The companies opened the second day of the Farnborough air show in England July 19 by announcing they had signed a memorandum of understanding to pursue a potential deal with Saudi Arabia for the Embraer’s C-390 tactical airlift twin jet.

The aim is to establish a partnership to collaborate in the Middle East and other markets, they said in a statement.

Details of the potential scope of the strategic partnership were not available. Ian Muldowney, chief operating officer for BAE Systems Air sector said the collaboration “recognizes the capability of the C-390 Millennium aircraft combined with BAE Systems’ extensive knowledge and understanding of international markets including experience in standing up military capability and delivering industrialization through the support, maintenance, and training solutions for complex aircraft.”

BAE has had a major industrial and support presence in Saudi Arabia for decades on the back of massive deals in the air sector involving Typhoon, Tornado combat jets and Hawk trainers.

The C-390, known as the Millennium, is a multi-mission platform available in airlifter, air-to-air refueling and other variants.

Launched in 2009 on the back of a Brazilian military requirement the Lockheed Martin C-130J rival has been picking up international orders, most notably in the Netherlands where the government said it would buy five C-390′s to replace it’s aging C-130 H fleet.

Embraer previously had an agreement with Boeing to market the C-390 in markets like the Middle East but that arrangement fell apart in 2019 when a wider co-operation plan collapsed.

The C-390 MoU was one of two agreements signed by the British company and Embraer at the show. The two sides also confirmed their intention to create a joint venture to develop a defense variant of a electrically powered VTOL platform originally designed by the Embraer backed company Eve for the urban mobility market .

The companies revealed last December they were planning to work together in the eVTOL market.

“Teams from BAE Systems and Embraer will continue working together to explore how the aircraft, designed for the urban mobility market, can provide cost-effective, sustainable, and adaptable capability as a defense variant,” said Jackson Schneider, president and chief executive at Embraer Defense & Security.

Eve Holding announced at the show a non-binding Letter of Intent with Embraer and BAE to explore the potential order of up to 150 electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles with the aim of examining the aircrafts applications for the defense and security markets.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has cleared Chile to purchase modernization upgrades for its F-16 fleet, with a potential $634 million price tag.

Chile currently operates 44 F-16s. That includes 10 Block 50 models purchased in the early 2000s, as well as 36 older models bought second-hand from the Netherlands. Reports that Chile would look to upgrade their existing F-16 fleet first emerged in 2017, but final details had not been made public. Analysts have also speculated that Chile may look to buy a small number of new F-16s to supplement its fleet.

The upgrades included in this potential sale include 19 Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS); six inert MK-82 (500LB) general purpose bomb bodies; two MXU-650KB Air Foil Groups (AFG); 44 LN-260 Embedded GPS/INS (EGI) and 49 Multifunctional Information Distribution System Joint Tactical Radios (MIDS JTRS).

Also included are avionics equipment and software upgrades, new radios, upgraded IFF transponders, secure communications equipment and other parts. The upgrades are expected to go across the 44 plane fleet.

“The proposed sale will improve Chile’s capability to meet current and future threats by modernizing its F-16 fleet, which will allow Chile to maintain sovereignty and homeland defense, increase interoperability with the United States and other partners, and deter potential adversaries,” per a statement on the website of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Lockheed Martin, which produces the F-16, will be the prime contractor on the deal, should it go through. All DSCA announcements must be cleared by Congress. At that point negotiations begin. Quantities and dollar values often change in the final agreement.

Although this is the first FMS case approved for Chile since the start of fiscal 2017, the F-16 has proven to be a reliable sales vehicle for Lockheed abroad, with 14 F-16 related FMS requests cleared by DSCA during this time period.

The outcome was a loss for the White House, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other opponents who claim a new “Space Corps” equals more bureaucracy, but it was a win for lawmakers who warn the Air Force must be reorganized to catch up with China and Russia’s militarization of space. Space has become critical for the U.S. military with satellites used for navigation, protected communications, missile warning, surveillance and intelligence collection.

Plans for the new Space Corps were spearheaded by House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., with the support of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. The HASC voted 60-1 last month to approve the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which contains the Space Corps legislative language.

House Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, had waged a public push and lobbying effort to replace the Space Corps language with orders for a study on whether a new branch is necessary. Mattis and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson had each written letters backing him, and the White House listed it among two dozen NDAA provisions it opposes.

Congressional aides said late Wednesday the House Rules Committee, led by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, did not deem the amendment in order, and it did not receive an individual up-or-down vote. After Turner, Rogers and Cooper each pleaded their cases in a public hearing, the decision appears to have been made quietly.

“At a time when we are trying to integrate the Department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations vice an integrated one we’re constructing under our current approach,” Mattis wrote.

Rogers and Cooper testified together before the House Rules Committee on Wednesday to emphasize their proposal’s bipartisan support and the dire need to prioritize space as its own domain.

