Boeing Wins MQ-25A Stingray Contract

The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, is awarded a ceiling price $805,318,853 fixed-price-incentive-firm-target contract to provide the design, development, fabrication, test, verification, certification, delivery, and support of four MQ-25A unmanned air vehicles, including integration into the carrier air wing to provide an initial operational capability to the Navy. The work will be performed in St. Louis, Missouri (45.5 percent); Indianapolis, Indiana (6.9 percent); Cedar Rapids, Iowa (3.1 percent); Quebec, Canada (3.1 percent); Palm Bay, Florida (2.3 percent); San Diego, California (1.5 percent); and various locations inside and outside the continental U.S. (37.6 percent), and is expected to be completed in August 2024. Fiscal 2018 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $79,050,820 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via an electronic request for proposals; three offers were received. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N00019-18-C-1012).

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Bombers! USAF Bombers! USAF Bombers in Australia! USAF LRS-B Bombers in Australia!

First Off, the US Air Force is looking to base bombers and tankers in Australia:

While I hear there are still difficult details to be ironed out, the United States and Australia appear close to agreeing to regularly fly strategic bombers and airborne tankers from Darwin and Tindal air base in Australia.

Gen. Lori Robinson, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast this morning that no decisions had been yet about which bombers would operate from Australia. Robinson’s predecessor, Gen. Hawk Carlisle, first mentioned the possibility that bombers would rotate to and from Australia in July 2013.

The talks with Australia have gone on for some time. David Shear, assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May that the U.S. planned to send B-1 bombers to Australia. He clearly jumped the gun a bit as Australian officials were quick to say, not so fast. As with the agreement for US Marines to train and rotate in and out of Darwin, the two sides have yet to work out all the details. I hear Australia is unhappy that the US wants them to pick up a substantial portion of the bill to pay for our troops while they’re there.

“We’re in the process of deciding on timing of when that will happen,” Robinson said this morning. “So final timing hasn’t happened as we are working our way through all of that.”

Currently, B-1s, B-2s and B-52s rotate in and out of Guam for Pacific presence operations. Should the US also be able to maintain bombers, at least for routine issues, that would mark a major increase in US regional flexibility. (Warships benefit even more from being based near their area of operations).

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The US Air Force (USAF) is studying options for new bomber and tanker aircraft rotations through Australia, according to a senior US military official.

The United States has reached an agreement with Australia on a "force posture initiative", General Lori Robinson, commander of the USAF's Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), said during a 18 November Defense Writers' Group breakfast in Washington, DC.

"The idea is much like what we do in Guam - rotation of tankers and bombers to do training and working with Australian allies … as well as training our pilots and aircrew - to help them understand the vastness of that region," said Gen Robinson.

The bombers and tankers would rotate through Australia's RAAF Base Tindal, but details about numbers of aircraft and timings are still being negotiated. "So that's all part of the conversations that we're having now," she added.

The new Northrop Grumman Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) could also be involved in that effort once it is deployed, the general said.

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Advocates of the Long Range Strike Bomber are stating the total bombers made ought to be boosted from 80/100 to 200:

Lawmakers and analysts renewed calls Wednesday for the Pentagon to build significantly more next-generation bombers than currently planned, arguing that the Air Force needs a fleet of 200 advanced bombers to project power in a more dangerous world.

In study released today by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Moeller made the case for the Pentagon to procure a modernized bomber force of 200 aircraft by 2045.

“America desperately needs to rebuild its bomber force, starting with the [Long Range Strike Bomber] and then moving forward,” Moeller said. “100 new bombers, the analysis finds, is not enough.”

The Air Force plans to buy 80-100 LRS-Bs to replace the service’s aging B-1 and B-52 bombers, a number many advocates have decried as insufficient. The 100 LRS-Bs, plus the 20 existing stealth B-2 bombers, will not be enough to meet future threats, Moeller argued.

“Limiting production of the new bomber, LRS-B, to 100 airframes would severely decrease the options available to national decision-makers during times of crisis or periods of instability,” Moeller wrote in the study. “A modernized bomber force of 200 aircraft will sustain America’s asymmetric advantage in long-range precision strike for decades to come.”

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Is China Making a Refueling Tanker Aircraft Based on Their H-6 Bomber?

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SASC Hammers US Air Force Over Long Range Strike Bomber, Tanker Problems

In a sign that this town is slowly coming back to life after a laconic August, the Senate Armed Services Committee has written Defense Secretary Ash Carter about mistakes made about the price of the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) in two reports to Congress and raised questions about the latest delays to Boeing’s problem-plagued KC-46 tanker.

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US Navy NOT Interested in Using USMC V-22 Tanking Technology

The Navy has no immediate plans to explore using its planned fleet of V-22 Ospreys carrier onboard delivery aircraft to refuel its carrier aircraft, while the Marines are actively looking to include a tanking capability in its own tilt-rotor V-22s by 2017, service officials told USNI News on Monday.

