1st Catapult Launch for F-35C Joint Strike Fighter

For the first time, an F-35C Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) was propelled into the air July 27 by a steam catapult, marking a significant milestone in the test program to qualify the aircraft for carrier operations.

AN F-35C SHOOTS down the track Wednesday during the first steam catapult launch of a Joint Strike Fighter. (Lockheed Martin)

The aircraft, dubbed CF-3, was launched at the U.S. Navy's aviation test facilities at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, N.J., Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) said in a press release. It was flown by Navy test pilot Lt. Chris Tabert, the most junior test pilot yet to fly any variant of the F-35.

Using more junior aviators to test the aircraft is "a deliberate shaping of the test force," NAVAIR said, with the aim of balancing "experienced military and contractor test pilots with newly qualified test pilots with recent fleet experience."

The F-35C - the carrier variant of the JSF program - was launched by a TC-13 Mod 2 test steam catapult, similar to the catapults used by all the Navy's aircraft carriers.

Further tests lie ahead at Lakehurst, including launching the aircraft at varying catapult power levels, testing degraded catapult configurations, and jet blast deflector testing.

N.Korea Warns of New Nuclear Arms Race Ahead Of Talks

UNITED NATIONS - North Korea said July 27, ahead of landmark talks with the United States, that a U.S. missile defense shield will set off a new nuclear arms race.

The new diplomatic attack on the United States came as the U.S. government said it wanted to see signs in talks due to start on July 28 in New York that North Korea is "serious about moving forward."

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But the North's U.N. envoy said the United States was aiming through its proposed missile defense shield to gain "absolute nuclear superiority and global hegemony over the other nuclear power rivals."

The ambassador, Sin Son Ho, said the shield showed the United States has no "moral justifications" to lecture other countries about proliferation.

"In this current changing world, one can easily understand that this dangerous move will eventually spark a new nuclear arms race," Sin said of the shield which the United States wants to build over Eastern Europe. Washington says the shield is aimed at preventing attacks by rogue states such as Iran.

"This shows that the world's largest nuclear weapon state has lost its legal or moral justifications to talk of proliferation issues before international society, on whatever ground," the envoy added.

North Korea and the United States are to hold two days of talks in New York from Thursday on issues including the North's nuclear arsenal.

Vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan is leading the North's delegation at the New York talks. Kim arrived in the United States late Tuesday.

Kim and U.S. envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, are expected to discuss improving U.S.-North Korean ties and ways to relaunch six-nation talks on the North giving up its nuclear weapons.

Talks between North Korea and the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia have been frozen since December 2008.

The North staged nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 which sparked international concern and outrage.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the New York talks on July 24, two days after the nuclear envoys of South and North Korea held a surprise meeting on the sidelines of an Asian security conference in Bali, Indonesia.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the Bali meeting had been "constructive" but that the communist state needs to do more.

"What we're looking for is in our mind a clear indication that North Korea is serious about moving forward," Toner told reporters.

The United States will be watching to see if North Korea will recommit to a 2005 agreement made at the six party talks "as well as take concrete and irreversible steps towards denuclearization," the spokesman said.

South Korea, a key observer in the new contacts between the North and the world superpower, has also demanded signs that its arch-rival is sincere about wanting good relations before it agrees to concrete action to help its beleaguered neighbor.

South Korea remains furious over a deadly attack last year on an island on the tense frontier between the two.

The North's disclosure in November that it had a uranium enrichment plant, which could give it another way to make atomic weapons, has become a new complicating factor.

The North's official news agency, in a commentary July 27, said a peace agreement with the United States formally ending the 1950-53 war could become a "first step" to peace on the Korean peninsula and "denuclearization".

The North and South fought a bitter war in 1950-53, with the United States fighting with the South. The conflict ended 58 years ago on July 27 with an armistice but no full peace treaty.

"It is impossible to wipe out the mutual distrust, nor is it possible to achieve a smooth solution of the issue of denuclearization, as long as there persists the hostile relationship" between North Korea and the United States, the news agency said.

