September 10, 2019 | International, Naval
By: Andrew Chuter
LONDON — Confronted with the dilemma of maintaining a naval industrial base after the completion of two 65,000-ton aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, the British government two years ago launched a national shipbuilding strategy aimed at building an efficient sector, and thus keeping skills and capacity alive.
But the strategy has failed to work out exactly as planned. Two yards closed this year and a third was rescued by nationalization. Meanwhile in the supply chain, the Ministry of Defence had to act quickly on ordering the motor for the Type 26 frigate to prevent the contractor from moving its capabilities to France.
Former shipyard boss Peter Parker, who authored the original shipbuilding strategy, delivered a review of the strategy's status to the MoD, but the update remains under wraps, with no firm timing announced for its publication.
One key element of the strategy included procurement of five general-purpose frigates for the Royal Navy to be competed for by local shipyards in an effort to end BAE Systems' maritime monopoly in Britain. Another included an international competition for up to three 40,000-ton fleet solid support ships. Both programs have subsequently run into stormy waters.
Paul Everitt, the chief executive of ADS, the lobby group that represents British defense, aerospace and security companies, said it's important to continue to support the strategy, even as some of the impetus has been lost.
“We need to stick with the national shipbuilding strategy. It marks a significant shift in the MoD's approach to procurement. The area that has been challenging, though, is that progress has been hindered by the political uncertainty around Brexit and the future size of MoD budgets,” Everitt said, referring to Britain's exit from the European Union.
“Some of the decisions that would help to give industry the longer-term certainty they require to invest or hang in there aren't being made,” he added. “Where do we go next ? It is really about the MoD creating certainty around a pipeline of work from all the key programs, all of which should offer significant amounts of work to U.K. industry over the next 15 years.”
Shipyard survival
Not everyone remains signed up to the shipbuilding strategy, however.
Defense commentator Howard Wheeldon, of Wheeldon Strategic Advisory, is unsure about the relevance of the strategy.
“It's no longer fit for purpose. We have moved on. More shipyards have closed due to lack of work, and we should not kid ourselves that a commercial shipyard that has little or no expertise in building Navy ships can take on the responsibility and risk that the government requires,” Wheeldon said.
“If the government has any belief in the strategy, it will ensure that contracts for the fleet [solid] support ships will be placed in U.K. shipyards. If it fails, then we must conclude that it has neither belief in its own strategy or in ensuring that we retain the sovereign capability that a nation such as the U.K. needs,” he added.
An international competition to build two or three fleet solid support ships has been underway for months, with the bidders narrowed down to Navantia of Spain, Japan Marine United Corp., and a homemade consortium made up of BAE Systems, Babcock International, Cammell Laird and Rolls-Royce, known as Team UK.
The MoD opened the deal to foreign bidders, reasoning that the vessels were not warships and therefore, under European Union regulations, the competition must be open to all.
Now, though, the tide seems to be turning in favor of British yards taking a bigger share of the work than just the fitting of locally made sensitive kit.
One senior industry executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the “current fleet solid support [ship] procurement plan is not really tenable with the current government team and a shipbuilding strategy which is in danger of becoming unstitched.”
“The government will have come under huge pressure on this issue at every political level. You have a new procurement minister, [Marie-Anne Trevelyn], who only a couple of months ago put her name to a parliamentary report supporting building the ships in the U.K.; you have a Brexiter defense secretary in Ben Wallace; and [Prime Minister Boris] Johnson himself,” the industry executive said. “Is that trio likely to award a contract to a Spanish yard?”
Whatever the outcome, it's too late for two of the yards. Babcock's Appledore yard in southwest England closed in early 2019 after the completion of an offshore patrol boat for the Irish Naval Service. Additionally, Harland & Wolff recently went into insolvency proceedings with its Belfast, Northern Ireland, yard that famously built the Titanic — although there remains a chance a buyer could be found for the facility.
