West Coast F-35Cs. Naval Air Station Lemoore in California is scheduled to receive its first four F-35C Lightning II jets Jan. 25. The aircraft will join the recently reactivated Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 125, which will train naval aviators on the F-35C, the carrier variant of the new multi-role fighter. An East Coast training unit, VFA-101 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, began receiving F-35Cs in 2013. The single-seat, Lockheed Martin-built F-35C is designed to replace the aging Boeing F/A-18 Hornet.
T-45C Mishap. The Navy says it is investigating why a T-45C Goshawk trainer jet crashed during a “routine training flight” Jan. 17 at Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi. “An aviation mishap board has been established but it could take months to a year to determine the cause of the mishap,” a Navy spokeswoman says. The incident occurred while the plane was approaching a runway. The student and instructor pilots ejected safely from the Boeing aircraft, and they were treated at a local hospital and released, the Navy says.
Super Subs. The Navy should increase the capability of its submarines because its surface ships are increasingly vulnerable to attack, according to a new report on U.S. Eurasia defense strategy by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). “Design work should begin for a follow-on to the Virginia-class attack submarine, with a significantly larger payload,” the think-tank recommends. “The potential value of deploying submarines with towed payload modules should be vigorously explored as a means of increasing their offensive punch and expanding their ability to deploy mines and unmanned undersea vehicles.” Another option suggested by CSBA is to consider designing a cruise-missile variant of the Navy’s upcoming Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine.
THAAD Dispute. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says China should stop “bullying” South Korea over U.S. plans to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery to the Korean peninsula to defend against North Korean ballistic missiles. “China has cut off charter flights from South Korea, banned imports of South Korean cosmetics and other products, outlawed South Korean music, and threatened South Korean companies,” McCain says. “China has done all of this to stop the deployment of a missile defense system, which is only necessary because China has aided and abetted North Korea for decades. If China believes in free trade and has genuine concerns about the deployment of THAAD in South Korea, it should cease its attempts to undermine South Korea’s sovereign ability to defend itself and use its considerable influence to pressure North Korea to stop its destabilizing behavior.”
BE-4… Blue Origin is testing its second iteration of its ox boost pump (OBP) for its BE-4 engine, according to a company statement. Blue Origin also finished assembly of the unit that it will install for the first all-up BE-4 engine test. The company’s OBP design leverages 3D additive manufacturing to make many of the key components. The housing is a single printed aluminum part and all of the stages of the hydraulic turbine are printed from Monel, a nickel alloy containing 65 to 70 percent nickel, 20 to 29 percent copper and small amounts of iron, manganese, silicon and carbon. Monel is considered stronger than steel, malleable, resistant to corrosion and fairly inexpensive. Blue Origin says this manufacturing approach allows the integration of complex internal flow passages in the housing that would be much more difficult to make using conventional methods. The turbine nozzles and rotors are also 3D printed and require minimum machining to achieve the required fits.
…More BE-4. Industry consultant and Space Shuttle program veteran Rand Simberg calls 3D printing a revolutionary technology for reducing cost and weight of space hardware. He says the advantage of 3D printing is that companies can manufacture parts that are impossible to machine, with weird curved sections that improve performance, while being lighter weight. Complex parts, he says, can be both lighter and more efficient, but traditionally are hard to impossible to make. Simberg says with liquid oxygen that Blue Origin uses, companies don’t want sharp corners in the flow because it is an opportunity for an explosion if a piece of debris hits it at high velocity. Simberg says the interesting thing about 3D printing is that the more complex part, the lighter it is, and it’s cheaper to manufacture because there’s no wasted material as opposed to when a hole is bored out of a hunk of metal.
NROL-79. The launch date for the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) NROL-79 mission is under review, according to launch provider United Launch Alliance (ULA). The launch team is actively working to resolve Atlas V second stage booster issues discovered during vehicle testing. This additional time will allow the ULA team to ensure all systems are operating nominally prior to launch. A new launch date will be released once it is established. The Atlas V is set to eventually liftoff from Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
SBIRS GEO-3. ULA is ready for the Air Force’s Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) GEO-3 mission set for Jan. 19 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Launch window is set to open at 7:46 p.m. EST. The mission will take place on an Atlas V. SBIRS is a missile warning and tracking satellite system. GEO-3 will operate from geostationary earth orbit (GEO). ULA said its NROL-79 delay would not affect the SBIRS GEO-3 launch.
