March 18, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The Army has selected Bell and Sikorsky to enter into a competitive demonstration and risk reduction effort ahead of the start of the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, program of record.
The service is on a tight timeline to field a new long-range assault aircraft by 2030. The CDRR will consist of two phases that will last roughly one year each.
The companies will deliver initial conceptual designs, an assessment of the feasibility of requirements and trade studies using model-based systems engineering. The competition for the program of record will begin in 2022 with a plan to field the first unit equipped in 2030.
Congress added $76 million in funding to the aircraft program's top line in fiscal 2020 to drive down technical risk and speed up delivery. The money, which Congress approved as part of its FY20 appropriations bill signed into law in December, will fund the CDRR effort.
The Army completed its Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration, or JMR TD, for which Bell and the Sikorsky-Boeing team each built aircraft to help the service understand what is possible for a future aircraft — mainly to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk.
“These agreements are an important milestone for FLRAA,” Patrick Mason, the Army's aviation program executive officer, said in a statement issued March 16. “The CD&RR continues to transition technologies from the JMR-TD effort to the FLRAA weapons system design. We will be conducting analysis to refine the requirements, conceptual designs, and acquisition approach. Ultimately, this information and industry feedback are vital to understanding the performance, cost, affordability, schedule risks and trades needed to successfully execute the FLRAA program.”
Bell has flown its V-280 Valor tilt-rotor demonstrator for two years in the JMR-TD and has logged more than 160 hours of flight time on the experimental aircraft.
Sikorsky and Boeing's SB-1 Defiant coaxial demonstrator had a more difficult time getting off the ground due to issues in manufacturing its rotor blades. Its first flight was in March 2019.
Even though Defiant has flown for a significantly reduced amount of time, the Army has determined it has enough data to move forward on its FLRAA program rather than extend the JMR TD to wait for the Sikorsky-Boeing team to log flight time.
Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the service's future vertical lift modernization efforts, said last spring that because of the data collected through the JMR TD process as a well as additional studies and modeling, the service now thinks it has enough information to move more quickly into a full and open competition for FLRAA.
Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, the military deputy to the acquisition chief, said in a Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing around the same time that the Army is presenting an acquisition strategy to the Pentagon's acquisition chief focusing on a nondevelopmental item approach to procuring FLRAA. That route, Ostrowski said, could lead to a competitive downselect by FY22.
The extra funding provided by Congress will give the service the ability to continue to fly and burn down that inherent risk in developing a new helicopter.
“What [that] may do as we hit those gates, is allow us to take what was going to be a primary budget, really a starting budget for the Army in ‘23 and ‘24, and potentially move that selection back to ‘23,” Rugen said recently. “We are not going to go to selection if, number one, we don't have requirements stable, we don't have resources stable, and, number two, the technology is not there.”
The Army already has had a robust technology demonstrator program, including an extension, Rugen said, but that type of effort doesn't garner the same data as a prototype demonstration or a full-up weapon system.
“In the CDRR [competitive demonstration and risk reduction], we're really trying to develop a weapons system, not the tech demonstrator,” Rugen said. “So we're trying to take it to the next level.”
The CDRR will assess a laundry list of technologies identified through an Office of the Secretary of Defense-conducted independent technology readiness assessment, which would require additional evaluation to reduce risk, according to Rugen.
Some of these technologies include the powertrain, drivetrain and control laws of the aircraft. “When we look at the software involved in flight controls, we have to really reduce risk there,” Rugen noted.
The CDRR will also allow the Army to work on the integration of its mission systems.
