Glenn Dean's Blog, page 12

Barn find: P-40 Kittyhawk

You hear about "barn finds" from time to time, classic or highly sought-after cars found hidden in some long-forgotten storage site.

While not quite the same story, the remains of a Royal Air Force P-40B Kittyhawk fighter have been found in the sands of the Western Sahara Desert, mostly untouched after crash-landing there in 1942. From the Gizmodo article on the subject:

The plane was supposedly flown by Flight Sgt Dennis Copping, who was 24-years-old at the time. He was ordered to fly the plane to a British airbase in northern Egypt for repairs but ended up crash-landing the plane in June of 1942. No one is quite sure why he had to crash-land, there are bullet holes in the plane, but Copping was never seen again. Officials who have analyzed the plane wreckage say that Copping had survived the crash and even created shelter with his parachute and attempted to fix the engine but he couldn't escape the punishing heat of the desert. He died away from the camp site, in the desert trying to find civilization. The nearest town, his only hope of survival, was 200 miles away.

Here's some video:

This reminds me of the story of the Lady Be Good, a B-24 that disappeared in 1943 after a bombing mission to Italy, to be found deep in the Libyan desert in 1959, touching off a long search that ultimately found the remains of seven of the eight crew of the bomber.  I first learned about Lady from a diorama at the March Field Museum when I was a kid; there are a couple of good books out on the subject now.

I wonder what other missing aircraft and airmen may yet wait undiscovered in the deserts of North Africa or the jungles of the Pacific?

Good design, bad design

I'm just back from a week on the road, catching up on emails, blogs, and other news.  In the process I came across a little article at Gizmodo.com lauding the design of a new towel rack. But is it really that good?

It's certainly attractive, that towel rack.  It's right up there with the philosophy that design is "art design" -- it's got to look good, have a statement, or something.  Being an engineer, and a human factors specialist at that, I'm of a rather different opinion -- good design has to be easy to use, easy to understand, and intuitive, while at the same time being unintrusive.  Does this towel rack achieve that?  No.  Why?  Well, despite having three arms for towels that rotate for access, it's still a floor-mounted design.  Most bathrooms don't have a lot of floor space, particularly near a shower or tub where you actually need to have a towel close by.  Then there's the variable height -- the lowest rack looks to be at about knee level.  What good is that?  Do I want to bend over to grab a towel? Usability -- fail.

It may seem a bit silly to be ranting about towel racks, but I'm sensitive because during a week on the road through three different hotels, I was exposed to it excessively.  Three hotel rooms, each of which had nice "art design", but didn't have towel racks in reach of the shower -- be sure to remember to drop a towel on the toilet seat before you jump in so you have one in reach when you get out.  All three had horribly designed shower faucets -- the kind that have a single control for both water pressure and hot/cold termperature.  In two cases, that single control was a single dial.  You dial the control to increase water pressure, and somewhere along the line you had to figure out what the right setting was for water temperature.  Getting the temperature right usually meant getting the water flow wrong.

I find it hard to take room designers seriously when they can't figure out a sinple shower control.  Look, guys, a shower control has to do three things: control water pressure, control water temperature, and direct flow to/from tub and shower.  Would it kill you to separate the functions so they are intuitively obvious?  Like, say, an up-down control for water pressure with a dial control for temperature?  Stop trying to be artsy and cute and give me something I can use.

Poor decisions on simple things is part of what got me into the acquisition business.  A personal war story: I'm left-eye dominant, which means that with both eyes open, I favor what I see through the left eye.  It's fairly severe, so to use a rifle sight I have to physically close my left eye, where right-handed, right-eye dominant people can use the sights with both eyes open.  On the M1A1 Abrams tank I commanded as a platoon leader, the commander's sight extension was set up to be used by the right eye -- the brow pad over the sight allowing you to align your head would only allow for placement of the head in one position, with the right eye over the sight.  This was a real pain, since for gunnery I had to constantly keep my left eye closed (bully for the commander's display in the M1A2 which allowed me to sit back and use both eyes when using the commander's independent sight).  The M3A2 Bradley I commanded next had an adjustable brow pad over the sight extension -- so I could move it over and place it so I could use my left eye on the sight.  A simple thing, really, but it made a big difference in usability and reduced fatigue during gunnery.

