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When I visited RAF Lossiemouth in June 2016, I had a chance to visit the QRA based at Lossiemouth which is in addition to the one at RAF Coningsby
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Visiting the QRA area demonstrated the 24/7 quality of the operation.
There was the red button to generate the movement of pilots and personnel to launch the aircraft very rapidly.
Map published by the Daily Mail on 2/19/15 showing Typhoon intercepts of Russian aircraft in 2014 and 2015 up to that point.
There are ops areas and offices, crew rooms, a dining area and kitchen to serve the staff, bedrooms for the rotational crew and a gym to remain ready.
But the question of what the pyramid looks like beyond this is simply having two pilots ready 24/7 with 2 support staff and eight engineers for each week in support as well.
1(F) Squadron, II (AC) Sqn. and 6 Sqn. provide the aircraft, pilots and engineers for the 24/7 operation. The Air Traffic Control Center is manned 24/7 to enable aircraft to launch at any time. The Ground Support System or GSS provides support to the Typhoons with mission data and computer systems used by the aircraft.
And chefs and catering staff are on station to cook and serve meals for duty personnel, three meals a day, 365 days a year.
To put it bluntly: to be 24/7 ready is a significant demand signal for the Typhoon fleet, and one which can be overlooked in terms of the number of aircraft which are required to remain ready for operational launch, 24/7 and 365 days a year.
According to the QRA North team, the Typhoon has performed its role well, but it requires maintainers, pilots and operations personnel to pay close attention to the rotation of aircraft into the demand side of QRA.
And when the RAF deploys to the Baltics, in effect, the UK is supporting three QRA efforts.
The pyramid is demanding; the photos of the planes on strip alert simply masks the significant level of effort to ensure that they are on strip alert.
This demand side is one which can be easily overlooked by everyone, except those providing the capability and the intruders into UK airspace.
Now the RAF has stood up a new QRA at Lossiemouth.
The personnel and aircraft of IX(B) Squadron will be at the heart of the UK’s Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) Force, ready to take off within minutes of an alert being triggered.
The Squadron was officially stood up at a ceremonial parade and flypast at RAF Lossiemouth on May 2, 2019, but has been operational since 1 April. The standing up of the new Squadron coincides with RAF Lossiemouth marking its 80th anniversary.
Some of the Squadron’s aircraft will be painted in distinctive markings to identify them as training ‘adversaries’, in their role as ‘aggressors’. In this role, they will provide a sterner training test to RAF and NATO fast-jet pilots, as they will play the role of opposing aircraft which match their speed and manoeuvrability while using the latest real-world dogfighting and air combat tactics against them.
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier said:
“I’m delighted to be back at RAF Lossiemouth today, one day after the station celebrated its 80th Anniversary. RAF Lossiemouth has and will continue to play a key role in the Defence of the United Kingdom, being ready to intercept potential airborne threats 24/7 and in addition shortly becoming home to our nine new submarine hunting P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft. These will work with our Typhoon force to patrol far out into the Atlantic protecting the UK’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent and two new aircraft carriers.
“Today’s transition of IX Sqn from Tornado to Typhoon is one important part of the expansion of RAF Lossiemouth which will see the number of service personnel here increase to some 2,300, supported by a further 1,800 MOD civilian and contractor staff.
“I am proud to see our Combat Air capabilities continue to grow, a necessity as they will undoubtedly continue to be in exceptionally high demand on operations, here in the UK and across the world”.
Quick Reaction Alert involves the entire UK Air Defence system on standby at immediate readiness, 24/7, 365 days a year, with aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Coningsby protecting northern and southern UK airspace respectively. In recent months, Typhoons from RAF Lossiemouth have been scrambled four times as long-range Russian bombers approached UK airspace.
Personnel and Typhoons from RAF Lossiemouth conducted a NATO Air Policing mission role in Romania in 2018, where they scrambled eight times in response to 20 Russian aircraft as part of assurance measures for eastern allies. Later this year, RAF Lossiemouth aircraft will deploy to Iceland to conduct a further NATO Air Policing mission, while other aircraft from the UK Typhoon force deploy to Estonia on a similar task.
The Typhoon has exceptional performance that makes it capable of intercepting aircraft from the smallest light aircraft to the largest of airliners. The supersonic fighter has the ability of reaching all corners of the UK’s airspace within minutes of getting airborne.
