F-22 Getting New Brain

It has proved so difficult and expensive to upgrade the F-22 Raptor, whose stealthy body contains sensors and electronic brains, that the U.S. Air Force may take the unprecedented step of threading what amounts to a second central nervous system into a fighter jet.
By introducing an open architecture to one of the world's most tightly knit proprietary systems, service officials hope to make it much cheaper and easier to insert new technology - even gear developed for the F-35 Lightning II - into the stealthy air-superiority fighter.
"This jet has a very highly integrated avionics system. Because of that tight coupling and that highly integrated nature, it makes it very difficult, and we are highly reliant upon [Raptor makers] Lockheed Martin and Boeing to do any kinds of modifications to the jet," said David Weber, deputy director of the F-22 System Program Office (SPO) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Weber said the open-architecture effort is meant to allow the Air Force to open upgrade work to competition.
Today, he said, "the architecture is proprietary to Lockheed Martin, and we're kinda stuck with Lockheed Martin when we want to integrate something new."
Weber said the work is at such an early stage that the F-22 SPO has no guess how much it might cost.
This year, service officials plan to study the options, in part by issuing a request for information inviting contractors to suggest demonstration projects to help flesh out the alternatives.
"All of them have different ideas about how to go about doing this," Weber said.
In October through December, the service will award contracts to allow contractors to demonstrate ideas in a lab or flying testbed, said Col. John Williams, who runs the F-22 SPO's modernization office.
The SPO officials said Boeing and Lockheed would be welcome to bid on the demonstration contracts.
Lockheed, which had earlier proposed to essentially port the hardware and software architecture of the F-35 Lightning II into the Raptor, might respond to the Air Force solicitation with a similar proposal, said Jeff Babione, Lockheed's Raptor program manager. But Babione said the company might propose a different solution, depending on the service's requirements.
The Air Force will ultimately select one contractor to install the new architecture on its Raptors - ideally, said Weber, all 185 that will be built, less two losses.
"From our perspective, the fleet size is so small compared to where we wanted to be, our objective would be to make this applicable to all aircraft," he said.
The SPO deputy director said it may be deemed too costly to install the new architecture on the 34 oldest Raptors, which are currently used for training. Those planes are also not slated to get the Increment 3.2 upgrade, the next major group of hardware and software upgrades for the Raptor fleet.
But Weber noted that the new architecture might also make it cost-effective to bring those oldest Raptors up to the 3.2 standard.
If all goes well, development work could begin in earnest around 2014 as part of the development of Increment 3.2C, which is slated to begin installation in 2019 or 2020, he said.

Grafting On

As currently envisioned, the new network would be grafted onto the F-22's existing avionics, Weber said. The twin-engine jet's current network would continue to carry data between existing components, while upgraded ones would be linked by the new network. The data from both architectures would be translated and fused so that the jet continues to operate as a cohesive whole.
The installation of the new architecture might happen in one step, or it might proceed piece by piece, Williams said.
"Potentially, you could do it multiple times based on what you're trying to open up," he said. "You're opening up the [communication, navigation and identification]; maybe you're opening up the radar more, something like that. You may actually have multiple guys doing it, but it will be to a common standard."
As more systems are ported over to the new architecture, the older systems would wither away.
"Gradually, you'd have to start migrating some of the functions that we currently have in our core integrated processor away from the core integrated processor, so that everything doesn't flow through that piece," Williams said.
It may or may not be possible to migrate all of the Raptor's functionality.
"It depends on the degree we can open up the architecture," Weber said.
Lockheed's Babione said it might not be cost-effective to move everything to the new system.
The F-22 has received one upgrade - called Increment 2 - since it first arrived on Air Force flight lines in 2005. Those upgrades have added the capability to drop two 1,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions to the aircraft.
A planned upgrade, called Increment 3.1 and slated to begin this year, will add synthetic aperture radar mapping, the capability to carry eight Small Diameter Bombs, and other features.
In 2014, a software-only upgrade called Increment 3.2A will add electronic protection against jamming, better Link 16 receive capability and combat identification, and other improvements. In 2017, Increment 3.2B will add support for the plane's AIM-9X short-range and AIM-120D medium-range anti-air missiles, among many other upgrades.
In 2008, then-Pentagon acquisition chief John Young put the total cost of developing and installing Increment 3.1 and what became 3.2A and 3.2B at around $8 billion. The figure has likely gone up because the Air Force now plans to upgrade more F-22s.
Once the new architecture is installed, "if we want a new capability on the airplane, we can go out to industry with an RfI [request for information] and say, 'You all got good ideas; can you make it work with this architecture?'" Weber said.
The ultimate goal is to allow systems such as new radars to be "plug-and-play," as a printer might be to a desktop computer, he said.
This might allow the Raptor to use technology developed for the F-35 Lightning II without time-consuming and expensive integration work, Williams said. Ë

