Lockheed's on its 5th Iteration of its Fusion Reactor Prototype

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works is building a new, more capable test reactor as it continues to move ahead with its ambitious Compact Fusion Reactor program, or CFR. Despite slower than expected progress, the company remains confident the project can produce practical results, which would completely transform how power gets generated for both military and civilian purposes.

Aviation Week was first to report the updates on the CFR program, including that Lockheed Martin is in the process of constructing its newest experimental reactor, known as the T5, on July 19, 2019. The company's legendary California-based Skunk Works advanced projects office is in charge of the effort and had already built four different test reactor designs, as well as a number of subvariants, since the program first became public knowledge in 2014. The War Zone has been following news of this potentially revolutionary program very closely in recent years.

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Lockheed Got a Patent for its Fusion Design

Lockheed Martin has quietly obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor, or CFR. If this project has been progressing on schedule, the company could debut a prototype system that size of shipping container, but capable of powering a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or 80,000 homes, sometime in the next year or so.

The patent, for a portion of the confinement system, or embodiment, is dated Feb. 15, 2018. The Maryland-headquartered defense contractor had filed a provisional claim on April 3, 2013 and a formal application nearly a year later. Our good friend Stephen Trimble, chief of Flightglobal's Americas Bureau, subsequently spotted it and Tweeted out its basic details.

In 2014, the company also made a splash by announcing they were working on the device at all and that it was the responsibility of its Skunk Works advanced projects office in Palmdale, California. At the time, Dr. Thomas McGuire, head of the Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Project, said the goal was to have a working reactor in five years and production worthy design within 10.

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Lockheed to Deliver 60 kw Laser Weapon to US Navy by 2020

Lockheed Martin Aculight is being awarded a $150,022,901 contract for Surface Navy Laser Weapon System Increment 1, High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with surveillance system.

Under this contract Lockheed Martin Aculight will develop, manufacture, and deliver two test units in fiscal 2020, one unit for US Navy destoryer DDG 51 FLT IIA, and one for land-based testing, a US DoD announcement said Friday.

This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $942,818,114.

A request for proposal for the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system had been released by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) on 18 June 2017.

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Thales Alenia Participating With THree Companies in Studying the Deep Space Gateway

Thales Alenia Space is partnering with three U.S. companies that are working on NASA studies of concepts for the proposed Deep Space Gateway, leveraging its expertise in space station and cargo module development.

Thales announced Dec. 14 that Boeing was the latest company it was working with as part of NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) 2 effort. Thales has previously also been working with Lockheed Martin and Orbital ATK. Thales did not disclose the value of the individual contracts with the three companies.

For all three companies, Thales is providing expertise in areas such as structures, environmental controls and thermal controls, said Walter Cugno, vice president of Thales Alenia Space’s exploration and sciences domain, in a call with reporters. The company’s contributions are currently limited to studies, he said, and does not include hardware at this time.

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NASA is Considering Scrapping the Orion Capsule

Eric Berger at Ars Technica reports that NASA has begun to consider possible alternatives to the Orion spacecraft beyond the initial crewed flights of the Lockheed Martin-built deep-space vehicle.

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LRASM Successfully Test Fired From Underway Naval Test Ship

Lockheed Martin has completed the third of three test shots to prove that their air-launched Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) can be fired from a surface ship on the move, company officials told USNI News on Wednesday.

The Monday test at the Navy’s Point Mugu Sea Range, California took the same weapon Lockheed developed for a DARPA program to be launched against ships from fighters and bombers and loaded it into the same launch system used on the service’s guided missile destroyers and cruisers.

“We’re doing it to demonstrate that LRASM can be integrated onto a ship with software changes only and it won’t be a huge bill to put LRASMs in the surface fleet,” Scott Callaway — LRASM Surface-Launch director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control — told USNI News.

Lockheed refurbished a Mk 41 Vertical Launch System cell for the test, combined the 500 nautical mile range LRASM with an additional booster and tied it to a Tactical Tomahawk Weapon Control System (TTWCS) for guidance – all installed on Navy’s Self Defense Test Ship, the former USS Paul Foster.

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Lockheed Proposals for Deep Space Exploration

At a House Space Subcommittee meeting on Capitol Hill last week, several companies laid out plans for deep space exploration. Lockheed Martin Vice President Wanda A. Sigur discussed the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle the company is building for NASA, proposed cis-lunar space operations, and a Mars base camp orbiting the Red Planet.

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Lockheed's Fusion Reactor Research has First Plasma

Lockheed Martin continues to invest in its portable nuclear fusion generator, with that investment recently entering a more advanced stage, according to the head of the company’s Skunk Works division.

Rob Weiss told an audience at the Atlantic Council that Lockheed is “about four months into a little bit more significant investment” into the technology, which was first revealed around two years ago.

At the time of the initial announcement, Lockheed said it was aiming for a 100 megawatt device which could fit on the back of a large truck. Such a reactor, the company claims, could power a city of up to 100,000 people.