The featured photo shows
Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier, and RAF personnel at a ceremony to mark a fourth Quick Reaction Alert Squadron based out of RAF Lossiemouth. Crown Copyright.
For a look at QRAs operating in Europe, see the following:
In order to attack the industrial might of Germany the RAF and a brilliant scientist worked together to develop a unique payload utility weapon the “bouncing bomb.”
The engineering genius that provided a unique payload to an RAF Squadron attacking the heart of Germany with undaunted courage was Bernard Wallis;
“Sir Barnes Neville Wallis CBE FRS RDI FRAeS (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979), was an English scientist, engineer and inventor.
“He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the “Dambusters” raid) to attack the dams of the Ruhr Valley during World War II.
After the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe in 1939, Wallis saw a need for strategic bombing to destroy the enemy’s ability to wage war and he wrote a paper entitled “A Note on a Method of Attacking the Axis Powers”.
As often with the case of visionary leaders and inventors, institutional skepticism and inertia has to be overcome. That occurred with Barnes Wallis’s ideas but he refused to give up and the payload bouncing bomb “upkeep” was invented and tested over and over until it worked.
Fast forward to a 21stCentury design engineering team that is now advocating for an accelerated audition to the American way of war a Payload Utility function (PU) which is a crash program for Directed Energy laser payloads.
Wartime pressure accelerated the right payload, a bouncing bomb, in the hands of warfighters to achieve remarkable results and is now history is repeating itself with new payloads to mitigate enemy threats.
The threat of both Russia and China rapidly testing Hypersonic Cruise Missiles and soon adding them to their fighting forces is upon us, right now today, not in the year 2030.
President Putin is brilliant as an Information Warrior and to use two complementary cliché’s in one sentence; he is continuing to punch above his weight while playing a weak hand very well.
UK F-35 Dambuster’s Squadron Patch
He has recently threatened a direct attack against the United States with nuclear weapons if we do not comply with his strategic approach to Europe and the West.
The Russian PR machine has kicked in and we have a recent you tube visit from a St. Petersburg choir highlighting a historical tune threatening such an event.
Notably, President Putin focused on the employment of nuclear tipped hypersonic cruise missiles launched from his navy’s submarines off of the East Coast of the United States.1
In effect, what Putin did was to sound “General Quarters” for a combat proven warfighting Navy to go on high alert.
The United States has now joined allies like Denmark which have been threatened by the Russians with the potential use of nuclear weapons against as part of normal coercive diplomacy.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Peoples republic of China is also strutting on the world stage in a very military provocative way with their high speed cruise missile programs.
The United States, Russia, and China are all rushing to field hypersonic weapons.
Hypersonic weapons travel much faster than traditional weapons: While many long range land attack missiles travels at subsonic speeds and attempt to fly below radar, hypersonic weapons would attempt to beat enemy defenses with pure speed.
This not only gives the enemy much less time to react but is also too fast for modern air defenses to shoot down–for now anyway.
Many, if not all modern air defense systems simply can’t intercept a missile traveling at Mach 5+.
There is a saying on the modern battlefield, that if you emit the wrong way you die.
I would like to add to that warning, that if an incoming weapon is an “air breather” it can be acquired and targeted in a Kill Web solution with current and near term payloads in development by the United States and its allies.
It is a shame that the UnderSecretary for Research and Engineering the Honorable Mike Griffin doesn’t understand the above point.
This research paper began at the 2019 Directed Energy Summit.
I asked the UnderSecretary of Defense the Honorable Mike Griffin at that conference: If war breaks out tomorrow how can we stop the HSCM threat?
He immediately went to his perceived hardest problem an ICBM hypersonic maneuver multi warhead threat to frame an answer.
However, when I asked him specifically to address an air-breathing HSCM, he framed his answer in similar fashion to the ICBM threat that because of the HSCM speed it was to hard a war fighting problem.
He mentioned AARAM and Aegis against slower moving cruise missiles, but not adequate for HSCM speeds.
Note in this Breaking Defense reporting, his merging of two threat issues into one “to hard” problem:
So how do we shoot down hypersonic missiles before we develop such directed energy weapons and sensors?
“If war breaks out tomorrow, we’re probably not going to kill hypersonic boost glide missiles,” Griffin said.
“Existing air and missile defense systems are “very effective “are very effective against a threat moving slowly enough to give us time to acquire track, target, and deploy a shooter,” he said, but hypersonics just move too fast for current defenses to intercept.
