Northrop Grumman has started building the center fuselage for the first international F-35 -- BK-1, ordered by the United Kingdom. In hono(u)r of the occasion, I build a flow-chart based on Lockheed Martin images showing 12 major steps in the center fuselage assembly process. Note: The chart describes the conventional take-off and landing variants center fuselage, but BK-1 is a short-takeoff-vertical-landing version.

Only one day after President Barack Obama signed a defense bill authorizing the shutdown of the F-22 production line, the US Air Force announced signing a contract to buy the last four F-22s.

Lockheed Martin Corp., of Fort Worth, Texas was awarded a $474,200,000 contract which will provide for the issuance of full production of four F-22 Lot 10 air vehicles, alternate mission equipment, production engineering support and work in process through Aug. 11, 2009 for 16 shipsets of raw material aircraft fuselage titanium.  478 AESG/PK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (FA8611-09-C-2900,P00007).

The notice shows all hope for the F-22's future within the USAF apparently died on August 11, when Lockheed's supply chain stopped work on titanium to build 16 more stealth fighters. Let the record show that was three weeks after Senate authorizers voted to kill the F-22, but nearly one month before Senate appropriators followed suit.

Although I called it a 'parting gift' in the headline, yes, I do realize more money is coming. Lockheed now has to negotiate a program termination fee. The USAF also plans to spend some $8 billion to upgrade all 186 F-22s, including the last four purchased above.  The only question left is whether the last F-22 contract will be paid in yen.

Lockheed Martin has doubled-down on its F-35 proposal to South Korea, my colleague in Singapore Siva Govindasamy reports.

To steal a contract that presumably favors Boeing's V-tailed F-15 Silent Eagle, Lockheed sales veep Steve O'Bryan made the following promises at the Seoul Air Show last week:

• Delivery slots in 2014
• Second-tier supplier deals
• Final assembly role in South Korea

Lockheed's sales pitch also appeared to get the full support of the US government. In a pre-show interview with the english-language Korean Times, top US Air Force weapons salesman (ahem, I mean, deputy undersecretary) Bruce Lemkin suggested the F-35 would be an excellent choice for the KF-X contract. If Lemkin mentioned the Boeing F-15SE, the reporter didn't note it.

Mikhail Petrovich Simonov, designer of the iconic Su-27 Flanker, realized after the 1977 first flight that the T-10 prototype was a dog, a fact he explained to the aviation minister in Moscow.

"'It's a good thing, Petrovich, that today is not 1937," the minister replied.

That is one of the incredible anecdotes sprinkled throughout a Simonov feature published today in the London Telegraph. The article is a must read for anyone even slightly curious about aviation history. For example, we learn the lead designer's delightfully Russian reaction to Simonov's proposed solution to the T-10's problem, which involved moving a belly storage compartment onto the top of the fuselage.

"'Why don't you, Mikhail Petrovich, go to your wife," the designer shouted, "and ask her to move her breasts onto her back?! We'll see how useful she will be then!'"

But the best -- and most newsy -- part of the feature is about Simonov's views about the F-15's performance compared to the Su-27. Simonov is obviously biased, but he makes some interesting points. Simonov described what he believes happened when Russian Su-27s and American F-15s 'fought' during a 1990s exercise. 

"The F-15 constantly needed to make a kind of a "step" - fly along a straight line for a certain period of time. The Russian pilots took advantage of that - they persuaded the Americans to go upward, at which point they lost speed, and the Sus, having made a sharp turn, found themselves on the tail of the enemy. A moment later and the target was "destroyed"." 

Simonov also revealed what he thinks about the Indian's Su-30MKI's recent run-ins with American fighters.
 

Thus, when the Americans learnt that India had acquired the more advanced Su-30s, they decided to pay them a visit. In their exercises they decided to use the improved F-15. The result of the meeting was 6:4 in favour of the Su-30. However, instead of the Su-30MKI, the Indians used the ordinary training Su-30, a machine without the new radar or thrust vector control. The next time Americans arrived in India, they brought the improved F-16.

"This fighter jet is smaller and lighter than our Su-30," says Simonov. "Thus, logically, it ought to be more manoeuvrable and win in close combat. But everything was exactly the opposite. Su-30MKIs were used. The defeat was unquestionable."

Watch Northrop's full presentation in four parts on YouTube:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3 (above)
• Part 4
  

Northrop Grumman hosted a press conference today to deliver a specific message: the company wants wholesale changes made to the US Air Force's draft requirements for a KC-135R tanker replacement contract.

