Roper Calls For New Air Force Planes Every Five Years; Recalls X Plane Days. A slice: “Part of Roper’s push is for what he called “attritable aircraft” — basically planes the Air Force can afford to lose, in part because they don’t have pilots aboard and in part because they cost much less than highly advanced fighters like the F-35 or the F-15.”
Army approves JLTV for full-rate production. Here were some of my thoughts.
SDA Director Fred Kennedy steps down, amid turmoil within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin. Also having left in space leadership, SecAF Heather Wilson and principal deputy SecAF for space will be stepping down in July.
More on that: Space in transition as DoD leaders depart in quick succession.
“If your tank battalion has the choice of a good highway or a bad road, take the bad road, says Luttwak. If you can divide your fighter squadrons onto two aircraft carriers instead of one, then waste the fuel and do it. And if two of your enemies are squaring off in Syria, sit back and toast your good fortune.” Recommended.
The real test is yet to come: UK flies F-35 missions over Iraq and Syria — out of 95 missions accomplished, zero attacks were carried out.
Iran Says it Almost Downed a P-8 Surveillance Plane. They “refrained” from shooting it down to hit a BAMS drone instead. This wouldn’t be surprising for ComNavOps, who pointed out that P-8 detection range is 100-200 miles, while Russian surface-to-air missiles can easily reach that distance.
Here are the biggest weaknesses in America’s defense sector. Ground systems problem, as the Pentagon reports it, is that it incrementally updates existing designs rather than going for wholesale new designs… perhaps the Army has just forgotten its history with new designs, such as the MBT-70 (cancelled), the M1 (which was high cost at the time), the Bradley (which today looks cheap compared to a smaller Stryker), the FCS (cancelled), the GCV (cancelled), the Marines’ EFV (cancelled), and the jury is still out on the JLTV. Of course, the Army/Marines should pursue clean-sheet designs — but perhaps they should be managed continuously and at low levels with various prototypes not intended to be production models the very first try.
DARPA puts $1.5 billion towards remaking U.S. electronics industry. Read the good interview with DARPA’s electronics director, Bill Chappell. A slice: “We’ve got underlying trends where the physics is already hard and getting harder. And that’s expressing itself in the cost across the board, whether that’s design, manufacturing, or even writing the software on top of a system-on-chip. Most aspects of electronics are getting more expensive, and larger design teams are needed to manage the underlying complexity.” Sounds like the “is science slowing down?” question. Lot’s more detail in the interview, including practical next steps.
Why does DARPA put so much online? The journalist thinks that it is “very stupid” to put so much online. I disagree. The information cannot help another country solve the problems addressed — it’s way too high level — but it can promote relationships and spur activity within US industry and academia where interests overlap.
“I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.” That was Brunnatine Greenhouse exposing a $7 billion, potentially unethical, contract to the firm formerly known as Halliburton.
Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers.
A new report on why military space is so expensive. Not surprising: low production quantities and highly specified requirements.
LCS Billings Commander Removed After Hitting Merchant Ship in Montreal. Some accountability is shown by the Navy, but it is perhaps misplaced since we all recognize that the LCS was a flawed ship from the start (not to mention grossly undermanned). Commanding an LCS seems to be highly risky to one’s career, but note that no one’s head rolled for screwing up a multi-billion dollar engineering program in the first place.
Whoops — The U.S. Army Owns Potentially Hundreds of Thousands of Faulty Guns. Luckily, handguns should be easy to test in operational environments, and there are many commercial equivalents to indicate the reasonableness of price.
Sacrebleu! New KC-46 Pegasus Tanker Makes Wild Landing at Le Bourget.
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