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January 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace

Airbus, Leonardo : l'Espagne s'offre 23 NH90 supplémentaires

Par Michel Cabirol

L'Espagne a signé un contrat avec le consortium NHIndustries, composé d'Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo et le néerlandais Fokker portant sur l'acquisition de 23 NH90, dont sept dans une version navale tactique.

Airbus Helicopters et Leonardo ont terminé l'année sur une très belle commande. Selon nos informations, l'Espagne a signé un contrat avec le consortium NHIndustries (NHI), composé d'Airbus Helicopters (62,5%), Leonardo (32%) et le néerlandais Fokker (5,5%) portant sur l'acquisition de 23 NH90, dont sept dans une version navale tactique. Le gouvernement espagnol avait décidé en septembre, lors d'un conseil des ministres, de consacrer une enveloppe budgétaire de 1,5 milliard d'euros à l'achat de 23 nouveaux NH90 (dix pour l'armée de Terre, six pour l'armée de l'Air et sept pour la Marine). Le montant du contrat s'élève à 1,38 milliard d'euros (hors TVA).

2018 a vraiment marqué le retour du NH90 sur le plan commercial avec deux belles commandes : Qatar (28 NH90) et Espagne. Il y avait des années que le NH90 n'avait pas été exporté. La Nouvelle-Zélande en 2007 et la Belgique en 2008 avaient été les derniers pays à s'offrir des appareils de ce type. Fin 2015, le ministère de la Défense français avait commandé six hélicoptères NH90 dans sa version de transport tactique (TTH) destinés à l'aviation légère de l'armée de terre. Au total, 543 NH90 ont été commandés par les clients dans le monde entier.

Une flotte renouvelée à partir de 2006

Le programme de renouvellement de la flotte d'hélicoptères a débuté en 2006 avec l'intention d'acquérir 45 hélicoptères NH90. Toutefois, en raison de restrictions budgétaires de l'époque, l'Espagne n'avait acheté que 22 appareils dans la version terrestre (TTH). Les nouveaux appareils de l'armée de Terre et de l'Air vont remplacer des Super Puma (AS332) tandis que ceux de la marine vont succéder aux très vieux Sikorsky S-60 pour des missions de transport tactique. En septembre, l'Espagne avait également décidé de moderniser ses hélicoptères lourds américains CH-47D Chinook pour un montant de 819 millions d'euros (livraison entre 2021 et 2025).

https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/airbus-leonardo-l-espagne-s-offre-23-nh90-supplementaires-802328.html

On the same subject

  • Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - November 27, 2019

    November 28, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - November 27, 2019

