I will remember US military aircraft in 2008 as The Year of Indecision. We managed -- barely -- to elect a new President, but somehow couldn't summon the decisiveness to pick -- and stick with -- a measly new tanker. Ditto for combat search and rescue helicopters, F-22s and C-17s.

How may 2009 be remembered?

It could live as the year when finally the US Air Force and the Secretary of Defense adopted a unified airpower theory and then backed it up with funding. (Pause)  ... Nah.

More likely, but still improbable, it could be the year when the aerospace novelty acts of the past decade -- ie, unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), high-altitude airships and airborne directed energy systems -- prove whether or not they're here to stay.

Indeed, the Northrop Grumman X-47B, Lockheed Martin HAA and Boeing Airborne Laser (ABL) and Airborne Tactical Laser (ATL) are each preparing for pivotal and potentially ground breaking years.

The Akron-based HAA is due for a first flight in the third quarter (or summer, to Northern Hemisphere folks). Senator Tom Coburn earlier this month derided HAA as one of the government's most excessive wastes of taxpayer money, but there's no doubt that interest in such high-altitude, stationary platforms runs high among DOD's civilian leadership.

In the late 3rd quarter/early fourth quarter timeframe, the Missile Defense Agency will find out if the $5 billion investment in the 747 ABL has produced a system capable of shooting down a ballistic missile -- at least in a demonstration. Meanwhile, the C-130-mounted ATL will begin a three-year user demonstration with special operations forces.

Finally, and perhaps most momentously, the X-47B should achieve first flight in the fourth quarter. If the unmanned combat air system-demonstration program succeeds, it could have a revolutionary impact on the future of military aircraft technology.

Here's my list for the most significant scheduled events for next year.

1Q

F-22 - Re-certification by March 1

HC/MC-130 Recap - RFP release

STUAS/Tier II - RFP ??

 

2Q

EA-18G - SDD complete. FRP decision.

 

3Q

C-17 - 190^th airplane delivery

HAA - 1^st flight

Mobility Requirements Study complete?

P-8A - First flight

 

4Q

Airborne Laser - Intercept Test

X-47B First Flight

[UPDATE: I forgot a big one! Full STOVL-mode F-35B flight tests start in June!)

Go to Wikileaks.org to download a massive pile of internal documents on the planning and execution of Empire Challenge 2008, the US Joint Force Command's premier intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance exercise for coalition forces.

Much of the data may seem mundane, but there's plenty of interesting details buried throughout. I found the "daily reports" -- naturally, summarizing the daily activities -- most fascinating.

For instance, we learn the Boeing NanoSAR payload in X band maps "an area in a strip map mode at a range approximately .6 mile (1 km), at resolutions of up to 39 inches (01 meter)".

I doubt you'll ever get such detail from Boeing or the government.

It's also fascinating to read about the sheer challenge of pulling off a major exercise.

It seemed like most of the major problems got sorted by the end, but the 2,000 Empire Challenge participants had to overcome massive technical and connectivity problems. Two Boeing Scan Eagles crashed in the exercise, prompting the Royal Air Force daily briefer to observe:

"Lesson Learned: Buy a bigger rubber band for the Scan Eagle launcher!"

This comment from another briefer on Day 5 sums it up:

"Due to TigerShark camera limitations (high resolution still frame at 01 FPS with limited dissemination), the variety of UAS (Predator, Raven, Cobra, Skylark, Reaper, GoldenEye) that withdrew from EC08 in the months leading up to execution, the Coyote (CA) surrogate's difficulties in getting their video on the network, and SensorWeb/ArgonST's difficulties in correcting NightScout's data corruption problems, Scan Eagle FMV is the "only game in town", thus spotlighting the current problems of this historically extremely reliable and dependable platform."

The radar modernization program for the B-2 has been delayed more than a year, but has finally transitioned from development to the production phase.

Read more about the delay here.

The US Air Force emailed me this contract announcement this morning:

The Air Force awarded a production contract with the Northrop Grumman Corporation yesterday, December 29, 2008, for the B-2 stealth bomber Radar Modernization Program (RMP).  The production contract, with a target price of approximately $468 million, will provide advanced state-of-the-art radar components to ensure sustained operational viability of the B-2 bomber fleet, at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, well into the foreseeable future.  Northrop Grumman Integrated System, Palmdale, California is the B-2 RMP prime contractor and has significant subcontracting efforts with Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, El Segundo California, Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, Owego, New York and BAE Systems, Greenlawn, New York.  The award of the B-2 RMP production contract builds upon successful Initial Operational Test & Evaluation flight tests that were recently completed at Edwards AFB, California.

Spotted this presentation today on Slideshare.net, which happens to be a very useful tool, and thought I'd pass it along. Flight International will be publishing a special report on the Canadian aerospace industry next year, and I found this to be a good primer for anyone.

Buried within the transcript of General Victor Renuart, chief of US Northern Command, who spoke to reporters on 17 December at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. 

As the President moves around we stand up and stand down temporary flight restrictions around airfields and principal locations. There clearly is one around the National Capital Region every day. When he travels to Crawford we establish one down there.

