Where is the "Arsenal Plane"? The Defense Department won't say. But the secretive Strategic Capabilities Office has kicked off a program called "Alternative Strike" that sounds strikingly similar, would have a "launch platform" ready for testing as soon as 2018, and is seeking a $200 million down payment in the fiscal year 2017 budget request.
The budget proposal seeks $198 million in advanced component development and prototypes funding for an "Alternative Strike" effort and plans to commence long-lead acquisition next year and conduct demonstrations between 2018 and 2020.
The project description make no explicit reference to an "Arsenal Plane." However, the "Alternative Strike" project is the only item in the Strategic Capabilities Office's budget request that comes close to matching Defense Secretary Ash Carter's description of the Arsenal Plane. On Feb. 2, Carter said the project "takes one of our oldest aircraft platform and turns it into a flying launchpad for all sorts of different conventional payloads."
During a speech in which Carter revealed unprecedented detail about the work of the Strategic Capabilities Office, he said "the arsenal plane will function as a very large airborne magazine, networked to fifth generation aircraft that act as forward sensor and targeting nodes, essentially combining different systems already in our inventory to create whole new capabilities."
Is "Alternative Strike" in fact the Arsenal Plane? The Pentagon won't clarify the issue.
"Due to security considerations we will not be disclosing any additional information at this time regarding Alternative Strike," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway said in an email statement.
The SCO, a shop established in 2012 to fast-track development of promising, cutting-edge concepts and technologies to give U.S. forces new advantages against great powers, describes "Alternative Strike" as a demonstration that "integrates existing weapons, launch platforms, and command and control structures in novel ways to quickly provide the Combatant Commanders with critical multimission capabilities."
"This project will demonstrate the feasibility and utility of launching existing/modified weapons from existing launch platforms," according to the budget request. "This project will retire risks associated with cross platform integration to enable transition of new weapon/system combinations to service partners. System design and long-lead acquisition will be initiated in FY 2017, leading to subsequent demonstrations in FY 2018 through FY 2020."
In preparation, the FY-17 budget reveals for the first time that the SCO is spending $6 million in FY-16 to "perform preliminary weapon/launch platform integration studies." These studies include the preliminary design of required weapons/platform modifications as well as developing interfaces to permit such integration. The studies will develop and assess concepts of operation as well as finalize plans for a four-year development and demonstration beginning in FY-17.
In FY-17, the "Alternative Strike" program would complete a preliminary design review for platform integration and "down select from multiple prototype designs."
The project would also use aerodynamic modeling and simulation of weapon release; conduct detailed design of necessary launch platform modifications; and conduct detailed design of weapon modifications for new missions, according to the budget request.
In addition, the project would set a plan to test the prototype aircraft between 2018 and 2020 as well as complete a critical design review of the entire "weapon/platform/communication" design, according to the budget.