    NAVY United Technologies Corp., Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, East Hartford, Connecticut, is awarded a $521,996,409 undefinitized contract modification (P00070) to a previously awarded cost-plus-incentive-fee, cost-plus-fixed-fee and fixed-price-incentive-firm-target contract (N00019-17-C-0010). This modification provides performance based logistics sustainment in support of the F-35 Lightning II F135 propulsion system for the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, non-Department of Defense (DoD) participants and foreign military sales (FMS) customers. Work will be performed in East Hartford, Connecticut (73%); Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (18%); Camari, Italy (3%); Eglin Air Force Base, Florida (2%); Edwards Air Force Base, California (1%); Hill Air Force Base, Utah (1%); Luke Air Force Base, Arizona (1%); and Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina (1%), and is expected to be completed in November 2020. Fiscal 2020 operation and maintenance (Air Force) funds for $72,261,440 will be obligated at time of award, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This modification combines purchases for the Air Force ($179,272,654; 34%); Marine Corps ($134,605,633; 26%); Navy ($29,758,385; 6%); non-DoD participants ($124,483,008; 24%), and FMS customers ($53,876,729; 10%) under the FMS Program. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Kings Bay Support Services LLC, Alexandria, Virginia, is awarded a $20,049,858 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity modification for the exercise of the option to extend services for base operating support services at Naval Submarine Base, Kings Bay, Georgia. The work to be performed provides for all labor, facilities management, supervision, tools, materials, equipment, incidental engineering, environmental services and transportation to effectively execute base operating support services. After award of this option, the total cumulative contract value will be $342,241,061. Work will be performed in Kings Bay, Georgia. This option period is from December 2019 to May 2020. No funds will be obligated at time of award. Fiscal 2020 operation and maintenance (Navy) contract funds for $16,928,444 for recurring work will be obligated on individual task orders issued during the option period. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southeast, Jacksonville, Florida, is the contracting activity (N69450-11-D-7578). ARMY Seaside Engineering & Surveying LLC,* Baker, Florida (W9126G-20-D-6003); and Lowe Engineers LLC,* Robert, Louisiana (W9126G-20-D-6004) will compete for each order of the $240,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for professional land survey architect-engineer in support of the Southwestern Division Department of Homeland Security Border Infrastructure Program. Bids were solicited via the internet with 12 received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Nov. 26, 2024. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock, Arkansas, is the contracting activity. Lockheed Martin Corp., Orlando, Florida, was awarded a $134,707,194 modification (P00094) to contract W31P4Q-15-C-0102 for procurement of the Joint-Air-to-Ground Missiles. Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida, with an estimated completion date of Feb. 28, 2023. Fiscal 2019 procurement of ammunition, Army funds in the amount of $134,707,194 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity. Ames Construction Inc., Burnsville, Minnesota, was awarded a $58,784,850 firm-fixed-price contract for plant, labor, materials to construct a gated water control structure, dam walls, a vehicle service bridge, stilling basin, pre-formed scour hole, approach apron, a slope protection slab and approach walls. Bids were solicited via the internet with two received. Work will be performed in Fargo, North Dakota, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 16, 2024. Fiscal 2019 civil construction funds in the amount of $58,784,850 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the contracting activity (W912ES-20-C-0001). Technica LLC,* Charleston, South Carolina, was awarded a $17,880,934 modification (0004BK) to contract W52P1J-12-G-0018 for logistics support services, maintenance, transportation, and supply support. Work will be performed in El Paso, Texas, with an estimated completion date of June 2, 2020. Fiscal 2020 overseas contingency operations transfer and operation and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $10,477,200 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity. Lockheed Martin Corp., Orlando, Florida, was awarded a $7,563,160 modification (P00002) to contract W52P1J-19-F-0533 for Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight Pilot Night Vision Sensor Systems, subcomponent production and technical services for the Apache Attack Helicopter. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 1, 2023. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING SERVICE KPMG LLP, McLean, Virginia, is being awarded a labor-hour contract option with a maximum value of $41,643,963 for audit services of the Army general fund and working capital fund financial statements. Work will be performed in McLean, Virginia, with an expected completion date of Nov. 30, 2020. This contract is the result of a competitive acquisition for which one quote was received. The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $131,613,957 from $89,969,994. Fiscal 2020 Army operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $41,643,963 are being obligated at the time of the award. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Contract Services Directorate, Columbus, Ohio, is the contracting activity (HQ0423-17-F-0010). DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Apteryx Inc. Akron, Ohio, has been awarded a maximum $20,900,000 fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for hospital equipment and accessories for the Defense Logistics Agency electronic catalog. This was a competitive acquisition with 101 responses received. This is a five-year contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Ohio, with a Nov. 26, 2024, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2025 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE2DH-20-D-0025). R.A. Miller Industries Inc.,** Grand Haven, Michigan, has been awarded a maximum $8,737,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract for antennas and an antenna element. This was a competitive acquisition with one offer received. This is a three-year base contract with two one-year option periods. Location of performance is Michigan, with a Nov. 26, 2022, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2023 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Columbus, Ohio (SPE7MX20D0008). LVI, Pendergrass, Georgia, has been awarded an $8,696,995 modification (P00036) exercising the fourth one-year option of a three-year base contract (SPM1C1-14-C-0002) with four, one-year option periods for warehousing, storage, logistics and distribution functions. This is a fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment contract. Location of performance is Georgia, with a Dec. 1, 2020, performance completion date. Using customers are Army and Defense Logistics Agency. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. *Small Business **Woman-Owned Small Business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2028834/source/GovDelivery/

