/themes/custom/particle/dist/app-drupal/assets/awn-logo.svg
Skip to main content
  • Market Sector
    • Aerospace
    • Air Transport
    • MRO
    • Defense and Space
    • Business Aviation
  • Markets
    • Aerospace
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Connected Aerospace
      • Emerging Technologies
      • Manufacturing & Supply Chain
      • Unmanned & Urban Aviation
      • Commercial Space
      • Program Management
    • Air Transport
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Interiors & Connectivity
      • Airports & Routes
      • Airlines & Lessors
      • Safety, Ops & Regulation
      • Maintenance & Training
    • MRO
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Interiors & Connectivity
      • Emerging Technologies
      • Supply Chain
      • Safety, Ops & Regulation
      • Workforce & Training
    • Defense and Space
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Sensors & Electronic Warfare
      • Missile Defense & Weapons
      • Supply Chain
      • Budget, Policy & Operations
      • Space
    • Business Aviation
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Interiors & Connectivity
      • Airports, FBOs & Suppliers
      • Flight Deck
      • Safety, Ops & Regulation
      • Maintenance & Training
  • Marketplace
  • Services
    • Services
      • Advertising
      • Marketing Services
      • Fleet, Data & APIs
      • Research & Consulting
      • Network and Route Planning
      • Marketplace
  • Store
    • Market Sector

      • Aerospace
      • Air Transport
      • MRO
      • Defense and Space
      • Business Aviation
    • Type View All Products
      • Intelligence Bundles
        • AWIN - Premium
        • AWIN - Aerospace and Defense
        • AWIN - Business Aviation
        • AWIN - Commercial Aviation
      • Market Briefings
        • Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
        • Aviation Daily
        • SpeedNews
        • The Weekly of Business Aviation
      • Directories
        • Air Charter Guide
        • Aviation Week Marketplace
        • Route Exchange
        • The Engine Yearbook
      • Data Services
        • AC-U-KWIK
        • Aircraft Bluebook
        • Airportdata.com
        • Airport Strategy and Marketing (ASM)
        • CAPA – Centre for Aviation
        • Fleet Discovery Civil
        • Fleet Discovery Military
        • Fleet & MRO Forecast
        • MRO Prospector
      • Publications
        • Air Transport World
        • Aviation Week & Space Technology
        • Aviation Week & Space Technology - Inside MRO
        • Business & Commercial Aviation
        • CAPA - Airline Leader
        • Routes magazine
        • ShowNews
      • Resources
        • Downloadable Reports
  • Events
    • Events View All Events
      • MRO
        • MRO Americas
        • MRO Asia
        • MRO Baltics, Eastern Europe and Russia (BEER)
        • MRO Europe
        • MRO Latin America
        • MRO Middle East
        • MRO Transatlantic
        • Military Aviation Logistics and Maintenance Symposium (MALMS)
      • Commercial Aviation
        • Aero-Engines Americas
        • Aero-Engines Asia
        • Aero-Engines Europe
        • Commercial Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference (ASC)
        • Commercial Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference - Europe (ACE)
        • Engine Leasing, Trading & Finance
      • Aerospace and Defense
        • A&D Mergers and Acquisitions Conference (ADMA)
        • Aerospace Manufacturing Conference (AMC)
        • Aerospace Raw Materials & Manufacturers Supply Chain Conference (RMC)
        • DefenseChain Conference (DCPE)
      • Air Transport
        • CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation Summit
        • CAPA Latin America Aviation & LCCs Summit
        • CAPA Live
        • Routes Americas 2021
        • Routes Asia 2021
        • Routes Europe 2021
        • Routes Reconnected
        • TakeOff North America 2020
        • World Aviation Outlook Summit 2020
        • World Routes 2021
      • Business Aviation
        • Business Aviation Week 2020
        • Business & General Aviation Conference (BGA)
      • Awards
        • 20 Twenties
        • Aviation Week Laureates Awards
        • Program Excellence Awards and Banquet
    • Webinars
      • Upcoming Webinars
  • About
    • About Aviation Week Network
      • Our Story
      • Content and Data Team
      • Aviation Week & Space Technology 100-Year
    • Contact Us
      • Subscriber Services
      • Advertising, Marketing Services & List Rentals
      • Content Sales
      • Events
      • PR & Communications
      • Content Licensing and Reprints
      • FAQ
  • Log In
  • Register
  • My Account
    • Profile
    • Sign Out
  • AWIN Access
  • My cart
  1. Back to Defense and Space

Share

Out Of The Shadows: The Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office