Thankfully, visionary American military combat leaders are not waiting for the Honorable Mike Griffin’s potential elegant space solution.
Those commanders facing imminent threats are intellectually working inside the evolving technology of Combat Clouds, Kill Webs, and Sensor/Shooter platforms with a goal of no platform fighting alone where platforms can all be networked to fight at the speed of light.
The promise of advances in Artificial Intelligence are also beginning to be added to this evolving American way of war.
It is actually conceptually very simple: US and Allied fighting forces both tactically and strategically at all levels are striving to network the payload utility function of selecting the best warhead that can be either kinetic and/or” tron” as the combat situation commences.
Transmitting target acquisition and then target engagement information to distributed redundant secure combat platforms over great distance can make the speed of Hyper Sonic Cruise Missiles (HSCM)a solvable problem.
If appropriate DOD R&E focus is supported conceptually to pull together existing technology and weapons systems then a threat mitigation way ahead is ready now and not waiting for a possible space solution in 2030.
Just like the need for accelerated development of weapon technology in WWII, the time is now to recognize that American scientists and engineers who refused to give up when faced with a potential career ending moment in the development of laser weapons simply refused to stop their research.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates killed all research on an Airborne Laser weapon and he based it on his cost calculations. Remember this is the same guy that spent $52 billion on 22,000 MRAPs left rusting in the Middle East or in storage with engines removed. Ultimately broken up on 25 September 2014.
Secretary of Defense Gates summarized fundamental concerns with the practicality of the program concept:
“I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense, Mr. Tiahrt, who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. ..And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.”[19]
The Air Force did not request further funds for the Airborne Laser for 2010; Air Force Chief of Staff Schwartz has said that the system “does not reflect something that is operationally viable.”
Gates had ensured no opposition by firing Secretary Wynne and COS of the USAF General “Buzz” Mosley. This is the same Secretary of Defense who killed the “cold war” airplane, known as the F-22.
But some USAF Officers and their scientific and engineering partners did not stop; In fact, the did just the opposite — they created Directed Energy Summit
Recently, the fifth annual 2019 Directed Energy Summit was held.
It was co-sponsored by Booz Allen and theCenter for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
Discussion at the DES focused on “the urgent need to acquire directed energy weapons to help counter significant existing and emerging threats.”
It must be recognized that “Fighting At the Speed of Light” means networking information flowing at the speed of light throughout Kill Webs that operate a payload utility function.
The ability to acquire and designate threats while engaging the best payload for a successful outcome is the payload utility function.
Payloads can be kinetic and “tron” depending on the need.
It is fortuitous that lasers go hot at the speed of light but they are still just subsumed in a “light speed’ engagement.
For example, if it means the survival of a Carrier Strike Group I doubt any fighting Admiral would not hesitate to employ a low yield Nuc kinetic warhead to stop incoming hypersonic threats.
Laser research and the need for rapid fielding of a new “tron” weapon in our inventory just came out of the 5thDE Summit.
Like the legend of The Phoenix, our warriors, scientists and engineers never gave up and their time is now.
At the DES, Henry “Trey” Obering III, an Executive Vice President and Directed Energy Lead at Booz Allen Hamilton and the former director of the Missile Defense Agency, argued for a 10-point plan to accelerate the effort for directed energy weapons.
The Defense Department must scale up laser power and improve beam quality development. The pace of maturing these capabilities is not technology-limited – it is funding-limited. Therefore, we should increase directed energy funding to between $2 billion to $3 billion per year.
We should also take further action to reduce the size, power, weight, and cost requirements of these weapons. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, for example, should establish and fund a separate program toward that end – and to focus broadly on improving laser weapon lethality. MDA laser programs should be fully funded to increase laser power levels for high-altitude and space-based applications.
We must provide warfighters with tactical decision aids to ensure they know how and when to use these weapons. This will go far toward instilling confidence in our warfighters that these weapons will be effective in combat against multiple threats.
While a tremendous amount of work has been done, we should also conduct further research to improve our understanding of laser lethality and reliability across an increasing range of weather and atmospheric conditions. This research should also focus on minimizing any collateral damage.
We need to accelerate our acquisition of these capabilities. DoD takes more than 16 years, on the average, to bring new technologies from statement of need to deployment. But there are several examples of this timeline being dramatically shortened, such as the Navy’s Rapid Prototyping Experimentation and Demonstration program for mission-critical capabilities and the use of specialized acquisition authorities by the MDA. DoD should use such accelerated processes for directed energy development and deployment.