Well, I don't know how much you know about that area of Texas, but there's a lot of cotton farmers and other farmers in that area which require aerial spraying of the crops. We've had a couple of instances where 7:00 o'clock in the morning, that's when the crop sprayer gets out to spray his crops, and if his crops are on the other side of a restricted area from his airfield, he just takes off and flies right through it. Well that tends to alert the system quite a bit, and so we've had F-16s or F-22s even in one case, chasing around after a crop duster down there because he could have alleviated that by one, understanding that the flight restricted area was up; and then filing a flight plan or alerting the FAA that he was going to be transiting underneath that at such and such an altitude.

There you have it folks: The first instance that I'm aware of an F-22 intercepting another aircraft, and it was a cropduster. How's that for asymmetric range?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Bob Cox writes a good piece today about the F-22's future in the hands of the Obama Administration.

The story perpetuates consultant Jim McAleese's claim two weeks ago at a Reuters event that the US Air Force wants to buy only 60 more F-22s, taking the total inventory to 243.

Is anybody really buying this?

The USAF's requirement for 381 F-22s still appears to stand -- although John Young raised some doubts about this last month. I'll leave judgment on whether 381 F-22s is the right call or not to others more informed -- or at least opinionated -- on operational requirements than myself.

I'm sure the USAF wants to buy at least 60 more F-22s in a new multi-year procurement deal.
But does anyone really believe that the USAF will allow F-22 production to disappear without a fight in 2012?

Maybe the Yomiuri Shinbum knows something we don't? The newspaper's sources in Tokyo reported on Saturday that Japan has dropped plans to buy the F-22 to replace F-15s. Why? Because the Obama Administration is likely to halt production of the F-22, according to the Japanese newspaper.

I think their sources may be mistaken about the likelihood of the F-22's imminent demise, but I don't doubt that Japan's air force is looking at other fighters to replace the F-15.

Govt likely to drop plan to procure F-22

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The government likely will drop its plan to introduce the U.S.-made F-22 Raptor stealth fighter to replace its aging F-15 fleet, and will instead concentrate on three other potential candidates, government sources said Saturday.

The moves to abandon efforts to acquire the cutting-edge F-22 follow signs that the incoming U.S. administration of President-elect Barack Obama is leaning toward curbing or even halting production of the aircraft, the sources said.

According to the sources, the replacement candidates are the Eurofighter Typhoon, jointly developed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization members Britain, Italy, Spain and Germany; the F-35 Lightning II produced by the United States, Britain and other countries; and the F-15FX of the United States.

1. KC-X contract overturned - It embarrassed the US Air Force, embittered European industrialists and empowered Boeing. On 18 June, the Government Accountability Office sustained Boeing's protest, nullifying the second deal to recapitalize the tanker fleet and the first requiring translation into French and German.

2. USAF leadership ousted - On 9 June, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates went nuclear on the air force leadership, ostensibly for failing to safeguard the nuclear stockpile. But nukes clearly weren't the only issue for Gates, who prefers his flyboys to focus less on F-22 fighters -- and more on f/22 apertures aboard airborne ISR assets.

3. Russia-Georgia Air War - In August, Russia's army easily over-powered the South Ossetian front, but Georgia's air defenses - stocked allegedly with Ukranian SA-11s and Tor-M1s - shot down three Sukhoi Su-25 and one Tupolev Tu-122. In the Pentagon, the Hezbollah/Israel-inspired "hybrid warfare" file was briefly shelved while staffers scurried to re-open decomposing folders marked "Fulda Gap".

4. DARPA cancels Blackswift - Joining a long and distinguished line-up of recently aborted aerospace science projects, Congress pulled the plug on Blackswift before DARPA could even award a contract. With Blackswift's cancellation, the dream of demonstrating unmanned, reusable, Mach 6 aircraft dies - or moves to China.

5. Liberty Ship Revived - For lend-lease, 18 American shipyards built 2,751 "Liberty" cargo ships between 1941 and 1945. For the ISR surge, the US Air Force will take delivery of 37 small "Liberty Ship" turboprops between 2008 and 2009, which is seven to eight years after the war that required them had already started. Progress!

Andrea Shalal-Esa, of Reuters, quotes Jim McAleese today saying that the US Air Force will delay KC-X and CSAR-X in order to pay for 60 more F-22s.

Jim McAleese, a consultant with close ties to the Air Force, said the service was counting on receiving $10 billion in additional funding as part of an expected $57 billion increase in the Pentagon's overall base budget for fiscal 2010 that begins Oct. 1 next year.

Work on a fleet of new refueling tankers, which the Air Force had named as its No. 1 acquisition priority, is expected to be delayed for at least a year. The Pentagon decided in September to redo the heated competition between Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp, which teamed up with Europe's EADS.

The No. 2 priority program, a $15 billion drive to buy new combat search and rescue helicopters, has also been delayed as the Air Force reviews competing bids from Boeing, Lockheed and Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

As a result, funding for both programs would likely remain under the 'research and development' heading for a while longer, letting the Air Force use its limited procurement dollars for more F-22s, McAleese said.

