US Army Starting a OH-58 Kiowa Replacement

The US Army has confirmed its pursuit of a light reconnaissance helicopter that will assume the role left vacant by the retirement of the Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.

Army military deputy for acquisition, technology and logistics Lt Gen Michael Williamson suggested the army might move quicker on its Future Vertical Lift-Light (FVL-Light) programme because it might be more achievable in the near term.

“I think what you’ll find is there’s still a requirement for us to have a light reconnaissance helicopter, so as we looked at the dollars that are available and the timing to get to a platform, we saw the light helicopter probably gave us the most in terms of schedule,” Williamson said at a conference on US fiscal year 2017 defence programmes in Washington DC on 10 March.

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Northrop Debuts its 'Laser Ready' 'Hellhound' for US Army’s Light Reconnaissance Vehicle Competition

“There’s never been that much power on a vehicle this small,” said Jeff Wood, showing off Northrop Grumman’s new Hellhound scout car. In fact, he told reporters, standing amidst the buzzing chaos of the exhibit space at Washington’s biggest defense conference, “I can power this entire hall with this vehicle.” In a disaster scenario, he said, the Hellhound could power a blacked-out hospital; in a war zone, it could power a command post. Or, Wood said, you could power a laser beam.

Developed for the Army’s Light Reconnaissance Vehicle competition, the Hellhound is a mid-sized off-road truck that can generate more electrical power for radios, sensors, defensive jammers, and other gear than much larger vehicles using older technology. The 30-ton M2 Bradley generates less than 20 kW, leading some variants to get brown-outs when fully kitted for Iraq; the 6.5-ton Hellhound, however, generates a whopping 100 kilowatts (kW).

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Lockheed: Fund Replacement UAV for Global Hawk and U-2

The Air Force's current plans for high-altitude surveillance, keeping the decades-old U-2 flying while upgrading the new RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, will not meet the demands of the military for reconnaissance, and the service needs to start again with a new aircraft to replace both spy plans, the head of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works said.

The Air Force's fiscal 2016 budget request will keep the U-2 flying until 2019 while funding upgrades to the Global Hawk's sensor package to put the drone on par with the aging spy plane. The move will have the drone take over the spy plane's missions in full, though the differences in capabilities means that neither aircraft can really do the other's job.

"I ask myself, when will a program be initiated, which I think will be unmanned, to replace both and do the full set of missions accomplished by both the U-2 and the Global Hawk" said Rob Weiss, the executive vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin's advanced development programs, or Skunk Works, which originally designed the U-2.

Air Force officials have repeatedly said there is an ever-increasing demand for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance around the world. The service does not have enough operators, and is trying to upgrade its ISR fleet to keep up with demand.

"There is no opportunity to replace both of them based on current demand," Weiss said.

The Air Force had originally sought to cut it's brand-new Block 30 variants of the Global Hawk, saying the U-2 was more capable and had a cheaper cost per flight hour. The service flipped its position, and in the fiscal 2015 request tried to retire all of its U-2s, a move that Congress blocked. The compromise in the newest spending request looks to appease Congressional concerns and keep the spy plane in the air long enough to meet short-term demands of combatant commanders.

But the difference in capability will mean this plan could mean a shortfall in ISR capability, Weiss said. Northrop Grumman is developing a "universal payload adapter" to take the sensor suite from a U-2 and fix it to the drone. The $487 million project is expected to take three to four years to develop and test, according to an Air Force report to Congress.

There is technology advanced enough to be able to develop a new system to address the need for high-altitude surveillance, but now it's an issue of funding and deciding to move forward.

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Sikorsky Delays First Flight of S-97 Raider to 2015

Sikorsky has chosen prudence over spectacle and delayed the first flight of its S-97 Raider prototype until 2015.

The company, which has invested more than $150 million of internal funding to develop the coaxial rigid-rotor vertical-lift platform, originally planned for it to fly before then end of 2014, but has yet to begin ground testing in preparation for the aircraft’s maiden flight.

Doug Shidler, who headed the Raider project before taking the helm of the company’s joint multi-role development effort, tells Flightglobal there is no particular issues holding the programme back.

