Sponsored by Control Solutions LLC.
http://www.controls.com/product-cat/systems/
——————————————————————-
06 Aug 18. United Kingdom-Bristol: Weapons, ammunition and associated parts, 2018/S 151-348104. Voluntary ex ante transparency notice, Services. Legal Basis:
Directive 2009/81/EC
Section I: Contracting authority/entity
I.1)Name and addresses
Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Dismounted Close Combat (DCC)
NH4, Elm 3C #4325, Abbeywood, Bristol, BS348JH, United Kingdom
Contact person: Jessica Cainey
Telephone: +44 3067939504
E-mail:
NUTS code: UKK1
Internet address(es):
Main address: https://modgovuk.sharepoint.com
II.1.4)Short description:
The Authority requires the provision of continuing support to the in service fleet of L129-A1 Sharpshooter Assault Rifles. The Authority are amending the current contract to procure additional Sharpshooter Assault Rifles.
II.1.6)Information about lots
This contract is divided into lots: no
II.1.7)Total value of the procurement (excluding VAT)
Value excluding VAT: 3 500 000.00 GBP
II.2.3)Place of performance
NUTS code: UKK1
Main site or place of performance:
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol/Bath area
II.2.4)Description of the procurement:
Single Source amendment to the LEI Combined support contract to supply an Additional 397 Sharpshooter Assault Rifles placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication
IV.1.1)Type of procedure
Negotiated procedure without publication of a contract notice
- The works, supplies or services can be provided only by a particular economic operator for the following reason:
o absence of competition for technical reasons
Explanation:
The Authority intends to amend the single source contract with Law Enforcement International Limited for the provision of L129-A1 Sharpshooter Assault Rifles to procure an additional 397 weapons to the value of £3.5m. The duration of the contract remains at 3 years plus two one year’ options. It is considered that this contract can be placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication pursuant to Article 28(1)(e) of Directive 2009/81/EC (Regulations 16(1)(a)(ii) and 16(1)(b)(i) of the Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011) for technical reasons. Law Enforcement International Limited is the Authority’s system co-ordinator and Design Authority for this weapon system. No other supplier would have access to the technical data, proprietary information, knowledge and experience required to provide the support required as Design Authority, and underwrite the integrity of any modifications or changes to the weapon system. The Authority is unable to accommodate weapons from an alternative supplier as this would result in goods being supplied which would have different technical characteristics to those already in service. This would result in technical difficulties in maintenance of the system as well as incompatibility between existing and new weapons and accessories. Such incompatibility and lack of overall safety integrity would lead to Law Enforcement International ceasing to underwrite the safety of the parts within the weapon system. New testing, verification and validation would be required to ensure safety and suitability for service and to obtain a new Safety Case in accordance with the Authority’s obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Until such a Safety Case was generated and testing was complete and successful, the Authority would be prevented from using the weapon system, which would compromise the safe functioning of the Armed Forces.
V.2.3)Name and address of the contractor/concessionaire
Law Enforcement International
PO Box 328
St Asaph
AL4 0WA
United Kingdom
NUTS code: UKK1
The contractor/concessionaire will be an SME: no
V.2.4)Information on value of the contract/lot/concession (excluding VAT)
Initial estimated total value of the contract/lot/concession: 3 500 000.00 GBP
Total value of the contract/lot/concession: 3 500 000.00 GBP
VI.4.1)Review body
Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Dismounted Close Combat (DCC)
NH4, Elm 3C #4325, Abbeywood
Bristol
BS34 8JH
United Kingdom
VI.4.2)Body responsible for mediation procedures
Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Dismounted Close Combat (DCC)
Bristol
United Kingdom
VI.4.3)Review procedure
VI.4.4)Service from which information about the review procedure may be obtained
VI.5)Date of dispatch of this notice:
06/08/2018
08 Aug 18. U.S. Army takes serious steps toward interim cruise missile protection capability. The Army is heading toward acquiring an interim cruise missile protection capability as part of an effort being spearheaded by the air-and-missile defense cross functional team within the service’s new Futures Command. The Army’s AMD CFT took on the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 program as one of its priorities in April this year at the request of the Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy due to challenges with the baseline program and the need to prioritize the development of a cruise missile defense capability, Col. William Darne, the AMD CFT’s chief of staff, said August 7 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. Originally IFPC Inc. 2 was to address rockets, artillery and mortar threats but then the Army decided to focus on cruise missile and counter-unmanned aircraft systems missions for the increment as the C-RAM threat was being met through a different system in the service’s inventory.
“We are working with the program manager,” Darne said, “and it looks like the direction we are likely to head is we have to come up with an interim capability, something we can get very quickly out there to provide some capability, and then, meanwhile, also figuring out what we need to do with the program of record.”
The move to acquiring an interim solution is a 180-degree turn from what the Army said in March at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium also in Huntsville. When asked by Defense News then about the possibility of an interim capability for IFPC, Army AMD leaders said they were sticking to their plan to field IFPC in roughly 2023 and were focused on that mission. But then the House and Senate Armed Services Committee presented similar language aiming for an interim cruise missile solution in their separate fiscal 2019 defense authorization bills released in May and June. The SASC’s draft would give the Army 30 days following the bill’s enactment to answer the committee on whether to deploy an interim cruise missile defense capability, but also instructed the Army to buy two batteries no later than Sept. 30, 2022 and two more by Sept. 30, 2023. The HASC’s draft got more specific, requesting the Army experiment with Israeli company Rafael’s Iron Dome, that U.S. company Raytheon has co-developed with the country and the U.S. government has funded, through demonstrations to assess the operational suitability for air and missile defense at fixed and semi-fixed sites.
Ultimately, the National Defense Authorization Act requires the Army to come up with an interim solution and provides $87m in additional funding to do so, contingent on actual defense appropriations. The FY19 defense spending bill has yet to be passed. Darne said Iron Dome was under consideration for the interim solution, noting the U.S. has made significant investment in the capability and it has demonstrated its ability to get after multiple threats operationally in Israel.
“We are taking a hard look at that, a lot of analysis,” he said. “We’ve made a trip over to Israel in a government to government exchange to determine the capabilities and what’s the secret sauce.”
But many of the decisions on a gap-filler solution are predecisional, Darne added.
