Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Sep 16–18. US air and space forces are undergoing the largest overhauls in recent times. Air force procurement is changing. The structure of the air force is changing. Space force is receiving its first bespoke space-shit from SDA & co. Army is coming to terms with joint all-domain ops. The "Great Power Competition" shift is on.Two notes about these happenings. One, OP can't spoonfeed you everything even if wanted to. Two, the air and space force professional association (AFA) considers this whole month to be "AFA September." If it's news and it's US military aviation, you can stick it ITT if you'd like.Ok let's start.https://afa.org/air-space-cyber-conference/
WHERE TO GET NEWS1. Breaking Defense>https://breakingdefense.com/tag/afa-2024/2. Air & Space Forces Mag. This is the AFA's own outlet.https://airandspaceforces.com
WHERE TO SEE CONFERENCE CONTENT3. Agendahttps://afa.org/air-space-cyber-conference/2024-agenda/4. Exhibitors Listhttps://afa.org/air-space-cyber-conference/exhibitor-directory/5. Program - rehosted PDFhttps://files.catbox.moe/enh0lt.pdf6. Program - 1st party PDF with more ergonomic links.https://airforcehq-my.sharepoint.com/personal/askodi_afa_org/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Faskodi%5Fafa%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FDesktop%2FASC%202024%20Program%20Guide%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Faskodi%5Fafa%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FDesktop&ga=1
Before the announcements get out of hand, why not post low-hanging fruit from day 1.
Boeing unveils land-based variant of the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned tanker >Boeing is designing a larger, land-based version of its uncrewed MQ-25 tanker, targeting US Air Force future refueling plans including topping up Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) in contested airspace. Company officials say they have been working with the Air Force on the design, which expands the 75-ft. wingspan of the Navy’s Stingray design to 92 ft. The land-based variant would also no longer require the wings to be folded like the carrier-based version, a change that combined with the increased span would provide 40% more space for fuel in the wings. https://aviationweek.com/defense/aircraft-propulsion/boeing-unveils-land-based-mq-25-autonomous-tanker-designnb. Increment 1 CCA picks do not have refueling capability, so this would be slated toward Increment 2 and later.
>>62520184>>62520357Man, I love flying wing/blended body/blended wing designs
Anduril's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) on display at AFA 2024.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc's CCA on display at AFA 2024.
GA-ASI's XQ-67A OBSS on display at AFA 2024.
A couple aerial platforms from Europe's MBDA on dsiplay at AFA 2024.
Blue Halo shows off a family of quadcopters to be used on mobile missions with its truck-based command post at AFA 2024.
A model of Airbus's Arrow satellite playload at AFA 2024.
>>62520357I was itching over the artist formerly known as loyal wingman now known as CCA. The idea that Super Duper Bugs to F-35Bs and Cs can have a swarm of low observable fuel and missile bags going alongside them is extremely appealing.Launch 2-4 F-35s and a swarm of bi-AMRAAM (or AIM-260) carrying lil buggers with a bunch of the others carrying very large fuel payloads, top their fuel up just outside of the threat zone and then push forwards with the drones. F-35s do the spotting against aircraft before the AMRAAMs get launched up close and personal deep in the NEZ. Meanwhile the others carrying the evolved HARMs and JDAM-ERs dump em and fuck off. F-35s guide in strikes by their sensor package and datalink. Everything fucks off as the next flight arrives on station while the fuel bag drones do buddy tanking to the F-35s and remaining drones before they all come home for a warm dinner at a carrier all while having a combat radius larger than the AGM-158XR.Not going to lie I was cheering for the XQ-47 form factor way back in the day because the flying wing shape had a lot of potential for being a big fat plump flying fuel bags or ammo bags (because MK84 JDAMs) but I assume the DoD and USN know better than a shitposter like me for their requirements.
A seat for getting out of Dodge, Martin-Baker's F-35 ejection seat is shown at AFA 2024.
Anduril's Barracuda family of munitions at the company's stand at AFA 2024.
>>62520516Here's the weight range on that seat too, or at least old stats on it.