Lockheed: Little to No Damage from Cyberattack

WASHINGTON - Major U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin said May 29 it was investigating the source of a major cyber-attack one week ago against its information network, the company said.
"Lockheed Martin detected a significant and tenacious attack on its information systems network," the company said in a news statement released late May 28.

The company said the cyber-assault took place on May 21, and that quick action by its security team successfully repelled the attack.
"No customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised," Lockheed's statement said, adding that federal authorities had been notified.
"Throughout the ongoing investigation, Lockheed Martin has continued to keep the appropriate U.S. government agencies informed of our actions," the company said.
President Obama has been briefed about the attack, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
"It has been part of the briefing materials that he has," Carney said. "My understanding, based on what I've seen, is they feel it's fairly minimal in terms of the damage."
Lockheed Martin said its officials are working "around the clock to restore employee access to the network, while maintaining the highest level of security."
It did not mention the suspected source of the cyber-attack.
The company's information security team detected the attack almost immediately and took what is described as "aggressive actions" to protect all systems and data, the statement added.
The statement said that despite the attack, the company remains confident in the integrity of its "robust, multi-layered information systems security."
Federal officials, for their part, told U.S. media that the consequences of the attack for the Pentagon and other agencies was "minimal," and no adverse effect on their operations was expected.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 126,000 people worldwide. It focuses on design, development and manufacturing of advanced technology systems, including some of the military's most advanced weaponry.
Seventy-four percent of the company's 2009 revenue came from military sales, according to published reports.
Lockheed Martin's products included the Trident missile, P-3 Orion spy plane, F-16 and F-22 fighter jets, and C-130 Hercules military cargo planes among many other major weapons systems.
The company is a primary developer of stealth technology used in U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, the F-117 fighter jet as well as the F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter designs.
The corporation's 2010 sales from continuing operations reached $45.8 billion.
However, the stealth Joint Strike Fighter program has faced delays and cost overruns, and the Pentagon overhauled the program last year.
The initial estimate for each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft was $50 million eight years ago, but more recent estimates were up to $92 million.
Meanwhile, NASA announced last week that a new spacecraft to ferry humans into deep space would be based on designs for the Orion crew exploration vehicle built by Lockheed Martin.
The Orion capsule, originally designed to take astronauts back to the moon, is a surviving component of the Constellation manned space exploration program canceled by Obama last year for being behind schedule and over budget.
The capsule will weigh 23 tons and NASA has no date set for a potential launch, said Douglas Cooke, associate administrator for NASA's exploration systems mission directorate.
There is also no final cost associated with the project.
Lockheed Martin is to continue its work on building the space capsule begun in 2006.

Indonesia To Buy 16 S. Korean T-50 Trainers

SEOUL - Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) signed a $400 million deal to sell 16 T-50 Golden Eagle supersonic trainer aircraft to Indonesia, marking the first overseas sale of the $20 million jet co-developed by Lockheed Martin.
The deal obligates South Korea to buy Indonesian-built CN-235 transport airplanes, Seoul and Jakarta government officials confirmed.

