Armada International - April/May 2021

april-may 2021. Issue 02.

L3HARRIS.COM

VIPER SHIELD™ Innovative electronic warfare for tomorrow’s F-16 Increase mission success in an increasingly dangerous threat environment. The L3Harris Viper Shield digital electronic warfare (EW) suite is custom designed to maximize the survivability and mission success of advanced F-16 aircraft.

Developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force, the new AN/ ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield provides U.S. and global coalition partners with cutting-edge countermeasures against sophisticated, ever-changing threats. This advanced EW system provides a virtual electronic shield around the aircraft, enabling warfighters to complete missions safely in increasingly complex battlespace scenarios. L3Harris continues a 60-plus-year legacy of developing advanced electronic warfare technology to ensure superiority across the spectrum.

Learn more at L3Harris.com/vipershield.

APRIL-MAY 2021 www.armadainternational.com

10 electronic Warfare

0ุ 6 commander's intent

SUPPRESSIVE FIRE Thomas Withington reports that the Royal Air Force is once again embracing the air defence suppression mission.

EVOLVING AGILE AND FLEXIBLE COMMAND AT SEA Commodore Michael Harris, Commodore Flotillas, explains the Royal Australian Navy's task group command structure to Dr Lee Willett.

14 land Warfare

TURKISH ARMOUR AIMS FOR EXPORTS The first feature in a two part focus on the Turkish defence industy. Christopher Foss looks at the export potential of AFVs.

32 airborne Weapons

22 air poWer

OTTOMAN AEROSPACE EMERGES In the second part of our focus on Turkey, Alan Warnes examines the growth and potential of the indigenous aerospace industry.

CHECK SIX - 360º AIR ENGAGEMENTS Jon Lake traces the development of air-to-air missiles, ending with 'over the shoulder' capability and longer ranges.

28 sea poWer

NAVAL DESIGN SWAP Alix Valenti assesses how new factors are influencing traditional ship designs.

37 armada commentary

BEGINNING OF THE END FOR F-35?

Guest analyst Jon Lake asks whether the Lockheed Martin F-35 has already reached its zenith.

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

3

ON THE COVER: “The PARS 6x6 Vehicle incorporates high level ballistic and mine protection with its state of the art design architecture. With its reliable power pack and height adjustable, independent hydropneumatic suspension system the vehicle provides high mobility on all terrains.”

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS D&S Thailand

Volume 45, Issue No.2, APRIL-MAY 2021 Published bi-monthly by Media Transasia Ltd. Copyright 2012 by Media Transasia Ltd. Publishing Office: Media Transasia Ltd., 1603, 16/F, Island PL Tower, 510 Kings Road, Hong Kong Editor-in-Chief: Andrew Drwiega General Manager: Jakhongir Djalmetov International Marketing Manager: Roman Durksen Digital Manager: David Siriphonphutakun Art Director: Rachata Sharma Chairman: J.S. Uberoi President: Egasith Chotpakditrakul Chief Financial Officer: Gaurav Kumar

Cover 4

FNSS

15

Havelsan

19

Dubai Airshow

27

IDEF

31

IMDEX

39

L3Harris Land Forces

Cover 2

33

Lemo

11

Milmast

17

Roketsan

23

Advertising Sales Offices FRANCE/SPAIN Stephane de Remusat, REM International Tel: (33) 5 3427 0130 E-Mail: sremusat@rem-intl.com

THIS MONTH ON ARMADAINTERNATIONAL.COM

GERMANY Sam Baird, Whitehill Media Tel: (44-1883) 715 697 Mobile: (44-7770) 237 646 E-Mail: sam@whitehillmedia.com UK Zena Coupé Tel: +44 1923 852537, zena@expomedia.biz NORDIC COUNTRIES/ITALY/SWITZERLAND Emanuela Castagnetti-Gillberg Tel: (46) 31 799 9028 E-Mail: emanuela.armada@gmail.com RUSSIA Alla Butova, NOVO-Media Ltd, Tel/Fax: (7 3832) 180 885 Mobile : (7 960) 783 6653 Email :alla@mediatransasia.com USA/CANADA Margie Brown, Blessall Media, LLC. Tel : (+1 540) 341 7581 Email: margiespub@rcn.com INDIA Sanjay Seth Global Exposures Tel: +91 11 466 96566 Mob: +91 9818 697279 Email: sseth.globex@gmail.com TURKEY Zeynep Özlem Baş Mob: +90 532 375 0046 Email: media@oz-ist.com ALL OTHER COUNTRIES Jakhongir Djalmetov Media Transasia Limited Tel: +66 2204 2370, Mobile: +66 81 6455654 Email: joha@mediatransasia.com

■ RUSSIA FIRES FOR THE FIRST TIME AT SEA THE NAVAL PANTSIR The Russian Navy has tested for the first time from a ship the Pantsir-M surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery system, which is a naval version of the land mobile Pantsir-S1 system.

■ JAMMING BACKPACKS The US Army could receive backpack-based electronic warfare/cyber attack systems in the coming years.

Roman Durksen Media Transasia Limited Tel: +66 2204 2370, Mobile +66 83 6037989 E-Mail: roman@mediatransasia.com

Circulation Audit Board

Controlled circulation: 26,121 (average per issue) certified by CAB for the period 1st January 2019 to 31st December 2019.

Printed by Media Transasia Ltd., 75/8, 14th Floor, Ocean Tower II, Soi Sukhumvit 19, Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok 10110, Thailand.

Tel: 66 (0)-2204 2370, Fax: 66 (0)-2204 2390 -1 Annual subscription rates: Europe: CHF 222 (including postage) Rest of the World: USD 222 (including postage) Subscription Information: Readers should contact the following address: Subscription Department, Media Transasia Ltd., 75/8, 14th Floor, Ocean Tower II, Soi Sukhumvit 19, Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok 10110, Thailand.

Tel +66 2204 2370 Fax: +66 2204 2387 Email: accounts@mediatransasia.com

4

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

■ DECOY AND DESTROY

■ RASISR SHARP

A new addition to Saab’s Arexis electronic warfare product line provides added protection for Gripen.

L3Harris expects to have its new RASISR Signals Intelligence collection pod ready for delivery in 2021, the firm has told Armada.

Editorial

U.S. WITHDRAWAL WILL NOT END AFGHANISTAN’S ‘FOREVER WAR’

O

n Wednesday 14 April President Biden announced that the United States will unconditionally withdraw all of its forces from Afghanistan by 11 September, the anniversary of the infamous attacks in 2001 against the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and another unspecified target but potentially the US Capitol in Washington DC. President Biden is following the policy of his predecessor, President Trump, in drawing a line in the dust and saying this far and no further in Afghanistan. He is holding to the U.S. side of the Peace Talks with the Taliban, albeit withdrawing later than 1 May, but it is very much standing by a ‘onesided’ commitment. The Islamic Taliban, who still have elements of al Qaeda within their ranks, have continued a campaign of bombings and murder.

Calling it the “forever war’, President Biden stated that the main aim of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was the defeat Al Qaeda and find (and kill) Osama bin Laden which he said had been accomplished. That may be true, but many of the conditions that allowed the initial growth of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, working with the Taliban, have the potential to return. Perhaps Daesh will also gravitate towards the country While Afghan President Ashraf Ghani

said that the Afghan forces were “fully capable” of defending Afghanistan, that is undermined by the fact that the Taliban already control vast areas of the country with government forces only exerting influence inside and close-in to metropolitan areas.

Biden stated that the U.S. and NATO coalition troops “have trained and equipped a standing force of over 300,000 Afghan personnel today and hundreds of thousands over the past two decades. And they’ll continue to fight valiantly, on behalf of the Afghans, at great cost.”

“At great cost” underlines that however good that initial training has been, unless there are factors such as constant access to current intelligence, excellent communication s, interoperability, coordinated airpower, equipment maintenance and casualty recovery and care, the confidence and ability of those troops is likely to be undermined very quickly. Their success will also depend on the confidence of the population in them and in the government. As in all wars, if the population do not feel protected and are vulnerable they will side with whoever is likely to let them live the longest. Many moderates and progressives are already looking for an exit.

The just released 2021 Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence

Community, published on 13 April, 2021, emphasises the probability of a further deterioration of security within Afghanistan once U.S., NATO and coalition troops depart: “We assess that prospects for a peace deal will remain low during the next year. The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.”

It goes on the state: “Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory…Afghan forces continue to secure major cities and other government strongholds, but they remain tied down in defensive missions and have struggled to hold recaptured territory or re-establish a presence in areas abandoned in 2020.

General Petraeus, former commanding general of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan and former CIA director, following the announcement said: “I'm really afraid that we're going to look back two years from now and regret the decision… ending US involvement in an endless war doesn't end the endless war. It just ends our involvement. And I fear that this war is going to get worse.”

ANDREw DRwIEGA, Editor-in-Chief

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

5

Royal Australian Navy

Commander's Intent

The Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN’s) landing helicopter dock (LHD) amphibious ship HMAS Canberra (left), the MEKO 200 Anzac-class frigate HMAS Arunta (centre), and HMAS Hobart sailing from Darwin, northern Australia during the 2020 deployment. During this deployment, all three ships took on a command role within the RAN’s new task group command construct.

EVOLVING AGILE AND FLEXIBLE COMMAND AT SEA Commodore Michael Harris, Commodore Flotillas, discusses how the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has been scaling its task group command structure to enhance operational flexibility.

W

ith returning great power competition manifested at sea in returning naval rivalry, task group operations are increasingly central for navies in delivering maritime presence.

Task groups bring flexibility in capability and operation, but to generate this flexibility such groups require effective command structures.

Growing emphasis on task group presence is evident in Indo-Pacific naval activity. As one of the theatre’s major regional navies, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has an established history of operating

6

Dr Lee Willett theatre-wide, from its own waters to the Gulf. Today, task groups sit more centrally in such RAN presence.

The RAN’s task groups are built around new platforms bringing new capabilities.

The RAN is also operationalising various task group constructs built around these platforms, using a new command staff structure to deliver flexibility in using such capability.

The RAN’s new task group presence has been based initially around its Canberra-class landing helicopter dock (LHD) amphibious assault ships, HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide (commissioned in 2014 and 2015, respectively). The LHDs have

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

deployed across the region for operations and exercises, including as amphibious task groups (ATGs) to provide humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HADR) support for Australia’s neighbours. More recently, task group presence has been reinforced by the RAN’s three Hobart-class air warfarefocused guided-missile destroyers (DDGs), HMAS Hobart, HMAS Brisbane, and HMAS Sydney (commissioned in 2017, 2018, and 2020, respectively).

The RAN can now deploy different task group operational and command constructs, using the LHDs and/or the DDGs, and even its MEKO 200 Anzac-class guided-missile frigates.

OPTIMISING OUTPUTS To maximise and optimise the flexibility and outputs of such task groups, the RAN has established two primary at-sea operational command-and-control (C2) staff constructs – the ATG and the Maritime Task Group (Mar TG), the latter established most recently, in December 2018.

“The Mar TG staff was stood up to provide Fleet Command and, in particular, Commodore Flotillas [COMFLOT] as the maritime component commander [MCC] with another arm in the staff, so they could act as task group command at sea and also provide their primary function as a warfare staff that constitutes the sea combat commander [SCC],” Commodore Michael Harris, in post as COMFLOT since early 2020, told Armada International.

This approach is creating a scalable command construct, one which reflects the scalability of the task groups themselves.

