03 Feb 23. Lockheed Martin conducts Spike NLOS test from Apache helicopter. The test aimed to validate the capability of the Spike NLOS AURs to be integrated onto an Apache Echo Model V6 platform. Lockheed Martin has successfully carried out a live fire demonstration of the Spike non line-of-sight (NLOS), all-up rounds (AURs) missile from the US Army’s Apache helicopter.
The demonstration was executed by the company’s Precision Strike team at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, US, on 26 January.
As part of the live fire test, which involved two different scenarios, a total of two Spike NLOS AURs were fired from a US Army Apache Echo Model V6 attack helicopter against a pre-destined stationary target.
The company said that the live fire test successfully achieved the specified objectives to validate the capability of integrating Spike NLOS onto the army’s Apache helicopter.
This will further allow the Spike NLOS long range precision munitions directed requirement system to enter the next qualification testing stage.
In the next testing scenarios, the weapon system will verify its design for its airworthiness release (AWR) capability.
After the completion of AWR, Lockheed Martin’s Spike NLOS system will be equipped onto the US Army’s Apache Echo Model V6 helicopters.
The fielding of this integrated platform is expected by September next year. Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Precision Strike team programme management senior manager Tom Bargnesi said: “The successful integration of Spike NLOS on the Apache platform demonstrates Lockheed Martin’s continued commitment to 21st century security solutions that help our customers complete their missions.
“The system’s expansion onto additional platforms, along with its mission-focused defence capabilities, ensures it will help the US Army stay ahead of ready in an ever-evolving threat environment.”
In May last year, Lockheed Martin integrated the Spike NLOS precision strike system onto Oshkosh Defense’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, which is also in service with the US forces. (Source: army-technology.com)
01 Feb 23. Germany plans to buy eight IRIS-T air defence systems for its military – document. Germany aims to purchase eight IRIS-T air defence units for its military, according to a document seen by Reuters, referring to a medium-range surface-to-air system that Berlin has bought to donate to Kyiv but not yet purchased for its own forces.
The defence ministry paper, dated Jan. 25 and seen by Reuters on Wednesday, lists the defence deal as one of several planned purchases expected to be submitted for approval to parliament in the second quarter of 2023. A spokesperson for the defence ministry said it intended to submit a deal on the purchase of the IRIS-T system to parliament this year but declined to comment on the number of units and the exact timing.
In October, Ukraine received the first of four IRIS-T air defence systems pledged by Germany to help Kyiv protect its cities from missile and drone attacks.
The systems are estimated to cost 150 m euros ($163 m) apiece.
The German armed forces themselves do not currently own the system built by privately held German arms maker Diehl and considered among the world’s most advanced.
The fire units can launch missiles over a distance of 40 kilometres (25 miles) to take down fighter jets, helicopters, drones, missiles and cruise missiles.
Also in the second quarter, the defence ministry aims to submit to parliament deals to replace the howitzers and corresponding 155mm rounds that were supplied to Ukraine out of German military stocks, the document says.
The paper notes that some of the purchases listed for the second quarter may also be dealt with by parliament in its session in July, before deputies head off into their summer break. ($1 = 0.9184 euros) (Source: Reuters)
02 Feb 23. Israeli drones use free-falling bombs, can carry up to a tonne. Israeli armed drones use gravity bombs that produce no noise or smoke as they fall, making them hard for enemies to anticipate or evade, and the largest model of the aircraft can carry up to a tonne of munitions, the military says.
After more than two decades of secrecy, Israel in July went public with the existence of armed drones in its arsenal. In November, an Israeli general detailed the two corps – air force and artillery – that operate the systems in combat.
Such drones are remote-piloted, dropping bombs or carrying out surveillance before returning to base. They are distinct from the kamikaze drones that Iran said were used in a weekend attack on a defence plant in Isfahan – an incident on which Israel has declined to comment.
Briefing Reuters, a senior Israeli military officer said the armed drone fleet includes the passenger plane-sized Heron TP, made by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd, and Elbit Systems Ltd’s (ESLT.TA) smaller Hermes.
The former, the officer said, “is the heaviest drone that the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) has, which can carry munitions, with an effective payload of around a tonne”.
The Israeli manufacturers do not publicise the armed capabilities of the drones, under what industry sources have described as a Defence Ministry secrecy policy.
The officer, not identified in line with military requirements given the sensitivity of the subject, said any sales of bomb-capable drones would be government-to-government, negating the need for publicity.