U.S. Air Force

In February, Carter revealed the SCO’s pursuit of an “arsenal plane,” which allows frontline fighters to launch weapons from an undisclosed heavy ordnance carrier flying at the back of a pack via an airborne fire-control network. He also revealed the development of micro-drones that can be dispensed from a fighter aircraft traveling at Mach 0.9, and the firing of subcaliber hypervelocity projectiles—originally intended for electromagnetic railguns—from Army howitzers and 5-in. Navy cannons for defense against missile raids. Carter added that the SCO has tweaked Raytheon’s shipborne, aircraft-killing Standard Missile-6 to destroy enemy vessels, and is also installing anti-ship seekers on the Raytheon Tomahawk Land Attack Missile and Lockheed Martin-built Army Tactical Missile System (ATacMS).

Small-Diameter Bomb’s New Seeker

U.S. Air Force

Satellite-guided weapons forever changed warfare by replacing mass bombardments with precision strikes. But with so many munitions now dependent on GPS for guidance, what happens if the signal is disrupted, jammed or those satellites are destroyed? The SCO has proposed low-cost seekers—produced from smartphone-class camera components. The office intends to demonstrate it first with the Boeing GBU-39 Small-Diameter Bomb and regular Joint Direct Attack Munitions. Captive-carry tests to validate the software and hardware on a surrogate aircraft have already taken place prior to flight demonstrations in 2017, Roper says.

If successful, the Air Force could choose to procure it as an upgrade kit for weapons that are solely reliant on GPS-aided inertial navigation for guidance. The tests will confirm if the seeker can steer the weapon to within meters of an intended target, and if so, there is high likelihood the advanced navigation kit will transition into a program of record, Roper said in August. “We’ll take the data back from those Small-Diameter Bomb tests and then anchor our models for how it could be applied to other weapons,” he says. “If everything goes well, I think it has a high potential to transition.”

Multidomain ATacMS

U.S. Army

The most recent the SCO revelation came on Oct. 28 during Carter’s speech at a Defense Department-sponsored Third Offset Strategy in Washington. There, he announced that the Army Tactical Missile System designed in the late-1980s would receive a new seeker for targeting ships some 186 mi. (300 km) off the coast.

With its budget and force size a fraction of what is was during the military buildup in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2009, the Army has been looking for more ways to contribute beyond traditional land warfare. With the Air Force and Navy now providing the bulk of firepower against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria, the Army is pursuing a new doctrine dubbed multidomain battlefield, where Army will fight across the land, air, sea, space and cyber domains. It is in this new doctrinal reality that the 24-in.-dia. “Multidomain ATacMS” missile comes into play.

Roper says the SCO has been working with the ATacMS program office for a couple of years to find a seeker that will allow the long-serving, GPS-guided missile to strike moving and stationary targets on land and at sea, even without a satellite signal. He says it should not come as any surprise, given the number and variety of seekers now in development, that ATacMS would be modified to hit sea targets. The Lockheed-made weapon is launched from the twin-shot M270 and single-shot M142 artillery rocket vehicles.

Hyper-Velocity Projectiles

Office of Naval Research

The pursuit of revolutionary technologies such as lasers and electromagnetic railguns has been a long and expensive affair, but sometimes new technologies spin out faster than the weapons themselves. Such is the case for the Office of Naval Research’s Hyper-Velocity Projectile, a low-drag, high-speed guided projectile designed to be shot from an electromagnetic railgun at seven times the speed of sound to destroy targets up to 100 mi. away. The SCO is investigating whether this sleek bullet could be fired from traditional “power guns,” namely the Paladin 155-mm self-propelled howitzer or 5-in. Mk. 45 Naval gun.

By wrapping the subcaliber projectile in an expendable sabot made from lightweight composite materials, it fits neatly inside the barrel of traditional guns. The concept was successfully demonstrated earlier this year with the fastest ever shot from a howitzer. “With Army and Navy artillery experts, we’ve improved our assessment of what powder guns can do by firing this pretty snazzy smart projectile,” Roper says. “When rail guns field in the future, we already have a ton of operational experience with the round, which has a role today.”

Advanced MK-48 Torpedo

Lockheed Martin

As the Navy resumes production of its heavy-hitting MK-48 submarine-launched torpedo, the SCO has proposed several classified design changes that will give it improved performance against enemy boats. “We are partnering with the Navy to build a higher-risk, higher-payoff variant with advanced propulsion, modular payloads and classified capabilities, enabling this undersea workhorse to go further and do more,” Roper stated in written testimony to Congress earlier this year.