The scalable command level is shaped by the mission. “It’s all derived around the mission and the principal warfare commander (PWC) duties,” said Cdre Harris.

“The make-up has got two streams: there is the administrative stream for running the task group, that the Commander Task Group (CTG) runs; and there is the warfighting stream that the Composite Warfare Commander (CWC) runs.”

In 2019 and 2020, the RAN deployed different task group constructs on different operations and exercises. The deployments demonstrated how the new C2 structure is increasing command options and flexibility.

In late 2019, the Mar TG embarked in HMAS Hobart to deploy in a CTG role, as the DDG led a three-ship task group on a three-month operational deployment to Northeast Asia.

In early 2020, for the Ocean Shield / Ocean Horizon combined synthetic/at-sea exercise, COMFLOT and his staff embarked in Canberra as CTG/CWC, with the Mar TG staff fulfilling the SCC role and supporting Hobart’s commanding officer (CO) in the PWC role of the integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) command platform. “That allowed me as the CTG/CWC, Mar TG as the SCC, and Hobart as the IAMD commander to be certified as warfare staff for what was going to be a five-ship task group deployment to Hawaii for RIMPAC,” said Cdre Harris.

The annual, US Navy (USN)-led RIMPAC exercise took place in August 2020.

Although it was delayed (by two months,

from June) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the RAN’s deployment continued. Its RIMPAC task group included: HMAS Canberra (with COMFLOT embarked as CTG/CWC); HMAS Hobart, with the Mar TG’s SCC staff embarked alongside the IAMD staff; the Anzac frigates HMAS Arunta and Stuart; and the support ship HMAS Sirius.

The task group sailed on an extended deployment, calling first in Darwin, Australia before sailing through Southeast Asia to Guam, and then on to Hawaii.

HMAS Canberra left the group in Guam to return to Australia for scheduled maintenance. Cdre Harris said this necessitated a shift in the command staff and task group constructs, but noted that the shift demonstrated these constructs’ inherent flexibility. The SCC staff switched to HMAS Canberra to return to Australia. COMFLOT and the CTG/CWC staff embarked in HMAS Hobart, with the DDG continuing in the IAMD role. The SCC role was handed over to HMAS Arunta’s commanding officer.

HMAS Hobart led the task group on to RIMPAC. DEPLOYED TO FIGHT The command staff construct used for the 2020 deployment was a significant change from 2019, said Cdre Harris. “It was the first time the SCC – that comes from the Mar TG organisation – had deployed as the SCC under COMFLOT as the CTG/CWC,” he explained. “So, we effectively deployed, in that task group, in the way we would fight.”

For deployments in 2019 (including the Australia-US Talisman Sabre exercise), the CTG / CWC staff had deployed ashore, rather than at sea, conducting command from the Deployable Joint Force Headquarters (DJFHQ) in Brisbane.

“The other change that occurred in line with that deployment is that we now see the command staff [and] the task groups as very much scalable,” Cdre Harris added.

In late 2020, HMAS Arunta and Anzac sister frigate HMAS Ballarat both conducted single-ship deployments (HMAS Arunta to support international sanction enforcement operations against North Korea, and HMAS Ballarat to the Indian Ocean to participate in the multinational, Indian Navy-led exercise Malabar), where they operated in the CTG role, although with no additional CTG staff embarked. “So, what we see very much is that the administrative functions of the task group are very scalable, from the ‘one-star’ [COMFLOT]

Royal Australian Navy Saab

Commander's Intent

Commodore Michael Harris Royal Australian Navy, Commodore Flotillas (COMFLOT).

going to sea all the way down to a ship’s commanding officer; alternatively, I can provide command elements from the ATG or Mar TG as the task group staff,” said Cdre Harris.

In 2021, deployments will follow a similar construct, he continued. “When a task deployment is a single- or potentially two-ship deployment and is non-complex in nature, the senior CO of the task group ships deploying can act as the CTG or task unit commander. When the deployment becomes more complex, that’s when the Mar TG organisation can deploy as a task group staff, or I have the ability to do that with an element of the COMAUSATG [Commander Australian ATG] staff.” For a large, complex task group – such as assembled for the 2020 RIMPAC deployment – COMFLOT would deploy as CTG/CWC. The deployment and exercise focus for 2021 began in February with the Ocean Shield synthetic exercise, which then rolled into Ocean Horizon in February-March and a large fleet battle staff command post exercise involving the entire staff from COMFLOT down. However, the principal focus is Talisman Sabre, taking place off Queensland in the year’s third quarter.

Here, COMFLOT and his staff will operate ashore at the DJFHQ as the MCC, and the Mar TG will deploy at sea as the SCC. “What you can see – from the way the deployments of task group command

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

7

Swedish Air Force

US Navy

Commander's Intent

The RAN’s Anzac frigates HMA Ships Stuart and Arunta (both foreground) conduct a formation group sail with USN and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships following the 2020 RIMPAC exercise. During RIMPAC and the wider regional deployment, the RAN demonstrated the flexibility in its emerging task group and operational command constructs.

ship task group, for example, the ship COs would provide the various PWC functions, including the SCC role. “It is really scalable in the way we conduct our task group deployments,” said Cdre Harris.

The primary aim in this force structure and command structure evolution is to deliver maximum operational flexibility.

The benefit of that flexibility, Cdre Harris explained, is that “it allows us to put ships and staff against the mission. We have a process to ensure that a task group, whether it consists of one ship or six ships, is staffed and certified to conduct that mission.”

“The first step is mission analysis,” he said. “That then drives what the task group should look like: what assets it will be made up of, and what capabilities it needs from ship and staff perspectives.”

With the HMAS Canberra-/Hobart-led deployment in 2020, “We were able to show our flexibility and importantly our agility,” said Cdre Harris. Due to COVID delaying RIMPAC and HMAS Canberra needing to return home for planned maintenance, “the mission changed, where we needed a different focus in RIMPAC to what we had originally [planned]. That was when we were able to remove the SCC staff from the DDG in Guam … and a scaled-down version of the staff that I had as my CTG staff in Canberra was able to embark in HMAS Hobart as the CTG staff, augmented by other staff

For a four or more ship task group, one possibly containing multiple task units, COMFLOT potentially would deploy as CTG/CWC, with a captain-led Mar TG staff undertaking the SCC role, and with the DDG’s CO delivering the PWC function (for example, for IAMD). Other command functions could be shared around the task group, the commodore explained. If the Mar TG assumed the CTG/CWC role in a three-

COMMAND CONTRIBUTIONS When the Mar TG was established in 2018, RAN task group presence was based mostly around the LHDs as the force structure and the ATG as the command structure.

Now, with the DDGs arriving in the force structure and with the command structure evolving, the RAN can use the DDGs and the Anzacs as platforms to support the Mar TG and other components of the at-sea operational staff. This underlines the scalability of the deployed staff and the flexibility of the administrative and warfighting command streams, relative to the deployed force structure and the mission in hand.

In terms of platforms, for a non-complex mission conducted by a single ship, the ship CO assumes the CTG/CWC role, with the ship’s own warfare staff providing the PWC function. For a more complex mission requiring two or more ships, the Mar TG staff can act as the CTG/CWC, with various ship principal warfare officers (PWOs) across the TG delivering the various warfare functions.

Commodore Michael Harris (left), the RAN’s Commodore Flotillas (COMFLOT), is pictured in 2020 at the handover ceremony for command of the navy’s Maritime Task Group (COMMarTG), at Fleet Headquarters, Sydney. Established in December 2018, the Mar TG is a central component of the RAN’s emerging at-sea operational command-and-control (C2) staff construct.

8

Royal Australian Navy

happened in 2020, and the way it is going to occur in 2021 in the lead-up to Talisman’ Sabre – is that we’re really getting after the COMFLOT branch motto, which is ‘Command the Fight’,” said Cdre Harris. Integral to this ethos is continuing focus in the staff structure, from COMFLOT down, on warfare as the primary function, he added. “[This] is what we’re developing within the Mar TG organisation.”

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

US Navy

Commander's Intent

HMAS Canberra sails with the USN’s Flight IIA DDG 51 guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell (centre) and the Whidbey Island-class landing ship dock (LSD) amphibious ship USS Ashland during the Australia-US ‘Talisman Sabre’ exercise in 2019, off the Queensland coast. For ‘Talisman Sabre 2021’, the RAN and the USN will integrate again.

distributed throughout the task group.”

The staffs remaining on the deployment retained the ability to reach back to the staff returning home with HMAS Canberra.

SIZEABLE TG STAFF The RIMPAC deployment, including the extended transit when HMAS Canberra sailed with the group, was the first time for a while the RAN had deployed a group of such size; moreover, the RAN’s entire warfighting staff from COMFLOT down was deployed at sea at the same time. Cdre Harris pointed to one particular element: “Because it was the first time the SCC had to work for COMFLOT as the CWC, I was able to drive the Mar TG staff to conduct their role as SCC.” “It wasn’t only the SCC,” he continued: “because of the size of the staff I had and the focus I put on the transit, I was able to drive the warfare organisation of the task group, which I don’t think is something we’d done for a long time because we hadn’t operated at that size of task group staff.”

Taking this forward into Talisman Sabre, where the RAN will again be

integrating with the USN, it will be looking to demonstrate the emerging at-sea command construct and capability once more. “My aim will be ‘We’ve done it once, but we need to show that it’s repeatable’ and that, as a learning organisation, we learn from each deployment to make the next one better,” said Cdre Harris.

Should the opportunity arise for the Mar TG to operate in the SCC role embarked in a USN ship, for example, Cdre Harris noted that the Mar TG is designed to do just this. “It’s important to remember that the Mar TG role of SCC has been designed around a construct that is similar to, if not the same as, the staff that provides that function in the USN. The procedures we use are the same.”

“Before the Mar TG was stood up, from the fleet battle staff … and from the navy writ large [we had] been able to form staff to provide the SCC function because it’s a role we’ve been doing for a long time as it’s part of our warfare organisation,” the commodore continued. “The beauty now is that the personnel that are a part of the Mar TG that

provide that function have done it before ….

So, invariably, they can embark in the USN warfare organisation and hit the ground running as SCC, because it aligns with the USN’s sea combat command staff.”

“The complication we have this year with Talisman Sabre, like with RIMPAC last year, is that we’re operating in a COVID environment,” said Cdre Harris. “That drives us down the path that, invariably, there are no face-to-face meetings or briefings, pre-exercise: the ships meet at sea, and we then go and conduct the activity.” Consequently, he explained, “It’s kind of ‘We turn up, ready to go’, understanding all of our procedures and tactics.”

The RIMPAC deployment, said Cdre Harris, “proved to my staff, and to many senior staff, the flexibility and agility of the C2 construct we’ve developed.” “From [COMFLOT] down, the ability to provide flexible staff constructs that are agile depending on what the mission is, [and] a task group design that can change as we progress towards achieving the mission, has been a real step forward.”

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

9

BAE Systems

Electronic Warfare

The ECRS Mk.2 promises a step change for the RAF’s Tranche-3 Typhoons. The radar’s ability to transmit electronic attack, and possibly cyber warfare, waveforms makes it a potent air defence suppression weapon in its own right.

SUPPRESSIVE FIRE The Royal Air Force is once again embracing the air defence suppression mission courtesy of two fledgling capabilities expected to enter service this decade.

By Thomas Withington

I

t was 0210 Baghdad time on 16 January when two Royal Air Force (RAF) Panavia Tornado GR.1 ground attack aircraft left runway 06/13 at the Royal Saudi Air Force’s Tabuk airbase, northwest Saudi Arabia. The air campaign of Operation Desert Storm, being waged by a United States-led coalition to evict Iraq from its occupation of Kuwait began just under 30 minutes later.

