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April 6, 2021 | International, Aerospace

Airbus solely qualifies for Canada's tanker procurement

Only Airbus and its A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) aircraft qualified to bid for Canada's Strategic Tanker Transport Capability (STTC) Project, Canada announced on 1 April. Canada seeks to replace its Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF)...

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/airbus-solely-qualifies-for-canadas-tanker-procurement

On the same subject

  • La DGA lance CI-AILE, un cluster d’innovation technique de défense dans le domaine de l’aéromobilité

    January 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    La DGA lance CI-AILE, un cluster d’innovation technique de défense dans le domaine de l’aéromobilité

    La Direction générale de l'armement a inauguré le 19 décembre 2019 sur son centre d'expertise et d'essais Techniques aéronautiques à Balma (proche de Toulouse) un cluster d'innovation technique de défense dans le domaine de l'aéromobilité. Baptisé CI-AILE, ce cluster a été créé en associant quatre partenaires régionaux fondateurs : la DGA, l'armée de Terre, l'institut supérieur de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (ISAE-SUPAERO) et la communauté défense du pôle Aerospace Valley dans les régions Occitanie et Nouvelle Aquitaine. Le cluster CI-AILE a pour objectif de détecter, orienter et expérimenter les innovations portées par les acteurs régionaux afin de faire émerger de nouvelles solutions technologiques pour la défense dans le domaine de l'aéromobilité en lien avec l'Agence de l'innovation de défense (AID). Basé en région Occitanie, il pourra bénéficier d'un écosystème riche dans le domaine aéronautique et en particulier dans celui de l'aéromobilité, tout en restant ouvert à des partenariats avec des acteurs implantés dans d'autres régions de France. Le comité stratégique de CI-AILE est co-présidé par le directeur du centre d'expertise et d'essais DGA Techniques aéronautiques, le sous-chef d'état-major plans et programmes de l'armée de Terre, le directeur général de l'institut supérieur de l'aéronautique et de l'espace . Son comité de pilotage comprend un représentant de chaque membre fondateur. Ce nouveau cluster s'inscrit dans l'effort global du ministère des Armées en faveur du soutien à l'innovation, coordonné par l'Agence de l'innovation de défense en lien étroit avec la DGA. CI-AILE est un partenariat dont le fonctionnement repose sur un comité stratégique qui donne les orientations du cluster et un comité de pilotage qui anime et conduit les ateliers technico-opérationnels. Le comité de pilotage de ce cluster est constitué de personnels de DGA Techniques aéronautiques, de la 11e brigade parachutiste basée à Toulouse, du commandement des forces spéciales terre basé à Pau, de l'ISAE-SUPAERO et d'Aerospace Valley. Il se réunira pour la première fois en janvier 2020. Les périmètres attendus de l'innovation dans le domaine de l'aéromobilité sont la captation et l'évaluation de technologies innovantes dans les domaines : - du parachutage de combattants de l'armée de Terre et d'équipements, de mise à terre à partir d'aéronefs (aérolargage, aérocordage...) - de l'embarquement sur aéronefs (voilure fixe et tournante) de combattants de l'armée de Terre et d'équipements (aérotransport, aérocordage...) - de l'équipement du combattant débarqué et embarqué, toutes fonctions opérationnelles confondues, et de son adaptation aux contraintes du parachutiste - des méthodes et des moyens d'essais et de la R&T dans le domaine de l'aéromobilité. Cinq clusters d'innovation techniques ont déjà été créés en 2019 par la DGA autour de ses centres d'expertise et d'essais, CI-AILE étant le sixième : ALIENOR à Saint-Médard-en-Jalles dans le domaine aérospatial GIMNOTE à Toulon et ORION à Brest pour le domaine des techniques navales GINCO à Vert-le-Petit (Essonne) dans le domaine de la maitrise des techniques nucléaire, radiologique, biologique et chimique LAHITOLLE à Bourges dans le domaine des techniques terrestres. https://www.defense.gouv.fr/dga/actualite/la-dga-lance-ci-aile-un-cluster-d-innovation-technique-de-defense-dans-le-domaine-de-l-aeromobilite

  • Babcock, Rolls-Royce to sell stakes in AirTanker asset joint venture

    September 15, 2021 | International, Aerospace

    Babcock, Rolls-Royce to sell stakes in AirTanker asset joint venture

    A UK Royal Air Force A330 tanker owned by AirTanker Holdings Ltd prepares to refuel a Tornado strike aircraft. UK engineering company Babcock International and British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce have agreed to divest their minority stak...

