Cyberdéfense : la France, «nation la plus forte dans l’Union européenne»

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  May 31, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Spanish defense contractors are itching to get a piece of FCAS

  By: Sebastian Sprenger MADRID — Spanish defense companies are chomping at the bit to get into the business of building Europe's next-generation combat aircraft, just as the government is about to formally enter the Franco-German project. While the extent of the Spanish industry participation in the Future Combat Air System program is still an open question, some of the companies at the inaugural FEINDEF defense expo in Madrid, Spain, are beginning to jockey for position. Brig Gen. Juan Pablo Sanchez de Lara, chief of the Spanish Air Force's plans division, told reporters at the expo that industrial cooperation is “essential for us.” “We are not new in the business,” he said. “Of course Spanish companies are very keen to participate.” Airbus, for example, which is already a prime contractor besides Dassault from France, is looking to bring into play its local work with the Spanish Air Force for the cockpit design of the future fighter aircraft. The Spanish air service presented an Airbus-made cockpit prototype — part futuristic lab, part test bed for additional design work — at its booth, pitching it as a contender for the FCAS program. The setup features a large, panoramic screen similar to that in the F-35, sprinkling in some traditional controls beside the pilot. Officials said the cockpit is the result of previous concept work, concluding that fusing information and commanding nearby drones, for example, are key requirements. Tests are ongoing based on operational vignettes crafted by the Air Force to see how pilots handle workload, stress and the torrent of information thrown at them during flight. When the first FCAS aircraft takes to the skies around 2040, “the scenarios will be more complex,” Ignacio de Castro Vidal, Airbus Defence and Space future capabilities program manager at the defense giant's Madrid location, predicted in an interview with Defense News. That is a reference to the expectation that warfare itself will be more complicated, but it's also an acknowledgment that the program is designed with so much networked technology that the task of flying the aircraft must be kept manageable. To increase the ease of use for pilots, the company plans to lean heavily on voice commands to operate the aircraft's systems, de Castro Vidal said. Spanish electronics specialist Indra is also eyeing work on elements of the next-gen fighter aircraft. “Indra is the second provider of avionic systems for the Eurofighter,” Pedro Barco, the company's director of platforms, wrote in a statement to Defense News. “The experience gained in this project allows us to play a key role as integrator of the system of systems for the FCAS. “In particular, we have a strong experience in electronic warfare systems, voice and data communications, and radar detection and identification systems.” Eurofighter Typhoon-maker Airbus has pitched upgraded versions of that jet as a gap filler until the new aircraft is developed and built, saying that the planned upgrades would serve as something of a sandbox to try new air warfare concepts. Spain and Germany fly that aircraft, while France has the Rafale. As for engines, ITP Aero, based north of Madrid, hopes to share development work with France's Safran and Germany's MTU. “ITP is looking forward to the next step of the program, and we want to be a part of it from the beginning,” Marta Gimeno Garcia-Andrade, director of the company's defense business unit, told Defense News. She said a key area of expertise for ITP Aero lies in low-pressure turbines and movable, “thrust-vectoring” nozzles. Several Spanish defense executives at the FEINDEF expo said expect Spain's formal integration into FCAS to take place at the Paris Air Show in mid-June. Officials in Germany, however, said earlier this week the exact sequence of extending the program's framework agreement to include Madrid was still in flux. That is because the German parliament has yet to greenlight funding for an ongoing study contract and because legal issues with the agreement text may not be fully sorted out in time. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/05/30/spanish-defense-contractors-are-itching-to-get-a-piece-of-fcas/

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  March 12, 2019 | International, Land

