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The Russian Federation Navy’s Northern Fleet detachment, including the Severomorsk large anti-submarine destroyer, paid a surprise visit to the Port of Cape Town.
The Severomorsk, an Udaloy I (Project1155) class ASW Destroyer, together with the Altay (Ingul, Project 1453, class rescue tug) and Dubna replenishment tanker arrived in Cape Town for a port visit on Monday, March 20.
The Severomorsk was attached to the Russian naval group which took part in counter-terrorism operations in Syria, leaving her home base at Severomorsk on the coast of the Barents Sea on November 16, 2016.
She provided security for the Northern Fleet grouping headed by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier during combat operations near the Syrian coast in December 2016/January 2017.
The anti-submarine destroyer and her two escorts thereafter participated in the international AMAN-2017 sea drills in the Arabian Sea in mid-February. That four-day exercise, with 37 countries taking part, was the fifth such exercise Pakistan has hosted since 2007.
The press service of the Russian Northern fleet noted that during the exercise, the Severomosrk crew interacted with colleagues from Pakistan, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey and several other countries to enhance efforts on combating piracy and protecting international trade routes.
Following AMAN-2017, the three-vessel detachment crossed the equator and docked at the port of Victoria in the Seychelles to replenish stores in the first week of March.
While the Russian Federation Navy would not comment on the port visit, a Russian Ministry of Defence communiqué noted the Severomorsk has been performing assigned tasks in the further ocean zone under the command of Captain I Rank Stanislav Varik.
In Cape Town the crews laid a wreath at the graves of 17 Russian sailors at the Simon’s Town cemetery, who died more than 100 years ago. The navy and merchant sailors died on separate occasions during the 19th century while their vessels were docked in Simon’s Town.
The Severomorsk (Project 619) is a vessel of the original Udaloy I-class and was launched on December 24, 1985. Formally commissioned on December 30, 1987, she has served the Soviet / Russian Northern Fleet ever since.
Classified as an Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) destroyer, the vessel is bristling with weapons and retains an inherent Anti-Ship (AS) capability. Her primary armaments are eight SS-N-14 “Silex” anti-submarine/anti-ship missile launchers and 64 SA-N-9 “Gauntlet” surface-to-air missiles in Vertical Launching Systems (VLSs).
Other armament includes two 100mm /70 calibre Dual-Purpose guns, four 30mm AK-630 Close-In Weapon Systems (CIWSs) and eight 553mm torpedo tubes (firing either torpedoes or SS-N-15 missiles).
Also docked in the Port of Cape Town is the Russian oceanographic research vessel Akademik Alexander Karpinksy.
The Severomorsk and her support vessels are due to depart Cape Town on Thursday, March 23 for their return home.
Republished with permission of our partner defenceWeb
The Turkish Army will open its largest foreign military base in the Somali capital Mogadishu next month during a ceremony expected to be attended by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Army General Staff Chief General Hulusi Akar as well as top Somali government officials.
According to Turkish newspaper ‘Yeni Safak’, soldiers from the Somali National Army (SNA) will be trained in batches of 500 per intake at the base.
The 400-hectare property will house three military academies, dormitories and military supply depots.
The facility, under construction since March 2015, is in line with a bilateral agreement signed earlier, which provided for Turkish assistance with military training and equipment.
It also provided for direct funding and material assistance for education, infrastructural development, human resources and skills training.
Speaking during a tour of the facility last week, Somali defence minister General Abdulkadir Ali Dini said his country was grateful the Turkish Army had selected Somalia as host for its largest foreign base.
In a comment posted on his official Twitter account, Somali President Mohammad Abdullah Muhammad Farmajo confirmed the Turkish military base would be opened soon.
“Turkey’s largest military base in the world is almost complete.
“Soon the Somali Army will return strongly,” Farmajo said.
Built at an estimated cost of US$50 million, the base will provide Turkey with an opportunity to project its military power into the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR).
Meanwhile, the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) has announced the deployment of a military medical unit to help the Somali government cope with the humanitarian crisis spawned by years of successive drought.
Malaysian Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said following cabinet approval of a Somali government request, troops and essential assets will be deployed to Mogadishu shortly as cabinet had approved the Somali government request for help.
The unit will deploy from the Saudi capital Riyadh, from where it has been supporting evacuation missions for Malaysian nationals in war-torn Yemen.
“The decision to deploy troops was reached after my meeting with Somalia Deputy Prime Minister Mohamed Omer Arteh Ghalib. He requested assistance in the provision of aid in terms of food, medicine and expertise of the Armed Forces’ medical unit.
“Three officers and 17 personnel from the Armed Forces Medical Corps will be sent to Somalia.
“An infantry unit, consisting of an officer and 10 men, will provide security for the Malaysian delegation. Food and medical supplies will be flown to Somalia via a Hercules C-130 aircraft,” Hishammuddin said.
Further, he said the Saudi-based unit was chosen for the Somali mission because through the Yemeni operations, it had gained local experience and expertise and adapted to the operating environment in the Gulf of Aden, the same as that prevailing in the Horn of Africa region.
Republished with permission of our partner defenceWeb
When I interviewed then PACAF Commander, General “Hawk” Carlisle during a visit to Hawaii on my way to Australia, we discussed how the coming of the F-35 would affect US and allied capabilities and approaches.
He hammered home the point that it would open a new phase of shaping US and allied approaches to collective defense.
“The roll out of the sensor-shooter C2 approach for an integrated air and missile defense system also lays down a capability that a decade from now when the fleet of allied and American F-35s is operational will be able to leverage as well.
“By having shaped an approach towards integrated sensor-shooter relationships within which C2 was being worked, the F-35 as a sensor and shooter laid on top of that grid would be an immediate force multiplier.
“General Carlisle was asked what would be the impact of a fleet of F-35s (allied and US) upon a Commander of PACAF a decade out.
It will be significant.
Instead of thinking of an AOC, I can begin to think of an American and allied CAOC (Combined Air Operations Center).
By sharing a common operating picture, we can become more effective tactically and strategically throughout the area of operations.”
And Carlisle added further insights into how he saw the way ahead in an interview I conducted with Ed Timperlake.
“His focus was upon leveraging Air Force and joint assets in ways that would make that force more expeditionary and more effective in providing for cross-domain synergy. He noted that the combination of a large deck carrier with the Air Force with the Amphibious Ready Group and Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG-MEU) air assets when conjoined within a distributed strike package provides significantly greater capability than when each is considered on its own.
“He sees this reshaping approach as central to shaping the distributed operations approach emerging as the F-35 fleet is deployed over the decade ahead.
“The F-35 is the finest sensor-enabled aircraft ever built. The F-35 is orders of magnitude better than the F-22 (which is the greatest air to air fighter ever built) as an electronic warfare enabled sensor-rich aircraft. We already are working synergy between F-22s and fourth generation aircraft to provide greater fidelity of the information shaping air combat operations. With the F-22 and F-35 combination and the folding in of on-orbit information and surveillance systems, we will be able to generate more synergy across the fleet,” the general told us.
“The other advantage of the F-35 is its commonality across the services. “We are already working on greater synergy among the air power services; with the F-35 and deploying common assets in a dispersed fleet, the efforts we are making now for today’s conditions will only lead to more effective capabilities for tomorrow’s crises as well.”
Now just two PACAF commanders later, the US Pacific Air Force has held its first F-35 symposium with key allies in the Pacific. And he made it very clear that the F-35 is not a niche capability but a foundational capability to reshaping combat operations in the Pacific.
We have interviewed many of those who have attended and certainly have discussed with key players in every Air Force in the Pacific acquiring F-35s, and the same message has been driven home during those visits — the F-35 is a foundational aircraft for reshaping combat operations.
The opening of the F-35 symposium was described in an article from PACAF published on March 10, 2017.
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AFNS) — JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AFNS)
The F-35 Lightning II will take center stage during the Pacific Air Forces’ inaugural F-35 Symposium next week. The two-day conference will mark the largest gathering of F-35 experts to include senior officers and warfighters from Japan, Australia, South Korea as well as the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.
Japan, Australia and South Korea are among the 11 countries in the F-35 program and represent the future of fifth-generation aviation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. International attendees will participate in a series of open discussions and briefings with the objective of enhancing F-35 operations in the Pacific, sharing fifth-generation lessons learned, and building a foundation for future F-35 bilateral and multilateral engagements. Topics will include bed down, integration, logistics, sustainment and combat operations.
“This symposium marks an exciting new chapter in Pacific combat capability. Together, our joint and international partners have introduced the most capable combat aircraft in the world to the Pacific,” said Brig. Gen. Craig Wills, PACAF’s strategy, plans and programs director.
The F-35 is a next-generation, multi-role fighter that combines advanced stealth with speed, agility and the capability to rapidly fuse information regionally across multiple domains. The Lightning II is the backbone for future combat operations. This symposium will provide an ideal venue to enhance interoperability and cooperation amongst the F-35 community.