DoD Strives To Curb Rework From F-35 Production

The F-35 Lightning II is proving to be as stealthy as promised; now the challenge is turning production from a somewhat handcrafted affair to a dependable industrial process, the deputy director of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program said July 27.

"The challenge that we see ahead is not necessarily achieving [very low observable] capabilities," said Air Force Maj. Gen. C.D. Moore. "The challenge is produce-ability. To be able to produce beyond four a month, six a month, eight a month, you need to be able to get your processes down to where you're not doing artisan type of work."

Right now, jets need to be reworked depending upon whatever corrections need to be made due to design changes or errors. Instead, what needs to happen is that aircraft have to be built so that such reworks are not needed, Moore said.

"That's still ahead of us to make [sure] we can do that and produce a plane the first time, every time," he said.

In the meantime, test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., continue to put the jet through maturity tests using the same syllabus as the first student pilots at the 33rd Fighter Wing, the first F-35 training unit. About 80 percent of those tests have been completed, Moore said. Remaining tests include two-ship sorties.

The data gathered will be used by the Air Force and Navy air systems commands to determine whether to certify the jets as airworthy and ready to start training.

Training will start at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., after an operational utility evaluation in the fall, Moore said.

Planning has already started for a second training site for the F-35 which should be up and running by 2014. The Air Force has not yet set a location, Moore said.

China Tells U.S. to Halt Spy Plane Flights: Report

BEIJING - China has demanded that the United States stop spy plane flights near the Chinese coast, saying they have "severely harmed" trust between the two countries, state-run media reported July 27.

The comments came after Taiwanese media reported two Chinese fighter jets attempted to scare off an American U-2 reconnaissance plane that was collecting intelligence on China while flying along the Taiwan Strait in late June.

Beijing's defense ministry said the U.S. must discontinue such flights, calling them a "major obstacle" as the two Pacific powers try to put a series of military disputes behind them, China's Global Times reported.

The flights "severely harmed" mutual trust, the paper quoted the ministry as saying.

"We demand that the U.S. respects China's sovereignty and security interests, and take concrete measures to boost a healthy and stable development of military relations," it added.

The ministry declined immediate comment when contacted by AFP.

Washington has said in the past that its reconnaissance flights are conducted in international airspace and will continue.

Sino-U.S. military relations have been plagued in recent years by periodic tensions stemming from U.S. plans for arms sales to Taiwan and naval standoffs in the disputed South China Sea.

Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and refuses to abandon the possibility of taking the self-ruled island by force. The two sides split at the end of a civil war.

The United States recognizes Beijing and not Taipei, but provides military support to Taiwan.

In the June encounter, one of the Chinese Sukhoi SU-27 fighters crossed over the Taiwan Strait's middle line, widely considered to be the boundary between Taiwan's airspace and that of the Chinese mainland, Taiwanese media have reported.

One of the Chinese jets did not leave until two Taiwanese planes were sent to intercept it, the island's United Daily News reported.

Washington is mulling a bilateral exchange of defense officials with Beijing to keep communication lines open, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen wrote in the New York Times this week.

Mullen, the top American military official, earlier this month became the first chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff since 2007 to visit China, as the two sides seek to mend ties.

U.S. Tried Halting Pakistan Nuclear Drive: Documents

WASHINGTON - The United States waged a secret diplomatic campaign in the 1970s to prevent Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons by pressing countries to control exports, declassified documents said.

In remarks with striking parallels to current U.S. debates, officials in President Jimmy Carter's administration voiced fear about Pakistan's trajectory and tried both pressure and aid incentives to seek a change in its behavior.

In a secret November 1978 memo, then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance instructed U.S. diplomats in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan to warn governments that Pakistan or its covert agents were seeking nuclear material.

Vance acknowledged that Pakistan was motivated by concerns over historic rival India. But he voiced alarm that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, before being deposed as prime minister in a coup, said that Pakistan would share nuclear weapons around the Islamic world.