At 0237 Task Force Normandy, a package of U.S. Army McDonnell Douglas/Boeing AH-64A Apache helicopter gunships escorted by two U.S. Air Force Sikorsky MH-53J Pave Low special forces helicopters attacked Iraqi Air Force (IAF) P-18 (NATO

reporting name Spoon Rest) Very High Frequency (VHF: 133 megahertz/MHz to 144MHz/216MHz to 225MHz) and P-15 (Flat Face) Ultra High Frequency (UHF: 420MHz to 450MHz/890MHz to 942MHz) groundbased air surveillance radars just behind the Iraqi-Saudi border. The radars were destroyed depriving the Iraqi Integrated Air Defence System (IADS) of most radar coverage above the west of the country. This shielded the incoming armada of coalition aircraft inbound to attack strategic targets as the conflict’s overture.

The two Tabuk Tornado-GR.1s joined up with a four-ship package of the same aircraft which had left their bases elsewhere

10 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations bound for the IAF’s Al Asad airbase, central Iraq. This was attacked with the Hunting Engineering JP-233 airfield denial weapon, the first time it had been used in anger.

Another weapon was also debuting that night. It was deployed by the two TornadoGR.1s which had departed Tabuk.

The British Aerospace/MBDA Air Launched Anti-Radiation Missile (ALARM) was developed during the Cold War to attack Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact groundbased air surveillance and fire control/ ground-controlled interception radars.

The Cold War was concluding, but Iraq had procured several of the same radars

Electronic Warfare

SPREADING ALARM ALARM had a long and distinguished career. The weapon was subsequently deployed to support the RAF and coalition allies during every major air campaign involving the RAF where adversary Ground-Based Air Defences (GBAD) posed

a clear and present danger. It won further accolades in the skies above the Balkans supporting the NATO’S 1995 Operation Deliberate Force and 1999 Operation Allied Force, both mounted to bring an end to the genocide blighting the former Yugoslavia.

An upgraded version of the missile returned to Iraq in 2003 supporting Operation Telic, the UK’s contribution to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US-led effort to remove Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein from power. Less than ten years later it was in action once more supporting the combined NATO and U.S. operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector waged in 2011 to protect Libyan civilians from forces loyal to that country’s dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The missile retired in 2013 and it appeared that the air force’s ability to perform air defence suppression retired with it. True, the RAF could perform Destruction of Enemy Air Defence (DEAD) missions by which conventional kinetic effects are brought to bear against elements of an IADS or GBAD on the battlefield. Yet ALARM’s retirement meant the RAF was bereft of the unique suppressive qualities that this weapon could bring, chiefly encouraging radars to remain off the air without the blue force necessarily knowing where those radars are. Sometimes launching a few anti-radar missiles pre-

emptively to protect a strike package which are detected by red force radar operators persuades the latter to switch off their equipment. DEAD is a vital mission but is dependent on knowing where the IADS or GBAD targets are you wish to strike.

NATO

ALARM was designed to attack during any conflict in Europe pitching the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact against one another.

Systems like the SNR-75 (NATO reporting name Fan Song) S-band (2.3 gigahertz/GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) and P-35M/37 (NATO reporting name Bar Lock) C-band (5.25GHz to 5.925GHz) series of groundbased air surveillance radars were supplied to Iraq by the Soviet Union and were among the radars ALARM was designed to find and kill.

Readers can learn more about the missile in the author’s article entitled ‘When They Sounded the ALARM’ posted on the Armada International electronic warfare website. Suffice to say that it performed with aplomb hitting Iraqi radars providing fire control to surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery batteries deployed to protect airfields and other targets being attacked by the Tornado GR.1s and other coalition strike packages.

ECRS MK.2 The good news is that the RAF will soon be back in the air defence suppression game, thanks to two new capabilities it is expected to receive in the future. The first is an electronic attack function to augment the new BAE Systems/Leonardo ECRS Mk.2 X-band (8.5GHz to 10.68GHz) fire control radar destined to equip the Tranche-3 variants of the RAF’s Eurofighter Typhoon FGR.4 combat aircraft. The second is the MBDA Select Precision Effects At Range Capability-Electronic Warfare (SPEAREW) loitering electronic attack system. Both effectively perform a similar function to ALARM but do so electronically.

One of ALARM’s attributes was that it could be used pre-emptively. The weapon’s flight profile meant that it could be launched at high-speed and low altitude when a jet was doing its best to stay below radar coverage. Once launched the missile would climb to 40,000 feet (12,192 metres).

This gave its radar seeker a ‘God’s Eye’ view of the terrain below. The missile would

The original Push-Pull connector LEMO’s range of rugged quick release connectors are smaller, lighter and ideal for harsh environment applications.

• • • •

LEMO SA - Switzerland Phone : +41 21 695 16 00 info@lemo.com www.lemo.com/contact

facebook.com/lemoconnectors

T, M & F Series IP68 rating Space saving Robust design

• Quick release mechanism • Light weight material options

®

®

linkedin.com/company/lemo-sa

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 11

MBDA

Electronic Warfare

MBDA’s SPEAR-EW is an electronic attack variant of the company’s SPEAR-3 air-to-surface missile. This is designed to work as a stand-off and stand-in jammer.

switch off its motor, deploy a parachute and fall leisurely to earth. Should any radar be foolish enough to illuminate it would immediately betray its presence. The emission would be detected by ALARM’s seeker, the parachute jettisoned and zoom towards the radar.

The beauty of ALARM was that it could be used sans pre-briefed targets.

The electronic attack function of the ECRS Mk.2 could work in such a fashion. The electronic support measure equipping the Typhoon’s EuroDASS Praetorian integrated defensive aids subsystem can detect a hostile radar when it transmits.

Having betrayed its presence the ECRS Mk.2 could be used to electronically attack that radar. Details on the precise workings of these electronic attack function are understandably sparse and probably highly classified. Nonetheless, these capabilities are all but certain to include conventional

noise and jamming waveforms transmitted by the radar, alongside discreet waveforms generated by the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) embedded in Praetorian.

DRFMs sample an incoming hostile radar transmission, manipulates this transmission and then send the signal back to the radar. This manipulation changes the original radar waveform in such a way as to convince the hostile radar that the illuminated aircraft is in another part of the sky, is flying at a different speed or altitude, or is one of several non-existent jets. The subtle manipulation of the original signal ideally leaves the radar none the wiser to the fact that the information it is receiving which it believes to be a radar reflection from the target is false.

As the ECRS Mk.2 has an active electronically scanned array it can electronically steer its electronic attack beams across a wide angle, probably in

12 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

excess of 60 degrees either side of the antenna’s boresight. This can mean that off-boresight radars can be attacked. This is particularly important as it allows the injection of an electronic attack into a radar’s sidelobes. Smaller radar beams fan out either side of the main axis of a radar’s transmission. These residual transmissions can be detected by an electronic support measure without the aircraft necessarily being in the radar’s field of view.

Unlike an anti-radar missile, an electronic attack can be instantaneous upon detection of a hostile radar and travels at the speed of light. This augmentation of the Typhoon’s radar will be particularly useful at stand-in distances when the aircraft is within the detection range of a hostile radar. Given that several radars can be jammed with several beams from the same antenna, this means multiple radars could be engaged simultaneously.

Raytheon

Electronic Warfare

A duet of Tornados seen here with ALARM rounds mounted on their inner underwing hardpoints. Earning its spurs during Operation Desert Storm the missile served with distinction until its retirement in 2013.

SPEAR OF DESTINY Air defence suppression will also be performed by the SPEAR-EW, an electronic attack version of MBDA’s SPEAR-3 air-tosurface missile. The weapon’s warhead is removed and replaced with an electronic attack payload. SPEAR-EW could outfit the RAF’s Typhoon and Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning combat aircraft. Like the electronic attack attributes of the ECRS Mk.2, the frequencies jammable with the SPEAR-EW are under wraps, but it is reasonable to assume these could encompass frequencies of 8.5 gigahertz/ GHz to 40GHz. This covers X-band (8.5GHz to 10.68GHz), Ku-band (13.4-14/15.7-17.7GHz), K-band (24.05 to 24.25GHz) and Ka-band (33.4GHz to 36GHz) ground-based air/ naval surveillance and fire control radars, plus missile radar seekers. SPEAR-EW will work as an escort jammer performing electronic attack at stand-off and stand-in

ranges to protect packages of aircraft. The SPEAR-EW will generate conventional and discreet jamming waveforms, while acting as a decoy to draw air defence attention away from other aircraft.

Although not mentioned in discussions of the SPEAR-EW or ECRS Mk.2 it would not be surprising it both capabilities retained cyber attack attributes. Today’s and tomorrow’s IADS and deployed GBAD, and constituent components like radars and command and control systems are entirely dependent on computers and internet protocol networks. There is every possibility that the electronic attacks which both will perform could be modulated to include malicious code to infect or exploit the data traffic integral to the smooth running of an air defence system.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has still yet to place an order for the

SPEAR-EW, although once this occurs, the weapon could enter service from the middle of this decade. For now, sources close to the SPEAR-EW programme have said that development continues apace.

Likewise, open sources note that the ECRS Mk.2 could enter service with the Tranche-3 Typhoons from 2025.

The advent of both will not only resurrect RAF SEAD capabilities, but improve them immeasurably from the days of ALARM for the wars of tomorrow. Harnessing electronic effects to substitute kinetic effects when possible enhances precision, reduces ordnance expenditure and lowers the risk of collateral damage. It also improves the ability of the RAF to manoeuvre in the spectrum to achieve electromagnetic superiority and supremacy, something indispensable to success in all domains of warfare.

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 13

FNSS

focus on turkey

The first international customer for the FNSS Medium Tank is Indonesia with the turret being supplied by John Cockerill Defense.

TURKISH ARMOUR AIMS FOR EXPORTS In the first of a two part special on the Turkish defence industry, Armada International reviews indigenous armoured vehicle designs for both national use and for the export market.

By Christopher F Foss

F

or many years the Turkish Land Forces Command (TLFC) deployed large numbers of foreign designed and built armoured fighting vehicles (AFV) including US M48 and M60 main battle tanks (MBTs) and US M113 series of armoured personnel carriers (APC) and variants.

More recently large numbers of surplus Porsche Leopard 1 and Krauss-Maffei Leopard 2 MBTs have been supplied by Germany.

Today, Turkey is self-sufficient in all classes of AFVs ranging from MBTs through to tracked and wheeled APCs as well as

wheeled vehicles suitable for the internal security vehicle (ISV) role.

In addition to the prime contractors of Turkish AFVs, there are also a number of key Turkish sub-contractors with Aselsan being responsible for fire control systems (FCS) and optronics and MKEK for guns and ammunition.

The two largest AFV contractors in Turkey are FNSS Savunma Sistemleri and Otokar, both of whom have built large numbers of AFVs for the home and increasingly demanding export markets.

In addition to designing AFVs, both of these contractors are involved in the design,

14 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

development and production of turrets and remote weapon stations (RWS) for their own platforms as well as other export customers.

FNSS Savunma Sistemleri is a joint venture between the now BAE Systems of the USA (49 percent) and the local company of Nurol (51 percent). This company was originally established to undertake production of the Turkish Infantry Fighting Vehicle (TIFV) based on the Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle (AIFV) developed in the USA by the now BAE Systems (at that time FMC) which was also adopted

by Belgium and the Netherlands. Turkey

PROTECTED MOBILITY

AT YOUR

SERVICE!