“We are going through several lab ground tests right now and we are planning to get into aircraft ground run here in the next couple of weeks,” he says. “As with any development program and first-of-type, there are discoveries. We haven’t had too much discovery, nothing that is insurmountable. We’re making some really good progress in getting the aircraft set for doing its ground runs.”

Raider uses coaxial rotors for vertical lift and a tail propeller for forward thrust. The combination allows for flight characteristics that are physically impossible for existing rotorcraft designs. There is no programme of record within the US military for the aircraft, though the US Army has been monitoring the development effort as it looks to eventually replace its existing, and aging, helicopter fleet.

A transmission system testbed is being built in parallel with the Raider, of which there will be two flying prototypes. The first is designed specifically for the flight test phase. The second will be a demonstration aircraft that will travel and be flown for prospective customers.

The fuselage for Raider II is complete and the remaining parts have been manufactured and delivered. Construction of the second aircraft will begin in early 2015, he says.

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US Navy Secretary: UCLASS to be More Than a Recon Drone

The U.S. Navy's planned unmanned plane for use on aircraft carriers should eventually be able to take on additional roles besides just surveillance, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said on Wednesday.

The Navy last week said it had delayed this month's planned kickoff of a competition for the new carrier-based unmanned spy plane, citing affordability concerns and a Pentagon-wide review of intelligence and surveillance programs.

Mabus addressed the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance Strike (UCLASS) program during the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit, but stopped short of calling the delay a setback for the program.

"It's going through a process at (the Office of the Secretary of Defense) to take a broader look at programs," he said, adding that decisions about the program's future would likely be included in the Pentagon's fiscal 2016 budget request.

Companies interested in the competition include Northrop Grumman Corp, maker of the X-47B unmanned, unarmed plane that has already been tested on U.S. carriers, Boeing Co, Lockheed Martin Corp, and privately held General Atomics, which builds the popular Predator unmanned planes used by the U.S. Air Force and other government agencies.

Congress has been debating what the range and armaments should be for the Navy's next-generation unmanned plane.

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More of the Story Behind the US Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory Cancellation

It was June 1969 and a senior official with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL, program was testifying behind closed doors in front of a congressional committee. He was explaining the value of MOL to a supportive audience that was glad to see the nation starting up another major human spaceflight program at the same time that Apollo was heading down. The speaker was talking when somebody handed him a note. He then informed the committee that he had just learned that President Nixon had canceled the MOL program. The room erupted in protest.

But the decision was made: MOL was dead.

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Via Avleak: Lockheed Ready to Start on Mach Six SR-72 After Seven Years of Secret Research, Ready for 2018 Demo

Ever since Lockheed’s unsurpassed SR-71 Blackbird was retired from U.S. Air Force service almost two decades ago, the perennial question has been: Will it ever be succeeded by a new-generation, higher-speed aircraft and, if so, when?

That is, until now. After years of silence on the subject, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has revealed exclusively to AW&ST details of long-running plans for what it describes as an affordable hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike platform that could enter development in demonstrator form as soon as 2018. Dubbed the SR-72, the twin-engine aircraft is designed for a Mach 6 cruise, around twice the speed of its forebear, and will have the optional capability to strike targets.

Guided by the U.S. Air Force’s long-term hypersonic road map, the SR-72 is designed to fill what are perceived by defense planners as growing gaps in coverage of fast-reaction intelligence by the plethora of satellites, subsonic manned and unmanned platforms meant to replace the SR-71. Potentially dangerous and increasingly mobile threats are emerging in areas of denied or contested airspace, in countries with sophisticated air defenses and detailed knowledge of satellite movements.

A vehicle penetrating at high altitude and Mach 6, a speed viewed by Lockheed Martin as the “sweet spot” for practical air-breathing hypersonics, is expected to survive where even stealthy, advanced subsonic or supersonic aircraft and unmanned vehicles might not. Moreover, an armed ISR platform would also have the ability to strike targets before they could hide.