Breaking Defense 4 minute vid on Day 1. They don't say anything worthwhile but there's some b-roll of the CCA loyal wingman models.https://youtu.be/ZRz3K7gHi2w
>>62520357Old videos and photo of the MQ-25 doing buddy tanking irl:https://youtu.be/s8-N6WsiBCI
>>62520184>space conference>nothing interesting is showna joke
>>62520511>the artist formerly known as loyal wingman now known as CCAHonestly, Kendall and company are breaking some of the cardinal rules of Innovation by constantly trying to retcon their marketing missteps, confusions, and so forth. One decent term for it, if you wanted to pathologize it, would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_inconsistency.There are many times when "failing" in a coherent fashion is a far better outcome than trying to polyfill all tech debt and past planning problems. Now Kendall is feeling the squeeze and he says he wants to stay on during the next president's term, regardless of who is in office. The out of touch boomer arrogance of voicing that now, when his direct legacy is currently a bunch of pseudo-cancelled zombie programs, is really something. All the good shit has happened despite big airforce and its politicos, often with them only vaguely aware of the goings-on at best.
Will MUTANT news be at this conference? Also thanks OP for taking time out of your busy schedule compiling this conference to make another thread about it.
>>62520562All the cool space stuff is highly classified and would never be shown in public.
5thgen+ jet bros, I dont feel so good...>Chinese researchers have found an innovative way to use SpaceX Starlink satellite constellations to detect aircraft, like stealth fighters, passively. According to Chinese media, this was achieved by effectively detecting the “shadow” of an object between the detector and the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the satellites.https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-starlink-detect-stealth-fighters
>>62520562NRO stuff is like the most black budget out there.
>>62520562There were a couple interesting things at SMD in August. https://smdsymposium.orgUSSF are still babbies with a very limited mission set (by american spookyspace standards). Satellite jannies, for now.
>>62520357>Boeing fucks up another tankerPlease, just preemptively give AirBus the contract
>>62520628Any radio amateur can do passive radar with satellite signals from their house. I could teach any nerd how to do it with a week of background reading and random shit lying around their garage / chicken coop / whatever. This has been possible since the time of transistor radios.There's a Fraunhofer research group with an ongoing project focused on starlink and low-cost, low-complexity receivers. Theirs currently does 0.5m.https://fhr.fraunhofer.de/de/bereiche/Multifunktionale-Hochfrequenz-und-Radarsysteme-MFR/Passives-Radar-via-Satellitensignal-JB2021.htmlI won't even bother looking into the chinese popsci tabloid shit, beyond>they used a DJI Phantom as a stand-in for targets iwth stealth characteristics
>>62520605Yes. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3899904/afrl-to-highlight-tech-to-achieve-decisive-advantage-in-an-age-of-growing-threa/Just the MUTANT excerpt of that has been widely syndicated on various .mil sites this past week. (Also, the vid's audio is busted.) https://www.dvidshub.net/video/936664/missile-utility-transformation-via-articulated-nose-technology-mutantFrankly, I'm just done with following AFRL media releases. They are too bafflingly spotty. The whole media office of AFRL seems to have the singular function of presenting the org in the worst possible light. I dunno when it started, but it's been like a couple years now, maybe?I did not subscribe to your youtube to get a notification burst every 4 months about AFRL Inspire™ Wymmyn in Uhhhhhhhh, and no (zero, zilch) notifications ever about actual AFRL projects.
>>62520765Interesting idea for snagging 5th gens, cat and mouse etc. Im sure a great deal of global satellites would be torn to pieces at the start of a high intensity global conflict anyways
>>62520817The PAO for AFRL is probably some additional duty position that sees a new person come in every few months or every year, if I had to guess. Similar levels of barely-giving-a-shit followed by oh-shit-put-something-out followed by barely-giving-a-shit seem to occur in other revolving door positions in the military, from my experience.
>>62520687>Irrational Boeing remark because the MSM trains you to do soThat's based off the existing MQ-25 drone doing the equivalent of buddy tanking guy.
>>62520594I'm really not sure what the hell's going on with the USAF leadership right now. "We don't have the money so we're delaying NGAD a couple years" would be coherent, but playing tempest in a teapot with the service's air dominance plans during an election year just seems insane, and all the different generals are swooping in over the carcass to try to get their version of the future funded. Maybe it's modernized F-22s, maybe it's a Spey-style light fighter, maybe it's some nebulous drone swarm, but no matter what, it's $$$ needed for perpetual requirements definition studies.
>>62520982Also there is no such thing as a useful public affairs officer. In order to be useful, they would have to care about the topic, and if they cared about the topic, they'd be working on the topic instead of being a public affairs officer.
