Germany leans on industry for latest PzH 2000 artillery provision to Ukraine - Army Technology

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  August 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Drone maker General Atomics lays off hundreds

  By: Joe Gould and Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON ― Privately held drone maker General Atomics, of San Diego, is laying off approximately 630 of its roughly 10,000 employees. “General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. can confirm a reduction in force involving 6% of its workforce,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to Defense News late Wednesday. “This reduction was made to balance resources with customer requirements.” The layoffs were announced internally Wednesday and confirmed by the company, which did not specify which operations were impacted. General Atomics and Northrop Grumman were two beneficiaries of the Trump administration's recent decision to ease restrictions on overseas sales of unmanned aircraft. In addition, lawmakers are expected to boost Reaper buys in the near term, with House appropriators proposing to give General Atomics $344 million for 16 more MQ-9s in fiscal 2021. But the company was also dealt a blow earlier this year when the Air Force announced it would stop buying the MQ-9 Reaper in fiscal year 2021, at least four years earlier than expected. And now the future of the program remains uncertain, with the Air Force looking at options to replace the MQ-9 Reaper. Over the past two decades, the Reaper has served as one of the Air Force's workhorse drones for surveillance and for striking targets in the Middle East. But service leaders believe it is ill-suited for a war with Russia and China. In addition, they believe it costs too much time and money to keep the aircraft ready for operations in low-threat environments. “The Reaper has been a great platform for us. Four million flight hours, just undeniable overmatch in a low-end uncontested fight, and it is certainly saving lives,” Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper told lawmakers at a House Armed Services Committee hearing this March. “But as we look to the high-end fight, we just can't take them into the battlefield. They are easily shot down.” In June, the Air Force issued a request for information for an MQ-9 successor, underscoring the service's plan to transition from the Reaper to a new surveillance and strike drone. https://www.defensenews.com/2020/08/27/drone-maker-general-atomics-lays-offs-hundreds/

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  May 22, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  BAE Makes Big Bet On Small Companies: FAST Labs

  By THERESA HITCHENS BOSTON: BAE Systems, the third-largest defense contractor in the world, is funding innovative small startups to get innovative technology quickly to its Defense Department customers. Through an initiative called FAST Labs, BAE is both providing seed capital directly to startups and funding a number of accelerators to widen the potential market. The standard tactics include simply buying a smaller company to gain its technology or investing in a startup in order to control the direction of its research. Instead, BAE's FAST Labs is attempting to serve as a middle man connecting startups with DoD customers and BAE's various units. “By giving [the startups] the feasibility money, we can expose them to those harsh requirements that exist in the aerospace and defense world, but we can also in turn do social engineering inside our company,” Jerry Wohletz, the vice president and general management of BAE FAST Labs, told me. The idea is to introduce the startups' designs to BAE's factory and engineering work force, he said, “because we need to get it out of R&D land and get it into those products and services” that BAE knows its defense customers are looking for. FAST Labs is focused on research related to next-generation electronics, intelligent autonomous systems, cyber, electronic warfare, and sensors and processing. Wohletz explained that BAE does in-house research on capabilities that are solely of interest to DoD and the Intelligence Community, but it is reaching out to startups in order to partner on products and services based on commercial market needs. “A lot of aerospace and defense companies have venture capital funds,” Wohletz said. “That's not what we are trying to do. This is not an equity play to drive bottom line performance. We talk here about innovation velocity. We want speed to market.” Therefore, BAE is also putting its money — but more importantly its time — into a number of technology accelerators, such as Techstars in Boston, Capitol Factory in Austin, Texas, and MASSChallenge with hubs in both cities. FAST Labs has a team of scouts whose job is to attend pitches all across the country. “This is not based on ownership. We leave them their freedom,” Francesca Scire-Scappuzzo, who heads the scout team, told me. “We want innovation not just to support our market, we want to support their own innovation” for the commercial market. “Other defense contractors are trying to get involved with venture capital, but they for the most part don't really get it. BAE was in early, and they had the benefit of being linked with us,” Lt. Col. Dave Harden, chief operating officer of AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation hub, told me during the Techstars Air Force Accelerator Demo Day here last Thursday. Indeed, BAE cosponsored the event, and put upfront investment in at least three of 10 start-up companies participating. Neither Wohletz or Scire-Scappuzzo would tell me the size of BAE's budget for startup investment, but Wohletz said “it's getting bigger every year.” Further, the company is using accelerators not just to help itself innovate, Wohletz said, but also to find foreign companies to partner with in bids where the buying country requires offsets, such as India. “It's a completely different way of looking at this than we have done in the past,” he summed up. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/05/bae-makes-big-bet-on-small-companies-fast-labs/

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  January 28, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Financement de l'industrie française de la défense : vers un renforcement du rôle de Bpifrance ?

  Un doublement des plafonds de financement de la banque publique Bpifrance serait à l'étude, afin de remédier à des difficultés de financement à l'export de l'industrie de défense française, rapportent Les Echos. Selon le quotidien, l'Assemblée nationale devrait diffuser, le 17 février prochain, un rapport sur le financement de l'industrie de défense, et devrait faire plusieurs recommandations. Des pistes telles que la formation de référents bancaires aux sujets stratégiques, le renforcement du rôle de Bpifrance à l'export, la création d'une banque à capitaux mixtes dédiée au secteur de la défense, ou encore le développement de fonds de souveraineté, seraient examinées. « Il y a un réel problème de financement bancaire à l'export et il faut absolument remonter les plafonds de garanties de la BPI », estime le député LR Jean-Louis Thieriot, rapporteur sur le sujet à l'Assemblée nationale. Les Echos du 28 janvier