  • Boom Supersonic wins USAF contract to accelerate Overture commercial airliner development - Skies Mag

    January 14, 2022 | International, Aerospace

    Boom Supersonic wins USAF contract to accelerate Overture commercial airliner development - Skies Mag

    The contract, valued at up to $60 million, will help fast-track critical design and development initiatives on Boom Supersonic's Overture aircraft.

  • With challenges aplenty, Europe’s navies are coming to grips with high-end warfare

    June 23, 2020 | International, Naval

    With challenges aplenty, Europe’s navies are coming to grips with high-end warfare

    By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The former head of the U.S. Navy said in June testimony that as the service grapples with establishing the right type of force, it must account for the degraded capabilities of its allies, hinting at the once substantial Cold War-era European navies. “In my mind [there's] been an over-fixation on the total number of ships as opposed to the nuance numbers of specific types of ships that support viable operational plans,” retired Adm. Gary Roughead, former chief of naval operations, said before the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. “There's also the need to understand just how small our allied navies have become, and in the past we have always looked to our allies to support us, but those navies are extraordinarily small.” NATO has for years counted on the U.S. Navy as the centerpiece of its maritime forces, with the individual European navies serving as augmenting and supporting forces. And in the post-Cold War era, Europe's navies have focused on low-end missions like counterterrorism and counter-piracy. And that has led to a precipitous decline in naval power available to surge in the event of a high-end conflict. In a 2017 study, the Center for a New American Security found that Europe's combat power at sea was about half of what it was during the height of the Cold War. “Atlantic-facing members of NATO now possess far fewer frigates — the premier class of surface vessels designated to conduct [anti-submarine warfare] ASW operations — than they did 20 years ago,” the study found. Where they collectively had about 100 frigates in 1995, that number hovers at 51 today. “Similarly, these nations had, in 1995, 145 attack submarines — those dedicated to anti-shipping and anti-submarine warfare missions — but that number has plummeted to a present low of 84,” the study found. But with the U.S. increasingly focused on Asia and amid tension within the alliance, Europe is coming to grips with the need to grow its forces and regain high-end capabilities it once had — a realization that also grew out of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. “Throughout the 1990s, the focus was low-end missions: counter-piracy, counterterrorism, migration, search and rescue,” said Sebastian Bruns, head of the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security in Kiel, Germany. “And they did so with the legacy platforms of the 1980s and 1990s. You know, sending an ASW frigate to fight piracy, well that's not a lot of bang for your buck. “But 2014, that's really the turnaround. I can't think of any European nation that's not on board with modernizing and growing their navies. But the long-lead times and having to replace the legacy units, it just takes a damned long time to turn the ship around.” But an unfortunate side effect of the long-lead times involved in force design — sometimes a decade or more — is that pre-2014 ship designs that are coming into service now are ill-suited for the high-end fight, Bruns said. The prime example of this mission mismatch is Germany's 7,200-ton Baden-Württemberg-class frigate. It began entering service in 2019, but is designed for low-end operations. “They were designed in the 2000s — they even call it a ‘stabilization frigate' — and they're coming online at a time where the German Navy needs them for presence, but they don't have the kind of teeth you'd expect for a 7,000-ton frigate,” Bruns said. “They're really capable for presence and maritime security operations, but of course that's not so much the world we live in anymore.” But new, more advanced frigates are starting to filter into the market. For example, in 2017, France's Naval Group launched a five-hull intermediate air defense frigate program designed to intercept air threats with the Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles. And in January, the German Navy announced it had hired Dutch shipbuilder Damen to build at least four new MKS 180 frigates — a 9,000-ton ship designed to operate in waters with ice formations in a nod to the renewed competition in the Arctic. Payloads over platforms It's not just new frigate designs that show Europe gradually upping its game. Similar to the track