AVWK: Details emerging on Beast Of Kandahar/RQ170 Sentinel.

Illustration by Gregory Lewis Aviation Week & Space Technology

Article by David A. Fulghum and Bill Sweetman

The U.S. has been flying a classified, stealthy, remotely piloted aircraft in Afghanistan. That single fact reveals the continued development of low-observable UAVs, hidden aspects of the surveillance buildup in Afghanistan, the footprint of an active “black aircraft world” that stretches to Southwest Asia, and links into the Pentagon’s next-generation recce bomber.

The mystery aircraft—once referred to as the Beast of Kandahar and now identified by the U.S. Air Force as a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works RQ-170 Sentinel—flew from Kandahar’s airport, where it was photographed at least twice in 2007. It shared a hangar with Predator and Reaper UAVs being used in combat operations. On Dec. 4, three days after declassification was requested, Aviation Week revealed the program on its web site. Like Predator and Reaper, the Sentinel is remotely piloted by aircrews—in this case the 30th Reconnaissance Sqdn. (RS) at Tonopah Test Range Airport in the northwest corner of the Nevada Test and Training Range.

The confirmation came the same week as the Air Force’s top intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) officer called for a new, stealth, jet-powered strike-reconnaissance aircraft that can meet the requirements of both irregular and conventional conflicts and strategic, peacetime information-gathering.

The demands of fighting an irregular war do not change the critical operational need for a stealthier, strategic-range, higher-payload, strike-reconnaissance aircraft, says Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, deputy chief of staff for ISR.

The battle will be to balance the way the military wants to fight in Afghanistan now against how it wants to fight elsewhere in the future. Air Force officials want to keep those two needs from becoming widely divergent points in geography, technology and operational techniques. For the next 18 months, about 150,000 U.S. and allied troops will try to break the offensive capabilities of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghan istan, and new technologies will be brought into play.

“Don’t get enamored with current conditions,” Deptula cautions. “We don’t know what the future will bring.” While operations in Afghanistan will be “more complex than ever,” the future is “not only going to be about irregular warfare.”

Beyond 2011, the Air Force’s first priority and the destination of the next dollar to be spent “if I were king for a day,” Deptula says, “would be for long-range [reconnaissance and] precision strike. That’s the number-one need.

“We cannot move into a future without a platform that allows [us] to project power long distances and to meet advanced threats in a fashion that gives us an advantage that no other nation has,” he notes. “We can’t walk away from that capability.”

A next-generation design would be equally important as a stealthy ISR platform to greatly extend—through speed, endurance and stealth—the capability produced by putting electro-optical and infrared sensor packets on the B-1 and B-52 bombers for precise attacks on fleeting targets in Southwest Asia.

Surveillance aircraft can see a lot more (farther and better) with long-wave infrared if the platform can operate at 50,000 ft. or higher. The RC-135S Cobra Ball, RC-135W Rivet Joint and E-8C Joint Stars are all limited to flying lower than 30,000 ft. Moreover, the multispectral technology to examine the chemical content of rocket plumes has been miniaturized to fit easily on a much smaller aircraft. Other sensors of interest are electronically scanned array radars, low-probability-of-intercept synthetic aperture radars and signals intelligence.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT AVWK

DoD To Add $100B to 2011-15 Spending

The Obama administration will add $100 billion to the Pentagon's 2011-'15 base budget plan to cover the rising cost of personnel and pressing modernization needs, officials said.

IF APPROVED BY Congress, the additional money would allow U.S. defense spending to rise about 1 percent above projected inflation, analysts said. (AFP)
If approved by Congress, the money would allow U.S. defense spending to rise about 1 percent above projected inflation, analysts said.

The Pentagon's 2010 budget request called for $534 billion, plus $130 billion to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It did not include the estimated $30 billion that will be needed to fund President Barack Obama's recent decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Nor did the 2010 spending plan contain the customary five-year spending outlook, although the new Obama administration had in January pledged annual defense spending of about $540 billion, plus inflation, plus $50 billion for operations.