U.S. F-35s have reached initial operational capability with Marines and Airmen both flying operational and combat ready aircraft. In addition to the F-35As with the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, 10 F-35Bs from the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing out of Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Arizona, are deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, with six more scheduled to arrive later this year.
Japan started its pilot training program in late 2016, South Korea is scheduled to receive its first aircraft in 2018 and Australia has been training pilots in two Royal Australian Air Force F-35s in Arizona since late 2014.
“Together with our Pacific allies and partners we’re sending a clear message to our neighbors and friends in the region. We will continue to invest in the combat capability required to assure our ability to defend freedom and uphold the rules-based international order,” Wills said.
The Australian F-35 made its first appearance in Australia at the 2017 Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defense Exposition at Avalon Airport, Victoria, Australia. While travelling to Victoria, the aircraft stopped at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, symbolically emphasizing the importance of the global partnerships and opportunities the F-35 will offer in the coming decades.
And after the conclusion of the symposium, in an article published on March 16, 2017 by Staff Sgt. Kamaile Chan, Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs, the work conducted at the symposium was the focus of attention.
Military senior officers from nations throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region gathered March 14 and 15, during the first-ever Pacific Air Forces-hosted F-35 Symposium, to discuss the future of F-35 operations in the Pacific.
“The F-35 is not just a new fighter, it’s a fundamentally different capability,”” said U.S. Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, PACAF commander, during his opening remarks.
“From the technology to the integrated training, it brings an unprecedented combination of lethality, survivability, and adaptability, to the fight.
The F-35 is the backbone of future joint and combined air operations.”
As the Pacific’s 5th Generation Center of Excellence, PACAF will shape all aspects of employment and integration for fifth-generation aircraft in the region, enhancing bilateral relations between Pacific allies.
Subject matter experts from Japan, Australia and the Republic of Korea as well as the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force participated in open discussions, briefings and expert panels focused on setting the stage for future F-35 operations in the Pacific.
The two day symposium delivered an occasion for the U.S.’s Pacific allies to fuse with experts with the F-35 Joint Program Office, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps to learn more about fifth-generation aviation.
Sharing information and lessons learned was the centerpiece to the event.
Participating nations formed the baseline of future F-35 operations and engagements through discussion on F-35 bed down, integration, logistics, sustainment and combat operations. O’Shaughnessy noted that the symposium would not be a one-off event, but the first in a reoccurring schedule of forums that bring F-35 stakeholders together.
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“We have a rare face-to-face opportunity to dive into an extremely sophisticated jet, as a joint and multinational team, to maximize the interoperability of the most lethal weapons system to grace the skies,” added O’Shaughnessy.
“The F-35’s ability to fuse multi-domain information is a game-changing capability that will give us a tactical advantage. It’s because of the F-35’s fusing capability that we must enhance the interoperability among all partners and allies who fly it.”
The F-35 is a next-generation multi-role fighter that combines advanced stealth with speed, agility and a 360-degree view of the battlespace and will form the backbone of air combat superiority for decades to come.
The two-day symposium served as a springboard for F-35’s future in the Pacific by strengthening the forces involved, leading to a better, more fully interoperable joint and coalition team.
“Together with our Pacific allies and partners, we’re sending a clear message to our neighbors and friends in the region,” said Brig. Gen. Craig Wills, PACAF’s Strategy, Plans and Programs director. “We will continue to invest in the combat capability required to assure our ability to defend the security and stability in this region and to uphold the rules-based international order.”
This inaugural Pacific F-35 Symposium featured the largest gathering of fifth-generation warfighters in history. Approximately 91 senior officers and F-35 experts from a variety of organizations participated. Among the organizations represented were U.S. Pacific Command, Air Combat Command, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Marine Corps Forces Pacific and the Air Force Integration Office.
“The scale of participation we’ve seen with the F-35 Symposium accentuates just how important the F-35 is to us and our allies. The Lightning II is a phenomenal fighter and an incredible investment in our warfighting capability and ability to defend freedom,” Wills said.
U.S. F-35s have reached Initial Operational Capability with Marines and Airmen both flying operational and combat ready aircraft.
In addition to the F-35As with the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, ten F-35Bs from the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing out of Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Ariz., are deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, with six more scheduled to arrive later this year.
Japan started its pilot training program in late 2016, the Republic of Korea is scheduled to receive its first aircraft in 2018 and Australia has been training pilots in two Royal Australian Air Force F-35s in Arizona since late 2014.
In a March 2014 article about the emerging F-35 global enterprise, I looked at how the global fleet was likely to impact collective defense.
Allies are not simply “partners” in the program they are the enablers of 21st century air combat development and approaches.
Allies are not simply “following” the US lead; they are innovating on their own and will infuse the F-35 global enterprise with the spirit of innovation and invention, not mortgaged by the “sequestration” somnolent evident in Washington.
The F-35 as a global enterprise is clearly a foundational force or forcing function force for other developments.
It is not simply a means to an end (modernizing the tactical aircraft fleet) but a forcing function force for fundamental change.
There are several key aspects of the F-35 global enterprise, which are significant for allies as well as Americans.
The key to the F-35 is the reach of the fleet not the range of a single aircraft. Here the intersection of USMC F-35Bs operating off of an ARG-MEU are seen intersecting with Singapore’s F-35Bs. Credit Graphic: Second LIne of Defense
First, it will be in production for a long time, which means that allies can buy with confidence that the system will be there when they need it. There will be no repeat of the Aussie F-111 problem of buying and then the USAF retiring its aircraft leaving the Aussies to foot a significant maintenance bill
The US is up and down in buying numbers of aircraft but with the coming of three production lines (Fort Worth, Cameri, Japan) the allies will be able to buy as the US goes up and down.
Although Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor, the key designers of the combat systems are among the world’s best combat systems companies. As Ed Timperlake has highlighted, the combat systems have their own R and D vectors, which will drive capabilities up over time, which will be reflected in the aircraft.
The weapons, which will be fitted onto the F-35 or operated by the F-35 in a sensor shooter relationship, will be developed globally.
For example, the Kongsberg missile developed for Norway will be available immediately for any F-35A user. The new MBDA Meteor missile is also a case in point of allied investments also shaping a global market
This is historically unprecedented and allows global partners to build for themselves and for the global consortium.
For example, a country like Australia with unique ranges and key scientific capability (demonstrated in the hypersonics area) can become a major designer and producer of missiles for the F-35.
And as one Aussie engineer commented: “Clearly we see the opportunity inherent on adding longer range capabilities for strike associated with the F-35. And one needs to realize that the technology barriers that have hampered the development of a scramjet powered vehicle operating in the low hypersonic region have been broken.”
As a software upgradeable aircraft, users reflecting collaborative combat experience will do the code rewrite. This is already happening with the Wedgetail in Australia, which is a launch point for the use of new software upgradeable aircraft.
The Pacific F-35 Fleet can be sustained through a network of hubs and training ranges. Credit Graphic: Second Line of Defense
The program has built in a global sustainment capability from the ground up, which allows for the clear possibility of shaping a very different approach to global sustainment. Programs developed first for the US which then add global customers face a significant parts and support problem because there was never a thought of building in a global sustainment approach.
The Italians have already built a regional sustainment center in Italy for Europe and Med operations.
The manufacturing program is already mature and there will three FACOS: two already exist in the US and Italy and a third to be added in Japan.
And operationally, a global fleet will provide significant opportunities for innovation by the US and its partners in building out a new combat approach around distributed operations.
And the usual comparisons of stealth China and Russian aircraft versus the F-35 ignore three crucial points:
The US and several allies are investing in the program and will use the program. As a result, it is unlikely that Russia or China will win the fifth generation investment race.
The USAF has several decades of experience with stealth, which neither the Russians nor Chinese have.
The con-ops of F-35 facilities an aerospace combat cloud and distributed operations; neither is a strong suit for authoritarian controlled air combat forces such as those of the Russians and Chinese.
In short, the reality is the reality
The opportunities are there for the new generation of I-Pad generation pilots and the 21st century air combat innovators.
The “Right Stuff” is back.
But of course you actually have to talk to the new generation of pilots, maintainers, and manufacturers of the 21st century air combat force to feel the enthusiasm and see the rethinking going on daily.
It takes time, but the enthusiasm from the new generation is palpable.
And I would add that I am writing this piece from Canberra, Australia where this week The Williams Foundation is hosting a conference on the 5th generation opportunity.
I maybe physically down under but these folks are certainly not when it comes to sorting out the future.
The slideshow above highlights participants at the Symposium, underscoring the point that key US allies are key plank holders in the F-35 global enterprise, and credibility with Allies will require the US to get on with the fifth generation airpower transition, distributed lethality and building kill webs for a defense in depth strategy in the Pacific. The photos are credited to the USAF.