The MK-48 was designed in the 1960s and fielded in the 1970s and the Hughes company produced an “advanced-capability” variant in the 1980s. The latest type—called MK-48 Mod 7 Common Broadband Advanced Sonar System, and produced by Lockheed Martin as an upgrade kit for the U.S. and Australia—achieved initial operational capability in 2006. In 2015, the Navy announced that production of new torpedoes would resume to meet operational requirements. Measuring 21-in. in diameter and weighing 3,520 lb., the torpedo upgrades will likely include an increase in speed beyond the current 28 kt. with an improved or replaced pumpjet engine and a new high-explosive, multi-effects warhead.

Arsenal Plane

Darpa

For the U.S. Air Force’s premier fighter aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35, stealth comes at the expense of payload capacity. To maintain their low-observable characteristics when flying into hostile combat zones guarded by many surface-to-air missiles, all weapons needed for a mission must be stored internally.

In stealth mode, the F-22 carries six AIM-120 Amraams and two AIM-9X Sidewinders, or dual AIM-120s and AIM-9Xs when making room for two 1,000-lb. smart bombs. The F-35 can carry up to 18,000 lb. of ordnance internally and on its wings, but this is reduced to two air-to-air missiles and two smart bombs when it flies covertly. Enter the SCO’s “Arsenal Plane,” a hefty, non-stealthy linebacker that launches weapons from beyond the range of enemy interceptors and missiles. This flying bomb truck would be linked to the F-22 and F-35 and other forward sensors over an airborne network to receive dynamic targeting information, allowing fewer aircraft to wreak more havoc. The SCO will demonstrate the capability on an as-yet-unspecified cargo or bomber aircraft, likely the Lockheed Martin C-130H or Boeing B-52H.

“The arsenal plane idea has been around for a long time, and it makes tons of sense,” Roper says. “In the Navy, you have a distributed, integrated fire-control network that can perform better than individual, isolated ships. It makes sense it could work in the air domain. Looking across the airplanes we have, we’re very likely to have one that can do the job. Once we have it, we’re likely to unveil it.”

Perdix Microdrone

James Drew/AW&ST

In ancient Greek mythology, Perdix was saved from sure death by transforming into a small bird when his jealous uncle, Daedalus, pushed him from a tower. That was the inspiration behind one prized SCO innovation, the Perdix microdrone, a surveillance device that is “kicked out” of a fighter’s flare dispenser at high subsonic speeds.

The design has gone through seven iterations and been demonstrated hundreds of times in flight from Boeing F/A-18s and Lockheed F-16s during combat exercises. When launched by the pilot at the press of a button, these swarmbots fall until they “wake up and find each other” via networking before flying off to perform their programmed surveillance mission below the cloud deck. “We’ve done more than 500 flights of the [unmanned aerial vehicle] now,” says Roper. “We’re always improving the design, as it’s a commercially based product. We build 40 or 50 in one lot, and by the time we’ve tested them, we already have the next design we’re building through 3-D printing and agile manufacturing. It’s an example of a [Defense Department] project where we’re starting to follow industry’s lead of continual improvement and testing.” If Perdix proves its operational worth in upcoming combat exercises, the program could move into production for use by fast jets.

Anti-Ship Standard Missile-6

Raytheon

Few missiles at sea are deadlier to aircraft than Raytheon’s Standard Missile-6, which combines the active seeker of its AIM-120C7 Amraam with the long-serving standard missile airframe. But when it was used this year to sink the USS Reuben James, a decommissioned Clemson-class destroyer, the naval fleets of Russia and China probably took note. Behind the project was the SCO, which partnered with the Navy to demonstrate the “distributed lethality” capabilities of the SM-6 weapon system through a few clever tweaks, essentially making it a triple threat against enemy aircraft, terminal-phase ballistic missiles and now ships. Produced at Raytheon’s plant at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the missile was first deployed operationally in 2013. The Navy is planning to buy upward of 600 SM-6s, meaning it will also have 600 anti-ship weapons. “A lot of what you see publicly [from the SCO] is driven by high-end [conflict], like the repurposing of SM-6,” Roper says. “I hold that up as a fielded example. We fielded that very quickly with the support of the Navy.” SM-6 is a key feature of the Navy’s Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air battle network.

Maritime Tomahawk

U.S. Navy

The Raytheon Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TALM) has served the Navy as a conventional and nuclear armament since its introduced in the 1980s, but a new seeker proposed by the SCO will allow it to target enemy ships at sea. The long-range, subsonic device is launched from U.S. submarine and surface vessels, with the latest variant being the networked Block IV variant. The SCO has been working with the Navy to demonstrate new guidance options under the “Strike-Ex project,” and the Navy intends to spend up to $430 million installing new anti-ship seekers and processors on up to 245 Tomahawks as it also searches for a long-term successor for fielding in the "2028-30 timeframe” under the Next-Generation Land Attack Weapon program.

