July 5, 2021 | International, Aerospace
Lockheed Martin Wins $1.8B F-35 Support Contract
Lockheed Martin Wins $1.8B F-35 Support Contract
July 29, 2020 | International, C4ISR
How COVID-19 affected the Army’s plan for testing new network tools
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the Army's plans for testing upgrades to its network, according to two top Army generals working on the project.
The pandemic has meant fewer soldiers have availability to perform operational testing for new network equipment, known as Capability Set '21. Units are either not training or have implemented safety measures such as social distancing or personal protective equipment.
“The COVID-19 has had an impact on our cycle of testing, our access to units, and it's caused us to make some adjustments in our in our time schedule, as we've been trying to take care of the health and safety of our soldiers and our workforce, but still keep our modernization efforts on track,” said Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the network cross-functional team for Army Futures Command, at a C4ISRNET event in May.
The Army had to change plans for soldier experiments that were going to play important roles in informing the allocation of new devices across the brigades.
“We had to really start with what were we going to learn specifically from those soldier experiments and how are we going to use that information to help make procurement decisions,” said then-Maj. Gen. David Bassett and former leader of Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical at the C4ISRNET conference. Bassett has since been promoted to lieutenant general and now leads the Defense Contract Management Agency.
He added, “And so in most cases, we weren't really using that to decide whether we were going to buy something or not. [It was] more about the density and the way things were integrated.”
Bassett also said that while the Army did lose out on some field testing, the service had already collected sufficient data in labs that could help “inform some of our decision-making.” He also said that the network modernization team was prepared to make adjustments to equipment because of the challenges associated with coronavirus.
“We're looking really hard at and when the next opportunities are going to be available to us to get that detailed operational feedback from soldiers either in a training environment or a test environment,” Bassett said.
The coronavirus pandemic “hasn't limited” the Army's ability to move forward on procurement decisions because of the large amounts of data it collected in testing for Capability Set '21.
“I think the risk of making those procurement decisions at this stage has been exceedingly low. And something that I think is a reasonable balance of risk and rigor and agility,” Bassett said.
The testing program was also disrupted at the beginning of the year when the 82nd Airborne Division, a primary partner for testing capabilities, was deployed to the Middle East.
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January 16, 2020 | International, Naval
US Marine Corps could soon take out enemy ships with Navy missiles
By: David B. Larter and Jeff Martin WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps could soon get the Navy's new Naval Strike Missile for use as a shore battery, according to the Navy's acquisitions chief. “Just yesterday [Jan. 14] we had the team in that has the Naval Strike Missile on LCS working hand-in-hand with the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps does ground launchers, we do command and control," Assistant Secretary of the Navy James “Hondo” Geurts told reporters after his Jan. 15 speech at the annual Surface Navy symposium. “We'll make that immediately available to the Marine Corps.” Geurts said the effort on Naval Strike Missile, a Kongsberg/Raytheon product, was emblematic of a more coherent approach where instead of a dedicated Marine Corps effort to examine, test and field a system, the services were leveraging each other to get capabilities out faster. The missile was recently deployed to the Pacific on the littoral combat ship Gabrielle Giffords, and the weapon is capable of flying more than 100 miles. It can passively detect enemy ships with imagery in its brain and is so precise that it can target individual parts of a ship, like the engine room or bridge. In May, Raytheon announced it had been awarded $48 million through an other transaction authority contract to integrate the Naval Strike Missile into the Marine Corps' force structure, but very few details were available at the time. This won't be the first time the missile is based on land, as Poland's coastal defense forces already have several batteries in service. And in 2018 at the Rim of the Pacific exercise, the U.S. Army fired a Naval Strike Missile at a decommissioned ship as part of a live-fire demonstration. It's unknown what the Marine Corps will use as a launcher, as it is unclear whether or not the service's M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System can be used to fire the Naval Strike Missile. However, it is likely that the Corps' manned launchers will fire the missiles while on the deck of Navy amphibious ships, as the Corps has been testing the capability with HIMARS launchers. “We're serious about it,” Geurts said. “You've heard the commandant and the assistant commandant talk about more lethal anti-ship activity. ... It's certainly something we are looking at closely.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/surface-navy-association/2020/01/15/the-marine-corps-could-soon-take-out-enemy-ships-with-navy-missiles
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May 31, 2019 | International, Aerospace
Le français Parrot retenu par l’armée américaine pour construire des drones de reconnaissance
Sérieusement concurrencée par DJI sur le domaine des drones grand public, la marque française Parrot élargit son horizon. Elle travaille de plus en plus sur des engins destinés aux professionnels et pourrait bientôt décrocher un contrat de grande ampleur. La firme a en effet été retenue (avec cinq autres sociétés) par le département de la Défense des États-Unis pour un appel d'offres visant à développer et à prototyper une nouvelle génération de drones compacts, de courte portée et dédiée à la surveillance (« Short Range Reconnaissance drone » ou SRR). Il semblerait donc que la méfiance envers les acteurs chinois (majoritaires) du secteur fasse le bonheur des autres. Henri Seydoux, président et PDG de Parrot, a réagit à l'annonce de la sélection : « Parrot est fier d'avoir été sélectionné par l'U.S. Army pour travailler sur ce projet hautement stratégique [...] Nous comprenons parfaitement combien un drone ultra-compact, à l'instar de la plateforme de drone ANAFI, possède les atouts pour devenir un élément central de la défense. Nous sommes impatients de mettre à profit l'excellence de notre R&D pour répondre aux plus hautes exigences de l'U.S. Army afin d'intégrer l'efficacité offerte par les drones dans leurs opérations et d'accompagner la plus importante force armée et de défense au monde. » Ledit programme a en effet alloué 11 millions de dollars de dollars à ces six acteurs afin qu'il puisse rapidement mettre au point un drone capable d'être déployé rapidement sur le terrain par les soldats. Il permettra ainsi de disposer d'un meilleur champ de vision et d'une « compréhension immédiate et élargie » de l'environnement dans lequel ils évoluent. Évidemment, l'armée a défini plusieurs objectifs que l'appareil doit remplir pour être sélectionné. Il devra notamment bénéficier d'un temps de vol de 30 minutes et d'une portée allant jusqu'à 3 kilomètres. Son poids ne pourra excéder 1,3 kg/ Il faudra qu'il soit opérationnel en moins de 2 minutes et doit pouvoir être transporté dans les sacs à dos standards utilisés par les soldats. Rien qui ne paraisse impossible à réaliser pour la firme, qui joue très gros sur ce marché. https://www.journaldugeek.com/2019/05/30/le-francais-parrot-retenu-par-larmee-americaine-pour-construire-des-drones-de-reconnaissance/