India's Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) may finally have been cleared for entry into squadron service, but the coming year brings a critical round of testing for the Mk. 1 fighter. It must meet a final deadline of December 2014 to be fully operational. The tests are crucial to how the Indian air force (IAF) will deploy the jet, built chiefly to replace large numbers of MiG-21 interceptors still in service with frontline squadrons.
It has not been canceled but it is still not launched. South Korea's KF-X indigenous fighter program has received limited 2014 funding from parliament, subject to conditions that implicitly threaten to kill it if it goes off the rails.
What is becoming increasingly clear as the U.S. military continues its rebalance to the Asia-Pacific is that it is not only a mostly naval Pacific pivot, but primarily a shift of naval aviation. The Navy and Marine Corps are deploying their most technologically advanced aircraft to the region to participate in large-scale exercises or assist in major humanitarian efforts.
It has 1.25 million men and women and double-digit increases in its budget. But for officers, does the People's Liberation Army have good military leaders or good networkers?
Without money to carry two vendors through separate programs to develop more powerful Boeing Apache and Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter engines, U.S. Army officials are simply hoping now to be able to carry both through the technology development phase of the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP).
LONDON — Airbus Defense and Space — previously EADS Cassidian — has started test flights carrying the KEPD 350 Taurus cruise missile on the Eurofighter Typhoon. The first flight carrying the weapons took off from Manching air base, Germany, on Jan. 15 on Instrumented Production Aircraft (IPA) 7. The flight follows completion of ground tests and taxi tests late last year.
LONDON — Senior U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) officials have expressed their wish to keep the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial system after U.K. troops pull out of Afghanistan at the end of this year.
COAST GUARD: Congress looks set to provide the U.S. Coast Guard with $10.2 billion for fiscal 2014, $464 million above the Obama administration’s request for the year ending Sept. 30. In the congressional compromise worked out late Jan. 13 by Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and her House counterpart, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), lawmakers also provided $31 million for the Coast Guard to stand up an asset project office for the 14 C-27Js it is receiving from the Defense Department.
The main concern of Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, is North Korea and the unpredictable nature of the country and its government. That issue is “what I worry about every day,” he said, speaking Jan. 16 at the 2014 annual Surface Navy Association Symposium. “We’ve put [North] Korea on the back burner for the past couple of decades.” Now, he says, it’s time to put the country and related issues back in the spotlight.
ARLINGTON, Va. — U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Thomas Copeman, commander of the Naval Surface Force and U.S. Pacific Naval Surface Force, wants to bridge a missile gap he perceives in the service’s surface force to make it more lethal. While Copeman and other surface warfare officers have been talking about the growing lack of lethality for more than a decade, he acknowledges that the issue is now getting some of the spotlight.
BEIJING — The Chinese military has become a target for the clean-government drive of the administration of President Xi Jinping, with the armed forces told to cut down on spending that personally benefits service members. The orders announced this week at least indirectly address the problem of officers buying and selling postings, especially those that can be turned to personal advantage.
Test ranges — from a mockup city for disaster-response training to the coasts and waters of the Gulf of Mexico — are key reasons the FAA chose Texas as the location for one of six test sites for research to integrate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into civil airspace. The Lone Star UAS Center (LSUASC), operated by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMUCC), plans to offer test ranges providing different geographies, temperatures, altitudes and environments from maritime to urban, says Luis Cifuentes, vice president for research and commercialization.
Despite the continued push to develop more expertise in “electro-magnetic maneuverable warfare,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations (CNO), says the U.S. Navy still is coming up short in that discipline. Radios, radars and other radiating equipment are emitting signals that Navy personnel should be more aware of, Greenert says. The service needs to do a better job masking, disguising or cutting down on those signals, he argues.
LONDON — British army officials say confidence in the Thales Watchkeeper unmanned aerial system (UAS) is rising and it could be ready to enter service in the spring. Currently running three years behind schedule, the certification and introduction into service of the Watchkeeper has been slowed due to concerns raised by the U.K.’s newly established safety body, the Military Aviation Authority (MAA). Watchkeeper is the first UAS to be examined by the agency.
Test ranges — from a mockup city for disaster-response training to the coasts and waters of the Gulf of Mexico — are key reasons the FAA chose Texas as the location for one of six test sites for research to integrate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into civil airspace. The Lone Star UAS Center (LSUASC), operated by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMUCC), plans to offer test ranges providing different geographies, temperatures, altitudes and environments from maritime to urban, says Luis Cifuentes, vice president for research and commercialization.
CHEATING CHARGES: One week after a leadership visit to a Wyoming Air Force base that houses intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), the Pentagon is having more trouble with its ICBM force. Several dozen ICBM officers are alleged to have cheated on their proficiency tests, the Pentagon revealed Jan. 15. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James briefed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on the allegations. The charges come on the heels of a new series of embarrassments for the U.S. nuclear force.
ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy is making 14 different design changes costing an estimated $40 million on its LHA-6 amphibious ship, the USS America, to accommodate heat and downwash from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, says ship program official Capt. Chris Mercer. At the same time, Mercer says, the Navy has modified the flight decks for its LH(R) amphibious ships to accommodate some of the stresses created by V-22 Osprey takeoffs and landings, and the service has also restricted operations on Wasp-class ships for the Bell-Boeing tiltrotors.
Disproportionate budget cuts to research and development, driven by sequestration, threaten to turn the U.S. Defense Department into a “hollow force” as China and Russia continue to modernize their armed forces, says the Pentagon’s top acquisition chief.
The pantheon of captains of the U.S. defense industry is losing another prominent figure, with Bill Swanson, Raytheon’s CEO and chairman, slated to hand over the chief executive’s office to current COO Tom Kennedy on March 31. The Waltham, Mass., defense prime announced the move Jan. 15, saying Swanson advised Raytheon’s board of his intention to step down as CEO last March following his 65th birthday that February. He will remain chairman at least while the company transitions to Kennedy’s leadership.
As the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom’s crewmembers wind down after their first Western Pacific deployment, the ship is continuing to battle misconceptions that it spends most of the time broken down at pier side, U.S. Navy officials say. While the ship’s deployment was marred by problems related to power generators, coolers and other systems, those kinds of problems are to be expected during a major overseas deployment for a ship at this stage, officials say.
Proper “interface management” of the U.S. Navy’s air and missile defense radar (AMDR) with the existing combat system will be vital to AMDR’s success, says Bill Bray, the Navy’s program executive officer and director of integrated warfare systems. “We had a good idea of what we thought the interface was,” he said Jan. 14 during a Naval Sea Systems Command briefing at the 2014 annual Surface Navy Association Symposium. “It’s going to have to be a continued focus.” He adds, “We really have to look at that integration piece.”