I wish more so-called "designers" would use user-centered design principles.  Want a good starting point?  I recommend Don Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things (and subsequent sequels).  Norman is a UC San Diego psychology professor who has spent a lot of time studying usability and design.  I guarantee that after reading it you'll never look at a doorknob or shower control the same way again.

Army invests in dial-a-bullet tech

The Army is looking for new technology to allow cannons to rapidly select between different types of ammunition, according to a small business innovative research proposal request for ""Smart-Feed" Selective Ammunition Feed System for Machine Guns and Auto Cannons".

It's certainly a neat idea, and the Army is looking to demonstrate it in the 30mm M230 cannon from the Apache, which is currently a 600-round-per-minute single-feed system, as compared to the 200 round-per-minute dual-feed 25mm M242 cannon on the Bradley or LAV-25, or the dual-feed 200 rpm 30mm Mk44 cannon on the LPD-17 series of ships.

There's one problem.  What ammo is the M230 going to select between?  There are two production rounds for the M230: the M788 training round (a slug) and the M789 high-explosive dual-purpose round, which is the combat round (yes, there is an older HE-incendiary M799 round, but without some optimization it isn't any more effective than the M789 when used against troops due to the way it is designed and fuzed).  So the M230 has one combat round to choose from -- what good does this ammo selection system do?  For ground vehicles, there are typically two types of ammo, and given that those cannon are dual-feed ...

Perhaps this technology would make more sense if it were tied to a development of a new ammunition type or a caliber/configuration that would allow more choices.  For example, in 40mm, you might use a mix of HEDP, HE, non-lethal, and marking rounds, which might benefit from a multi-select feed system.

I'll observe that this SBIR proposal comes out of the Aviation and Missile RDE Center, not the Armaments RDE Center, which might explain the lack of complete analysis of the implementation of the solution.

A great question: when to cancel a program?

Dan Ward has a great article up at Time's Battlelands Blog.  Titled "Why to Cancel a Pentagon Procurement Program", it examines program termination, which the author argues should occur under three conditions:

We can’t afford it.

We don’t need it.

It doesn’t work.

More intriguing still is his look at two Air Force Acquisition programs I've blogged about here: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft.

On this note, Stars and Stripes just ran an ironically-placed pair of articles. The top of page 4 featured a piece from the Los Angeles Times about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s ballooning costs, showing how the estimated price tag jumped from $233B in 2001 to $395B in 2011. That’s an increase of $162B for an aircraft that is expected to deliver its first basic combat capability in 2015, assuming all the technical problems can be solved by then. The article quoted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta as saying, “We absolutely need it for the future.”

Immediately below the JSF story was a piece about the USAF’s pending decision to cut the C-27J Spartan, which the U.S. has been using for combat supply missions in Afghanistan for the past eight months. The Air Force has spent approximately $1B on the Spartan so far and recently signed a contract worth $2B, but the article explained that Air Force leaders now see the small cargo hauler as “a luxury it cannot afford in this era of cost-cutting.”

If the Spartan is an unaffordable luxury at $2B, it does beg the question of the JSF’s affordability at $395B. We can afford the expensive one but not the cheap one? I think that’s a fair question to ask, since the C-27 is being called “unaffordable” while the JSF’s cost growth alone is 80 times larger than the new Spartan contract.

As for necessity, if we don’t need the C-27J – which is flying in today’s war – one might perhaps be forgiven for wondering how much we need the still-being-developed JSF, whose most optimistic delivery date occurs after the projected 2014 departure from Afghanistan. Of course, the SECDEF’s commitment to the JSF couldn’t be clearer, so the necessity question for that particular aircraft is settled in the affirmative – at least for now.