If KC-X were a political campaign, pundits would say Northrop's candidate for the coveted KC-X deal has "gone negative". But the twist is that Northrop isn't bothering to criticize it's rival (Boeing KC-7A7 bid). Instead, Northrop's complaints are focused on how its customer is proposing to evaluate the final bids. Following the political analogy, it might be like a politician bashing voters for the way they think.

But Northrop's bottom line still isn't clear. The company won't say what it will do if the USAF doesn't make substantial change to its acquisition strategy. Off camera, I asked Bill Welser, Northrop vice president for air mobility, if Northrop believes its tanker bid can win under the draft requirements. Welser replied that he'd have to wait to see the final requirements. After I repeated that I had asked about the draft requirements, Welser again dodged a direct reply: "We can design an aircraft that meets the requirement," he says.

The US Air Force has revealed that the structural health of its primary airborne electronic attack platform, the EC-130H Compass Call, is under review by a fleet viability board.

The board's members will determine by January how the airframes of the 14-aircraft Compass Call fleet have held up after nearly a decade of hyper-activity, says Col Stephen Brown, chief of electronic warfare requirements.

The US Air Force's primary system for jamming communications systems has been in high demand in both Afghanistan and Iraq, presumably for disrupting the comparatively primitive command and control networks of insurgents and jamming the triggering devices for improvised explosive devices.

The Compass Call fleet has operated at a rate 2.5 times greater than planned, Brown says in an interview. But it's not clear if any major concerns prompted USAF officials to call for the fleet viability board review.

"I'm not gong to say it was a worry or a concern," Brown says.

The results of the review will be closely scrutinized by the joint community. The Compass Calls are not only in high demand in current operations, but are the primary aerial weapon for jamming or disrupting enemy communications in a "near-peer" conflict.

Moreover, the Compass Call's future viability is a hot issue within the USAF. By default, the EC-130H fleet now stands as a pillar of the USAF's airborne electronic attack strategy, with the final demise earlier this year of a plan to convert some B-52s into standoff broadband signals jammers. Brown confirms the B-52 core component jammer programme was canceled because a broadband jammer was not deemed cost-effective.

If the Compass Call viability review  finds any problems, the USAF could be faced with an unplanned, and expensive, repair or replacement bill. USAF officials have previously stated that WC-130s or TC-130s, or both, could be converted into EC-130Hs if the demand required it.

The US Navy is also starting to field its own communications jamming system. The Boeing EA-18G Growler carries the Raytheon ALQ-227 communications countermeasures set.

The US Army also appears interested in creating a similar capability by repackaging the ALQ-227 into a jamming pod that can be carried by unmanned aircraft system such as the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc MQ-1C Sky Warrior.

Who needs a PR staff when you can just browse job ads for news?

Consider this new ad posted by Raytheon seeking to hire a program manager in Dallas.

Manager III-Program Management

In November of 2007, the U.S. Army selected RTN to provide a common sensor payload for manned and unmanned aircraft in a program that could represent more than $1 billion in potential sales.  CSP was awarded to Raytheon Army contract to provide the electro-optic/infrared/laser designator (EO/IR/LD) payload for use on the Army's Extended Range Multi-Purpose (ERMP) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

 

In response to a recent army RFQ,   RTN has proposed a significant upgrade program to the baseline CSP configuration to include High Definition (HD) EO/IR capability and Target Location Accuracy (TLA) enhancements. This position is the program manager (PM) of the CSP TLA/HD  (approx $30M) development program. The selected individual will be responsible for managing all aspects of the development program including start up, gate reviews, customer reviews, customer daily interface, supplier management, build of 6 integration and test systems, quality testing and flight testing. It is anticipated the CSP TLA/HD development program will result in retrofit of up to 100 baseline CSP systems and this position would manage the follow-on retrofit business.  The TLA/HD upgrade program will be run in parallel with the CSP IDIQ base program and will require integration and leveraging with the on-going CSP production program

Has anybody heard of the Sabre Warrior UCAV?



This video has been on YouTube since May 2008, but hasn't received nearly the attention it deserves.

Only one reference to the Sabre Warrior has appeared in print, and that was about a decade ago. An Associated Press story on April 17, 1999, quotes Armand Chaput, then-Lockheed Martin's director for unmanned combat air vehicles, who gave a lecture at the University of Toledo.

"Chaput showed Toledo engineering students video animations of several Lockheed-Martin projects, complete with video game-style fires and explosions.