Rogers argued the path ahead would actually be fairly deliberative. The Air Force would have six months after the bill’s passage to create its own plan, teeing up further congressional action to move forward or reverse as necessary. Even sooner, there would be a series of classified and open hearings on the next steps, he said.

“We encourage you to come, particularly to the classified hearings to see our capabilities and our adversaries’ — it is shocking what’s happened,” Rogers told the House Rules Committee. “Both China and Russia have already reorganized space.”

Although Turner acknowledged the military has faced difficulties in executing space programs, he argued that House lawmakers have not adequately laid out the organization and functions of the Space Corps, or even how much forming it would cost. 

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein has also cautioned against forming a Space Corps. In May, he told lawmakers that the Air Force needs to focus on integrating the space enterprise with other war-fighting functions and domains. Creating a stovepiped space organization outside that of the major services could take the military further from that goal.

“Anything that separates space and makes it unique and different, relative to all of the war-fighting missions that we perform that are reliant on space, I don’t think believe that will move us in the right direction at this time,” Goldfein said.

Email:  jgould@defensenews.com                     

Twitter:  @reporterjoe

Raytheon was first selected as the provider for 3DELRR in October 2014, but Northrop and Lockheed quickly lodged protests over the decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Days before the protest window was to run out, the Air Force voluntarily announced it would re-evaluate the contract award, a move seen as a sign that the service expected the GAO to side with one of the protesting companies.

As a result, Raytheon lodged a suit against the service, one which was ultimately rejected by a U.S. court. The Air Force then relaunched the competition. The 3DELRR program will replace the service’s aging TPS-75 expeditionary radar system, which officials have warned will not be able to track future capabilities being designed by potential foes. The new systems are scheduled to be active in 2028.

At stake with the contract was not just the right to produce systems for the Air Force, but a potential stranglehold on the broader ground-based radar market. The U.S. Marine Corps has also explored the option of using the 3DELRR winner to replace its AN/TPS-59 system.

A Raytheon spokesman said the company was “pleased” and “eager to move forward” on the contract.

Although Lockheed did not win, they appear to have a fan of their offering — in 2014, a Chinese radar bearing heavy similarity to the Lockheed design appeared at a trade show. The company was famously hacked in 2009, with consensus that the Chinese government was behind it.

“What this layer is giving us, this unmanned team with a manned system, is really just giving us expendability. We have not had that in our platforms, maybe ever,” Roper said.

“All the things we build are expensive and if they take off, it’s our expectation they come home and land. That hasn’t been an issue until now, but if you think about highly competitive peer-on-peer war, how you have that system come back and land is a huge constraint,” he continued. “You have to protect it, you have to refuel it, you have to get them and maintain it and sustain it.”

The end goal, in Roper’s mind, is to limit the danger to individual operators. Rather than send in a wave of manned planes for the first day of combat, the SCO head said, send in wave after wave of cheap, disposable systems that come with no risk of losing a U.S. servicemember.

Michael Blades, an analyst with Frost and Sullivan, says the pieces for making the loyal wingman concept work are all available – but getting them to talk together is the tricky part.

“The technology is there but it all has to work together, and it has to work almost flawlessly,” Blades said. “We can’t even get a fighter jet to work for all the requirements of the different services, and we can’t decide what capabilities the MQ-25 should have, so do we really think we are ready for AI-controlled loyal wingmen?”

The big hurdles, Blades said, will be with datalinks and cybersecurity, something Roper acknowledged could be a challenge that needs to be worked out.

Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official now with the University of Pennsylvania who has studied drone issues, says that another challenge is the uncertainty around how technology will develop.

“Even within the AI research world, there is disagreement about how quickly various advances will occur,” Horowitz said. “Given that AI has utility far beyond the military context, commercial and academic research alone will likely push the realm of the possible in autonomous systems forward.”

Cultural Pushback?

To Roper, the future of drone swarm warfare will occur across all the services. But he is concerned that the Air Force may not be as willing to take part as other services, in part because they have no faced the same kind of fundamental challenges the other services have.

“The worst thing is to be in a position where the need to change is, yes, the most important thing, but it never the most important thing today,” Roper said. “We have to keep urgency in the need to change, because when we’re goanna need those changes, [when] the country says I now have a need for a next generation Air Force, it’s too late.”

Ironically, two of the most prominent AI/swarming programs from SCO are tied to the Air Force.  One, known as Avatar, is focused on the loyal wingman theory, taking a manned jet and having several unmanned systems tied together under its command. (There is also a ground-based equivalent being worked for the Army, Rpoer said.)

And perhaps the most attention-getting program from the office has been the Perdix system, a series of small drones designed with off-the-shelf technology. Perdix can be launched from the flare dispensers on an F-16 or F/A-18, and then can automatically link up and form a self-driving swarm of small ISR devices. A test in October successfully showed that the system could link 103 of the drones together.