A final question remains – does it work? Since the C-27J is flying missions this very minute, it clearly earns a yes. Based on the latest test results, I’m sorry to say the JSF doesn’t get a yes quite yet.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/27/why-to-cancel-a-pentagon-procurement-program/#ixzz1tr6hNdSB

Since the author is an Air Force acquisition officer, his opinion provides some unique perspective, don't you think?

C-RAM Test Video and some history

I've posted before about Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar systems (and I supported the Army's Land-based Phalanx C-RAM system in a previous life).  Here's some video of the land-based Phalanx firing:

Gizmodo has an article up with a bit of C-RAM's history -- it's a good, short read.  In the comments, a commenter hawkeye18 provided some feedback on using the system:

See my post above for more info on the gun, but the round cylinder thing is what houses the radars. The search radar, which sits at the very top of the dome, looks like a smaller version of the FURUNO units you see on boats, except with two arms facing opposing directions. It spins constantly, scanning a large dome around the unit.

The track radar looks a lot like a height-finding radar (do a google image search to see what they look like), and sits at the front of the cylindrical part. It has a very narrow detection range, but is incredibly sensitive. Once the search radar detects a potential target, it will pass it to the track radar. The gun does not move when it is searching for targets, but when the track radar wants to look at something, it will take the gun with it. In the videos, you can see the mount stuttering around quite a bit before it fires. This is the track radar attempting to get an accurate fix on distance, height, trajectory and speed information. Once it establishes a positive lock, it fires.

The ammo I talk about above - HEIT-SD rounds. Google them, they're quite cool! Here is a picture of them loaded in the gun.

and

Our unit's shoot-down rate was 100% while we were in theater. Everything we actually shot at, we hit. That's not to say that there weren't any mortars or rockets that landed - plenty did, but most of those hit in unpopulated areas, and didn't pass through any guns' defended zones (those two facts are related). Some of them were shot too low and didn't give the gun enough time. Actually, that's not true. The gun had plenty of time, but the humans didn't have enough time. A big, big, big deal in deciding whether to shoot at something or not is positive identification. We have to be absolutely, positively motherfucking sure it's a mortar that we're shooting at. We also have to make absolutely, positively motherfucking sure that there are no other aircraft in the area. If there are, even close, we can't shoot. We call it an airspace foul. It sucks, but shooting down one of our own Blackhawks would be eleventy billion times worse than letting a mortar hit a patch of dirt, or more frequently the lakes surrounding Al-Faw palace. They liked aiming for that. Their aim sucked.

My bit of support for C-RAM was the 20mm x 102mm M940 MPT-SD (multi-purpose tracer w/self-destruct) ammunition C-RAM used -- which unlike the tungsten saboted primary ammo used by sea-based CIWS, is a semi-armor-piercing high explosive incendiary with tracer that has a self-destruct feature.  M940 was originally developed as a lower drag, longer-ranged round for the product-improved Vulcan air defense system, but as the Vulcan was retired before M940 was fielded the Army sold the lots of M940 it produced to Israel, who was still using the guns.  When C-RAM started we had to buy a bunch of M940 back from Israel until we could get production started.  There are other types of HEI 20mm, used in aircraft (like the Navy PGU-28), but they lack the longer range of M940 as well as the self-destruct feature needed for use from the ground.  We eventually got production rates up significantly for M940 to support both test and theater requirements.

The round has a pyrotechnic initiation system in its nose, licensed from Nammo-Raufoss, rather than a mechanical fuze.  The tracer burns for several thousand meters, and when it reaches the end of the burn it ignites the HE fill causing the self-destruct.

