Raytheon Awarded Contract for 100 Kilowatt Laser Weapon System

Raytheon Company is developing a 100 kW class laser weapon system under a $10 million U.S. Army’s High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstration (HEL TVD) program contract. The preliminary design will be integrated for demonstration onboard a military Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) truck. The science and technology demonstration program is part of the Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 Block 2 (IFPC 2-I Blk 2) initiative designed to defeat drones, rockets, artillery, and mortars (C-RAM/UAS).

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Chinese Infantry may Outgun American Troops

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China claims to have entered its QTS-11 OICW into service.  

The QTS-11 is of the same breed as the now cancelled OICW the US Army was pursuing, but could not get to work: it involved an air bursting 25mm grenade launcher mated to a 5.56mm assault weapon.  That proved to be too heavy, by US Army standards and they went with just developing the grenade launcher as a standalone weapon.  Due to some weird legal wrangling - HK wanted the US gov to grant some statements regarding international law about explosive projectiles below a certain diameter and the US gov didn't - HK refused to continue with the manufacture of the weapon.  Orbital ATK was the contract holder with the US Army - having teamed with HK - and failed to deliver the weapons.  The US Army then cancelled the contract last April.  Orbital ATK is now in legal hell with HK to pursue another manufacturing partner to try to win back the contract.

However, in the mean time, if the Chinese have successfully pulled off the introduction of an effective OICW, the US Army Infantryman is outgunned.  Big time.  Really big time.  

And we have a very serious problem.

US Army Wants a new Tank by 2035

The US Army wants its Next Generation Combat Vehicle to serve as pack master to a swarm of crawling and flying robots. It wants lighter weapons with heavier firepower, able to aim almost straight up to shoot drones out of the sky and hit rooftop snipers. It wants miniaturized missile defenses to shoot down incoming anti-tank weapons. It wants suspension, underbody, and crew compartments designed from the ground up (literally) to resist landmines and roadside bombs. It wants diesel-electric engines — like a giant Prius — or other advanced motors that can power an array of jammers, sensors, and drone-killing lasers.

Given Russian advances and our own aging hardware, the Army also wants all this, or something close, by 2035. That means research and development must get started now, when budgets are already tight.

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US Army Should Either Cancel or Produce XM-25 Grenade Launcher

The US Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG) has recommended the US Army either move forward or cancel the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) weapon programme.

Army officials deployed prototype XM25 systems to Afghanistan as part of a 'forward operational assessment' from November 2010 to April 2012, and then sent another set in January 2013.

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US Army Testing Foriegn Active Protection Systems for Tanks

The US Army is turning to foreign systems for an interim solution for advanced protection for its combat vehicles against rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank guided missiles and other threats.

The service’s effort to rapidly integrate already developed solutions is heating up this summer as the Army tests out what will likely be four different solutions on M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker combat vehicles.

Such threats like RPGs aren’t just resident in one theater, but are problems world-wide for armored combat vehicles and it’s only growing, particularly in the Central and European Command area of operations.

Partly spurring the effort is the possibility that Russia is ahead of the US Army when it comes to armor protection as evidenced by the reported survivability of its tanks when up against Ukrainian anti-tank and anti-armor weapons in the ongoing conflict along Ukraine’s border with Russia.

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US Army Wants, but Cannot Afford Iron Man Powered Armour

As difficult as any rocket is the engineering required to created powered armor that carries its own weight without burdening the wearer, an military exoskeleton like Heinlein’s Mobile Infantry or Marvel’s Iron Man. The Special Operations Command is researching such a system, TALOS, but when asked about its applicability to the rest of the Army, Allyn was skeptical.

“Currently, in the conventional force, I doubt we could afford it in the near term,” at least on any large scale, said Allyn. So are you at least interested? “I wouldn’t say as yet I’m interested because I try not to get interested in things I cant afford,” Allyn said with a smile. “I don’t go to the Jaguar and Mercedes dealerships.”

Of course, if the Army got more money, it could make different choices. Currently the service is “mortgaging” long-term modernization to pay for near-term readiness, Allyn said, which puts a damper on all new technologies. “The way out obviously is increased topline — and there’s not a likelihood of receiving that,” Allyn said.

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US Army Hopes for a lot From the Future Vertical Lift Program

Anyone who has strolled around an army or civil helicopter show in the USA lately cannot help but have noticed some strange rotary-wing birds that promise to morph between troop-carrying assault machines and armed gunships, bristling with cannons and Hellfire missiles. Full-scale mock-ups of the Bell Helicopter V-280 Valor and the Sikorsky S-97 Raider, and models of some other radical concepts, are – their creators hope – the future of rotary-wing aviation for the US military.

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What Should the Infantry Squad of the 21st Century Look Like?