"We believe it is critical to stability in the region and to our non-proliferation objectives to inhibit Pakistan from moving closer to the threshold of nuclear explosive capability," Vance wrote, the year before the overthrow of Iran's pro-Western shah and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Britain was waging a parallel campaign, Vance said. Britain banned the export of inverters - which can be used in centrifuges that produce highly enriched uranium - and urged other countries to follow suit, Vance said.

Most countries sounded sympathetic, though West Germany - a major industrial exporter - insisted it already had adequate safeguards, memos said.

Pakistan nonetheless pursued nuclear weapons and detonated a bomb in 1998 in response to a test by India. The Pakistani scientist who built the bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had access to sensitive technology in the Netherlands.

Khan admitted in 2004 that he ran a nuclear black-market, selling secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Khan, who is considered a hero by many Pakistanis, later retracted his remarks and in 2009 was freed from house arrest.

The declassified documents were released after requests by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

William Burr, a scholar at the National Security Archive, said that a U.S. report from 1978 that could shed light on Khan's activities was missing and that he feared it had been destroyed.

The released documents said Pakistan wanted to maintain work on a reprocessing plant. France initially supported the project but backed out in 1978 due to fears that it would be used to produce weapons.

Then-Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher in a secret memo urged a "low profile" on France's decision, saying it would "severely embarrass" France's then-President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and impede future cooperation if it appeared he was responding to U.S. pressure.

Christopher also said he was urging the U.S. Congress to consider economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan, which was considered a U.S. ally in the Cold War when India tilted toward the Soviet Union.

Assistance to Pakistan can "perhaps relieve some of the tension and sense of isolation which give Pakistan greater incentive to move covertly in the nuclear field," wrote Christopher, who later served as secretary of state.

The United States eventually pursued a major assistance package for Pakistan as part of a partnership against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The United States later cut aid due to nuclear concerns - only to resume it again as it sought Pakistan's cooperation in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

President Barack Obama's administration recently suspended about one-third of its $2.7 billion annual defense aid to Pakistan to put pressure for more action against Islamic militants.

U.S. Navy Gets a New LCS Program Chief

The U.S. Navy's effort to develop and field the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) got more focused after the July 11 establishment of a single program executive office that combined ship and mission module development efforts under a single leader. Rear Adm. James Murdoch, a previous director of the LCS ship development office, is the new PEO LCS, returning after about a year of working on fleet maintenance.

Despite the recent award of several construction contracts for both LCS variants, the program remains under occasional fire from congressional opponents, spurred by high costs, program decisions sometimes seen as hasty, reports of corrosion on Austal USA's USS Independence (LCS 2), and superstructure and weld cracks on Lockheed Martin's USS Freedom (LCS 1).

Murdoch addressed a number of issues during a July 20 interview at his Washington Navy Yard headquarters.

Q. WHAT'S YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THE LCS PROGRAM RIGHT NOW?

A. Overall, the program is pretty healthy. The shipbuilding side has reached a place where we're into the contracts we want; we're in serial production with a stable design. Mission packages, we're getting in to the test phase. The challenge now is to put it all together.

Establishing a single PEO gives an end-to-end responsibility for the warfare capability to one guy. We'll have one organization covering three big themes: getting the shipbuilding in a stable march down the learning curve; testing the mission packages with all their components and then into the ship; and introducing it into the fleet.

I recognize the concerns that recently surfaced, but frankly these are all part and parcel of the challenges in building ships, and complex ships at that. Where there are issues, we're going to assess, analyze and fix 'em.

Q. LCS 1 HAD TWO STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS: PERSISTENT CRACKING IN THE ALUMINUM SUPERSTRUCTURE AND A WELD SEAM BREACH. HAVE THOSE BEEN FIXED?