>>62521085>Irrational Boeing remarkWhy carry water for those cucksuckers? Crashing planes for cheaping out on sensors on a 300 million dollar aircraft and outsourcing labor to the 3rd worlders for software. Just got 2 astronauts stuck even with a 6billion+ budget for the mission. Losing more contracts to airbus because airbus planes work. The icing is no one holds them responsible and the gov just funnels more money just a verbal slap on the wrist from congress.
>>62521445>MSM trains you to do soYou failed the gell-mann amnesia test
>>62521456How am I wrong? They pay the lowest wages to Americas they possible can despite being welfare queens and continue to be a world wide embarrassment with failures. World wide being sales has fallen off giving more to airbus due to the crazy issues.
>>62521445>737 MAXArguably big fuckups on the software side and sketchy sensor implementation but runaway trim is something that pilots train for which is how MCAS worked anyways (by manipulating trim). Take note all the crashes were dependent on pilots outside of US and Europe. Runaway trim has killed before in the past which is why pilots train to recognize and stop it but it doesn't excuse suboptimal decisions but you argue based on MSM trained points rather than actual aviation knowledge.>StarlinerThrusters was a subcontractor (Aerojet) issue and it didn't make the (rightfully so) high percentage of success rate that NASA wanted. Starliner is a hot mess in a bunch of ways but you have it completely wrong again as you've been trained on MSM points rather than being an aeropace follower.Which brings us to>MQ-25Which is an already prototype tested flying drone that otherwise has a quiet existence. There are plenty of things that Boeing ended up acquiring (ex: Vertol and the Chinooks) that quietly sat out of the notice of the public, incident, accident or crash because you were never told to look at it.>>62521508>Welfare queensAirbus and Boeing are both relative welfare queens due to airliner production capability being viewed in a strategic light by their respective regional economies, much like how the Sukhoi Superjet was a massive welfare queen for Russia so they could have a modern airliner and Comac's very uncompetitive (and very parts-cloned) C919 for China. Your arguments are yet again MSM points rather than aerospace watcher type points.>AirbusIf you actually >noooticed then Airbus hasn't been stabbing Boeing over what should be an easy victory lap because they don't want to throw stones in glass house: https://simpleflying.com/easa-airbus-a380-potential-gaps/I respect both Airbus and Boeing for producing airliners and equally I know enough of their highly sub-optimal decision making (Air France Flight 296Q and blaming the aircrew over FBW).
>>62521508>Pay scaleBased on what? Which division, civvie, military? Which part of those given Boeing is one of the (unfortunate) products of the post Cold War era acquisitions and mergers where they engulfed up many of the legacy defense contractors? Do you even know how many "Boeing products" exist from those acquisitions in the first place and how quietly out of the news they remain because the average journalist can't clown on them too hard (much like they tried for the F-35). Provide specific examples if you want to argue they pay the lowest wages rather than to play hysterics.>muh boeing workers>Not realizing that Spirit does significant fabrication on the civvie airliner side>Not realizing they also don't pay the same as Boeing-properFurthermore if you weren't arguing on retardedly MSM points you'd realize that Spirit AeroSystems which provides (primarily) fuselages to Boeing but also does work for Airbus. The door plug departure issue had both Boeing AND Airbus looking at Spirit due to them both being dependent on Spirit as a subcontractor. So much so that Airbus was willing to try to acquire Spirit but not before Boeing grabbed them. Spirit in itself has a long and lengthy history as Stearman before Boeing acquired them and much later spun them off.Aerospace is not the realm for MSMbrained robots like yourself to make hysterical screeching cries. I tire of having to "defend" Boeing when it is clear they have had significant management issues for a while and coasted on inertia for their civvie side programs but Boeing is not a monolith much like LockMart, UTC, Raytheon-UTC, General Dynamics, etc aren't either. They are products of acquisitions and mergers which means significant parts of their respective pre-merger corporate structure and human talent exist (much like McD poisoned Boeing through these means) which are separate from the headline entity's main pool.Here: Do you realize the AH-64 is a "Boeing" product too?
>>62521508>AH-64Made by Hughes which was acquired by McDonald Douglas in 1984 before they merged with Boeing in 1997. Gulf War AH-64s functioned fine even under McD and Iraq War AH-64s functioned fine under Boeing. You are hysterically echoing MSM points at aerospace and are incapable of making an actual argument.