The Navy has not had an anti-ship Tomahawk since the 300-mi.-range, active-radar-homing Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile was discarded in the 1990s. “This is not your grandfather’s Tomahawk,” says Ron Jenkins, Raytheon’s director of stand-off strike programs. “We’ll have a Tomahawk missile that can strike land targets as well as go after the challenging maritime targets at extreme range, so we’re talking in excess of 900 mi. for the maritime-strike Tomahawk, giving Tomahawk the ability to enter the offensive antisurface warfare fight.”

Miniature Air-Launched Decoy-X

U.S. Air Force

The SCO sees untapped potential in Raytheon’s ADM-160 Miniature Air Launched Decoy, a Pratt & Whitney TJ-150-powered cruise missile that acts as a stand-in decoy and electronic attack jammer. It uses signature augmentation technology to replicate the radar cross-section of Western combat jets as a way of making enemy early-warning radars think more fighters are inbound than actually are, or waste million-dollar missiles on phony targets. The decoys are launched from bombers and fighter jets and can also be dropped out of the back of cargo aircraft. The latest variant adds an electronic-attack capability to disrupt enemy radars. The SCO has proposed a “super version” of MALD dubbed MALD-X, which networks the weapon via data link and installs a new type of electronic-warfare payload. It will also be able to cruise at low altitudes to evade radar detection if needed. The SCO’s design builds upon on the existing model and meets the Navy’s requirement for a networked “MALD-N.”

“This was a program with lots of potential but stagnated,” Roper explained after a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington earlier this year. “We’ve been with it for two years, and we’re going to try to build a super version of it. We put an 'X' in it because we’re going do some really boundary-pushing technology, and we want to make it work for multiple services. We have a lot of options at our disposal.”

Previous
Next

As President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January and the relatively short reign of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter at the Pentagon closes, what will become of the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), Director William Roper and his merry band of innovators? Carter set up the SCO during his tenure as deputy defense secretary in August 2012 , but the office was kept secret until his fiscal 2017 budget preview at the Economic Club of Washington in February.  

Most of the SCO's 15-plus projects remain classified. The organization typically seeks to fund five or six projects each budget cycle and has requested $900 million from Congress for this fiscal year. It has already nominated several projects for fiscal 2018. But their fate, and that of the SCO will depend on who Trump picks to lead the Pentagon.

Roper, who has led the SCO since its inception, hails from the missile defense community. He says the SCO’s charter is to create an “arsenal of surprises and sleights of war” by teaching new tricks to old and recently-fielded weapons. The organization does not run programs, but instead partners with the services, combatant commanders and intelligence community to conduct two-to-four-year prototyping efforts, where they test novel concepts and ways of using weapons. SCO teams are working with the Pacific, European, Strategic and Special Operations commands to ensure projects are operationally relevant and can rapidly transition into funded programs of record if successfully demonstrated.

Coming out of the shadows in 2016 has helped raise the profile of the organization and has led to innovative ideas being presented by industry, but most of the SCO's work will remain secretive, Roper says. 

“My ultimate allegiance is to the commanders, and they need surprises,” he says. “They need tricks up their sleeve. They need the sleights of war early in a conflict that an opponent doesn’t know I’ve got coming. The more surprises we keep behind the door, the better equipped they’ll be to win.”

In this gallery, Aviation Week shows some of the projects revealed by Carter and Roper since the organization was publicly acknowledged.

This article was originally published digitally in Aviation Week & Space Technology on November 16, 2016.

Aviation Week Intelligence Network
Monitor the market and connect your business to the people, programs and proprietary data driving the Aerospace & Defense market - only available with AWIN.

ASD_AWIN_thumbnail_270

Stay Connected.
Stay Informed
Grow Your Business.

Learn How

Follow us on

Markets

  • Aerospace
  • Air Transport
  • MRO
  • Defense and Space
  • Business Aviation

Products

  • AWIN Intelligence Bundles
  • Market Briefings
  • Publications
  • Data Services
  • Directories
  • Resources

Contact Us

  • Subscriber Services
  • Advertising, Marketing Services & List Rentals
  • Content Sales
  • Events
  • PR & Communications
  • Content Licensing and Reprints
  • FAQ

Other Resources

  • Aviation Week Marketplace
  • Knowledge Center
  • Newsletters
  • ShowNews
Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved. Informa Markets, a trading division of Informa PLC.
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms of Use