the U.S. Navy has taken in fielding the Naval Strike Missile on its littoral combat ships and the Marine Corps' approach to fielding it as a shore battery, European navies have begun to upgrade their ships' systems in preparation for a high-end fight, said Jeremy Stöhs, a naval analyst who authored the book “Decline of European Naval Forces.” “What we see now is since 2014 the focus is much more on sea control, lines of communication, territorial defense,” Stöhs said. “But because of the long-lead times, it is not just the ships they're building; it's the sensor suites, midlife upgrades, focusing again on sea-denial capabilities.” Countries like the Black Sea and Scandinavian states are investing in anti-ship missiles and shore-based missile systems, he added, whereas a lot of those weapons were disbanded in the 1990s. In 2016, for example, Sweden announced it was fielding coastal batteries with Saab's RBS-15 anti-ship missile to defend its Baltic coast for the first time since 2000. The Franco-British Sea Venom anti-ship missile is being designed to launch from a helicopter such as the U.K.'s Wildcat. It recently passed its first firing trial. The missile is currently designed for small, fast-moving vessels up to Corvette-sized warships. In the Netherlands, the government announced in 2018 that their De Zeven Provinciën-class frigates would be ditching the venerable Harpoon missile for a new, more advanced surface-to-surface missile by 2024. Evolving threat, evolving politics Europe's evolution toward more high-end naval battles in many ways mirrors the United States' own pivot away from wars in the Middle East and Asia. But it's also informed by changing politics. “I'm seeing European navies pivot back to the basics: How do we handle the GIUK [Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom] gap? How do we patrol the North Atlantic? Anti-submarine warfare, convoy escort, anti-surface warfare: They are starting to come back to that,” said Jerry Hendrix, an analyst with Telemus Group and a retired Navy captain. “And as you are starting to see the new heavy German designs, they're coming back to focusing on a maritime challenger.” But with this evolution has come a realization of Europe's shortcomings and just how dependent those navies have been on the U.S. for some core capabilities. “They're starting to think about a naval force without the US present,” Hendrix said. “[German Chancellor] Angela Merkel has talked about the need for Europe to start thinking about going its own way. And by the way, I don't think that's a bad thing. I do see the interests on the continent and the U.S. going in different directions.” But a European naval construct without the U.S. would prove challenging, as many countries based their investments on the idea of a shared responsibility, with the U.S. as the main high-end capability provider, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at The Hudson Institute. “NATO, in theory, still has the NATO strategic concept where different countries were going to specialize in different capabilities, which led to the Finns and Swedes really embracing amphibious capabilities for small-scale, special operations forces insertion. The Brits and Italians focused on ASW. But without the U.S. acting as the strategic centerpiece, the strategic concept starts to fall apart. “The concept assumes you have someone that has a multimission capability that you can augment, as opposed to: ‘We're going to pull all this together without the U.S. from a bunch of disparate countries with disparate capabilities.' ” That situation means any NATO action with just European nations would need a lot of participation, he said. “Before, if you had just the U.S. and three or four nations participating, you'd have a pretty robust, multimission capability” Clark said. “But without the U.S., you'd need half the alliance to contribute so as to not miss out on key mission areas.” And without the robust U.S. logistics system, countries would have to replace not just the high-end weapons and sensors, but much of the support infrastructure as well. That could mean even more downward pressure on how much capability Europe can bring to bear. “If you have to expend weapons or do extensive resupply or refueling, the whole model starts to break down,” Clark added. “The way the European navies are structured, they don't have this end-to-end capability to deliver on all the support missions as well. “So if they have to invest in a significant combat logistics force, with budgets for defense being limited, that's going to mean their navies will potentially become even smaller.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/transatlantic-partnerships/2020/06/22/with-challenges-aplenty-europes-navies-are-coming-to-grips-with-high-end-warfare/

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