“We are working through it but we are considering what the interim gap filler capability will be,” he said. “There are systems out there today that have proven that they can get after the threat sets that we are trying to [defeat].” But, he added, there is a whole host of challenges associated with which system to choose and the Army is considering issues with interoperability, integration, and “you have to have information assurance, it’s a tough one.” Information assurance takes years to build, Darne said.
“We are reviewing all of those right now and we are developing a strategy and working closely with the PM and the [Program Executive Office] to come up with a solution,” Darne said. “Part of the challenge is funding so we are waiting to see how that all fleshes out. We’ve been engaged with authorizers and appropriators and there will be a lot more clarity within the next month or two.”
Per the standard Defense Department acquisition process, the Army Cruise Missile Defense Program Office sponsored a DoD Insensitive Munitions Board briefing on Iron Dome’s Tamir missile, according to Raytheon’s vice president of integrated fire protection mission & Israel cooperative programs, Ed Roesly, Raytheon and Rafael presented test results on two years of recent testing, “demonstrating impressive results in all aspects of Insensitive Munitions certification,” Roesly told Defense News in a statement. The board had planned to make a formal assessment of the results within 30 days of the briefing, which took place June 21, Roesly, said, so a decision is imminent. Rafael and Raytheon have already submitted and been approved to qualify Tamir as part of the Army’s competition — the Extended Mission Area Missile — to acquire a second interceptor for the IFPC Inc. 2 program. The Army has already launched Tamir from the Army’s Multi-Mission Launcher, which is also part of the program.
“Under the EMAM contract, a fully U.S compliant version of the Tamir missile, called SkyHunter, will meet all information assurance requirements,” Roesly said. “Raytheon is a world leader in cybersecurity for the DoD and looks forward to supporting integration of Iron Dome into the U.S. Army’s Command and Control Network.”
Lockheed Martin’s vice president of integrated air and missile defense within the company’s Missiles and Fire Control business, Tim Cahill, told reporters August 7 that Lockheed has a few solutions that it has offered to the Army for consideration for the interim capability but for competitive reasons preferred not to elaborate on what has been pitched. (Source: Defense News)
08 Aug 18. WB Electronics discloses next-generation Warmate development. WB Electronics of Poland has disclosed development of a new generation of Warmate combat unmanned aerial system. While its product designation is currently unspecified, the new, heavier variant builds on the legacy Warmate micro-class air vehicle and is expected to be officially unveiled in late August/early September of this year. The original Warmate concept – first unveiled in September 2014 – was a fully automated manportable ground-launched/vehicle-borne pneumatic targeted-strike capability for tactical anti-armour and anti-personnel applications. The initial concept was provided for a canister-launched (wings folded) system; however the evolved concept releases the air vehicle directly (wings unfolded) from the launcher. The system is also intended to be launched from unmanned aerial systems, but the status of this development is currently undisclosed. The baseline Warmate air vehicle is 117cm in length, has an unfolded wingspan of 159cm, a maximum take-off weight of 5.3 kg, with a maximum payload of 1.4kg. Initiated by a lightweight pneumatic catapult launcher and powered by a lithium-polymer battery-fuelled electric motor/aft-mounted push propeller propulsion assembly, Warmate has a stated instrumented air speed of 50–150km/h, an operating altitude of between 100m and 500m above ground level, and a maximum flight/loitering endurance of 50 minutes. Mission flight profiles – fully autonomous (to pre-programmed waypoints), loiter, cruise (straight line in the direction that the camera is facing), and attack – are controlled by a lightweight (4 kg) ground-control station (GCS) assembly, which comprises a ruggedised touch-screen laptop and a tripod-mounted bi-directional digital-encrypted datalink transceiver. Warmate’s line-of-sight datalink range/operating radius is 12km. The air vehicle can be armed with three interchangeable warhead types: a high-explosive anti-personnel warhead (designated GO-1-HE), which contains a 300g explosive charge with an effective destructive radius of 10m; a high-explosive anti-tank warhead (GO-1-HEAT) capable of penetrating 120mm of rolled homogeneous armour; and an inert training warhead (GO-1-T). (Source: IHS Jane’s)
08 Aug 18. Detect Nukes In Flight With Electron Beam Technology. Imagine a technology that could detect roadside bombs and landmines buried underground, pick out a nuclear warhead from a cloud of decoys miles away, or even fry enemy electronics, potentially disarming those warheads from a distance. Well, physicist William Dent has invented that technology and briefed its potential to the Army and industry here. It’s called a neutron beam generator. Dent’s idea is a potential breakthrough for bomb squads and missile defenses, enthused conference organizer David Mann, a three-star Army general who ran Space & Missile Defense Command here (SMDC) until his retirement in 2016. Despite the Star Trek-esque name, Mann told me after Dent’s presentation, this is a feasible real-world technology, a matter of “when, not if.” Dent is already working with the Army to explore the low-hanging fruit: detecting buried explosives at a distance. Now, the military already uses neutron generators for this, because neutrons easily penetrate most materials (they have no electric charge to interact with and a lot of mass to give them momentum) but will stop and generate a distinctive burst of gamma rays when they hit high-density materials like explosives. The problem with current systems is their range is very short, anywhere from one meter to 20-plus depending on the size of the explosive and the depth to which it’s buried.
Why? Traditional neutron generators shoot off neutrons indiscriminately in all directions, the same way a light bulb emits light. That means the neutrons spread out rapidly, in fact exponentially (specifically, divide strength at the source by the square of the distance). Very soon, there are too few of them hitting any particular target to trigger enough gamma radiation to detect.
Dent’s electron beam generator, however, shoots out all its electrons along the same path, like a laser beam. (It’s worth noting that getting neutrons to line up obediently like this is an extraordinary achievement in physics; more on that below). As a result, the number of neutrons hitting the target stays high even at a distance. Just how far depends on the power you put in and the quality of your aiming system.
How long a range is Dent talking about? “Many, many kilometers,” he told me and another reporter after his presentation. The individual neutrons cross that distance at a respectable 14 percent of the speed of light, about 94 million miles per hour. And that’s with a system of manageable size: neutron beam generator, aiming system, and power supply should add up to no more than “a few hundred pounds,” he said.
