Fincantieri: contract signed for the supply of two PPAs to Indonesia

On the same subject

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  March 30, 2023 | International, Aerospace

  F-35 upgrades slip to 2024, drawing lawmaker’s ire

  “We currently are paying for a great capability, but we’re currently only getting a good capability fielded,” subcommittee chairman Rep. Rob Wittman said.

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  June 2, 2020 | International, Naval

  Pandemic Hits Navy’s New Nuke Submarine Program

  Work on the missile tubes for the Navy's part of the nation's nuclear triad is months behind schedule after Babcock was smacked hard by the pandemic. By PAUL MCLEARYon June 01, 2020 at 5:23 PM WASHINGTON: The Navy's top priority — its new nuclear-powered Columbia-class submarine — has been struck by the COVID-19 virus. Workers' absences at a critical supplier have delayed construction and welding of the boat's missile tubes by several months a senior Navy official said today, and the service is scrambling to make that time up. While the service and its contractors are looking for ways to reclaim that time, the situation is something that Navy and Pentagon officials have most feared. Large-scale work on the first of the twelve planned Columbia submarines is slated to kick off in 2021, with deliveries starting 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 warheads allowed by the New Start treaty with Russia. Head of the Columbia program, Rear Adm. Scott Pappano, said during a video conference sponsored by the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance today that the work experienced “a hiccup” earlier this year when less than 30 percent of workers at UK-based Babcock Marine showed up for work during the height of the COVID outbreak, leading to setbacks in the work schedule. “There was an interruption in our ability to do work,” Pappano said, calling the delay of several months a “worst case” scenario that would stick if no actions were taken to speed up work going forward. “We're analyzing the plan right now,” he added. “Prioritizing what tubes go where and then coming up with mid-term and long-term recovery plans to go deal with that.” Pappano said the Navy and industry may hire more workers and bring in more vendors to buy that time back. The missile tubes have already caused the service some pain. In 2018, contractor BWX, contracted to deliver three tubes to Electric Boat, discovered problems before the tubes were delivered, eventually paying $27 million to fix the problems. The company later said it is considering getting out of the missile tube business with the Navy, leaving BAE Systems as the only US-based company capable of doing the work. The Navy is walking a tightrope on its Virginia and Columbia programs, and any slip on one program will affect the other. The two share the same missile tube design, which will also be fitted onto the UK's forthcoming Dreadnaught class of submarines. “One of the biggest risks to Columbia is if Virginia gets out of its cadence,” James Geurts, the Navy's acquisition chief, told reporters late last year. Once the Columbia subs begin rolling out of Electric Boat's shipyard, the Navy will have to produce one Columbia and two Virginias per year, a pace of submarine building the service has not seen in decades. But Columbia will remain the Navy's top focus. Geurts said he's structured both programs in a way that the shared supplier base is aware of what's needed well in advance, but “if not, we can back off a little to make sure Columbia is successful.” Despite the setback, Babcock's workforce has recovered in recent weeks, “and essentially they're above 90% capacity” on the production line, Pappano said. “So my assessment is they're essentially back up — or close to it — not where they were before” the virus struck. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/covid-19-hits-navys-newest-nuke-submarine-program/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2006.02.20&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief

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  October 9, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  US Army capabilities integration chief talks multidomain ops

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley is the new Army Capabilities Integration Center director and the first director to guide the center's efforts under the purview of the brand-new Army Futures Command, as opposed to Training and Doctrine Command, where the center lived since its inception. ARCIC will be responsible for the development of future operational and war-fighting concepts that align and inform the service's major modernization priorities that Futures Command is tasked to develop in a new and rapid way. In an unprecedented method, concept and capability development will be formed in parallel. In a wide-ranging interview with Defense News, Wesley discussed how the Army is evolving its major operational concept — Multidomain Operations 1.5 — and how ARCIC will continue to align modernization strategy with the concept as the Army heads toward a fully modernized force by 2028 — one that can provide overmatch against peer adversaries. When are you coming out with the new version of the Army's Multidomain Operations concept (MDO 1.5)? Will it be at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference? We're teasing it out. What we're going to do is deliver all of the principles and tenets of this new concept, and then you'll see the signed version within 30 days of that. Why is getting the MDO concept right so critical? I'll say upfront this is the most fundamental rewrite of an operational concept since AirLand Battle that was published in 1982. Concepts are critical, particularly at a point in time when you see the world's dynamics fundamentally shift in a way that you've got to, in many ways, reconfigure or redesign and modernize your army. What has changed in the world that requires multidomain operations? I'd say there are a number of things. But if there's a word that you want to remember in terms of identifying the challenges we face within the pacing threats, it is the word “standoff.” And what [our adversaries] have invested in are things that mitigate against the United States and our partners and allies' strengths. We're very good at close combat, and they've watched us over the last 30 years or so. And when you give the United States and our coalition partners and allies time to build up against it, usually the outcome is preordained based on ability to get into position and conduct operations the way we like to conduct them. So recognizing that, they've invested in what we oftentimes refer to as anti-access, area denial capabilities, which serendipitously came parallel with our withdrawal from the continent of Europe and the Korean Peninsula over the last 30 years. Fll article: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/us-army-capabilities-integration-chief-talks-multidomain-ops