One, the Sabre Warrior, was portrayed taking off from an airfield at night, receiving computerized target instructions from soldiers hidden inside enemy lines, and dropping bombs that destroy a convoy of tanks and other armored equipment.

Chaput also showed a video animation of a proposed unmanned plane that would take off from a submarine, unfold its wings while floating to the surface, fly to a target, drop bombs and return to the submarine, where it would be serviced by robots."

Flightglobal's Asia bureau chief Siva Govindasamy covered the Seoul Air Show last week, and published two big program updates on KF-X and AH-X.

• Seoul could revive KF-16 plans

• KAI reveals options for army attack helicopter

A tourist also posted great video of the static line and exhibit halls on You Tube. The soundtrack is a little cheesy, but the footage is worth the minor annoyance.

Quoting a single, anonymous source, InsideDefense.com today reported that the Pentagon's Joint Estimating Team (JET) has concluded the F-35 faces another multi-billion dollar overrun and more schedule delays. If true, the JET might have simply re-affirmed the conclusions in last year's report (click here -- see page 8) , which projected a nearly $7 billion overrun and a two-year delay. Or JET's outlook for the program could have worsened over the past year, as the InsideDefense.com story suggests.

The Pentagon won't confirm the InsideDefense.com article, or even comment on whether the JET has finished their work. The JET is a composite of the secretary of defense's cost analysis improvement group, and estimating teams from each of the services.

Whatever the status of the JET report is, however, Lockheed Martin disagrees with the conclusions. The company has released this statement in response to the InsideDefense.com scoop:

Lockheed Martin and our industry partners recognize the Joint Estimate Team's earnest efforts to predict F-35 program costs and schedules as part of the annual DoD budget planning process.  However, we disagree with their conclusions, which we believe are driven by legacy-based assumptions regarding the time required to deliver the remaining SDD aircraft, complete development, and conduct the flight test campaign.

The article below will appear next week in Flight International magazine. Click on the video to hear Lt. Col. Dale Zelko describe the moment a Serbian missile shot down his F-117 stealth fighter. 

USAF re-orients frustrated jamming strategy

By Stephen Trimble/Washington DC

The US Air Force has dramatically changed the focus of a frustrated, decade-long attempt to revitalize its ability to jam radars and communications systems.

After abandoning a second attempt earlier this year to convert some Boeing B-52Hs into standoff jamming platforms, the USAF investment strategy has shifted to fielding less expensive "stand-in" systems that could be delivered within a few years.

"In this new environment, as we look at this fiscally-constrained world, we've got to figure out how to do it with less money, but we also have to figure out how to do it faster," Maj Gen David J. Scott, air staff requirements director, said 20 October.

Scott, addressing the Association of Old Crows annual convention, cited Raytheon's miniature air launched decoy-jammer (MALD-J) as a key priority in the new strategy. The MALD-J remains in development, but, when deployed, will fly into defended airspace and jam hostile radars.

The USAF also has revealed plans to adopt a low-cost strategy to augment its aging and heavily used EC-130 Compass Call fleet. Compass Call crews jam communications systems ranging from the command and control networks of peer militaries to mobile phones carried by insurgents for coordinating ambushes or triggering improvised explosive devices.

Two weeks ago, the Aeronautical Systems Center's capabilities development division issued a call for industry to propose ideas for augmenting the EC-130's mission with a communications network attack pod.

The USAF may acquire low-cost, communications jamming pods for "existing aircraft", and deploy them no later than 2012, the survey notice says.

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), fighters, bombers and transports could be used to carry the pod, the notice says. Performance requirements for the jamming system are classified, but the survey notice says some are "challenging". If a company is unable to deliver a fully compliant system by 2012, it should explain how it could be upgraded to meet all of the requirements later, the notice says.

The low-cost, stand-in jamming strategy is the latest plan for addressing the US military's acknowledged gaps in electronic warfare capabilities.

The USAF chose not to replace the EF-111 Raven fleet, retired in 1997. Two years later, Serbia shot down the Lockheed F-117 fighter, exposing the need for robust jamming even with stealth technology.

In 2002, the USAF launched the airborne electronic attack system of systems strategy, which called for acquiring the B-52 standoff jamming system. But the USAF cancelled the programme in 2005, claiming the programme's cost had ballooned from $1 billion to $7 billion.

A scaled-back version of the B-52 concept was revived in 2007, renamed the core component jammer. But the USAF acknowledged that the CCJ programme was eliminated in budget plans earlier this year.

