[EDITOR’S NOTE: I have trav­eled out to Ft. Bliss to par­tic­i­pate in a media event intended to out­line the Army’s mod­ern­iza­tion effort for its brigade com­bat teams. I’ll be out in the field tomor­row shoot­ing video tak­ing some stills and doing inter­views (and gen­er­ally get­ting smart on the pro­gram) and will pro­vide data dumps here as comms per­mit. The fol­low­ing arti­cle from our Av Week friends helps set the scene.]
This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

By early October, the U.S. Army will have a new pro­gram exec­u­tive office (PEO) in charge of its Brigade Combat Team Modernization (BCTM), a sweep­ing effort to restruc­ture its con­tro­ver­sial Future Combat Systems (FCS) pro­gram.

The new PEO will effec­tively act as the inte­gra­tor for BCTM, look­ing across the board at how to inte­grate so-​​called capa­bil­i­ties sets into Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), accord­ing to Paul Mehney, asso­ciate direc­tor for BCTM. Additionally, a prod­uct man­ager role will be estab­lished in var­i­ous sec­tors, includ­ing one for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), which will replace the can­celled Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV).

The Armys much-​​touted net­work, the back­bone of FCS, could become a point of con­tention as the ser­vices Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) wres­tles with how much infor­ma­tion will go to whom and how it will get deliv­ered. The MGVs were essen­tially the hub of the net­work, and with­out them, TRADOC will have to deter­mine new require­ments for host­ing the net­work and how much infor­ma­tion the new struc­ture will relay to the field.

The fully equipped, 15-​​brigade FCS struc­ture is off the table as well, forc­ing the Army to fig­ure out how to incor­po­rate Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehi­cles and up-​​armored Humvees into the new BCT for­ma­tions. All 73 Army BCTs will now be mobile and tailor-​​able, accord­ing to Mehney, capa­ble of per­form­ing the full spec­trum of oper­a­tions — offen­sive, defen­sive and sta­bil­ity — no mat­ter the brigades con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Capability sets will replace so-​​called spin outs, with the BCTs ben­e­fit­ing from upgrades and improve­ments on a rotat­ing basis every few years. That sys­tem may help the pro­gram avoid the tech­ni­cal matu­rity issues it faced over the course of devel­op­ment for FCS. Paul Francis of the con­gres­sional Government Accountability Office (GAO) tes­ti­fied June 16 before the Senate Armed Services air-​​land sub­com­mit­tee that he thought the require­ments were set before we knew what was tech­ni­cally fea­si­ble. So I think theres been a lot of work to ratio­nal­ize.

Still, the end-​​product may not be that far from the orig­i­nal vision, albeit adapted to new bud­get real­i­ties, one Washington think tank ana­lyst says in an Aug. 26 report. Given the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the net­work and a num­ber of addi­tional FCS com­po­nents, it seems unlikely that the new mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram will be sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent from the pre­vi­ous one, says Evan Braden Montgomery of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The Army may need to be far more selec­tive in its mod­ern­iza­tion efforts, replac­ing some but not all of the dif­fer­ent types of vehi­cles in its armored fleet.

The new process will take longer, how­ever. The Army will start with a first incre­ment in 2011, but it will take until 2025 to com­pletely field all the capa­bil­ity sets.

Read the rest of this story, see how the Iraqi air force is gain­ing planes, read about the dead Rendon con­tract and hear the gen­er­als roar from our Aviation Week friends, exclu­sively on Military​.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Russian air force ambi­tions stretch far beyond the $2.65-billion Sukhoi fighter order at the MAKS 2009 show. Aspirations include field­ing an unmanned com­bat air vehi­cle (UCAV) along­side its fifth-​​generation fighter and devel­op­ing a next-​​generation strate­gic bomber. 

The fighter deal is a fil­lip to the air force and Sukhoi. The mil­i­tary will acquire 48 Su-​​35S fighter air­craft from 2010–15, along with 12 Su-​​27SMs and four Su-​​30M2s. Delivery of the last two ver­sions of the Flanker should be com­pleted by 2011. 

Securing an air force order bol­sters Sukhoi’s export aims for the Su-​​35, while also pro­vid­ing pro­duc­tion work for its Komsomolsk-​​on-​​Amur site. 

Maj. Gen. Oleg Barmin, chief of pro­cure­ment for the Russian air force, says the Su-​​35S offer was par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive to his ser­vice. “We are not bear­ing any devel­op­ment costs, and it is sav­ing us money,” he told a press brief­ing here last week. If MiG is able to do the same with its MiG-​​35 devel­op­ment of the MiG-​​29 Fulcrum, this would ben­e­fit a pos­si­ble pur­chase, he noted. 

The S-​​35S will oper­ate with the air force’s fifth-​​generation fighter, known as PAK-​​FA, when it enters service. 

The PAK-FA’s radar design was unveiled at the show, with Russian man­u­fac­turer NIIP show­ing a pro­to­type of the active, elec­tron­i­cally scanned array (AESA) device. The radar had ini­tially remained cov­ered on the com­pany stand, since gov­ern­ment clear­ance was needed to show the design. 