Since the firearm’s creation, firepower has aggregated at increasingly lower echelons in armies with each century, allowing smaller number of soldiers to dominate larger amounts of terrain and inflict greater amounts of damage on enemies. Today, a pair of soldiers handling a 20th-century machine gun can exceed rates of fire achievable only by an entire regiment of 19th-century riflemen. Advances in robotics, miniaturization of technology, and most importantly, exploration of human-machine combat teaming concepts will continue this trend and render the infantry squad of the 21st century the deadliest yet.

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US Army Under Pressure to Speed up Future Veritcal Lift Program

The US Army is under pressure to speed up its Future Vertical Lift (FVL) acquisition as it seeks permission from the Pentagon to begin pursuing a mid-sized Capability Set 3 (CS3) aircraft to eventually succeed the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and Boeing AH-64 Apache.

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US Army Tests HELMTT at Ft Sill, Wants Lasers on the Battlefield by 2025

Aiming specifically to determine how the High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck might help troops in the Army of 2025, the service’s weapon system participated in an exercise at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, conducted through the Fires Center of Excellence Battle Lab.

From April 11-19, the HELMTT program, which is managed by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Army Forces Strategic Command, was brought into the Excellence Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment (MFIX) and used to acquire, track, engage and destroy air and ground targets in “a simulated tactical environment” and demonstrated the Army’s directed energy technology, according to a May 12 Army statement.

"We integrated HELMTT for the first time into an Army command and control network," said Adam Aberle, the SMDC technical center HELMTT demonstrator program manager. "We learned how a laser platform would operate in a relevant tactical environment."

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US Army M-1 Tanks Deployed to the Republic of Georgia

Few things highlight a nation’s military power better than a column of tanks. As the United States and Russia vie for influence in Europe, the Pentagon has come to see armored vehicles as an important, if often slow, show of force.

That’s why a team of M-1 Abrams main battle tanks made the long journey to the Republic of Georgia in early May 2016. They were the U.S. Army’s first tanks to ever visit Georgia, which fought a brief, violent war with Russia in 2008.

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US Army Desperately Needs Future Vertical Lift for Pacific Theater

The deputy commander of US Pacific Command says the Army must field next-generation aircraft with greater range, speed and survivability than is achievable with today’s helicopter inventory.

Lt Gen Tony Crutchfield says the vast distances inherent in the Pacific theatre, as well as the proliferation of anti-aircraft weaponry, are challenging the current generation of army rotorcraft, namely the AH-6 Little Bird, UH-60 Black Hawk, AH-64 Apache and CH-47 Chinook, which were all adopted in the last century.

“I firmly believe the only way we will close the gap with the problems facing us today is with Future Vertical Lift (FVL),” he says, referring to the army-led acquisition programme that will introduce a new family of aircraft with roughly double the range and speed of today’s models.

“We must have Future Vertical Lift,” he continues, speaking at an Army Aviation Association of America conference in Atlanta, Georgia on 30 April. “It is the only way we will be successful in the PACOM environment with the distances. That range and that speed and that survivability are critical to army aviation to be effective in this fight.”

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US Army Testing Lasers, Railguns in Exercise at Fort Sill

A swarm of experts from across the nation assembled for a two-week experiment at Fort Sill trying out systems with the potential to provide service members with unlimited weapons capabilities. The event, called Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment, spanned, April 11-22, and demonstrated two types of weaponry – one using lasers and the other using electricity-propelled projectiles to acquire and destroy targets.

According to John Haithcock, director of the Fires Battle Lab on Fort Sill, counter unmanned aerial vehicle missions are the current capability gap and the focus of the weapons experiment. By conducting the experiments early in the development process, Haithcock said developers could incorporate the insights of service members who would use the equipment and report on how to improve the interfaces.

Also, the event brought out not only future technologies but current technologies that may be integrated together. The result is an integrated weapon system with command and control sensors that can do multiple missions, he said.

“As opposed to having three pieces of equipment, we can use some of this new technology and integrate it into a single vehicle,” said Haithcock.

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First Future Vertical Lift VTOL Will be the Medium Class

The first Future Vertical Lift aircraft to be fielded by the Army will come in the medium-lift category, where attack and cargo lift helicopters reside, Maj. Gen. William Gayler, the new Army Aviation Center of Excellence commander at Fort Rucker, Ala., said at the Aviation Association of America’s Mission Solutions Summit Friday.

Gayler said that since Congress required the Army to consider the FVL program as a joint program to include the Marine Corps and the Air Force, the need to be joint is driving the decision on which type of helicopter will be built first. The Army is still leading the effort.

The Army’s acquisition approach divides up the type of helicopters to be built as a family of helicopters to replace the service’s current fleet into five “capability sets.” The first set is the lightest variant while the fifth is the heaviest. Capability set 3 refers to the medium-lift variant.

Because the Marines and Air Force are more interested in a medium-lift, the Army has decided to focus on that weight class for the first helicopters that will be fielded starting in the early 2030s, according to Gayler.

