Some 100 high security buildings providing three million sq ft of floor space in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles house Lockheed Martin's famed Skunk Works, a facility where, according to one executive, “anything that you can imagine, we're already working on”.
Julian Kerr | US
Such hubris is understandable. Products conceived and developed by what is officially designated the Advanced Development Programs organisation include the U-2 ultra-high altitude reconnaissance aircraft; the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, still the fastest plane that has ever flown; the F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft; the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter; and the F-35 multi-role Joint Strike Fighter.
Australian defence journalists visiting the Palmdale site were told that current development programs range from a compact nuclear fusion reactor to a supersonic transport designed so as not to produce the supersonic boom that led the US in the 1960s to ban overland flights by civilian aircraft at more than Mach 1.0.
Military developments were not discussed, although one executive disclosed that the U-2, in service since the late 1950s but regularly upgraded, remains the most-heavily tasked of any US Air Force platform.
Under development to meet a NASA design requirement, a model of the so-called X-plane supersonic transport demonstrator shows a single-engined, single-piloted, vectored thrust design with an elongated nose, a delta wing and two angled canards mounted forward of the cockpit.
“More significantly, flight testing is underway for the S-97 Raider light tactical helicopter and the CH-53K King Stallion heavy lift helicopter.”
Skunk Works executive Mike Buonanno said wind tunnel tests had indicated that the X-Plane’s noise level could be as low as 75 decibels thanks to design concepts that avoided the shock waves from individual features “bunching up”.
Construction of the demonstrator will be subject to competition and its first flight is expected in 2019. The demonstrator is likely to weigh about 25,000lb; large enough to accurately replicate the acoustic signature of a 100-seat design, whether civil or military, weighing up to 300,000lb.
At the other end of the velocity scale, a massive Skunk Works building originally used for production of the L1011 Tristar airliner now houses the LMH-1 heavier-than-air hybrid airship, 82 metres long and capable of cost-effectively carrying a 21 tonne payload and 19 passengers over 2,600km at 60 knots.
Larger versions on the drawing board will be able to lift 90 and 500 tonnes respectively, the latter by a design 230 metres long. Eighty per cent of the hybrid’s lift is generated by helium gas, the balance of 20 per cent from the aerodynamic properties of the envelope’s unique tri-lobe shape – in essence one giant wing, creating lift at just 10 km/h.
In March the type received its first letter of intent; for up to 12 hybrids with a potential value of US$480 million to enter service by 2021. The following month Hybrid Enterprises, the airship’s exclusive reseller, reported strong interest from Australian majors at an international liquified gas conference in Perth.
As at other Lockheed Martin technology centres, Skunk Works executives welcomed the corporation’s decision to establish in Melbourne the so-called Science Technology Engineering Leadership and Research Laboratory (STELaR Lab), and suggested hypersonics as a potential area of collaboration.
Enter Sikorsky
Lockheed Martin’s aeronautical portfolio has been further boosted by last year’s US$9 billion acquisition of helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky, whose Intelligent Technologies and Analytics area is headed by Melbourne-born Matt Tarascio.
New developments at Sikorsky’s Stratford, Connecticut headquarters include an armed variant of the ubiquitous Black Hawk, which the company sees as an option for countries seeking to replace their Russian-manufactured Mil Mi-24 fleets.
The variant uses the helicopter’s existing stub wings, usually holding auxiliary fuel tanks, to carry the weapon payload. The configuration includes an Infirno electro-optical/infrared turret and DAGR 70mm guided rockets, both developed by Lockheed Martin.
Other weapon options include podded machineguns, the M134 7.62mm minigun, Hydra unguided 70mm rockets, or Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.
More significantly, flight testing is underway for the S-97 Raider light tactical helicopter and the CH-53K King Stallion heavy lift helicopter. Two hundred of the latter are destined for the US Marine Corps (USMC).
As pointed out by Chris Van Buiten, Vice-President Sikorsky Innovations, current helicopter designs are relatively slow with maximum speeds of about 150 knots, and must sacrifice manoeuvrability for speed, or vice versa.
Enter the Raider, which features a rigid rotor co-axial design in which two counter-rotating rotor hubs, one stacked directly above the other, spin four rigid rotor blades in opposite directions.
This configuration generates a top speed of more than 220 knots and enhanced manoeuvrability in confined spaces in the hover and low speed regimes, attributes which Van Buiten believes will dramatically change the way in which military helicopters will be flown and fought.
The CH-53K King Stallion, successor to the CH-53E Super Stallion, has a footprint 10 per cent smaller than the CH-53E but its three 7,500 shaft hp GE38-1B engines will enable it to lift an external load of 36,000 lb – triple that of the Super Stallion – over a mission radius of 204 km under hot and high conditions.
Four prototypes are now undertaking a 2,000 hour flight test program. What will be the largest and heaviest helicopter in the US military is expected to achieve Initial Operational Capability (IOC) with the USMC in 2019.