In Glasgow, shipbuilder Ferguson's nationalization by the Scottish government was announced Aug. 16 after the yard went over time and over budget with a commercial ferry contract it won.
Harland & Wolff was the lead U.K. yard in a proposal by German-based Atlas Elektronik to build Type 31e frigates for the Royal Navy. The yard's demise could scuttle the German company's bid, although parent company Thyssenkrupp has a history of reviving cold yards.
Atlas isn't the only company with Harland & Wolff on its team. Babcock also listed the Northern Ireland yard in its Type 31e proposal at one stage and also named Ferguson as a subcontractor.
Britain has shortlisted three contenders for the Type 31e requirement: Atlas, Babcock and BAE Systems. A decision on a winner is expected this year, although there has been speculation it could come during or soon after the DSEI trade show in September.
Second-order effects
The supply chain has not been immune from difficulties either.
GE Power, which provides power-conversion systems for Royal Navy warships, announced it was closing its Rugby site in Central England and relocating the work to France. In response, the MoD ordered motors for a second batch of Type 26s to prevent the move, even though BAE does not yet have a deal to build the warships.
The industry executive said the GE Power episode highlighted a weakness in Britain's shipbuilding strategy.
“GE proved the point: It [the strategy] didn't really address the criticality of the supply chain. It assumed the criticality was all about shipyards,” he said. “The other fundamental flaw with it was you were never going to keep all the U.K. yards in business if you were going to put the fleet solid support ship deal offshore.”
The situation certainly isn't improved by the political turmoil at the MoD and in wider government.
Defense and procurement leaders have been coming and going with alarming regularity for years , particularly since the government adopted the shipbuilding strategy in September 2017.
Penny Mordaunt, the pro-Navy, pro-buy-British defense secretary, lasted just more than 60 days before she found herself backing the wrong candidate in a Conservative Party leadership contest, which resulted in Johnson becoming prime minister on July 24.
Given the current political uncertainties, there is no guarantee how long the new administration will last.
With the Brexit debate occupying the government nearly 24/7, defense has barely rated a mention by the Johnson government; that is, other than during the furor caused by the Royal Navy's inability to stop the seizure of a British-registered tanker by Iran on July 19.
The uncertainties have come at a time of mixed fortunes for the British maritime sector.
Yards may be closing, but set against that is the Type 26 anti-submarine frigate design scoring major export successes in Australia and Canada — successes that could put Britain back on the maritime export map in a big way.
Neither of the export customers will have their frigates built in the U.K., but the deals open the door to potentially billions of pounds of orders for the British supply chain.
August 5, 2024 | International, Aerospace
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March 20, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Brandon Knapp Leaders from the satellite imaging industry presented a long list of regulation reforms they want to see from the Trump administration during a panel discussion March 14 during the 2018 Satellite show held in Washington D.C. To allow the space industry to thrive, industry officials called for a regulatory process that is more efficient, transparent and narrowly focused. The panelists described the current regulatory regime as a convoluted process that stifles innovation and “tells you no slowly, but can't tell you why.” The remote sensing regulatory environment currently operates on “the presumption of no,” said Walter Scott, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Maxar Technologies. Last year Maxar acquired satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe. “If telecommunications had been regulated this way, instead of smartphones we'd be up here with devices that have big dials and wires attached to them.” A common concern among the industry panelists was the rise of competition in the space domain, especially from foreign actors that are less constrained by regulatory burdens imposed on American space companies. “Taking three months to write a report to make a committee to study something about a decision just doesn't cut it in a world where this technology is becoming rapidly available to almost everyone,” said Peter Platzer, the chief executive, a satellite imagery company based in St. Louis. DoD leaders have historically said reviews are necessary to understand the national security implications of new satellite technology. Only a handful of DoD officials served on panels during the four day conference. Industry leaders said they hoped their grievances will be well received by the Trump administration, which has taken a both a pro-space and anti-regulation posture in its first year. The administration reactivated the National Space Council last summer and President Donald Trump