CACI Awarded $314 Million Task Order to Provide Engineering Services to U.S. Navy NUWC

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  August 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  Armaments consortium launches new path to field high-tech prototypes

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― The National Armaments Consortium, along with the DoD Ordnance Technology Consortium and Army Contracting Command-New Jersey, is taking steps to fast-track their armament prototyping efforts, it was announced Thursday. A year after the Army's high-profile reorganization to more quickly field cutting-edge weapons technologies, the Charleston, South Carolina-based National Armaments Consortium ― made up of 900 companies and academic institutions ― wants to better sync with both the government's increased demand and its actual bandwidth for turning research into prototypes. Pentagon modernization efforts have prioritized, in recent years, long-range precision fires, hypersonic and extended-range missiles, and anti-jam GPS devices ― all of which fall in the lane of the armaments consortium, said National Armaments Consortium Executive Director Charlie Zisette. “Armaments is kind of where the rubber hits the road for our war fighter because we're dealing with everything in the kill chain, protection and survivability,” Zisette told Defense News. “All of these things created a fairly large demand signal for modernization of our systems and components.” The 20-year-old NAC is one of a growing number of Pentagon-sponsored consortia that work to translate the government's notional requirements into technological breakthroughs and business opportunities. Consortia members will work with the government through collective “other transaction agreements” or “other transaction authorities.” These OTAs have become a popular tool to allow the government to communicate more openly about its needs and to work with nontraditional defense contractors whose innovations the Department of Defense wants to harness. According to Zisette, the NAC has 650 active projects at various stages to solve tough problems like developing a new heat-resistant composite material, new types of explosives and a complex long-range precision artillery system. So far this year, its efforts have led to 150 new-start acquisition programs, half awarded to “non-traditionals.” Historically, the NAC would release one annual solicitation based on government requirements, and host one annual collaboration event for NAC members to tout their technologies and ask government representatives about requirements. NAC also hosts a members-only online collaboration portal along similar lines. But something had to change. Amid the DoD's modernization efforts, the NAC has grown such that there would be 350 government solicitations and upward of 1,400 whitepapers, almost simultaneously. It was a “huge bow wave” that overwhelmed the procurement, legal and program staffs involved, Zisette said. “It became too much for the Department of Defense, so we were seeing our award-cycle times getting stretched out,” he said. “We realized we had to level that workload out: put in more agreements officers and contracts specialists so we could ... get quickly through the process itself.” The NAC unveiled Thursday it will initiate faster deadlines to develop prototypes, but it will also move to monthly solicitation releases and three virtual collaboration events per year instead of one. Other consortia will often either deal with requirements on an annual or ad hoc basis, meaning they're emailed out as they're developed. To Zisette's knowledge, no other DoD-sponsored consortia have monthly solicitation releases like the NAC is planning, but the idea for tri-annual events was something Zisette borrowed. “The total model will be a pathfinder,” he said, “but absolutely leveraging some of the best practices and input from across the department.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/08/27/armaments-consortium-launches-new-path-to-field-high-tech-prototypes/

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  January 28, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Lockheed Overtakes Boeing as Largest US Aerospace and Defense Firm

  Boeing, which saw no defense revenue growth last year, takes another financial hit from the tanker program. Boeing ceded its long-held top spot as America's largest aerospace and defense firms to Lockheed Martin after reporting financial results from an abysmal 2020 on Wednesday. The Chicago-based company also said it would lose another $275 million building Air Force KC-46 tankers because of “program primarily due to production inefficiencies including impacts of COVID-19 disruption.” The company has lost more than $4 billion on the project. The company closed 2020 — a year that saw the collapse of passenger air travel from the coronavirus pandemic and the return to flight of the 737 Max airliner — with just under $58.2 billion in revenue, down 24 percent from the previous year. While Lockheed — which on Tuesday reported $65.4 billion in 2020 sales — has long been the world's largest defense contractor, revenue from Boeing's commercial airplane business has combined with its military work to keep it atop the defense-and-aerospace category for decades. Boeing's defense and space sales were flat year-over-year at just shy of $26.3 billion. Its services business, which includes defense work, made $15.5 billion, down 16 percent as thousands of aircraft remain grounded due to the pandemic. “Overall, the government services and defense and space businesses remain significant and relatively stable and we continue to see solid global demand for our major programs,” CEO David Calhoun said on the company's quarterly earnings call Wednesday. “Nevertheless, the scale of government spending on COVID-19 response has the potential to add pressure to global defense spending in the years ahead.” U.S. defense spending is expected to flatten or decline in coming years as the Biden administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress focus more on domestic issues. Calhoun said the company expects its defense business to grow in the “lower end of the single digits” in coming years. “It's hard to commit to a big uptick in any way on growth rates anytime soon, in light of what I think are the pressures,” he said. Calhoun, who became CEO of the firm one year ago this month, said the coronavirus would continue to delay international defense contracts. “The order activity in those international markets has pushed to the right, somewhat of an almost entirely because of COVID-related stuff, not because of any competitive issue one way or the other,” he said. Like many of his colleagues in recent years, Calhoun touted Boeing's classified military work as being “incredibly encouraging and incredibly important to us.” Despite the continued problems with the KC-46, the Air Force has purchased 94 of a planned 179 aircraft. Just this month, it placed two orders totaling $3.8 billion for 27 aircraft. The FAA last month cleared the 737 Max for passenger flights in the United States. Some airlines have already resumed flights across North and South America. European regulators on Wednesday said the plane can resume flights across the continent. Boeing also disclosed Wednesday that it would not deliver its first 777X, a larger, more efficient version of the popular 777 jetliner, until late 2023. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2021/01/lockheed-overtakes-boeing-largest-us-aerospace-and-defense-firm/171684/

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  January 20, 2022 | International, Aerospace

  Greece boosts Air Force with advanced French jets

  Six advanced Rafale jets, purchased from the French Air Force, flew in low formation over Athens before their official handover to the Greek armed forces at a nearby air base.