Scheduled to take its first flight late next year is the Sikorsky/Boeing SB-1 Defiant, conceived as a next-generation replacement for the UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache via the US Army’s Joint Multirole and follow-on Future Vertical Lift (FVL) programs.
Weighing in at 13.6 tonnes, nearly three times the weight of the Raider, the compound co-axial rotor Defiant will transport four aircrew and 12 fully-equipped troops with its pusher propeller helping to drive it to a top speed of 250 knots.
The FVL program will introduce a next-generation family of rotorcraft to succeed everything from the OH-58 Kiowa to the CH-47 Chinook beginning in the coming decades. It’s not yet clear whether FVL-Light or FVL-Medium will come first, but a request for proposals is expected in 2018.
An Australian Lieutenant-Colonel is participating in early FVL discussions to assist the Australian Army “to meet our future requirements as outlined in the 2016 Defence White Paper”, a Defence spokesperson confirmed to ADM.
“This exchange of ideas … is occurring without a financial arrangement, membership or any other commitment,” the Defence spokesperson added.
Maritime Following briefings at Lockheed Martin’s Surface Navy Innovation Centre at Moorestown, New Jersey, it’s clear that the Commonwealth faces a major decision on upgrading the Aegis combat system aboard the Hobart class AWDs from the Baseline 8.0 configuration with which they will enter service, to Baseline 9.0.
Assuming the intention is to retain system commonality with the US Navy (USN), the question is not ‘if,’ but ‘when’.
Additional impetus is provided by the designation of Baseline 9.0 as the foundation for all future Aegis upgrades, together with the establishment as part of Baseline 9.0 development of a Common Source Library (CSL) which allows the reuse by customers of common tactical software across different Aegis configurations.
As described by Richard Calabrese, Director of Combat Mission Systems, “This is a cultural change for Lockheed Martin in that we’re moving from individual to shared requirements in keeping pace with emerging threats and cost-effectively adding high-priority capabilities”.
To save costs, the Baseline 9.A upgrade for ageing Ticonderoga class cruisers does not include BMD capabilities.
Under the Baseline 9.C1 configuration destined for the USN’s in-service Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers, a multi-mission signal processor will allow the destroyers to switch between ballistic missile defence (BMD) and the air defence role.
Japan and South Korea confirmed in August that their future destroyers will be equipped with the new configuration, presumably either Baseline 9.C1 or the Baseline 9.D variant intended for Arleigh Burke Flight IIA new construction.
For the Australian AWDs, in addition to the SM-2 Block IIIB missiles they will deploy for air defence, undertaking the BMD role included in Baselines 9.C1 or 9.D would require the acquisition of costly SM-3 or SM-6 missiles for the destruction of ballistic missiles in, respectively, the lower or upper atmospheres.
With the government still to decide at the time of publication whether the combat systems integrator for the Future Submarine program will be Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, Lockheed Martin executives were keen to stress their company’s role as combat systems integrator for every class of USN submarine, together with those of Canada, Brazil, Spain “and a couple of others”.
“In the US we simultaneously have the Los Angeles, Seawolf and the new Virginia class fast attack submarines, the Ohio class ballistic missile ‘boomers’ and the Ohio class guided missile boats, and we’re now working with General Dynamics on the Ohio class replacement,” Doug Laurendeau, Vice President Business Development, Underseas Systems said.
“This gives us tremendous experience and reachback. With Australia’s Future Submarine our plan is not to bring across Lockheed Martin kit, it’s to bring across the integration services and business models and engineering processes that have been successful on Virginia, all the way from early design to sustainment, to enable an Australian combat system to be integrated by Australians”.
Laurendeau said the Lockheed Martin proposal included a solution to US security requirements that currently prevent full integration on the Collins class of the AN/BYG-1 tactical and weapon control system – the preferred solution for the Future Submarine – with the Thales sonar suite. A Thales sonar fit is also the likely choice for the Future Submarine.
“We’re working with Thales on that and we’ve found a technical path that resolves that gap,” Laurendeau disclosed.
He declined to give any details, but ADM believes this could involve Lockheed Martin’s ARCI (Acoustic Rapid COTS Insertion) program. The open architecture ARCI design exploits commercial processing improvements and would eliminate the requirement for any security interface between its processors and the tactical and weapon control system.
Air 6500
Meanwhile Lockheed Martin has been modelling and simulating its ability to integrate major military platforms and systems as part of its preparations to bid for the joint battle management system proposed under Project Air 6500.
Over a two-week period, engineers at the company’s Centre for Innovation in Suffolk, Virginia, had demonstrated their ability to integrate 14 representative systems including dynamic retasking of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and a coordinated engagement with an Aegis-equipped Hobart class AWD, program executive Steve Froelich disclosed.
A capability solutions study for a system reaching Initial Operating Capability in 2022 or 2023 was due to be submitted by Lockheed Martin and other contenders – believed to be Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman – in September.
Disclaimer: Julian Kerr travelled to the US as a guest of Lockheed Martin.
This article first appeared in the October 2016 edition of ADM.