Those numbers make the neutron beam generator practical for a wide range of military applications. While detecting roadside bombs is the most near-term possibility, a high-power version of the same technology could be mounted on aircraft or even satellites, something he’s discussing with Army Space & Missile Defense Command here. Like high explosives, nuclear warheads are extremely dense, made of plutonium or uranium. So, like conventional explosives, nuclear explosives are dense enough to stop neutrons that would go through most ordinary materials, and once the neutrons hit, they generate a distinctive burst of gamma rays. By zapping incoming radar contacts with neutron beams, missile defenders could tell which were decoys and which were real warheads, allowing them to target the real threat. At even higher power levels, the neutron beam generator could also disable electronics. High-energy neutrons, it turns out, do nasty things to materials like the silicon used in computer chips or the gallium used in radars. It’s rather like a neutron bomb, except you can aim it at one target instead of blasting everything indiscriminately. (There are other aimable electronics-killing technologies out there as well, like high-powered microwaves, but the range is much shorter).
So, I asked, could a sufficiently high-powered neutron beam not just detect a nuclear warhead from a distance, but actually disable it? Dent, who worked on the Safeguard missile defense system as a young Army officer and later on Reagan’s Star Wars initiative for SAIC, pondered a moment.
Then he said: “Could it fry the electronics ? Yes, it could.” And is that just a theory, I asked afterwards, or something you’re actively working on? The answer: He’s working on it.
The Physics: Rats and Rhinos
Neutrons are not user-friendly particles, so getting them to line up politely and all go in one direction is a remarkable feat of physics. If electrons are the rats of the subatomic world — small, fast, highly reactive to stimuli, and able to sneak in almost anywhere — then neutrons are rhinoceroses: big, unresponsive to most stimuli, slow to get going, but once in motion almost impossible to stop.
(Why? Electrons have a large electrical charge but very little mass, making them easy to “grab into” electromagnetically, while neutrons have a large mass but no charge, making them the subatomic equivalent of a bowling ball with no finger holes).
Our civilization runs on electricity because electrons are tractable: Magnetic fields and copper wires are basically the Pied Piper for electrons, able to make the rats scurry wherever we want them to go. But neutrons are intractable: What Dent has done is invent the Pied Piper for rhinoceroses.
How Dent directs the neutrons is an exercise in arcane quantum mechanics. Since a neutron has no electric charge, you can’t direct it with electromagnetic fields the way you can direct a charged particle, such as electron or a proton. But neutrons split off from atoms (in this case, from the atomic nucleus formed when deuterium and tritium undergo fusion in a particle accelerator). And you can give an atom a charge (by adding or subtracting electrons). So instead of manipulating the neutrons themselves, you manipulate the parent atoms to make sure the neutrons they emit go in the right direction.
Specifically, an atomic particle spins on its axis, like a top. If that particle undergoes a nuclear reaction and splits off another, smaller particle, the spin of the parent determines the spin of the child. (In mathematical terms, spin is a conserved quantity). Normal neutron generators shoot neutrons in all directions because the atoms generating the neutrons are all spinning in different directions. But if you can line up atoms so they’re all spinning in the same direction, you can predict the direction of any new particles they spin off. That is how Dent aims neutrons.
Readers with a background in either science or science fiction might realize what we’re taking about is a form of particle beam. But experimental particle beams in the real world generally shoot charged particles, which are easier to aim than neutrons but which are also more massive also interact much more with the atmosphere, slowing them down. Those resistances require a lot of power to overcome. Since the neutron beam generator shoots neutrons, which have no charge and don’t interact with anything less dense than high explosives, it takes much less energy to propel them a long distance.
Finally, why go to all this trouble to generate neutrons to detect conventional and nuclear explosives? Readers might wonder why we can’t detect nuclear weaponsfrom long range already. But contrary to myth, nuclear warheads aren’t particularly radioactive compared to, say, granite or bananas. So you can’t detect nukes from a distance with a Geiger counter — at least not until they detonate, which is rather too late. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Breaking Defense)
07 Aug 18. Japan confirms development of electromagnetic railgun. The Japanese Ministry of Defense’s Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) released video footage on 31 July showing a small-calibre developmental electromagnetic (EM) railgun along with related support and test equipment. ATLA said in a report that it will spend JPY1bn (USD9m) from fiscal year (FY) 2016 to FY 2021 to fund research and efforts to develop an EM railgun weapon system.
“This is the first time ATLA [has released] a promotional video on the internet showing footage of the experimental equipment used for developing the electromagnetic railgun,” an ATLA official told Jane’s on 7 August, adding that Japan is currently working on a prototype.
The video was first shown during last year’s Defense Technology Symposium, which was hosted by ATLA on 10–11 November in Tokyo. In the video ATLA claims that the EM railgun system, if powered by an electrical current exceeding two mega-amperes, could theoretically launch a 10kg projectile at 2,000m/s. This would not only increase range but also accuracy, the agency added. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/IHS Jane’s)
07 Aug 18. Lockheed Martin claims both USAF hypersonic programmes. The US Air Force has selected Lockheed Martin to rapidly develop and field both new hypersonic missiles launched as a response to surprise developments in high-speed weapons by China and Russia, newly-released acquisition documents confirm. The service already announced a $928m award in April deal for Lockheed’s Missiles and Space company to develop the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW, pronounced “Hacksaw”). But a new document reveals that the USAF awarded a separate deal to Lockheed’s Missiles and Fire Control division in July 2017 to rapidly develop and field the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW, pronounced “Arrow”).
The ARRW, now assigned the designation AGM-183A, evolves from the Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) programme launched in 2014 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). By using a rocket to boost the missile to very high altitudes, the unpowered ARRW then glides down to lower altitudes at speeds up to Mach 20. Although Lockheed won the $780m ARRW contract more than a year ago, the USAF was forced to re-open the competition this summer. The original deal was structured as an extension to a DARPA contract for TBG. The USAF later decided to restructure the terms using the service’s own acquisition process. That decision, however, required the USAF to re-consider the two bidders that had already been disqualified under the DARPA programme. Boeing had been out of DARPA’s TBG programme since 2015 and Raytheon was cut after 2016, but both companies responded to the USAF’s latest call for information in July. Neither of their responses, however, met the USAF’s requirements for ARRW. Indeed, Boeing presented an hypersonic design that flew a ballistic re-entry trajectory, rather than a glide profile as required, the USAF document says. Boeing’s design also proposed different propulsion systems for development and production versions of the weapon, which the USAF dismissed for adding too much risk. Raytheon Missile Systems submitted a compliant boost-glide concept, but the USAF criticised the proposal for lacking details about the effort required to field a flight-qualified weapon. Lockheed’s concept — resubmitted a year after winning the original contract — was unsurprisingly far more detailed and technically compliant with the ARRW requirement, the USAF says. Moreover, Lockheed has worked with suppliers to prepare to meet the “required production rate at 36 months after contract award”, the USAF says.