Why 20mm?  It was cheap and available, since the CIWS could be adopted quickly and had the requried accuracy and rate of fire.  A 20mm was about the smallest round to be able to penetrate the target with sufficient explosive to detonate it -- big mortar rounds and artillery shells are pretty hard targets, while rockets and missiles are "soft" targets.  A little bigger payload would actually have been better.  We did some later experimentation with 35/50mm ammo and twin 35mm Bushmaster III cannon for a follow-on to C-RAM called EAPS (Extended Area Protection System).  EAPS actually had maneuvering rounds that released a frag cloud to destroy the target (more effective against missiles, not as good against artillery), but it was horrifically expensive compared to 20mm. It's a really tough problem, hitting a bullet with a bullet in a very short intercept window, particularly with a man in the loop.

An interesting story about M940 self-destruct and C-RAM:  When the first batteries went up at Camp Victory, the crews operating the guns assumed "self-destruct" meant that the rounds turned into confetti and just floated down.  The rounds do come apart, but the pieces are up to the size of a quarter and as much as twice as massive.  C-RAM has to do periodic alignment fires to align all the radars with the guns.  When the guys at Victory did the first alignment fire, they pointed it in what they thought was a generally safe direction (ignoring the surface danger zone diagram they'd been provided) and let fly ... only to rain down shrapnel through the roof of the mess hall, a storage area, and other occuiped areas where the frags went through the roofs of metal containers.  We got a panicked call ... "Why are pieces FALLING FROM THE SKY!!!??" ... and after explaining that nothing not fired into orbit stays in the sky once fired up there, we did some calculations and provided a zone in which most of the debris would land. They could then use that for safe alignment fires, though the word would have to get out for soldiers in the line of an actual intercept to take cover, since only 1 round of a 200-300 round burst would hit the target, and the target and the rest of the debris from the intercept rounds had to come down somewhere.

Anyway, once sorted out the systems became pretty effective.  We were working on bringing some intercept batteries into Afghanistan when I was there, but I don't know if those batteries were ever shifted from Iraq.  Of course, the Army's working on son-of-C-RAM now, aka the IFPC or Indirect Fire Protection Capability, which could be a missile- or gun-based system.

Defense contract action for 4 May

Here's some interesting contract actions from the DoD as of their 4 May update:

$750M in cellphone minutes.  The Navy awarded three 5-year contracts for cell & data services to AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.  Assuming equal distribution, that's up to $50M per company per year.  At, say $1000 per phone per year, that supports 150,000 phones per year.  That's a lot of rollover minutes ...

New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc., doing business as AT&T Mobility, Hanover, Md., (N00244-12-D-0014); Sprint Communications Co., L.P., doing business as Sprint, Reston, Va. (N00244-12-D-0015); and Cellco Partnership, doing business as Verizon Wireless, Basking Ridge, N.J. (N00244-12-D-0016), are each being awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, multiple award contract for domestic and international wireless services, as well as data plans and devices.  The maximum dollar value for the program, including one 12-month base period and four 12-month option periods for all three contracts combined, is $750,000,000.  Funding will be provided at the task order level.  These three contractors will compete for the task orders under the terms and conditions of the awarded contract.  This is an ongoing requirement and the locations of service will vary depending upon the location information as provided on the individual task orders.  Work will be performed in California (21.5 percent); Virginia (20 percent); Washington, D.C. (15.5 percent); Washington (10 percent); and various locations inside and outside the continental United States (33 percent).  Work is expected to be completed May 2013.  If all options are exercised, work will continue through May 2017.  The requirement was awarded through full and open competition and solicited through the Navy Electronic Commerce Online and Federal Business Opportunities websites, with four offers received.   NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego, Calif., is the contracting activity.

Small company makes good in IED detection.  Niitek, Inc received a $579M contract for delivery of Husky-Mounted Detection System ground penetrating radars for IED delivery.  No quantity provided.  I was involved with early deployments in 2009, and though reviews were mixed the promise was there; looks like persistence pays off.

Niitek, Inc., Dulles, Va., was awarded a $579,000,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract.  The award will provide for the procurement of the Husky mounted detection systems and spare parts.  Work will be performed in Dulles, Va., with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2015.  One bid was solicited, with one bid received.  The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Fort Belvoir, Va., is the contracting activity (W909MY-12-D-0010).