DoD must signal a long-term commitment to lasers, so the industrial base will know there will be a market for its products in the coming years. In doing so, DoD should prepare, and encourage, the industrial base to support the rising need for first-, second-, and third-tier suppliers.
DoD should fully fund existing tests at sea, on land, and in the air – and there are many. Navy projects, such as the Laser Weapons System aboard the USS Ponce, have already shown that lasers can shoot down drones and collect surveillance data at long range. Other higher-powered Navy lasers, such as the HELIOS system, are in development and will be on a surface combatant next year. Meanwhile, the Army has tested a 5-kilowatt laser mounted on a Stryker combat vehicle and aims to field-test a 50-kW Stryker-mounted laser in 2021, with a goal of fielding it by 2023. Plus, the Air Force’s SHiELD project is developing 50-kW air-based lasers to produce a fighter-compatible weapon for use by 2021.
All parties involved in laser deployment should talk to each other. DoD needs to better articulate its requirements for deployable lasers. But also, the industrial base must interface better with DoD and its leadership to increase understanding of innovative laser weapon capabilities.
We must also prioritize warfighter training. There is currently no established laser weapon training pipeline, and that’s because lasers have no formal programs of record. Once these are set up, training must follow. To assist in establishing such programs, we should encourage wargames and operational analysis to investigate and better articulate the battlefield benefits of lasers.
DoD should adapt command-and-control functions to address rapidly evolving threats, such as hypersonics, to reduce the engagement times of defensive systems. Very short engagement timelines will likely necessitate the incorporation of artificial intelligence capabilities to help the U.S. leverage the speed-of-light engagement that directed energy weapons offer.
These are the steps we can take to bring laser prototype systems to our warfighters.
Our brave men and women confront dangerous threats across all physical domains – land, air, sea, and space – and need nothing less than the world’s most promising new capabilities to protect our national security.
Our adversaries are not waiting to develop directed energy weapons.
Neither should we.
The US defense industry is ready now and into the future as a key R&E focus on fighting at the speed of light and it all began to come together over ten years ago with the creation of the F-35 global enterprise as the driver for 21st Century change, including industrial base changes .
And it should be noted that this generation’s Dambusters are key stakeholders and innovators in the F-35 global enterprise, and will operate off the world’s newest aircraft carrier.
These modern day Dambusters are joined at the hip with the US Navy and USMC, as they have initially trained at MCAS Beaufort, and both the Marines and the Navy are working closely with the stand up of the new UK carrier capability as well.
The learning curve to improve sensors, system capability and weapons carried quickly compared to building another airframe may be a new American way of industrial surging.
The American arsenal of democracy may be shifting from an industrial production line to a clean room and a computer lab as key shapers of competitive advantage.
For a report by Ed Timperlake, which takes a kill web approach to the defeat and attack mission against adversary forces using HSCM which highlights a key role for the F-35 in the overall effort, see the following:
Maj. Adam Schubert, a C-17 Pilot with 437th Airlift Wing, 15th Airlift Squadron shares what to expect from the C-17 demonstration at the 2019 MCAS Beaufort Air Show, 17 April, 2019.
The Beaufort Air Show is one of the premiere community relations events put on by the air station to reinforce the partnership with the surrounding community. (Official USMC video by Corporal Debra S. Sainer/Released.
Yesterday (April 29, 2019) from the election campaign trail in Western Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made some naval shipbuilding announcements relating to the Royal Australian Navy’s mine-clearing and hydrographic capabilities.
Speaking from the Henderson shipyard south of Perth, he announced that more ships would be built in … Henderson.
After the recent twisted history of our future submarine project, the media and public might be forgiven for suspecting that this is a vote-grabbing exercise in pork-barrelling.
So let’s unpack what’s new here, what’s already in the works and, more importantly, what’s actually a good idea.
First, there is nothing new in the plan to build a hydrographic vessel at Henderson.
The Department of Defence has the responsibility of providing hydrographic services for the nation, although it has not necessarily always met the nation’s demand for such services. The 2016 defence white paper (page 93) and its supporting integrated investment program(page 88) said that Defence would replace its current hydrographic capability with a combination of military and commercial elements from the early 2020s.
Essentially it would outsource the routine national support tasks to better meet public demand, and keep the specialised military functions in house.