Editor’s Note: The Aussies continue their innovative and cutting edge look at the broader evolution of fifth generation warfare and the challenge of shaping an integrated combat force in their latest Williams Foundation Seminar on April 11, 2017.
The US Navy leadership has articulated what they see as a key way ahead to build a 21st century integrated force and have introduced the concepts of kill web and distributed lethality to get at the concept.
The key is to buy the right platforms, and to build an integrated force from the ground up and as you do so you work integration backwards as well to leverage legacy assets, which are capable of making the transition.
The challenge is how to acquire, build, buy and develop such a force going forward?
This is no easy task because the core focus of the legacy mindset is about buying a platform and then figuring out how to integrate that platform with the force.
With the acquisition of the P-8, Triton and F-35 the US Navy has been leaning forward to shape thinking and a way ahead to work towards a more integrated force going forward, although the notion that buying more Super Hornets at the expense of the F-35 makes little sense from this standpoint.
If the USN wants a 21st century integrated force going forward, the F-35 is a key foundational element to get that capability; the Super Hornet is headed towards a future of being a bomb truck for the F-35.
The Aussies have grasped this point from the outset of their planned acquisition of the F-35 and have looked from the outset beyond the buying of a new platform to the shaping of a new force.
The F-35 is key driver of change for the Aussies but it is not an in and of itself capability.
The Williams Foundation has been a thought leader in bringing together the key players in the Australian military as well as allies to shape a way ahead for the integrated force.
Now the Foundation is hosting a conference on April 11, 2017 in Canberra which will explicitly address the key challenge of how to develop such an integrated force with a key case study being the way ahead to build an integrated missile defense capability built into the force.
According to the Williams Foundation:
Since March 2014, the Williams Foundation has conducted a series of Seminars that explored the opportunities and challenges afforded by the introduction of next generation combat capabilities.
Topics that have been explored to date included:
Air Combat Operations – 2025 and Beyond • Battlespace Awareness – The Joint Edge • Integrating Innovative Airpower (held in Copenhagen) • Training for an Integrated ADF: Live, Virtual and Constructive • Design-Led Innovation • New Thinking on Air-Land • New Thinking on Air-Sea
The Next Step – The Integrated Force Seminar
The hypotheses the seminar will explore are:
We must operate as an integrated team from the design, through delivery to the operation of the force; failure to act as such will incur unacceptable risk in future operations.
If we don’t “design” the integrated force we are committed to “after-market” integration.
We can’t build and operate an integrated force using business models developed for acquiring stand-alone, stove-piped capabilities.
“Design” is about more than just platforms and systems … it is about how we design, acquire, operate and sustain an integrated force in a more complex interconnected global context.
If we over-complicate the “design” process we will stall our efforts and get the same results we have had over the past 20 years; i.e. stove-piped capabilities.
We must recognise that the task load of the three Services in their raise, train, sustain and Capablity Manager roles means that simply delivering a large volume of Force Design guidance to the three Services at once will not work; we must be cogniscant of the realites of the Service’s exisiting tasks and loadings when seeking to transform to an integrated force model.
In preparation for the Seminar, the Williams Foundation has run a six month IAMD Study, exploring the challenges of the IAMD program and the concept of integrated force design, as one example of the forty programs that the Department of Defence has embarked upon. The IAMD Study Report will be launched at the seminar.
Seminar Program
The Seminar will be run at the National Gallery of Australia on 11 April 2017. The program will include coordinated presentations from the three Services and VCDF Group.
They will all be addressing the challenges and opportunities of integrated force design.
In an afternoon session, a series of presentations and a panel discussion comprising Defence Industry and CASG will explore how the integrated force will be acquired and sustained given the predominance of business models developed for acquiring stand-alone, stove-piped capabilities.
Second Line of Defense will be attending the Seminar and will report on the debates, discussions and the thinking about the way ahead.
Our military situation today is stark. The United States faces a burgeoning number, and a greater spectrum of threats around the globe. At the same time we have declining resources allocated to meeting these threats.
To successfully confront this dynamic array of dangers, we must optimize our military organizations and concepts of operation.
We must evolve service relationships from ones of interoperability—a goal of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, to ones of full integration and interdependency.
This is the next step in the evolution of our military.
A dollar spent on duplicative capability comes at the expense of essential capacity or capability elsewhere.
Confused organizational structures lead to sub-optimal employment of forces already stretched too thin. Outdated service roles, missions, and concepts of operation yield costly, inefficient acquisition programs.
Clearly, things have to change—security circumstances and fiscal pressures will no longer tolerate such conditions.
We are not going to be able to blast or buy our way out of these challenges—we are going to have to think our way out of them.
I believe that if the United States is to succeed in protecting its core interests around the globe and deter aggression, we must have the strongest Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force in the world.
However, fiscal realities dictate that the military must make difficult choices in balancing near-term operational readiness with longer-term needs.
This demands much more clarity regarding goals and desired outcomes, with special emphasis on how we can best project effective, prudent power to negate threats that would oppose us in the 21st century.
It is time to change and to focus on con-ops innovation to drive strategy. Linking operations across all domains with accurate information can be the basis for an omnipresent security complex that is self-forming, and if attacked, self-healing. Credit Image: Bigstock
Our Department of Defense and military services are conservative institutions.
While highly capable they are slow to change, but to operate effectively in the information age, we must develop and capitalize on the new concepts of operation and organizations that new technologies enable.
Dr. Thomas Kuhn, renowned American physicist, historian and philosopher, noted institutions only accept new paradigms when: 1) there is a paradigm crisis; 2) the old people of a given paradigm die off; or 3) change is forced from the outside.[1] We want to change before a crisis occurs, and cannot afford to wait for the “old-guard” to depart.
In 1986 Congress was the outside institution that forced much needed change in the Department of Defense with the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
It may be time to consider such action again.
I commend Chairman Cotton, Senator King, and the rest of the Airland Subcommittee for beginning this conversation and initiating this series of hearings regarding the future of all arms warfare in the 21st century. It is a much-needed start.
I believe the biggest challenge our defense establishment faces is one of institutional inertia.
We are well into the information age, yet our systems, organizations, and concepts of operations remain rooted in the industrial age of warfare.
Our diplomatic, economic, and informational elements of our national security enterprise are also largely unchanged since the mid 20th century, and require more integration than ever before.
We can no longer afford this misalignment—not only is it costly, but it also poses undue risk.
Change with respect to the military involves four principal factors—advanced technologies, new concepts of operation, organizational change, and the human dimension.
Advanced technologies and the new capabilities they yield, enable new concepts of operation that produce order-of-magnitude increases in our ability to achieve desired military effects.
Organizational change codifies changes and enhances our ability to execute our national security strategy.
The final and essential element to progress is the human dimension.
People are fundamental to everything we do, especially when it comes to leadership.
The 21st Century Security Environment
First, our defense strategy must contend with non-state and transnational actors; a rising economic and military powerhouse in China; a resurgent Russia; declining states—some with nuclear weapons; the increasing likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation; evil actors of the most despicable nature; and a dynamic web of terrorism.
Second, the pace and tenor of our lives has been irrevocably altered by the acceleration of change.
Global trade, travel, and telecommunications have produced major shifts in the way we live.
Such developments are not isolated. Speed and complexity have merged, and now permeate the conduct of warfare. Consequently, one implication for future air and land warfare operations is that they must be able to respond rapidly and decisively anywhere on the globe at any time.
As recent events have demonstrated, key security events now unfold in a matter of hours and days, not months or years.
The window to influence such circumstances is increasingly fleeting.
Third, we have to contend with increasing personnel and procurement costs at a time when defense budgets are decreasing. Therefore, the provision of flexibility of response across a wide spectrum of circumstances should be foremost among the decision criteria we apply to our future military.
Fourth, we should acknowledge that deploying large numbers of American military forces onto foreign soil to nation-build vice accomplishing a defined mission and then leaving is counter-productive to securing our goals.
Strategies centered upon occupation expose America’s vulnerabilities, often result in anti-American backlash and domestic disapproval, and create destabilizing effects within the very state or region they are intended to secure.
Fifth, we must actively pursue and invest in options we can use to counter the increasingly advanced anti-access strategies and technologies our adversaries are developing.
Precision weapons and stealth projected incredible lethality at the end of the Cold War. Those capabilities proliferated, and our adversaries are now equipping themselves with these systems, and seeking greater advancements. One quarter of a century later, it is foolhardy to assume U.S. forces will be afforded freedom of action in future engagements. Our strategies, planning assumptions, acquisition programs, and training need to account for more capable enemies.
Sixth, we need to challenge our adversaries’ domination of public perception. We have to learn how to use the application of accurate, compelling information as a core element of our security apparatus.