McAleese also says that the USAF will be content to buy 60 more F-22s, which would reduce their roughly eight-year-old requirement from 381 to 243.

I strongly doubt that the USAF will ever be so content. When the time comes to close production on the F-22 line in another three years, I expect to see another huge fight.

It's been a good month for Lockheed Martin's international sales team. After bagging Norway's generously early endorsement a few weeks ago, they just picked up a love letter from The Hague.

The F-35's opponents in the Dutch Parliament required the Ministry of Defense to perform a comparative study of the F-16 advanced, Gripen Next Generation and F-35.

According to secretary of defense Jack de Vries's statement today, the F-35 won big-time.

"The F-35 is the best multi-role combat aircraft and by around 2015 will certainly be able to carry out all six main missions successfully," according to de Vries. The statement continues:

"The F-35 also has the greatest operational availability. In addition, the capital costs of the F-35 are the lowest and it is anticipated that the total life-cycle costs will also be the lowest."

The de Vries statement notes that the comparison was overseen by Rand Europe, which deemed the study was transparent, objective and accurate.

L-3 Communications yesterday announced upgrading the EP-3E with its first multi-intelligence capability as part of the Pentagon's ISR surge, but declined all requests to elaborate on what new intelligence collectors were actually added.

Luckily, the company released a photo today of the first upgraded EP-3E that reveals at least two of the major changes.

An electro-optical/infrared ball is now installed just ahead of the nose gear door, and a dorsal radome that appears to be a satcom antenna is installed on top of the aft fuselage just behind the cockpit.

An internal Northrop Grumman presentation inadvertently posted on the public Internet provides a rare glimpse of the F/A-18 program's current manufacturing challenges and sales prospects over the next decade.

A cached snapshot of the 53-page presentation, dated 12 March 2008, has been preserved by the Google search engine on this web site:

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:Q0nQkNCXX64J:https://oasis.northgrum.com/general/
docs/F-18EF_Supplier_Symposium031208.pdf+site:com+f-35+proprietary+ppt&hl=en&ct=
clnk&cd=15&gl=uk

(WARNING: Link contains presentation marked "proprietary level 1" by Northrop.)

Most illuminating is a slide revealing a potential delivery profile of new F/A-18E/Fs and EA-18Gs from 2006 to 2019. The chart reveals a proposal for an 18-aircraft plus-up by the USN in fiscal 2010 and 2011, and estimates a 100-aircraft buy in a third multi-year procurement deal that is currently under negotiation.

The slide also details the Boeing/Northrop strategy for winning sales from Australia and Canada -- two members of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter development partnership. Northrop projects possible further Australian orders for 6 EA-18Gs in 2013 and 24 F/A-18E/Fs from 2014-17. Canada is also listed as a potential buyer from 2015 to 2018 of 24 F/A-18E/Fs.

In some cases, Northrop's projections are already out-dated or curiously incomplete. Neither Brazil nor Denmark are listed on the slide as potential F/A-18 customers, despite Boeing's ongoing sales campaigns in both countries. Boeing has since decided to withdraw from the contract competition in Switzerland.

	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
US Navy (F/A-18E/F)	37	27	16	9
US Navy + UP (F/A-18E/F)			4	14
US Navy (EA-18G)	7	14	22	20	16	3	1
US Navy FY10-13 MYP3				9	32	30	24	5
Australia		10	12	2
Australia Follow-on (EA-18G)						6
Australia Follow-on (F/A-18E/F)							6	10	8
Japan					5	9	9	9	9	9
India					2	16	17	19	18	22	22	10
Greece					6	8	8	8
Switzerland					3	5	6	5	3
Kuwait						6	8	8	2
Bulgaria						3	5	5	3
Malaysia							8
Canada								6	8	8	2
Total	44	51	54	54	64	86	92	75	51	39	24	10

The first of two KC-767Js delivered by Boeing to Japan sustained damaged in an emergency landing on Friday.

A very bad Google translation of the Japan military's statement on the incident reads like this:

Now KC-767 aerial refueling aircraft for an emergency landing
 

Problems occurred in mid-air refueling KC-767 transport plane No. 602, went down today, 16 remain at the refueling boom in the state of Gifu Air Self-Defense Force have landed on the airport.

At the same time as the plane stopped for refueling boom near the tip of an ignition 4 pm 1 minute emergency escape all the crew, fire engines and fire-fighting operations 4 pm 3 minutes to complete extinguishing. The occupant is not unusual.

At present, and no damage to outsiders is a design that is being reviewed for details.

Here's a slightly more helpful statement released by Boeing in English:

On Friday December 12 a Japan air self defense forces KC-767J aerial refueling tanker based on Komaki Air Base, Japan, made an emergency landing at Gifu Air Base, Japan. It's our understanding there ere no injuries. The Japan Ministry of Defense has released a statement with details of the incident. We're standing by ready to assist the JASDF when called upon. For any additional details and information, please contact the Japan MOD or JASDF.

