June 30, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By Jon Harper
Market opportunities for the Army's helicopter fleet will average about $10 billion per year over the next decade as the service modernizes its rotary-wing assets, according to analysts.
The current inventory includes UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters, AH-46 Apache attack helicopters, CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and UH-72 Lakota light utility helicopters. All but the Lakota are still in production today.
Meanwhile, future vertical lift is one of the Army's top three modernization priorities, and it is pursuing two new aircraft: an armed scout platform known as the future attack reconnaissance aircraft, or FARA, and the future long-range assault aircraft, or FLRAA.
“The Army's effort to develop and field the next generation of vertical lift aircraft ... will have significant implications for the industrial base,” defense analysts Andrew Hunter and Rhys McCormick wrote in a recent report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Projections show that although there will be a drop-off in the procurement of legacy aircraft in the mid-2020s as FARA and FLRAA full-rate production starts to ramp up, there is still a roughly $8 billion to $10 billion annual addressable Army vertical lift market over the next decade,” they said in the report titled, “Assessing the Industrial Base Implications of the Army's Future Vertical Lift Plans.”
FLRAA has an estimated program value of $40 billion, while FARA could be worth about $20 billion.
In March, the Army announced it had selected Bell and a Sikorsky-Boeing team for the FLRAA competitive demonstration and risk reduction effort. The winner of that phase is expected to be selected in fiscal year 2022.
The service also picked Bell and Sikorsky to continue on in the competition for the future attack reconnaissance aircraft. A “flyoff” for the FARA competition is scheduled for fiscal year 2023, with a production decision expected in fiscal year 2024.
Both the FARA and FLRAA platforms are slated to enter production later this decade.
Meanwhile, operation and sustainment costs will remain the largest source of Army vertical lift spending over the next 10 years, according to the CSIS report.
“There's going to be opportunity [for industry] in kind of the aftermarket side because even as you start to produce the new aircraft, there will still be the enduring platforms that are out” operating as next-generation helicopters come online, said Patrick Mason, head of Army program executive office aviation.
“We will still need spares and certain things done within the aftermarket side as this transition would occur,” he added during a recent press briefing. “That drives so much of the supply chain.”
Some observers have questioned whether the Army will have enough money to buy high-ticket FARA and FLRAA platforms at the same time given future budget projections.
There is also the risk that the programs might go off the rails.
“FVL isn't the only game in town, but it is by far the biggest,” Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant and chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute think tank, wrote in a recent op-ed for Forbes. “If production of legacy rotorcraft ceases to make room for new ones and then FVL fails to deliver, industry might not have enough cash flow to sustain essential skills and suppliers.”
Hunter said problems with the future vertical lift initiatives would upend the CSIS market projections.
“If you were to take one of those programs out of the equation, that changes the addressable market in two significant ways,” he said. “One is, it shrinks it obviously by pulling out ... multiple billion dollars of investment throughout the 10-year window that we looked at. The other effect that it has is it reduces the competitive opportunity for industry.
Right now, you know you've got multiple companies gunning for two aircraft. And even if you went down to one [program] and you were still competing, that's much less opportunity for industry to win in that scenario.”
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/6/29/army-helo-market-pegged-at-$10-billion
June 9, 2021 | International, Naval
Marion, Va. – General Dynamics Mission Systems was awarded a multi-million-dollar firm fixed-price contract from Northrop Grumman to provide Reduced Weight Basic Operating Assembly (RWBOA) containers for U.S. Navy littoral combat ships (LCS), the company said in a release. The containers, developed specifically for...
February 16, 2022 | International, Naval
The goal of the new strategy is to equip the French military with the ability to reach depths of 6,000 meters, or nearly 20,000 feet, said Minister of Defense Florence Parly in a Feb. 14 press conference.
May 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By: The Associated Press BEIJING — A study says Southeast Asian countries are cutting defense spending as a result of the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, potentially opening up room for China to further assert its claims in the region. Aristyo Rizka Darmawan, a maritime security expert at the University of Indonesia, writes that slashing defense spending is seen as a relatively easy way to cut costs when countries are facing pressure on their budgets. “Indonesia, for example, has announced it will slash its defense budget this year by nearly US$588 million. Thailand has likewise reduced its defense allocation by $555 million. Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines all face similar pressure,” Darmawan wrote in the online journal of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. “Less defense spending will invariably mean less patrols at sea.” China recently announced it will increase its defense spending by 6.6 percent in 2020, despite a major downturn in the country's economic growth due to the pandemic. The increase is the lowest in years, but will still allow China to expand its ability to enforce its territorial claims in the South China Sea and grow its military presence in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans. Another key priority is maintaining a credible threat against Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China considers its own territory, to be brought under its control by military force if necessary. China has maintained its presence in the South China Sea throughout the virus outbreak. Recent frictions include Chinese ships shadowing Malaysian mineral exploration operations and the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat by a Chinese maritime security vessel. However, China's foreign minister dismissed claims that the country is exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to expand its regional footprint, labeling such accusations as “sheer nonsense.” State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters at a news conference on Sunday that China is cooperating closely on anti-virus efforts with Southeast Asian countries, several of whom have overlapping territorial claims with China in the strategically vital waterway. While China has long been stepping up its presence in the region, Wang said other countries — likely meaning the United States and its allies — have been creating instability with military flights and sea patrols. “Their ill-intentioned and despicable moves are meant to sow discord between China and [Southeast Asian countries] and undermine the hard-won stability in the region,” Wang said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/05/26/downward-trend-southeast-asian-countries-cut-defense-spending/