15th International Defence Industry Fair

We kindly invite you to our stand.

Hall: 7

Stand No: 710

May 25-28,2021 / İstanbul, TÜYAP

Otokar

focus on turkey

Otokar Arma (8x8) fitted with an Otokar Mizrak remote controlled turret armed with a 30mm dual feed cannon and 7.62mm co-axial MG.

took delivery of 2,249 TIFV in four basic configurations.

Further development for the export market resulted in the Armoured Combat Vehicle 15 (ACV-15) with the 15 relating to the typical gross vehicle weight (GVW) in tonnes.

Export sales of the ACV-15 have so far been made to Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A stretched version of the ACV-15, called the ACV-19, has more volume and payload enabling it to undertake a wider range of battlefield missions. This has been sold to Malaysia (eight fitted with Thales 120mm mortar), Saudi Arabia and the UAE. FNSS has also been engaged in the upgrading of the M113 series APC to the M113A4 standard. The largest customer has been Saudi Arabia with the work being carried out in country.

The company has also developed two new tracked AFVs as a private venture, the Kaplan 30 New Generation (NG) AFV and Kaplan 20 NG which can both be optimised to meet the end user’s specific operational requirements.

To meet the TLFC need for a highly mobile tank destroyer, FNSS developed the Kaplan 10 and Pars (4x4) platforms

which are both amphibious and fitted with a remote controlled turret (RCT) armed with the Russian Kornet-E or Roketsan Mizrak-U anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW).

The company is also producing the Marine Assault Vehicle (MAV) which will be deployed by the new Turkish Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD). It is amphibious, propelled in the water by two water jets positioned either side at the rear. It is fitted with a RWS armed with a 12.7mm machine gun (MG) and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher (AGL).

A total of 27 MAV are being supplied under a contract awarded in 2017 of which 23 are in APC configuration, as well as two command post and two armoured recovery versions.

Under sub-contract to Aselsan, FNSS is providing the Air Defence System Platform for their HISAR surface-to-air missile (SAM) system and the Korkut twin 35mm self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) which have now entered production for Turkey. These leverage from their wellestablished ACV-15 and ACV-19 platforms.

FROM TRACKS TO WHEELS While originally concentrating on tracked

16 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

AFVs, FNSS has now moved into the wheeled AFV market with the Pars family of 8x8 and 6x6 vehicles.

The first customer was Malaysia which ordered a total of 257 Pars 8x8 in many configurations with first vehicles coming from Turkey followed by local production in Malaysia. Havelsan completed the installation of its AV8 Pars armoured ground vehicle simulator at the KEM Syed Sirajuddin military facility in 2020. The AV8 simulator consists of two trainers, one for advanced driving and the second for operators of the weapon, sensor and turret. Both simulator cabins can be used simultaneously.

The second customer was the Royal Army of Oman who received 172 Pars III of which 145 were in the 8x8 configuration and 27 in the 6x6 configuration.

In 2019 Turkey placed a contract for 100 units, five of which were for the Turkish Gendarmerie with the remaining 95 for the Army, of which 50 are 8x8 and 45 are in 6x6 configuration.

The latest FNSS export development is the Kaplan Medium Tank (MT) which is the result of co-operation between FNSS and PT Pindad of Indonesia who is the launch customer for 18 vehicles. The MT is fitted

focus on turkey

FNSS

focus on turkey

Pars III (8x8) for the Royal Army of Oman armed with a Swiss RUAG Cobra 120mm muzzle loaded mortar shown here in firing position.

two and can carry up to seven dismounts with a variety of roof mounted weapons.

There are also more specialised versions, including a reconnaissance and an amphibious variant.

This was followed by a brand new design called Cobra II (4x4) which has more volume and payload and can undertake a wider range of battlefield missions. In 2021 the company launched the Cobra Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) version on the export market which is claimed to combine a high level

Otokar

with the Belgian John Cockerill Defense C3105 turret armed with a 105mm rifled gun fed by an automatic loader with a 7.62mm co-axial machine gun.

The company has also built a batch of 12 Armoured Amphibious Combat Earthmover (AACE) for the TLFC and recently won a contract from the Philippines for an undisclosed number of units, so the production line will start again with first deliveries in 2023.

The company has also supplied the TLFC with the Armoured Amphibious Assault Bridge (AAAB) which is being offered on the export market as the Otter Rapidly Deployable Amphibious Wet Gap Crossing System.

This can be used as a Military Load Class 21 (one unit), MLC 85 (two units) or MLC 120 (three units) in the ferry mode or 12 can be connected together to form a 150m long bridge.

Otokar started designing light AFVs such as the Akrep (Scorpion) 4x4 light reconnaissance vehicle and a 4x4 light APC suitable for the IS role based on a long wheel base Land Rover chassis.

By early 2021 the company had built some 33,000 vehicles, including trucks and AFVs, selling to 36 countries all over the world. The smaller AFVs were followed by the bestselling Cobra (4x4) based on automotive components of the US AM General Expanded Capacity Vehicle (ECV).

The baseline Cobra APC has a crew of

of survivability and mobility in a modular package. By March 2021, Otokar had built over 4,000 Cobra (4x4) in all versions.

For the export market Otokar developed the Arma in both 8x8 and 6x6 configurations which share 90 percent common components and can be fitted with a wide range of weapons. The 8x8 can be fitted with a wide range of weapons including a two person turret armed with a 105mm gun. The first customer for the Arma 6x6 was Bahrain in the APC configuration with a second customer ordering the 8x8 model.

Further development of the Arma 8x8 resulted in the larger Rabdan for the UAE with the first batch consisting of 100 units fitted with the complete turret of the Russian BMP-3 IFV armed with a 100mm gun (which can also fire a guided projectile), 30mm co-axial cannon and 7.62mm co-axial machine gun.

Production of the Rabdan is now underway in the UAE as Otokar has a joint venture company with Edge of the Abu Dhabi Government and Al Jassor.

As a private venture, Otokar has designed and built the Tulpar IFV (which is called the Safa by the Gulf Cooperation Council) and the more compact Tulpar-S tracked vehicles with the latter being amphibious.

Otokar has not neglected MRAP type vehicles and has developed Kaya I and Kay II as well as the Kale, with all of these being of the 4x4 type. The company is also investing in new technology and has built

The Altay MBT was designed by Otokar but production is being undertaken

by BMC. Altay has a computerised fire control system with commander and gunner provided with roof mounted stabilised sights.

18 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

focus on turkey

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 19

Aselsan

focus on turkey

BMC Vuran (4x4) MRAP fitted with Aselsan Alkar 120mm weapon mortar system during initial firing trials.

the Altay MBT, but the production contract was awarded to BMC who had no experience in the manufacture of highly complex AFVs such as MBTs. The Altay is a conventional design with driver at front, turret armed 120mm smooth bore gun in the middle and power The BMC Kirpi can hold 13 troops and has a top speed of 65mph (105km/h).

MOVING INTO DEFENCE BMC is a relative newcomer to the AFV domain having built large numbers of trucks for the home and export markets.

This provided the basis for the design, development and production of wheeled AFV, especially those optimised for IS type operations.

Otokar was responsible for the design, development and testing of prototypes of

20 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

pack at the rear. It has a computerised FCS with commander and gunner using stabilised day/night sights with an eye safe laser rangefinder. The first production contract for the Altay MBT is for 250 units, with additional orders expected plus more specialised versions.

BMC

the prototypes of the Akrep II (4x4) which is being marketed in full electric, diesel and hybrid configurations.

As previously stated, the Turkish Nurol company owns 51 percent of FNSS but then went onto develop the Ejder (6x6) amphibious APC and 70 units were supplied to Georgia, although all marketing of this family of vehicles has now ceased.

Nurol is now concentrating on 4x4 wheeled AFVs with the first of these being the Edjer Yalcin which has been built in significant numbers for the home and export markets.

FNSS

focus on turkey

The FNSS remote-controlled anti-tank turret on the PARS 4x4 has been cleared to fire both the Degtyaryov KORNET and Roketsan OMTAS missiles.

can carry seven people.

The Vuran is also used as the platform for the Sungur surface-to-air missile (SAM) system. On the roof is a pedestal with two pods each containing two fire and forget infra-red homing missiles. It has also been fitted with the Aselsan Alkar 120mm turntable mounted mortar fitted with a semi-automatic loading system.

A more recent Turkish AFV contractor is Katmerciler who developed the Hizar (4x4) with the first customer being Turkey.

An undisclosed customer in Africa placed a

Otokar

BMC moved into the design, development and production of MRAP type vehicles, initially for the home market but then for export. The Kipri (4x4) MRAP was supplied first to Turkey but then to export customers include Libya, Qatar and Somalia.

Further development has resulted in a Kipri 6x6 model which offers more volume and payload.

Other BMC MRAP type vehicles include the Vuran (4x4) which can carry nine people and the more compact Amazon (4x4) which

The Cobra II MRAP is a new generation modular mine protected vehicle with high survivability and mobility.

contract worth $20.7 million in July 2019.

OVERHAUL AND UPGRADE While the Turkish AFV industry is capable of the design, development and production of a wide range of AFV, tracked and wheeled, the TLFC has extensive facilities for the overhaul and upgrading of AFVs. It has upgraded the M48 MBTs to the M48T standard and conducted a major upgrade for the M60 to the M60T standard based on an Israeli design and including new armour, power pack, 120mm smooth bore and new computerised FCS. It also upgraded large numbers of M113 series APC and variants to the diesel powered M113 standard which has the local designation of the M113A2T2. In addition it has converted upgraded M113 to more specialised roles such as Engineering Squad Armoured Vehicle, Ambulance and Command Post vehicles.

The TLFC has also converted Leopard 1 MBT hulls to transport and launch the German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Leguan bridge system. They are also responsible for the Firtina 155mm/52 calibre self-propelled howitzer based on the South Korean K9 Thunder. Turkey has also designed and built an ammunition resupply vehicle for the Firtina which is based on components from M48 tanks.

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 21

(Allied Joint ForceAlan Command) Warnes

air Power

Hurjet is a new advanced jet trainer/light combat aircraft that was launched at Farnborough. It will make its first flight in 2022, in time to celebrate the Republic of Turkey’s 100th anniversary in 2023.

OTTOMAN AEROSPACE EMERGES Turkey’s aerospace industry is turning away from traditional US ITAR restricted platforms to indigenously shape the future of the Turkish Air Force.

T

urkish Air Force (TuAFA) modernisation is being fuelled by the indigenisation of Turkey’s relatively new aerospace industry. Major home growth defence contractors such as Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), Aselsan, Havelsan and Roketsan all now play a massive part in solving the needs of the local military, and are keen to export their products to fund the domestic market.

Increasingly though, they are finding it difficult to sell to allied countries because of International Treaty on Arms (ITAR) restrictions. For example, Pakistan signed up for 30 TAI T129 attack and reconnais-

Alan Warnes sance helicopters (ATAK) in a $1.5 billion deal in May 2018, but the Honeywell/Rolls Royce LHTEC 800 engine that powers the helicopter has been sanctioned under ITAR legislation. A Tusas Engine Industries (TEI) TS1400 powerplant is being heralded as the replacement solution, but this will take time due to its ongoing development.

