Army's $5.1B wish list to Congress would ramp up modernization, infrastructure efforts

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  July 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Is Dassault Aviation on Way to Another Rafale Jet Export Contract?

  Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier hinted at a new Rafale jet export contract in the making while speaking at his company's first half 2020 financial results conference in Paris earlier this week. “A potential new Rafale export contract is postponed,” he said while referring to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Dassault's performance without naming the country with whom his company was close to signing the contract with. This is the first official acknowledgement by Dassault Aviation of a new Rafale export order reaching the contract stage- the first since deals were struck with Egypt, Qatar and India starting 2015. Reports of India being in talks to buy an additional 36 Rafale aircraft have been going on for a while now, but nothing has been revealed officially as yet. In addition, Dassault Aviation is in talks with UAE and Malaysia. It is in competition to sell jets to Switzerland and Finland pitted against European rivals Eurofighter and Saab. Of these prospects, India appears as the most likely candidate even as the first five Rafale jets arrive in India Monday. Earlier this year, comments by the Indian Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Bipin Rawat that a potential order for 114 jets would be “staggered” set off speculation of an additional order for Rafale fighters. A staggered purchase (of the Rafales) would ease financial burden by paying for the jets as they are manufactured. In addition, buying additional Rafales would ensure that the jets keep getting supplied to India uninterrupted beyond the end of the first contract for 36 jets. Several Indian media reports said that French aircraft manufacturer Dassault and India's HAL are in talks for possible cooperation in producing Rafale fighter jets in India for additional anticipated orders under a staggered procurement plan. The Economic Times reported in February this year that a few rounds of discussions have taken place between the two companies on possible work share for additional orders of the Rafale. In this context ‘work share' could mean local assembly of either the aircraft or some major components. It could also mean installation of some Indian components in the jet. Dassault and HAL are already implementing a contract to modernize India's Mirage-2000 jets. Additional Rafales could be cheaper than the 36 ordered in 2016 for Euro 7.8 billion. Of the total cost, Euro 195 million was spent on India-specific enhancements which will come down as the majority of the cost was for R & D, modification and certification. Besides, India had paid for setting up two bases for just 36 aircraft. These bases can easily accommodate more jets. https://www.defenseworld.net/news/27509#.XyCAdZ5KiUk

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  December 4, 2019 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  The US Air Force wants to network all its weapons together. Will simulators be included?

  By: Valerie Insinna ORLANDO, Fla. — As the U.S. military prepares for the release of its fiscal 2021 budget request, Air Force leaders have made clear that a massive financial hike is needed for multidomain command-and-control efforts to connect weapon systems across the joint force. As part of that initiative, it will also be critical for the military to link together simulators so service members can replicate combat on a massive scale, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Stephen Wilson said during a speech Tuesday at the Interservice/Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference. “I know you spent a lot of time yesterday about how to connect and integrate simulators from across our various weapons systems. I can't overstate how important that is,” he said. “Individual weapon system simulators can help our men and women become proficient tacticians, but it's their ability to integrate and connect that will differentiate us against a peer threat. And no one is going to win alone." Wilson said the Air Force plans to spend “a lot of money in this next five-year defense plan” on multidomain command and control, but he did not detail how much funding the service might ask for, or whether that sum will include investments in technology to network together simulators. The service is still in the earliest stages of identifying how to connect its aircraft and space assets with the joint force to fight advanced, near-peer threats like Russia and China. The same goes for its aircraft simulators, which are largely detached from each other. An Air Force program called Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards, or SCARS, will start to transform the simulation enterprise and make it more interconnected, said Col. Phillip Carpenter, the Air Force's senior materiel leader for the simulators program office. “It's an effort to make the entire portfolio more modular, more open-system,” he told Defense News in an exclusive interview. “I'm not going to say [SCARS] is the solution to all of our problems,” but it will “help lay that groundwork so that we become much more interoperable across the board.” Under SCARS, the Air Force wants to create a common, open architecture for its simulators that will impose stricter cybersecurity standards and make it easier for the service to update simulators with new capabilities or threat information. The goal, Carpenter said, is to have a fleet of simulators that can remotely receive software updates, much like a smartphone. The Air Force released a SCARS request for proposals in December 2018 for a 10-year contract worth up to $900 million, according to Bloomberg. The service intends to award a contract for SCARS in 2020 and has received a lot of interest from industry, Carpenter said. Carpenter was clear that SCARS — at least how it is currently conceived — will not enable the Air Force to carry out the type of scenarios Wilson spoke about: large-scale, simulated air operations involving simulators of many different airframes. To achieve that, “we need to work on some of the security pieces so that we can allow multilevel security or some of these other aspects that would allow totality of these systems to participate and fight like they would actually fight in a real world,” Carpenter explained. But Carpenter believes there is potential for other parts of the Air Force — like its space, cyber and intelligence community — or even the other services to adopt SCARS or an architecture that is compatible with it. “I think there is great potential for SCARS to be more than something for just aircraft simulators,” he said. “If somebody is off building a system outside of our portfolio, if it's built to a common standard, I think that would effectively make all the systems, whether they're in our portfolio or not, more interoperable.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/itsec/2019/12/03/the-us-air-force-wants-to-network-all-its-weapons-together-will-simulators-be-included

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  June 29, 2021 | International, Other Defence

  More than $41.4-billion in spending goes without Commons committee review