An F-35B Lightning II with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 121 takes off during exercise Red Flag 16-3 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., July 20. This is the first time that the fifth generation fighter has participated in the multiservice air-to-air combat training exercise. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Harley Robinson/Released)
We are woefully inept at strategic communications and too often put ourselves in a reactionary versus proactive position in struggling to gain domestic and international public support.
Finally, information’s value also extends past the media. Just as wireless connectivity, personal computing devices, and cloud-based applications are revolutionizing life in the civilian sector; these trends are also altering how our military forces project power. Faster and more capable networks and computing capabilities are turning information into the dominant factor in modern warfare.
We need to understand that aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 are information systems far above and beyond being fighters that shoot missiles and drop bombs—they are sensor-shooters. F-22 operations over Syria validate this statement.
Given this reality, we must now acknowledge that information and its management are just as important today as the traditional tools of hard military power—airplanes, satellites, infantry, warships.
Information is the force evolving all weapon systems from isolated instruments of power into a highly integrated enterprise where the exchange of information and data will determine success or failure in the 21st century.
These facts have major implications throughout the military enterprise, particularly air and land operations—shaping key areas like doctrine, organization, training, materiel acquisition and sustainment, along with command and control.
Top leaders in the policy community must adjust to the new realities of information age combat operations. Cold War and counterinsurgency paradigms will fall short when building, sustaining and employing military power in the modern era.
These trends provide a starting point for anticipating the future with which we will have to contend.
Bluntly stated, all the services, Department of Defense (DOD) agencies, and the other elements of our national security architecture have been slow to recognize the emerging new security environment.
Our focus has remained on traditional weapons platforms. We still have institutions and processes that were designed in the middle of the last century to accommodate what we now view—in retrospect—as a rather simple world of kinetics and traditional domains that characterized the Cold War.
Will the United States and its allies shape a credibility defense strategy in the Pacific to reduce the nuclear threat? Or will growing threats to Japan lead Japan to join the nuclear club? Credit Image: Bigstock
While nuclear threats have not gone away, we need to supplement our traditional focus on combined arms warfare with a broader “lens” that exploits non-kinetic tools and the cyber domain.
Excessive emphasis on traditional weapon platforms associated with combined arms warfare runs the danger of under-investing in emerging non-kinetic instruments.
We cannot relive the era of battleship admirals and cavalry generals that dismissed aviation as a passing fad.
Summarizing, the proliferation of technology, information flow, and the associated empowerment of nation-states, organizations, as well as individuals, presents one of the most daunting challenges our military has ever faced.
Editor’s Note: This has been excerpted by Lt. General (Retired) Deptula’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Airland, March 15, 2017
The strategic certainties and alliances of the post Cold War world are all now facing severe challenges.
The certainties of the period of globalization are clearly contested on many fronts.
The causes of this crisis are multiple.
Some see the causes as originating in the imperial overreach of the United States in the Middle East. Others blame the imperial overreach of Europe to the borders of Russia. Some blame Russia and Putin for the seizure of the Crimea.
But these causes will be the subject for future historians.
What is clear now is that a new phase is beginning which requires clear headed analysis.
The tectonic plates are shifting and the United States needs to think carefully about the prospects and consequences of these profound changes between (and within) nations, and how best to respond to this new world order (or disorder).
Many of these changes were already underway before 2017.
From the Cold War, to the Post-Cold War World to the post-9/11 World, to the post-shared sovereignty globalization world to the new phase of global development, aggregated interest clusterizations and promoting national interests.
But this is most especially the major international challenge facing the new Trump administration.
But for now what is clear is that security threats have unleashed national reactions with various nations seeking to rebalance their position in the global order, and seeking to work with clusters of either like minded states, or with states capable of providing key needs.
It is not exactly the return of nationalism, for that has not been absent in any case, but is clearly the return of security and defense concerns as a priority, and these concerns are always led by states seeking allies, partners or friends, or “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” types of partners.
And of course, key elements of global reach will remain relevant in the new situation, such as the reach of global information, cyber threats, and information war, as key interactive tools, which will be as disruptive as they are binding. And the reach of global information into sub-regional groups can well lead to new types of disintegration and integration as well.
These trends were underway before the election of Donald Trump.
But the trends are clearly affected by him and will provide a significant challenge to his Administration as it seeks to protect or advance American interests in the new global situation.
Brexit
We can start with Brexit which clearly has been generated by security concerns unleashed by open borders and concerns about the perceived roles of the European Court and the Commission in making rules without regard to British national interests.
The “democratic deficit” in Europe, and the often low quality of who get high ranking jobs in the Commission have been met by the referendum vote for Britain to exit the European Union.
It is clear, however, that even when Article 50 is invoked it will be a complicated process to determine what exactly Brexit will mean.
And these negotiations will clearly be affected by the dynamic and fluid set of affairs on the Continent itself.
And with the possibility of another Scottish referendum it is not impossible to image that Scotland becomes independent and “little” England on its own seeking to sort out its post-Brexit future.
The prospect for a United Ireland has also returned. The possibility of a post-Brexit “hard” border returning between the Irish republic, an EU member, and Northern Ireland, is already causing deep concern. Northern Ireland is currently without a devolved government, and a return to the bitter tribal politics of the past there should not be discounted.
The Euro, the European Union and “Multi-Speed” Europe
Clearly one of the major domestic challenges in almost all the western nations is the continuing “democratic deficit” that is the alienation of many segments of the population which have be adversely impacted by globalization and post industrialization.
The critical role of the upper mid-western states in the victory of Trump, and the rise in support for the anti-EU and anti-Muslim “National Front” of Marine Le Pen in France, and the support for Brexit in the U.K. are all part of this new wave.
But how to respond to the root causes of this alienation from mainstream politics and politicians is not at all clear.
This is clearly one of the major challenges for the future within many western democracies.
The impact of Brexit, and profound security and economic concerns among the populations of European states, are leading to significant pressures for change.
The euro-club is unlikely to expand, and open borders will end to all intents and purposes.
The European market already hardly an open one, so that renegotiation with Britain will raise again fundamental questions of support for special interests such as French and German farming and many other protected sectors in the European Union.
It is quite likely that the European Union will come to resemble what President Trump called it, namely the European consortium.
But clearly key states will try to sort out ways to work more effectively together to protect perceived national interests, but this is already very different from the multi-national structures dominated by the Commission in the globalization phase.
And key states outside of the European Union, namely Russia, China and Iran, will enhance their roles in dealing with individual states to seek ways to enhance their interests globally, supported by various bilateral agreements or investments as well.
Turkey
The war of words between the Turkish leader and Europeans is simply the more obvious shift in the President of Turkey’s approach to shape in effect a more Islamic state which can provide for leadership in the Middle East and work with other global powers outside of Europe to enhance his position in the region.
Turkey has already ramped up its defense industrial relations in the region and has become a source for arms in the region as well.
And will play off the United States, China and Russia to enhance Turkey’s power in the region.
ISIS is seen as a useful de-facto ally of Turkey in dealing with the Kurdish threat as the leaders of Turkey sees it.
Not only is Turkey not going to be a member of the European Union but its role in NATO is clearly in question as well.
Mexico
With the focus of attention in the 2016 Presidential campaign on Mexico, it is clear that the alliance between the two countries forged during the globalization phase is on the rocks. Mexican leaders are reaching out to China as well as to other Latin American leaders to provide new sources of revenue, raw materials and diplomatic support.
Mexico has often been a security threat to the United States in the 19th Century and was seen by the Nazis in World War II as a soft underbelly for the United States. And of course significant parts of the United States were once part of Mexico, something which Americans forget but the Mexicans do not.
With the NAFTA agreements Mexican elites tied their future to their North American neighbors. With the new US administration, Mexican elites are seeking to retreat from this position, and seek alternatives in a reshaped relationship with Latin America and receptiveness to new openings to China.
But with a wall, the blending of Mexicans in the United States and Mexicans living in Mexico is a significant one which create significant domestic political problems for the Administration.
The drug cartels will find ways other than overcoming the wall to come into the United States. This will be especially true if the USCG is really reduced to the extent envisaged in the Trump Administration budget, or by using pathways through Canada into the United States, as the Trudeau government is providing visa free travel from Mexico into Canada.
Dynamics are underway which can clearly change the nature of Mexico and its relationship to the United States which President Trump has not anticipated in his discussion of the future US-Mexican relationship.
China
The leader of China has consolidated his control over China and is certainly not going to wait while President Trump sorts out his strategy. He is already shaping a global support for multilateralism Chinese style.
He put that clearly in play at this year’s Davos sessions and although one has to be a bit delusional to believe in Chinese multilateralism, what this means in reality is the Chinese offering an alternative to the Trump vision of trade and global economic relations.
It is a version of playing older style Americanism against the new style of Americanism.
The Role of the BRICS
How will the relationships among the BRIC states work out?
The notion of an alliance of major developing countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) was originally an economically motivated construct from Goldman Sachs British born chief economist. It has long since been superseded. Major rivalries between the BRICS remain, especially between India and China.