Both ARRW and HCSW have come to light as the Department of Defense scrambles to respond to breakthroughs in hypersonic testing reported by China and Russia since 2016. Most recently, state media reported on 5 August that a hypersonic waverider vehicle — similar in concept to the Boeing X-51 demonstrator — completed a successful test in northwestern China at the end of last week. In February, Russian president Vladimir Putin revealed the existence of the Kinzhal (“Dagger”) missile, which is capable of hypersonic speed upon launch from a MiG-31.
Lockheed’s hypersonic experts now form the thrust of the US response to the Chinese and Russian developments. Although the contract awards went to the company’s operating divisions, the Skunk Works advanced prototyping and development organisation is heavily involved in designing and producing the new vehicles. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Flightglobal)
02 Aug 18. Valhalla advances Midgard 300 RWS development. Slovenian remote weapon station (RWS) and turret developer Valhalla will perform the first firing trials of its Midgard 300 RWS in the United Kingdom in late September 2018, Jane’s has learned. The first version of the modular Midguard 300 RWS is armed with the UK-made AEI Systems stabilised 30mm Venom revolver cannon, which is a further development of the 30 mm ADEN cannon originally developed for aircraft applications and for which the company is now the overall design authority. For ground-based applications the Venom cannon has been modified and now has a 1.4 m long barrel compared with the standard 30 mm ADEN cannon, which has a barrel length of 1.08m. The additional length is due to a new three-stage muzzle brake for reduced recoil and a barrel-aligned recoil buffer for improved accuracy.
It has an effective range of 2,000 m and the operator can select single shot or sustained fire at rates of 200/240 rds/min or 1,200/1,400 rds/min. Compatible 30×113 mm ammunition include high-explosive incendiary (HEI), high-explosive incendiary-tracer (HEI-T), armour piercing (AP), armour piercing-tracer (AP-T), high-explosive dual purpose (HE-DP), target practice (TP), and target practice-tracer (TP-T) with muzzle velocity between 780m/s and 800m/s. The weapon is designed and manufactured in the United Kingdom and is therefore International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)-free. It can be fed from the left or right depending on the application, but for the Midgard 300 it is belt-fed from the left side with 200 rounds of ready use ammunition and equipped with a mechanical and electrical cocking system. The Midgard 300 RWS mount, which does not penetrate the vehicle’s hull, weighs 390 kg with the Venom cannon unloaded. It is equipped with all welded aluminium armour to STANAG 4569 Level 1 standard, but can be optionally outfitted with Level 2 protection. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
07 Aug 18. Efforts underway to resuscitate weapons supply chain. Defense companies are taking matters into their own hands — in partnership with the Pentagon — to recover a withering supply chain for the munitions market. Released in the spring of this year, the annual industrial capabilities report, put out by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, concluded that the industrial base of the munitions sector is particularly strained — something the report blamed on the start-and-stop nature of related procurement over the last 20 years, as well as the lack of new designs being internally developed.
For their part, primes are investing their own dollars to meet demand, particularly as the Pentagon plans to invest more than $20bn in munitions in its next budget.
“We went through a period over the last decade, where U.S. production requirements of munitions were at a fairly low rate compared to historical,” said Frank St. John, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control business. “Our response was to work hard to bring international partners into the programs and fill that with foreign military sales requirements. What we’ve seen over the last 18-25 months is a recognition by the department that they need to rebuild the stock on munitions. We’ve seen a steady increase across the board in every one of our programs — rate increases from 20 percent to 80 percent.”
But as primes expand factory capacity to achieve increased rates, suppliers are often limited in their ability to scale. That leaves Lockheed and Raytheon, the companies that together account for about 97 percent of the Defense Department’s munitions and missile procurement funding, to identify critical areas that might have a single source and make investments to develop alternatives, avoiding any single points of failure. The Department of Defense is baking funds for such investments into the procurements, and structuring more munitions buys as multiyear contracts.
“We’re looking at a couple in some of our largest missile programs,” said Taylor W. Lawrence, president of Raytheon’s Missile Systems business. “That gives us the ability to predict the future. That also allows us to flow stability down into the supply base and makes it healthier over time. The most disruptive thing to us in industry [is] uncertainty, and variability in quantities they’re buying. The more we can predict, the better the health of the supply base will be.”
But even if a pool of first-tier suppliers can be stood up by joint efforts of primes and the Pentagon, dwindling materials used in the systems pose a more daunting challenge. As one example noted in the report, the department is facing rising costs for ammonium perchlorate, used in almost all DoD missile programs, because the sole is only operating at 10-15 percent of capacity due to limited demand. Similarly, there is no domestic supplier for Dechlorane Plus 25, a component in the insulation of weapons; the sole source is Occidental Chemical in Belgium. Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said in a May interview with Defense News that policymakers will likely want to start considering special protections and/or subsidies when needed. That said, “I’m not sure the bell can be un-rung in the case of Chinese suppliers,” she added.
In coordination with the DoD, primes are more often buying additional stock of the at-risk components to buy time to work alternative solutions, St. John said. They also identify alternative suppliers when they can, domestically or in an ally nation where a steady source of supply is fair to assume. Also, to reinvigorate the supply of raw materials, efforts are underway to develop and qualify brand-new plotters domestically.
“So far, we’ve been able to address the needs,” St. John said. “But it is different than it was years ago, when DoD and military applications were on the leading edge. Now we’re buying along with the Apples and Samsungs of the world. We’re not driving the market the way we used to — as opposed to being the big dog.” (Source: Defense News)
07 Aug 18. Leonardo DRS On-Board Vehicle Power to Improve Electrical Power System on THAAD Vehicles . Leonardo DRS, Inc. announced today that it has been selected by the U.S. Army to demonstrate its On-Board Vehicle Power (OBVP) on Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery command and control, and launcher vehicles. The electrical power system improvements will give air defense operators immediate access to electrical power directly from a vehicle’s power train.
