Finnish officials begin sifting through final HX fighter offers

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  October 21, 2023 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR

  The fight in Gaza will be hell, military experts in urban combat say

  A ground offensive in Gaza promises to be long, brutal and costly.

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  April 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Lockheed looks to sell additional F-16s to customers in Africa, Asia and South America

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin anticipates another wave of international F-16 sales, with countries from Africa, South America and Southeast Asia among those interested in purchasing the jet, the company's chief financial officer said Tuesday. “I think this is a good fourth-generation aircraft for those customers that can't afford the F-35 or, frankly, can't at this time buy the F-35,” Lockheed CFO Kenneth Possenriede told investors during an April 21 earnings call. “It might be a good intermediary step for customers to go from the F-16 to F-35. So we see it frankly as complementary and not competing against themselves.” Unlike the F-35 program, which is seeing disruption within its supply chain that could delay future deliveries, the F-16 production line has experienced little impact as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Possenriede said. The company moved production of the F-16 production line from Fort Worth, Texas, to Greenville, South Carolina, in 2019 to accommodate production of 16 Block 70 aircraft for Bahrain. Since Bahrain's order in 2018, Lockheed has garnered contracts for eight F-16s for Bulgaria, 14 aircraft for Slovakia, and is working with the U.S. government on a sale of 66 jets for Taiwan. “We also have a couple of orders for F-16 that we're working to try to shape,” Possenriede said. “There is an African country that is interested in F-16, so we're hopeful that will happen. [There is also a] South American country, and then there are some Southeast Asian countries that are interested in F-16 as well.” Possenriede didn't detail which nations were considering purchases of the F-16, as defense companies typically wait until international militaries publicly declare their interest in a sale before talking about specific customers. Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group, said there's a “pretty good chance” that some of those orders materialize. “Lockheed was doing a disservice by forgetting the F-16 program for so many years. They had this idea that the future was F-35 and nothing but F-35, ignoring the part of the market that is not prepared to buy the F-35 price tag,” he said. “It's actually a really good franchise with a really solid core market. It seems ill-advised to neglect it.” If a new customer in Africa is looking to buy F-16s, it could be Botswana, which has indicated an interest in buying fighter jets, Aboulafia said. Lockheed has already sold F-16s to Morocco and Egypt, and the U.S. State Department in 2019 cleared Morocco for new F-16s and upgrades. In South America, Lockheed has been trying to sell F-16s to Argentina for years, but Aboulafia believes a second order for Chile is a more likely prospect. In Southeast Asia, a sale to Indonesia “would seem to be one of the most likely possibilities,” he added. https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2020/04/22/lockheed-looking-to-sell-additional-f-16s-to-customers-in-africa-south-america/

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  December 9, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Germany in talks with Lockheed Martin over ‘fragile’ missile defense program

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany – German defense officials are negotiating with contractors Lockheed Martin and MBDA Deutschland about a bid proposal for a next-generation antimissile program that the government believes is missing crucial components, according to a new defense ministry report. Information about the status of the high-profile TLVS program, short for Taktisches Luftverteidigungssystem, is included in the latest, unclassified portion of a biannual assessment by the defense ministry on the progress of key military acquisition programs. The document constitutes the defense ministry's first public evaluation of the U.S.-German industry consortium's second and final bid, submitted in June. “The analysis of the second offer shows that the proposal still falls short of the government's requirements because key elements and services were not included, some of which had been previously agreed,” the document states. Additionally, some performance requirements, which are left unexplained in the report, were not addressed in the industry bid, it adds. Talks with the companies are ongoing to clarify outstanding issues by the end of 2019, the defense ministry wrote. Overall, the government considers the program to be “fragile” based on a high degree of technological and managerial complexity. That is compared to a more upbeat assessment in the previous report, dated June, which found “significant progress” had been made over the previous six months. The defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment on what elements the Lockheed Martin-MBDA proposal was lacking. A Lockheed spokesman referred questions to the German government, writing in an email, “It is a matter for the German MoD to comment on the content of its latest project report and position relating to TLVS.” The report offers an explanation for why defense officials have been unable to articulate a time table for submitting the multibillion-dollar program to the German parliament for consideration. For one, the government must first wait for a foreign military sales process to play out with the United States over access to key performance data of the Lockheed-made PAC-3 MSE interceptor, the primary missile of the TLVS system. Germany launched the petition for the requisite goods and services in April 2019. In addition, officials are unable to formulate a path for integrating a secondary interceptor into the system, the IRIS-T SL, to be made by Germany's Diehl Defence, officials wrote. That is because the most recent Lockheed-MBDA proposal lacks the detailed interface documentation that would be needed to integrate such an interceptor into TLVS. Without that information, however, officials are unable to solicit a bid from Diehl, according to the report. German officials consider the ability to use IRIS-T missile a must-have for TLVS because those missiles are domestically made and because they are cheaper. Amid the runaway program complexity giving officials headaches, the government still appears to believe in the promise of the TLVS system as a replacement of the country's fleet of Patriot batteries. If it can be made to work, the military expects a “technological advantage” that will position the country as a NATO leader in missile defense, the report states. Officials will make decisions about the way ahead after ongoing talks with industry come to an end, it adds. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/12/06/germany-in-talks-with-lockheed-martin-over-fragile-missile-defense-program