Boeing gets $999M contract to continue producing wings for the A-10 Warthog.
Where are the single points of failure in US defense supply chain?
Is full modularity the key to future Army Aviation readiness?
JLTV, Successor To Humvee, Tests U.S. Army’s Ability To Stick With A Plan. The argument is that the Army has a record of canceling programs, which makes it look incompetent. And it would look worse by rolling back JLTV production. But in reality, what actually looks incompetent is a failure to learn or adapt. And what’s more, the JLTV only underwent Limited User Testing, so we’re not sure how it actually performs. Perhaps the move allows the Army to write off the JLTV without losing face.
China watch: Chinese shipbuilder launches ‘combat-ready’ JARI unmanned ship.
It appears F-35 JPO is buying spares instead of performance. But which spares, and how many?
The 23 aircraft in the [F-35] test fleet achieved an abysmal “fully mission capable” rate of 8.7 percent in June 2019. Note that what is reported is “fully mission capable” rate rather than “mission capable,” the latter means being able to perform at least one mission rather than all missions. Looks like the fleet-wide F-35A mission capable rate is closer to 50 percent. The 8.7 percent figure is somewhat surprising, perhaps, considering I didn’t expect the F-35A (let alone the gunless B and C variants) to be able to perform ground attack missions yet.
New York Times: Inside America’s Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program. As Edward Keating reminded me on the Acquisition Talk podcast, beware of people reporting dollar figuresover many deades without specifying then year or constant year dollars. HT: Kevin Lewis.
More on drones not being survivable: A U.S. military MQ-9 drone was shot down in Yemen.
The Pentagon is canceling a multi-billion dollar contract with Boeing for a new ballistic missile interceptor. USD(R&E) Griffin on the matter: “Ending the program was the responsible thing to do.” A new kill vehicle will be started, but what would have been responsible in the first place was to have a hedging program riding along all the time, even if it were at a level 1/10th that of Boeing’s RKV. Boeing was probably massively overfunded in the first place.
Trusted Capital Marketplace to go live this fall. Justification by USD(A&S) Lord seems to be China, but if China were no threat, would the DOD have moved in this direction?
What effect could this have on low-radar cross section aircraft? A new “quantum radar” device uses entangled microwaves to overcome some of the limitations of traditional radar systems.
The Army’s accelerated attempts to build up capabilities in cyberwarfare and other technologies are causing challenges for staffing, equipping and training. One Army cyber/EW brigade had 80 percent vacancies. Of course, the DOD is simply too large to compete in the open market for talent. It has to focus on building the talent itself.
Leave a Reply