Block III Apache Low-Rate Initial Production.  Boeing got the contracts for Apache Block III LRIP, launching the production of the next generation of the iconic attack helicopter. Block III in particular features the ability to do "manned-unmanned teaming".

  The Boeing Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded a $486,370,418 firm-fixed-price contract.  The award will provide for the AH-64D Apache Block III low rate initial production and related support.  Work will be performed in Mesa, Ariz., with an estimated completion date of Nov. 30, 2014.  The bid was solicited through the Internet, with one bid received.  The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-09-C-0161).

            The Boeing Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded a $171,777,672 firm-fixed-price contract.  The award will provide for the procurement of Apache Block III aircraft and related services in support of Foreign Military Sales.  Work will be performed in Mesa, Ariz., with an estimated completion date of Dec. 30, 2014.  One bid was solicited, with one bid received.  The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-12-C-0089).

Taiwanese UH-60s.  Sikorsky got a $43M contract to modify four UH-60M model helicopters for Taiwan.  Given that the -M is the latest version of the UH-60, I wonder what Taiwan-uniqu mods cost ~$10M/helicopter?

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., Stratford, Conn., was awarded a $43,182,000 firm-fixed-price contract.  The award will provide for the engineering services to covert four UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters to the specific unique configuration for Taiwan.  Work will be performed in Stratford, Conn., with an estimated completion date of Oct. 31, 2014.  One bid was solicited, with one bid received.  The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-08-C-0003).

Army Individual Carbine Competition: On to Phase II

Military.com is reporting that companies are receiving their notices that they are moving on to Phase II of the Army Individual Carbine Competition.  Reportedly, Colt, FN, HK, Remington, and Adcor Defense have reported receiving letters allowing them to move to the next phase.  

What are the phases?  According to Military.com:

Phase I of the competition had nothing to do with evaluating test prototypes, but instead focused on weeding out companies that may not have the production capacity to make thousands of weapons per month.

Once Phase II of the carbine competition begins, Army testers will shoot hundreds of thousands of rounds through the test weapons to assess accuracy, reliability and durability. Phase II will end with the award of contracts to three gun makers that will advance to Phase III. The Army will buy more of these weapons out of the contracts to conduct three limited user evaluations.

So, frankly, Phase I wasn't much of a cut -- it is just weeding out the garage tinkerers.  Phase II will start to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Is LSAT ready to be the Army's next light machine gun?

I've posted before on the Army's Lightweight Small Arms Technology program, a technology program designed to dramatically reduce the weight of the Army's guns and ammo by doing a ground-up redesign of both using plastic case-telescoped ammunition and/or caseless ammo.

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The program is maturing, and has successfully cut the weight of a light machine gun and ammo nearly in half.  Military.com's KitUp! blog asks the question: is it time to get serious about LSAT?

With one major caveat, I think the answer is yes.  Why?  Consider:

- The M249 SAW is aging, and suffered some serious degradation during Iraq that only an intensive maintenance program helped.  The Marines have started dumping theirs, but for an ill-considered auto-rifle that lacks the firepower of the weapon it replaces.

- Ammo stockpiles have never been lower, since stockpiles were depleted during Iraq as the ammo enterprise rushed to spool up, in some cases just barely making its requirements.  Most ammo that is produced today is fired within a year or two.  Given that the Army just switched to a new ammo configuration, it will take some time to rebuild a stockpile -- that funding could be diverted to new ammo.

- LSAT offers the opportunity to give every soldier the firepower of a SAW with the accuracy of a rifle, without a weight growth -- or depending on the tradeoffs, a weight reduction.  The rest of the Soldier's kit is only getting heavier; some of that weight can offset network technologies like Nett Warrior.

