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ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE --
The Air National Guard is programming $1.7 billion in upgrades and improvements to the Joint STARS fleet, according to reports in the Washington news media last week.
The ground surveillance system, flown exclusively by the 116th Air Control Wing at Robins Air Force Base, has been an indispensable lifesaver for ground troops in the war on terror. It detects, identifies, tracks and relays targeting information, giving commanders on the ground and in the air a vital heads-up.
Keeping the 18 aircraft fleet - including one testbed system - viable well into this century is the goal.
"All of the things on the list have been identified for a long time," confirmed Col. Dom Eanniello, 116th vice commander. "Whether Congress decides to fund all or some is beyond my purview. The airplane will remain viable for a while if nothing is done, but it will get harder and harder to maintain."
The airframe, a converted Boeing 707, is expected to remain serviceable for 50 more years. But the airplanes' 40-year-old engines and increasingly obsolete electronics are aging, becoming increasingly difficult to service.
The primary - and most costly - culprit is the TF33 engine. The lion's share of the upgrade funds, about $1.2 billion, would go for new Pratt and Whitney JT8D-219 engines, power plants currently used by a number of commercial aircraft.
That change would give Joint STARS a huge boost, including operation from shorter runways, quicker climb to optimum altitudes, improved fuel burn rates, decreased reliance on in-flight refueling and increased loiter time over the target.
That process is well under way. The Air Force already has awarded two contracts to Northrop Grumman Corp., valued at $300 million, to complete initial engineering, flight testing and certification for the engines.
The other upgrades in the Guard's requirements book are less certain. A big ticket and essential item is a projected $311 million to replace the aircraft's mission control computers. Eighteen mission crew members onboard Joint STARS use the computers to process and distribute data from the aircraft's 24-foot, belly-mounted radar.
"It's a diminishing vendors issue," Eanniello said. "We built the back end of the aircraft using commercial off-the-shelf systems. They're old computers and no one makes replacements for them anymore. There is some lead funding for this in the 2009 budget, but we expect the bulk to come in 2010."
Another initiative - valued at $114.5 million and unfunded at this point - would go for new target identification technology.
"We see things moving on the ground, but we can't put a weapon on target until we positively identify it," the vice commander said. "The dot on the ground could be a school bus full of kids."
The new modification would shorten the time needed to identify a potential target by giving Joint STARS crews access to another type of sensor to identity the mover.
"We are testing a system this fall - an electro-optical system - that may be the answer," he said. "Once the test is done, the Air Force will decide if it's worth pursuing."
Another funded modification this fall will allow for tracking maritime targets. The update is called an enhanced land and maritime mode, or ELMM.
"We'll have to go forward to an optical type venue to determine if the target is a pleasure craft or a drug smuggler," Eanniello said. "But with ELMM, we'll be able to see movement on the water."
The Guard's requirements list also includes $124 million for Link-16. That would enable near real time exchange of data, including text messages, images and digital voice.
"We have some of that on the aircraft now," the 116th vice commander said, "so it's a question of retrofitting the entire airplane. We have Link-16 capability with some people now and, with a software update coming this fall, it will expand. It's an incremental thing. The additional money would complete the picture and speed up the process."
Other upgrades call for installation of new VHF radios for operation in congested European airspace and a projected $130 million for an infrared countermeasure system. The radios are necessary, Eanniello concedes, but the countermeasure system is far down the food chain.
"It's been articulated for years, but $130 million is a large sum of money compared to the things we really need," he said.
The colonel compares Joint STARS to maintaining an old car. "The issue is whether we want to spend money to maintain an old car or spend a lot of money up front and make it a new car for a longer period of time," he said.
In the end, he suggests, the proven value of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mainstay will rule the day.
"ISR is a big event in the Air Force," Eanniello said. "I believe we're going to get there because we contribute so much to the fight. I think we'll see new engines, upgraded radar and more. We'll get there."
http://www.macon.com/197/story/386264.html
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"Korea has not been the only battle ground since the end of the Second World War. Men have fought and died in Malaya, in Greece, in the Philippines, in Algeria and Cuba, and Cyprus and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired. No massive nuclear retaliation has been considered appropriate. This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin--war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called 'wars of liberation,' to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It requires in those situations where we must counter it, and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training."-President Kennedy's Address at Graduation Exercises of the U.S. Military Academy, 1962
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"The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
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"Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It'll shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars."-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War
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