Officials with KAI and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) officials had denied that the trainer deal would require the airlifter purchase.
The contract was signed May 25, about a month and a half after Jakarta picked KAI as the preferred bidder for its trainer jet acquisition. The T-50 beat out Russia's Yak-130 and the Czech L-159B.
KAI is set to deliver the jets to the Indonesian Air Force by 2013.
The day after the T-50 announcement, KAI received approval from the Korea Exchange to proceed with an initial public offering (IPO) estimated to be worth about 576 billion won ($523 million).
The state-owned Korea Finance Corp. owns 30.1 percent of the aircraft maker, while Samsung Techwin, Hyundai Motor and Doosan Infracore hold 20.5 percent apiece.
The IPO may be held by the end of June.
Industry and securities sources expect KAI to sell 36 million shares at 14,000 won to 16,000 apiece.
"I'm very happy that the deal has been concluded before the planned IPO," said KAI President Kim Hong-kyung. "This Indonesia deal is just the starting point for the country's aircraft exports. As the leading aerospace company in South Korea, we will make best efforts to help the country become the world's top seven aircraft exporters by 2020."
South Korea will become the sixth country to export supersonic jets, following the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and Sweden, according to a KAI-DAPA news release.
The single-engine T-50 plane has digital flight controls and a modern, ground-based training system. It is designed to have the maneuverability, endurance and systems to prepare pilots to fly next-generation aircraft such as the Eurofighter Typhoon, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II. The jet has a top speed of Mach 1.4 and an operational range of 1,851 kilometers.
The news of the offset provision confirmed what Amir Sambodo, special staff for the Indonesian Coordinating Economic Minister told the Jakarta Post on May 20: "There have been talks that if Indonesia buys T-50s, there will be compensation for Korea to purchase CN-235s."
Sambodo said South Korea would buy two or four more CN-235s.
"This needs to be increased to mutually benefit both countries. If South Korea is good at trainer jets, we are strong in transport aircraft," he said.
Seoul and Jakarta had a similar barter trade deal in 2001, when South Korea bought eight CN-235 transport planes in return for selling 12 KT-1 Woongbi basic trainers.
The CN-235 is a medium-range twin-turboprop airplane, jointly developed by Spain's CASA and Indonesia's PT DI. The plane is used for VIP transport, maritime patrols, airlifts and troop carrying.
South Korea has 20 CN-235s, 12 built in Spain and eight in Indonesia. Under a 2008 deal, PT DI plans to deliver four more CN-235s to South Korea's Coast Guard by year's end.

Is China's J-20 Better Than F-22?

China, Russia Erode U.S. Stealth Technology Lead

The United States' lead in stealth technology is eroding more quickly than anticipated, senior uniformed officials told Congress on May 24.
"Those are discouraging," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Herbert Carlisle, the service's deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Carlisle was referring to Russia's development of the Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA and China's efforts to build the Chengdu J-20 fifth-generation fighters.
"Over time I believe we will still maintain an advantage, but I think our advantage will be a shorter period of time," he said.
Carlisle added that the U.S. has maintained an advantage in stealth technology since the late 1970s with the debut of the now-retired F-117 stealth fighter.
"I don't see us maintaining an advantage for as long, as I think other nations will continue to gain that technology," he said.
Carlisle, who has extensive experience flying Soviet-built warplanes during the 1980s as part of the formerly classified 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron, said both Russia and China are skilled at building good fighter aircraft.
However, Carlisle cautioned that neither of those two countries would be able to build such aircraft overnight. It takes time and experience to build such sophisticated stealth warplanes, he said.
'These things are hard to develop," Carlisle said, pointing to the difficultly the U.S. faced in building the B-2 stealth bomber, F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
"We have the same assessment," added Marine Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, that service's deputy commandant for aviation, who was testifying alongside Carlisle. "What's keeping us ahead right now - I think the Joint Strike Fighter and its capabilities will do that."
Speaking to reporters after his testimony, Carlisle added that although he thought Russia and China will eventually get to an operational fifth-generation fighter, they are not remotely close to matching the F-35.
"I think they'll get there eventually, but by that time, we'll be at the next level," he said.

F-22 Upgrade Taking Too Much Time, Money

The latest hardware and software upgrade for the U.S. Air Force's F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet is over budget and behind schedule, top Defense Department officials told Congress on May 19.
"The Increment 3.2 that we're currently working on for the F-22 for our war-fighting customer is taking too long to implement," Air Force procurement chief David Van Buren told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We are working with the company [Lockheed Martin] to try to speed that up and make it more affordable."