Stay tuned for more details.

Amy Butler, of Aviation Week, sneaked a big scoop into the magazine blog's Check 6 podcast this morning. In the weekly "missed approaches" segment, she reports:

Amy Butler: Well, this missed approach is just something that's been under the radar at least to me, maybe not to other people. But I was interviewing an air force official this week and it came to my attention that apparently the White House has just recently begun discussions with Air Mobility Command ... and apparently they're saying that by 2017 they would like to have a new air force one on the ramp.

And if that's true - and I think it is - that's a pretty big deal and a pretty aggressive schedule. And I'm kind of curious to see a couple of things. One, what the requirements would be and what would drive them to abandon the current model with the 747. Also, two, if the Obama Administration comes in and says, 'Hey, wait a minute in the vein of sort of finding savings ... if maybe the Obama administration might be less aggressive and maybe push that back a bit."

The USAF's two VC-25s are among the last 747-200s that rolled off Boeing's assembly line in the early 1990s before it upgraded to the 747-400. Fuel costs have forced most commercial carriers to abandon the -200 as the youngest aircraft approach their 20th year in operations.

This blog reported last year that a USAF analysis of alternatives had identified the Airbus A380 as one of the candidates for Air Force One.

A Boeing-Airbus competition for Air Force One could make the furor over the tanker contract sound like child's play.

Flight International is celebrating its 100th anniversary in print on 6 January with a special centenary issue. The editors in London have asked me to propose 5 key trends for the next 100 years of military aerospace. Here's what I've come up with.

Which trend do you think will be the most important? Or do you think I've missed what will be the most important technological breakthrough for aerospace in the next century? If so, please email me or submit a comment.

Boeing has just announced a management shake-up of sorts in the commercial airplanes division.

Scott Fancher, currently VP for missile defense, has been named the new program manager for the 787.

Fancher succeeds Pat Shanahan, who also came to the 787 after a stint as VP for missile defense. Boeing promoted Shanahan from the 787 post to head development for all airplane programs, including 787 and 747-8.

Both Shanahan and Fancher can be credited with executing a fairly impressive turnaround at the missile defense unit. In 2004, the division faced a lot of scrutiny after botching two missile defense tests due to basic quality assurance errors.

The 787 was in similarly bad shape when Shanahan arrived last October, having announced an 18-month delay. It looked like he had gotten the program back on track by May, but a 57-day strike by machinists and an unexpected fastener installation problem caused another roughly six month delay. Boeing announced this latest delay earlier this morning.

The US Air Force will announce later today that Maj Gen Charles R. (C.R.) Davis will assume command of the Air Armament Center next spring.

That means Davis will be rotating out as the lead executive of the F-35 program office, where he has proven to be a forceful and outspoken advocate. In an interview with me last July, Davis made headlines by publicly taking Boeing to task for making improper statements about the F-35 as part of their sales campaign for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

The transition also means that Brig Gen David Heinz, currently Davis' deputy, will take the lead role in March or April.

Heinz will be replaced by a yet-unnamed USAF officer.

The Center for American Progress has a great little interactive toy on their web site. It allows acquisition nerds like me to build their own defense budget. It's not extremely detailed, but I was surprised -- and a little disturbed -- by how much fun I had with it. So go check it out.

After you make your budget choices, it summarizes what kind of military you've just decided to buy (regardless of industrial base havoc I'm sure my own choices produced). Here's mine:

"Your budget choices are consistent with a heavily irregular force. Your military will be able to respond to a wide variety of non-conventional threats such as piracy, terrorism, insurgency and humanitarian disaster. However, it will have a very limited ability to respond to conventional military contingencies should they arise."

Hmm ... not sure that's what I intended! Guess that's why I'm not in charge of making acquisition decisions.

In this paean to airlift's role in modern strategy, UPI defense industry editor Martin Sieff uses some, er, unique linguistic devices. And by "unique", I mean "slightly deranged". When he challenges the competence of others in the news media, I'm sure he means those cranks downtown at AvWeek! (Har!)

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm Mike Mullen made news today at the Pentagon press briefing about the F-22. Here's the exchange:

Q     Do you think, for instance, of the biggest military needs -- say the F-22, the most expensive fighter plane ever made? 

ADM. MULLEN: There's been an awful lot of discussion about that. It's not a matter of do we need it, Jamie. We have it. It's a question of how many do we need for the future. And Secretary Gates has been pretty clear. This administration has been very clear about where it's been, where he is, and certainly has, you know, left it open to see what the additional numbers should be. The chief of staff of the Air Force has talked about a number that is another -- what? -- 50 or so more than the 183 right now. 

 
So I think we're going to -- we're going to work our way through that. I do -- I am concerned that it is such an expensive system.   

I think it is -- in the aviation world, our future is in the Joint Strike Fighter, but the Joint Strike Fighter is a new system. New systems usually struggle, you know, meeting exact deadlines. And I think it's very important we have capability to bridge to that system with respect to the broad range of capabilities for the country. 

