Current Events in the Americas

From DefenseNews Pentagon Cancels Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter By GINA CAVALLARO Published: 16 Oct 19:39 EDT (23:39 GMT) The Defense Department late today scrapped the $6.2 billion program to replace the aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior with the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, citing cost overruns. The Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter was to replace the Kiowa Warrior, pictured. (M. Scott Mahaskey / Staff) The Army announced in July that the contract with Bell-Textron was then more than 40 percent over cost, triggering a program reviewunder legislation know as the Nunn-McCurdy statute. John Young, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and lo…

From Aviation Week Pentagon Scraps USAF Tanker Competition Sep 10, 2008 By Jefferson Morris The U.S. Department of Defense announced this morning that it is terminating the U.S. Air Force refueling tanker competition, and has notified Congress and the competing industry teams of the move. Halting the current competition can be viewed as a win for Boeing, which complained that the quick pace of the recompete didn't give it enough time to substantively change its proposal. The deferment would allow the company to rebuild its proposal strategy around a larger aircraft like the 777. According to a DOD statement, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in consultatio…

CNN WASHINGTON (AP) -- A mechanical monster grabs the F-14 fighter jet and chews through one wing and then another, ripping off the Tomcat's appendages before moving on to its guts. Finally, all that's left is a pile of shredded rubble -- like scraps from a Thanksgiving turkey. Rows of retired F-14 jets await demolition Monday at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. The Pentagon is paying a contractor at least $900,000 to destroy old F-14s, a jet affectionately nicknamed "the turkey," rather than sell the spares. The Pentagon fears that if the surplus jets aren't destroyed, they could fall into the wrong hands, including Iran's. Within a workda…

Pentagon's Global Strike Weapon Stuck In Limbo; Congress Fears Accidental WWIII (AOL Defense)

Some 30 will be carried by a single F-16, with propeller and electric batteries: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/08/inside-the-secretive-pentagon-office-planning-skyborg-fighters-and-drone-swarms/ http://warisboring.com/articles/imagine-f-16s-deploying-swarms-of-tiny-drones/

From DefenseNews Periscope Pursuit New Breed of U.S. Navy Radars Would Reveal Stealthy Subs By Jon W. Glass Published: 17 November 2008 Trying to spot a submarine periscope lurking in cluttered coastal waters is akin to identifying a floating beer can from 60 miles away. That's the challenge the U.S. Navy faces as it tries to track a growing fleet of modern diesel-electric submarines. The Pentagon plans to do this by improving existing radars with new signal processing software and by rotating the radar antennas faster inside their radomes. The Navy is moving forward to develop Automatic Radar Periscope Detection and Discrimination (ARPDD) radars for Nimitz…

From Defence Talk Phoenix Missile Hypersonic Testbed NASA | Jan 30, 2007 Researchers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, Calif., are investigating the use of surplus demilitarized Navy AIM-54 Phoenix air-launched missiles as possible hypersonic test platforms or testbeds. Hypersonic flight is defined as aerodynamic flight at speeds of Mach 5 or greater, and use of surplus Phoenix missiles is one of the methods being considered to obtain critical flight data in the hypersonic regime. These missions, to be conducted over restricted military test ranges, would i…

A great set of photos from Red Flag 08-04: http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/C1...5317/index.html

Collection of photos of US Navy radar ships over the years, including the newest, USNS Howard O. Lorenzen, here.

From DefenseNews' Intercepts blog [excerpt]

From http://www.defence-aerospace.com Predator Reaches Initial Operating Capacity Source: US Air Force; issued March 1, 2005 LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. --- One of the most heavily used and valued weapons systems of operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom has reached initial operating capability, Air Combat Command officials here announced March 1. The MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle was officially declared IOC March 1 by Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, ACC’s vice commander. The milestone was reached after the MQ-1 completed eleven requirements including supportability, maintainability and aircraft and parts availability. Initially fielded as…