Among other procurement efforts, the money will pay for new Air Force global strike programs - including work on new manned and unmanned systems - Army brigade combat team modernization, a Navy attack submarine, and the Navy's new Carrier Long-Range Strike system, sources said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss the administration's budget deliberations. But multiple sources confirmed the $100 billion figure.

Analysts called the decision a victory for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has lobbied the White House for more funding. Gates, who reviewed a draft of the Quadrennial Defense Review in early December, is to meet with the military services this week to discuss their spending plans, sources said. The QDR and 2011 budget request are due to Congress in February.

Gates, who scrutinized a draft version of the QDR on his trip last week to Afghanistan and Iraq, announced in Kirkuk, Iraq, that the review likely will endorse a new family of Air Force long-range strike systems that are manned and unmanned. In April, Gates pushed back funding for the Air Force's new bomber, stripping it from the 2010 budget.

The QDR and 2011 budgets are being shaped with an eye toward strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base, sources said. Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter and industrial policy director Brett Lambert have said DoD must better preserve key industrial capabilities, in part by spending more. Lambert has said he worries about major prime contractors but is applying more focus on second-, third- and fourth-tier firms that supply critical components and skills.

Pierre Chao, the managing partner of Renaissance Strategic Advisors, called the plus-up "a welcome relief."

"From a macro perspective, it means that the administration is focused on funding defense at the right level, that they are very sensitive to the strains on personnel and those concerns will be funded," Chao said. "To those who were focused on the programs and hardware side, it provides relief to the extent that programs don't have to be raided to support the people side of the department."

The Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson noted that Gates had pressed the White House to keep the Pentagon budget growing faster than inflation.

"It's important to understand that a significant amount is going to rising health care costs; however, there is no question increase of this magnitude will allow the continued modernization of weapons systems," Thompson said.

But Gordon Adams, a defense budget expert with Henry L. Stimson Center and American University, said the plus-up is back-loaded, with most of the money coming in the last years of the five-year plan.

"In the first year, it doesn't look like much, but in the out-years it's a big deal," Adams said. "But as Mark Twain is said to have said, making predictions is difficult, especially about the future. It's the near-term war that matters and they are not getting anything like the growth they wanted in year one, and that's where the real money is."

On the Horizon: The B-3 Bomber

By JOHN T. BENNETT

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Dec. 11 the 2011 Pentagon spending request is likely to include funding for development of a new Air Force bomber, Reuters reported.

The long-talked-about program has been in limbo since Gates froze it in April amid several dozen major weapons program cuts. Gates wanted the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review to look at the need for a new long-range bomber fleet.

"We are probably going to proceed with a long-range strike initiative coming out of the Quadrennial Defense Review and various other reviews going on," Gates told troops in Kirkuk, Iraq. "We're looking at a family of capabilities, both manned and unmanned."

He said funding likely would start at $1 billion, and then ramp up in subsequent years.

Thais detain plane with weapons from North Korea

Bangkok, Thailand (CNN) -- Thai authorities seized a cargo aircraft carrying tons of weapons from North Korea during a refueling stop in Bangkok, a government official said.

The pilot told Thai authorities the aircraft was headed to Sri Lanka, but its final destination was unknown, according to Panitan Wattanayagorn, a spokesman for the Thai prime minister.

It contained about 35 tons of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-launched rockets and tubes that may be missile components, the spokesman said.

The plane, which was detained Saturday, had five people onboard -- four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus. They will appear in court Monday on charges related to illegal weapons smuggling, the spokesman said.

Thai government officials acted after working with several intelligence agencies for several weeks, the spokesman said. The cargo was taken to a military base while the plane, which is registered in Georgia, remains at Don Muang.

READ THE FUL STORY HERE

CNN: Iranian Nuclear Scientist missing/Iran blames U.S.

I'm surprised CNN didn't do this story earlier - it was posted on this blog months ago. Better late than never I suppose.

Here's the original post that was on this blog in early October.

-Steve Douglass

ORIGINAL POST LINK