  The US Army is preparing for major changes to force structure

  By: Jen Judson Update: This story has been updated to reflect Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley's correct title. WASHINGTON — The Army is preparing to make what it deems as necessary, and major, organizational changes to its force structure within the next five years, according to the Futures and Concepts Center director. “There is going to be a fundamental change in the organizational structure to fight the way we are describing,” Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley told an audience at the Center for a New American Security in Washington on March 4. “The Army has relied on counterinsurgency operations over the past 15 years that depended greatly on the Brigade Combat Team. But now, with a new focus on large-scale ground combat operations anticipated in the future operating environment, “that will require echelons above brigade, all of which will solve unique and distinct problems that a given BCT can't solve by itself,” Wesley said. A new organizational structure is necessary, according to Wesley, to align better with the service's new warfighting doctrine under development — Multidomain Operations or MDO. The Army rolled out the first iteration of its new doctrine over a year ago and debuted a revised version — MDO 1.5 — shortly after the Association of the U.S. Army's annual convention in Washington last fall. The new doctrine addresses how the service plans to operate in the future against adversaries that have learned to engage in provocative behavior in a gray zone that doesn't quite classify as conflict, and who have gone to school on U.S. capabilities, developing equipment and operating concepts that threaten the U.S.'s long-standing capability overmatch. The Army is now focused on ensuring that its capabilities match its new doctrine, standing up a new four-star command in Austin, Texas — Army Futures Command — to accomplish such a goal and syncing its other major commands together to focus on six top modernization priorities. Wesley noted that the organizational realignment needed would “probably be even a bigger problem than the materiel requirements" to create a force designed for multidomain operations. “You will see us seek to build out echelons above brigade — the Division, the Corps, even potentially a field Army — to get into theater that can manage these theater problems that otherwise wouldn't be achieved,” he added. The Army will likely have to make trades across the active and reserve forces, Wesley said, “so we have the ability to have a force posture that can rapidly transition if necessary.” But with all of these other dramatic changes, it's inevitable that the force structure change with it, according to Wesley, and that is going to have to happen sooner rather than later, he stressed. The Army has to “dive in” and start putting plans in place in the next five-year budgeting cycle “because if you want to achieve what the secretary and the chief has said, to be an MDO capable force by 2028, you have to start doing some of these organizational changes early,” Wesley told a group of reporters following the event at CNAS. And organizational changes need to align with the service's plans to field first units with newly modernized equipment and in some cases, units are slated to receive this equipment in very short order, according to Wesley. “You need some place for that stuff to land,” he said. “When you talk about long-range precision fires, for example, having an appropriate theater fires command. When you talk about air-and-missile defense and first unit equipped, what kind of force structure do we have to enable that? And it can't just be at the brigade level ... It has to transcend echelons.” Wesley said while he couldn't discuss specifics yet, he believed evidence of major organizational changes will likely be seen toward the end of the next five-year budget period. The three-star also said he believed the Army would need to increase the level of units stationed abroad. “The National Defense Strategy talks about the contact and blunt forces,” Wesley said. “Contact are those that are in theater all the time — either rotational or permanent — and blunt [forces] are those that can rapidly move into theater as necessary.” Getting the right mix between contact and blunt forces will be necessary, Wesley said. "You have to have contact forces. What we are working on is how to optimize what that balance is. You have to have headquarters and fires commands and that can be a deterrent effect immediately.” Over the next few years, the Army plans to war-game the right mix, but “regardless, I think you are going to find that at some point there will have to be a debate on the degree to which we have forward presence, potentially increased, in the future,” Wesley said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/03/06/major-army-force-structure-changes-afoot/

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  February 1, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Un rapport critique l’absence de solidarité européenne en termes de défense

  Le rapport d'information sur la Coopération structurée permanente (CSP) des deux députées Natalia Pouzyreff (LREM) et Michèle Tabarot (LR) critique les insuffisances de cette structure, censée mutualiser les moyens de la défense européenne. La France reste le pays le plus actif, à l'inverse de nombreux pays, et beaucoup d'Etats-membres font encore trop souvent appel aux Etats-Unis pour leur équipement militaire, au détriment des entreprises européennes. « L'implication des États-membres dans les projets est très variable, reflet pour l'essentiel de capacités militaires très différentes. La France participe ainsi à 38 projets, coordonnant 10 d'entre eux. C'est le pays le plus actif, écrivent les auteures du rapport. Tous les États-membres ne sont pas aussi impliqués dans la CSP que la France et nombre d'entre eux, notamment l'Allemagne, ne la voit pas comme une priorité. C'est le cas également des pays d'Europe de l'Est pour lesquels la priorité en matière de défense est et restera l'OTAN ». Par ailleurs, poursuivent les deux députées, « il apparaît que, pour de nombreux États-membres, l'augmentation des budgets de défense ait surtout été utilisée pour acquérir des armements auprès d'entreprises américaines, qui sont les concurrentes directes des entreprises européennes de défense, au point que l'Europe représente 53% des exportations d'armes américaines (2018) ». La Tribune du 1er février 2021