All the drone munitions are Israeli-made, the officer said, and “come down in free-fall, and can reach the speed of sound”.
Such bombs would not have propulsion systems that generate the tell-tale noise and smoke of fuel afterburners.
The officer declined to give further details on the munitions, saying only that, by design, when an armed drone attacks “no one will hear it, no one will see it coming”.
This would assume enough altitude so that the drones’ propeller engines can not be clearly heard on the ground, however.
In winter wars, like Israel’s in Gaza in 2008-2009, the drones have to be flown below the clouds for their targeting cameras to work, meaning they might be heard.
“You lose the element of surprise,” the officer said. (Source: Reuters)
31 Jan 23. USN nears operational capability on LCS counter-mine mission package. The U.S. Navy is close to declaring initial operational capability on its second and final Littoral Combat Ship mission package, the mine countermeasures package, as it awaits a final report from the service’s test and evaluation office.
The sea service has individually tested each of the six pieces of equipment in the mission package and also conducted a full-package operational test in August, where sailors aboard LCS Cincinnati demonstrated the entire detect-to-engage kill chain, officials at the Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants said this week at an American Society of Naval Engineers conference here.
“We are officially done with testing for now,” PEO USC mine warfare senior leader Sam Taylor told Defense News after a panel presentation. “We’re ready to push it out the door.”
Since the August test, the PEO has continued to work on fleet familiarization efforts, Taylor said. The Navy’s Operational Test and Evaluation Force continues to analyze the test results and should have a final report to present to Navy leadership soon, he said.
“Once that report comes out, it will be any day after that report” that Director of Expeditionary Warfare (OPNAV N95) Brig. Gen. Marcus Annibale will likely declare IOC, Taylor told Defense News.
Declaring IOC for the LCS mine countermeasures mission package is an key step because the Navy is prevented by law from decommissioning its 1980s-era MCM ships and helicopters until a sufficient replacement is fielded.
Taylor told Defense News that, once the Navy declares initial operational capability on the mission package, the equipment will go out to the fleet for familiarization and training. When fleet leaders are satisfied they understand the equipment and can use it to reliably find and destroy mines in the water, the Navy will certify the new systems and allow decommissioning of the old systems to begin.
Taylor said the PEO has little control over that timing, saying “we basically drive the delivery of systems, and the fleet decides when and where and how.”
Rear Adm. Casey Moton, who leads PEO USC, told Defense News at the conference all MCM mission package testing has been done with fleet sailors and, throughout that process, the PEO has discovered areas of insufficient training. Over the past year and a half, the office has refined its training plans so the fleet familiarization phase can progress quickly and the Navy can feel comfortable transitioning from the legacy MCM systems to the new mission package.
The MCM mission package, originally developed to be employed from both LCS variants but now planned for deployment just on the Independence LCS, includes six separate systems.
From the air, sailors can employ the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System, the Airborne Mine Neutralization System and the Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis system via the MH-60 helicopter and MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle.
In the water, sailors use the Knifefish mine-hunting unmanned underwater system, the Unmanned Influence Sweep System towed mine sweep, and the AN/AQS-20C towed mine hunting sonar. The latter two are towed from the same MCM Unmanned Surface Vehicle, which Moton said had some reliability problems the Navy has since fixed.
The Navy also separately fields a surface warfare mission package on the LCS. The service canceled a third package, for anti-submarine warfare, last year.
An annual report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, released Jan. 20, noted the Unmanned Influence Sweep System’s “reliability and availability do not support sustained mine sweeping operations. Operational availability demonstrated when employing UISS from an LCS was 0.29, well below the Navy-defined minimum threshold.”
The DOT&E report lists an August 2022 test date, which would have been the full mission package test event. Just prior to that test, the Navy declared initial operational capability on the UISS system, the first time the Navy has ever reached IOC for an unmanned surface vessel.
Moton said the Navy was aware of these reliability concerns when it conducted the UISS-only operational testing in May and June 2021. Following that testing, the Navy identified a number of issues, briefed a corrective action plan to Navy leadership and made changes to the Textron-built USVs that were in the water for testing.
However, the Navy decided in April 2022 Textron would not build the USVs that will deploy around the world with LCSs. Instead, the service selected Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana to take over the MCM USV program.
“All the tests to date have so far been Textron-produced vehicles,” Moton said. The reliability issues noted in the DOT&E report “were, for the most part, tied to vehicle design aspects. … What we have done is not only fixed the vehicle we tested, but we developed [engineering change proposal] packages for all of those fixes, and those fixes are being applied to the Bollinger vehicles at the start of the production line.”