The 2017 naval shipbuilding plan (pages 38–39) elaborated on this, stating that a vessel for ‘strategic’ military hydrography would be built as part of the continuous minor war vessel program (which is centred on Henderson in Western Australia) and be delivered in the mid-2020s.
The prime minister’s statement that construction of that vessel would commence in the early 2020s is completely consistent with that plan.
So it’s not new.
And it’s actually a good idea.
The commercial surveying sector can do the routine tasks more cost-effectively, so it is better for Defence to focus on the difficult and dangerous hydrographic missions such as supporting submarine or amphibious operations in unfriendly waters.
Making sure Defence retains sufficient critical mass in skilled personnel will be the challenge here, not building the ship.
The developments in the mine countermeasure space, however, are actually new, and, more importantly, they’re also a good thing—but that’s got little to do with shipbuilding jobs.
Defence currently operates four manned minehunters (down from six after two were retired early as a cost saving). These vessels perform mine clearance the traditional way—by going into the minefield.
That means they are specialised vessels made of fibreglass so they don’t set off mines and are designed to be extremely shock-proof in case they do.
It’s still dangerous.
They’re also slow, and they’re designed to clear domestic ports rather than deploy with rapidly moving naval or amphibious task forces.
Like many militaries, the ADF has been experimenting with unmanned, more-or-less autonomous systems for mine hunting, so that humans can sit outside the minefield and send drones in to do the dull, dirty and dangerous work.
These systems can potentially be operated from any ‘vessel of opportunity’, so we wouldn’t need specialised minehunters anymore.
They could be operated from an amphibious vessel, or an offshore patrol vessel, for instance, that was part of the deployed task force.
In fact, back in the 2009 white paper (page 73), this was meant to be the future concept. Defence would build a one-size-fits-all minor war vessel that would do maritime patrol and border protection tasks as well as host mine clearance and even hydrographic teams when necessary.
However, the autonomous technology didn’t seem to be maturing quickly, so Defence went back to the safe path of upgrading the minehunters and extending their lives out to the early 2030s, so they wouldn’t be replaced until then.
But the complexity of the vessels made the upgrade very expensive—$1–2 billion, according to the integrated investment program (page 90).
But the technology then matured faster than expected.
What exactly was the capability shortfall in unmanned autonomous systems?
What could humans do that they couldn’t?
And did it warrant sending humans into the minefield?
The answer essentially came down to trust. Autonomous systems could do the job (or increasingly more of it, at least).
And for many tasks that required routine and repetition, they could do it better.
But we still didn’t trust them.
Ultimately, we want a human to assure us that that stretch of water is clear of mines before we sail through.
But Defence, through continuous experimentation with unmanned systems in exercises such as Autonomous Warrior, has developed familiarity with the technology—and, rather than contempt, familiarity builds trust.
Just think of your own reliance now on your mobile phone for navigation.
So, in the mine clearance space at least, autonomous systems have now cleared the trust bar.
The details of the new strategy and the project to deliver it (SEA 1905, according to the prime minister) aren’t public, highlighting again the need for an updated public integrated investment plan.
From the capability perspective, the two new ‘mine warfare support vessels’ to be built at Henderson aren’t the most important part of the system. What they will look like is a little irrelevant (probably something a lot like the offshore patrol vessels just starting construction).
The key point is that instead of spending $1–2 billion on extending the life of an outdated concept, Defence is embracing the new, retiring the old minehunters and adopting a solution based on autonomous systems.
For this, it should be commended.
The question is, how far is Defence willing to go down the path of autonomous systems?
And when?
In contrast to its mine-clearance capability, in surface combatants and submarines it is doubling down on exquisitely capable, yet exquisitely expensive, manned vessels that consume its capital budget but won’t deliver anything for more than a decade, potentially into a world swarming with autonomous systems and weapons designed to destroy those high-value platforms.
When will Defence trust autonomous systems enough to move away from manned platforms in those areas, or at least adopt autonomous systems that complement and protect those traditional platforms?
It will be interesting to see how its experiment in the mine warfare space shapes its appetite to innovate and embrace risk in other areas of warfare.
Marcus Hellyer is ASPI’s senior analyst for defence economics and capability. Image courtesy of the Department of Defence.
The featured photo shows the Bluebottle Unmanned Surface Vessel operates in Jervis Bay during Autonomous Warrior 2018.
Autonomous Warrior 2018 was a major demonstration designed to examine the potential of robotic, autonomous and uninhabited systems, in support of Defence operations in coastal environments.
