Via DefPro.com...
Under the terms of the contract, Northrop Grumman will deliver 65 Viper Strike munitions beginning this year to the Joint Attack Munition Systems Project Office within the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space at Redstone Arsenal for eventual integration onto the KC-130J platform.More info on Viper Strike and Harvest Hawk ....
http://www.es.northropgrumman.com/solutions/viperstrike/index.html
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Harvest-Hawk-Aims-to-Arm-USMCs-KC-130J-Aerial-Tankers-05409/
Just on a side note...check out our bureaucracy at work. They're going to deliver them to the Joint Attack Munitions Systems Project Office within the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space and that's before NavAir gets ahold of it which is before Headquarters Marine Corps does its thing...all of which is before the guys who will actually use the damn thing get a chance to even see what it looks like! Amazing!
I like this and Griffin better than the Hellfire. You can retain your tanking ability, and it's not so obvious which plane in the squadron is actually armed. Plus the 60'-70' of wiring out to the wing station will be fun to maintain. Sure there's wiring going out there already, but with three kits per squadron, you know only two will be working at one time. It could be years for any particular airframe to have this installed.
ReplyDeleteThe entire procurement bureaucracy/process is AFU. There are some sound underlying processes, but they are set up to do things like JSF, therefore when you do something smaller, it costs. There seems to be little guidance on how to properly scale the process so individual smaller programs all do something a little different. Plus there are plenty of unionized government workers to whom the process IS the product. So they protect the process, no matter how cumbersome, at all costs. Add to that people in decision making positions that don't know their own rules (the contractors pay people lots of money to know the rules) and you get a damn mess.
/rant off/