Congressional commission calls for more nuclear arsenal expansion

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  September 24, 2018 | International, Naval, Land

  US Marine Corps kills amphibious assault vehicle upgrade program

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps has killed its Amphibious Assault Vehicle survivability upgrade program as it turns focus to the future and aligns with the new National Defense Strategy. The service executed a stop work order Aug. 27 to SAIC, which was under contract to perform survivability upgrades to the 40-plus-year-old AAV fleet to include new tracks to enhance mobility as well as increased underbelly armor, blast-mitigating seats, a new engine and transmission along with an assortment of suspension upgrades. The order “allows [SAIC] to finish the four production control modules that they were building,” Marine Corps spokesman Manny Pacheco said in a statement sent to Defense News. “They have delivered three and we expect the fourth soon. “All other work will be terminated.” SAIC has already delivered 10 AAV Engineering and Manufacturing Development versions of the vehicle to the Marines. The Marine Corps has spent approximately $125 million to date on the AAV Survivability Upgrade, or SU, program and has now identified approximately $96 million in fiscal 2019 funding that the Defense Department and Congress will have to reprioritize, according to Pacheco. The idea was to keep the vehicles alive into 2035 as the Marine Corps begins to bring online its new Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or ACV, that would slowly replace the AAVs over time. But in an effort to “better align programs with the National Defense Strategy and congressional guidance to reduce investment in legacy programs and focus buying power on modernization, the Marine Corps made the decision to divest the AAV SU program,” Pacheco said. The AAV does not “meet the needs of modern Marine amphibious forcible entry operations,” he said. “Rather than continue to invest in that vehicle that, even in upgraded form, will not provide adequate maneuverability, survivability, or ship-to-shore performance, the Marine Corps believes these funds would be better used elsewhere to support modernization initiatives across the force.” The decision was also motivated by the expected mobility and survivability demonstrated by the ACV, along with planned lethality, “which will ensure that our Marines have the firepower and survivability to succeed in the future fight,” Pacheco added. “Reinvestment decisions will be made separately and focus on increasing lethality of the force,” Pacheco explained. “AAV SU divestiture assets may allow us to procure underfunded initiatives in the AAV modification line such as Tactical Communication Modernization and a Remote Weapons Station.” The stop work order serves as another blow to SAIC, which lost in June a head-to-head competition to build the Marines' new ACV. BAE Systems was selected to build 30 low-rate initial production vehicles expected to be delivered by the fall of 2019, valued at $198 million. The total value of the contract with all options exercised is expected to amount to about $1.2 billion. But the AAV isn't likely the only program on the chopping block. Defense leadership has been saying since last year that it can't continue to invest in older systems while also focusing on new programs; they have admitted there will come a time when those legacy systems will have to be scaled back to make way for more a modernized capability. The FY20 budget documents and five-year plans from each service have been submitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and it's likely more examples of efforts to reprioritize funds from old to new platforms will emerge. The Army has already terminated the Bradley A5 upgrade program in favor of the new Next-Generation Combat Vehicle. That upgrade would have included improvements like a third-generation FLIR, a cross-platform laser pointer, color day camera and an improved laser range finder. And in the FY19 spending bill conference report, the Bradley A4 program took a $160 million hit due to a “revised acquisition strategy.” While SAIC appears to have lost out both on the ACV program and now the AAV SU effort with the Marine Corps, the company is now setting its sights — building off its experience as an effective platform integrator — on the U.S. Army's Mobile Protected Firepower program. The company, partnered with ST Kinetics and CMI Defence, will integrate CMI's Cockerill 3105 turret onto an ST Kinetics next-generation armored fighting vehicle chassis as its offering in the Mobile Protected Firepower competition that kicked off with the release of a request for proposals in November 2017. And the company is working on some efforts related to the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle as well, SAIC's CEO, Tony Moraco, told Defense News in a recent interview. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2018/09/24/us-marine-corps-kills-amphibious-assault-vehicle-upgrade-program

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  October 7, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Essor des missiles hypersoniques : l’impact stratégique

  Le Figaro, qui rappelle que la Corée du Nord a annoncé avoir testé avec succès pour la première fois un planeur « hypersonique », le 28 septembre, revient sur l'impact stratégique de l'essor des armes hypersoniques. L'« hypervélocité », c'est-à-dire la capacité de voler à plus de six fois la vitesse du son, pourrait « bouleverser les équilibres militaires », souligne le quotidien. La Russie a procédé début octobre à deux tirs d'essai de son missile de croisière hypersonique Zircon depuis un sous-marin en immersion. De leur côté, les États-Unis mènent plusieurs projets baptisés C-HGB, ARRW et HAWC. Le 27 septembre, la Darpa, l'agence de recherche de l'armée américaine, annonçait avoir réussi un vol test de son système HAWC. La Chine dispose elle aussi d'un missile de croisière supersonique, le DF-100, et d'un planeur hypersonique, le DF-17, et entend achever l'année prochaine la construction de la soufflerie JF-22, capable de simuler des vols à Mach 30. En France, un vol de démonstration du planeur hypersonique V-MAX, développé par ArianeGroup, est annoncé prochainement. Le Figaro du 7 octobre

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  October 16, 2020 | International, Land

  Soldiers to evaluate new light tank prototypes

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is preparing a soldier vehicle assessment of two different light tank prototypes for infantry brigade combat teams that will start in January 2021 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The assessment will run through June 2021, according to the service. BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems were chosen in December 2018 to each build 12 prototypes of the Army's future mobile protected firepower, or MPF, vehicle identified in the service's ground combat vehicle strategy published in 2015. The service had found the capability one the service lacks. GDLS is building a vehicle that takes the United Kingdom's AJAX chassis and combines it with an M1 Abrams tank turret. BAE Systems' design is an updated M8 Buford armored gun system with new capabilities and components. “I just had my deep dive today on the SVA [soldier vehicle assessment] with the 82nd [Airborne],” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, the Army's program executive officer for ground combat systems, told Defense News in a recent interview. Work is ongoing to prepare ranges and roads for the arrival of the prototypes, he said. The MPF is going to be critical for the infantry because it provides infantry brigade combat teams with an organic capability to take care of impediments to forward progression such as gunfire from a machine gun nest or another enemy vehicle. The Army is expected to choose a winner in 2022. The first units will get MPF in fiscal 2025. The Army plans to initially build 26 vehicles, with an option to build 28 more and retrofit eight prototypes. GDLS told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference that it has delivered three vehicles to the Army. One is at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, going through characterization and mobility testing and preparing for firing. Another is at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona, undergoing desert testing and preparing for soldier training. Five more prototypes are in “some form of checkout, getting ready for their final inspection report to deliver to the government,” a GDLS spokesperson said, and the company is on track to deliver all of the vehicles this year. BAE is looking forward to the assessment because the two prototypes are so different from one another, said Jim Miller, the company's senior business development director for combat vehicles. The BAE's offering is smaller — fitting in between the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a Stryker in terms of size — while GDLS' vehicle is bigger, as it's based on the M1 Abrams chassis. The BAE's MPF prototype can be transported via a C-130 aircraft. Three can fit on a C-17 aircraft. And even though it is small, it has the survivability of BAE's Armored Multipurpose Vehicle, Miller said. The Army is requiring the vehicle be C-17 transportable. Soldier assessments for other recent competitions have weighed heavily into decisions, Miller added. “I think the soldier vehicle assessment is going to be really important,” he said. “Did we get this right? Now which one is closer to the mark?” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2020/10/15/soldiers-to-evaluate-new-light-tank-prototypes/