A. There was about a 6-inch crack in a weld. I'm certainly not happy with it, but this is pretty normal for a new warship design, to have some sorts of issues. My personal perspective is we probably had fewer problems with both of these ships than I might have expected, based on past Navy experience.

All ships work in a seaway. Navy ships go faster, generally speaking, so there's more potential for stress and strain.

When I was working this program earlier, I would see workers putting more scantlings, stiffeners, longitudinal frame members and so forth, into the structure. I would typically ask, "What are you guys doing?" Well, they said, "We were reviewing the design and decided that, based on structural models, we need to put a little more in here." I think actually the designs came out pretty well.

The hull crack in Freedom was in a chine area. I'm pretty confident from the summaries that this was a weld defect, didn't do it right. There are miles of linear welds on the ship and this is six inches. Once again, I'm not happy about that. We've looked at other places in the ship, haven't found any problems we need to go repair. And we've beefed the design a bit in that particular area, added some additional structure around that break point. I think the crack issue is understood; we've addressed it.

Superstructure cracking, frankly, is not uncommon, especially in ships that have aluminum superstructures. Aluminum is lighter by weight, it has the strength to hold the ship together and is more resistant to oxidation corrosion, and you don't have to paint it. But it has to be treated more carefully in terms of its fatigue life. We have the technology to get that right.

This is not something that keeps me awake at night. There are things you worry about in every job, but that's not one of them.

The corrosion that's recently resurfaced on LCS 2, we were looking for this. We've looked at it on both designs.

It's not a different mechanism of corrosion than what's taking place on [other Navy ships]. Where you have different materials used between the propellers in the water jets and the hull of the ship, you have to do a variety of things to prevent one of those metals corroding in sea water.

We made design decisions on both of these ships with regard to where to put zinc anodes, where are we going to employ impressed current cathodic protection systems. We thought we got the design pretty right, but in this and in other areas, we said, first one we built. So we're going to go in and look at them periodically.

In LCS 2, we found inside the water jet tunnels the paint surface had degraded, and we started having pitting corrosion which was obviously galvanic. So we'll put some additional aluminum plating around the water-jet tunnel area so I can continue operations until I can get her into dry dock, which was a planned evolution.

There is any number of risks, quite a few of which just didn't materialize. I had people telling me the water jet impellers would experience a lot of cavitation, degrade rapidly and not make it to the post-shakedown availability. We've gone in and inspected those, and they're behaving much more on the favorable side of the predicted model than the unfavorable side. So there are things in the design that went very well, better than expected.

I think we did a pretty fair job on this design, especially given the amount of time we took on it. We didn't get it exactly perfect, but it came out pretty well. And the areas we need to go fix are pretty fixable.

Q. COMPARED WITH LAST YEAR'S PUBLIC RELATIONS EFFORT TO SHOW OFF LCS 1, THERE HAS BEEN A DEARTH OF NEWS ABOUT THE INDEPENDENCE (LCS 2). IT'S OPERATING FROM MAYPORT, FLA., RATHER THAN THE MAIN FLEET BASE AT NORFOLK. IT HAS YET TO MAKE A SIGNIFICANT CRUISE. THERE IS ALMOST NO WORD OF ITS ACTIVITIES, FEW PHOTOS ARE RELEASED, AND AUSTAL USA, UNLIKE LOCKHEED MARTIN AND LCS 1, HAS BECOME VERY RELUCTANT TO TALK ABOUT THE SHIP. THE ONLY NEWS THAT'S OUT THERE IS ABOUT CORROSION PROBLEMS. IS LCS 2 BROKEN?

A. There's nothing wrong with LCS 2. Fair observations, I wouldn't dispute you. You could certainly draw the conclusion that you haven't heard about the ship, then, gosh, is there something wrong with it? That's why I'm here. I believe the fleet introduction of these ships is very important. When it comes to these ships, nobody cares like I care.

I guess I agree with you. LCS, in the press, has kind of gone sinker, and maybe we shouldn't have let that happen.