To meet the Army’s power needs, OBVP systems are integrated with the vehicle transmission to generate up to 55kW of usable electrical power while on the move or up to 120kW of usable electrical power while stationary. The Leonardo DRS OBVP system has proven it can increase battlefield agility, reduce deployment logistics costs, and improve mission readiness with no impact on vehicle functionality. A 2016 U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) Vehicle to Grid (V2G) study reported a 23% fuel savings over Tactical Quiet Generators when employing OBVP technology for grid power. In development since 2008, Leonardo DRS OBVP systems have successfully performed in various technical demonstrations and evaluations to include the Army Expeditionary Warfare Experiment, Network Integration Evaluation and the U.S. Marine Corps Limited User Test. It is now a mature system that is ready to address mission power requirements.
“This proven system will provide our customers with a solution to address the growing electrical power gap affecting all military ground vehicle platforms,” said Jerry Hathaway, vice president and general manager of DRS Land Electronics. “Leonardo DRS and our partner, Allison Transmission, have been long-time believers in OBVP technology. We are very pleased with the leadership of the DoD, specifically the Army TARDEC, in demonstrating technology that can address the ground combat vehicle power gap,” Hathaway said.
Leonardo DRS, partnered with Allison Transmission, will jointly provide existing OBVP systems based on the Allison 3200 SP transmission and will develop an OBVP system for the Allison 4500 SP transmission. Both systems will support the THAAD vehicles used for command and control and missile launchers. To date, Leonardo DRS OBVP technology has been integrated on various medium-class platforms, it can support the Stryker, FMTV, M-ATV, MRAP vehicle types. This award will expand Leonardo DRS OBVP technology onto the heavy-class platforms which include HEMTT and MTVR vehicles. With the capability to generate power beyond the Army’s stated 120kW requirement, the system is ready and able to support Mission Command, Command Post, Missile Systems, Maneuver SHORAD, Directed Energy Systems and High Energy Laser programs; improving battlefield operations with highly reliable, mission assured power, anywhere and anytime. Work on this program will be conducted at Leonardo DRS’s facilities in Huntsville, AL and Fitchburg, MA. Allison Transmission’s work will be conducted in Indianapolis, IN.
07 Aug 18. With failures in the rearview, the US Navy and Missile Defense Agency push toward critical missile test. As the U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency move into the second half of 2018, the SM-3 Block IIA missile is heading for a crucial test that the Pentagon hopes will dispel nagging doubts after two successive failures. Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, the head of the MDA, told lawmakers in April that the next test of the IIA will come before the end of the calendar year, a test in which the agency will try to put a string of bad luck behind it as it pushes toward the ultimate goal of testing the interceptor against an intercontinental ballistic missile by the end of 2020.
Following a successful intercept in February 2017, a test that same year failed after a sailor error caused a IIA launched from the destroyer John Paul Jones to self-destruct in flight. A second test failed in January 2018 went awry because of an as-yet unnamed component misfired, the significance of which Greaves has downplayed.
“The component that we’re concerned about has flown successfully nine out of 10 times,” Greaves told a Senate panel in April. “So, as of now, I am not concerned that it is a true design issue. And we’re following through to identify the problem and then correct it.”
A spokesman for MDA said the failure review board is still ongoing for the most recent test. Despite the failures, MDA seems to feel good about the trajectory of the program, and SM-3 IIA will likely forge ahead, according to Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Even with the failure, the test accomplished the things they were doing the test for,” Karako said. “It just does not sound as if the future numbers or pace of the program are contingent on the failure review board. Based on what they say thus far, these are separate tracks.”
The fact that so many of the main elements of the failed tests went right is a source of immense frustration for the Pentagon and contractors working the problem. The SM-3 that misfired in January, for example, successfully received targeting data from an AN/TPY-2 radar through an encrypted link track and relayed it to an Aegis Ashore system on which it used the data to launch. The implications of that technology for ballistic missile defense and for more conventional warfare are enormous. If a forward sensor can get a kill quality track that it can then, through a data link, transfer to another system such as Aegis Ashore, it can conceivably send that data to any number of Aegis-capable units up in the link. That means anyone who is in position to take a shot can do it without having a track on the missile with an organic sensor. The same principle applies to more conventional engagements, meaning that, ultimately, ships in a network can rely on a sensor — maybe one Aegis ship or an aircraft equipped with a powerful radar or, even more ideally, an unmanned offboard sensor — to radiate while the other ships passively receive the data and launch without giving away their position. For the SM-3 IIA, the question that people should be asking is what is the next evolution of the missile and what can MDA do to meet evolving threats, Karako said.
“All indicators are that the IIA is going forward. The real question that ought to be asked, given the reorientation of the National Defense Strategy’s laserlike focus on hypersonics, is what’s increment one and what is increment two for SM-3 IIA.”
Make the Navy maneuverable again
While MDA makes progress on IIA development, the Navy is losing patience with its current role in the national missile defense mission. While the mission has been both a cash cow and a technological revolution for the service, standing patrol requirements have put an enormous strain on the Navy’s already overtasked surface combatants. The Navy’s top officer said June 12 that he wants the Navy off the tether of those patrols so those ships can perform other missions and move as much of the standing requirements to shore-based systems.
“Right now, as we speak, I have six multimission, very sophisticated, dynamic cruisers and destroyers ― six of them are on ballistic missile defense duty at sea,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said June 12 during his address at the U.S. Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum. “And if you know a little bit about this business, you know that geometry is a tyrant. You have to be in a tiny little box to have a chance at intercepting that incoming missile. So, we have six ships that could go anywhere in the world, at flank speed, in a tiny little box, defending land.”
Richardson went on to say the Navy could be more effectively used for BMD in emergency or high-threat situations rather than as a permanent fixture. Some relief could be on the horizon. Japan announced in 2017 that it plans to buy the Aegis Ashore system. But analysts and experts warn that the Navy shouldn’t be too hasty to ditch BMD patrols. The service has a disproportionately large number of highly capable (and expensive) surface combatants, a fact that has the Navy quickly pushing to develop a smaller surface combatant to complement the force, as threats are on the rise from Russia and China. But the BMD mission is a big reason why the Navy is so Aegis-heavy.
