision-guided rocket space: Lockheed Martin, Thales TDA, and a raft of international partnerships involving major defense firms and partners in Korea, the UAE, Canada/Norway, and Israel. This DID FOCUS article covers the most prominent competitors within the guided rocket trend. Their products will sit between full anti-armor missiles like Hellfire, TOW, and Brimstone, and an emerging class of ultra-small precision attack weapons like Northrop Grumman’s Viper Strike, Raytheon’s Griffin, etc.

NASA’s CCiCap: Can Space Taxis Help the Pentagon?

Boeing CST-100

With competition coming at last to American military satellite launches, civilian developments take on new importance. A NASA program called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) is a major source of potential funds for key players in space launch and space vehicles, which could solve a civilian problem while improving the military’s options.

With the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, American manned missions to the International Space Station have mostly involved Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, which costs about $63 million per seat. The lone exception has involved the commercial space innovator SpaceX, whose unmanned Dragon v1.0 capsule docked at the ISS in May 2012. NASA continues to pursue its own Space Launch System heavy rocket and Orion capsule for manned spaceflight, but in the mean time, its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) program aims to spur development of lower-cost American options that could supplant or supplement Soyuz.

These “space taxis” will rely on heavy-lift rockets to make it into space. Their purpose isn’t military, but their configurations are very good news for the USA’s space industrial base…

Jordan’s AC-235 and AC-295 Pocket Gunships

AC-235 concept

In February 2011, with unrest engulfing the Middle East, ATK announced a project with Jordan to turn 2 Jordanian CN-235 light transport aircraft into small aerial gunships. In June 2014, they were so pleased by the results that they decided to convert one of their larger C295s.

The aircraft pack electro-optical targeting systems that include a laser designator, aircraft self-protection equipment, and a weapons suite of Hellfire laser-guided missiles, laser-guided APKWS-II 70mm/2.75 inch rockets, and the same M230 link-fed 30mm chain gun that equips AH-64 Apache helicopters. The weapons are all controlled by ATK’s STAR mission system, turning the Airbus light transports into lethal but relatively inexpensive counter-insurgency platforms…

Pocket Gunship: From AC-XX to the MC-27J Praetorian

C-27J 3-view

In mid-2008 Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) made a $32 million budget reprogramming request in order to buy a C-27J light tactical transport plane and convert it into a small prototype AC-XX gunship, using “proven/known” weapons and systems.

That effort foundered for good when the USAF canceled the C-27J, but programs to turn existing USMC and AFSOC C-130s into light gunships had laid the technical foundations. Italy’s Alenia Aermacchi figured that a C-27J gunship might have a lot of appeal on the international market. Especially if the gunship kit could somehow co-exist with its role as a transport. In 2012, they unveiled exactly that, thanks to a collaboration with America’s ATK: the MC-27J Praetorian.

ATK’s PGK: Turning Shells into Precision Artillery

ATK’s PGK

Alliant Tech Systems’ GPS-guided Precision Guidance Kit hopes to do for artillery shells what Boeing’s JDAM tail kit has done for conventional bombs – or what ATK’s APMI kit has done for 120mm mortars.

The Western way of war has largely pushed conventional artillery off of the battlefield. A 200 – 300 meter CEP (Circular Error Probable, where 50% of rounds hit within that radius) just isn’t viable when you need to reduce the risks of friendly casualties and collateral damage. Attempts to improve that performance began in the 1980s, but ran into 2 big roadblocks: cost, and reliability…

Kuwait is the Latest Gulf State in the C-17 Club

Kuwaiti C-17

In September 2010, Kuwait added itself to the list of existing and potential Gulf Cooperation Council C-17 customers. Within the Gulf Cooperation Council, both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have bought the aircraft, even though they’re both small countries whose territories are well within the operating radius of smaller planes.

A hint of why might be found in neighboring Qatar’s decision to paint their first military C-17 in the bright colors of their national airline. C-17s that can deploy across oceans are a potent asset in a world that’s very short on advanced airlift. When disaster strikes, they boost the prestige and soft power of countries that possess them. If a Kuwaiti sale goes through, it could push total GCC fleet orders to 12 planes.

InTop: Sorting out Ships’ Topside Mess

USS Philippine Sea

A quick look at almost any modern warship shows a bewildering array of gear on its mast and upper surfaces. These “topside apertures” serve an array of functions, from communications, to data transmission, to electronic listening and defense. Not only do they disrupt ship smoothness, and hence radar profiles, when installed, but they can also be extremely difficult to integrate together so that object A’s transmissions aren’t interfering with critical service B. While firms like Thales in Europe pursue “integrated modular mast” technologies, the US Navy is aiming to go one step beyond. They’re funding “Integrated Topside” R&D to go beyond just a pre-packaged array, and turn all of these little bolt-ons into one common, smooth-running, and upgradeable basic architecture.

InTop for surface ships will be based on AESA radar technology, and aims to become an innovative, scalable suite of electronic warfare, information operations, and line-of-sight communications hardware and software. Its performance goals are to improve ships’ anti-radar profiles, increase communications bandwidth, and resolve electromagnetic interference and compatibility issues…