Roper expressed surprise at the attention Perdix has gotten, saying he expected more interest in the work the office had done on other programs.  But the lessons learned from testing the system, including the software that powers the autonomous swarming capabilities, could be applied towards future swarming programs, he noted.

Horowitz notes that it is a “challenge” for any service to incorporate “emerging technologies that could threaten established ways of doing business,” which leads to a prediction that AI will make its way into existing operational concepts before we see anything revolutionary.

Adds Blades, “It’s a lot to execute in the implied short time, but with the rapid advancement of many technologies I think we could see things like AI and loyal wingmen integrated into normal ops, piecemeal, starting in 10-15 years.”

“We will submit a new proposal in the next three months to Ministry of Defence to seek project approval to source around 200 EW suites [that] cost around $100 million from domestic companies” a senior Air Force official said.

“Supply of complete set of EW suites appears to be beyond the capability of any single [Indian] company,” said retired Air Force air marshal and defense analyst Daljit Singh.

However, the domestic companies will need to tie up with overseas original equipment manufacturers to build EW suites, said a senior MoD official, adding that the “MoD is hopeful that the domestic companies will be able to supply the suites for the [Russian] helicopters.”

“There are a number of Indian companies currently carrying out research in manufacturing some EW components, but a tie-up with foreign Industries is inevitable,” Singh said.

State enterprises Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited, and private companies Larsen & Toubro, Tata Power SED, Mahindra Defence Systems, and Data Patterns are scouting to enter into EW market for this particular project.

The overseas companies likely to team up with the domestic companies to manufacture the suites include BAE Systems of the U.K., Saab of Sweden, Selex of Italy, Elbit of Israel, Thales of France, Terma of Denmark, and Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon of the United States.

“Locally made EW equipment are very crucial for the IAF as every weapon system employed in hostile environment would require a shield of self-protection, without which any Air Force would suffer unacceptable attrition,” Singh said.

An Air Force official disclosed that the EW suites for the Mi-17V-5 helicopters will include radar warning receivers, missile approach warning systems and countermeasure dispensing systems. Additionally, some of the helos would also be integrated with laser warning receivers and directed infrared countermeasure systems.

Giving details of the EW suites, the Air Force official said the radar warning receivers would provide the capability to intercept, identify and prioritize multiple airborne and ground-based threats.

The missile approach warning systems would provide the capability to detect, identify, warn and prioritize air-to-air and ground-to-air threats to the pilot while the directed infrared countermeasure systems would counter threats in all bands of infrared and ultraviolet.

The Air Force currently has a fleet of about 150 Mi-17V-5 helicopters procured from Russia since 2008 in different phases. “The Mi-17V-5 makes up the backbone of the IAF’s transport helicopter fleet,” the Air Force official said.

Rockwell Collins on Monday is introducing Coalescence at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida. Two demos will be showcased at the company’s booth: an F/A-18 “ready room” where pilots prepare for a flight from an aircraft carrier, and a ship bridge simulation.

“The advantage would be to have a very small footprint on an aircraft carrier” that would allow F/A-18 pilots at sea to prepare for and practice missions before they step into the cockpit and execute, Gibbs said.

“It would be a cost-reduced, highly improved fidelity environment to what exists today,” he said. “What that would look like today is you might be in that same cockpit looking at a computer monitor, not really immersed in your aircraft.”

The system can be configured several ways. One method is to mate an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset with existing simulation equipment, and pipe data from the simulator into the headset. At I/ITSEC, Rockwell Collins is showing how Coalescence works with an Oculus Rift and typical military hardware not hooked up to a simulator — items like a cockpit, displays and controls — which are integrated with the company’s core simulation architecture and a synthetic environment.

According to Gibbs, the “secret sauce” is how the software figures out what elements from the real world to bring into the virtual world and how to solve latency issues that may arise. For instance, in a situation where a person is holding a ball and then throws it to the user, the user needs to be able to see that ball and catch it without the simulated visuals lagging behind.

The technology isn’t quite ready for full-flight simulators yet, but it’s quickly approaching the resolution and fidelity needed, Gibbs said.

” Moore’s lawis working here pretty hard, so it won’t be long. It will be a couple of years for sure,” he said, referring to the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, who anticipated that computing would increase in power and decrease in relative cost at an exponential pace.

Rockwell Collins plans to make Coalescence available in 2017, but the company is still looking for its first customer. Gibbs believes it could be adapted for a variety of missions including joint tactical air control, dismounted soldier, driver training and even some rotary-wing applications. But although the company is considering proposing it for several programs of record, it has already run into a problem — the technology has outpaced the currently defined requirements.

Gibbs summarized his argument to the US military as: “Let’s identify a set of requirements that satisfies the training needs assessment for the program, and enable those to be satisfied by different and new technology.”

One selling point could be the cost. The company is still solidifying its cost model, but Gibbs said it will be “orders of magnitude less” than the $6 million to $10 million price tag of most flight simulators.