May 13, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Comme l'a souligné la Cour des comptes dans le rapport qu'elle a publié le 11 mai sur les capacités des forces françaises, la trajectoire financière
May 19, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By: Bill Brown, L3Harris Technologies The Department of Defense and defense industry have a long history of responding quickly and forcefully to crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Today, hundreds of thousands of dedicated defense workers remain at their posts – delivering mission-critical products and services to support our troops around the world, while also providing personal protective equipment and other supplies to first responders and health care workers here at home. However, this most recent crisis has re-exposed weaknesses in our defense industrial base – highlighting the need to significantly bolster the nation's vital supply chain. This serves as a call to action to develop a strategic, long-term approach across government and industry. We witnessed the fallout from the 2008-09 financial crisis. Thousands of suppliers shuttered or permanently shifted precious capacity to other verticals when defense budgets were indiscriminately cut following the Budget Control Act of 2011 and sequester of 2013. When budgets began to recover several years later, the damage was clear – longer lead times that in some cases doubled or more, and increased reliance on single-source and international suppliers for critical components, such as microelectronics. In 2017, President Trump signed an executive order and established a multi-agency task force to study supply chain resiliency. The task force identified five macro forces that create risk to the supply chain and national security preparedness including sequestration and the uncertainty of government spending, the overall decline of U.S. manufacturing capabilities and capacity, harmful government business and procurement practices, industrial policies of competitor nations, and diminishing U.S. STEM and trade skills. Task force members proposed a comprehensive set of risk-reduction actions – ranging from establishing sustained and predictable multi-year budgets and developing an adaptive acquisition framework, to directing investment to small businesses and diversifying the supplier base. Over the past two years, the government has made initial strides on a number of these fronts, including working to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign sources for critical rare earth minerals and decreasing the country's dependence on China and other international suppliers for semiconductors and related components. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged before these and other task force initiatives gained serious traction and forced the DoD to refocus its near-term priorities. And the urgency escalated when we began to see the brutal impact the pandemic was causing in the commercial aerospace sector, an important vertical market for many defense suppliers. The department quickly designated defense suppliers as essential and increased progress payments, spurring larger defense contractors to accelerate payments to thousands of small business suppliers. These actions helped companies to continue operating, maintain their employment and hiring goals, and sustain critical spending on internal research and development (IRAD) to keep the innovation engine humming. At L3Harris, for example, we recommitted to investing nearly 4 percent of revenues in IRAD, hiring 6,000 new employees and maintaining our apprenticeship and internship programs to provide opportunities for the workforce of the future. The combined DoD and industry efforts demonstrate the power of a focused, collaborative approach to mitigate and address the damaging effects of the pandemic and to support the broader defense industrial base. Today, we are at a critical juncture. We have an opportunity to make the necessary strategic investments that could significantly strengthen our supply base for generations to come, including: · Ensure sustained/predictable budgets – stable, long-term funding helps companies better plan and encourages them to invest in staffing, technology and facilities needed for the country to maintain its technical superiority. Now is not the time to pull back the reins on defense spending. · Accelerate contract awards – shorter decision and acquisition cycles enable suppliers to invest in and deliver technologies faster than with traditional methods, and in the near term could help offset the impact of the commercial aerospace downturn. · Expand domestic supplier base – increasing domestic capabilities reduces vulnerabilities and increases access to critical components, such as rare earths and microelectronics, and over time can help reduce the proportion of sole/single-source supply. · Increase workforce investment – providing advanced STEM education opportunities drives innovation and productivity by enhancing critical skillsets for existing employees, while attracting, training and growing the workforce of the future. · Institutionalize process improvements – the COVID-19 pandemic forced government and industry to find new and more efficient ways to work. The challenge now – to make these advances permanent. These are not quick fixes. However, they provide a strong platform for a more resilient national defense supplier base, which is vital at a time when near-peer adversaries continue to invest heavily in new technologies that threaten our nation's security. The imperative is clear – and the opportunity is now. Bill Brown is chairman and CEO at L3Harris Technologies. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/18/our-nations-defense-supply-chain-imperative/
September 18, 2019 | International, Land
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The U.S. Army has awarded BAE Systems a $318 million contract to upgrade M88 recovery vehicles to the M88A3 configuration designed for single-vehicle recovery of the latest version of the Abrams tank. The new M88A3 configuration eliminates the necessity of using two vehicles to raise and move the tanks, which have increased in weight in recent years. “As the U.S. Army's primary recovery vehicle, the M88 plays a critical role in the Army's Armored Brigade Combat Team,” said Dennis Hancock, recovery programs director for BAE Systems' Combat Vehicles business. “We have partnered closely with the Army and industry partners to develop a solution that addresses the single-vehicle recovery gap. We are proud to continue to support the Army's recovery needs by providing a next-generation solution to effectively rescue disabled tanks from the battlefield.” The M88A3 configuration features an upgraded powertrain, suspension and tracks, increasing the vehicle's speed, survivability and reliability. The M88A3 also features a seventh road wheel to reduce ground pressure and new hydropneumatic suspension units (HSUs) that enable the track to be locked out for greater control when recovering vehicles. The contract is being awarded under an Other Transactional Authority (OTA) acquisition model for upgrading the M88A2 Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift Evacuation System (HERCULES) to the next generation M88A3 HERCULES. BAE Systems' M88 family of recovery vehicles has provided the Army with unprecedented capability for recovering stranded or disabled combat vehicles since the 1960s. Due to incremental weight increases of the Army's Main Battle Tank over the years, the M88A3's predecessor, the M88A2, is currently unable to safely perform single-vehicle recovery of the Abrams. BAE Systems has invested Independent Research and Development to develop the M88A3 for three years in an effort to identify, understand, and provide solutions to return to single-vehicle recovery of the tank. The work will be performed at BAE Systems' facilities in York, Pennsylvania; Aiken, South Carolina, Anniston, Alabama, and Sterling Heights, Michigan. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190917006045/en/