The news here is that Mullen claims Gen Norton Schwartz, the USAF's chief of staff, has talked about buying "50 or so more than the 183" F-22s ordered so far (not counting the four aircraft now in long-lead limbo).

Unless my memory is failing me, Schwartz has not publicly stated any number remotely as specific as "50 or so".

Schwartz has said that he thinks the number of F-22s should be higher than 183 and lower than 381, with the latter being the USAF's stated requirement for the last several years.

The question is whether Mullen botched the statement. Perhaps Mullen knows something we don't know?

Read this bizarre paragraph in an otherwise interesting L. A. Times article this morning:

There are dozens of ideas that can be developed, if Gates and his new team decide to support them.

Some Army officials are pushing development of a small blimp equipped with an automated high-powered sniper rifle that could provide a form of inexpensive but effective air support for platoons in Afghanistan.

Er, huh?

Surely, the army is really asking for a small aerostat linked to an actual soldier on the ground with a sniper rifle, no? 

Three weeks after Norway's ministry of defense shocked Saab by selecting the F-35 over the Gripen NG one month ahead of schedule, the Swedish manufacturer has issued a rebuttal.

Here are some highlights:

• The claim that Gripen does not fulfil the operational requirements ... turns out to be founded on simulations previously unknown to us. To our understanding those simulations must be based on incomplete performance information, simply because such information about Gripen has neither been communicated to us nor requested from us or the Swedish government.

• "It was a great surprise to Saab when the Norwegian evaluation committee concluded that Gripen would have a higher life cycle cost. It is not consistent with what we know of the costs of keeping different air crafts operational over time. If the claimed estimates are correct it would be cheaper for Norway to obtain JSF, even if Sweden would have developed and given 48 Gripen Next Generation (NG) as a gift to Norway. It should be unreasonable."

• "The number of aircraft has been changed from 48 to 58 and the operational life cycle has been extended from 25 to 35 years. These are two new conditions entirely decisive for the calculation. That these calculations to a large extent have been conducted without dialogue is most unusual and has contributed to an incorrect picture of the alternatives."

Read Flight's news article here.

The Seattle P-I's James Wallace has a great write-up this morning on the ongoing litigation over the A-12, the carrier-based stealth bomber that then-Defense secretary Dick Cheney canceled in 1991. The best part of the story is this exchange between lawyers and judges in a DC courtroom last week.

Last week the A-12 arguments played out in a federal appeals court for the second time. It was the same court that reversed the earlier judgment in favor of Boeing and General Dynamics.

Boeing lawyer Charles Cooper told the court that the Navy had no basis for declaring the companies had defaulted on the contract because, before the contract was canceled, the Navy had agreed to extend the terms of the original contract without setting a new delivery schedule, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

"You don't default by failure to make progress or failure to make interim milestones," Cooper argued before the three-judge panel.

"Changing the initial contract terms doesn't give you forever," Judge Kimberly Moore of the appeals court told the lawyers.

I attended a press conference this morning with the US Army's top acquisition managers for unmanned aircraft systems -- Col Greg Gonzalez and Tim Owings.

I asked about a lot of things, but I was particularly interested in their thoughts about one of their biggest contractors -- General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI).

TDL: This is about your contractor on Sky Warrior -- General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.  The BAMS protest came back and there was some documentation in there that quoted an army contracting officer for Sky Warrior with some very specific concerns about the contractor's performance -- specifically obligating performance beyond the capacity of the company. [Read more: "General Atomics may have a customer relations problem"]

As we're talking about the acquisition strategy [review] coming up in January -- and obviously the importance of this program -- what is your relationship with General Atomics, and, these concerns that have been talked about, how have they been dealt with?

GONZALEZ: The first thing I have to say is General Atomics has a tremendous history of providing very high quality products. The products that they have produced -- even the earlier pre-production models that we've fielded and are using in theater -- have had outstanding success. But there's always room for improvement.

One of the things we have found with that particular contractor is that there are some process things that could be improved in terms of software development and predictive capability of software.

And we are working as a project management office very closely with them and they have been very cooperative in improving those processes. And we're very confident that shortly they will make the changes that need to be made and they'll continue to provide those quality products.

But they'll also be able to - in addition to providing those products -- they'll have a better capability to predict how long it will take to do certain software upgrades and those types of things.

COLIN CLARK (DOD Buzz): So on the hardware side, you're confident. Software is --?

GONZALEZ: Hardware has never been an issue.

OWINGS : And in fact they are producing product right now that's -- ... we're very satisfied with. They're producing on schedule. So it's not an issue from a standpoint of not getting the product. At the end of the day the products have been very, very good. It's just the software processes probably need to be matured some. And they've been very cooperative in working through those issues that we outlined for them.

The US Air Force began its search for a "counter electronics munition" by issuing a request for information to industry last October. That was followed by a public briefing that outlined plans for deploying an operational weapon by 2012. As of last July, the USAF had expressed a preference for a "counter electronics" payload that is inserted into a JDAM body modified with a wingkit for extended range.

This process appears to have coalesced into a new competition launched last week for the counter-electronics HPM advanced missile project (CHAMP), a 36-month proof of principle demonstration.