BANNED FROM F-35 One major setback for the TuAFA came when the United States (US) government banned Turkey from the Lockheed Martin’s F-35 programme. The TuAF had a requirement for 100 F-35As to replace its ageing F-4E Phantoms and F-16C/Ds. Six had been

22 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

contracted, while another 24 were set to be acquired by fiscal year 2020. It led to the first TuAF F-35A flight on 10 May, 2018 with the aircraft subsequently handed over to the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke AFB, Arizona, for pilot and maintenance training. By April 2019 three more had arrived. Then in March 2019, Turkey ordered the Russian S-400 long range air defence system.

That put relations with the United States in a spin. The transfer of F-35A support equipment was put on hold and Turkish personnel were eventually expelled from F-35 training and other activities.

The chief Pentagon spokesman, Charles Summers said in a statement released on

air Power

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 23

air Power

TURKISH FIGHTER The F-35 cancellation meant that the TuAFA had to extend the lifetime in service of the older F-16C/Ds and F-4E Phantoms until around 2030. At that time Turkey’s indigenous new generation fighter, known as Turkish Fighter-X (TF-X), or MMU as as it is known locally, should start being delivered to the TuAF. A full scale mock-up of the TF-X was unveiled in June 2019 at the Paris Airshow, but a month earlier at Turkey’s own defence exhibition, IDEF 2019 in Istanbul, the author spoke to Fahrettin Öztürk, Turkish Aerospace’s vice president, Research and Development who stated that he had been “tasked to handle the research and development processes and get everything to serial production quicker.”

Undoubtedly TF-X will be take up much of his time. “We are in a design partnership with BAE Systems on the project…This involves around 100 BAE staff on secondment to TAI in Ankara,“ stated Öztürk at the time.

“We are in Phase 1 – the conceptual design and selection of major systems, then we will put [a model] through wind tunnel tests. In Phase 2 we will start the detailed design, manufacturing and integrating of all the systems. We are expecting TF-X will have its first flight in 2026,” he predicted.

In August 2020 TAI’s CEO, Temel Kotil said that the TF-X would now be rolled out on 18 March, 2023 (to coincide with Turkey celebrating 100 years of its existence). This

Alan Warnes

Monday 1 April, 2019, “the United States has suspended deliveries and activities associated with the stand-up of Turkey's F-35 operational capability. Should Turkey procure the S-400, their continued participation in the F-35 program is at risk.”

On 17 July 2019 the White House issued a statement that stated: “Unfortunately, Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defence systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible. The F-35 cannot co-exist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities. The United States still greatly values its strategic relationship with Turkey and we will continue to cooperate with Turkey extensively, mindful of constraints due to the presence of the S-400 system in Turkey.”

Since then all the workshare that had been awarded to Turkish companies has stopped, with the majority of it being transferred back to the US under ex-President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policy.

The Aksungur seen at the Turkish Aerospace stand in IDEF 2019, was fitted with six hard points, and with a double rack carrying four MAM-L (laser smart micro munition).

would be followed by two years of ground tests. He added that there will be seven prototypes.

The biggest issue is the engine. Designing and developing an indigenous powerplant for a fighter isn’t easy as both Russia and China can vouch. There were aspirations to co-develop such a requirement with an international partner, but so far nothing has materialised. Originally three foreign companies bid for the work in partnership with Eskisehir-based Turkish Engine Industries (TEI), which will be responsible for producing the engine.

Rolls Royce and Kale Group of Turkey announced the creation of a joint venture company on 8 May, 2017 for a new engine, which never materialised into development due to transfer of technology concerns.

General Electric offered technology transfer (ToT) for the F414-GE-400 which powers the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, while Eurojet offered an improved version of its EJ-200 engine, the Typhoon’s powerplant as well as ToT. However, on 14 February this year, Turkish state-run engine maker TRMotor signed a deal with TAI to develop two critical components of the engine - the auxiliary power unit and an air turbine start system, that will power the jet. As Osman Dur, general manager of TRMotor said,

24 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

“The TF-X powerplant is still at its concept design phase.” Until an engine is selected, the design of the fighter cannot progress.

SELF RELIANCE During IDEF 2019, Turkey’s President Erdogan spoke of his defence industry stepping up its game, allowing the country’s military to go 100 percent indigenous, because of the threats of sanctions on ITAR products.

TAI led by CEO Temel Kotil is playing a big part in his dream, with the development of several new platforms. Many are helicopter projects, including the T129 Tactical Reconnaissance and Attack (ATAK), the T625 Gokbey, a six ton unmanned electric powered T629 and the Multi Role Heavy Combat Helicopter (MHCH) currently referred to as ATAK-2. There is also the Hurjet jet trainer, Hurkus-B turboprop trainer, Hurkus-C close air support aircraft, new generation TF fighter, a stand-off jammer (SOJ) and several UAVs such as the Anka-Aksungar and Anka-S that draw strength from all aspects of the defence industry. You name it and Turkey’s SSB (Undersecretariat for Defence Industries) is looking to have a Turkish solution within the foreseeable future.

On 25 February, TAI delivered the first T129 ATAK to the Polis, in the Phase-2

air Power

Turkey is intending to replace its fleet of F-4E-2020 Phantoms and F-16C/Ds with the TF-X, which was unveiled at Paris Air Show in 2019.

Mr Demir also pointed out the plan was not to just build platforms, but also domestically develop subsystems and critical components. The TEI TS1400 powerplant currently being developed to power helicopters, is one of the most important steps in this process.

The first six-ton T625 Gökbey, TC-HLP flew on 6 September, 2018 but this was essentially an ‘iron bird’ - a ground test vehicle modified with new avionics and engine. Its flight marked the fifth anniversary of the contract being signed to develop the aircraft. Civilian certification should be completed this year when serial production

TAI

configuration, with enhanced Aselsan electronic warfare and countermeasures capabilities. Two more of six ordered in March 2017 were set to be delivered in March. Ismail Demir, the SSB chairperson said: “We are proud to see the delivery of this helicopter which will further strengthen the police forces.”

By June last year, 57 of the 59 T129s on order by the Turkish Land Forces had been delivered, while the Gendarmerie has received at least six of 18 on order.

To date 83 T129s have been ordered, with another three are on option, possibly for the Gendarmerie.

The huge Aksungur UAS made its public debut at IDEF 19.

It is being developed as a multi role platform – for surveillance, maritime patrol and attack.

is also expected to commence.

With a requirement of up to 600 military T625 Gökbeys to replace the ageing Bell UH1H Hueys, AB212ASWs and Sikorsky S-70B Seahawks, there is an important need to develop the indigenous engine that will power it. An important milestone came on 5 December, 2020 when TAI took delivery of the first TEI TS1400 to integrate into a T625. The civilian prototype relies on a LHTEC-800, the same powerplant the ATAK uses, and could easily be sanctioned by the US. According to a TAI source, there will be two military T625 prototypes, one in an attack configuration and another in a Search and Rescue (SAR) role fitted with a hoist.

The naval T625 version will have a new radar and folding rotors allowing it to operate from ships. While the Army is looking for a requirement of up to 160 Gökbeys to fulfil both the SAR, utility (with 16 seats) and attack versions, other services including the TuAFA, Jandarma and Gendarmerie will have their own requirements. Many of TAI’s senior management see the Gökbey as a departure from working exclusively with the military, because the six-ton helicopter will be available to the civilian market too.

At Farnborough 2018, TAI launched the Hurjet jet trainer in mock-up form, which was presented again at IDEF 2019. That’s where Mr Öztürk told the author, “We have started manufacturing the parts and the first flight will be in late-2022.” When it comes to the prototypes, Mr Öztürk said, “There could be four or five in different configurations, but not all will fly. There will be static rig tests, dynamic ground tests and one could be used for wind tunnels, checking systems and performance before flight.

This is the minimum, there could be more!”

The Hurjet is expected to make its first public appearance on 18 March, 2023 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ataturk’s secular Islamic state being founded. No decision has been made on the Hurjet’s powerplant although both the Eurojet EJ200 and General Electric F404 are candidates.

The jet trainer will eventually replace the 40 TuAF T-38 Talons that TAI upgraded between 2011-16, and there are big aspirations to export the aircraft and even develop a light attack version.

The 10 ton Multirole Heavy Combat Helicopter (MHCH), also unofficially known as ATAK-2, was seen in mock-up form at IDEF 19. TAI sees the MHCH as the ideal alternative to the Boeing AH-64 Apache. Öztürk commented: “We want the MHCH

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 25

Alan Warnes

air Power

Turkish Aerospace believes the ten ton Multirole Heavy Combat Helicopter (MHCH) also referred to as ATAK-2 will be an ideal alternative to the Boeing Apache.

IMPRESSIVE UAVS Also making its debut at IDEF 19 was the Aksungur Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), with a staggering 24 metre wingspan and a maximum take-off weight of 7,300lbs (3,310kg). The twin boomed UAS is powered by two locally developed TEI PD1700 turbo diesel engines, which flew for the first time on the smaller Anka on 27 December, 2018.

The Aksungur’s first flight on 20 March, 2019 lasted four hours and 20 minutes, and in September 2020 flew for the first time with a payload of 12 MAM-Ls (smart micro

munition – laser) for 28 hours. There are six hard points under its massive wings to accommodate a diverse range of weapons, among them the Aselsan Small Diameter Bomb, Roketsan Teber 81 (Mk 81 bomb fitted with a Tubitak SAGE [Defence Industry Research and Development Institute] HGK3 laser guidance kit), Teber 82 (Mk 82 bomb fitted with HGK-5 laser guidance kit), and MAM-L (smart micro munition – laser) plus Tübitak SAGE HGK 82. A sonobuoy pod was also seen fitted under the wing to optimise maritime surveillance operations.

Another popular UAV is the Bayraktar TB2 armed drone, which has been

TAI

to be more manoeuvrable than the Apache, more functional and armed with more Turkish-designed weapons.”

TEI has now started work on a more powerful TS3000 for heavy class helicopters, and are also working on jet engines.

TEI faces the biggest task among the local aerospace companies, by developing engines for most of the new platforms.

This year should see the Academy at Cigli receive the first of 52 MFI-17 Super Mushshaks being built by Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) Kamra. In a deal signed on 10 May, 2017, the trainers are being fitted with new Garmin 950 avionics. They will replace the air force’s fleet of SF260s and Cessna T-41s based at Izmir-Kaklic and Istanbul-Yesilkoy respectively for student pilot/undergraduate training. The first two prototypes left the PAC paint shop in December 2020.

supporting Turkey’s efforts in Libya and Syria so well and helped Azerbaijan claim victory in the Nagorno Karabkh conflict against Armenia in October/November 2020. It’s unclear how many have been delivered to both the Army and Navy, but armed with MAM-Ls and MAM-Cs they have done a formidable job.

Bayraktar also launched the heavyweight Akinci combat UAV in May 2017, leading to the first flight on 6 December, 2019 followed by a second prototype on 13 August, 2020. The 12.5m drone currently powered by two Ivchenko-Progress Motor Sich AI-450T turboprop engines can fly up to 40,000 feet (12,100m), has an impressive 195 knot (361km/h) cruising speed, an endurance of 24 hours and a range of 3,100 miles (5,000kms). With a 20m wing span, there is a provision for eight hard points that can accommodate a multitude of Turkish-developed weapons. The first serial production example for the TuAFA was being built in early 2021. It’s unclear how many the TuAF has ordered.

It is evident that the Turkish military is looking to replace most of its mainly US aircraft with ‘Made In Turkey’ products.

Undoubtedly there are many challenges but the Turkish aerospace industry, since being launched as part of the US F-16 purchase off-set deal in the mid-80s, is a shining example of what can be done with a huge amount of government investment.

