August 26, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Defense supply chains should support allies, but favor domestic producers
The concept is simple: buy American when you can, buy from trusted allies when you must.
July 16, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security
Airbus US pivots business strategy away from selling big platforms to the Pentagon
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — After decades of trying to break into the U.S. military aircraft market, Airbus is shifting course with a new strategy that prioritizes selling off-the-shelf sensors, data, space and intelligence capabilities that have been customized for U.S. government buyers.
During a Wednesday discussion with reporters about the new direction for the business, Chris Emerson, the new chief executive of the Airbus U.S. Space and Defense division and formerly the president of Airbus Helicopters, said he wanted to move the company's focus in the United States away from the major fixed-wing platforms that are the company's bread and butter in Europe.
Instead, he hopes to expand the company's presence in the growing space and intelligence markets, particularly with low-cost satellites like those made by its joint venture One Web, geospatial intelligence and imaging, and space-based sensors.
“We know the Air Force needs an A400M, but I can spend 10 years trying to convince the Air Force and all the politicians that they should buy an A400M. And ultimately they will buy C-130s,” Emerson said.
“So let me focus this energy, this great leadership team, on achieving something that is tangible today that the customer really needs. Yes, it's not traditional for Airbus, but it will bring the value and we'll have a better foundation if one day my successor says, ‘You know, I want to be a big platform competitor.' At least we'd have built up trust and proven that we could really meet the requirements that are demanded of it.”
Although Airbus is a juggernaut in the international military and commercial aerospace market, it has always struggled to find its place among the U.S. defense prime contractors as major aircraft manufacturers. It famously lost the KC-X contract to Boeing in 2011 after a bloody and prolonged battle. Since then, the company's biggest procurement victory has been continued sales of its UH-72A Lakota helicopter to the Army.
“I remember I spent eight years thinking we could bring real value on air-to-air refueling for the Air Force. But I spent eight years, and I'm frustrated because I look at it and we didn't succeed,” Emerson said. “I've asked the team, ‘Let's find a roadmap where we can actually make a mark with the customers.' And that means, I'm not going to go look at competing with Boeing and the Lockheeds and Northrop, but I'm going to look at other areas.”
The U.S. customer is increasingly making investments into technologies that can augment or accelerate decision-making, he said.
“That's where we start to look everything beyond an air breathing platform. We started to look at the data, the intelligence, that they need,” he said. “It could be intelligence that is geospatial-related, either Earth observation, or electro-optical, or synthetic aperture radar, or a blend that we're pulling in multi-source information.”
Airbus already develops those types of capabilities in its commercial air and space businesses, and could quickly adapt them to U.S. demands, he said.
When there are opportunities to offer Airbus aircraft to the U.S. military, the strategy will be to partner with American primes, Emerson said. For instance, last year Airbus and Lockheed signed a memorandum of understanding to market aerial refueling services to the U.S. Air Force using the Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport.
Asked on Wednesday whether the two companies planned to compete for tanker leasing opportunities currently being considered by the Air Force, Emerson said Lockheed takes the lead on interactions with the U.S. military on aerial refueling.
He added that UH-72s will continue to be manufactured alongside Airbus's commercial H125 helicopter in Columbus, Miss., but modifications, support and contracting will be performed by the Airbus U.S. Space and Defense.
In addition to naming Emerson as head of the company's U.S. defense and space business, Airbus also appointed a five-person board of directors — which includes former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director Letitia Long and William Shelton, a retired Air Force four-star and former head of Air Force Space Command — aimed at deepening ties with the U.S. military, space and intelligence agencies. It also named a seven-person team of advisers made up of former national security officials.
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March 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Poll: Germans, Americans far apart on use of military, defense spending
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — Germans and Americans remain far apart on defense issues, ranging from when to use the military, how much to spend on defense and which country poses a bigger challenge — Russia or China — according to a new study unveiled Monday. “Three years into a turbulent period of American-German relations, with Donald Trump at the helm of American foreign policy and Angela Merkel leading Germany, there continues to be a wide divergence in views of bilateral relations and security policy between the publics of both countries,” said a Pew Research Center study published in cooperation with Koerber Stiftung, a German think tank. The two organizations each polled about 1,000 adults in September 2019 in the United States and Germany. Also included in the data are results from Pew's “global attitudes” survey conducted in both countries during the spring and summer of 2019. The results are unlikely to surprise anyone following trans-Atlantic relations, but they put into perspective why deep-seated differences persist in crafting a more coherent political show of force between the two nations. While roughly 80 percent Americans believe that using military might is sometimes necessary to maintain order in the world, Germans were almost split evenly on the same question, with a slight majority disagreeing. On the question of defending a fellow NATO ally against Russia in the event of a conflict, 6 in 10 Americans said the United States should help, whereas 6 in 10 German respondents said their country should not get involved. At the same time, Germans saw the United States high up in the list of key foreign policy allies, much higher than Americans viewed Germany. Asked to name their most or second-most important partner, 42 percent of Germans mentioned the United Sates, surpassed only by the their top choice of France, at 60 percent. For Americans, the British ranked highest on the same question, at 36 percent, followed by China (23 percent), Canada (20 percent) and Israel (15 percent). “One area of convergence is the broad support in both the U.S. and Germany for more cooperation with France and Japan. And similar majorities in the U.S. and Germany want to cooperate more with China,” the study read. As for cooperation with Russia, “Germans are almost twice as likely as Americans to want greater collaboration,” it added. When it comes to defense spending, 35 percent of Americans felt that Europeans should up their military budget, with 50 percent saying it should stay the same and 9 percent saying it should decrease. In 2017, the share of Americans wanting an increase was 45 percent. In Germany, the acceptance for defense budget increases has grown since 2017, when only 32 percent of those polled voiced support and 50 percent wanted it to remain the same. In 2018, 43 percent of respondents supported an increase. At the mid-February Munich Security Conference, much was made about the European Union's need to “learn to use the language of power,” as Josep Borrell, the bloc's defense and foreign policy chief, put it. That, of course, would cost money. Germans have traditionally frowned upon that kind of talk, though there is an increasing awareness of geopolitical perils in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Jeffrey Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said in an interview last month. “Germany has been able to get by with its rhetorical response to the deteriorating security environment,” he said. “Now it's increasingly obvious that that is no longer enough.” While the country has significantly upped its defense spending, sensitizing the public for operational contributions to Europe's security will be a crucial next step for this government and the next, Rathke argued. The Pew and Koerber figures point to a generational change in the general attitudes of Germans and Americans about one another. “Despite these divergences in opinion, young people in both countries have more positive views of the U.S.-German relationship,” the study read. “In the U.S., for example, 82 percent of people ages 18 to 29 say the relationship is good, compared with 73 percent of those ages 65 and older. Similarly, in Germany, four-in-ten young people say relations with the U.S. are good, compared with only 31 percent of those 65 and older.” Notably, the two countries' militaries enjoy a much closer level of cooperation than the political discourse suggests, especially during the Trump administration, a fact that officials in both countries keep stressing when the tone between Berlin and Washington turns particularly icy. “There is an instinctive perception in the German public to defense matters anchored in Europe and the trans-Atlantic alliance,” Rathke said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/03/09/poll-germans-americans-far-apart-on-use-of-military-defense-spending/
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January 24, 2024 | International, Land
IAV 2024: Dutch CV90 MLU releases new firepower and survival tech