Among other improvements, the upgrade will allow the F-22 to carry the AIM-9X infrared-guided air-to-air missile and the AIM-120D medium-range air-to-air missile, and to attack eight ground targets with eight 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs.
Software development appears to be the primary cause of the delay.
Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, said the F-22's software is written largely in Ada, a programming language that was once a DoD standard but whose use has waned in the past 15 years.
"It tends to impede quick upgrades to the system to which it is the base software," Thompson said.
Moreover, he said, "The affordability of any upgrade becomes debatable when you purchase a relatively small number of upgrades."
Lockheed has built 187 Raptors, of which two have been lost.
The company said it is working with the Air Force to accelerate fielding of the upgrade, which is split into two components, A and B, while trying to cut costs.
Lockheed has saved the Air Force $20 million by moving some electronic protection software from Increment 3.2B to Increment 3.2A, company spokeswoman Alison Orne stated in an email.
"We have successfully accelerated several Electronic Protection capabilities," she said. "These capabilities were previously planned to field in 2017 and are now part of the 3.2A baseline planned to field in 2014."
The company also is looking at 100 additional items on which it could cut costs for the second half of the upgrade.
"Each savings candidate is being reviewed for potential inclusion into the baseline Increment 3.2B program," Orne said.
Despite Lockheed's confidence, the Defense Department's leaders are worried about the program.
"The F-22 modernization program is a concern to us," said Pentagon procurement chief Ashton Carter, who testified alongside Van Buren at the May 19 hearing.

After Grounding Raptors, USAF Eyes Other Jets' Oxygen Systems

The U.S. Air Force, which on May 3 grounded its F-22 Raptors, has now identified which other aircraft might be affected by defective oxygen generators.

U.S. airmen watch as a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor taxis toward a refueling station March 31 on the flightline at Kadena Air Base, Japan. The service has also probed oxygen systems on other jet models, too. (Airman 1st Class Maeson L. Elleman / U.S. Air Force)

Since at least November, the service has been investigating the On-Board Oxygen Generation Systems (OBOGS) aboard the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and other tactical aircraft and trainers. The service grounded the F-22s after a spike in incidents potentially related to hypoxia.

"No other airframes have been stood down due to this investigation; however, a parallel investigation is taking place on the on-board oxygen generation systems on the A-10, F-15E, F-16, F-35 and T-6 aircraft," said Capt. Jennifer Ferrau, an Air Force spokeswoman for Air Combat Command (ACC), the service's primary body for training and equipping the combat air forces.
Equipment such as the OBOGS is fairly standardized across multiple aircraft types, said Hans Weber, who sat on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee, and is the president of Tecop International, a San Diego consulting firm.
"It's a big deal if you're at high altitude and you run out of oxygen," Weber said.
At 50,000 feet, a human being has less than 10 seconds of useful consciousness, he said.
Air Force Gen. William Fraser, commander of ACC, ordered a stand-down of the entire 158-plane F-22 fleet on May 3, Ferrau said. The service has not determined how long the Raptor fleet will remain grounded, nor has the exact nature of the problem been identified, she said.
"We are still working to pinpoint the exact nature of the problem. It is premature to definitively link the current issues to the OBOGS system," Ferrau said. "The safety of our airmen is paramount and we will take the necessary time to ensure we perform a thorough investigation."
There have been nine suspected cases of hypoxia during F-22 operations since mid-2008, and recently there has been a jump in the number of such incidents.
"Over the last week, we have experienced five additional F-22 'Physiological-Hypoxia Like' events across the Air Force, which led Commander of Air Combat Command to establish the current F-22 stand-down," Ferrau said.
Fraser has ordered an OBOGS Safety Investigation Board to get to the cause of these incidents, which now total 14.
Most of the incidents are characterized as "increased frequency of pilot reported physiological incidents such as hypoxia and decompression sickness," Ferrau said.
Air Force sources said that an OBOGS malfunction was suspected in a November crash outside Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, that claimed the life of Capt. Jeff Haney of the 525th Fighter Squadron.
Despite the known OBOGS incidents, the Air Force will not officially link the November crash to the oxygen generator malfunctions.
"It is inappropriate for us to comment on the F-22 crash in Alaska, since the accident investigation board report has not concluded," Ferrau said.
Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-22, has dispatched a five-person team of engineers to help with the Air Force OBOGS investigation, company spokeswoman Stephanie Stinn said.

USAF Indefinitely Grounds F-22 Raptors

The U.S. Air Force has grounded all of its F-22 Raptors until further notice because of potential malfunctions in the fighter jets' oxygen-generation system.

The On-Board Oxygen Generating System has been under investigation since a November 2010 crash in Alaska. (File photo / U.S. Air Force)

Gen. William Fraser, commander of U.S. Air Combat Command, ordered a stand-down of the 165-plane fleet May 3, ACC spokeswoman Capt. Jennifer Ferrau said. Ferrau didn't immediately know how long the Raptors will be out of service.