“The BMD mission is part of what creates the force structure requirement for large surface combatants,” said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer skipper and defense consultant with The FerryBridge Group. “Absent it, the number of CGs [cruisers] and DDGs [destroyers] would necessarily decline. It cannot be forgotten that while the mission is somewhat wasteful of a capable, multimission ship, the fact that we have built the ships that (among other things) do this mission is an incredibly good thing. If there is a penalty to be paid in peacetime suboptimization in order to have wartime capacity, should this not be considered a positive thing?”
From the perspective of layered missile defense, moving standing requirements to shore makes sense. But the Navy isn’t going to get away from BMD anytime soon, said Karako.
“Shifting more of the requirements to land, that’s all goodness,” he said. “But the Navy isn’t going to get out of air and missile defense so long as there are air and missile threats.” (Source: Defense News)
06 Aug 18. Congress offers millions in budget to cyber-harden missile defense systems. House and Senate lawmakers have authorized an injection of about $51m in funding to cyber-harden missile defense systems, according to the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act conference report, and appropriators are expected to follow suit in the defense spending bill with roughly $100m in additional funding. Congressional authorizers noted in a summary of the NDAA conference report, released July 23, that the conferees were supporting an increase in funding to address cyberthreats to U.S. missile defense systems. The U.S. military and its allies are reliant on missile defense systems both regionally and to defend the homeland. Such a capability will require a more robust level of protection against cyberattacks as adversaries grow in their ability to take down systems through jamming and other electronic warfare capabilities. The strategy to disarm enemy systems using jamming and electronic attack already plays a major role in war gaming against possible peer adversaries in the future. Using cyber and electronic attack is seen, at times, as the first line of offense to take down enemy air defense systems, so as to allow the injection of friendly forces into denied territory. And since that’s part of the strategy to penetrate enemy systems, it will be and already is a part of the adversaries’ strategies, too. While House authorizers initially planned to provide roughly $100m to cyber-harden missile defense systems. The final version of the NDAA to come out of conference committee only authorizes about half of that, cutting House plans to fund $45m to address cyberthreats to the ballistic missile defense terminal defense segment of the BMD framework. But the lawmakers in charge of the purse strings want to spend twice as much as the NDAA would authorize, according to both the House and Senate FY19 spending bills. House and Senate appropriators’ funding lines for cyber-hardening missile defense systems are essentially identical, so it’s likely the funding will withstand conference committee and come out in the final bill. According to the Senate appropriations bill report, the committee is adding $100m in funding to “advance the [Missile Defense Agency’s] compliance with the Department of Defense Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation Plan to protect MDA systems in highly-contested cybersecurity threat environments.” Within that $100m, House and Senate appropriators want $40m in funds to increase cybersecurity for ballistic missile-enabling programs and another $16.2m for a cyber assessment of those programs.
Similar to the FY19 NDAA funding, appropriators plan to provide an additional $10m for cybersecurity efforts for the ballistic missile defense system’s midcourse defense segment, which defends the homeland from possible attacks from North Korea and Iran. Another $5m would help cyber-harden missile defense sensors, while $10 m would fund cybersecurity measures within the brains of the entire ballistic missile defense system — the BMD’s Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications system. An additional $20m would fund cybersecurity efforts related to BMD testing, and another $5m would go toward cyber-hardening BMD targets. Appropriators would also fund $5m to work cybersecurity elements into ongoing BMD technology maturation initiatives, and another $5m would attempt to secure BMD elements in space from cyberattack. (Source: Defense News)
06 Aug 18. Thanks to missile sales to UAE, US Army can buy 100 more advanced Patriot missiles. The U.S. Army plans to pay for 100 of the newest variant of Patriot missiles using proceeds from the sale of old missiles to the United Arab Emirates, according to a reprogramming request sent to Congress in June. The request to shift fiscal 2018 funding must clear the House and Senate defense committees in order to be approved. The service is trying to grow its annual capacity of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles from the current 240 annual capacity to 350 in FY2020. To buy 100 PAC-3 MSEs, the Army has sold 100 PAC-3 Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical missiles to the UAE, collecting $363m in proceeds from that sale, the reprogramming document notes. This is just one of the ways that Lockheed will double its PAC-3 MSE line to 500 missiles annually in the coming years as it tackles exploding orders of the missile from not only the U.S. Army but its allies like Poland, Romania and Sweden. Just among those three countries, Lockheed would build 576 PAC-3 MSEs. The Army is reaching full-rate production for its PAC-3 MSE and has decided to increase the stockpile on hand as operations overseas continue to eat up the inventory. The service had planned to buy roughly 95 missiles per year from FY18 through FY22, but a year later the service increased the 2018 order from 93 to 240 to include those bought with overseas contingency operations funds. In FY19, the Army asked for 240 missiles again, with base orders for the missile in FY21 and FY22 totaling 160 each year. The Army’s plans to dramatically increase its PAC-3 MSE production going forward has seen unanimous congressional approval, although the final FY19 defense appropriations bill has yet to become law. House and Senate appropriators are fully funding the production of 179 MSE missiles in FY19 in the base budget. The MSE version has a larger, dual-pulse, solid-fuel rocket motor and larger control fins that double the missile’s reach and improve performance against evolving ballistic and cruise missiles. (Source: Defense News)
06 Aug 18. The U.S. Army awarded Dynetics, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and its partners a $10m contract to continue development for the next phase of the High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL TVD) program, a 100-kilowatt class laser weapon system. Laser weapons are ideally suited to address high volume, low cost threats because of their inexpensive cost per shot and deep magazine. Team Dynetics HEL TVD system incorporates highly reliable subsystems to withstand the expected rugged operation conditions. The team recently completed a System Requirements Review and technical baseline update. The next step in the program will be the preliminary design review in January 2019.
“The HEL TVD program will be pivotal for the warfighters while they are protecting our country. Dynetics, Lockheed Martin and our partners are providing a safe and simple high energy laser weapon system that crews can operate for years to come and across various terrains,” said Ronnie Chronister, Dynetics vice president of contracts. “We pulled together a cross-industry leading team, which has the expertise and knowledge to understand exactly what is needed. We believe that our solution will be straightforward and will be the type of system that will preferred by the Army.”
