Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - June 10, 2019

On the same subject

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  December 5, 2023 | International, C4ISR

  Hensoldt acquires ESG Elektroniksystem in $728 million deal

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  April 24, 2020 | International, Land

  COVID-19 Won’t Slow New Army Weapons: McCarthy, Murray, Jette

  While some prototype deliveries and field tests are being delayed, Army leaders said, there's enough slack in the schedule that combat units will still get the new tech on time. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on April 23, 2020 at 2:40 PM WASHINGTON: The Army and its contractors are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic so well that the service expects no delay in the fielding of future weapons, the Army Secretary and his two top modernization officials told reporters today. The “rigorous” review of acquisition programs for the 2022 budget request is also still on schedule, Sec. Ryan McCarthy said. “It's just amazing how quickly they've adapted, kept their workforce engaged, and are protecting cost, schedule, and performance on these weapons systems,” said McCarthy, recently returned from a visit to BAE and General Dynamics facilities in Detroit. “Also I'm very proud of Dr. Jette's and Gen. Murray's performance during this crisis, working on things like progress payments for manufacturers, trying to help them get access to small business loans, the managing of second- and third-tier suppliers.” “Right now, all the companies that were closed for any period of time are reopened,” said Assistant Secretary Bruce Jette, the service's civilian acquisition chief. One BAE worker was infected, resulting in a week-long shutdown of a combat vehicle assembly line – you can't weld armor plate over your telephone, Jette noted – but the company has now restarted production with new precautions in place. The company and the union have agreed to give up their traditional week-long shutdown for summer vacation to catch up. The Boeing CH-47 helicopter plant in Philadelphia also shut down for 10 days, Jette reported, but they're back up and running as well. He's most worried about smaller subcontractors, where a single COVID-19 case can force the entire workforce to be quarantined for 14 days, so he's tracking that closely. “I keep track on a daily basis of 63 pages of supply chain [data],” Jette said. “Our industry partners have been really good about opening their books all the way down to their sub-suppliers and keeping us well-informed — they contractually don't have to do that but they have.” Some deliveries of prototypes have been delayed, said Gen. John “Mike” Murray, chief of Army Futures Command. But, so far, those delays are measured in weeks and there's sufficient slack in schedules to catch up later this year, he said, which means programs will proceed to production and fielding on time. What's particularly tricky for the Army is that, after decades of dumping “good ideas” on soldiers only to find they didn't actually work, it's now systematically letting soldiers try out prototypes hands-on. These soldier touchpoints require troops to work together in the field, often side-by-side with contractors who record their feedback and make some fixes on the spot. That's difficult given pandemic precautions – but not impossible. Other types of testing allow a little more social distance, and work from engineering design to budget reviews can take place entirely online. Gen. Murray gave a rundown of key programs: The next flight test of Lockheed Martin's Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) will take place as scheduled on April 30th, Gen. Murray said. “I'm very confident,” he declared, to the point he's already planned his flight to go observe. On the other hand, the third big soldier touchpoint test for the IVAS targeting goggles, scheduled for this summer, has been delayed to the fall. That's not just because of social distancing, Murray said, but also because a Microsoft subcontractor ran into COVID-19 problems (they'll be back in operation this week). Because this would have been the first test of a fully militarized and ruggedized “form factor” of IVAS, which began life as a modified Microsoft HoloLens, it's too important to cut corners, he said. The program will be able to make up the lost time and deliver the final production version to troops on schedule, he said. There's been a six week delay in delivery of the three competiting prototypes for Next Generation Squad Weapon, meant to replace the M249 SAW. Once the weapons arrive, however, the Army will now get them into soldiers' hands in just two weeks, a month faster than originally planned, making up for most of that lost time. Field-testing of one contender for the new FTUAS drone is already underway at Fort Riley, as we've previously reported. Testing of another drone design at Fort Campbell is “a little bit delayed,” Murray said, but should start by the end of the month. The Limited User Test of the IBCS missile defense network has been postponed (again, as we've reported). But the equipment remains in place at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Murray said, software updates continue, and the soldiers who spent months training to operate it will be back to do the test “this summer or early fall.” (The Army also previously announced it would postpone field tests of promising new Robotic Combat Vehicles). “In general,” Jette said, “we don't see any FUEs changing”: That's military jargon for “First Unit Equipped,” the crucial moment when enough of a weapon has been built to equip a significant combat unit. “We are tracking each program,” Jette said, not just the service's top priorities “but all of our over 600 programs, [and] none of them are at risk” of a delay so severe they can't recover. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/covid-19-wont-slow-new-army-weapons-mccarthy-murray-jette/

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  April 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  UK hits pause on defense review due to coronavirus

  By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — The British government has hit the pause button on its integrated defense review as it pours its efforts into battling the coronavirus crisis, Cabinet Office officials have told the parliamentary Defence Committee. “The Cabinet Office has informed the defence select committee that work on the integrated review has been formally paused across Whitehall,” the committee announced April 15. Committee chair Tobias Ellwood said in a statement that the move by the Cabinet Office, the department leading the review, was the right move to take given the crisis. “There would be no point in conducting an in-depth review of the nation's defence and security challenges to an artificial deadline, especially at a time when Whitehall is rightly focusing on tackling conronavirus,” Ellwood said. The recently appointed Defence Committee chair said that when the review restarts it will have to do so “with the added consequences of the pandemic to be considered.” A spokesperson for the Defence Committee said the Cabinet Office had not given any indication as to when it might start to ramp up the review effort again. However, two sources tell Defense News that the review could go on ice for up to a year. In a letter announcing the pause, deputy national security adviser Alex Ellis said that while the review was on hold, the government would be retaining a “small core capacity to think about the long-term effects of COVID-19 and issues expected to be covered in the Integrated Review." This team will be very limited in size and function, he added. The Ministry of Defence already faced mounting budget problems before the pandemic struck. Now, the massive economic crisis facing the British government makes it highly unlikely any additional cash will be found for defense, despite the prominent role the military is playing here combating the virus. The review was initiated immediately following Boris Johnson's election as prime minister in early December. Johnson promised it would be the most fundamental review of its kind since the end of the Cold War. Defense, security, foreign policy and international development strategy were to all be part of the effort. The review was scheduled by the government to be completed by July, a timescale the Defence Committee, analysts, lawmakers and others all said was too quick. Johnson first signaled his intention to slow down work on the review in a letter to Ellwood and two other committee chair dated March 24. “We have diverted resources from across Government and the Civil Service to work on COVID-19, scaling back efforts on the Integrated Review,” Johnson said at the time. Quizzed last month by parliamentarians about a possible delay to the review, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the government was open-minded about putting the work on hold. “There is no ideological block or determination to carry on come what may," Wallace said then. “With this coronavirus growing, if it is the right thing to do, we will absolutely pause the review if necessary; if not, we shall move forward.” Jon Louth, an independent defense analyst, believes the government may have to start the review process over again, given the changing circumstances. “I think we are close to going back to square one, if the budget settlement for defense is to be unpicked and secured as part of a late Autumn or Spring [2021] government-wide spending review,” he said. “Who could have any confidence in what the defense equipment program funding settlement would actually be? It could involve unpacking current contracts, but also unpick some of the ambition we have in terms of new things. “What we have and what we would like are going to be colored by a budget settlement smaller than people were anticipating; in fact, quite substantially smaller. Whether that means the MoD starts to think about reprofiling things to the right or really starts taking strategic choices, we will have to wait and see,” added Louth, who until recently was a senior analyst at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/04/15/uk-hits-pause-on-defense-review-due-to-coronavirus/