"I think when you see the final [Fiscal 2012 programme objective memoranda and FY2011 budget request], I think you'll see that we've tried to do some things to improve those capabilties," Scott says.

[Correction: Updating version with F-16, not F-117.]

Maj Gen David Scott yesterday greatly added to the unclassified record of the F-117 F-16 shoot-down over Bosnia 14 years ago. Addressing the Association of Old Crows convention, Scott, air staff requirements director, says Capt O'Grady's fighter was shot down because the USAF failed to install a piece of technology it had developed 10 years earlier. His explanation reveals much about the USAF's prevailing attitude towards electronic warfare funding.

"No matter what you all have heard and all the things, and a lot of us fighter pilots, you know, man, if it had been me, it would never have happened. No that's not true, and I know a little bit more and we can't get into details, but if we go back in the back room, I can probably tell you a little bit more because right after that, I came to the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron.

The chief of staff at the time was a guy named Fogleman. He knew some systems that we had that were sitting in a bucket back here that we just hadn't paid for and we just hadn't brought forth that would have enabled us within two months, we take that system to Aviano, we put it on the F-16s, and today it's flying on lots of airplanes and it has the capability that we need to give to the warfighter."

Several minutes later, Scott returns to the F-16 shoot-down theme:

Personally, and is just a personal opinion, but I got to be very involved in all the tests and evaluation as we looked at the shoot-down, as we looked at the capabilities that he had on his aircraft, as we looked at how the Serbians did the particular shot and the things that they did, if he had had that piece of equipment that General Fogleman had worked on when he was a one star general, an A8 XP, now he's the chief of staff 10 years later, and we have to have a chief of staff say, 'Put that on the airplane. Why is that not there?'

Never before perhaps has a fighter been "selected" by so many countries without actually, you know, signing an order.

French media reports today that Kuwait Defense Minister Sheik Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah now wants to buy between 14 to 28 Dassault Rafales. Says French newspaper Le Point, according to Google translator: "We have given the green light and we'll leave it to the technical group to study in depth the details," added the minister, whose remarks were translated."

So the Rafale is reportedly selected in Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, but still hasn't secured an order. In September, Brazil announced that the Rafale enjoys a "comparative advantage" over US and Swedish rivals, but the competition apparently remains alive. So no order there either.

The Dubai Air Show is next month. Will it finally be Rafale's turn to participate in a contract signing ceremony?

I get that the US Transportation Command needs to ask airlines how they could support a proposed network for shipping highly classified information around the country. See market research survey here.

But couldn't they have figured out a way to ask that information without publicly giving away the routes, frequencies and approximate size of the classified shipments?

Excerpt:

We are seeking information from the airline industry on the best commercial practices to move two couriers and sensitive/classified material in sealable containers via air as follows:

Two United States Transportation Command DoD Couriers with personal baggage and airline provided sealable canisters of various sizes based on cargo weight (average weights per route subject to change) according to the following schedule:

Baltimore to Sacramento approximately 4,800 lbs weekly

Sacramento to Baltimore approximately 4,200 lbs weekly

Baltimore to San Antonio approximately 2,500 lbs weekly

San Antonio to Baltimore approximately 1,900 lbs weekly

Baltimore to Omaha approximately 3,500 lbs bi-weekly

Omaha to Baltimore approximately 2,100 lbs bi-weekly

Sacramento to Seattle approximately 900 lbs bi-weekly

Seattle to Sacramento approximately 450 lbs bi-weekly

EADS CEO Louis Gallois today announced that former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will succeed Ralph Crosby as head of the company's North American subsidiary on November 1. Crosby will assume a new role as chairman, but continue to lead the company's pursuit of the KC-X tanker contract in partnership with Northrop Grumman.

Et tu, Raytheon?


The defense contractor intentionally misspelled a would-be namesake to make the acronym work for a new pod (pictured above) for unmanned aircraft systems.

So Caesar, the Roman emperor/murder victim, became CEASAR, short for communications electronic attack with surveillance and reconnaissance.

The pod, unveiled yesterday at the Association of Old Crows convention, re-packages the EA-18G communications jammer for the MQ-1C Sky Warrior. The US Army is apparently interested in buying a few.

But watch out, CEASAR. Brutus is dead, but keep your eyes out for knife-wielding assassins wearing USAF-blue togas!