Last year, the Navy selected the Bell Boeing V-22 to be the replacement for the service’s aging fleet of Northrop Grumman C-2A Greyhoud carrier onboard delivery (COD) that’s used to bring on supplies and material from shore to an embarked aircraft carrier.

While the has Navy touted some benefits of selecting the Osprey — its easier to get supplies to a ship at long range since the V-22 can land on more ships, not just the carrier — it’s not talked about the using the Navy Osprey as a refueling platform.

“While there is always a potential to leverage other V-22 capabilities down the road, our focus remains on seamlessly transitioning the Navy variant of the V-22 into the airwing to fulfill the carrier onboard delivery mission,” Navy spokesman Lt. Rob Myers told USNI News on Monday.

For its part, the Marines are currently developing the V-22 Aerial Refueling System (VARS), which is being developed in parallel with the planned first Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter deployment in 2017, according to the Marine Corps’ 2015 aviation plan.

Similar to the Harvest HAWK roll-on weapons kit for the Marine’s Lockheed Martin KC-130J, the system will be able to roll on and off the aircraft as needed, USNI News understands.

The goal of VARS is to include an organic tanking capability to the Marine Air Combat Element (ACE) of an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) starting with tactical fighters and then moving into other aircraft.

For the Navy, the next tanking option is less obvious.

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Lookie! Lookie! China's J-20 Stealth Fighter has an Aerial Refueling Probe

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General Pawlikowski on the Pentagon's Offset Strategy: Autonomy, Refueling & Additive Manufacturing are key

Ellen Pawlikowski helps decide what weapons the Air Force buys and manages the buying process, so when the lieutenant general says she likes autonomy and 3-D printing as the most promising capabilities for her service to develop as part of the new offset strategy, it’s worth listening.

“This is Ellen Pawlikowski speaking,” she says in her E-ring office at the Pentagon, making sure we all know this is her personal opinion. She thinks autonomy — a cluster of technologies that allows weapons to execute missions without much human intervention — can “play a major role. It can allow me to get more numbers in things than I can get now.” And, as most generals will tell you, quantity possesses a quality all its own.

This is all about the Pentagon’s offset strategy, overseen by Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, designed to ensure America’s continued military dominance for a long time. Pawlikowski is the uniformed official who oversees the Air Force’s science and technology work, so much of the service’s offset strategy effort will be led by her.

“I can see a scenario where you’ve got an F-35 orchestrating an attack with 20 RPAs [remotely-piloted aircraft] that are weapons-equipped and that F-35, with all its sensors and communications, is essentially an orchestrator,” she says.

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X-47B may Test Air to Air Refueling in 2015

If the Navy can get the resources, it plans to test an aerial refueling capability on its experimental carrier-launched unmanned aerial vehicle, the X-47B, as early as next year, Naval Air Systems Command officials told USNI News on Tuesday.

The move follows a $64 million June 2014 contract award to Northrop Grumman that extended the testing schedule of the Navy’s two X-47Bs on carriers and continue autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) research as part of the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System demonstration (UCAS-D) program.

“Those efforts include additional [carrier] detachments and AAR software coding through the remainder of this calendar year,” said NAVAIR program manager Capt. Beau Duarte in a statement provided to USNI News on Tuesday.
“If resources allow, the Navy may demonstrate autonomous engagement flight testing in fiscal year 2015.”

In 2013, USNI News reported NAVAIR had tentatively scheduled an autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) in 2015.

NAVAIR has conducted AAR tests with a surrogate aircraft to test the X-47B software that allows the test plane to mimic the interaction between the tanker and the aircraft receiving the fuel but stops short of a mid-air refueling.

One of the two X-47Bs — called Salty Dog 501 and Salty Dog 502 — is equipped with an aerial refueling capability, USNI News understands.

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US Navy Muling Using UCLASS as a Tanker

he U.S. Navy is considering using its forthcoming Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft as an aerial refueling tanker to free up its fleet of Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets for more strike missions, several sources told USNI News.

“It’s definitely of interest,” one industry official said.
“On a typical air operations day, they might have to dedicate up to five Hornets to do tanking.”

Most of those tanker sorties are for “recovery tanking” around the carrier.

According to industry sources and retired service officials, up to 20 percent of a carrier air wing’s Super Hornet sorties are consumed by the tanker mission.

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But industry sources are not convinced. By the mid-2020s, there probably will not be enough UCLASS air vehicles in the Navy arsenal to perform the aerial refueling mission especially as the Super Hornet airframe start to wear out, the industry sources said.

In that case the Navy will have to come up with an alternative.

“They may be forced to have a dedicated tanker on the deck,” an industry source said.
“This idea that UCLASS is somehow going to save Super Hornets from doing tanking—I’m not seeing how that’s really going to work when you look at the lifespan of the Super Hornets and when UCLASS is going to be in the fleet.”

That’s especially true if a carrier would only carry six UCLASS air vehicles—which would have to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in addition to the tanker mission.

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