July 10, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR
The Army is awarding delivery orders to three vendors to support equipment for three Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E) units.
Specifically, the awards will support fielding of satellite baseband equipment, said Paul Mehney, director of public communications at Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical.
Expeditionary signal battalions support units that don't have organic communications capabilities. These groups could include military intelligence battalions, chemical battalions, engineering battalions or air defense artillery branches. The ESB-E aims to be more mobile and require less equipment in order to drop in, support units and move more quickly on the battlefield.
Overall, the vendors will be responsible for providing 48 baseband sets of equipment for each ESB-E formation.
“Due to aggressive initial fielding timelines, after the first six ESB-E formations are fielded, the program office intends to open baseband capability competition for future ESB-E needs,” Mehney said.
PacStar was recently awarded a contract to support the ESB-E program to provide its 400-Series modular platform to enhance tactical expeditionary communications, the company said in a July 7 release.
The 400-Series is lightweight allowing these smaller and expeditionary units to maneuver more quickly. It includes 128 GB RAM, virtual routing and the PacStar 463 Radio Gateway.
“Network modernization to meet warfighter needs and defense priorities is a core focus for the Army and across the DoD, and we are proud to support these efforts with PacStar 400-Series for ESB-E,” Peggy J. Miller, chief executive of PacStar, said in a statement. “With these solutions, ESB-E [Scalable Network Node] will get the smallest, lightest, modular tactical communications platform in the industry, which is part of our larger initiative to enable increased reliability and innovation for warfighters.”
The other vendors include Klas and DTECH, with all three supporting one ESB-E.
An additional delivery order for each vendor to a second ESB-E will be issued, meaning in the near future, each vendor will support two units a piece. After that, the Army will open up the contracts to competition.
This approach follows how the Army has been experimenting to date by providing similar, yet comparable equipment to several ESB-E's.
These companies have provided separate equipment to three units allowing the Army to gain useful feedback from units to see what they liked and disliked about the gear. This has allowed the Army to execute rapid prototyping and experimentation on a tighter timeline for making fielding decisions while providing equipment to soldiers in the interim.
The first two ESB-Es fielded include the 57th ESB-E at Fort Hood and the 50th ESB-E at Fort Bragg.
January 14, 2022 | International, Aerospace
La flotte de Gripen de l'armée de l'air hongroise va bénéficier d'une mise à niveau connue sous la dénomination de MS20 Block 2. Cette dernière apportera au chasseur des améliorations sur le plan avionique, liaisons de données, communications, radar mais également la capacité d'emport d'armements tels que le missile infrarouge Iris-T, le missile Meteor ou encore la GBU-49.
November 28, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Nikkei staff writers TOKYO -- Japan is preparing to order another 100 F-35 stealth fighter jets from the U.S. to replace some of its aging F-15s, according to sources. The plan can be considered a response to China's military buildup, as well as a nod to U.S. President Donald Trump's call for Tokyo to buy more American defense equipment. Japan already intended to procure 42 of the new fighters. A single F-35 costs more than 10 billion yen ($88.1 million), meaning the additional order would exceed 1 trillion yen. Japan's government plans to approve the purchase when it adopts new National Defense Program Guidelines at a cabinet meeting in mid-December. It will also include the F-35 order in its medium-term defense program, which covers fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2023. The government wants to obtain 42 F-35s as successors to its F-4s by fiscal 2024. The 42 fighters Japan originally planned to buy are all F-35As, a conventional takeoff and landing variant. The additional 100 planes would include both the F-35A and F-35B, which is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings. At present, Japan deploys about 200 F-15s, roughly half of which cannot be upgraded. The Defense Ministry wants to replace the planes that cannot be upgraded with the 100 F-35s, while enhancing and retaining the remaining F-15s. To accommodate the F-35Bs, the government intends to revamp the Maritime Self-Defense Force's JS Izumo helicopter carrier to host the fighters. Japan's neighbors are busy introducing their own advanced military aircraft. China deployed its homegrown J-20 stealth fighter in February, and by 2030 some experts expect the country to build a fleet of more than 250 fifth-generation jets -- as the latest generation of fighters like the F-35 is known. Russia, too, is expected to introduce its fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 in 2019, at the earliest. To keep up, Tokyo believes it is imperative to significantly increase its procurement of the most sophisticated stealth jets. At the same time, Trump has repeatedly urged Japan to purchase more American hardware and reduce the trade imbalance between the countries. Buying more of the high-priced fighters is a quick way to do that. In September, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Trump, "Introducing high-performance equipment, including American [materiel], is important for our country to strengthen its defense capabilities." https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-Relations/Japan-to-order-100-more-F-35-fighters-from-US
March 11, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
L'Australie va renforcer les effectifs de son armée d'environ 30 % d'ici à 2040, a annoncé, jeudi 10 mars, son Premier ministre, Scott Morrison. Les forces de défense australiennes atteindront 80 000 personnes, soit un renfort de 18 500 soldats, pour un coût de quelque 38 Md$ australiens (25 Md€ environ), a-t-il déclaré lors d'une conférence de presse dans une caserne de l'armée, à Brisbane. Selon M. Morrison, il s'agit de « la plus forte augmentation » des effectifs des forces de défense « en temps de paix dans l'histoire de l'Australie ». Ce renforcement militaire marque, selon lui, la reconnaissance par son gouvernement des « menaces et de l'environnement auxquels nous sommes confrontés en tant que pays, en tant que démocratie libérale dans l'Indo-Pacifique ». Les Echos du 10 mars