CH-53E Heavy Lift Helicopter Reaches One Million Flight Hours

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  March 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Pentagon seeks to classify future year defense spending plans

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has asked Congress to allow it to classify its Future Year Defense Program spending projections, new documents have revealed. The FYDP numbers, which project five years into the future, are considered essential information for the public to see where the Department of Defense expects to invest in the future, and to hold the department accountable when those spending plans change. Information on the request was published Monday by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. Aftergood wrote that the proposal would “make it even harder for Congress and the public to refocus and reconstruct the defense budget.” In its request to Congress, the Pentagon wrote that an unclassified FYDP “might inadvertently reveal sensitive information,” despite the fact the numbers have been unclassified since 1989. “With the ready availability of data mining tools and techniques, and the large volume of data on the Department's operations and resources already available in the public domain, additional unclassified FYDP data, if it were released, potentially allows adversaries to derive sensitive information by compilation about the Department's weapons development, force structure, and strategic plans,” the DoD wrote. It added that there is a commercial concern with the FYDP providing too much information to industry. “The Department is also concerned about the potential harm to its interactions with commercial interests by release of FYDP information prior to the budget year. Exposing resources allocated to future acquisition plans may encourage bids and other development activities not beneficial to the Government,” the proposal read. Seamus Daniels, a budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a tweet that “DoD's proposal to eliminate the unclassified FYDP severely limits the public's ability to track how strategy aligns with budgets and how program plans change over time. Serious step backwards in transparency from the department.” Earlier this year, the No. 2 uniformed officer in the Pentagon railed against the department's tendency toward overclassification, calling it “unbelievably ridiculous.” The Pentagon has requested a number of legislative changes this year, in addition to the FYDP classification attempt. Among the notable requests are one that would remove the requirement for the defense secretary to “notify the Senate and House Armed Services Committees whenever the Secretary establishes or modifies an end-of-quarter strength level;” a request for the ability to add an additional 15 general officer billets in the combatant commands and three general officer billets on the Joint Staff, to be filled exclusively by reserve component officers; and a request to rename the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict as the assistant secretary of defense for “Special Operations and Irregular Warfare.” https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/03/30/pentagon-seeks-to-classify-future-year-defense-spending-plans/

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  November 20, 2018 | International, Land

  Czech MoD seeks light 4x4 vehicles for airborne battalion

  The Czech Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to procure a fleet of 4x4 lightweight vehicles to fulfil an urgent requirement for the Army of the Czech Republic (ACR) to equip an airborne battalion planned for activation in 2020. The ACR is considering the Gepard, a new 4x4 vehicle based on the Toyota Land Cruiser Model 70 being offered in a rapid-deployment version and long-range patrol version by a Czech consortium of indigenous vehicle suppliers Dajbych, Tatra Defence Vehicles, and Optokon. The criteria for the platform include that it can accommodate six fully equipped personnel and can be fitted with modular ballistic protection. https://www.janes.com/article/84687/czech-mod-seeks-light-4x4-vehicles-for-airborne-battalion

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  September 17, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  Air Force aims to move startups from pitch to contract award in 24 hours

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — A fledgling five-person software start-up has just wrapped up their pitch to what could be a key investor. The pressure has been intense, but the customer decides to bite, sliding a credit card through a Square reader to award money to the company's Paypal account. This isn't an episode of Shark Tank, or a successful bid to get investment dollars from a Silicon Valley angel investor. The customer in this scenario is the Air Force — or at least, its acquisition executive would like it to be. During the Air Force Association's annual conference, Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, will announce a series of “Startup Days” targeted toward involving startup companies in Air Force acquisition by rapidly awarding contracts in less than 24 hours. “From the company's view, it will be a single day. From our view, we could probably turn it as quickly as a few days to a week — we put a call out, someone submits their idea, we analyze their idea, we check their company profile, we then invite a subset that have met the criteria,” he told Defense News in an exclusive Sept. 7 interview. “But then, when they come in to pitch their idea, they have a reasonable expectation of leaving with funding. We're ready to go or not go on a single day,” he continued. “And the contract length? One page.” When Defense News spoke with Roper, he had just gotten the green light to move ahead with this new way of awarding contracts. The effort remains in its early stages, and dates for Startup Day have not been chosen, although Roper believes the service could hold a series of Startup Days as soon as the end of this year or early 2019. The exact format is still being worked out as well: Program managers will be able to suggest precise technical problems that they'd like to see solutions for, but he'd also like to give companies the latitude to pitch their products for requirements the Air Force doesn't even know it has. Companies will submit proposals, which will be evaluated by Air Force program and contacting officials who will also analyze the company's profile — its number of employees, business type, product maturity and potential impact. But the goal is to have the actual events structured like a meeting with an angel investor, not the typical PowerPoint-laden gatherings of military officials and defense primes. “We've got to make this look more like Kickstarter than a defense industry day,” Roper said. “We may even put them on contract swiping a Square reader. We have government purchase cards that we're able to use for small purchases — up to $150k per transaction. That may be the mechanism we use because most companies that are startups, I'm going to guess, have a Paypal account.” An industry day geared specifically for start-up companies is just the latest way the Air Force is trying to harness a commercial technology boom where innovation has often been led by startups. Last year, the service announced the creation of a new organization called AFWERX that it began to help engage elements of the private sector that don't usually work with the government. However, even with AFWERX in operation, it takes the Air Force six to eight weeks to award a contract at its very fastest. And that's still too slow of a pace to enable it to work effectively with startup companies, Roper said. “There's this artificial ceiling that small companies can't reach to work with the government simply because they're too small to wait for a paycheck. If they're not on contract with us now, they've got to work with an investor fast enough to fund cash flow rates that startups need to grow,” he said. Roper doesn't expect all investments to bear fruit, but efforts like Startup Day have other advantages, he said. It gets Air Force contracting officers more comfortable with executing rapid contracts, potentially gives program managers a more effective way of spending their small business dollars and allows the service to have a voice in the kinds of technologies that cutting-edge companies develop. “I hope that will mean that every year when we do this — if it's successful, we'll do it every year—companies will have us on their radar screen and think, ‘The Air Force is a great way for us to get from being a company of five to a company of 50...and then we'll go off and become billionaires working with Amazon and Google,'” he said. “But this way they'll know us and their products and projects will have been influenced by us, hopefully for the betterment of the Air Force.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2018/09/17/air-force-aims-to-move-startups-from-pitch-to-contract-award-in-24-hours