July 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace
by Gareth Jennings
Airbus has demonstrated for the first time with real combat aircraft the Remote Carrier (RC) ‘loyal wingman' technology it is developing for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS)/Systeme de Combat Arien du Futur (SCAF) programme.
The event during the Luftwaffe's Timber Express exercise over northern Germany and the North Sea, announced by the company on 30 July, saw national Eurofighter and Panavia Tornado aircraft demonstrate interconnectivity with an RC network using the Link 16 datalink.
“During the exercise, the Remote Carriers, which currently use the Compact Airborne Networking Data Link (CANDL), were successfully connected to Link 16, the operational tactical datalink of the armed forces. The Remote Carriers were not only visible to all tactical combat aircraft of the [German] Air Force, but could also receive and execute orders without the need for technical modifications to the aircraft,” Airbus said.
As noted by the company, this event was followed up with a demonstration of RC interoperability with the NATO concept of Co-operative ESM Operations (CESMO); a reconnaissance network spanning several branches of the armed forces aimed at locating threat systems in the electromagnetic spectrum in real time.
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November 5, 2020 | International, Naval
by Gabriel Dominguez & Matteo Scarano The Republic of China Navy (RoCN) has announced that construction work on Taiwan's first locally designed and developed diesel-electric attack submarine (SSK) will begin before the end of November. The RoCN said in a 2 November statement that the island's new submarine-building facility, located in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, will become operational this month, with local naval shipbuilder CSBC Corporation expected to hold a ceremony to mark the beginning of production of the first of eight planned submarines. According to Taiwanese media, the first boat is slated for completion in the third quarter of 2024, with sea trials and commissioning scheduled for 2025. The boats will be built under the Indigenous Defence Submarine Programme, also known as the Hai Ch'ang programme. CSBC Corporation (formerly the China Shipbuilding Corporation) is Taiwan's largest shipbuilder and is partly owned by the state. It had broken ground on the new facility in May 2019 in a ceremony presided over by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who was quoted at the time as saying that the facility had become necessary because international submarine manufacturers “no longer dared sell” Taiwan submarines because of pressure from China, which regards Taiwan as a break-away province. As Janes reported, the corporation – and its development partner, the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST) – were awarded a contract in 2017 to design and construct the submarines. The project is supported by a submarine development centre that CSBC inaugurated in 2016. https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/taiwan-to-start-building-first-indigenous-submarine-before-end-of-november