Rapid Fire May 31, 2012: Defining Unmanned Missions

• Northrop Grumman is pitching a fleet of 3 to 5 modified Global Hawks Block 30s to Canada. The call it “Polar Hawk”. It’s a good thing Microsoft is not in charge of their branding: “Global Hawk Cold Proof Starter Edition” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

• RAND came up with methodologies to determine the future role and missions of UAVs.

• IAI sales for Q1 2012 are up 5% from a year ago to $894M. Its backlog reached $9.7B. Exports and military sales represent 80% and 76% of total sales respectively.

QinetiQ’s Q-Net: Fabric Beats Rocket

M-ATV w. Q-Net

No vehicle “cage armor” provides 100% protection, but even 50% effectiveness will save lives. QinetiQ’s Q-Net uses high-tech fabrics to replace metal cage armor, and protect against incoming rockets. In May 2012, QinetiQ North America in Watham, MA received an $11.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for 420 “rocket-propelled grenade defeating nets,” 420 battle damage Q-net kits, and proprietary tubes. Work will be performed in Franklin, MA, with an estimated completion date of Dec 13/12. One bid was solicited, with 1 bid received by the U.S. Army Contracting Command in Warren, MI (W56HAV-12-C-0240).

This isn’t the USA’s first Q-Net purchase. Kits have been created and fielded for HMMWVs, and for blast-resistant RG-31s and M-ATVs, but contracts to date had been handed out through the vehicle manufacturers. That isn’t entirely unreasonable, since any cage armor must be produced as a specific kit that protects a given vehicle type. As for Q-Net…

Australia and USA Collaborating on New Small-Ship Radars

Upgraded ANZAC concept
(click to enlarge)

In August 2005, Australia’s Ministry of Defence reported that Australia and the United States had joined forces by signing a joint agreement to develop active phased array radar technology in Australia. The total development cost was estimated to be approximately A$ 30 million over 3 years. The hope was that it would kick-start a new Australian electronics and systems integration industry, based on S-band active array and X-band phased-array technology, sized for and applied to smaller ships like frigates and corvettes.

Both countries will share the development costs, technical expertise and benefits of the CEAFAR (3D) active phased array radar. This technology is being developed by ACT electronics company CEA Technologies, and has become part of Australia’s ASMD project to make its new Anzac-Class frigates survivable against supersonic cruise missiles. Other military and civil applications on land and sea are also possible, given the radar’s characteristics:

• The CEAFAR/CEAMOUNT Solution
  
• Contracts and Key Events [updated]
  
• Additional Readings
  

Rapid Fire May 30, 2012: Air Control Coordination

• Rafael is trying to increase the range of its Iron Dome rocket shields. The US plans to provide military aid to Israel to buy more of these counter-rocket systems, though so far numbers fluctuate widely between the Administration, the House and the Senate.

• House Armed Services Committee member Silvestre Reyes [D-TX-16] lost the Democratic primary after serving 8 terms. He’s currently the Ranking Member of two subcommittees: Readiness, and Air and Land Forces.

• Booz Allen Hamilton’s revenue for its FY 2012 grew by 4.8% to almost $5.9B. Their total backlog at the end of March was down $120M to $10.8B, though the funded part of the backlog gained ground to $2.9B vs. $2.4B a year earlier.

24-Year, GBP 1.5B contract to Maintain UK’s Hercules Fleet

UK C-130 C5

In mid-2006 the UK MoD added another platform to the expanding list of long-term, performance-based, public-private, “contracting for availability” maintenance solutions for Britain’s key military platforms, by awarding Marshall Aerospace a GBP 1.52 billion contract ($2.86 billion conversion back then) to begin supporting its fleet of C-130 Hercules transport aircraft until 2030.

The deal has several segments, with mechanisms for price adjustments upward and downward as the contract continues. Britain’s SDSR plans may also cut the deal off early, if the entire C-130 fleet retires by 2022 as planned. As prime contractor, Marshall Aerospace is working in partnership with the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO), the Royal Air Force, Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce to deliver the Hercules Integrated Operational Support (HIOS) programme. The HIOS programme will provide guaranteed levels of aircraft availability to a fleet that includes both older C3/C1 models (C-130K stretched and normal) and C4/C5 models (C-130J-30 and C-130J).

US Army Wants a Small Radar, for Small UAVs

NanoSAR on ScanEagle

In May 2012, ImSAR, L.L.C. in Salem, UT received a $24 million firm-fixed-price and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to build, test, and assess a lightweight ultra wide band synthetic aperture (ground-looking) radar for use on small unmanned aerial vehicles. Work will be performed in Salem, UT, with an estimated completion date of May 31/17. One bid was solicited, with 1 bid received by U.S. Army Contracting Command in Natick, MA (W911QY-12-D-0011).