Michael Wynne, a former Secretary of the Air Force, has published a blistering new critique on the industrial impact of the F-22 termination decision. It exposes many skeletons that industry may prefer to keep hidden. He suggests, for example, that F-22's demise could a) drive price increases for the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, b) trigger new cost problems for the C-130J and c) ultimately force Lockheed to shut down the Marietta facility. We also learn more about several misguided industrial base strategies, such as the DOD-imposed ADA software standard that crippled a wide variety of major weapons programs, including the F-22. In the end, Wynne, a Bush Administration appointee, takes a political stand, implying the F-22 decision is a "symbolic target for a populist president".

It is not factually accurate to write that Wynne was "ousted" or "fired" by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but he might as well have been. Wynne was asked to resign, and he complied. The ostensible reason was to hold Wynne -- and Chief of Staff Gen T. Michael Moseley -- accountable for breakdowns in oversight of the US Air Force's nuclear enterprise. But Wynne and Moseley also staunchly fought to protect the F-22 against termination threats from both the second Bush and Obama administrations. Their removal paved the way for Gates to successfully kill the program this summer over the objections of loyal F-22 supporters in Congress.

READ WYNNE'S FULL OP-ED PIECE HERE.

The Association of Old Crows hosted a press conference today featuring Ron "Fog" Hahn, a former EA-6B Prowler pilot, who is now deputy director of the Joint Electronic Warfare Center.

I asked him the biggest question on my mind about the electronic warfare community. With the Next Generation Jammer program now gaining momentum, and the USAF struggling to get the Core Component Jammer program off the ground, how does the joint community justify the budget for these very clearly "next war" type programs. In an age of where the most dangerous immediate threat is an insurgent holding a cellular phone, how do you find billions of dollars to spend on technology designed to defeat the most advanced sensors in a "peer" adversary's arsenal.

This clip is from two weeks ago. Two colonels representing the USAF's combat search and rescue community answer questions from reporters on the sidelines of the HC-130J keel-laying ceremony on October 5. The ceremony took place inside Lockheed's massive factory in Fort Worth Marietta, Georgia, where the F-22, C-130J and P-3 wings are manufactured. The F-35's center wing panels are also moving from Fort Worth to Marietta very soon.

The DEW Line thanks the folks at Naval Air Station/Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth for fashioning commemorative bottles of F-35 chardonnay, and, of course, to "spacer01" for posting the picture on Twitter. Thanks to them, we may be able to answer the critical question -- decades ahead of schedule, mind you: How well does the F-35 age? (H/t: spacer01)

Yes, there are a few cringe-worthy moments of irony-free propaganda, but this promotional video posted on YouTube earlier today serves as a nice introduction to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Given that the company's very acronym is vintage Space Odyssey-style irony, it's hard to fault them for generous descriptions of such legendarily troubled programs as Tejas and the Hawk trainer. But you can bet that HAL will be a major force in global aeronautics over the next several decades, given India's rising strategic importance. So enjoy the show, irony and all.

So I'm reading Esquire's new thumb-sucker of a feature article with the typical -- and increasingly mandatory -- "UAVs are changing war as we know it" angle, and my eyes stumble on this gem of a paragraph. Can somebody put some MILCON in the next budget for a few spare power generators at Creech AFB, for pete's sake?

During "lost link" episodes, when communication with the air crew is broken, the plane circles on a preset course and waits for direction. "We have to find it. It's like hide-and-seek," Dowd said. The week Gersten took command at Creech, a power surge hit the base and he lost contact with several Predators and Reapers over Afghanistan and Iraq. His crews told him this was nothing to worry about, and in fifteen minutes all the planes were back online. Two weeks later, another power surge hit Creech and he lost contact with more Predators and Reapers. Within a half hour, all were found. But systems so technology-dependent will be vulnerable to exploitation, whether through hacking or physical interruption of data -- shooting down a satellite, perhaps, along its round-the-world journey. And in increasingly wired war zones, everyone will be fighting for bandwidth.

Lockheed Martin has identified a possible new business model in the global market for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft: leasing platforms that carry reconfigurable suites of multi-intelligence payloads.
The strategy is based on Lockheed's airborne multi-intelligence laboratory, a company-owned Gulfstream III (G-III) modified to carry three sensors - electro-optical/infrared cameras, low- and high-band signals receivers and a synthetic aperture radar - and an on-board processing system.