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Lockheed Considering Other Uses for NASA's Deep Space Habitation Module

Lockheed Martin is considering additional applications of a cislunar outpost that it is designing for potential use on future NASA human spaceflight missions, including supporting commercial lunar missions.

Bill Pratt, program manager for Lockheed Martin’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) contract with NASA, said he believes that there could be other applications for the proposed habitat once it completed its primary mission for the space agency.

“NASA has a set of ‘Proving Ground’ objectives that they want to accomplish in order to get to Mars. That’s the primary purpose of the outpost,” he said in an April 13 interview during the 32nd Space Symposium here. “Past that, though, my personal view is that the outpost would be great support for countries or other entities that want to go to the lunar surface.”

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Lockheed Wants to Place Aegis System on LX(R) Amphibious Ship

LPD-28, the 12th ship in the San Antonio class line, may serve as somewhat of a bridge to the upcoming class of amphibious transport docks, currently dubbed the LX(R). As part of this transitional vessel, Lockheed wants to install its vaunted Aegis Combat System aboard it, giving the ship a much higher level of defensive capabilities, independence and situational awareness.

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Another step towards the San Antonio class being the basis of the US Navy's next cruiser.

Lockheed Takes a Shot at China

Lockheed Touts Hypersonic Technologies

As the Pentagon telegraphs a new sense of urgency to fielding hypersonic weapons, top Lockheed Martin officials are touting recent breakthroughs in leveraging extreme speed to counter emerging threats.

“Lockheed Martin has a legacy of making fast aircraft,” Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson said March 15 during the company’s annual media day. “We are now producing a controllable, low-drag, aerodynamic configuration capable of stable operations from takeoff to subsonic, transonic, supersonic and hypersonic, to Mach 6.”

Hypersonic flight is defined as anything about Mach 5, meaning five times the speed of sound or 3,600 miles per hour. To put it into perspective, a jet flying at hypersonic speeds could cross the continental United States in about half an hour.

Although it is extremely difficult to reach and maintain such speeds due to extreme temperatures and thermal loadings, the US has had the ability to build boost glide and boost cruise weapons for six decades. NASA’s X-15 effort in the 1960s was able to achieve speeds of Mach 5, and in 2013 the Air Force’s X-51 Waverider air vehicle, launched from a B-52 bomber, reached Mach 5.1 at 60,000 feet.

But developing a hypersonic weapon is expensive and technologically challenging, and in recent decades the Pentagon has chosen to invest in more traditional ways to take out the threat. However, as adversaries like Russia and China develop surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft weapons designed to foil US forces’ ability to penetrate, Pentagon leaders are pushing hypersonics as a means to counter this “anti-access area denial,” or A2/AD, environment.

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Lockheed: Lasers are Ready to be Deployed as Weapons

For years, the Pentagon has pursued the dream of directed energy weaponry — laser weapons that could defeat a foe for pennies when compared with the expensive kinetic weapons the department relies on. And for years, the technology proved to be elusive.

But the time has finally come where those weapons are capable of being fielded, according to a trio of Lockheed Martin executives who work on the development of the company’s laser arsenal.

“The technologies now exist,” said Paul Shattuck, company director for Directed Energy Systems. “They can be packaged into a size, weight, power and thermal which can be fit onto relevant tactical platforms, whether it’s a ship, whether it’s a ground vehicle or whether it’s an airborne platform.

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Lockheed Pushing Hypersonic SR-72 With Unmanned Demonstrator for $1 Billion

Lockheed Martin’s unmanned SR-72 aircraft concept has surfaced again with renewed vigour, with company leadership now pushing a reusable, air-breathing hypersonic vehicle as an “affordable” way to validate a new propulsion concept for achieving speeds within the atmosphere between Mach 6.0 to Mach 20.

Speaking at a Lockheed media event in Washington DC on 15 March, company chief executive Marillyn Hewson confirmed that the company is building on “several breakthroughs” made during the short-lived HTV-3X Blackswift hypersonic testbed, which was de-funded by Congress in fiscal year 2009, to develop “a controllable, low-drag aerodynamic configuration capable of stable operation from takeoff to subsonic, transonic, supersonic and hypersonic to Mach 6”.

Hewson, while displaying an artist’s rendering of the SR-72, said it would cost “less than $1 billion” to develop and fly a demonstrator aircraft the size of an F-22 Raptor.

Devised by Lockheed’s Skunk Works division, SR-72 employs a turbine-based combined cycle propulsion system to get above "Mach 1.5 to 2.0," at which point it would begin converting to a supersonic combustion ramjet for speeds beyond Mach 6.

That’s according to Skunk Works head Rob Weiss, who confirmed that it would be an unmanned vehicle, at least at first. Hewson says the company’s long-term ambition is to “enable hypersonic passenger flights and easier access to space”.

The company’s militarised spinoffs could be an air-breathing, hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft, or perhaps even new fighters and bombers further along.

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Lockheed revealed its next-generation version of the famed SR-71 Blackbird, the SR-72, in 2013 and has said it would hope to introduce a reusable hypersonic aircraft in the mid-2020s or so. The challenge is transitioning through Mach 3.0 – since modern turbojet engines are only capable of powering an aircraft to Mach 2.2, whereas typical ramjets don’t work below Mach 4.0.