ImSAR’s NanoSAR radar has already tested on Boeing’s popular ScanEagle UAV, and the company began offering it as an official payload option on Feb 23/10. The US Army doesn’t use ScanEagle UAVs, but they do have options like the RQ-7B Shadow that could benefit from a small radar that was light enough to add in addition to the existing surveillance turret. ImSAR can offer them an improved NanoSAR B, or their new Leonardo radar that’s well-suited to tasks like convoy overwatch and land-mine detection.

Rapid Fire May 29, 2012: Australian Spending, Such as It Is

• The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published its Defence Budget Brief 2012-2013 [PDF] last week. It starts like this:

“The numbers tell the story. Next year the defence budget will fall in real terms by 10.5%, the largest year-on-year reductions since the end of the Korean conflict in 1953. As a result, defence spending as a share of GDP will fall to 1.56%, the smallest figure recorded by Australia since the eve of WWII in 1938.”

• Karl-Heinz Kamp in a NATO Defence College paper [PDF] argues that if members of the alliance are going to go through budget cuts because of overwhelming financial pressure, they should at least proceed in a coordinated fashion to maintain aggregate capabilities.

• The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concurs [PDF] on the idea that there must be a method behind defense drawdowns. They project personnel costs in the US to creep up as a percentage of total spending while procurement would take the brunt of the cuts. This is already going on in Europe.

Australia’s M113 APC Family Upgrades

M113A1 & M1A1s, 1AR
(click to expand)

The M113A1 family of vehicles was introduced into service in Australia in the mid 1960s, and arrived in time to see service in Vietnam. Additional vehicle variants were added until 1979, and there are 766 M113A1 vehicles currently in the Australian Army fleet. By February 2005, however, only 520 remained in service.

A number of upgrades have been suggested for Australia’s APCs(Armoured Personnel Carrier) over the years, with a number of different reviews and upgrade proposals submitted. Many of Australia’s M113s remained in the old M113A1 configuration, though some had at least been repaired and overhauled at 25,000 km. Bushmaster wheeled mine-resistant vehicles have replaced some M113s in the ADF, but the M113′s lightweight, tracked, off-road mobility remains important to Australian mechanized formations, and to troops deployed in combat zones. A plan approved in the 1990s involved a “minimum upgrade” of 537 vehicles from 1996-1998, at a cost of about A$ 40 million in 1993 dollars, with a major upgrade to follow. That major upgrade did follow – along with schedule slips, and cost increases from around A$ 594 million to nearly A$ 1 billion.

The UK’s FRES Transformational Armored Vehicles

FRES-U finalists:
There can be… none?

Many of Britain’s army vehicles are old and worn, and the necessities of hard service on the battlefield are only accelerating that wear. The multi-billion pound “Future Rapid Effects System” (FRES) aims to recapitalize the core of Britain’s armored vehicle fleet over the next decade or more, filling many of the same medium armor roles as the Stryker Family of armored wheeled vehicles and/or the Future Combat Systems’ Manned Ground Vehicle family. Current estimates indicate a potential requirement for over 3,700 FRES vehicles, including utility and reconnaissance variants. Even so, one should be cautioned that actual numbers bought usually fall short of intended figures for early-stage defense programs.

The FRES program was spawned by the UK’s withdrawal from the German-Dutch-UK Boxer MRAV modular wheeled APC program, in order to develop a more deployable vehicle that fit Britain’s exact requirements. Those initial requirements were challenging, however, and experience in Iraq and Afghanistan led to decisions that changed a number of requirements. In the end, GD MOWAG’s Piranha V won the utility vehicle competition. FRES-U is not the end of the competition, however, or the contracts. In fact, FRES-U had the winning bidder’s preferred status revoked; that entire phase will now take a back seat to the FRS-SV scout version:

Britain Adds to Its C-17 fleet

RAF C-17

In 2000 the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) signed a 7-year ‘lease-and-support’ agreement with Boeing and the United States Air Force for the use of 4 Boeing C-17 Globemaster IIIs (3 + 1 “active reserve”) for the period 2001 – 2007, with an option for a possible extension to 9 years. Although it has the ability to operate from unprepared strips, the RAF uses the C-17 as a strategic transport aircraft to established bases, especially those that are far from Britain. The C-17 made its RAF operational debut during the Afghanistan conflict in 2001.

Front line needs soon had the C-17 fleet in high demand, and a combination of an aging C-130K Hercules force and delays to Britain’s 25 22 planned A400M transports stretched the RAF’s transport fleet even more. Instead of extending the C-17 lease, therefore, a deal struck with Boeing in 2006 saw the UK buy all 4 aircraft outright, and add a 5th aircraft to the RAF’s C-17 fleet at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Since then, the fleet has kept on growing. A 6th C-17 was ordered in 2007, a 7th was ordered in 2009, and #8 was ordered and delivered in 2012.