But the concept was given form in a series of summits between the leaders of the countries involved, and they have also established a BRICS development bank to provide a rival (or at least an alternative) to the US and Western European led IMF and World Bank.
Russia is already a major supplier of arms to India. Brazil has signed a deal to provide a new generation of fighter jets with Sweden in preference to the US. Russia is also a major supplier of arms to Venezuela,
For China this is an important extra mechanism for its engagement especially in Brazil where China is already Brazil’s largest trading partner. And is becoming a major investor.
Political Corruption, Drug trafficking and International Criminal Networks
Even if explicit national recognition of globalization as a positive focus of inter-state agreements goes down, globalization will certainly continue at the sub-national level, notably with regard to cyber threats, drug trafficking, and movement of migrants.
For example, the international drug trade is not confined to “bad hombres” from Mexico.
Nor is the US the only market for illegal drugs.
With the putative peace Agreement in Colombia many of the drug traders in cocaine have continued with their links to international cartels, not only via the Caribbean and Mexico and Venezuela, but also via the Brazil, the small west African nation of former Portuguese Guinea, and on into southern Europe, and into then into the UK and North Western Europe.
The corruption endemic in all the countries on these route from South America, as well as the control by competing drug gangs in the South American favelas and on the street, and into the political, law enforcement, and judicial systems of all these countries, is a continuing, and largely hidden problem, which is presenting major border control problems for the Brazilian military for example on the far flung, riverine, jungle, and only partially controlled Amazonian frontiers of Brazil.
The Redrawing of Boundaries and Negative Globalization: The Case of the Middle East
The state boundaries established in the 1920s in the Middle East were also stakes in the sand. With the evolution of the new phase of the global order, these lines are very likely to be redrawn.
The fissures in the Middle East are creating new fault lines as well with the role of outside players being significant in playing upon those fault lines with new working relationships among powers in the region, state and non-state with external power actors, namely European states, the United States, China, and Russia.
Key players in the region are already redrawing on the ground the nature of power. The dissolution of Iraq and Syria is well underway. ISIS and the significant migratory pressures in the region represent what might be called negative globalization, namely the movement of threats and forces which have eroded the reality of state sovereignty in the region.
And the reach of Iran and Turkey from the two sides of the region is designed to augment their national influence and augments the dynamics of change in the effective meaning of sovereignty in the region.
The GCC states facing Iran, Turkey and ISIS and having several powers proactively acting in the region from the outside face internal and external pressures, which can easily lead to explosive pressures on these states.
In many ways, the new Middle East, which will emerge in the next few years, may be the clearest statement about what the new phase in global politics actually will look like.
Israel as the only democracy in the region faces significant pressures to defend its interests and will certainly rely heavily on the United States to provide for maneuver room while Israel finds its place in the evolving Middle East situation of maneuvering sovereignty and explosive negative globalization.
The Trump Administration and Its Way Ahead
There are many other fissures emerging in a dynamic process of disintegration of the old and forging of the new, notably in terms of old nemeses of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. But we can simply stop here for the moment and reflect upon the trends we have introduced in the paper and address the challenge for the way ahead for the Trump Administration.
What are the consequences for trade and the opportunities for China as a consequence of Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific trade deal negotiations? One aspect will be the question of how Australia and the east coast Latin American countries might seek new forms of engagement with each other.
The evolving strategic map raises a number of key questions.
What will new world “order” look like? What are the principal emerging clusters of power — political, economic, and military?
How serious is the domestic political crisis of western democracy? Is the West up to confronting these shifting military, strategic and economic challenges of a new global order and strategic map?
How dangerous is the threat of war? How dangerous is the threat from nuclear proliferation? If the threat of war is a real treat where will the spark most likely come from? Estonia? Korea? Ukraine? Will it be conventional? How quickly might a war become nuclear?
How will the Russians play on the fissures in Europe and tensions between key European nations and the United States? What opportunities will emerge for the Russians? What threats can be generated by significant Russian miscalculation of varied Western responses to their actions? If there is less Western cohesion, they may well be very different responses to which the Russians might clearly miscalculate.
The world which President Trump is facing is a very fluid one and one which is changing right before his eyes. History will not stop while he sorts out his NAFTA negotiating strategy or figures out what to do with China.
His rhetoric and language has highlighted trends already underway but what is not clear is what will be his realistic policy responses?
Will there be a reworking of the US-Mexican relationship which can involve security and trade but is viewed by Mexico as equitable and far?
What will be his real policy towards Europe in terms of trade and defense and will there be a realistic understanding of how negative some of the far right players in Europe clearly are for American interests? Any notion that Marie Le Pen is somehow Trump like needs to be clearly dealt with.
Brexit will be a difficult path to thread through a fluid and dynamically changing Europe, a Europe which remains central for the security, defense and prosperity for Britain. What will be the Trump Administration policy towards Britain in a European context?
And China clearly needs to be dealt with. It is a threat to US interests on many levels and the President clearly raised the level of interest in terms of dealing with these threats. But there needs to be a global policy which deals with China in a broader context; it is not just about a trade negotiation.
There are many other issues and players to discuss, but what we have done here is simply to sketch how dramatic the changes underway are already. And those changes will define the environment to which the Administration will need to shape and respond, not simply re-assert aspirations articulated during the campaign.
But as we learned at Jax Navy air station last year, no Triton flies alone.
It is part of an overall Navy approach to distributed lethality or an evolving kill web.
In narrow terms, the P-3 platform and mission are being replaced by the P-8 and Triton dyad.
But given the nature of both the evolving data sphere as well as decision-making approach, the P-8, F-35, Triton, and Advanced Hawkeye are all key elements in the flying part of distributed lethality for the Navy-Marine Corps team.
It is a key part of the evolving sensor-shooter system being shaped to allow for distributed operations.
It is clearly a work in progress but it is a decisive shift from the legacy approach as well. With regard to Triton and P-8, the US Navy will operate them as a dyad.
The USN is approaching the P-8/Triton combat partnership, which is the integration of manned, and unmanned systems, or what are now commonly called “remotes”. The Navy looked at the USAF experience and intentionally decided to not build a Triton “remote” operational combat team that is stovepiped away from their P-8 Squadrons.
The teams at Navy Jax and Pax River are building a common Maritime Domain Awareness and Maritime Combat Culture and treats the platforms as partner applications of the evolving combat theory.
The partnership is both technology synergistic and also aircrew moving between the Triton and P-8.
The P-8 pilot and mission crews, after deploying with the fleet globally can be assigned significant shore duty flying Tritons. The number of personnel to fly initially the Tritons is more than 500 navy personnel so this is hardly an unmanned aircraft. Hence, inside a technological family of systems there is also an interchangeable family of combat crews.
These new systems are all software upgradeable which sets in motion the opportunity and a need to shape new acquisition approaches to take advantage of software, which can evolve to deal with the threat environment as well.
Software upgradeability provides for a lifetime of combat learning to be reflected in the rewriting of the software code and continually modernizing existing combat systems, while adding new capabilities over the operational life of the aircraft.
Over time, fleet knowledge will allow the US Navy and its partners to understand how best to maintain and support the aircraft while operating the missions effectively in support of global operations.
The baseline Triton getting ready for deployment is an ISR platform; but will evolve into a tron warfare platform engaged in the extended battlespace.
And this evolution will be largely software driven.
What makes the Triton different from the Advanced Hawkeye, P-8 or F-35 is that it is all software driven, in that there is no man onboard, although the man in the loop will be key both to the C2 role and the proliferation of the information garnered by the platform.
And the software on the platform also derives much of its capability from the software developed for the F-35. And onboard are scalable systems which provide for ongoing innovations in radar capability at very high altitudes.
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According to Northrop Grumman, “Triton will support a wide range of missions including maritime ISR patrol, signals intelligence, search and rescue and communications relay.
The aircraft can fly up to 24 hours at a time, at altitudes higher than 10 miles, with an operational range of 8,200 nautical miles.”
Again according to Northrop Grumman there are four key systems onboard the aircraft:
A multi-function active sensor radar which provides “unprecedented 360 degree views for detecting and identifying targets at sea;
An automatic identification system which tracks ships;
An electro-optical/infrared MTS-B multi-spectral targeting system which captures both hi-res images and full motion video with multiple field of views;
And electronic support measures which identify and locate signals emitted from maritime vessels.
To get an update on the Triton, I had a chance to visit Pax River and to meet with the program manager and his Triton program team.
Sean Burke is the program manager for the Persistent Maritime Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Office (PMA-262), headquartered in Patuxent River, Md. He assumed command in December 2014 and is responsible for the development, production, fielding and sustainment of all persistent maritime unmanned aircraft systems, including the Triton Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS) and BAMS-demonstration program.
He was joined in the interview by Captain Tom Hoover and Commander Daniel Papp.