The 1,500-element array is a slight ellipse, likely reflect­ing the cross sec­tion of the PAK-​​FA nose. While NIIP offi­cials say they have looked at an AESA design in which the antenna face can be moved, the approach being taken with PAK-​​FA is for a fixed antenna. Test flights of the radar are due to begin in 2010. The first PAK-​​FA pro­to­type is still expected to fly before year-​​end. The air­craft design also could use sec­ondary con­for­mal array anten­nas to pro­vide addi­tional angu­lar coverage. 

NIIP pre­vi­ously devel­oped a vari­ety of pas­sive, phased array radars; how­ever, the shift to an active array poses a leap in tech­nol­ogy — not least of all in man­u­fac­tur­ing the transmit/​receive modules. 

The air force pro­cure­ment chief main­tains that field­ing the Su-​​35S will pro­vide his ser­vice with a near-​​term counter to the U.S. Air Force’s Lockheed Martin F-​​22 Raptor. 

In addi­tion to the PAK-​​FA, the air force is look­ing at its UCAV needs. Barmin sug­gests it will carry “the same weapons as the fifth-​​generation fighter.“ 

MiG and Sukhoi are already work­ing on UCAV devel­op­ments. Two years ago, MiG unveiled its Skat project and showed a mockup of the design. The com­pany is con­tin­u­ing its UCAV work, although its exact sta­tus is unknown. Sukhoi General Designer Mikhail Pogosyan, who also leads MiG, sug­gests the devel­op­ment of a UCAV could be the first com­mon effort between the two fighter man­u­fac­tur­ers. Both are to form the com­bat air­craft busi­ness unit of Russia’s United Aircraft Corp (UAC), with Sukhoi as the dom­i­nant element.

(more…)

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

The like­li­hood of the U.S. estab­lish­ing a fixed Ground-​​Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) mis­sile inter­cep­tor site in Poland appears to be wan­ing as the Pentagon is more sharply focused on the quick field­ing of a land-​​based SM-​​3 sys­tem to pro­tect Europe from an Iranian bal­lis­tic mis­sile threat.

Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says part of the ratio­nale behind cap­ping the num­ber of oper­a­tional three-​​stage Ground-​​Based Interceptors (GBIs) (GMD’s mis­sile seg­ment) was a mis­cal­cu­la­tion of the inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­sile threat. “The real­ity is it did not come as fast as we thought it’d come,” he told an audi­ence at the Space and Missile Defense Conference 2009 here last week. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry (Trey) Obering, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) direc­tor through 2008, said the ICBM threat was expected to mate­ri­al­ize in 2015, and that drove the time line for estab­lish­ment of the European mis­sile field. Cartwright did not cite a new date by which intel­li­gence experts pre­dict an ICBM threat could mate­ri­al­ize.

Iran has demon­strated a space launch capa­bil­ity and, despite a third-​​stage fail­ure of North Korea’s Taepo-​​Dong 2 dur­ing a recent test, experts at the con­fer­ence this week say Pyongyang is mak­ing some head­way. Uzi Rubin, retired Israeli gen­eral offi­cer and expert on the threat, says the Iranians have made con­sid­er­able head­way with solid rocket motors. And the pace of bal­lis­tic missile-​​testing in Iran is impres­sive, he says.

Still, the 30 GBIs — 26 at Ft. Greely, Alaska, and four at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. — are deemed suf­fi­cient to counter the “rogue” threat of a long-​​range bal­lis­tic mis­sile attack on the U.S. from North Korea or Iran. “That is a heck of a lot more than [needed for] a rogue,” Cartwright added. An X-​​band track­ing radar, which is slated for the Czech Republic, is needed in the region regard­less of where the inter­cep­tors are based, he noted.

Despite a rush from then-​​President George W. Bush to estab­lish a site for 10 two-​​stage GBIs in Poland in advance of the 2015 threat, the pro­posal has suf­fered set­backs. It has not been rat­i­fied there. And it has sparked ire from Russia, which sees it as desta­bi­liz­ing and threat­en­ing to Moscow’s nuclear deter­rent capa­bil­ity at a time when Washington is nego­ti­at­ing a follow-​​on to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which expires at the end of the year. Cartwright says it would take five years from approval until deploy­ment of the GBIs in Poland.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has begun a whole­sale review of what is needed to defend allies in Europe and U.S. forces there from an attack. This shift away from GBIs could rep­re­sent an attempt by the White House to con­tinue field­ing mis­sile defenses, but also to steer clear of the fast and long-​​range GBIs as well as the very-​​high-​​speed and mobile Kinetic Energy Interceptor. Termination of KEI was pro­posed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the Fiscal 2010 bud­get, and pro­gram exe­cu­tion was cited among the rea­sons. The mobile GBI and KEI could be viewed as more desta­bi­liz­ing for regional pow­ers such as Russia and China. One retired senior Pentagon offi­cial sug­gests KEI could have been a “sac­ri­fice” to get Russia to agree to some other form of mis­sile defenses in Europe and in light of the Start talks.

“We have to walk a fine line as we deploy and develop a sys­tem to counter North Korea,” said U.S. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command, in a speech here last week. Deployment of mis­sile defense sys­tems that could be seen to threaten Russia’s and China’s nuclear deter­rent could spark an arms race that is unaf­ford­able in this reces­sion, he noted.

Read the rest of this story, check out the Russky’s hot Su-​​35S, see if the new ICBM threat is worth wor­ry­ing about and see the gaps in mis­sile defense from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military​.com.

– Christian