After the F-35: Would-Be F/A-XX Contractors Build Capacity, Expectations

It may yet be a decade or two before the U.S. has an appetite for another “generation” increment for its fighters, but Boeing and Northrop Grumman are hungry now. Northrop is
touting its new design teams dedicated to generating capabilities for the Navy and Air Forces future wish lists. The little information about their initial efforts indicate that it is oddly close to Boeing’s own requirements appetizer, which sported a flying wing design and preceded Northrop’s announcement by more than a year.

The flying wing focus may be a product of these airframes being quite similar to existing development work done for stealth fighter UAV programs, which have featured the more stealthy wing designs.

After seeing how chummy the service branches became in creating a joint strike fighter, Northrop is bowing to current service desires and employing two independent teams to ensure that both the Navy and Air Force can dream big without design compromises.

Some F/A-XX work was generated back in April 2012, when the Navy asked contractors for information about F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Growler replacements – an early indication that the F-35 was not going to be all things to all services.

One interesting feature, at least in Boeing’s theoretical offering, is that the fighter can be flown by wire – still a politically charged feature in several ways. Pilots have been skeptical of unmanned fighters, such as the UCAS-D/N-UCAS/UCLASS program. The subsequent UCLASS project has been watered down by the Navy, with its role limited to surveillance type activities it is thought in order to preserve the more kinetic jobs for manned aircraft like the F/A-XX.

U.S. Military Environmental Liabilities Tempered by Lax Policies of Yore

• Military bases are often home to environmental disasters, and mitigation costs are significant enough today that it exerts a real and behavior-changing influence on the U.S. military. But the liabilities are not considered “strict liabilities” as federal Superfund sites are, which means generally that the military can be held liable only if it failed to abide by requirements of the day. Such was the case when a federal judge dismissed a case against the Army regarding Fort Detrick TCE pollution.

U.S.

• The Pentagon’s director of operational testing indicated that the Littoral Combat Ship’s mine detection packages fail to so far to meet the Navy’s minimum requirements. In addition to operator inexperience, the failure was chalked up in part to software and integration issues. The Navy was hoping for a green light by September 2015. He also indicated that changes announced last month to a later tranche of 20 future ships, to be built after the first 32, wouldn’t change the likelihood of loss if an LCS were to be so unfortunate as to actually get into a fight.

• The ever-even-keeled Congressional Research Service published a report over the holidays giving the current status of China’s naval improvements, which are substantial. The quality of its ships and training increased dramatically, making a gross numbers analysis less informative. Its weaknesses remain lack of integration with other service branches, lack of experience and lack of long-range deployment sustainability.

• The General Accountability Office found that the Office of Secretary of Defense and other very high level pentagon offices do not have a rational, iterative assessment process for determining their staffing needs and structures. The upshot: “DOD and the military services have undertaken reviews to reduce headquarters but these budget-driven efforts have not been the result of systematic determinations of personnel needs.” The GAO, an arm of Congress, made only two mentions of Sequestration, both in footnotes.

• GE Aviation won up to $325 million in additional funds in January 2015 to work on an adaptive cycle engine under phase three of the Versatile affordable advanced turbine engines (VAATE) program that preceded ADVENT.

• In part due to sanctions on Russia, Kalashnikov will produce the eponymous assault rifles in the U.S., according to TASS

Europe

• Brazil hopes to reinstate a mid-air refueling capacity after having retired its KC-137s. Final contract negotiations have been delayed, with one of the 767 conversions being handled by IAI, and another two by domestic firm TAP.

Today’s Video

• This is a three year old video of the ADVENT program. It may be revolutionary for jet engines, but it would be nice if GE could up its game in green screen production values: