Aviation Week Forecasts: Western Attack Helicopter Deliveries/Retirements 2020-2029

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  April 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  COVID cash crunch still hurting small defense firms

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Cash flow for small defense contractors is continuing to suffer under the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey by the National Defense Industrial Association. The survey echoes warnings from the Pentagon that these firms, part of a vast network of suppliers that makes up the defense-industrial base, are especially vulnerable. The Pentagon this week announced it will make $3 billion in new “progress payments" to increase cash flow to prime contractors, expecting the money would then trickle down. Of the NDIA survey respondents: 67 percent of companies with less than $1 million in annual revenue have seen a cash-flow disruption. 60 percent said the crisis has interfered with their cash flow. 60 percent expect to have long-term financial and cash-flow issues stemming from the crisis. 66 percent said accelerated payments from the Defense Department or prime contractors would be the most helpful step toward business recovery. L3Harris Technologies said this week it will issue more than $100 million in payments to its small suppliers. Lockheed Martin announced Friday it executed $256 million in accelerated payment toward its $450 million goal. Both of these promised followed the Pentagon's announcement this month that it will boost progress payment rates from 80 percent to 90 percent for large companies, and to 95 percent for small businesses. The payments are made to contractors, usually on a monthly basis, for costs incurred and work performed under a contract; a 90 percent rate means that if $1 million in expenses are submitted on the program, the Defense Department will reimburse $900,000. Sixty-six percent of the respondents also said it would help them to receive flexibility on the performance of their contracts. Seventy-two percent expected to avoid overruns on their firm fixed-price contracts as a result of disruptions caused by COVID-19. On Thursday, acquisitions officials with the Army said they expect costs to rise, and in response will guard against program slips and closely watch vulnerable lower-tier companies with less slack in their workforces. Pentagon officials anticipate workforce and supply chain issues will yield a three-month delay across the majority of its Major Defense Acquisition Program portfolio. “The supply chain does have some challenges, and that's probably where the vast majority of any slips would occur that are tied to individual companies,” said Bruce Jette, the Army's acquisition chief. “These companies are small, and if one person gets COVID in the company, the next thing you know you've lost 14 days with the company because everybody that didn't get it is in quarantine.” As of April 10, 769 small businesses responded to the NDIA survey. The number of companies expecting cash-flow disruptions was slightly lower last month, when 458 small businesses responded. Factoring into cash-flow problems, according to the NDIA, are cuts to billable hours, delayed payments from prime contractors and government customers, a lack of telework options or schedule flexibility in contracts, and shelter-in-place orders that prevent employees from working. Beyond revenue expectations, meeting contract obligations and access to capital are where small businesses are taking the biggest hits during the pandemic. Other areas of difficulty were workforce availability, access to secure facilities, contracting officers accessibility, clear information from the Defense Department, confidence in the supply chain, and stock and cost of materials. The technology and services sectors reported more disturbances from the crisis than the manufacturing sector, NDIA noted. And businesses with fewer than 50 employees are feeling the brunt harder than businesses with more than 500 employees. Defense Contract Management Agency data this week showed that 106 out of 10,509 primary Pentagon contractors are closed, and 68 companies closed and then reopened. Of 11,413 subcontractors, 427 were closed, with 147 having closed and reopened. https://www.defensenews.com/2020/04/24/covid-cash-crunch-still-hurting-small-defense-firms/

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  July 9, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Pakistan hires Leonardo, Paramount Group for aircraft conversion program

  Follow-on contracts are expected to bring Pakistan's total number of Sea Sultan aircraft to 10, replacing the country’s long-serving P-3C Orion fleet.

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  April 9, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Here’s what the Army wants in future radios

  By: Mark Pomerleau Advancements in electronics and tactics by high-end adversaries are forcing the Army to change the way it revamps and optimizes its communications network against current and future threats. The problem: adversaries have become more proficient and precise in the sensing and jamming of signals. “What we're looking for in terms of resilience in the future is not only making individual links more anti-jam and resilient, resistant to threats, but also having the ability to use multiple paths if one goes down,” Joe Welch, chief engineer at Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications Tactical (C3T), told reporters during a network demo at Fort Myer in early March. “Your phones work this way between 4G and Wi-Fi and that's seamless to you. That's kind of the target of what we're intending to provide with next-generation transport for the Army's tactical network.” Members of industry are now looking to develop radios to these specifications outlined by the Army. “We have an extensive library of waveforms — 51, 52 waveforms that we can bring to bear — that we can say look we can use this waveform to give you more resilience with this capability,” Jeff Kroon, director of product management at Harris, told C4ISRNET during an interview at the AUSA Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, in March. “Down the road, we need to talk about resilience and what's going on with the near-peer threats.” Next-generation systems, leaders believe, will be able to provide this necessary flexibility. “The radios that we're looking at buying now — the manpack and the two-channel leader radios — have shown themselves to be able to run a pretty wide range of waveforms and we think it postures us to run some changes to those waveforms in the future as we look at even more advanced waveforms,” Maj. Gen. David Bassett, program executive officer of C3T, told reporters at Fort Myer. While jammers have become more powerful and targeted in recent years, officials contend the entire spectrum can't be interrupted at once. The Army realizes links won't be jam-proof, Bassett told reporters at Fort Myer, so it is looking at how they can be either more jam-resistant or able to switch seamlessly across portions of the spectrum that are not being jammed. Kroon noted that one of the big developments within the radio community down the road will be radios that seamlessly switch frequencies or waveforms without direct user input. “I think, as we move forward, we'll start to have more cognitive capabilities that will allow [the radio] to adapt automatically, and keep the user focused on their own job and let the radio handle the rest,” he said. In addition to multiwaveform and a large range of spectrum coverage, Kroon said the Army is also really looking for multifunction capabilities within radios. Radios also have to have passive sensing capabilities to be able to understand the signals in the environment and provide some level of situational awareness of the spectrum environment. “They have to have visibility into what's going on around them ... not just for [electronic warfare] purposes but sometime just knowing what's going on in the spectrum around you as a planner is really important,” Kroon said. “What's actually going on out there, I don't know I was told this frequency was clear, how do I really know. Having a radio come back and say look what we hit ... it is actually very useful.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/global-force-symposium/2018/04/06/heres-what-the-army-wants-in-future-radios/