Undoubtedly the likes of UAE and Saudi Arabia, which also have similar aspirations will be looking on.

The T625 Gökbey (Sky Lord) is the first platform Turkish Aerospace could sell into the civilian market as well as the military. It views the Middle East as a region where the helicopter could do well.

26 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

THE

FUTURE

OF THE

AEROSPACE INDUSTRY

14-18 November 2021

Join us as we launch a range of new features including new content streams, emerging technologies showcase, intelligent matchmaking platform, enhanced networking and much more in a live format.

DWC, Dubai Airshow Site

www.dubaiairshow.aero Book your space today: sales@dubai.aero

Follow us on:

|

|

|

| #DubaiAirshow

CommerCIal Aviation | Aircraft Interiors | MRO | Business Aviation | Air Traffic Management Space | Defence & Military | Air Cargo | Emerging Technologies NEW

Supported by:

Saab

sea power

Saab Kockums' Visby corvette is a flexible surface combatant, designed for a wide range of roles, in line with the current multi-mission ship-type design trend

NAVAL DESIGN SWAP Naval ship design has significantly changed to reflect influencing factors such as lifecycle costs, modularity and energy efficiency.

By Alix Valenti

O

ver the past couple of decades, technological developments and breakthroughs have been redefining navies’ concepts of operations at a surprising speed. From weapon systems to threat detection and ever-expanding Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), navies have been adapting ship design in a constant bid to keep ahead of the competition.

The more recent return of near-peer competition has further exacerbated this trend, “setting completely new and imperative demands,” Lars Brännström, deputy head and chief marketing officer, Saab’s Business Area Kockums, told Armada International. It brings “new threat vectors, such as unmanned systems above or below water with new weapons that travel faster, while older forms of naval warfare such as

mine warfare or the application of electronic warfare (EW) are gaining prominence.”

These trends have had a significant impact on ship design. Constrained by their budgets, navies have been seeking increasingly multi-mission capable ships. These allow for a wide range of missions, but also for more room to accommodate new and emergent technologies, equipment and systems. “This requires very careful provisions of margins for weight, space, power and information to be made” in a bid to contain lifecycle costs without limiting future developments, said Ian Cowper, engineering director Warships at Babcock.

MODULARITY AND LIFECYCLE COSTS “The need for multi-role capability has largely been driven by the lower number of vessels that each navy can field over recent

28 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

decades,” Cowper noted. Faced with restricted budgets yet called upon to carry out ever-more complex missions – facing both symmetric and asymmetric threats – the trend has been to acquire ships developed around the concept of mission modularity.

These ships feature reconfigurable mission bays housing specific capabilities according to each mission.

However, if modularity has emerged as the solution of choice in such complex geopolitical environments, the reality has revealed that finding the right balance between missions is difficult and will inevitably result in compromise. “The wider consequences of modularity are often neglected or at least underestimated,” Simon Jones, chief naval architect (Ship Delivery) for Defence and Security at BMT, told AI. In particular, requirements for storage, maintenance, personnel training, transportation

BMT

sea power

BMT’s design for the Royal Norwegian Navy HNoMS Maud Logistics and Support Vessel (LSV), seen here conducting a resupply at sea.

and installation of the modules need to be carefully considered.

The increasing pace of technological developments in the naval domain is also progressively revealing the limits of modularity. Not all technological advances can be turned into modules; some require that ships be designed “to allow upgrade through life as new technologies mature,” Jones added. The introduction of commercial design standards as a viable and cost-effective alternative to some military design standards is further exacerbating this trend. “The balance between the military and commercial aspects will vary depending on the roles that the vessel is intended to carry out,” Cowper explained, “but in essence the aim is to ensure the best possible compromise between the capability required and the budget available.”

Finding the right compromises has meant that an ongoing discussion about ship lifecycle costs between navies and ship designers has now become essential from the start.

Broadly speaking, lifecycle costs include energy efficiency to determine how much fuel the ship will need to operate, personnel needed or available to man the ship, and maintenance throughout the 30 or so years of the ship’s life. In order to restrain a ship’s lifecycle costs, navies and ship designers need to determine how to accommodate future technologies without major alterations to the ship. Doing so requires “margins in the design in terms of Space, Weight, Power and Cooling (SWAP-C), along with flexible infrastructure and open architecture to easily interface any new system that comes along” Jones said. BMT’s design for the Royal Norwegian Navy HNoMS Maud Logistics and Support Vessel (LSV) offers multi-mission capabilities using a mix of mission containers, built-in functions, re-rolable compartments. “We call this ‘in the box’ and ‘out of the box’ modularity, said Jones.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY The discussion over energy consumption and storage has significantly evolved over the past couple of decades as a result of a number of factors.

First, energy consumption will determine the lifecycle cost of a given ship in terms of fuel expenditure. The more a ship has been designed to optimise energy consumption, the less expensive it will be to operate over its lifespan. There are several ways in which this can be addressed, chiefly amongst which is “in-depth hydrodynamic analysis followed by meticulous model tests to gain maximum efficiency,” stated Shiran Purvin, vice president engineering at Israel Shipyards.

Hull lines have been the centre of attention in this debate from the beginnings of ship design, but increasingly discussions over appendages capable of improving hydrodynamics are taking place.

For example, Hull Vane, a company based in the Netherlands, offers the Hull Vane, a partial hydrofoil designed to reduce a displacement or semi-displacement vessel’s resistance. Seeking to reduce resistance and pitching, suppress stern wave, and trim correction, the Hull Vane greatly contributes to reducing fuel consumption. “A side, yet crucial, effect for navies is the fact that a reduced stern wave also greatly reduces noise levels,” Bruno Bouckaert, Hull Vane sales director, told AI. “Reduced resistance has a similar side-effect, because the ship’s engine does not have to work as hard to power the vessel.”

The discussion over energy consumption has also been driven by an increasing trend for navies to comply with commercial standards of cardon dioxide (CO2) emissions reductions. “There are an increasing number of maritime zones in the world today that have become zero carbon areas,” Hervé Boy, business development senior manager at Naval Group revealed. “If

ships don’t comply, they will not be able to transit.”

As such, propulsion will shift to completely electric or hybrid architectures, according to Luca Mattei, vice president design and engineering Fincantieri Naval Vessels. Diesel electric has already established itself as a significant trend over the past decades. Yet, as the commercial sector, driven by International Maritime Organisation (IMO) standards, continues to explore new, greener fuels, the naval domain may begin looking in that direction as well, according to Purvin.

However, storage remains a significant challenge to overcome when talking about energy efficiency and greener fuels. “Energy density can be a challenge,” said Jones, especially when looking at hydrogen or batteries, both of which are gaining traction in the maritime sector but require large volumes for installation, and may present additional hazards when used in a naval environment. Electrical power, whether for hybrid or fully electrical, may also raise storage issues, especially as ships are dependent on electricity for their increasing number of sensors onboard and future weapons – such as lasers or electromagnetic guns – according to Boy and Mattei.

“Ultimately, to be able to find the right mix of energy efficiency or new technology to make the ship greener, it is essential to have a full understanding of the concept of operations and assess the trade offs between procurement and through-life costs. Building in adaptability to accept new energy saving technologies or greener fuels as future upgrades will make the vessel more future proof” Jones concluded.

REDUCED MANNING Over the past decade, a couple of key factors have contributed to a growing number of ships being designed for reduced manning.

The primary reason has been the decreasing number of recruits in most Western navies, combined with difficulties in retaining trained personnel. Secondly, and just as importantly, the cost of personnel is a significant part of the lifecycle costs.

To attract and retain personnel, navies have been moving toward ship designs that provide better living conditions. “Crew are at sea for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time,” Purvin told Armada, “so spacious rooms, improved mess areas, recreational spaces and seakeeping, have become crucial.” Israel Shipyards’ latest ship design,

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 29

Hull Vane

sea power

The Hull Vane, a partial hydrofoil designed to reduce a displacement or semi-displacement vessel’s resistance, seeks to reduce resistance and pitching, suppress stern wave, and trim correction

mine countermeasure missions – so accommodating them onboard might significantly alter the size of the mothership.

Launch and recovery of unmanned systems, especially USVs, has also proven to be a significant challenge for mothership design. Typically, USVs can be launched when the ship is moving, and can operate at high speed. “There are a number of variables at play that need to be carefully accounted for when designing USV launch and recovery systems,” Jones noted. “From the perspective of the USV – how it finds its way and docks itself in different sea states and weather conditions, how it is affected by the wake of the mothership, and for the motherships, how does the USV and its launch and recovery equipment interface with the ship.” BMT was involved with a Joint Industry Project (JIP) called LAURA for the launch and recovery system for any small navy crafts. Incidentally, Bouckaert

SMARTER MAINTENANCE Maintenance costs greatly contribute to increased lifecycle costs. The introduction, over the past decade, of predictive maintenance has made a significant difference in this regard, with onboard sensors collecting data for tools such as digital twins.

Cowper noted that at Babcock, “a digitally enabled In-Service Support Solution is now at the heart of our developments, targeting ship system outputs to provide a data driven understanding of reliability and availability.” This is powered by digital twin technology, a development that has also been at the heart of Naval Group’s maintenance tools.

But this technology also has its impact on ship design, as noted by Boy: “Navies are increasingly looking at gathering as much data as possible to improve the performance of their ships over their lifecycle, and this has meant that at Naval Group we have designed ships with onboard data centres.”

It is not just the physical size of the data centres that has been made flexible to continue evolving in tandem with growing data needs; their software architecture has also been designed to accommodate upgrades throughout the ships’ lifecycle. This is the case for the French Navy’s defence and intervention frigates (FDI) for instance.

The introduction of additive manufacturing – more commonly known as 3D printing – is also significantly modifying maintenance costs, particularly in terms of logistics. In February 2021, Naval Group

Naval Group

the OPV-45 multipurpose vessel, included these capabilities. Hull Vane’s Bouckaert noted that one of the important ‘side-effects’ of the Hull Vane technology, and in particular of the Dynamic Hull Vane, is the reduction in pitch motions. “If you reduce this motion, the ship is more stable, even in high sea states, thus improving crew comfort, and the performance of equipment such as radars, weapons systems, sonars,” Bouckaert added.

Concurrently, the lifecycle cost of maintaining trained and skilled personnel has also led to increased automation. “Automation technologies are evolving to help with this challenge partly due to the rapid development of digital remote controlled and autonomous systems,” Jones noted.

Furthermore, autonomous systems have the potential to keep crew out of harm’s way, whether for mine countermeasure or ISR missions, but they also provide significant tactical benefits. “Off-board systems in the air, on the surface and underwater can act as force-multipliers for the limited number of ships available and ensure that the sphere of influence of each ship can be increased, offsetting the reduced number of ships,” added Cowper.

Yet, the integration of autonomous systems into ships comes with its own challenges. For instance, space is key and while increased deck space has been the main answer for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and, to some extent, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), it can prove much more complex for unmanned surface vehicles (USV). USVs have become larger over the years, with a number of them designed to deploy UUVs – particularly for

noted that the reduction of the wake and the stabilisation of the ship by the Hull Vane can also greatly contribute to addressing some of these challenges.

Naval Group worked closely with the French Navy and procurement agency as well as Bureau Veritas to equip a minehunter with a 3D printed propeller

30 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

Naval Group

S

AN

M D CO MODIT

Y

E

RE

BL

I C O F TÜR

RE

PU

K

E

1911

RK

YE

RE

RK

O F TÜ

TH

B

LI C

YE

PU

1911

B PU

RK

1911

O F TÜ LI C

UN

ION

NGES OF TU

OF CHA

HA

MB

R

XC

E

www.tuyap.com.tr

YE

announced that it had successfully mounted a metal 3D printed propeller on a French Navy tripartite minehunter, Andromède.