Lockheed officials previously advertised the aircraft as simply a testbed. US and foreign militaries could pay Lockheed to experiment with unfamiliar techniques, such as using the signals intelligence system to cue the camera onto a potential target.
But Lockheed also now sees the platform possibly ushering a very different kind of business model for a traditional defence contractor.
"We are also investigating the possibility of offering the AML as an ISR platform that customers can lease to meet their ISR needs," Jim Quinn, a Lockheed vice president. "We would reconfigure the aircraft to meet the customer's specific requirements, then lease the aircraft for a period of time to that customer."
Quinn also said the system could be installed on different platforms, ranging at the high end from Gulfstream 550s and Bombardier Q400w with roughly 9,070kg (20,000lb) payload capacity to Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350s with roughly 900kg payloads.
The strategy could expand Lockheed's original concept beyond the laboratory stage and into the operational arena. Several small US companies already operate in this space, including Avenge Inc. and Dynamic Aviation Services. These firms lease King Airs and Cessna caravans and private crews to US military and intelligence agencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Lockheed plans to partner with such companies to broker aircraft for the leasing deals, taking advantage of their lower overhead and existing relationships, Quinn said. In turn, Lockheed would provide the multi-intelligence suites and perform the integration on the aircraft, he added.
Platforms carrying multiple intelligence payloads that can cross-referenced in real-time by on-board processing equipment and specialists remains an operational novelty.
The US Army signed a $2 billion deal in 2004 to acquire the Aerial Common Sensor (ACS), but the contract with Lockheed was terminated two years later after the multi-intelligence sensor payload outgrew the capacity of the selected platform, a modified Embraer ERJ-145.

The French Air Force public affairs department released this video of the Rafale back in June. (h/t Denis)

Lockheed Martin unveiled Pakistan's new F-16 Block 52 this morning in a ceremony at Fort Worth, Texas, attended by both the US and Pakistani air force chiefs.


Pakistan hasn't taken delivery of a new Lockheed Martin F-16 since 1990. The US government suspended deliveries under the Peace Gate IV program, which put 28 aircraft already built but not delivered in limbo status for several years. They were eventually used by the US Air Force as aggressors.

Doug Barrie posted the photo above on the Ares blog last week. The picture shows a relatively new Chinese UAV obviously designed (see high-aspect ratio wing) for high-altitude operations.

The UAV is likely the BZK-005. It hasn't received much press in the West, but is well-known on indigenous Chinese defense blogs. See reference on the cnair.top81.cn blog's UAV page below:

BZK-005 was developed by BUAA and HAIG in 2005 as a medium/high altitude long range reconnaissance UAV. It was unveiled briefly in an AVIC promotional video at the 2006 Zhuhai International Airshow. The UAV features a stealth optimized fuselage and twin tailfins tilted outwards to reduce RCS. A large SATCOM antenna is thought to be installed inside the nose bulge, which provides live data transmission over thousands of kilometers. A small turret is installed underneath the nose housing the FLIR/CCD cameras. Those can be used for photo reconnaissance if needed. The UAV also features wings of a large wingspan and a fuel efficient poston engine, and is constructed using large amount of composite materials. These help to increase its range and cruising altitude, while reduce its RCS. Some specifications: cruising speed 150-180km/hr, service ceiling 8,000m, endurance 40hr, max TO weight <1,250kg, max payload >150kg, TO distance <600m, landing distance <500m.

There are also good references to the BZK-005 on Chinese-language military blogs. You can read Google-translated versions of the BZK-005 pages here and here, but look out for a not-safe-for-work-image at the bottom of the former page.

You can't make this stuff up.

China builds 'Pentagon' shopping centre in Shanghai

The Shanghai Pentagonal Mart is bigger than the Virginia headquarters of the US defence department, sprawling across over 70 acres, but it has a rather more mundane purpose.

When its doors open at the beginning of next year, it will be a shopping centre. The site is around 40 minutes from the centre of Shanghai by car.

"The project started in 2003," said a spokesman. "Construction started the following year and we are nearly finished. We are just sealing the roof."

He added: "The design of the project was inspired by the appearance of the Pentagon. This building is not only impressive externally, but it is actually a very smart design. The logistics mean that people can circulate freely inside."

The next time you find yourself stranded, chased by enemies and possibly injured, here's some advice: Duck! An all terrain vehicle dropped by a US Air Force C-130 or C-17 may soon be landing right on top of you.

That seems to be the goal anyway of a new USAF program called the Guardian Angel Air-Deployable Rescue Vehicle (GAARV). The Aeronautical Systems Center is hosting an industry day for prospective bidders during the first week of November in a lovely Southern California resort town called Lake Elsinore.