Dynetics is drawing on the experience of systems engineering, manufacturing, test and vehicle modifications for integration on the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV). Lockheed Martin provides the laser subsystem, as well as other key subsystems. The spectral beam-combined fiber laser subsystem strongly leverages Lockheed Martin’s experience from ground vehicle integration gained as part of the Army’s Robust Electric Laser Initiative (RELI) program.
“The proliferation of hostile unmanned aerial systems and rockets, artillery and mortars present an increasing threat to deployed U.S. troops. Laser weapons offer a deep magazine and very low cost per shot making them ideally suited to complement existing kinetic energy weapons to address intense UAS swarms and RAM raids,” said Iain McKinnie, Lockheed Martin business development lead for Advanced Laser Solutions and Strategy. “The Army’s HEL TVD program is a critical step toward realizing this potential, culminating in 2022 testing of a mobile 100 kW-class laser weapon system fully integrated with an Army FMTV truck.”
Lockheed Martin has more than 40 years of experience developing laser weapon systems. The HEL TVD award leverages technology building blocks from internal research and development projects, including the ATHENA system and ALADIN laser, as well as contract experience gained from programs such as the U.S. Army’s RELI program, the U.S. Air Force LANCE program and the U.S. Navy HELIOS and HEFL programs. Team Dynetics is one of two remaining contractors competing to build the demonstrator that will be tested in 2022. The winning contractor will be awarded a contract option to finish the design, build and integrate the laser weapon system onto an Army FMTV platform and conduct field testing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
05 Aug 18. Inside SecDef Jim Mattis’ $2.5bn Plan to Make the Infantry Deadlier. Retired Marine infantry officer Joe L’Etoile remembers when training money for his unit was so short “every man got four blanks; then we made butta-butta-bang noises” and “threw dirt clods for grenades.” Now, L’Etoile is director of the Defense Department’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force and leading an effort to manage $2.5bn worth of DoD investments into weapons, unmanned systems, body armor, training and promising new technology for a group that has typically ranked the lowest on the U.S. military’s priority list: the grunts.
But the task force’s mission isn’t just about funding high-tech new equipment for Army, Marine and special operations close-combat forces. It is also digging into deeply entrenched policies and making changes to improve unit cohesion, leadership and even the methods used for selecting individuals who serve in close-combat formations. Launched in February, the new joint task force is a top priority of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps infantry officer himself. With this level of potent support, L’Etoile is able to navigate through the bureaucratic strongholds of the Pentagon that traditionally favor large weapons programs such as Air Force fighters and Navy ships.
“This is a mechanism that resides at the OSD level, so it’s fairly quick; we are fairly nimble,” L’Etoile told Military.com on July 25. “And because this is the secretary’s priority … the bureaucracies respond well because the message is the secretary’s.”
Before he’s done, L’Etoile said, the task force will “reinvent the way the squad is perceived within the department.”
“I would like to see the squad viewed as a weapons platform and treated as such that its constituent parts matter,” he said. “We would never put an aircraft onto the flight line that didn’t have all of its parts, but a [Marine] squad that only has 10 out of 13? Yeah. Deploy it. Put it into combat. We need to take a look at what that costs us. And fundamentally, I believe down at my molecular level, we can do better.”
Improving the Squad
Mattis’ Feb. 8 memo to the service secretaries, Joint Chiefs of Staff and all combatant commands announcing the task force sent a shockwave through the force, stating “personnel policies, advances in training methods, and equipment have not kept pace with changes in available technology, human factors, science, and talent management best practices.” To L’Etoile, the task force is not out to fix what he describes as the U.S. military’s “phenomenal” infantry and direct-action forces.
“Our charter is really just to take it to the next level,” he said. “In terms of priorities, the material solution is not my number-one concern.”
Gifted Grunts
For starters, the task force is looking at ways to identify Marines and soldiers who possess the characteristics and qualities that will make an infantry squad more efficient in the deadly art of close combat.
The concept is murky, but “we are investing in some leading-edge science to get at the question of what are the attributes to be successful in close combat and how do you screen for those attributes?” L’Etoile said. “How do you incentivize individuals with those attributes to come on board to the close-combat team, to stick their hand in the air for an infantry MOS?”
Col. Joey Polanco, the Army service lead at the task force, said it is evaluating several screening programs, some that rely on “big data and analytics to see if this individual would be a better fit for, say, infantry or close-combat formations.” Polanco, an infantry officer who has served in the 82nd Airborne and 10th Mountain divisions, said the task force is also looking at ways to incentivize these individuals to “want to continue to stay infantry.”
L’Etoile said the task force is committed to changing policy to help fix a “wicked problem” in the Marine Corps of relying too heavily on corporals instead of sergeants to lead infantry squads.
“In the Marine Corps, there are plenty of squads that are being led by corporals instead of sergeants, and there are plenty of squads being led by lance corporals instead of corporals,” he said. “I led infantry units in combat. There is a difference when a squad is led by a lance corporal — no matter how stout his heart and back — and a sergeant leading them.”
Every Marine must be ready to take on leadership roles, but filling key leader jobs with junior enlisted personnel instead of sergeants degrades unit cohesion, L’Etoile said.
“When four guys are best buddies and they went to boot camp together and they go drinking beer together on the weekends … and then one day the squad leader rotates and it’s ‘Hey Johnson, you are now the squad leader,’ the human dynamics of that person becoming an effective leader with folks that were his peers is difficult to overcome,” he said.
It’s equally important to stabilize the squad’s leadership so that “the squad leader doesn’t show up three months before a deployment but is there in enough time to get that cohesion with his unit, his fire team leaders and his squad members,” L’Etoile said. “Having the appropriate grade, age-experience level and training is really, really important.”
The Army is compiling data to see if that issue is a persistent problem in its squads.
“When we get the data back, we will have a better idea of how do we increase the cohesion of an Army squad, and I think what you are going to find is, it needs its own solution, if there in fact is a problem,” L’Etoile said.
No Budget, But Deep Pockets
Just weeks after the first U.S. combat forces went into Afghanistan in late 2001, the Army, Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Command began modernizing and upgrading individual and squad weapons and gear. Since then, equipment officials have labored to field lighter body armor, more efficient load-bearing gear and new weapons to make infantry and special operations forces more lethal. But the reality is, there is only so much money budgeted toward individual kit and weapons when other service priorities, such as armored vehicles and rotary-wing aircraft, need modernizing as well.