We started by discussing the Triton and its synergy with other new air platforms.
“We reach out across every available relevant enterprise in the Navy and beyond to find ways to make the Triton a better platform. We have a team lead in our office focused on interoperability.
“We are looking closely at the flow of data from out platform and how best use can be made of that data.
“From a technical perspective, we are focused on sharing radar technological development.
“And that started at the outset when Northrop came in and proposed a radar option, driven from the F-35 program, to give us something much better than the radar we were initially considering.”
And the sharing in this case between the Triton and the F-35 radar occurs at the cards, chips and processor level.
“The F-35 has a sunk cost in the cards, chips and processors to build its radar; we can use those same cards, chips and processors for ours.
“And as a software upgradeable platform upgrading those cards, chips and processors over time as well can provide improvements for the Triton as well. It is both a cost savings and technologically dynamic upgrade process.”
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Both Papp and Hoover came from the P-8 program to the Triton program and illustrate the point driven home in Jax Navy of the commonality of the team developing and operating the two systems as a dyad.
“With the P-3 we of course shared data with the fleet and coalition partners.
“But the approach with P-8 and Triton is much different – it is web based. It is about sharing and acting on information in the operational force, whether to the surface ship, the Growler, the P-8 or the F-35”
And the new generation officers are growing up in this new operational environment.
“When deploying on the P-8 it was obvious that innovation started on the P-8 rail onboard the aircraft with the various systems operators.
“On the P-3, we were fairly narrowly constrained specialists; onboard the P-8 rail the operators may have a focus but are looking at the bigger picture as part of working their focus.
“And C2 is changing as well as the chat rooms established with the deployed force provide an opportunity for the operators to let one another know what is most important in their judgments about the information they are taking in – it is not just about conveying information into a giant data base.
It is about operators learning how to identify operationally the most important developments they are seeing and to convey those judgments and to send targeted information to the key elements of the combat force.”
And the Trion from this point of view is an “information sponge” but needs to be understood not simply as a collector of information but a platform manned by officers capable of making real time judgments on what they are seeing operationally.
“Our aircrews recognize that we will be the choke point if we do not pull in and disseminate simultaneously. We learned this lesson early on P-8 and are applying it to Triton.”
In other words, the P-8 and the Triton are being developed and will operate as a dyad.
“We are shaping a maritime patrol and reconnaissance community.
“It is not two communities; it is one community, which applies multiple assets.
“The operator who is flying P-8 today will be flying Triton on the next tour.
“They will flow between being P-8 to Triton crewmen.
“We view it as a body of operators within a broader community who will learn how to operate multiple forms for the same common goal of ISR and ASW in the support of the fleet.”
The team emphasized the key tactical role for the information, which the dyad generates for the fleet.
It is not about simply collecting information; it is about providing judgment as well as data to the fleet for its tactical missions.
“Our operators are looking at the tactical relevance of the information coming into the systems and providing both their judgment and data to the relevant assets engaged in the operation.
“It is the DNA of the new generation of operators to think cross platform and to think in information and decision terms.”
They emphasized as well that the Triton program is set up to have regular interactions with the deployed P-8 fleet and with those operating the initial Tritons.
“We have a very strong feedback loop with operators and maintainers in the program.
“We have close ties with the fleet in terms of their operations and the evolving role of the P-8 prior to deploying Triton.
“P-8 operators come to Pax to operate our software and provide real world experience in our testing out of our evolving Triton software.
“We marry up the test pilot trained in developmental testing with P-8 operators with real world experience in shaping our evolving software on Triton.”
The Navy liaison program becomes even more important as the Navy deploys software upgradeable platforms. As the platform cycles to the fleet, each iteration can be different and the fleet commander needs to understand what that “new” platform can contribute to the fleet.
“We are going to deploy the Tritons at Mayport which will provide a great opportunity given its proximity to Jax as well to shape cross-decking learning opportunities.
“The surface and subsurface officers know that in order for us to be successful, everyone else has to have a basic understanding of our evolving capability, so they can employ their weapons platforms more effectively.”
A challenge seen on the Triton along with other software upgradeable platforms is shaping the kind of acquisition system, which can optimize the contribution of software upgradeability.
21st century air and maritime combat power is being built around a number of multi-mission systems which are themselves software upgradeable; but there still is a legacy mindset that platforms are hardware first and software second.
This means as well that you want to get these platforms into the hands of the operators to gain operational experience to guide software development rather than too rigid of a requirements setting process which can get in the way of actually using the platform today and leveraging that operational experience to drive further development of the platform.
The Triton to be deployed next year will meet the requirements set in the 2007-2008 timeframe with the software onboard the Triton to be deployed next year.
Then the team will look to evolve that basic capability into the next platform iteration of capability.
The Navy is looking to evolve the Triton from an ISR to multi-intelligence platform.
And that will happen with the evolution of the software much more than modification of hardware, yet the acquisition system is challenged to allow for the software driven flow for such a platform, rather than prioritizing hardware over software.
Editor’s Note: For earlier articles on Triton, see the following:
Comments by Commander Papp as quoted in a NAVAIR article on Triton published June 22, 2016:
The Navy recently demonstrated two key capabilities for the Triton Unmanned Air System (UAS) program that will enhance future fleet operations.
During a flight test June 2, an MQ-4C Triton and P-8A Poseidon successfully exchanged full motion video for the first time inflight via a Common Data Link (CDL), marking another interoperability step for the program.
The test demonstrated Triton’s ability to track a target with its electro-optical/infrared camera to build situational awareness for a distant P-8 aircrew.
“In an operational environment, this would enable the P-8 aircrew to become familiar with a contact of interest and surrounding vessels well in advance of the aircraft’s arrival in station” said Cmdr. Daniel Papp, Triton integrated program team lead.
The MQ-4C Triton’s ability to perform persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance within a range of 2,000 nautical miles will allow the P-8A aircraft to focus on their core missions.
Last week also marked the completion of Triton’s first heavy weight flight that will expand Triton’s estimated time on station significantly. Triton operated in the 20,000 foot altitude band in the heavy weight configuration for the first time and completed all test objectives. A second heavy weight flight on June 14 had Triton operating in the 30,000 foot altitude band.
“The heavy weight envelope expansion work will enable Triton to realize its long dwell capability and become the unblinking eye for the fleet,” Papp added.
Triton is designed to fly missions of up to 24 hours at altitudes over 10 miles high, allowing the system to monitor two million square miles of ocean and littoral areas at a time. Since its first flight in 2013, Triton has flown more than 455 flight hours.
The Navy will continue testing Triton at Patuxent River to prepare for its first planned deployment in 2018.
The pictures in the second slideshow are credited to Navair and to Todd Miller. The Triton on the ground were shot by Todd Miller and the Triton in the air is credited to Navair.
2017-03-18 The Australian KC-30A was joined with the RAF’s A400M during its global reach into the Pacific during the Avalon Air Show in Australia.
The Aussie tanker represents the most mature advanced tanker in the world, while the A400M flown by the RAF has become a solid member of the Brize-Norton lift and tanking support structure to the RAF in its operations.
The two together are becoming key partners in a number of the world’s air forces.
The KC-30A Achieves Final Operational Capability
At the recent Australian Avalon Air Show, the RAAF declared their KC-30A to have achieved final operational capability (FOC).
As reported by Australian Aviation in an article published on March 2, 2017: “It is quickly becoming the tanker of choice,” Air Marshal Davies said of the KC-30A.
“We are now there where the aircraft has done so many receiver clearances that, having spoken to the Minister for Defence over the last couple of days, I would like to take this opportunity to declare final operational capability for the KC-30A MRTT in the Royal Australian Air Force,” AIRMSHL Davies told a media briefing.
“There has been a lot of hard work that has gone into its development, but … there is a lot more that this aircraft can do. Now that we have FOC we are able to go into that next smart phase [of developing the aircraft],” the Chief observed.
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“This tanker has come a long way since its introduction, undertaking significant operational, test and evaluation activities with a range of coalition aircraft, including United States Air Force F-35A Lightning II aircraft. This was a vital test of the KC-30A, to ensure we are prepared for our future force, including our F-35A arriving in late 2018.”
Defence Minister Senator Marise Payne also noted the significance of the KC-30A achieving final operating capability in a statement….
“This is a significant milestone for the fleet, which is now able to refuel a range of aircraft from our Air Force and our international partners,” Minister Payne said.
“The KC-30A has been an outstanding asset over Iraq on Operation Okra, having offloaded over 74 million pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft, including Australia’s F/A-18A Hornet and E-7A Wedgetail aircraft. It is on the frontline, making sure the Hornets can take the fight to Daesh effectively.
“Just one KC-30A can support the deployment of four fighter aircraft over 5,000km, with 50 personnel and 12 tonnes of equipment. It is an extremely versatile aircraft that is suited to the long ranges of the Australian continent.”
