First Production-Model JSF. The Air Force accepts the first of a planned 1,763 production-model F-35A Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The signing of formal acceptance documents for the jet, known as AF-7, took place at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 final assembly plant in Fort Worth, Texas, May 5. The jet flew to Edwards AFB, Calif., to begin its flight testing program. “This first aircraft is the beginning of the modernization of U.S. Air Force, Marine and Naval Air power and for our coalition partners around the world,” said Larry Lawson, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and F-35 program general manager. “Today we begin to fulfill the vision of our government and international customers.” F-35s have completed more than 865 flights since flight-testing began in late 2006. In addition to AF-7, eight more production-model F-35s have rolled out and are being prepared for delivery.
UAE C-17s. Boeing delivers the first of six C-17 Globemaster airlifters to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Air Force at the company’s final assembly facility in Long Beach. “It is with great pride that we accept delivery of our first C-17, which will help expand our ability to perform humanitarian and strategic-lift missions in the region and around the world,” said Maj. Gen. Staff Pilot Mohammed bin Suwaidan Saeed Al Qamzi, UAE Air Force commander. The UAE will take delivery of three more C-17s this year and two in 2012 as it modernizes its airlift capabilities. As a member of the worldwide C-17 “virtual fleet,” the UAE’s C-17s will be supported through Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III Sustainment Partnership, a multinational Performance-Based Logistics program. There are currently 231 C-17s in service worldwide, 21 of those with international customers.
Root Out Redundancies. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Pete Chiarelli says he’s “four-square behind” the Defense Department’s roles and missions review. The review is looking to root out redundancies and duplications among the services similar to what the Army is doing internally with its portfolio reviews. These reviews are “extremely successful,” Chiarelli says at a Defense Writers Group breakfast last week. The Vice would like to see a scrub of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, and precision munitions.
Really Bright. Boeing says it received a $4.2 million, 16-month contract to design and develop a 25-kilowatt high-brightness laser for the Pentagon’s High Energy Laser-Joint Technology Office (HEL-JTO). Boeing will develop the solid-state, electric laser based on the highly efficient Thin Disk Laser (TDL) technology. The project’s goal is to demonstrate that the performance of a TDL-based system is consistent with the HEL-JTO Robust Electric Laser Initiative program objectives of high brightness and high electrical efficiency. Successful completion of this 16-month effort could lead to the development and production of operational versions of the laser system.
New Certification. L-3 MPRI says it has achieved International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2008 certification. The certification spans L-3 MPRI’s role as a provider of integrated training, education, development and staffing solutions for security, military, and law enforcement services and programs for the U.S. government and foreign governments. “Our focus on continued process improvement fosters increased consistency and efficiency within our organization so that we can deliver a higher level of service to our customers,” said Brian Gilbert, vice president of quality at L-3 MPRI. “Our recent ISO 9001:2008 registration helps assure governments that our core support processes have the internationally recognized performance and quality management characteristics necessary to execute contract objectives.”
Homeland Security Bill. The House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee on Friday approved by voice vote a $40.6 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security in FY ’12. The proposed budget is $3 billion, or about 7 percent, less than the Obama administration requested.
Badging Made Easier. In an effort to make it easier to go through enrollments for different security credentialing processes managed by the Transportation Security Administration, the House Homeland Security Transportation Subcommittee last week approved a bill that eliminates the redundancies in the credentialing processes. The MODERN Security Credentials Act (H.R. 1690) reduces costs for certain commercial motor vehicle operators by streamlining the credentialing process so that they will no longer be required to undergo multiple, duplicative threat assessments by eliminating redundancies and overlap between the federal credentialing process and those at the state and local levels. The bill also establishes a task force of industry, labor and government stakeholders to provide recommendations for further modernizing the threat assessment process.
…Expedited Screening. The subcommittee also approved another piece of legislation, the Risk-Based Security Screening for Members of The Armed Forces Act (H.R. 1801), which provides for expedited airport security screenings for members of the U.S. military and their accompanying family members.
Carrying On. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead last week dismissed notions that the sea service’s carrier force was quickly becoming a relic of warfare. After his speech at an unmanned technology symposium at the Brookings think tank in Washington, Roughead said the Navy’s carrier fleet would become more, not less, important in future conflicts. Aircraft carriers, he argued, were essentially “moveable sovereign airfields” and were not hamstrung by the various lease and host nation challenges that other installations have to deal with. As a number of host nations begin to revisit a number of those lease agreements with the U.S. military, the carrier force will be necessary to make up for that potential loss of access across the globe, Roughead said.
…Sinking EW. With the Navy putting on display its bolstered air-based electronic warfare capabilities in Libya to devastating effect, the service’s top officer says it is time that the sea service began looking at focusing that capability in other warfighting domains. During his speech this week at an unmanned technology symposium in Washington, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead says the service needed to increase the impact of its EW technologies in its surface and underwater warfare portfolios. On underwater EW capabilities, the four-star says that a submarine-based EW application would be “an extraordinary system” when used in operations such as Odyssey Dawn. During the speech, he adds that an additional underwater cyberwarfare capability also had the potential to be a game changer for the Navy. 


Giving Notice. As the Air Force moves ahead with its long-awaited development of its new aerial refueler, Congress wants to make sure it does not get left out of the loop. As part of the HASC’s version of the fiscal year 2012 defense bill, lawmakers included language requiring the Pentagon to notify Capitol Hill of any changes to the program. According to the legislation, DoD acquisition chief Ashton Carter must inform Congress of any “major engineering, design, capability or configuration change” made to the KC-46A program of record. Additionally, Air Force program officials must also submit the cost difference associated with the change, compared to the program baseline, “when it becomes known.” House committee members unanimously adopted the measure into the bill. The full House will vote on the defense spending legislation later this month.
Home Port. Tensions between the Florida and Virginia delegations of the HASC came to a head this week, over proposed legislation to increase funding for construction work at the Navy’s shipyards in Mayport, Fla. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) proposed an amendment to the panel’s version of the fiscal year 2012 defense bill to finance work at the Mayport installation, which would allow nuclear-powered carriers to dock there. The legislation would have given the Navy two locations on the East Coast to service the nuclear-powered carrier fleet. The other location is in Norfolk, Va. Miller and others argued that the two locations would ensure that carrier maintenance could be carried out at a faster clip, while ensuring that the service’s carrier fleet on the East Coast would not be centrally located at one facility. However, members of the Virginia delegation opposed the legislation, noting the Navy had more pressing funding requirements, and that such work at the Mayport shipyards would only be duplicative. Miller eventually withdrew the legislation, but is expected to raise the issue back when the bill comes to the full House.