“Since it’s a DoD joint program, we think the right answer is to go with [capability set 3] with other services, but we obviously will still be very interested in 1 or 2 as well,” Gayler said.

There has been talk about whether the first variant of FVL would be a light reconnaissance-type helicopter in order to fill a gap left open when the Army decided to retire the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters. The service is temporarily filling the gap by teaming AH-64 Apache Attack helicopters with Shadow unmanned aircraft systems.

But Gayler’s comments seem to put that debate to rest.

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AVX Reveals Future Vertical Lift Class One Proposal

AVX Aircraft of Benbrook, Texas has responded to the US Army’s request for information on the smallest of five planned Future Vertical Lift (FVL) capability sets with two 7.5t (16,700lb) winged coaxial compound helicopter configurations that the company’s chief executive describes as vertical takeoff fighter aircraft for light reconnaissance, attack, assault and medical evacuation missions.

The baseline swept-wing, 13.4m (44ft) diametre rotor concept would be powered by two 3,000shp Improved Turbine Technology Programme (ITEP) engines and is designed to meet a demanding set of core requirements proposed by the US Army in its “Capability Set 1” RFI document. The requirements that emerged for that next-generation rotorcraft category required a more robust design than the 4.5t (10,000lb) light single that AVX discussed with the Army back in January for Capability Set 1 (CS1), prior to the 18 February RFI release.

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And, interestingly, to replace the Chinook, AVX would want to use a tilt rotor.

The Race to Finish the Joint Multi-Role Demonstrators for the Future Vertical Lift Program

In West Palm Beach, Florida, and Amarillo, Texas, two different aircraft are coming together in a sprint to the starting line of the Army’s much anticipated flight demonstrations of future helicopter concepts in 2017.

The Army plans to design and field a future vertical lift aircraft and is expected to kick off that program of record in the 2019 time frame. The expectation is to buy a new family of helicopters through a competition and field the new aircraft at some point in the early 2030s, although the Army has talked about speeding up that fielding timeline to the late 2020s.

But first the Army plans to demonstrate Joint Multi-Role (JMR) air vehicle capability at a 2017 flight demonstration in order to help the service fully define requirements for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program.

A Bell Helicopter and Lockheed Martin team is mating the entire wing -- which is one big part -- onto the fuselage in Texas of its advanced tiltrotor concept the V-280 Valor, according to Vince Tobin, Bell’s vice president for advanced tiltrotor systems.

Sikorsky and Boeing have all of its Defiant coaxial helicopter parts in fabrication, some have already been delivered to the final assembly facility in Florida, Pat Donnelly, Boeing’s program director, said. Notably, the fuselage is in California being assembled and the team plans to conduct flight loads verification before shipping it to Florida.

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US Army Wants Active Protection Systems for Armored Fighting Vehicles

Alarmed by deadly battles in Ukraine, the Army wants to place miniaturized missile defense systems on its armored vehicles to protect them from anti-tank weapons. To reach this high-tech holy grail, which has painfully evaded the service in the past, the Army is taking a two-track approach. The fast track, as we’ve written previously, is to test off-the-shelf systems, like the Israeli Trophy, that are used today. But today’s defenses may fail against tomorrow’s missiles.

That’s why the Army is also pursuing a long-term alternative, a Modular Active Protection System designed to be easily improved as new dangers emerge. The vision for MAPS is a suite of plug-and-play defenses adaptable to different threats and to different Army vehicles.

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US Army's Multi Mission Launcher Test Fired Missile From Israeli Iron Dome System

The Israeli Iron Dome missile system completed a successful test firing in the USA. The US Army completed a successful test of Tamir interceptor missile from the new Multi Mission Launcher (MML) developed under a US Army initiative. During the test the missile scored a hit at the target drone. RAFAEL and Raytheon plan to continue adapting the Iron Dome and Tamir interceptor missile to meet the requirements of the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC).

Prior to the test RAFAEL and its US partner Raytheon made the necessary adaptations to fit the Tamir missile with the Army experimental launcher. According to Lt. Col. Michael Fitzgerald, IFPC Inc 2-I Product Manager, the test was part of the US Army evaluation of different alternative effectors – both domestic and international, and their use with the Army’s new MML.

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Bell's V-280 Coming Together

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US Army Told to Find way to Hustle Future Vertical Lift Program

The US House Armed Services panel on tactical air and land forces says in its mark of the fiscal year 2017 defence policy bill that current funding levels for FVL are “inadequate”.

The legislative proposal, which will be considered by the full committee on 27 April, seeks a briefing by the army on its FVL and Joint-MultiRole Technology Demonstrator efforts. That briefing would include a status report on the Bell V-280 Valor and Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant programmes as well as an analysis of “potential options and required resources” for accelerating FVL.

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