The KC-30A and Airbus Defence Partner for the Next Phase of Tanker Development
And the Aussies have also signed an agreement with Airbus Defence and Space to partner in shaping what one might call Tanker 2.0, or the smart tanker. The tanker is a mature military product operated globally and now Australia is laying the foundation for the next transition, to shape new innovations through automation and linkages to shape the smart tanker.
According to a press release by Airbus Defence and Space:
Melbourne, 2 March 2016: The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and Airbus today signed a research agreement to further develop the RAAF KC-30A’s capabilities.
The agreement strengthens the industrial partnership between Airbus and Australia’s defence force, and will help to define the evolution of the KC-30A fleet as it reaches operational maturity and expand its capabilities.
This will result in the KC-30A’s core transport and refuelling capabilities supporting the RAAF’s transformation into a fully integrated force, capable of tackling complex contemporary defence and security challenges.
The agreement’s first milestone is the joint development of the automatic air-to-air refuelling (A3R) concept, which represents a major step forward in in-flight refuelling.
Automating boom refuelling contacts reduces potential risk by minimising operator workload, and increases operational efficiency by cutting the time for each contact.The system requires no additional equipment in the receiver aircraft.
Initial approach and tracking of the receiver is performed manually from the A330 MRTT’s console. Once the image processing system acquires the receiver and the receptacle position, the operator can use the system aid allowing the boom to automatically follow the receptacle. Final extension of the boom’s telescopic beam is manually performed by its operator to make and maintain contact.
Fernando Alonso, Head of Military Aircraft at Airbus Defence and Space said: “The KC-30A offers tremendous combat potential at the heart of the integrated Air Force of the Future, including using the platform as a Communication Node, to maximise air power delivery.”
Air Marshal Leo Davies, Chief of Air Force, RAAF, highlighted the value of ongoing defence and industry collaboration.
“We are delighted to contribute to the research and development of A3R with Airbus to automate the process for boom refuelling without the need for control by our on-board air refuelling operator”, said Air Marshal Davies.
The Royal Australian Air Force and Airbus have successfully performed proximity trials, with physical contacts planned for the near future.
The RAF and the A400M in the Pacific
Joining the KC-30A at the Avalon Air Show was an the RAF with their A400M which has been engaged in a long distance tour.
The route covered by the RAF is via Hickam in Hawaii, Wellington New Zealand, Ohakea New Zealand, Auckland New Zealand, Avalon Australia, Jakarta Indonesia and Subang Malaysia.
The A400M has matured to the point that the key baseline aircraft if fully functional and operational and ready for the next phase of its evolution.
And this core baseline aircraft is ready for global export.
According to an article by George Allison published in the Uk Defence Journal and published on March 2, 2017:
Speaking at the Avalon 2017 Air Show in Australia, Wing Commander Simon Boyle said:
“Entry into service of any new aircraft type is a challenge and for the A400M it was especially so.
I see a positive trajectory for the aircraft. We have momentum building, we are just now starting to understand how good this aircraft can be.”
Wing Commander Simon Boyle added:
“Indication is that the aircraft will perform very well in the tactical role and on unprepared runways. We’re starting to understand how good the aircraft could be in the tactical environment.”
The aircraft is based at Brize-Norton and the Brize-Norton website in an article published March 8, 2017 provided this perspective on the visit to the region:
The RAF A400M, based at RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, is the newest aircraft in the RAF’s fleet. It boasts cutting edge technology, combined with sheer brute strength to make it a formidable strategic and tactical air lift platform. Able to deploy globally, it specialises in carrying over-sized loads and can transport a load of 25 tonnes over a range of 2,000 nautical miles.
Wing Commander Simon Boyle, Officer Commanding No. LXX Squadron said, “It is a real privilege to bring A400M Atlas to New Zealand for the first time, and to be able to share in the RNZAF’s 80th Anniversary Celebrations. Furthermore, with important military cargo delivered to numerous locations en-route it has also been a valuable opportunity to demonstrate the global reach that Atlas offers UK defence as we continue to advance the aircraft’s capabilities.”
Whilst in Ohakea the A400M ‘Atlas’ played host to a meeting between the Chief of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the Chief of the Royal Air Force. After which gifts were exchanged and both thanked the crew and engineers for bringing the A400M ‘Atlas’ to Ohakea to celebrate a great partnership between the two nations.
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Stephen Hillier said:
“As Chief of the Air Staff I am delighted the Royal Air Force has been able to come to New Zealand to help celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. We have a long and rich history together going back over decades, going back over operations, and everything we do today.”
“It’s a fantastic new capability for the Royal Air Force, showing our ability to deploy all the way from the UK to the other side of the world really underlines the Air Forces Global Mobility capability in support of operations wherever they might be. We get here quickly and effectively in this fantastic new aircraft.
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies Chief of the Royal New Zealand Air Force said, “I did get to see the aircraft and have a good introduction with it last year. Wg Cdr Boyle kindly hosted me last July at LXX Squadron. I got to fly the simulator and go flying in the aircraft which was really impressive. Great range and payload. I am really envious that you’ve got them. This one has a lot of capability and a lot of credibility.”
“We have got a huge shared history together, our roots are from the RAF. It is very meaningful that on our 80th year the RAF is first and foremost the prime guests at our own party. To take the time and effort to come out here, especially for your CAS is really meaningful.”
The A400M ‘Atlas’ has clocked up 11500 miles since it left RAF Brize Norton less than 3 weeks ago, and headed to the Avalon Air Show in Australia after visiting Whenuapi.
There is a long-standing partnership between Australia and the UK, and the presence of the RAF A400M atlas from the UK is a clear demonstration of the commitment by the UK to the partnership.
Air Chief Marshall Sir Stephen Hillier, Chief of the Air Staff visited the aircraft to talk to the crew and engineers, he said, “Seeing the A400M ‘Atlas’ here in Australia. It demonstrates the quality of the RAFs Global reach and our Air Mobility capabilities…Our ability to fly this aircraft half way around the world is such an important demonstration of how important this aircraft is for the future of the RAF.”
“I would also like to offer my thanks and congratulations to Officer Commanding No. LXX Squadron, Wing commander Simon Boyle and all of the aircrew and engineers who are here in support of the A400M ‘Atlas’.
The aircraft has begun its journey back to the UK, picking up cargo on defence taskings along the way.
The photos in the first slideshow are credited to the Australian Ministry of Defense and the second to the Royal Air Force.
Editor’s Note: In an article published November 29, 2016, we focused on the emergence of Tanker 2.0.
The Airbus tanker is the only advanced tanker in operations and has been so for several years.
Airbus Defence and Space has sold tankers to a number of countries and has done so in what one might call national or serial sales.
Getting the tanker sold, and out in the operational space is shaping a baseline reality.
But with significant operational experience under their belt and with the focal point of Middle East operations, cross-cutting experiences are shaping the way ahead among the nations.
A baseline has been created from which what one might call Tanker 2.0 is emerging.
Tanker 2.0 can be understood in a couple of ways.
The first way is the coalescing of experience to shape a global fleet perspective whereby common experiences and con-ops shape the way ahead for the development of the tanker as well as providing an opportunity for global support.
The 330 Tanker program is not there yet, but with the experience of the nations under their belts and with the forcing function of operating in common in the Middle East, a baseline has been created which clearly can allow for this evolution.
In this phase of Tanker 2.0 the user groups can evolve in their importance.
There will soon be a user group meeting in Madrid. The evolution of the role of the user group was described by one Airbus Defence and Space official as moving in the early days from a brief BY the company to the users to the emergence of genuine interaction AMONG the users to dialogue with the company about the way ahead for tanker modernization and ways to shape a global fleet approach.
The second way would focus on how and paths to upgrade the tanker as a combat asset in the extended battlespace.
Because the plane carries the fuel for tanking in the wings, the internal space of the tanker, which currently is used for passengers or cargo, can be modified in various ways to be much wider combat support asset in the extended battlespace.
There is clearly thinking under way, notably in Australia, about how to take the tanker to this next step from being an MRTT in terms of combining lift and tanking functions to becoming a much wider combat support asset in terms of ISR, and C2 functions.
After my recent visit to the Albacete Air Base in Spain, I visited the Airbus Defence and Space facility in Madrid, namely the Getafe facility. I had a chance to discuss the baseline and the way ahead with the head of the tanker program, namely, Antonio Caramazana.
I first met Antonio Caramazana at an Airbus Defence and Space (then Airbus Military) Trade Media brief for the media in 2010. That briefing which he gave only six years ago shows how far the tanker has come in only six years.
We started by getting an update on the status of the tanker and discussing the baseline.
We then went on to discuss the evolution of the aircraft from a platform to a fleet, with the inherent opportunities to shape a global fleet solution.
Question: Certa 2016, what is the current status of sales and operational experience of your tanker?
Antonio Caramazana: We have delivered 28 tankers to date.