The propeller was created through Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), and the project was designed to address two main challenges, according to Cyril Nota, Responsible for Additive Manufacturing R&D, Naval Group: “Industrial, to be able to build certified blades that could be provided rapidly and that could overcome a number of limitations related to traditional foundry techniques; and, innovative, in order to provide a strong foundation to develop tomorrow’s propellers.” For this project, Naval Group worked closely with the French procurement agency (DGA) and the French Navy, but also with Bureau Veritas, the class society responsible for the classification of French Navy ships. “Working closely from the start with the customer and the class society has allowed us all to share and tackle any issues together in real time, and work on developing the best WAAM process for future uses,” added Nota.

The lifecycle cost savings that additive manufacturing can bring in terms of maintenance are significant. Currently, Naval Group is working to support maintenance ports so that, as industrial ramp-up for additive manufacturing continues, the need to stock large numbers of spare parts decreases. “It’s about changing stock management methods,” Nota told Armada, “ideally reaching a point where pre-qualified parts are already in a virtual library and maintenance hubs just have to print them.” This would not only speed up the process but also overcome issues of obsolescence for spare parts no longer in industrial production.

EY

Naval Group's FDI feature a data centre which architecture has been designed to allow for future upgrades as data needs continue to increase

TRANSPARENT PROCESS Ultimately, in the naval domain, size does matter.

Ship designs need to be innovative to be able to retain SWAP design margins in order to accommodate future technological developments. Only an in-depth conversation with the customer on its operational needs can prove efficient in striking the right SWAP to lifecycle cost balance.

Hull shapes and ship space, but also technological processes, will play a significant role in the conversation about lifecycle costs. The development of additive manufacturing will also bring significant changes to the world of ship design and maintenance. In fact, Naval Group is already working in a European project called RAMSSES for the development of hollow blades.

Previously impeded by the limitations of foundry techniques, this new design will increase efficiency while reducing maintenance costs in terms of stocks logistics but also energy optimisation.

“Working in partnership with other industrial partners and customers is crucial for the development of new processes like WAAM,” stated Laurent Courregelongue, director , environment & technologies department at Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore. “The transparency of the process with Naval Group was essential as a starting point, and now we need to work with other partners to develop rules that can provide a strong basis for such new and innovative process.”

A sentiment echoed by all contributors to this article and that goes well beyond additive manufacturing potential.

M-C TSE - ISO 10002

TS EN ISO 9001:2015

Lockheed Martin

Airborne weapons

A Lockheed Martin F-35B fires the last Flight Sciences separation test of an AIM-132 ASRAAM.

CHECK SIX - 360º AIR ENGAGEMENTS Air-to-air missiles can engage targets beyond visual range and ‘over the shoulder.’

By Jon Lake

T

he development of fighter aircraft has largely stalled in recent years, at least in terms of aircraft performance. Development has been largely focused on systems including sensors, avionics, displays, the ‘man machine interface’, and electronic warfare (EW) equipment, as well as the technologies behind Low Observability (LO) or ‘stealth’.

Weapons development has largely been concentrated on precision air-to-ground weapons, and until relatively recently, and with a few notable exceptions, most of the world’s air-to-air weapons would have been familiar to fighter pilots from 25 years ago!

The leading short-range weapons then

included the AIM-9 Sidewinder, in its Falklands War-winning AIM-9L form, or in the shape of the later AIM-9M, and the Russian R-73/74 AA-11 ‘Archer’, while older missiles remained in use in some numbers. Generally speaking (and excepting the R-73 and its variants), short range missiles required the launch aircraft to point its nose at the target, framing it in the head up display, allowing the missile seeker to acquire the IR source presented by the enemy aircraft in order to lock on. When this was achieved, the pilot would hear a confirmatory tone or ‘growl’ in his headphones, and would launch a missile, reasonably sure that it would then close in on the target and either explode on impact, or when triggered by a

32 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

proximity fuse. The big leap in capability had been the development of ‘all aspect’ missiles, which could be fired at a crossing target or even a head on target, and that did not need to be pointed directly up an enemy aircraft’s jet-pipe in order to acquire it.

But that has all changed in more recent times, and today the fighter pilot expects to be able to engage a target far outside the narrow confines of his head up display, perhaps using a helmet mounted sight, or helmet mounted cueing system to ‘point’ the seeker head of his missile at a target somewhere off his wingtip – or even behind him.

Though the South Africans (and then the Russians) pioneered the use of missiles that could be fired at high off boresight

angles, as long ago as the 1970s, cued by the use of helmet mounted sights, this technology has only recently become really widely adopted.

Apartheid South Africa’s isolation led to the development of a succession of advanced IR-homing air-to-air missiles, culminating in the A-Darter (V3E), which was given a formal Type Certificate by South Africa and Brazil in September 2019, and which has been cleared for use on the Saab JAS39 Gripen. The A-Darter has a thrust vectoring control (TVC) system, and a two colour thermal imaging seeker. The weapon has a range of 12 nautical miles (22km), and the absence of aluminium powder in the propellent inhibits production of a smoke trail.

Rafael’s Python 5 marks the latest in a series of Israeli air-to-air missiles. The missile has 18 control surfaces, which are claimed to make the weapon at least as agile as rival missiles with thrust vectoring. The advanced seeker includes an electro-optical (EO) and image infrared (IR) homing seeker which scans the target area for hostile aircraft, then locks-on for terminal chase.

Python 5 has a range of 10nm (20 km) and carries an 24 pound (11 kilogram) warhead.

Arguably the most interesting WVR missiles on the market today resulted from

MBDA

Airborne weapons

MBDA MICA fired from a Rafale.

the same requirement! In the 1980s, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) nations signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA0 under which the United States (US) would develop the AMRAAM for beyond visual range (BVR) use, while European countries abandoned their medium range missile programmes. The quid pro quo was that an Anglo-German team would develop a short-range air-to-air missile to replace the AIM-9 Sidewinder. But in the end, the US and Germany would drop out of the

original ASRAAM programme to develop their own short-range missiles, while the UK programme gave rise to an entirely new design.

The US developed the AIM-9X, marrying the rocket motor, fusing system, and warhead, from the AIM-9M to a new focal-plane array (FPA) seeker, a digital autopilot, fixed forward canards, with steerable tail surfaces and three-dimensional thrust vectoring. The Focal Plane Array had been designed by BAE Dynamics for ASRAAM,

Network and connect with key military, industry and government decision makers at the premier land forces exposition for Australia and the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

LAND FORCES will highlight defence capability and showcase platforms, equipment, support and technologies. l l l

Military, government and industry conferences and briefings International defence, government, industry and academic delegations Comprehensive industry exhibition

Don’t miss this opportunity to network and connect with key thought leaders through this established, worldclass exposition.

Platforms - Equipment - Support - Technologies www.landforces.com.au BRISBANE CONVENTION & EXHIBITION CENTRE, AUSTRALIA Proudly supported by the Queensland Government

For further information contact the LAND FORCES Sales Team: PO Box 4095 Geelong, Victoria 3220 Australia T: + 61 (0) 3 5282 0500 E: expo@amda.com.au Official Logistics Provider

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

USAF airmen prepare the AIM-9X Sidewinder missile before a live fire test at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in 2019. The AIM-9X is arguably the most advanced infrared-tracking, short-range, air-to-air and surface-to-air missile.

but was due to have been manufactured by Hughes in the US. The AIM-9X’s lower drag gives it improved range and speed than its predecessors, with a claimed range of 19nm (35km). Some 13 separation and control test launches and 12 guided launches were performed from US Navy Boeing F/A-18s and USAF Boeing F-15s between 1999 and 2000, leading to a first low-rate initial production contract for the AIM-9X in November 2000 and initial operational capability (IOC) in November 2003.

The AIM-9X Block II missile was an upgraded variant with a new datalink and a lock-on-after-launch capability, and this entered service in 2015. The AIM-9X is claimed to have improved infrared counter counter measures (IRCCM) performance but has apparently had some difficulty with older Soviet-era flares. When a US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet strike fighter tried to shoot down a Syrian Su-22 ‘Fitter’ the AIM9X was decoyed, and the F/A-18E had to fire an AIM-120.

Germany withdrew from the ASRAAM project in 1990, after it discovered that the capabilities of the Vympel R-73 missile (the AA-11 ‘Archer’) had been seriously underestimated, and that it was far more capable in terms of seeker acquisition and tracking than the latest AIM-9 Sidewinder. This led Germany to develop a new, tail-controlled, thrust-vectoring missile with a new imaging IR seeker, but which retained the diameter, length, mass and centre of gravity as the

AIM-9, ensuring that any aircraft capable of firing the Sidewinder would also be capable of launching the Diehl BGT Defence IRIS-T, using the same missile launcher interface.

Slower than many of its competitors, at just Mach 3, IRIS-T had a range of 14nm (25km).

Following the departure of Germany from the ASRAAM consortium, a new version was designed to meet the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) specification, with no operational or technical compromises to satisfy the requirements of other customers. BAE received a $786 million (£570 million) development and manufacturing contract in 1992, and a first guided firing was undertaken in the US, in 1996, from an Lockheed Martin F-16 test aircraft.

UK Service Evaluation Trials were flown by the Panavia Tornado F3 OEU, which deployed to Eglin Air Force Base in

34 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

An F-16 Fighting Falcon from the 49th Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., fires an AIM-9M Sidewinder during training and evaluation at Weapons System Evaluation Program-East, 10 March, 2021.

April 2002. A Tornado F.Mk 3 downed a pair of QF-4 drones in the process.

After some delays, the AIM-132 ASRAAM finally entered service with the RAF in 2002. The introduction of ASRAAM revolutionised RAF air defence capabilities.

The revolutionary focal plane array (FPA) seeker allowed targets to be acquired at significant BVR distances, while the high energy motor provided very high acceleration, and gave range performance that was comparable with the last generation of radar-guided BVR missiles. The ASRAAM’s range is usually stated to be ‘in excess of 13nm (25km)’ and has been reported to be as long as 26nm (50km).

ASRAAM was designed for use against targets at much longer ranges than other IR-homing missiles, responding faster, getting off the rail faster, flying faster and reaching further than any other competing missile, and reaching as far as early versions of the AMRAAM. To ensure this, ASRAAM used a 6.5 inch (16.51cm) diameter rocket motor. This compared to the 5in (12.7cm) motors used by the AIM-9M and AIM-9X and IRIS-T. This gave the ASRAAM significantly more thrust, speed and range. The weapon frequently defeated targets that tried to break off an engagement, as they were unable to achieve sufficient separation from the launch aircraft to avoid being shot down. ASRAAM also proved able to discriminate easily between decoy flares and real targets. With a full digital integration on the Typhoon, including the use of a helmet-mounted sight, ASRAAM proved even more impressive, demonstrating unmatched high off-bore sight capabilities.

The missile can be fired ‘over-theshoulder’ to engage a threat behind the launch aircraft, and the target does need not be in the seeker's field of view at launch

USAF

USAF

Airborne weapons

SUBSCRIBE NOW!

thE dEfENCE dECISION-MAKER’S fIRSt-ChOICE REfERENCE JOURNAL ARMAdA INtERNAtIONAL & COMPENdIUM SERIES OffER YOU INSIGht & ANALYSIS tO StAY AhEAd. UNMANNED SYSTEMS A Compendium by Armada International

A Quart

erly Arma

g Pursuines Pirat OPtrOnics ents DevelOPm + sPecial s OPeratiOn Quarterly

/JAN Dec 2015

06.