The clip below (h/t gizmodo) provides a glimpse of a posssble operational scenario.



Or, um, something like that.

According to the USAF's notice, a driver is apparently dropped with the GAARV in the vicinity of the "isolated personnel", and searches for them. If everything goes as planned, the vehicle than travels up to 100 miles at a top speed of 35 mph to a suitable extraction point. The system could be deployed to pick up hard-luck civilians, too. 

"The all-terrain capability inherent to the GAARV will also make this vehicle highly suited to hurricane response and other humanitarian relief operations by allowing teams to traverse streets flooded with up to 3 feet of water and piles of debris. The increased cargo capacity of the GAARV will provide the ability to transport medical and extrication equipment, in addition to extra supplies for survivors and the rescue team into the locations where it is needed most urgently."

A video has surfaced on YouTube showing a senior Brazilian officer expressing deep frustrations with the US government's technology transfer policies for military equipment. Complaints about the US government's technology transfer policies are widespread globally, but this video is remarkable for citing examples in such specific detail, including showing photocopies of US government denial letters.

The two-day-old clip is attributed to a lecture presented last December by Brigadier Engineer Venancio Alvarenga Gomes, the director of projects for Brazil's command-general for aerospace technology, in Sao Jose dos Campos, which also happens to be where Embraer's headquarters is located.



The video concludes with a graphic showing a red 'X' over a picture of a Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet, which is competing against the Dassault Rafale and the Saab Gripen for Brazil's F-X2 deal. According to Google's translator, the title of the slide says: "USA not technology transfer". It does not appear that the final slide was included in Gomes' presentation. It may have been added after that event by the YouTube poster.

Gomes presents a series of case studies to illustrate his frustrations of doing business with the US military. His examples include sudden policy changes by the US Department of State that revoked export licenses for two US-made systems -- Northrop Grumman's LN100G navigation system and a Honeywell navigation system -- that were already in production on Brazilian military aircraft.

"Sudden changes in policy of exporting is already generating uncertainty," Gomes writes on a slide, according to Google translator.

Gomes' presentation even included photocopied memos apparently by US Navy and Department of State officials, denying Brazilian requests for US-made components to upgrade a Brazilian missile called the Mectron MAA-1B Piranha 2.

An excerpt from one of the photocopied memos, signed by a US Navy official, is highlighted on Gomes' slide and says: "The use of two-color infrared detector arrays could potentially result in a significant upgrade of the Sidewinder missile seeker capability against decoys and countermeasures." Although the next sentence on the memo was not highlighted, it explained in English that Brazil had not described the MAA-1B development program in "sufficient detail" to allow the US Navy officials to perform a proper assessment.

If any of you know Portugese, please help translate the brigadier's remarks.

I am seeking information about companies that sell military aircraft services, similar to how Xe Services LLC (formerly Blackwater) sells guns for hire.

Just glancing around the web, I've found two companies that have deployed private military fleets to the Middle East under contract with the US military and government agencies.

Avenge Inc., for example, advertises that it provides as a service both intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and target acquisition, using a fleet of Hawker Beechcraft King Air turboprops.

Another firm, Dynamic Aviation, says that it operates a fleet that includes a DC-9 and several King Airs for intelligence-gathering purposes by the US military. 

Don't say the US Army lacks ambition. Nearly four years after the Aerial Common Sensor program flopped, the army is back with a bold new proposal to adopt a five-layer "aerial ISR family" featuring all-new hybrid airships, Bombardier Q400s, Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350s (aka: MC-12Ws) and two classes of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

The slide above shows the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc MQ-1C Sky Warrior for the medium/large UAS, but the rumors inside the AUSA exhibit hall also pointed to the Boeing A160 Hummingbird. The army hasn't joined the US Navy/US Marine Corps small tactical UAS/Tier II program, but the new strategy calls for a UAS in the same class. The picture above shows the AAI Aerosonde UAS, one of the four competitors for STUAS/Tier II.

The strategy for the aerial ISR family calls for buying four -- and perhaps -- five new aircraft, including one type -- an untethered, hybrid airship -- that hasn't been in the US Military force structure for about 60 years. The hybrid airship is called the long-endurance multi-intelligence vehicle. A request for proposals by the army's space and missile defense command is expected to be issued very soon. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division, which demonstrated the roughly half-scale P791 hybrid airship in 2006, and UK-based Hybrid Air Vehicles plan to compete for the LEMV contract.