Interestingly, the USAF seems to have discarded the modified JDAM strategy. Instead, the service is looking for a aerial platform -- ie, what I like to now call the "HPM bomber" -- equipped with an HPM payload.

Bids for the $40 million CHAMP contract are due on January 15, and contract award is scheduled in March. BAE Systems, MBDA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have already expressed interest.

The Center for National Policy, which has top former Clinton aides Leon Panetta and Dan Glickman on its board of directors, will publish a report tomorrow calling for a two-year pause on weapons projects. Reuters journalist Andrea Shalal-Esa reports today:

The Obama administration should review all major arms programs and set clear priorities about which should continue to be funded, and take steps to cut costs across all military branches, it said.

Specific recommendations included ending production of the Lockheed Martin Corp F-22 fighter; scaling back purchases of the F-35 fighter, also being built by Lockheed; focusing more on unmanned aerial vehicles; and increasing the size of the Navy fleet, but with more submarines and lower-cost, smaller ships.

For those keeping score at home, here's a quick update on the status of the 19-aircraft F-35 test fleet, as of this morning:

1. AA-1 -- Non-production test aircraft. Flying.
2. BF-1 -- 1st STOVL flight sciences asset. Grounded, in modification
3. BG-1 -- 1st STOVL static test airframe. Rolled-out.
4. BF-2 -- 2nd STOVL flight sciences asset. Rolled-out. In engine run-up tests.
5. BF-3 -- 3rd STOVL flight sciences asset. Roll-out scheduled on Saturday.
6. AF-1 -- 1st CTOL flight sciences asset. Roll-out scheduled Dec 19.
7. AG-1 -- 1st CTOL static test airframe. Roll-out date is "close", later this month.

Lockheed Martin has to continue delivering flight test aircraft at a rate of almost one per month to meet their ramp-up schedule, and that appears to be roughly on track with three aircraft rolling out later this month.

The next important roll-out will be BF-4 -- the first mission systems test asset.

Here's video of Lockheed Martin's MKV hover test on December 2. Looks impressive ...

The third round of bidding has officially started for the $15 billion, 141-aircraft CSAR-X contract.

Strangely, the US Air Force released the amended request for proposals, but didn't set a date for the contract award. Guess they didn't want to set a date, only to have it delayed when the next administration reviews the program.

The USAF's new solicitation documents set a new timetable for entry into service. The first 10 aircraft to establish initial operational capability must fall between the third quarter of FY2013 and the second quarter of FY2015. It also updates the five-year budget, which is set at $2.95 billion from FY09 to FY13.

CSAR-X solicitation links:

• Home page
• Document 1
• Document 2
  
• Document 3
  

Rotor & Wing columnist Giovanni di Briganti argues this week the CH-47 is "unsuited for the combat search and rescue mission", citing the Oxford coroner's report in October that blamed the Chinook's downwash for indirectly killing a paratrooper waiting to be rescued in a minefield. An excerpt:

In this instance, the downwash from an RAF Chinook attempting to land dislodged rocks which, in turn, detonated other mines. One of them killed Cpl Wright.
The second failing is that the Chinook had to land because it was not fitted with a rescue hoist, and so could not pull out the injured soldiers while hovering.

The third failing is that no other available British helicopter was fitted with a rescue hoist. The British forces' shortfall in helicopter support is well-documented, but it is in instances such as this that the full consequences of that shortfall are felt.

I've been on the receiving end of the Chinook's downwash a few times, and I can vouch for its power. Of course, one might question whether the downwash from any of the CH-47's competitors would have produced the same result in that situation. The real problem may have been this particular Chinook's lack of a hoist -- and not the rotor downwash.

I might be wrong here, but I think the US Navy may have just expanded the scope of the Unmanned Combat Air Systems - Demonstration (UCAS-D) program. My understanding was that the Northrop Grumman X-47 was on contract solely to demonstrate carrier-based operations by 2013. The X-47's design would be capable of performing autonomous aerial refuelling (AAR), but that wasn't in the Navy's budget.

I'm still checking on this to be certain, but it appears AAR has been added to the UCAS-D budget. Here's a solicitation document posted on Fbo.gov this morning:

NAVAIR intends to contract on a sole source basis with the Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation (NGSC), San Diego, CA to modify the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System under contract N00019-07-C-0055 to support demonstration of AAR capability by CY 2013.

The X-47B air vehicle is the only relevant carrier suitable unmanned air system in existence capable of demonstrating AAR. Further, the X-47B design is capable of accommodating both USN-style and USAF-style refueling physical and electronic interfaces required for AAR including a capability to accept fuel.

Looks like Saab is continuing to promote and demonstrate the Skeldar V-150 unmanned helicopter, a heavily modified CybAero design, despite abandoning efforts earlier this year to sell the aircraft to United Nations peacekeepers in Chad.

Here's a video now available on YouTube, showing a very recent flight demonstration.

John Douglass is a retired US Air Force general, former assistant secretary of the navy, former president of the Aerospace Industries Association and an ardent Democrat.

