Contracts for June 29, 2021

On the same subject

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  December 11, 2024 | International, Aerospace

  Space Force’s first Silent Barker satellites to go live in early 2025

  The Space Force expects the space domain awareness satellites to be fully operational by 2026.

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  August 10, 2020 | International, Naval

  Major Submarine Contractor Drops Navy Missile Tube Biz

  The disclosure comes as the Pentagon has been looking for ways to backstop key parts of its industrial base as supply chains slowed due to the COVID epidemic. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: One of the Navy's primary suppliers of missile tubes for its nuclear submarines is planning to walk away from the military business, a move that will drop the number of domestic companies capable of doing the work to two at a time when the service is in a scramble to ramp up its sub-building efforts. BWX Technologies President Rex Geveden says that the company is “not likely to pursue” any more Navy business and will repurpose a factory in Indiana that makes the components once the next set of deliveries of missile tubes wrap up in 2022. The Navy work “just doesn't have the margin profile that we want to see in the business,” Geveden said in a Tuesday investor call. BWX was slated to build the missile tubes for the new Columbia subs, but prime contractor Electric Boat says it has options to replace the company in coming years. The company “works with multiple suppliers to ensure we can meet the Navy's schedule requirements on these important programs,” a spokesperson emailed. “These are Babcock Marine, BAE Systems, Precision Custom Components and BWX Technologies. BWX Technologies will complete all currently contracted work for EB by 2022.” This comes as the Pentagon has been looking for ways to bolster key parts of its industrial base as communities shut down and workers are told not to report to work or take time off, due to the COVID epidemic. In a call with reporters late last month, Navy acquisition chief James Geurts acknowledged that the service is deeply worried that such closures and slowdowns could have wide-ranging impacts on shipbuilding. “I am absolutely interested in ensuring that we don't lose large chunks of the industrial base,” he said. “Restarting an industrial base that you lose is really hard, really painful, and takes a long time. We are absolutely focused on ensuring we do not lose an industrial base because we don't have the time or resources to re-generate it later when we need it.” The winnowing of such a key part of the industrial base will place more pressure on the handful of other companies who can do this sort of work, something to which Pentagon leadership is particularly sensitive. Overall, the Navy plans to buy 12 Columbia-class submarines between 2021 and 2035, with 10 of those coming 2026 and after. In the near-term, it plans two Virginia-class subs per year between 2021 and 2026, meaning shipyards will have to pump out two to four submarines a year in the mid-2020s. The new Columbia submarines will begin being delivered to the Navy in 2030, just in time to begin replacing the Cold War-era Ohio-class subs as the Navy's leg of the nation's nuclear triad. The subs will carry 70 percent of the nation's stockpile of warheads allowed by the New Start treaty with Russia. Falling in to replace the Ohio's on time would be a critical failure for the nation's nuclear triad, as the aging ships will have next to no life left in them by the end of the decade, and leaving the sea leg of the nuclear enterprise in some jeopardy. Babcock Marine is a UK-based company, but does work on some components that are used for both the Columbia program and the UK's Dreadnaught submarines, which shares similar missile tubes with the Columbia effort. In 2018, Virginia-based BWX was forced to pay $27 million to fix welding problems on the Columbia tubes, after issues were found on a total of 44 tubes. So far, 21 of those have been fixed and 11 delivered to the Navy. Navy officials have closely tied the modernizing of the current Virginia-class subs with the building of new Columbia's, warning that since they share a base of companies who can make precision parts for nuclear-powered submarines. So any problem with one program will have knock-on effects to the other. Geurts and others have said the Navy would prioritize the health of the Columbia effort over Virginia if they had to. If the House of Representatives gets its way, however, billions more will flow into the Virginia program than the White House has called for. Last week, the House voted to fund the construction of a second Virginia-class submarine in the 2021 budget request, after the White House dropped the planned buy to one submarine in its submission. The push was led by Rep. Joe Courtney, chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee who represents the Connecticut district that's home to Electric Boat. The bill now includes $6.8 billion to produce two Virginia-class attack submarines, approximately $2.5 billion more than the White House's own request, and $2.2 billion more than the Senate's. “The budget request we received from the White House flew in the face of testimony that we've heard from Navy leaders, experts, and combatant commanders,” Courtney said in a statement. “It requested the fewest ships in over a decade, and it eliminated construction of the second Virginia-class submarine in 2021—a vessel that the Navy quickly listed as its most important unfunded priority in 2021.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/major-submarine-contractor-drops-navy-missile-tube-biz

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  September 22, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  How Relativity Space plans to win the Pentagon’s launch contracts

  Nathan Strout Relativity Space wants to be the first company to launch an entirely 3D-printed rocket into orbit and it wants the Pentagon as a customer. While the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench into plans, a growing number of companies are looking to provide small and medium launch services to the U.S. government. The establishment of the U.S. Space Force, Space Development Agency and U.S. Space Command in 2019 signaled the Pentagon's ambitious plans for launching more payloads into space, and providing a vehicle for just a portion of those launches would prove lucrative to any company. For Vice President of Business Development and Government Affairs Josh Brost, Relativity Space stands out from the competition, bringing disruptive 3D printing technology to bear on the small launch sector. Prior to joining Relativity, he worked at SpaceX for nine years, where he was responsible for the company's government sales. Even as the company works toward the launch of its first Terran One rocket in fall 2021, Relativity has worked to secure contracts in the commercial world. In June, the company announced it had secured a deal with Iridium Communications for six dedicated launches to low Earth orbit, with the first launch taking place no earlier than 2023. That same month, Relativity also announced a Right of Entry Agreement with the 30th Space Wing for development of rocket launch facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Recently, Brost and Relativity Space co-founder and CEO Tim Ellis spoke with C4ISRNET about how the company plans to win launch contracts with the U.S. government. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/09/21/how-relativity-space-plans-to-win-the-pentagons-launch-contracts/