Thursday, July 16, 2009

F-22 demise premature?


Over the last few days I've read different articles detailing how Congressional leaders in the President's own party are saying "not so fast," when it comes to canceling the expensive F-22 Raptor jet fighter program.

As we've detailed on this page, President Obama wants to discontinue the F-22 Raptor, which has had major cost overruns and has yet to be deployed in favor of increased funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The problem as F-22 prime contractor Lockheed Martin sees it and many in Congress as well is that cancellation may create major job loss at a time when unemployment is already hovering around 10 percent.

Yes, major republican figures such as Sen. John McCain of Ariz., support the cancellation of the program, but congressional leaders on both sides are loathe to cut thousands of jobs that may in the end cost them their own jobs at election time.

President Obama's and Defense Secretary Robert Gates' argument for shifting funding away from the F-22 makes sense. However, some times facts don't matter in politics.

The recession doesn't look to end by the time the defense budget goes to Congress for a vote and if unemployment numbers go up look for the F-22 to keep flying for few more years.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

F-22 demise premature?


Posted by John McHale


Over the last few days I've read different articles detailing how Congressional leaders in the President's own party are saying "not so fast," when it comes to canceling the expensive F-22 jet fighter program.
Over the last few days I've read different articles detailing how Congressional leaders in the President's own party are saying "not so fast," when it comes to canceling the expensive F-22 Raptor jet fighter program.

As we've detailed on this page, President Obama wants to discontinue the F-22 Raptor, which has had major cost overruns and has yet to be deployed in favor of increased funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The problem as F-22 prime contractor Lockheed Martin sees it and many in Congress as well is that cancellation may create major job loss at a time when unemployment is already hovering around 10 percent.

Yes, major republican figures such as Sen. John McCain of Ariz., support the cancellation of the program, but congressional leaders on both sides are loathe to cut thousands of jobs that may in the end cost them their own jobs at election time.

President Obama's and Defense Secretary Robert Gates' argument for shifting funding away from the F-22 makes sense. However, some times facts don't matter in politics.

The recession doesn't look to end by the time the defense budget goes to Congress for a vote and if unemployment numbers go up look for the F-22 to keep flying for few more years.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Future Combat Systems: too big to fail, or too juicy a target to succeed?

Posted by John Keller

The U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, a mammoth initiative to design and field families of manned and unmanned armored vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and the networking and data communications necessary to link its systems together for decision support and situational awareness, appears to be finished -- at least as originally conceived.

Earlier this summer the Army officially cancelled the $160 billion FCS program with the signing of an acquisition defense memorandum that officially gutted the program of its manned combat vehicle component -- a family of armored vehicles based on a common chassis that was to include a new main battle tank, self-propelled artillery piece, and armored personnel carrier.



Instead, the Army is restructuring what is left of FCS to emphasize military ground robots and UAVs, communications networking, and sensors linked on communications networks. The new initiative to replace FCS is called Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization.

The FCS program has already yielded much important technology, including the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV), and the Warfighter Information Network–Tactical (WIN-T). More useful technology and equipment will come out of this program, including large unmanned ground vehicles that function as cargo trucks, which caravan together on the battlefield with minimal human intervention.

Despite its valuable developments, however, the FCS program had a lot of problems -- many of which were political, not technological.

The first problem involved the anticipated FCS mission: improving the Army's ability to go toe-to-toe with large national mechanized forces of major military powers like China and Russia. The motivation behind FCS, in large part, was a legacy of the Cold War, which ended nearly 20 years ago.

FCS was not so much about dealing with today's military imperatives of fighting unconventional forces and terrorists -- who rely on roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices (IEDs) detonated by cell phones and garage door openers -- as it was about confronting large national forces equipped with tanks and artillery.

The second problem with FCS was its sheer size. While most military programs are concerned with one platform at a time, the FCS packaged many platforms together as a monolithic move into the future. Proponents believed the program was a logical and integrated step toward modernization; proponents also believed the program was too big to fail.

Actually, the program was too large and juicy a target to survive. It was easy for political opponents to attack on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon -- a large, lumbering, fantastically expensive program with fragmented constituencies that could be set against one another with ease.

In the military today, there are few rivalries as fierce as the manned vs. unmanned vehicle communities. Tank drivers, artillery commanders, and helicopter pilots often look on unmanned vehicles with scorn; they have convinced themselves that their manned platforms can do a better job; they also know that unmanned vehicles threaten their jobs.

The FCS program contained both of these components as cornerstones. It was nearly inevitable that the program eventually would turn on itself.

We've seen much the same thing happen before. In 1984 then-President Ronald Reagan envisioned a gigantic land- and space-based system to defense against nuclear ballistic missiles called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which popularly became known as the Star Wars missile defense research program.

SDI brought together many separate ballistic missile defense programs under the Aegis of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). In its nine years of existence, the SDI program not only created breakthrough technology that we are seeing deployed today, but it also was a political lightning rod, which its well-organized opposition took delight in bashing.

Eventually the SDI program was whittled down, its overall vision evolved to land- and sea-based ballistic missile defense programs, and its name was changed in 1993 during the Clinton Administration to the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program. Today its managing organization is the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The SDI program, like the FCS program, made too big a target to survive.

Still, the SDI program's legacy lives on today, most notably in the Aegis ballistic missile defense systems aboard the Navy's Ticonderoga-class cruisers, as well as in land-based ballistic missile defense systems deployed in Alaska. Other legacies of the SDI program include the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS), and the recently cancelled Airborne Laser system (ABL).

Legacy components of the FCS program will live on, as well. These most likely will involve new generations of unmanned ground vehicles and battlefield tactical networking. Not only that, but the demise of the FCS program also paves the way to new research programs to develop next-generation battle tanks, artillery, and armored personnel carriers.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Paris exhibitors credit military market for stability


Posted by John McHale

Exhibitors at the Paris Air Show last month were constantly asked about how they were faring during the economic downturn. Most credited their military systems designs with keeping them afloat.

Exhibitors at the Paris Air Show last month were constantly asked about how they were faring during the economic downturn. Most credited their military systems designs with keeping them afloat.

"Military wins saved our business," Francois Hervieux, director of sales for Air Data in Quebec told me. Commercial wins have dried up due the economic downturn, but military business has been steady.

Nandu Balsaver of Laversab, a designer of avionics test equipment near Houston said it is not because commercial outfits do not have the money, -- they do. It is that they do not wish to part with it. "They are holding it tight to wait out the storm," he said.

The military is the only thing that has been consistent, Balsaver added.

Most of the people I talked to who have designs in both markets said the same thing -- commercial business is drying up while the military is steady but not going gangbusters.

That is unless you are a defense prime, a maker of unmanned systems, or FLIR in Beaverton, Ore. David Strong, the vice president of marketing for FLIR said the company is doing better than ever.

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently shifted funding in the DOD 2010 budget request from large platforms such as the F-22 to applications for Special Forces it played right into FLIR's core business, Strong said.

"Practically everything we do targets Special Forces from thermal weapon sights" to electro-optical gimbals on helicopters, Strong said.

The company is sitting quite pretty, having grown nearly 50 percent in the last two years, with their Government division making up more than half of their more than $1 billion in revenue.

Their government business -- which consist of not just military but civil and homeland security applications throughout the world -- is also the fastest growing part of their business, Strong noted.

Strong said he also sees the European market having fast growth potential, hence why they were here at the Paris Air Show.