In talking to him this morning about Airbus' ethics, I also asked him if he was looking for a job in the Obama administration.

"I worked hard in the Democratic side of the aisle to help get President-elect Obama elected, and I have told people that if asked to serve I would be inclined to go back into the government once again," Douglass said.

Do you expect to find out soon?

"The transition is at a point where they're appointing cabinet-level people," he said. "Positions below that level tends to form up 30-60 days after the cabinet group gets established."

Is there a particular job that interests you?

"My background is very strong in acquisition and there's a number of key acquisition jobs around the government," he said. "Those could be places for me to go. I've done a bunch of things. I was the assistant secretary of the navy. I'm a retired air force officer. I'm just am going to keep my head down here and doing what I'm doing, see what happens."

Airbus' now-public intelligence brief about the 787 must raise some questions about the company's code of ethics.

Of course, collecting intelligence on a competitor is not unethical -- it's smart, and all companies do it. But there are lines and standards. As a competitor, Airbus' practice of re-publishing Boeing's clearly-marked proprietary data -- even internally -- will certainly raise eyebrows across the industry.

This morning, I asked John Douglass, former head of the Aerospace Industries Association, about this. He has not reviewed the Airbus document yet, but here's what he thinks.

"Anytime you see one company with another company's slides marked 'proprietary' it does raise an eyebrow and you wonder what the deal is," Douglass said. "You have to wonder how widely available these things are. It could have been something that's very widely available. Somebody had a presentation at a conference and it said proprietary but it was handed out anyway. And in a case like there's not much of an issue."

But what if it isn't? Could such a document provoke concerns within the US government even as Airbus seeks to offer the US Air Force the A330 as a tanker?

"Obviously our government is, you know, concerned about these things and want to see all the contractors perform in an ethical way, so, yeah, it could be an issue," Douglass said. "On the other hand this could be just some charts somebody got."

My colleague Jon Ostrower, proprietor of the one-and-only FlightBlogger, has uncovered an internal Airbus competitive intelligence briefing on the Boeing 787 program, filled with juicy details.

Even if you aren't interested in commercial aircraft programs, reading the presentation alone is an amazing glimpse inside the process of corporate intelligence.

Click here to read Jon's blog entry.

Giving new meaning to the phrase air-to-air combat, a University of Akron professor thinks supersonic jet fighters may be able to "destroy" tropical storms, such as hurricanes and typhoons.

And by "hurricanes" and "typhoons", I mean the weather phenomenons, not the British/European fighter jets.

According to my corporate cousins at New Scientist magazine, Dr. Arkadii Leonov filed a patent application earlier this year proposing that two F-4s flying at Mach 1.5 can make a hurricane disappear. (His example using F-4s seems arbitrary. For poetic reasons, I'd recommend using the Typhoon or Rafale -- French for "squall" -- instead.)

New Scientist writes:

In a patent application, Leonov and colleagues say that they can put a spanner in the atmospheric works by flying supersonic jet aircraft in concentric circles around a hurricane's eye, the calm area around which the storm rotates.

The idea is that the sonic-boom shockwave would dramatically raise air pressure in the eye, disrupting the upward flow of warm air that drives the hurricane.

Read the full patent application here.

I keep waiting for someone in the US Air Force leadership to gush over the F-35. You know, just something to make the taxpayers feel better about their $300 billion investment in this aircraft. And I mean someone other than Maj Gen CR Davis, the program manager.

Australian Air Marshal Mark Binskin is apparently a huge F-35 fan. In a 1 December dinner speech at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Binskin gave the F-35 the strongest endorsement I've heard yet from a national air force leader. I haven't found these remarks posted anywhere on the Internet, so I can't give you a link. But Lexis-Nexis has a long quote from an AAP wire story.

   "We are looking at what will be the best multi-role aircraft in the world," he told an Australian Strategic Policy Institute  function.
   "It will  have the best radar, the best defensive system of any of those aircraft in the world.
   "It will be supported by the best airborne early warning and control aircraft and the best tanker in the world and flown, maintained and supported by the best people in the world."
   "I've got to tell you - the system ain't going to get any better than that.

Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has made it clear that 183-187 Lockheed Martin F-22s are enough for him. Yesterday, Gates officially accepted the SECDEF job in the Barack Obama administration. Just a few moments ago, Gates was asked in his first press conference since that announcement about whether he'll change his mind on the F-22.

Gates replied:

"I think the key here is to do the analysis, examine the air force requirements, talk to the senior leadership of the air force, talk to the new appointees who will come into the department, and then make a decision on how to go forward. But I'm not going to commit today on where I'm going on that subject. There's a lot of work to be done."

Allow me to introduce the Morphing Micro Air-Land Vehicle. It's like the Optimus Prime of UAVs. Cleveland-based BioRobots invented this machine to fulfill a very complex mission. According to a new paper, the 16-in wingspan vehicle can

1. fly from a takeoff point to a target area (e.g.a building),
   
2. land stealthily within a target area (e.g. on a rooftop),
   
3. transform into a highly mobile land vehicle,
4. locomote successfully over ground obstacles (e.g.crawl to the edge of a roof or into a building), and
5. transmit critical data (visual, acoustic, chemical, etc.) from its position

The paper is being presented on Thursday at the Army Science Conference in Orlando.

