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November 13, 2020 | International, Aerospace

Airbus hopes its $6.5 billion German Eurofighter sale will shine for Switzerland, Finland

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COLOGNE, Germany — Airbus is trying to make hay out of its $6.5 billion sale of 38 Eurofighter aircraft to Germany for other procurement competitions in Switzerland and Finland.

The European defense giant inked a deal with the German Luftwaffe, or Air Force, this week after the country's parliament, the Bundestag, approved the budget earlier this month. The Luftwaffe stands to get 30 single-seater and eight twin-seater planes, Airbus said in a statement.

Four of those aircraft will serve as test beds for future technology, as the company positions the Eurofighter as the bridge to the next-generation Future Combat Air System, a German-French-Spanish collaboration, according to the service.

“The renewed order from Germany secures production until 2030 and comes at a strategically important time for the program,” the company statement read. “In addition to an expected Eurofighter order from Spain to replace its legacy F-18s, procurement decisions in Switzerland and Finland are imminent in 2021.”

Switzerland wants to buy up to 40 aircraft for a maximum of $6.5 billion, and the Eurofighter is one of the aircraft in the running. Similarly, Finland is considering the plane as a replacement for its F-18 fleet.

“The variant offered in Switzerland corresponds to the configuration of the German Quadriga order,” Airbus officials wrote in the statement, referring to the name of a new, fourth tranche of aircraft.

The new batch, to be delivered by 2030, will replace the first tranche, bought between 2003 and 2008, which can only do air-to-air combat and boasts an obsolete radar, according to the German Defence Ministry.

Voters in Switzerland approved a new air defense package in September, including a ground-based weapon system and a fleet of combat aircraft. A second offer from the four competing companies is expected this month. Besides the Eurofighter, Dassault's Rafale, Boeing's F-18 Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin's F-35 also are under consideration.

The Finnish government over the summer upped the budget for its “HX” fighter program to $5.8 billion, eyeing a procurement decision in 2021.

“The new Tranche 4 Eurofighter is currently the most modern European-built combat aircraft with a service life well beyond 2060,” Airbus Defence and Space CEO Dirk Hoke said in a statement following the contract signature with the German government. “Its technical capabilities will allow full integration into the European Future Combat Air System, FCAS.”

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/11/12/airbus-hopes-its-65-billion-german-eurofighter-sale-will-shine-for-switzerland-finland

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  • US Army picks 5 teams to design new attack recon helicopter

    April 26, 2019 | International, Aerospace

    US Army picks 5 teams to design new attack recon helicopter

    By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — AVX Aircraft Co. partnered with L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, Bell Helicopter, Boeing, Karem Aircraft and Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky have won awards to design a new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) for the U.S. Army over the next year, the service announced April 23. Only two teams will move forward, at the end of the design phase, to build flyable prototypes of the future helicopter in a head-to-head competition. The Army laid out a handful of mandatory requirements that the vendors had to meet and also a list of desired requirements for initial designs, Col. Craig Alia, the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team chief of staff, told a select group of reporters just ahead of the contract awards. The service also looked at the vendors' execution plans and evaluated timing as well as funding profile requirements. “The ones that were selected were clearly meeting the mandatory requirements and were in the acceptable risk level of the execution plan and the desired requirements," Dan Bailey, who is the FARA competitive prototype program manager, added. The prototype program falls under the purview of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center's Aviation Development Directorate. AVX and L3 unveiled its design for the FARA competition at the Army Aviation Association of America's annual summit in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this month. The design uses AVX's compound coaxial and ducted fans technology. The companies said its single-engine design meets 100 percent of the Army's mandatory requirements and 70 percent of its desired attributes. 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Sikorsky's offering will be based off of its X2 coaxial technology seen in its S-97 Raider and the Sikorsky-Boeing developed SB-1 Defiant, which are now both flying. “This is the culmination of years of investment in the X2 Technology Demonstrator and the S-97 RAIDER aircraft that have proven the advanced technology and shown its ability to change the future battlefield,” Tim Malia, Sikorsky's director of Future Vertical Lift Light, told Defense News in an emailed statement shortly after the announcement. “We continue to fly the S-97 RAIDER to inform the design for FARA, which provides significant risk reduction to the program schedule and technical objectives. We are eager to continue to support the US Army, and we are excited that the Sikorsky FARA X2 will be ready for this critical mission," he said. A total of eight teams submitted data and potential designs for FARA, but upon evaluation, three of those did not meet mandatory requirements, according to Bailey. 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Through the AFC and the use of contracting mechanisms like OTAs, the Army has found a way to compress parts of the acquisition process that previously took three to five years into periods of time often amounting to less than a year. “What is exciting about the new process the Army has put in place,” Bailey said, “in basically a year's period of time, we've gone through concept, through an approved set of requirements, to developing an innovative approach to contracting, to building industry partnerships to have industry propose to us a plan and a solution.” And the Army rigorously evaluated those FARA proposals, Bailey said, all within that year. The teams have until January or February next year to provide design plans and an approach to executing the build of the prototypes followed by potential larger-scale manufacturing, Bailey said. The second phase of the program will be to build prototypes, and “only two will make it into phase 2 and they all know that now,” Bailey added. 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  • General Atomics Starts SeaGuardian RPAS Validation Flights In Japan

    October 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, C4ISR

    General Atomics Starts SeaGuardian RPAS Validation Flights In Japan

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  • Terma Secures Contract to Equip Belgian and Netherlands Navy Frigates with Scanter 6002 Naval Surveillance Radars

    June 3, 2024 | International, Naval

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