First European-Built F-35 For The Netherlands Presented

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  May 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Proposed rule banning Chinese tech needs to consider small contractors, senators warn

  Andrew Eversden Two U.S. senators called on the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that federal regulation banning the government's use of Chinese telecommunications technology include “explicit processes” to help small businesses with compliance. In a May 4 letter sent to acting OMB Director Russ Vought, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked Vought to carefully consider to the needs of small businesses while the agency reviews a proposed rule. The senators' concern is in response to a proposed rule under review by OMB implementing Section 889(a)(1)(B) of the fiscal 2019 defense policy law — a provision that bans federal agencies from procuring or doing business with companies using “covered telecommunications equipment or services" in an effort to block Chinese tech companies like Huawei and ZTE from entering the U.S. government's supply chain. Rubio and Cardin are the top two senators on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. According to the letter, OMB is currently reviewing the draft proposed rule, statutorily required to be implemented Aug. 13. Because smaller companies don't have access to the same resources as larger suppliers, they may need “more assistance and time,” the senators wrote. The pair called the guidance for small businesses “vita,l” given that small businesses make up about one-quarter of federal procurement, worth $120 billion. “By providing these small firms with a clear path toward compliance and a reasonable time frame, we believe that the goal of securing the United States supply chain will be better achieved,” Rubio and Cardin wrote. Outside interest groups representing federal contractors have also pushed Congress to delay the implementation of Part B of Section 889. In a joint letter in late March, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Professional Services Council asked Congress to delay the Aug. 13 date to February 2021. They also cited the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as reason for a delay. “Part B will impose significant financial and operational costs on medium and small-sized firms at a moment of substantial uncertainty and hardship. While we agree that Part B addresses a significant problem in defense supply chains, and that additional measures are needed to protect [Department of Defense] information assets from covered equipment, COVID-19 has made the current implementation timeline infeasible,” the groups wrote. The United States government alleges that Huawei's 5G technology allows for Chinese government espionage and poses a threat to national security. Senior U.S. officials have traveled the globe, urging allies not to include Huawei's technology in their 5G networks. But the effort has been largely unsuccessful, particularly after the United Kingdom announced in January it would allow Huawei to build noncritical pieces of its 5G network. That decision was met with scorn by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Still, Rubio and Cardin warned that OMB needs to produce the regulation cautiously and carefully. “We are concerned that if the regulatory implementation language fails to adequately consider small businesses, this process could not only result in an ineffective implementation of the prohibition, but also be both harmful and costly to thousands of small federal contractors,” they wrote. https://www.fifthdomain.com/congress/capitol-hill/2020/05/05/proposed-rule-banning-chinese-tech-needs-to-consider-small-contractors-senators-warn/

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  January 21, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  US Air Force’s plan to launch light-attack aircraft competition is now deferred indefinitely