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Lockheed & KAI Unveil T-X Prototype

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SeaRobotics Will Build Lockheed's Marlin Mk3 Unmanned Sub (UUV)

Lockheed Martin has announced who will build its latest autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) – the Marlin Mk3. The new vehicle boasts some impressive capabilities, including an operational depth of up to 4,000 m (13,000 ft).

AUVs are becoming more and more capable as the years go by, and are now extremely useful underwater tools utilized for numerous applications. Back in November 2014, a SeaBED AUV was used to map more than 500,000 square meters (5.4 million sq ft) of the Antarctic, showing that sea ice may be thicker than we thought. More recently, a Gavia AUV was used to study the distribution of algae on the underside of ice.

Lockheed Martin is no stranger to unmanned vehicles, and clearly understands the potential of such craft, announcing today that SeaRobotics will manufacture its brand new Marlin Mk3 survey and inspection AUV.

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Stealth Saga #17

META:

Who will win Asia's fifth generation fighter race?


UCAVs:

South Korea is developing a UCAV, that in the concepts looks a lot like the German Barracuda demonstrator.

The US Navy CNO has stated the UCLASS needs to be accelerated.

The British Taranis has completed a third round of test flights, but it is unclear if it will be tested further.

TF-X:

Rolls Royce has offered its EJ-200 engines for the Turkish TF-X program. 

KF-X:

South Korea's KF-X may not be a F-35 peer like South Korea originally wanted.

The US government has approved 21 technologies from the F-35 to be transferred to South Korea for the KF-X.

Sukhoi PAK-FA/T-50:

Supposedly the flight tests for the PAK-FA are virtually complete.  The procurement seems to be incredibly scaled back: only one squadron, the report states, is going to be bought.  Su-35s will be purchased instead.

Will India actually buy all 154 PAK-FA they originally were signing up for?

J-20: 

Supposedly, the Chinese military, despite significant changes to the latest prototype of the J-20 and the Su-35, is stating the flight testing for the J-20 is nearly complete.

F-35:

Denmark has, again, postponed the start of the procurement of its replacement fighter due to budget issues.  The F-35 is competing for the procurement.

South Korea has added diplomats to its negotiating team for its F-35 contract. 

Apparently, the F-35 office canceled a realistic cyber security test and now they are getting huge amounts of flak for the decision.

Lockheed will get all 45 of the F-35s planned for production this year done by December 31st.  43 are already done.

Northrop has delivered the center fuselage of the first Japanese F-35 to Lockheed.

Pakistan getting the F-35 would be India's worst nightmare, but its highly unlikely to happen any time soon.

The F-35A will begin flying 'Heritage Flights' at airshows.  

Something Intriguing From an LRS-B Protest Article: What is BLACK DIAMOND?

This brief review of the past performance and core competencies of the Boeing-Lockheed team suggests that the Air Force selection process for LRS-B—employing multiple reviews and several independent cost estimates—rather than being “fundamentally flawed” was sound and thorough. Boeing complaints that the Air Force unfairly penalized their bid on cost contradict reality. The KC-46 and 787 development programs priced out at double what Boeing originally estimated, experiencing costly delays owing to technical challenges and mismanagement. And Boeing proposals to wave away these unfavorable historical cost data with reference to a mysterious and untested “Black Diamond” manufacturing concept are unlikely to be convincing. In such competitions, the Air Force must rely on demonstrated competencies and past performance, not on unproven theories. As Secretary James noted, the independent cost estimators evaluating the LRS-B bids “do have this pesky thing called data and facts on their side more often than not.”

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Lockheed Negotiating With South Korea Over List of 21 Technologies to be Transferred for KF-X Stealth Fighter

Lockheed Martin officials will visit Korea this week to discuss the transfer of technologies related to the country's KF-X project, the development of an indigenous fighter.

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Lockheed Martin officials will visit the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) this week," said spokesman Col. Kim Si-cheol, Tuesday. "Working-level officials of the company and DAPA are checking on the progress of the U.S. government's inspection into the transfer of 21 technologies to Korea."

Kim, however, showed a subtle change from his existing position that the transfer of the 21 technologies, stipulated in an offset deal, including a flight control system, was a done deal.

He said it is a contractual obligation for Lockheed Martin to transfer technologies worth $1.41 billion, noting that although the company is changing the types to be handed over to Korea from the original list, it should be valued at the agreed amount.

The remark was construed to mean the list of technologies to be transferred could be changed after the U.S. government inspection.

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Despite Potential Su-35 Deal, Lockheed Confident of F-16V Sale to Indonesia

A possible contract from Indonesia may extend F-16 manufacturing into 2018, says Lockheed Martin, as the company works on filling an Iraqi order that may be the last for the biggest-selling fighter in current production.

Although Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu said in September that the country had chosen the Sukhoi Su-35 for its next fighter order, the deal has not been signed. The F-16 remains a contender, according to Randall Howard, Lockheed Martin’s business development director for the type.

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