US trade lobbying group the Aerospace Industries Association launched an interesting ad campaign today aimed at the incoming Barack Obama White House. The message: Don't break a healthy defense industry in order to fix an ailing economy.

I talked to Fred Downey for a quick feature I'm writing based on the ad campaign. Downey recently joined AIA as vice president of national security, who previously served as the defense specialist on the staff of Senator Joe Lieberman.

THE DEW LINE: This is a very proactive move on your part, to come out with an advertising campaign before the new administration takes office. There's so much uncertainty out there about what could happen, with the change in administration and the economic crisis. How concerned are you that defense could become a bill-payer for the economy?

DOWNEY: There's no question that there's a huge economic issue laying out there. ... We think that one of the things they shouldn't do is cause harm to an economic engine that's running well in order to shore up those that are not. There are things they can do that can make that engine stutter or even jump the track. That's a bad thing for national security, number one. And it's bad for the overall economy, number 2.

TDL: The Obama administration will have to make a couple of quick decisions on key programs, like the F-22 and the C-17. Are your concerns focused on those programs or are they broader than that?

The design of the Embraer C-390 has significantly evolved since earlier this year. A presentation posted by the Brazilian manufacturer on the Internet last month (hat tip: The Woracle) reveals three major changes.

1. Conventional vertical stabilizer is out. T-tail is in.
2. Aft-fuselage strakes
   
3. Wing-mounted refueling pods
   

Compare the photo on the left, released in May, to the photo on the right, which came from the new presentation.











You don't hear much about the Embraer C-390, a high-winged, military transport version of the E-190 airliner. It's a potential successor to the oldest Lockheed Martin C-130s, assuming a small segment of the 3,000-aircraft replacement market demands a smaller twin-jet instead of a four-engine turboprop.

An Airborne Laser parked in a hangar at Edwards AFB fired a high-energy laser for the first time last week, blasting a range simulator diagnostic system for a fraction of a second.

Boeing program manager Mike Rinn just spoke to reporters by teleconference. Here are some key points from my notes.

• Boeing wants to expand the Airborne Laser's target set from ballistic missiles to smaller targets, such as aircraft and cruise missiles. The multi-mission concept is the subject of ongoing funding discussions with the Missile Defense Agency.
  
• The required changes for the multi-mission capability involve adjusting the target acquisition system for lighter termal signatures, as well as connecting the ABL to off-board radar platforms, such as AWACS.
  
• There is still no money in the budget for building a "Tail-2" -- a second ABL based on the 747-8. But Boeing is not giving up hope: "It's important that we keep this momentum going for this critical technology that the US has developed and move this into a second tail as soon as we can," Rinn says.
• Flight tests start in the spring and the first in-flight shootdown test is still on track for late summer/early fall.
• Is the shootdown test a make-or-break event? Rinn: "I'd be foolish if I said it wasn't that important ... Even though we have brought down the risk with all the parts of the weapon system, there's nothing like ... flaming wreckage there to show the world that this is viable and that it works."
• The ground test last week revealed problems with a "handful" of safety sensors, which require adjustments.
• Ammonia required for long-duration tests is "prepped and ready to go," but not expected to be added to the mixture until late December/early January.

UPDATED: Boeing may be interested in a multi-mission ABL, but the Missile Defense Agency is not. I just talked to the MDA spokesman: "That may be Boeing's plan but MDA's emphasis [for ABL] is only on ballistic missile defense in the boost phase." A decision on funding for a second ABL is "not going to be determined until after we have the shootdown obviously," the spokesman said.

This is a surprise. Naval Air Systems Command hosts an industry day for the EP-X fleet. The Airbus A321 has been discussed as an alternative to the Boeing P-8B, a 737-based surveillance aircraft. But neither EADS North America nor Airbus appeared at the industry day on 20 November, according to this list of attendees.

Northrop Grumman, which has considered offering the A321, did show up. So did other obvious contenders for the prime contract: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, L-3 Integrated Systems and Raytheon.

Great read yesterday morning in the New York Times, which bashes Gen Barry McCaffrey for deploying his retired-four-star clout in the service of his own pocketbook.

One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex

Through seven years of war an exclusive club has quietly flourished at the intersection of network news and wartime commerce. Its members, mostly retired generals, have had a foot in both camps as influential network military analysts and defense industry rainmakers. It is a deeply opaque world, a place of privileged access to senior government officials, where war commentary can fit hand in glove with undisclosed commercial interests and network executives are sometimes oblivious to possible conflicts of interest.

Few illustrate the submerged complexities of this world better than Barry McCaffrey.

Check out McCaffrey's after-action report I obtained and posted on this blog last October. Extraordinarily, this retired mechanized infantry commander recommended buying more than 600 C-17s, 350 F-22s and a next-generation bomber fleet.