The On-Board Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS) has been under investigation since an F-22 crashed in November just outside Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. Until the stand-down, Raptor sorties had been restricted to an altitude of 25,000 feet or below for training missions because of the potential malfunctions.
The limits were "designed for mishap prevention and is a prudent measure to ensure the OBOGS are operating safely," ACC spokesman Col. William Nichols said in March, when the command first publicly disclosed the investigation.
An OBOGS malfunction can be potentially life-threatening, said Hans Weber, who sat on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee, and is president of Tecop International, a San Diego consulting firm.
"It's a big deal if you're at high altitude and you run out of oxygen," Weber said in a March interview.
At 50,000 feet, a human being has less than 10 seconds of useful consciousness, he said. The 25,000-foot altitude restriction would allow the pilot to quickly dive below 18,000 feet, where the atmosphere has enough oxygen to ensure prolonged survival in case of an emergency.
"It would take you so long when you're way up high, you may black out before you make it to a safe altitude," Weber said.

Embrace the Air-Power Revolution

U.S. Can't Approach 5th-Gen Aircraft the 'Old Way'

By ROBBIN LAIRD
Published: 21 February 2011

U.S. air power has reached a turning point. As budget cuts increase and the U.S. Air Force's percentage of the defense budget falls, the crucial requirement is to invest in the future. President Barack Obama is calling for a Sputnik moment in the investment in future technologies, and there is little reason to exclude the Defense Department from such an effort.
Yet this is exactly what is happening. After canceling the F-22 without ever understanding what the Raptor brings to the joint war fighter, the administration is slowing its investment in the F-35, instead putting money into legacy aircraft.
The new aircraft represent a sea change with significant savings in terms of fleet costs and overall capability. But this will not happen unless policymakers understand that the transition is not simply from fourth-generation to fifth-generation aircraft, but a transition from yesterday's approach to war fighting to distributed operations.
The shift is from linear to sequential operations; it is a shift away from fighter pilots who need to reach back for support from large aircraft command-and-control and ISR platforms, to 360-degree dominance by deployed decision-makers operating not in a network but a honeycomb.
The F-35 is a flying combat system able to operate across the spectrum of warfare. It is the first plane that has the combat system to manage 360-degree space. Deployed as a force, it enables distributed air operations, an approach crucial to the survival of our pilots in the period ahead.
The fifth-generation aircraft are a benchmark for a new approach to airpower. The traditional aircraft adds systems that provide capabilities, and the pilot has to manage each new system. The F-35 has five major combat systems that interact with each other to provide capabilities.
Functional capabilities emerge from the interaction of the systems done by the machine and are not simply correlated with a single system. For example, jamming can be done by several systems aboard the aircraft; the machine determines which one through interaction among the systems. The entire system rests on a common architecture with broadband capabilities.
But if airpower leaders simply mimic the operations of older aircraft with fifth-generation planes, the promise of new air operations will not be realized. The result would be a repeat of the failures of the French facing the Germans in World War II, where the French had superior tanks but outmoded tactics and command structures, and achieved predictable results.
The new aircraft simply do not function as do the old. Considerable cultural change will be required in moving to distributed air operations and decision-makers.
And the shift will require developers of weapons and remotely piloted aircraft to think differently about how to leverage the new stealth-enabled distributed air operational capabilities.
F-22 pilots have already called for the change. They don't want to be tethered to the Airborne Warning and Control System; they don't want to be directed by the classic operations of a centralized combat air operations center.
Another key part of the airpower cultural revolution is the approach to maintainability. To hear some Air Force officials, they sound like the union members in the 1970s objecting to changes in the work force associated with digital production of the newspaper. To recall the days of the controversy, union members wanted to keep their typesetting functions in spite of the elimination of the jobs necessary to produce a newspaper digitally. They lost and Rupert Murdoch won.
The same is true of the shift from mechanical to digital maintenance regimes. Many jobs will be eliminated - the U.S. Marine Corps estimates one-third - and the tooth-to-tail ratio much improved.
The administration's ideological opposition to performance-based logistics (PBL) systems is part of the problem of "union style" resistance to change. The last administration signed a PBL with the partners; the current administration should honor it. The benefits are clear; less cost for sustainment for a more capable aircraft.
In short, the U.S. and its partners are on the cusp of an air-power revolution if our leaders have the courage to embrace cultural change. And there is a clear need to direct investments toward the future, not the past. After all, this is change you can believe in.
Robbin Laird is editor of a book on the evolution of air operations, "Re-Norming Air Operations," and co-founder of the defense analytical website Second Line of Defense.