The task force has the freedom to look at where the DoD is “investing its research dollars and render an opinion on whether those dollars are being well spent,” L’Etoile said. “I have no money; I don’t want money. I don’t want to spend the next two years managing a budget. That takes a lot of time and energy. But I am very interested in where money goes. So, for instance, if there is a particular close-combat capability that I believe represents a substantive increase in survivability, lethality — you name it — for a close-combat formation, and I see that is not being funded at a meaningful level, step one is to ask why,” he continued. “Let’s get informed on the issue … and then if it makes sense, go advocate for additional funding for that capability.”
The task force currently has reprogramming or new funding requests worth up to $2.5bn for high-tech equipment and training efforts that L’Etoile would not describe in detail.
“I have a number of things that are teed up … it’s premature for me to say,” he said. “In broad categories, we have active requests for additional funding in sensing; think robots and [unmanned aerial systems]. We have requests for additional funding of munitions for training and additional tactical capabilities [and] additional funding for training adversaries, so you get a sparring partner as well as a heavy bag.”
The task force is requesting additional money for advanced night-vision equipment and synthetic-training technologies. L’Etoile also confirmed that it helped fund the Army’s $500m effort to train and equip the majority of its active brigade combat teams to fight in large, subterranean complexeslike those that exist in North Korea.
“We can go to the department and say, ‘This is of such importance that I think the department should shine a light on it and invest in it,’ ” he said.
Endorsing Futuristic Kit
One example of this is the task force’s interest in an Army program to equip its infantry units with a heads-up display designed to provide soldiers with a digital weapon-sight reticle, as well as tactical data about the immediate battlefield environment.
“The big thing is the Heads-Up Display 3.0. I would tell you that is one of the biggest things we are pushing,” Polanco said. “It’s focused primarily on helping us improve lethality, situational awareness, as well as our mobility.”
The Army is currently working on HUD 1.0, which involves a thermal weapon sight mounted on the soldier’s weapon that can wirelessly transmit the sight reticle into the new dual-tubed Enhanced Night Vision Goggle III B. The system can also display waypoints and share information with other soldiers in the field, Army officials said. The HUD 3.0 will draw on the synthetic training environment — one of the Army’s key priorities for modernizing training — and allow soldiers to train and rehearse in a virtual training environment, as well as take into combat. The service has already had soldiers test the HUD 1.0 version and provide feedback.
“If you look at the increased lethality just by taking that thermal reticle off of the weapon and putting it up into their eye, the testing has been off the chart,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue, director of the Army’s Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team, said at the Association of the United States Army’s Global Force Symposium earlier this year. The Army tried for years in the 1990s to accomplish this with its Land Warrior program, but it could be done only by running bulky cables from the weapon sight to the helmet-mounted display eyepiece. Soldiers found it too awkward and a snag hazard, so the effort was eventually shelved.
“Whatever we want to project up into that reticle — that tube — it’s pretty easy,” Donahue said. “It’s just a matter of how you get it and how much data. We don’t want too much information in there either … we’ve got to figure that out.”
The initial prototypes of the HUD 3.0 are scheduled to be ready in 18 months, he added.
“It is really a state-of-the art capability that allows you to train as you fight from a synthetic training environment standpoint to a live environment,” Polanco said, adding that the task force has submitted a request to the DoD to find funding for the HUD 3.0. “One of the things we have been able to do as a task force is we have endorsed and advocated strongly for this capability. … It’s going forward as a separate item that we are looking for funding on,” he said.
Perhaps the biggest challenge before the task force is how to ensure all these efforts to make the squad more lethal will not be undone when Mattis is no longer in office.
“We ask ourselves every time we step up to the plate to take on one of these challenges, how do we make it enduring?” L’Etoile said. “How do we ensure that the progress we make is not unwound when the priorities shift? So it’s important when you take these things on that you are mindful that there ought to be an accompanying policy because … they can’t just get unwound overnight,” he said. (Source: Military.com)
02 Aug 18. Laser-Guided Sidewinder. As part of the “Propelled Short-Range Effector” defence programme for the Bundeswehr Tornado fighter jet, the Federal Office of Defence Technology, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) is completing development work on the Laser-Guided Sidewinder (LaGS). The goal is the procurement of 300 LaGS guided missiles before the end of this year. The introduction of a semi-active laser seeker (SAL) makes it possible to cover new application scenarios, e.g. with stationary and mobile targets in an urban environment, without having to integrate a new missile into the aircraft at great expense. The air-to-surface LaGS for different carrier platforms is an offspring of the worldwide proven Sidewinder air-to-air missile family. Due to existing air vehicle interfaces, considerable costs for renewed integration can be avoided. Xc[The missiles measurements, weight, center of gravity and inertia remain unaltered; nor are the interfaces to the launcher air vehicle subject to change. Therefore LaGS will offer full compatibility with the Sidewinder weapon station. (Source: ESD Spotlight)
02 Aug 18. Test Shooting Successfully Completed. Hirtenberger Defence Europe (HDE) recently carried out a series of internal firing tests at the Felixdorf shooting range. The test series included technical adjustments of ST Engineering’s Super Rapid Advanced Mortar System (SRAMS) and the Hirtenberger 120 mm mortar ammunition as well as the training of the HDE operating team on the automated mortar system. In June, at Eurosatory in Paris, a cooperation between HDE and ST Engineering was agreed to jointly market the SRAMS in Europe. With a system weight of less than 1.2 tons and a maximum recoil of 26 tons (when fired with maximum charge), the SRAMS can also be integrated on light vehicles. Another test firing in the presence of an expert international audience is planned for September 2018. (Source: ESD Spotlight)
————————————————————————-
Control Solutions LLC is a turnkey design and manufacturing corporation with over 20 years experience solving tough military motion control problems. We focus on improving the safety, survivability, and mission effectiveness for personnel in tactical vehicles. We will be showcasing our CS5100 Lightweight Motorized Turret System as well as new JLTV-ready gun turrets. We have fielded over 60,000 ITDS and BPMTU motorized turret systems for the HMMWV, MRAP, and other tactical vehicle programs. We will present a family of accessories including weapon-mounted actuators, turret power and spotlight kits, and novel soldier power solutions. Control Solutions is on a mission to help solve your toughest motion control challenges.
————————————————————————-