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The start of a competition to provide light-attack aircraft for the U.S. Air Force has been postponed for the foreseeable future, as the service decides the way forward for additional experiments, the Air Force's No. 2 civilian said Friday. The Air Force started evaluating light-attack plane offerings in 2017 and was set to release a request for proposals in December 2018 to potentially lead to a program of record. But the service is not ready to commit to a program just yet, and wants to continue the experimentation phase, Under Secretary of the Air Force Matt Donovan told reporters after an Air Force Association event. "We're going to broaden the scope a little bit,” he said, potentially alluding for the possibility of new aircraft types to enter the competition. Asked if this meant the two aircraft positioned by the Air Force as potential contenders for a contract — the Sierra Nevada Corp.-Embraer A-29 Super Tucano, and the Textron AT-6 Wolverine — were no longer in the running, Donovan responded: “We're not excluding anything.” The Air Force's decision is a somewhat surprising one. The light-attack experiment began with four aircraft involved in flight tests at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico: the A-29 and AT-6, but also Textron's Scorpion jet and L3's AT-802L Longsword. The AT-6 and A-29 moved onto the second phase of experiments in 2018, which were mostly centered around the planes' maintainability and network capability. When the Air Force put out a draft RFP later that year, the solicitation stated that Textron and the SNC-Embraer partnership were “the only firms that appear to possess the capability necessary to meet the requirement within the Air Force's time frame without causing an unacceptable delay in meeting the needs of the warfighter.” If the Air Force is considering alternative aircraft, it's unclear what requirements are driving that search or whether a new entrant has caught the service's eye. Some foreign companies, namely South Africa's Paramount Group and Czech aerospace firm Aero Vodochody, have expressed interest in competing for U.S. light-attack aircraft contracts. And it's possible the T-X trainer jet, for which the Air Force chose Boeing to build, could be modified for a light-attack role. But for the last six months, Air Force acquisition officials have firmly suggested the A-29 or AT-6 would be the only options under consideration going forward. “The whole way we got to where we're at, we put out an invitation to participate, and we only had two that met all of the criteria that we were looking for,” Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service's top uniformed acquisition official, said in July. “We experimented with those, and they performed well enough that we did another phase, and those are the only two that we invited in [for phase two]. So at this point right now I'm seeing it as a competition between two airplanes.” If the Air Force is seeking more data from the current entrants or wants to conduct further demonstrations, the exact nature of those future experiments are also unclear — though Donovan said more information about the path forward would be released this year. Although Friday's announcement doesn't shut a door on the light-attack aircraft program, it does highlight the difficulties of rapid acquisition. In 2016, Gen. Mike Holmes, then the Headquarters U.S. Air Force's top requirements official and now the head of Air Combat Command, spoke with Defense News about the prospect of dedicating funds to flight test a range of off-the-shelf light-attack planes. The thought was that buying a low-cost, easy-to-maintain aircraft could effectively accomplish low-end missions in the Middle East at a lower expense than other Air Force planes, and that buying several hundred of such aircraft could also help the service absorb and train more pilots. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein repeatedly spoke about seeing a potential light-attack aircraft program as a way to increase interoperability with air forces that couldn't afford an F-15 or F-16, but who would benefit from commonality with American-operated platforms. More than two years later, Donovan said the Air Force is still learning, and hinted that perhaps there was not enough buy-in among international partners. “Did we meet the cost targets that we're aiming for? What's the market out there for coalition partners? Are there a lot of folks interested in that, or is there something else?” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/01/18/the-air-forces-plans-to-begin-a-light-attack-aircraft-competition-are-now-deferred-indefinitely/

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  March 30, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  La hausse des budgets de défense en Europe pourrait profiter à l'économie française

  DÉFENSE La hausse des budgets de défense en Europe pourrait profiter à l'économie française Selon le cabinet de conseil indépendant Asterès, « si l'Union européenne (hors France) portait ses dépenses militaires à 2% du PIB, il en résulterait pour l'économie française la création de 60 000 emplois, 5,2 Md€ de valeur ajoutée et plus de 1,6 Md€ de recettes sociales et fiscales (effet directs, indirects, induits et en chaîne sur une durée de quatre ans ». Alors que les pays de l'UE (hors France) consacrent globalement 1,5% de leurs PIB aux dépenses militaires, l'Allemagne, la Suède et le Danemark ont déjà annoncé vouloir moderniser et renforcer leurs armées. Selon Asterès, « la hausse des dépenses militaires de l'UE (hors France) de 1,5% à 2% du PIB représenterait une impulsion budgétaire nette de 0,5% du PIB ». Le cabinet estime que les dépenses militaires se divisent pour moitié en salaire et pour moitié en achat de matériels. Les effets positifs sur l'économie française seraient générés par une hausse des exportations d'armement en Europe en raison de l'augmentation des dépenses militaires de l'ensemble des autres pays de l'UE. Une telle hausse générerait aussi une progression des exportations françaises de 7,2 Md€, évalue le cabinet. La Tribune du 28 mars