He noted that, during the last test in September for the towed mine hunting system, the fixes were already in place on the Textron-made test USV and “we saw a marked improvement and we did not see any significant repeats” of the deficiencies DOT&E discovered.
(Source: Defense News)
31 Jan 23. Work begins on first NSM fit on Type 23. The Type 23 frigate HMS Somerset is in line to become the first UK Royal Navy (RN) ship to receive the Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace Naval Strike Missile (NSM).
Replacing the ageing Harpoon Block 1C surface-to-surface guided weapon, which will be retired from service in December this year, NSM is being procured as part of the RN’s Maritime Offensive Surface Strike programme. In November 2022, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed plans to pursue the accelerated acquisition of NSM under a government-to-government sales agreement with Norway. A total of 11 RN ships – a mix of Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers – will receive NSM, with an initial three vessels being fitted ‘at pace’. The objective is to ensure that a capability is in place by the time Harpoon leaves service at the end of 2023.(Source: Janes)
25 Jan 23. Elbit presents Crossbow turreted mortar. Elbit Systems presented the Crossbow 120 mm turreted mortar at Defence IQ’s International Armoured Vehicles (IAV) 2023 conference being held in London from 23 to 26 January.
The weapon can be installed in a mission module with minimal protrusion, can be easily operated by a single crew member, and is fuzed for fully automatic operation, according to Elbit.
It can fire the company’s range of mortar rounds, including those with an extended range and precision guidance. It has a range of 10 km and a rate of fire exceeding 12 rds/min, achieving 16 rounds for the first minute, an Elbit representative told Janes on 23 January. Crossbow is designed to be fired on the move and to shoot and scoot with a multiple round simultaneous impact (MRSI) capability.
A second Elbit representative said it was developed over the last three years based on Elbit’s experience in ammunition, fuzes, fire control, and command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) integration. It is scheduled to enter service in 2024 with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which financed its development. (Source: Janes)
30 Jan 23. DARPA, AFRL, Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne Team’s Second Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept Launched from B-52 Accomplishes All Test Objectives. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE: AJRD) team accomplished their primary objectives during its second Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) flight test doubling the amount of scramjet powered vehicle data.
Launching from a B-52, the HAWC system’s first stage boosted it to the targeted engine ignition envelope, where the Aerojet Rocketdyne scramjet engine fired and accelerated the system to speeds in excess of Mach 5. The system performed as predicted travelling more than 300 nautical miles and reaching altitudes above 60,000 feet.
“Affordability and reliability are essential as we work to develop operational hypersonic solutions,” said John Clark, vice president and general manager Lockheed Martin Skunk Works®. “Both of our HAWC flight tests launched from an operational aircraft and matched performance models and predictions to aid affordable, rapid development of future hypersonic weapons.”
The Lockheed Martin Skunk Works and Aerojet Rocketdyne team worked together to progress low-cost advanced manufacturing technologies, prioritizing extreme durability to vastly reduce piece and part cost. Through the purposeful integration of digital technologies throughout the design, test, and manufacturing process, the team validated that hypersonic systems can be produced affordably at the rates required to meet the urgent national need.
Lockheed Martin’s Background in Hypersonic Systems
Lockheed Martin’s played a significant role in the research, development and demonstration of hypersonic technologies for close to 60 years. The corporation made significant investments in the development of critical hypersonic technologies needed to enable operational systems to help the U.S. and its allies counter rapidly emerging threats.
30 Jan 23. Northrop Grumman integrating M-Code into precision artillery. US defence company Northrop Grumman will begin integrating Military Code (M-Code) global positioning system (GPS) capability into the company’s precision guidance systems for medium- and long-range artillery systems.
CAES, a Northern Virginia-based company specialising in advanced radio frequency (RF) technologies, will carry out the M-Code GPS integration work into Northrop Grumman’s Precision Guidance Kit (PGK), according to a 23 January statement by the RF technology firm. Valued at USD24m, the integration deal will see CAES-developed GPS antennas designed to send and receive signals across the M-Code band combined into PGKs slated for the US Army. The company will produce roughly 80,000 M-Code-enabled GPS antennas for PGK integration, the 23 January statement said.
“M-Code GPS antennas help improve security and anti-jamming of military navigation. Implementing this technology will make PGK one of the largest programmes within the US DoD integrating this critical capability,” CAES officials said in the statement. (Source: Janes)
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