- If the Army ever wants to seriously consider a caliber change to increase range, effectiveness, or other capabilities, the obvious time to do it is when the ammo configuration changes.  The same tech in M855A1 can be applied in other calibers; in the LSAT configuration there's no particular reason to stick to existing caliber configurations.  We did some analysis of alternative calibers at one point and found that we could achieve the range and penetration capability of a 7.62mm round at the weight of current 5.56mm systems by using a 6.5mm LSAT configuration.

- At least the Army would be investing in a new technology and capability, rather than reinventing the wheel.

The caveat?  The declining defense budget.  Retooling production for LSAT ammo would be a major investment: by some estimates it might cost as much as a billion dollars to set up for caseless ammo production (plastic case-telescoped could be significantly cheaper).  That's real money in the small arms business, though admittedly it's less than the cost of buying new carbines for the entire Army, and even less than the cost of an overrun on the F-35.  The investment would certainly be amortized over a long period of time -- the Army's likely to invest in a caliber change only once in a half-century or so.  I'd suggest a few small arms programs that could be killed to pay the bill, like the IC competition, the XM806 lightweight .50, and perhaps the XM25.

So is it LSAT's time?  Maybe, maybe not -- but perhaps it's time to run an operational assessment to answer the question.

 

Washington Post: Defense Acquisition is Broken

The Washington Post has concluded the defense acquisition process is broken.  This process:

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In other news, water is wet.

Hint to the post: the acquisition system isn't governed by the people who execute it -- it's governed by multiple conflicting sets of rules not written by the people who must operate it.  I can certainly agree with the recommendations referenced in the article:

The Punaro task force’s first recommendation: “Zero base the entire system, including all directives and regulations.”

At the heart of that suggestion is the conclusion that procurement’s three processes are broken — the military set requirements, followed by an essentially civilian-directed acquisition, along with a hybrid budgeting system to pay for it.

The Punaro Task Force proposed that requirements, acquisition and budgeting be merged with a common documentation throughout. It also recommended requirements be frozen, after cost, schedule and technical tradeoffs have been made. Industry is to be brought early into the process, and the current wall between military requirements and civilian-controlled acquisition should be removed. Service chiefs should be involved throughout the process.

Integrated Spine Concept for Load Bearing Equipment

A company called Emerald Touch, Inc has developed a new system for distributing load on a soldier's body through the use of a rigid exoskeletal spine that distributes loads more effectively from the shoulders to the hips.  The "Integrated Support Exospine" is designed by a chiropractic doctor.  Cehck it out in the video below.

It certainly looks like it would be comfortable, have full range of motion, and be effective at shifting load.

My question is how well it integrates with other equipment.  Supposedly it is designed to work with thre current Army body armor (the Improved Outer Tactical Vest, or IOTV), though I'm not quite clear if it is intended to go on over or under the IOTV, and I can see problems with both integrations.  The central spine looks like it wil further be an issue with hydration systems (the ubiquitous Camelbak) that already have problems with integration with things like rucksacks, vehicle seats, and other equipment that assumes a flat surface on the Soldier's back.

That's the problem and challenge with individual equipment.  Any one piece of kit may be a good idea, but the ral art is integrating them to work together.  Come up with one good idea and it may render a lot of other good kit useless.  Get the integration wrong, or integrate too effectively, and you just create other problems (this is an issue with the IOTV itself -- it's too well integrated, and can't be easily pulled apart for lower levels of protection and carriage, which is why the adoption of plate carriers as a lighter weight body armor solution is so critical).  

If ISE works, I can see all the rest of the individual gear needing to be redesigned to work around or integrate with that spinal system.  It may be worth it if ISE is good enough, and will be critical since we don't seem to be anywhere near close to reducing the "Christmas Tree" effect of hanging yet another piece of kit on our troopers.

Plus that hundred pounds of lightweight gear that we carry doesn't seem to be getting any lighter -- every pound saved just gets turned in to another capability, whether a spinal load carrying system or a new radio or handheld network device.