We have delivered 14 to the UK; 5 to Australia; 6 to Saudi Arabia and 3 to the UAE.
These aircraft already integrated into operations.
The fleet is operating and is demonstrating its value added.
And all are operating in the Middle East, which has provided a significant opportunity for the users to gain joint knowledge about the tanker and its capabilities.
They are even doing combined operations in a number of cases.
Question: You have sold the aircraft to several customers, but rather than just serial sales, you are seeing cross learning?
Antonio Caramazana: That is true.
For example, in the case of the clearance of receivers of fuel from the aircraft, the traditional approach would see a case by case national approach.
But there a particular national user is doing clearances, which provide certifications for other national users.
This is a culture shift for the air forces, which is provided by having a common aircraft, which is recognized as such by the air forces.
In effect, we are already seeing a global fleet which broaden the impact of the tanker.
For example, U.S. aircraft are being tanked by the various national tanker due to certification being done by specific nations which then allow the U.S. to tank into other national tankers.
Question: The next phase, which I will call Tanker 2.0, is to shape deliberately a global fleet. What are some of the key building blocks in your view to going down this path?
Antonio Caramazana: We are developing a A330 MRTT advanced which is designed to deliver a common aircraft, with common upgrade paths and solutions.
This will allow nations to get better value for money for their modernization investments.
Common configurations will be better for operations, and upgrades.
It will as well enhance common solutions to training, to parts supplies and to maintenance.
This is a way ahead for what you are calling Tanker 2.0.
This provides for culture change for both the militaries and industry to shape such a global solution.
The more users that buy into a common solution, costs can be contained with regard to upgrades, training and maintenance.
It will also allow tankers from one nation to fly to an area of interest and potentially leverage the support structure of a nation operating the tanker in that region of interest.
And the life cycle costs for such a global fleet will be lowered as well.
Our user groups are discussing paths to upgrades, more effective maintenance approaches, and other ways ahead to shape global solutions.
This is the advantage of already having several years of operations behind us as well as an aircraft with significant room for expansion of onboard systems as well.
Question: But Tanker 2.0 provides for another way ahead, namely to expand the contribution of the tanker to other combat assets in the battlespace.
How would you describe this way ahead?
Antonio Caramazana: From the inception of the A330MRTT, we have put into the market a very flexible asset with multiple capabilities.
You can combine passenger lift, cargo lift and tanking within the same platform, and countries like Australia or operating their C-17s with their tankers in very flexible ways in terms of cargo and passenger lift operating over both platforms while the tanking function allows both to go to the area of interest.
At the same time, with the evolution of militaries look to shape enhanced connectivity in the battlespace, a key way ahead is to rethink how the tanker can support other combat sets in terms of ISR and C2 functions.
This is work in progress, but given the flexibility of the tanker in terms of internal space, there are many possibilities for users.
This is about having a smart tanker able to link assets in the battlespace, air, ground or sea.
It can provide an ISR and C2 node function for the joint force in the battlespace. It is an information age aircraft as well as playing more classical role of a tanker.
When I was working in the semiconductor industry in 1984, the U.S. labor force was approximately 250,000 direct employees. In 2017, the labor force is roughly the same size.
Yet, we know that the volume of silicon wafers consumed, the base material used in almost all computer chip manufacturing, has grown from 1.3 to 10.4 billion square inches. [ref] Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International, Industry Research & Statistics (www.semi.org)[/ref]
But this tremendous growth rate pales in comparison to the number of transistors (the tiny electrical circuits that make up the computer chip) that have increased from around 250,000 per chip to well over 7,200,000,000 for a modern Intel microprocessor (over 30,000,000,000 for some application specific chips).
The point is clear; labor has become less of a factor in determining the output of a modern semiconductor factory, commonly called a “fab.”
But, have labor costs also gone down in relation to the productivity improvements achieved through automation, manufacturing equipment performance, and chip design?
I used the semiconductor industry, more correctly the integrated circuit (IC) industry, to demonstrate the subjective points regarding output and labor content.
To quantify my thesis that the reason we have seen a migration of high tech manufacturing jobs away from the U.S. has less to do with labor rates and more to do with governmental policies, I looked at another manufacturing industry; one that has almost entirely consolidated in mainland China, photovoltaics (PV) (i.e., solar electric distributed generation). PV manufacturing is much less complicated than IC’s and, therefore, easier to demonstrate the points regarding labor costs as they impact total product costs.
In a modest PV factory of approximately 100-megawatts (MW) annual output, there are approximately 130 direct labor employees.[ref] Factory modeling and simulation results provided by Wright Williams & Kelly, Inc., http://www.wwk.com[/ref]
PHILADELPHIA- Chinook and V22 Assembly line workers.1/27/2011
Looking at Figure 1 shows us that a 100% range of labor costs (±50%) impacts product costs by less than 7%. To say that another way, if a country offers wages at half the U.S. rate, they only impact the product cost by 3.5%.
So, how can government policies impact product costs by amounts greater than that impacted by regional differences in labor rates?
One obvious strategy is the proposal by President Trump to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%.
Using the same set of data, we see the increase in cash flow almost exactly offsets a 50% delta in labor costs (See Figures 2 and 3).[ref] Year 1 represents the start of investment. Year 2 represents the start of production[/ref]
Anecdotally, in a recent conversation regarding a proposed merger of two equipment companies I was informed that their decision to incorporate outside the U.S. was solely based on a 17% reduction in tax rates.
A 20% reduction in U.S. corporate tax rates would have had the effect of keeping that combined organization in the U.S. and captured the tax revenue from not only the original U.S.-based firm, but also their foreign partner.
Yet, tax rates don’t’ seem to answer all the questions.
In the case of silicon-based PV, you have to look at the very first stages of the supply chain. To avoid dumping charges, for which they were not successful, it has been reported that the Chinese government provided subsidies to polysilicon suppliers.
Polysilicon is the basic starting material for the wafers that will ultimately be turned into PV cells and those, in turn, used to create the finished panels you see on rooftops and ground-based installations.
An examination of the impact of polysilicon pricing finds that the reported subsidies by the Chinese government result in a ~33% reduction in finished wafer costs.
When this data is used in the Solar American Initiative Public Solar Model the resulting impact on PV module costs is just slightly lower at ~30%; however, given the low margins in the silicon PV market, mostly due to pricing pressure applied by Chinese manufacturers, you can see how difficult, if not impossible, it is for U.S. manufacturers to compete.[ref] National Renewable Energy Laboratory, www.nrel.gov[/ref]
And, in fact, they have virtually abandoned this market and have concentrated on other possible PV solutions.
While much of the media has been critical of President Trump’s call for the institution of tariffs and taxes on products manufactured in countries suspected of illegal subsidies and currency manipulation, it was the Obama administration that enacted tariffs against Chinese PV module manufacturers.
Yet, this tariff approach has done little to bring silicon-based PV manufacturing back to the U.S.
Perhaps this strategy is too little too late; proving that once an industry has been undercut, it is difficult to bring it back on shore without significant government policy changes.
So, that brings us to the question of how to change the playing field instead of just trying to level it.
In the PV case, one proposal that could change the playing field is a new set of regulations that require the measurement of the environmental impact of various PV technologies based on their point of origin (mass and energy balances and disposal costs).
What is the lifetime carbon footprint of a PV panel from China, made with electricity generated by a traditional coal-fired (i.e., dirty) plant as opposed one made with electricity from a natural gas-fired plant in the U.S.?
Other areas that impact the manufacturing location decision process are:
Strength of Intellectual Property (IP) protection
Cost of raw materials (e.g., lower energy and petroleum product costs due to “fracking”)
Cost and time to meet environmental and other regulations
Renegotiated trade agreements (e.g. Border tax)
Political winds of change (i.e., Nationalism)
Clearly, the old excuse that American workers are overpaid, is no longer a valid axiom.
Given the state of automation in most manufacturing environments, or at least those that are highly valued by governments, it is government regulations (or lack thereof) that will ultimately drive these decisions.
David Jimenez is President and CEO of Wright Williams & Kelly, Inc., the largest privately-held operational cost management software and consulting services company serving technology-dependent and technology-driven companies.
He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.B.A. in finance. He is also the author of over 25 published papers in the fields of productivity and cost management.
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It is time to change and to focus on con-ops innovation to drive strategy. Linking operations across all domains with accurate information can be the basis for an omnipresent security complex that is self-forming, and if attacked, self-healing. Credit Image: Bigstock
An F-35B Lightning II with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 121 takes off during exercise Red Flag 16-3 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., July 20. This is the first time that the fifth generation fighter has participated in the multiservice air-to-air combat training exercise. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Harley Robinson/Released)
Will the United States and its allies shape a credibility defense strategy in the Pacific to reduce the nuclear threat? Or will growing threats to Japan lead Japan to join the nuclear club? Credit Image: Bigstock