This could be the beginning of a long and interesting story as we watch the army attempt to radically transform its aerial ISR capability with a complete family of systems. Getting the funding in the current budget environment could be difficult. The US Senate has recently voted to eliminate all funding next year for the Q400 aerial common sensor.

MARIETTA, Ga. -- Lockheed Martin has displayed a fuzzy image of a whole new version of the 55-year-old C-130 Hercules family tailored to support the needs of special operations forces.

The picture (above) was visible in the bottom-left corner of a briefing slide (below) presented to reporters yesterday, who traveled to Lockheed's C-130J final assembly line to witness the keel-laying ceremony for the first production HC-130J.


Asked about the blurry concept image, Lockheed officials acknowledged developing plans for a larger version of the Super Hercules. It would feature extra storage capacity to house surveillance equipment and weapons required by special operations forces, who are emerging as a key new customer for Lockheed's C-130J. The goal is to clean up the C-130's outer mold line, while still providing special operators with all of their desired payloads.

Lockheed also displayed a slightly different version of a larger C-130 airframe slightly over a year ago. At that time, Lockheed said the enlarged version could be needed to support the US Army's increasingly heavier ground vehicles, and compete with the Airbus A400M.

Perhaps not since master Iraqi propagandist Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf declared coalition forces defeated even as tanks encircled Baghdad has a certain loser expressed such optimism:

Russian firm is confident to win Brazil jet deal

(AFP) - 3 hours ago

MOSCOW -- Russia's state arms export firm voiced optimism on Friday about winning a multi-billion-dollar Brazilian fighter jet tender despite rival bids from French, US and Swedish aerospace companies.

The article quotes Rosoboronexport spokesman Vyacheslav Davydenko doing his best "Baghdad Bob" impersonation: "We have good chances of winning the competition," Davydenko says.

Did Rosoboronexport miss the memo? The Brazilian Air Force rejected the Sukhoi Su-35 during the first downselect in October -- 2008! More recently, Brazil's president has declared that the Dassault Rafale F3 enjoys a "comparative advantage" over the two remaining finalists in the competition -- the Saab JAS-39 Gripen and Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

Capt. George Bryan Houghton, a US Air Force F-16 pilot, died on June 22 because he lost track of his altitude. He was practicing high-angle-strafing at night using night vision goggles. Houghton had only recently graduated to such operations in the F-16. If he realized that he began his dive toward the target 2,000ft below the minimum safe altitude, his actions didn't show it. A laser spot illuminating the target consumed Houghton's focus. He didn't respond to alerts from three different cockpit instruments and a ground controller -- all telling him to "pull up".

The accident investigation report released on Monday concluded that Houghton made no attempt to eject or pull up before crashing. His F-16 struck ground 50ft in front of his target, an angle suggesting Houghton believed it was still 1,000ft below.

I reported two months ago that the US Air Force had decided against funding a readily available technology that could prevent such an accident. I based my reporting on an official response to my question by Air Combat Command. I have recently learned that the ACC's response was wrong. The organization, in fact, has decided to upgrade the F-16, F-22 and F-35 -- all Lockheed Martin-designed, fly-by-wire fighters -- with the auto-ground collision avoidance system (Auto-GCAS).

The USAF and NASA first demonstrated Auto-GCAS in 1998. At that time, the Skunk Works-built software system had a few bugs, but still proved the idea was feasible, says Mark "Tex" Wilkins, a senior aviation safety analyst for the defense safety oversight council.

Auto-GCAS track's the aircraft's position, speed and altitude against a digital terrain map of the Earth. It intervenes when the pilot becomes disoriented, or suffers a G-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC). If the system calculates the aircraft is within 1.5sec of approaching a point of no return, it takes control and levels the aircraft, as you can see in the HUD video below of an Auto-GCAS test flight.



Wilkins says that analysis shows Auto-GCAS would have prevented 16 fighter crashes since 2000, when the system was originally declared a "mature" technology by the Air Force Research Laboratory. It would have saved Houghton life's, as well as the life of David Cooley, a Lockheed Martin F-22 test pilot. Cooley lost focus four 4sec during a high-speed manoeuvre, but regained control only to find himself in an unrecoverable position -- nose-low at Mach 1.6 and diving through 14,000ft.

The USAF will start equipping F-16s with Auto-GCAS in the 6.2 block of the operational fight program, which is scheduled to deploy after 2012. The system is also now part of the 3.2 software block for the F-22 operational flight program, now deploying in 2016, Wilkins says.