recently floated the idea of creating a new “Space Force” dedicated to space warfare. A report from the Department of Commerce on space regulations is due out by July 1. The department's secretary, Wilbur Ross, has said he wants to reform the process by creating a single space commerce office. (Ross headlined a keynote dinner to satellite leaders during the conference.) The panelists said they were hopeful that the report would lead to a more streamlined and transparent space licensing process. Some in the space community have proposed the idea of “permissionless” authorization, in which space licence applications would be automatically approved unless a specific objection is proposed within a determined number of days. “I don't think we're going to go that far,” said Peter Hays, a space policy consultant who works with the Department of Defense. “But I think we're heading in that direction.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2018/03/19/for-satellite-imagery-to-thrive-industry-wants-reforms/
August 21, 2019 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army is nearing a decision on who will build its Lower-Tier Air-and-Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, which will provide the sensing capability for the future Integrated Air-and-Missile Defense System the service is developing. The service is planning to award a contract no later than the end of the fiscal year to one of the three vendors that participated in a “sense-off” competition at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, over the spring, Daryl Youngman, the deputy director in charge of Army AMD modernization, told Defense News in a recent interview. According to other sources, that decision is expected next month. The radar is part of a new AMD system that will replace the Army's Raytheon-made Patriot system. Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and a Lockheed Martin-Elta Systems team all brought radars to the White Sands sense-off and subsequently submitted proposals for the prototype competition in July. The winner will build six prototypes by the end of FY22 to prove whether the radar can be built and then fielded to a unit for evaluation. A follow-on contract for 16 additional radars is expected if all goes well. The plan leaves an opening for other radar solutions to get back in the game if the prototyping effort does not pan out. While the Army has dropped its long-prioritized requirement for a radar capable of detecting threats from 360 degrees, it now seeks a broader baseline requirement to “expand the battle space beyond what the current Patriot radar has,” Youngman said. And the system will ideally have a lot of growth potential baked in, he added. Replacing the Patriot radar has been a long time coming. The radar was first fielded in the 1980s, and the Army previously attempted to replace the system with Lockheed Martin's Medium Extended Air Defense System through an international co-development effort with Germany and Italy. But that program was canceled in the U.S. after closing out a proof-of-concept phase roughly six years ago. Since then, the Army has studied and debated how to replace the Patriot radar while Raytheon continues to upgrade its radar to keep pace with current threats. It is acknowledged that there will come a point where radar upgrades will be unable to keep up with future threats. Taking years to decide, the service moved forward on a competition to replace the radar in 2017 and chose four companies to come up with design concepts for the capability — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Technovative Applications. Toward the end of 2018, Raytheon and Lockheed were chosen to continue technology development under that program. Defense News first broke the news last fall that the Army was attempting to hit the reset button on the LTAMDS program, deciding to host a “sense-off” to identify available radar capabilities. While LTAMDS is considered the fourth priority out of four major lines of effort with which the Cross-Functional Team in charge of AMD has defined, it is not because it's the least important, Youngman noted, but more related to schedule — where the system is in the development and fielding timeline. The AMD CFT's top priority is its command-and-control system — the Integrated Battle Command System — for its future IAMD architecture. Limited user testing will occur next spring with a decision to move into production in the fourth quarter of FY20. Manuever-Short-Range Air Defense — or M-SHORAD — is the second priority as the Army . The service is set to begin development testing of its prototypes this fall. The Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 program is ranked third as the Army prepares to take receipt of its interim cruise missile capability — two Iron Dome Systems — soon. The Army is in the midst of coming up with a new strategy for the IFPC system that will ultimately defend against rockets, artillery and mortar as well as cruise missiles and drone threats. The IFPC system will have to tie into the Army's IBCS system as well. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/08/20/us-army-nears-decision-on-who-will-build-new-missile-defense-radar-prototypes/