LCS 2 has been doing things. Vice Adm. Richard Hunt, commander of Naval Surface Forces, was on board last month. He watched them maneuver an unmanned vehicle around the mission bay, put it in the twin-boomed extensible crane, launch it from the ship. They operated it, drove it back into the recovery system, picked it up and brought it back aboard the ship. It was the first underway day he had in his new job, on the Independence. So why aren't we getting that message to you? I don't know.

Q. DO THE SHIPS' MISSION BAY HANDLING SYSTEMS WORK?

A. Not only have we launched and recovered and operated an unmanned surface vehicle, we've also recently launched and recovered the remote multimission vehicle. Handling is part of the main battery. I'm very pleased with where we are on both of these.

But we're building these ships at the affordable end of the spectrum here, so over time I expect the industry guys to get smart on these crane systems and provide me something they can procure affordably, that sailors can operate, that are reliable and maintainable.

I'm not looking for continual improvement in terms of being able to lift more weight. Both are pretty good. I'm always looking for something that makes the ship more affordable.

Q. ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT RELIABILITY ISSUES WITH EITHER HANDLING SYSTEM?

A. Not to my knowledge. Both systems are solid designs. I'm pretty confident in the systems.

Q. WHEN CAN THE FLEET EXPECT AN OPERATIONALLY EFFECTIVE, DEPLOYABLE, NON-TEST LCS WITH A MISSION MODULE?

A. By the end of 2012, I would like to have that mine warfare mission package testing over and done with. I need that to wrap that up and the testers need to do all their reporting. The real question you're asking me is, when does LCS 1 go out on its first all-operational cycle of deployment? My suspicion is that would be more likely to occur sometime in 2013.

Thai Army Probes Series of Chopper Crashes

BANGKOK - Thailand's army has grounded a number of its helicopter fleet, a military official said July 25, after a string of deadly chopper crashes that some have blamed on angry jungle spirits.

On July 24, three troops were killed when a Bell 212 helicopter went down in Phetchaburi province, southwest of Bangkok - one of three helicopter crashes in the area in little over a week that have together claimed 17 lives.

The crashes had spooked the superstitious even before it emerged that the third chopper had carried the bodies of those killed in the second helicopter, which had in turn been sent to retrieve those who died in the first crash.

"It is a big loss," Maj. Gen. Pitaya Krajangwong, the Thai army aviation commander, told a press conference in the capital.

He said the first two crashes, involving a Huey and a Black Hawk helicopter respectively, seemed on initial investigation to be caused by bad weather, while in the third incident the Bell 212 appeared to have a tail rota fault.

"The other 20 Bell 212 choppers will not fly until they are well-checked.

Once it is found that there is nothing wrong, they can go back to missions," he said, adding that a formal 30-day investigation into the crashes would be held.

The Bell lost on July 24, which was travelling from Bangkok to a task force base in Phetchaburi, had a day earlier transported bodies from a Black Hawk helicopter crash on Tuesday, in which nine people were killed.

The victims were eight military personnel and a television cameraman.

The Black Hawk was found in dense forest just across the border in Myanmar on July 22, three days after it disappeared during a mission to recover the bodies of five soldiers killed in the Huey helicopter accident on July 16.

The strange sequence of events has sparked a range of theories among those living in jungle-heavy areas close to the crash sites, according to Thai media.

A number of military and civilians "believe bad omens are to blame" and have cited earlier predictions by a fortune teller, the English-language Bangkok Post reported July 25.

"The guardian spirits here are very fierce," said one villager quoted by the paper.

The Thai Rath newspaper said the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment planned to hold a ceremony on July 25 to pay respect to spirits believed to be in the jungle.

Top army brass and politicians, including outgoing premier Abhisit Vejjajiva, attended a Buddhist ceremony for the victims of the Black Hawk crash in the western province of Kanchanburi on Monday.

Army chief Gen. Prayut Chan-O-Cha was initially due to travel to the service by helicopter but changed his plans and went by car, Pitaya said.