Air Force Innovation Fund. The Air Force plans to distribute $64 million to squadron commanders next week to help them experiment with ways to improve readiness, increase lethality and save time and money, Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein announced Feb. 23 at an Air Force Association (AFA) conference in Florida. “We need our squadrons to be aggressively persistent and take risks in the pursuit of new ideas and solutions,” Goldfein said. “No one knows the problems we face day to day more than the airmen in our squadrons.”
… Ailing Chief. Goldfein also revealed at the conference that he is recovering from Bell’s Palsy, a temporary partial facial paralysis that he contracted after he went on a grueling 19-day day trip to the Indo-Pacific region. His “spectacular” trip included visiting Guam, the Korean Peninsula and Singapore and flying on an Indian-made Tejas light-combat aircraft, he said.
… RPA Manning. The Air Force is looking to cut the number of people it takes to operate remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), according to Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, head of Air Education and Training Command. While a manned aircraft requires about 1.5 people to operate, an RPA requires about 10. “We have to change that because it’s too expensive in manpower,” Kwast told reporters at the AFA conference Feb. 22. While the solution will include increased automation, it will also involve many other steps, too. “There are about six pages of things that you can do,” he said.
T-X Basing. Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph in Texas, which is home to Air Force instructor pilot training, will be the first base to receive the Air Force’s new T-X trainer jet, the service announced Feb. 21. The new planes are scheduled to begin arriving at the base in 2022 to replace the aging T-38C Talon. The Air Force plans to pick a T-X prime contractor later this year. Competitors include a Boeing-Saab team, a Lockheed Martin-Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) team and Leonardo DRS.
Bronco II. Paramount Group International, a South African defense firm, announced Feb. 21 that it has formed Bronco Combat Systems USA to offer the new Bronco II light-attack aircraft in the United States. The Bronco II is based on Paramount’s existing Advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC) and is designed to carry a wide range of sensors and weapons. “The organization will be engaging with the special operations community, the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force and border control, as well as the law enforcement community and potential civilian operators” with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements, Paramount said. It is unclear whether the Bronco II can still be considered by the Air Force, which has already picked two other planes to participate in a light-attack aircraft experiment this year. That experiment is supposed to pave the way for a rapid procurement program.
Middle East Challenges. Army Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, is scheduled to testify before the House Armed Services Committee Feb. 27 about defense challenges in the Middle East posed by Iran and terrorism.
Icebreaker Milestone. The Department of Homeland Security’s Acquisition Review Board last week gave approval to the Coast Guard and Navy Integrated Program Office to transition the Heavy Polar Icebreaker program from the analyze and select phase to the obtain phase, enabling the release of a Request for Proposals, which is expected this month. The successful decision event is an “endorsement of program affordability and approval of key cost, schedule and performance parameters through the program’s Acquisition Program Baseline,” a Coast Guard spokesman told Defense Daily. The Coast Guard plans to acquire three heavy icebreakers with delivery of the first vessel slated for 2023. The service expects the cost of the first vessel to be under $1 billion.
DHS Markup. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning plans to mark up a bill that will reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security for the first time since standing up nearly 15 years ago. The bill has already been marked up and approved in the House. The bill includes a wide range of provisions, including requiring more scrutiny of acquisition programs, annual updates of the Transportation Security Administration’s five-year investment plan, and authorizes $2 billion annually in 2018 and 2019 for Coast Guard acquisition programs.
Duke Retiring. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Friday said that DHS Deputy Secretary Elaine Duke will be retiring in April after a year with the Trump administration. Duke was confirmed last April and was acting secretary of the department from July 31, 2017 until Dec. 6, 2017. Duke was nominated by President Donald Trump in Jan. 2017 to be deputy secretary of DHS, giving the department with a strong management professional to run day to day operations. Prior to becoming deputy, Duke ran her own consulting business and before that spent 29 years in federal government, including two years as the undersecretary of management at DHS.
BAE Big in U.S. United Kingdom-based BAE Systems last Thursday reported $27.4 billion in sales in 2017, with 39 percent, or about $10.7 billion, from customers in the U.S. The next largest customer by country is the U.K., with a quarter of sales. Rob Stallard, aerospace and defense analyst with Vertical Research Partners, said in a client note that customers in the U.S. will be driving the company’s growth in the near-term, suggesting that “By 2020, the US could make up half of BAE’s sales, with a good balance of sales across land, air, electronics and ship maintenance.”