Although there has been evidence to suggest that work on various classified successors to the SR-71, or some of its roles, has been attempted, none of the tantalizing signs have materialized into anything substantial. Outside of the black world, this has always been relatively easy to explain. Though few question the compelling military imperative for high speed ISR capability, the astronomical development costs have made the notion a virtual nonstarter.

But now Lockheed Martin believes it has the answer. “The Skunk Works has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne for the past seven years to develop a method to integrate an off-the-shelf turbine with a scramjet to power the aircraft from standstill to Mach 6 plus,” says Brad Leland, portfolio manager for air-breathing hypersonic technologies. “Our approach builds on HTV-3X, but this extends a lot beyond that and addresses the one key technical issue that remained on that program: the high-speed turbine engine,” he adds, referring to the U.S. Air Force/Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) reusable hypersonic demonstrator canceled in 2008.

[...]

Fundamental lessons were learned, particularly about flight control systems that could maintain stability through the transonic speed regime. Lockheed Martin’s work proved the configuration could “take off without departing,” Leland notes. “We were able to drive down the takeoff speed and keep it stable and controllable. We proved all that in a whole series of wind-tunnel tests.”

Just as importantly, the Skunk Works design team developed a methodology for integrating a working, practical turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) propulsion system. “Before that, it was all cartoons,” Leland says. “We actually developed a way of transforming it from a turbojet to a ramjet and back. We did a lot of tests to prove it out, including the first mode-transition demonstration.” The Skunk Works conducted subscale ground tests of the TBCC under the Facet program, which combined a small high-Mach turbojet with a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet, and the two sharing an axisymmetric inlet and nozzle.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s parallel HiSTED (High-Speed Turbine Engine Demonstration) program essentially failed to produce a small turbojet capable of speeds up to Mach 4 in a TBCC. “The high-speed turbine engine was the one technical issue remaining. Frankly, they just weren’t ready,” recalls Leland. This left the Skunk Work designers with a familiar problem: how to bridge the gap between the Mach 2.5 maximum speed of current-production turbine engines and the Mach 3-3.5 takeover speed of the ramjet/scramjet. “We call it the thrust chasm around Mach 3,” he adds.

Although further studies were conducted after the demise of the HTV-3X under the follow-on Darpa Mode-Transition program, that fell by the wayside, too, after completion of a TBCC engine model in 2009-10. So, Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne “sat down as two companies and asked ourselves, ‘Can we make it work? What are we still missing?’” says Leland. “A Mach 4 turbine is what gets you there, and we’ve been working with Rocketdyne on this problem for the last seven years.”

Finally, he says, the two achieved a design breakthrough that will enable the development of a viable hypersonic SR-71 replacement. “We have developed a way to work with an off-the-shelf fighter-class engine like the F100/F110,” notes Leland. The work, which includes modifying the ramjet to adapt to a lower takeover speed, is “the key enabler to make this airplane practical, and to making it both near-term and affordable,” he explains. “Even if the HiSTED engines were successful, and even if Blackswift flew, we’d have had to scale up those tiny turbines, and that would have cost billions.”

[...]

Lockheed has run scaled tests on components. “The next step would be to put it through a series of tests or critical demonstrations,” Leland says. “We are ready for those critical demonstrations, and we could be ready to do such a demonstration aircraft in 2018. That would be the beginning of building and running complete critical demonstrations. As of now, there are no technologies to be invented. We are ready to proceed—the only thing holding us back is the perception that [hypersonics] is always expensive, large and exotic.”

The 2018 time line is determined by the potential schedule for the high-speed strike weapon (HSSW), a U.S. hypersonic missile program taking shape under the Air Force and Darpa (see page 36). “We can do critical demonstrations between now and then, but we don’t believe it will be until HSSW flies and puts to bed any questions about this technology, and whether we can we truly make these, that the confidence will be there.” In spite of the recent success of demonstration efforts, such as the X-51A Waverider, Leland observes that “hypersonics still has a bit of a giggle factor.”

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Let me say again: there was NO Aurora project.  oy.  This just helps prove it.

Flipside.  This would be a kewl compliment to the next gen bomber they are working on.  Something quick and something persistent.