  • Opinion: Why The Future Will Not Be Virtual

    February 8, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    Opinion: Why The Future Will Not Be Virtual

    Steven Grundman The COVID-19 pandemic has accustomed us to living in the virtual world and hearing speculation about the ways in which our actual lives may never resume as before. Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently said he believes “over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away.” Explaining why the pandemic-induced surge in virtual house calls is likely to endure, Harvard's Dr. Thomas Delbanco concedes: “There are times when doctors, nurses or therapists really need to see you—no question about it. But there are also times when they really don't.” It was against the backdrop of such head-turning New Year's predictions that I spent the holidays reading about the Cold War and forming a nostalgic rebuttal to those prophesies of Zoom. At the start of my professional life, I led a surveillance platoon of the U.S. 1st Armored Division (1st AD), which was deployed to defend the “Frontier of Freedom” in the towns surrounding Nuremberg, West Germany. So it was that after cracking open Fulda Gap: Battlefield of the Cold War Alliances, I quickly thumbed forward to Chapter 7, “A Personal Perspective from Platoon Leader to Army Group” by Gen. (ret.) Crosbie Saint, who had commanded the 1st AD during my service in it. Saint's reflections transported me back to 1984 and the pastoral beauty of the Bavarian Oberpfalz, where we were actively preparing to fight a third world war. Prominent among the preparations Saint recounts was the terrain walk, a compulsory practice of every officer leading a maneuver unit regularly to traverse the ground where his troops would deploy, battle book in hand, mastering the contours of the landscape and envisioning his squads' movements in the General Defense Plan. Saint writes ardently about how “repetitive terrain walks at multiple command levels to analyze and become expert in exploiting the terrain for tactical purposes” gave the U.S. a decisive advantage over the vast armies of the Warsaw Pact. The still-clear memory of then-Lt. Grundman's own terrain walks along the monikered kill zones in my battle book—The Kemnath Bowl, Erbendorf Fire Trap, et al.—prompted me to wonder if the marvels of a virtual reality simulation would leave as indelible a mark. I doubt it. While the adoption of videoconferencing for commodity conversation is no doubt here to stay, the premium work of enterprise leadership must remain incarnate. Just as the experience of looking out from a ridgeline engages all the senses, strategic vision flows from an intuitive integration of time and space that no telemediation can fully activate. Beyond the battlefield lay other terrain walks affirming my conviction. In April 1993, just three weeks on the job as chief executive of an IBM teetering on insolvency, Lou Gerstner launched Operation Bear Hug, which directed each of the company's 250 most senior executives to visit at least five key customers over the following three months to learn why IBM had lost their trust. Years later, Gerstner wrote that Bear Hug made manifest what came to be the motive force of IBM's acclaimed transformation: “[W]e were going to build a company from the outside in and . . . the customer was going to drive everything we did in the company.” Gerstner invested this practice of deep listening to customers with the same strategic importance Saint attributed to a lieutenant's intimacy with the sight lines of his firing positions. Operation Bear Hug was a terrain walk. One of the trade secrets of my career as a business consultant to the aerospace industry is never to pass up an invitation to take a plant tour. No matter how near it is to your next flight's departure, when asked “Wanna see the shop?” the right answer is always “Of course.” When, a decade ago, I toured SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, headquarters and observed Elon Musk sitting at his desk among the busy cubicles of 30-something engineers gutting out their work in T-shirts, I instantly understood how the company's garage-shop culture could revolutionize the staid business of space launch. Years earlier, the clinical attention to workers' safety I saw at the bustling CFM56 jet engine plant in Villaroche, France, told me more about the success of the GE-Safran joint venture than even its impressive financials. So, too, did I need actually to feel the cavernous quietude in an antique defense factory to appreciate the true meaning of the sunk-cost fallacy. The aerospace plant tour is often a terrain walk. To all you leaders who, like me, find the progressively virtual world unsettling (and with apologies to a certain light lager's ad campaign), I say, “Find your terrain walk.” Once we again are free to move about, go physically to the crucible of what creates value for your enterprise and open your senses. Only from that vantage will you see truly into its future. The views expressed are not necessarily those of Aviation Week. https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/manufacturing-supply-chain/opinion-why-future-will-not-be-virtual

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