It combined an exhibition, trials and exercising in-service systems.
The dynamic industry exhibition provided an opportunity for industry to showcase its latest technology and capabilities, the Autonomy Strategic Challenge (also known as “The Wizard of Aus”) featured a set of multi-national scientific trials, whilst Navy and Army exercised their in-service autonomous and unmanned assets.
Held under the auspices of the Five Eyes’ The Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP), Autonomous Warrior 2018 was led by Defence Science and Technology (DST) and supported by the Royal Australian Navy. It was held betwen the 5th – 23rd November, 2018 at HMAS Creswell and surrounding Defence-controlled areas in Jervis Bay, Australian Capital Territory.
In an article by Andrew Greene, defense correspondent for Australia’s ABC news, the author leveraged Pierre Tran’s article published on Second Line of Defense to discuss the French-Australian working relationship around which a new submarine is to be designed, built and launched.
The story was published on April 26, 2019, and was entitled: “Cultural Clashes Dividing French, Australian Officials Working on $50 billion attack class submarine Program.”
Clearly attenuating the cultural differences and shaping effective working relationships is a work in progress.
We will write more on this challenge in the coming months, for it is at the heart of a strategic opportunity both for Australia and the French.
Ensuring that the strategic opportunity is fully realized is the challenge.
According to Greene’s article:
The ABC has been told of numerous frustrations between French and Australian officials working on the contract
One official said Australians needed to understand the sanctity of the lunch break — not just a sandwich snatched at the screen
The French Naval Group is developing “intercultural courses” for French staff being posted to Australia
Since that time the ABC has been told of numerous difficulties and frustrations between French and Australian officials, although a long-awaited strategic partnering agreementwas finally signed earlier this year.
In a series of candid interviews with the defence industry publication SLDInfo.com, Naval Group officials have now offered insights into the problems the French company is facing in dealing with Australia.
Denel’s plan to stop manufacturing components for the Airbus A400M Atlas airlifter will save the company R250 million as part of the state owned entity’s turnaround strategy.
In a presentation dated 29 March, Denel said a “managed exit with Airbus” could bring it an annualised benefit of R250 million.
Denel Aeronautics aims to wind down A400M component production over the next six to 18 months. Exiting the A400M agreement was first announced in March, but the timeframe and financial impact were not mentioned.
A spokesman for Airbus said: “The agreement to withdraw the A400M work packages is a mutual one. Airbus and Denel are discussing how best to proceed.”
Danie du Toit, Denel Group Chief Executive, said last month in view of Denel’s ongoing strategic review of its operations, the two companies agreed continued manufacturing of aircraft parts by Denel is no longer sustainable in its current form. “Denel and Airbus continue to collaborate in other areas and intend to build, expand and strengthen their strategic industrial partnership,” Denel said.
Renegotiating the A400M contract is part of Denel’s turnaround strategy to reposition the company and return it to profitability – Denel made a R1.7 billion loss in the 2017/18 financial year. Under its new strategy, the company plans to exit non-core areas of activity, divest from non-viable core business areas and focus on viable core business activities that will led to long-term sustainability; reposition the core viable business areas to leverage capital and market access; and focuss on export opportunities through strategic equity partnerships and joint ventures.
There are currently 75 A400Ms operational with various air forces around the world and all contain South African manufactured components. It is not yet clear which company will take over production of the components made by Denel for the 99 other A400Ms still on order.
The A400M programme was launched in response to needs expressed by seven European nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom) for a new military airlifter. Two years later Malaysia joined this group and the first flight of an A400M took place on 11 December 2009. The total Airbus A400M order book is 174 with 75 delivered and in service.
A year after the A400M was launched, South Africa announced its participation in the airlifter programme. This would see the country acquire eight A400Ms to replace its ageing C-130BZs at a reported cost of R6.5 billion. The order was placed in April 2005 with deliveries originally scheduled between 2006 and 2012.
Delays and other programme problems saw the maiden flight delayed by almost a year and an escalation in the cost of the aircraft destined for the SA Air Force (SAAF) to a reported R47 billion. This led to Cabinet cancelling the acquisition. Defence and Military Veterans Minister at the time, Lindiwe Sisulu, is reported as saying South Africa “terminated the contract with Airbus but we’ve not terminated our quest to ensure we have the necessary (airlift) capabilities”. At the same time she told the Joint Standing Committee on Defence the acquisition of strategic military air transport was a “priority”.