From Aviation Week President Publicly Reconsiders Marine One Feb 24, 2009 By Bettina H. Chavanne and Michael Bruno The high-profile VH-71 presidential replacement helicopter program came under the highest profile possible Monday when President Barack Obama and his former Republican rival for the White House lamented the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps project while discussing economic crises. “The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me,” Obama noted. The comment sent both the Navy, which runs the program, and manufacturer Lockheed Martin scurrying. “We are committed to the program’s success and are confident we can deliver the required number of…

Price Tag For Navy's New Aircraft Carrier On The Rise, GAO Says By Jon W. Glass, The Virginian-Pilot The next-generation aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, under design at shipbuilder Northrop Grumman Newport News, faces "substantial risk" of cost overruns that could complicate the Navy's plan to increase its fleet, a federal report scheduled for release Monday says. The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog for Congress, said that this "likely" cost growth "may force the Navy to sacrifice" other vessels in its 30-year plan to grow the fleet to 313 ships from the current 279, according to Bloomberg News. The business news service first reported the GAO's …

Looks like quality control problems are not limited to the PRC. See also. RedNova Problems on New Ship a Bad Sign, Analyst Warns Jul. 14--WASHINGTON -- The "poor construction and craftsmanship" Navy inspectors say they found last month aboard a new amphibious ship could be an ominous sign for the service and the U.S. shipbuilding industry as they embark on a host of other ship programs, a veteran naval analyst warned Wednesday. Scott C. Truver, a vice president of Anteon Corp., an information technology company based in Fairfax, said a newly disclosed Navy report on the San Antonio, a $1.2 billion helicopter and troop carrier scheduled to join the fleet this fall…

From Flight International DATE: 11/12/07 SOURCE: Flightglobal.com Production of first Boeing P-8A begins at Spirit By Graham Warwick Spirit AeroSystems has begun production of the fuselage for the first Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime-patrol aircraft, a derivative of the Next Generation 737 under development to replace the US Navy’s Lockheed P-3 Orion. Loading of the assembly jig began at Spirit’s Wichita, Kansas plant on 11 December, and the first fuselage is scheduled to be dispatched by rail car 100 days later to Boeing’s 737 final-assembly line in Renton, Washington on 19 March 2008. The first P-8 is one of five – three flight-test aircraft and two…

Mattis proposed revolution on surprise carrier battle groups deployments: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/05/02/is-secretary-of-defense-mattis-planning-radical-changes-to-how-the-navy-deploys/

From Defense Aerospace Want Real Missile Defense Soon? Put KEI to Sea (Source: The Lexington Institute; issued April 23, 2007) By Daniel Goure, Ph.D. More than six years into the Bush Administration and what do we have to show for its investment of billions of dollars in missile defense? Precious little is the answer. To defend the nation we are relying on a waterlogged Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) site at Fort Greeley, Alaska with about a dozen interceptors. A few more missiles have been deployed at Vandenburg AFB in California. There are a small number of Navy cruisers equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system and a number of Army PAC-3 …

From the July 2009 issue of Proceedings Put the Navy in the Lead! Lieutenant Commander Bart L. Denny, U.S. Navy (Retired) Ballistic-missile defense has been a hot-button issue since the first V-2s smashed into England. Today, the Navy is best positioned to provide that defense. The U.S. Navy has an emerging capability in evolved versions of the long-serving Standard Missile and Aegis weapon system to defend against short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the mid-course and terminal phases of flight. With further development, sea-based ballistic-missile defenses (BMD) will give the United States the ability to defeat even the largest, longest-range …

Navy CG(X) Cruiser Program: Background, Oversight Issues, and Options for Congress Source: Congressional Research Service (No public website) Ref: Order Code RL34179 Released Sept. 20, 2007 27 pages in PDF format The US Navy is currently developing technologies and studying design options for a planned new cruiser called the CG(X). Navy plans call for procuring the first CG(X) in FY2011, at an estimated cost of about $3.2 billion, and 18 more CG(X)s in subsequent years. If the CG(X) is equipped with a nuclear power plant, which is an option currently being considered by the Navy, then advance procurement funding for the first CG(X) could appear in the FY2009 …

F-35's French rival pitches 'Canadianized' fighter jet (CBC News)