2016. Issue

lS Signac e n e ig l l e AFGHANISTAN’S int ENDLESS WAR

t

Q4 2015 /Q1 201 6

feb/mar 2016. Issue 01.

SUPER SAVER OFFER VALID FOR LIMITED PERIOD 1 year

pplemen

2016 sTed sou

Yes, I would like to receive

ational Su

: The TrusTed source for defence Technology analysis

: The Tru

ORDER FORM

da Intern

CYBER WARFARE FIGHTER RADAR + UNMANNED sYsTEMs CoMpENDIUM

2 years

rce for

defence

Technolo

gy analy

sis

Annual Subscription: For Europe CHF 222 Other countries USD 222

Please deliver the magazine at the below address: Name:..........................................................................Position / Rank:......................................................................................

Organisation / Unit:........................................Address: .............................................................................................................. ..................................................City:....................................... Postcode:.................................. Country:…….…....………….

Tel:…………………………..................... Fax:………….……...…….....…............. Email:…….…....…...............................

I would like to pay by card.

Mastercard

Visa

Card Number:………….................................. Expiry Date:..............................Signature:........................................................

Name on Card:............................................................................. Card Security Code...............................................................

Auto Renewal:

Yes

No

Your subscription will automatically be renewed after your initial term for a one/two year subscription unless you tell us to stop. Before the start of each renewal, you will be sent a reminder notice stating the rate then in effect. If you do nothing, your credit/debit card will be charged or you will receive an invoice for another subscription year. You may cancel at anytime during your subscription and receive a full refund for unmailed issues

By cheque: Cheque made payable to: Media Transasia Limited, MAIL or FAx your subscription form to: : Media Transasia Ltd., 75/8, 14th Floor, Ocean Tower 2, Soi Sukhumvit 19, Bangkok 10110 THAILAND. Tel +66 2204 2370 Fax: +66 2204 2387 Email: accounts@mediatransasia.com or subscribe via www.armadainternational.com

Saab

Airborne weapons

A Swedish Air Force Gripen E test firing a Diehl BGT Defence IRIS-T missile.

Rafael

because of the midcourse inertial guidance capability. This capability was demonstrated in 2009 by a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F-18, which conducted a successful lock on after launch firing of an ASRAAM at a target behind the wing line, simulating a ‘chase down’ situation by an enemy fighter.

The US refused to share ASRAAM integration data with F-16 operators, hoping to advantage the home-grown AIM-9X. This effectively shut off a potentially huge export market for ASRAAM sales. The RAAF shortlisted ASRAAM for its F/A-18A Hornet fighters in 1997, after evaluating it against the Rafael Python 4 and the AIM-9X, which were judged to be inferior.

A new Block 6 ASRAAM is now in production, incorporating a new generation seeker of increased pixel density, and a new rocket motor, a new intelligent proximity

Rafael’s Python 5 air-to-air missile has 18 control surfaces which gives the missile its agility.

fuze, and a new actuation system from the CAMM air defence missile. The new variant has already been selected and ordered by the Sultanate of Oman and Qatar for their Eurofighter Typhoons, and by India, and further exports are likely.

MBDA inked a $428 million (£250 million) contract to supply 384 missiles to India in July 2014, to equip its upgraded SEPCAT Jaguar fighter-bombers under the ‘New Generation Close Combat Missile’ (NGCCM) programme. The ASRAAM is also set to equip India’s Sukhoi Su-30MKI squadrons, and the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).

The IRIS-T configuration is shared by the Japanese AAM-5B, which entered service in 2004, though exports are unlikely, so it remains of little interest outside the JASDF! Interestingly, the new Chinese PL-10 also uses the same basic configuration, and this weapon has been claimed to be China’s most advanced air to air missile.

A prototype was reportedly completed in 2013, and the weapon has been tested on the stealthy J-20 and on the J-11 (a licence-built Su-27). On the J-20 the weapon can move from its internal weapons bay to a semi-external position, with weapons bay doors closing behind it to give the seeker a view of the outside world, while minimising radar returns from the weapon bay itself. The PL10 should not be assumed to be an IRIS-T copy, though previous Chinese AAMs have often been copies of Western designs.

36 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

Interestingly, France followed a very different approach in developing its MICA (Missile d’interception, de combat et d’autodéfense, ‘interception, combat and self-defence missile’), producing a longer-range weapon for use over both short and medium ranges. MICA was developed

by Matra from 1982, with the French company subsequently becoming part of the Anglo French MBDA. Flight trials began in 1991, and the missile was ordered in 1996 to equip the Dassault Rafale and Mirage 2000.

MICA is available in two versions – the MICA RF with an active radar homing seeker and the MICA IR with an imaging infra-red homing seeker. The intention was to provide a missile that would replace both the ‘French Sparrow’ – the Matra Super 530 - in the BVR intercept role but also the shorter-range Matra Magic II IR-homing dogfight missile. The weapon was the first Western air-to-air missile to use thrust vectoring but it is neither as agile as some competing IR-homing rivals nor as fast and as lethal as other BVR weapons, but it does represent an interesting, effective and useful compromise.

MICA is not yet believed to have a mature integration with a helmet cueing system, but has demonstrated a third-party targeting capability, undertaking a ‘Parthian’ over-the-shoulder shot against a pursuing target.

There is a new generation of shortrange ‘dogfight’ missiles now under development, not least in the US, where the USAF has sponsored two separate research and development programmes by Raytheon: the Small Advanced Capability Missile (SACM) and Miniature Self-Defense Munition (MSDM). Lockheed Martin has also designed a conceptual air-to-air missile known as Cuda, and nicknamed ‘Halfraam’, which promises to double the F-22’s missile load, and to provide a short-to-medium range weapon.

In recent concept artwork portraying a number of future fighter programmes, tomorrow’s fighters have been shown using directed energy weapons against other aircraft. But these weapons remain essentially unproven, and despite decades of research and development, they are still at the experimental stage. They are likely to demand huge amounts of electrical power and are liable to have only the most modest range.

The air-to-air missile looks like it will be here to stay – at least for the foreseeable future.

ARMADA COMMENTARY

BEGINNING OF THE END FOR F-35?

Jon Lake

T

he United States Air Force’s (USAF) Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) office has drawn up a new future fighter roadmap that would cap Lockheed Martin F-35A deliveries at “about 1,050 jets” representing a 720 aircraft reduction. AFWIC argues that legacy platforms like the Boeing F-15 and Lockheed Martin F-16 can and should continue to play a vital role in the USAF’s frontline force mix, and this is likely to be reflected in the new TacAir study launched by the USAF, in association with the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office.

New USAF chief of staff General Charles Q.Brown has characterised the F-35

as a boutique, high-end fighter in the same class as the Lockheed Martin F-22. It is perhaps worth remembering that the USAF ended F-22 production prematurely, after just eight test aircraft and 187 operational aircraft had been built – far short of the 750 advanced tactical fighters that it had originally envisaged.

Former Pentagon acquisition tsar Will Roper was just as critical, observing that: “the F-35A is ‘a long way from being an affordable fighter that we can buy in bulk’.”

Although procurement cost of the F-35 has dropped to around $102.7 million (Lockheed Martin’s claim of an $80m unit cost does not include the engine) the aircraft still has prohibitively high operating, support and sustainment costs, and avail-

ability remains below expectations. These facts are the source of growing anger and frustration among the top brass.

The USAF has not yet officially abandoned plans to buy 1,763 F-35A aircraft, and this figure remains the official ‘program of record’, but the service has clearly begun to examine options for the future of its tactical fighter fleet. Some radical alternatives are clearly being considered in the new TacAir study, which will aim to establish the right mix of aircraft, what capabilities they should have and how many of each type will be required.

While it is far too early to predict with certainty what the report’s conclusions may be, it is already clear that the USAF is shifting further and further away from

Get the latest insight into the defence industry

www.armadainternational.com armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 37

USAF/ Matthew Short

ARMADA COMMENTARY

its original plan to deploy an all-stealthy frontline force, consisting of Boeing B-2 bombers, F-22 air dominance fighters, and F-35 tactical fighters.

In recent years, the operational and cost advantages of using fourth and fifth generation fighters together, leveraging the strengths of each, has been recognised and embraced much more widely. Fourth generation fighters enjoy some attributes that aircraft like the F-35 do not share.

They can carry bigger weapon loads and more AAMs to the fight, and some may enjoy superior performance, or have more advanced sensors, or may be able to use rapidly reprogrammable electronic warfare (EW) equipment to protect them against enemy air defences. Some believe that this kind of ‘digital stealth’ is actually more effective than traditional stealth in countering an evolving threat, since jammers can be upgraded or replaced whereas an low observable aircraft’s shape, structure and surface coatings cannot be changed. There has also been an acknowledgement that the USAF has the wrong mix of aircraft for the lower-end fight – something for which stealth fighters are arguably particularly poorly suited.

The USAF has recognised this, and has revealed “expanded plans to blend legacy fourth- and fifth-generation fighters to meet a range of mission sets.” It has also started to acquire new fourth generation

fighters, something that would have been deemed unthinkable a few years ago. The idea that only stealthy fighters can provide a meaningful capability now seems very old-fashioned.

Delays to the F-35 forced the USAF to delay the planned retirement of the F-16 from 2025 to at least 2048, and the USAF has now purchased an initial eight F-15EX Advanced Eagles and is eventually set to procure at least 144 F-15EX aircraft.

Continued procurement of the F-35, with its sky-high operating and support costs, will threaten the USAF’s ability to expand to fulfil former chief of staff General Dave Goldfein’s goal of growing the force from 312 to 386 operational squadrons by 2030. His replacement, General Brown, reportedly believes that the USAF is hurtling toward “the most difficult force structure decisions in generations” and has said that hard choices must be made.

“Programs that once held promise, but are no longer affordable or will not deliver needed capabilities on competition-relevant timelines, must be divested or terminated,” he stated last August.

Brown would like to introduce a more cost-effective alternative to the remaining, unbuilt, F-35As and buying new F-16s could also be an option. General Brown (himself a former F-16 pilot) is, however, “open to looking at other platforms to see what that right force mix is.”

38 armadainternational.com - april-may 2021

Brown reportedly thinks that the USAF needs an aircraft with an open mission systems architecture, and with enough computing power to allow software codes to be updated very quickly. He believed that even the latest F-16 variants lack this, and will therefore be unable to provide the kind of operational agility that the USAF needs.

Brown told a defence media roundtable: “I want to be able to build something new and different that’s not the F 16 — that has some of those capabilities, but gets there faster and uses some of our digital approach,” adding, “I want to entertain a clean-sheet design of something that’s not necessarily fourth-generation, but may not be completely fifth-generation either…..

Let’s not just buy off the shelf, let’s actually take a look at something else out there that we can build.” This was the first time that a senior US Air Force officer had advocated introducing a new fourth-generation aircraft into the USAF inventory.

But if such an aircraft is adopted, and if the USAF does cap F-35A production at 1,050 aircraft (60 percent of the planned total), what will that mean for F-35 sustainment costs and for the economies of scale that F-35 export customers were expecting?

And what does it say about the USAF’s long term commitment to the type? Air staffs in Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore will doubtless be watching developments with great interest.

ARMADA COMMENTARY

armadainternational.com - april-may 2021 39