The offset component of the acquisition agreement was not affected by the withdrawal decision and Denel Aerostructures (as it was then known), based at the state-owned defence and technology conglomerate’s campus east of Or Tambo International Airport, continued its contracts for A400M work packages.
To date this has seen South African produced components in every one of the 75 so far in service as well as up to aircraft number 100, currently on the final assembly line.
Over the time it has been part of the A400M programme, Denel Aerostructures has been responsible for producing wing-to-fuselage fairings, top shells, vertical tail plane ribs, swords and spars, cargo deck floor ISO locks and central guide vertical restraint systems.
According to Denel’s latest annual report the Airbus contract was historically loss-making and Denel could not meet its major A400M deliverables due to liquidity challenges. One example is the delivery of 14, as against 22 contracted, wing-to-fuselage fairings in the 2017/18 financial year. Contractual commitments on the ribs, spars and swords and cargo holding system work packages were also not met.
This article was first published by defenceWeb on April 25, 2019.
The featured photo shows an Airbus A400M during the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford, July 2016. Credit: RAAF
The time has come to create a separate armed service for space.
The urgent nature of the threat to our commercial, civil, and military space enterprise means that it is time to create a service that organizes, trains, and equips a military service to integrate space power.
The Space Force’s mission will be to protect the US, its allies, and its interests from attack in, attack from, and attack through space.
Why now?
A United States Space Force is needed now to create a military space doctrine and a professional cadre of space personnel for the 21stCentury.
Here’s the key point: under the current approach to military space, the Department of Defense has failed to deliver the doctrine and personnel cadre commensurate with the threat.
Military space capability is Balkanized across the Air Force, Army, Navy, NASA, and the NRO.
The Air Force, as the principal military space service, has failed to develop a 21stCentury space warfighting doctrine and has neglected the development of a first-class corps of career space officers.
The Air Force officer corps remains dominated by career fighter pilots who do not give appropriate priority to the development of space doctrine, systems, and career personnel. It has had decades to prove it is up to this task and it has failed.
Given the rapid development of adversary space capacity, the United States cannot afford to wait additional decades for the Air Force to get serious about space.
Many argue that it is premature to contemplate a unified Space Force, or that a new Unified Space Command can serve the same purpose.
While I agree that a joint Space Command is needed, it isn’t enough.
Unified commands do not write doctrine.
That is a service responsibility and in the absence of a separate Space Force, military space doctrine has languished and is failing to drive the debate about the future role of the United States in space.
By comparison, the nascent US Army Air Corps was a prime mover of doctrine, tactics, and procedures during the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. It forced the debate about the future of the United States as a global air power.
No such debate has arisen from the current DoD configuration for space and it won’t come from a Unified Space Command.
It will only come with the establishment of a separate service that has clear authority for establishing a war fighting doctrine and a war fighting ethos.
Unified commands also have limited acquisition authority, if they have any at all. Integrating development and acquisition authorities is one of the prime arguments in favor of a separate Space Force.
We must bring together the operational and technical capabilities of the military services, the NRO, and NASA.
For example, hypersonics is a crucial 21stCentury technology area and much of the leading work is taking place in NASA.
That work should be moved a new Space Development Agency (SDA). The Air Force Space and Missile Development Center should fall under the SDA. All of the NRO should be moved to the Space Force.
The new force must have unity of command and clear up confusion over who is responsible for space – in both the uniformed and civilian chains of command. The new service’s civilian and uniformed leaders must be equipped with impeccable space and leadership credentials and with political savvy and intellectual depth and flexibility.
Further, it is essential that the new leadership team has consistent top cover from the White House, SECDEF, and OMB.
Given the certainty that threats to the global space “commons” will continue to worsen, it is time to define a space power doctrine and strategy that will enable the development of US military capability in space beyond the support services it furnishes today.
Establishing a Space Force as a separate service will catalyze the Department of Defense to take decisive action.
Anything short of the establishment of a separate service risks a continuation of an unacceptable status quo that will fail to address the severity of the threat faced by the US and its allies.
Since World War Two, the United States and its partners in NATO and elsewhere have secured a general, global peace.
Despite that success we are falling behind in securing space.
There now exists a unique opportunity to restructure the national space enterprise to enable the United States to begin to improve security in space.
There is a unique opportunity to define space power doctrine and strategy designed to prevent conflict and to employ military power in space across the spectrum of conflict should deterrence fail.