SpaceX. SpaceX returned to flight on Jan. 14 with a successful launch of a Falcon 9 and a landing of its first stage booster. The mission was the company’s first since mid August when a Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad Sept. 1 during pre-flight testing. The company says it successfully delivered 10 communications satellites to low earth orbit (LEO) for Iridium.
OCX. Raytheon completes the factory qualification test of the launch and checkout system portion of the Global Positioning System (GPS) Operational Control Segment (OCX), according to a company statement. Raytheon tested 74 OCX segment requirements at its Aurora, Colo., factory in a cyber-hardened environment, verifying that the launch and checkout system is on its way to meeting Air Force requirements. The remaining OCX segment requirements will be qualified in retest period next and those requiring external interfaces will be qualified onsite at Schriever AFB, Colo., prior to delivery of the overall launch and checkout system in 2017. The final phase of testing, site acceptance testing, will follow the delivery of the system.
Coast Guard C4ISR. The Coast Guard’s acquisition directorate is touting the operational successes of the C4ISR suite onboard the service’s fleet of high-endurance National Security Cutters (NSCs), which helped the service break a record for drug interdictions in FY ’16. The NSC’s C4ISR suite allows the cutter to access real-time intelligence reports from shore-based network. It also includes the Link 11 system, which allows Coast Guard ships and aircraft to share their tactical data and to share information with U.S. and allied military branches so the NSC crew has greater situational awareness. Lockheed Martin supplies the C4ISR suite for the NSCs.
…Plans for OPC. The Coast Guard says its C4ISR program plans to bring similar C4ISR capabilities to its new class of medium-endurance cutters, the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), which is still in the design stage. The OPC will also feature the Link 11 system, and the acquisition directorate says it also hopes to include a data collection system that will integrate and analyze information from the cutter’s sensors to provide the crew with greater situational awareness. Eastern Shipbuilding Group, the prime contractor for the OPC, last fall awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to design the C4ISR system for the vessel.
Small UAS Testing. The Coast Guard earlier this month completed system operational verification testing of a small unmanned aircraft system, Boeing’s ScanEagle, aboard the National Security Cutter Stratton, paving the way for deployment of the sUAS aboard the cutter this winter for further testing to assess how to best utilize these unmanned aircraft on patrol. The test results will help the Coast Guard refine the concept of operations and requirements for installing and integrating future sUAS across the NSC fleet. The requirements will be used to help with a Request for Proposal for sUAS on the NSCs that is expected to be released by the end of FY ’17.
Galois Cyber Award. Galois won a $750,000 SBIR Phase II grant from the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to develop a new, advanced network cyber deception technology called Prattle. It aims to generate realistic traffic to tag adversaries monitoring network activity, mislead them about what they learn, and cause them to make mistakes that increase the likelihood of detection. The overarching goal is to largely reduce the capabilities of an attacker that has gained a foothold on a network. Galois and Tufts University will lead research efforts into high fidelity network protocol emulation while company subsidiary Formaltech, Inc. serves as a subcontractor on the grant. Other core team members include Fidelis Cybersecurity and PacStar.
OPĀQ Networks Forms. OPĀQ Networks forms in Virginia as a post-revenue Network Security-as-a-Service (NSaaS) company with $21 million in Series A funding. The funding round is led by venture capital firm Columbia Capital with Harmony Partners and Zero-G Inc. The new company simplifies, centralizes, and secure networks by combining networking and a security stack into a single service that organizations can turn on and scale.
Winnefeld on Raytheon Board. Raytheon says that its board has elected retired Navy Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld as a director, effective immediately. Winnefeld, 60, served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as sell as commander of Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, and the Navy’s Sixth Fleet, during is more than 37 years of service. “Sandy brings significant expertise to our board, including deep knowledge of the future capability needs of our customers,” says Thomas Kennedy, Raytheon’s chairman and CEO.