>>62521641>737Cheaping out on attack of flight sensors for the 737 max than having the shit software made by Indians for 9$ an hour not that not only force you into a nose dive but stopping you from taking over control to correct the pitch. You cannot defend this.>starliner>uhh well you say its shit because MSM but its actually shit for other reasonswow >Airbus and Boeing are both relative welfare queensIf youre going to be welfare queen you better make it nice for your fellow country men. They use slimy tactics despite having huge budgets and immense past success.>Airbus hasn't been stabbing BoeingWhy would they need to boeing doesnt make small mistakes it makes unignorably mistakes that has killed a lot of people and brought national embarrassment to our nations manufacturing sector. They are eating its marketshare for breakfast >>62521676>>62521685I'm referring to the civilian divisionAgain why defend this? Are you both saying there is no problem? They clearly to undergo a peroneal restructure to unfuck this. This is not small fry stuff.
>>62521456>gell-mann amnesia testsnippy quippy bitchy shit>MSM en pee ceeeeee>subcontracting autoclaves all responsibilities away>#NotAllBoeings>the most dour, miserable, irrelevant bikeshedding wall of text i've seen here in a minute, outside the pole screeching in the germany thread>calling anon hysterical for a couple casual run-on sentences and hasty generalizationsand now he replies with a chart, of courseboth of you fuck offfind something else to dosomewhere else to shityou are bickering over 1/4 remembered headlines about civil aviation and civil spaceflight
and no, don't fucking greentext him smugly about the deliveries trendline in the chart ackshuyually reflecting periods of mandatory groundings and recertification. don't be clockwork automata insecure retard nerds. just cease
>>62521736>Can't make arguments, just screech MSM points>Can't understand the historic problem of runaway trim (which is heavily trained for)>"Muh welfare queen" argument but then tries to run away from it after being callled out on it>Doesn't address how Airbus got into trouble (and in recognizing that the spotlight is on Boeing this time is trying to keep shit under wraps and fix it)>Can't understand anything outside of news media cycles (doesn't follow aviation, aerospace)
>>62521775>Airbus dipHmmmmmmmmmm almost as if something happened in 2020 to fuck up travel for everyone...
>>62521736>I'm referring to the civilian divisionStarliner is a subset of BDS (Boeing Defence, Space and Security) which means it is a subset of the same division that makes F-15s and AH-64s. It doesn't mean the exact same parts of that division act on making Starliner. You really, really are far less intelligent than you think you are from reading MSM points.
>>62521811NTAYou are defending a company that has been stripmined by nigger griffters that say they were like "Dark Vader" during union talks which resulted in tens of thousands of highly skilled Americans having a lower wage than a McD cashier. You are embarrassing and you should stop.
>>62521848>Weird mix of /pol/ and selectively MSM talking pointsOh shit looks like we got /leftypol/ in here.
>>62521869>no argumentsweird how you accuse other people for this but you do it ... almost as if ...
>>62521775>periods of mandatory groundings and recertificationThis proves my point of the serious issues going on in boeing. Go back further and it shows its never been worse than it is now in the past 28 years of operation.>>62521811Take it point by point and explain how I'm wrong all you do is cry MSM but provide no substance. I say there is organizational issues inside Boeing leading to massive failures in recent years. They have created a terrible work culture leading to outsourcing of critical software to incompetent engineers in foreign countries, poor safety costing many lives before being fixed after the fact, workers going on strike, whistle blowers saying that these concerns when brought up to upper management leading to punitive actions against the worker rather than addressing problems.>Cheaping out on attack of flight sensors for the 737 max than having the shit software made by Indians for 9$ an hour not that not only force you into a nose dive but stopping you from taking over control to correct the pitch. You cannot defend this.>>62521828Okay I guess this has bleed over to their defense sector as well. They are as a whole doing even worse than I thought.
>>62521905Weird how you ignored that guy's previous posts and decided to go on the offensive later while being a little bitch.
>>62521984I'm not that guy.You cry and insult while implying you know more, which is false.
bump
>>62524597stonk
>>62520530tell me im not the only one who thought the cartoon pilot's nose & glasses were a spurdo face at first
>>62520628let's check out some of the sources in that article>https://www.eurasiantimes.com/china-can-detect-f-22-f-35-stealth-jets/>https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3278209/starlink-radiation-makes-stealth-target-glow-chinese-radar
Can't wait to see Chinese copies of all this stuff in the coming years