Esri Deal. Spatial analytics firm Esri has acquired location data extraction technology from ClearShark, adding support of unstructured data for users of its ArcGIS platform, which provides contextual tools for mapping and spatial reasoning. The deal includes ClearShark’s ClearTerra business unit. California-based Esri said the addition of ClearTerra will make discovering and extracting geographic coordinates from unstructured textual data such as emails, briefings, and reports easier to map for industries such for users in the defense, intelligence and public safety markets, and for industries such as petroleum, utilities and maritime. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
SATCOM. Iridium Communications said that COMSAT has signed an agreement to become an Iridium Certus service provider for Department of Defense (DoD) users. The long-term deal will allow COMSAT to provide Iridium’s secure global satellite broadband connectivity for mobile voice and data services to the Department of Defense beginning in mid-2018. COMSAT will deliver enhanced capabilities that meet communications security (ComSec) requirements for the DoD. These capabilities include real-time usage statistics, telematics data, voice calling, personnel tracking applications, and real-time environmental assessments. Iridium Certus terminals are smaller and capable of maintaining broadband connectivity in fast-paced, unpredictable environments on land, at sea, in the air. The service will debut at speeds of 352 Kbps, with terminals upgradable to 704 Kbps through a future firmware update.
Javelin Deal. The Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin JV team, based in Tucson, Ariz., was awarded a $94.8 foreign military sales contract to provide Javelin weapon systems including rounds, command launch units, and battery coolant unit spares to France, Taiwan, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and Lithuania. Work will be performed in Tucson, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 31, 2020.
New SLCM. The deputy assistant secretary of defense (DASD) for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy disclosed a timeline for the new nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) planned by the administration in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). DASD Robert Soofer said at sister publication Exchange Monitor’s Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit that it may take seven to 10 years to deploy a new nuclear SLCM. In the meantime, the administration plans to modify a small number of nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) for low yield warheads.
IG Audit. The Defense Department’s Inspector General announced it has begun an audit of whether the Navy and Marine Corps have enough backup aircraft and depot maintenance float for ground combat and tactical vehicles. The IG will perform the audit at the office of the under secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L); office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OCNO) director of air warfare; Marine Corps combat development and integration office; Marine Corps installation and logistics office; Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and Marine Corps Logistics Command.
HII Leadership. Huntington Ingalls Industries announced two top leadership changes: executive vice president of strategy and development Michael Smith is moving to the company’s Technical Solutions division as president of SN3 business and executive vice president for internal audit Scott Stabler is moving to be HII’s executive vice president and chief transformation officer. Smith’s move is effective immediately and he will report to president of the nuclear & environmental group Michael Lempke. Stabler will now report to HII president and CEO Mike Petters.
T-ESB-4. The U.S. Navy formally accepted delivery of the second expeditionary sea base, the USNS Hershel “Woody” Williams (T-ESB-4), on Feb. 22. The ship will be owned and operated by Military Sealift Command. T-ESB-4 is build by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, which is also building the next ship in the class, the future USNS Miguel Keith (T-ESB-5). Williams is the second ESB variant platform and has a range of 9,500 nautical miles, can travel at speeds up to 15 knots, has a four-spot flight deck, and is expected to be used for maritime missions like airborne mine-countermeasures and special operations. Earlier this month, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said the ship will head to the Mediterranean Sea for its first deployment.
LCS-21 Keel. The U.S. Navy on Thursday held a keel laying and authentication ceremony for the future USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-21) in Marinette, Wis. The ship is being built by a Lockheed Martin-led team at Fincantieri Marinette Marine.
T-EPF-10 Christening. The U.S. Navy will christen its latest expeditionary fast transport, the future USNS Burlington (T-EPF-10), during a ceremony on Feb. 24 at the Austal USA shipyard at Mobile, Ala. This is the first ship named after the city in Vermont, although a ship named after Burlington, Iowa served in World War II. T-EPF-10 is designed to carry 600 short tons of military cargo 1,200 nautical miles at a speed of 35 knots for relief operations, logistics support, and rapid transport.
E-2D Parts. The Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a $100 million non-competitively procured contract for long-lead parts and support for E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft. This covers parts for full-rate production Lot 7 Hawkeyes. The work is expected to be finished by December 2022.
DISA GCDS Rates. Rates for the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Global Content Delivery Service fell dramatically from FY ’17 to FY ’18. The GCDS program provides DoD mission partners with a cost-effective way improve end-user performance, protect data and improve capabilities to provide information to warfighters. Rate for implementing web delivery and application firewall tools fell by 99 percent, and the price for implementing net storage capabilities fell by 71 percent. “As a result of onboarding more customers, we’ve been able to achieve economies of scale and dramatically reduce rates for both implementation and service delivery,” Tobi Felder, the GCDS program manager, said in a statement.