January 24, 2020 | International, Aerospace
During the long years that U.S. forces were fighting Islamic extremists in Southwest Asia, Russia and China were investing in new warfighting technologies.
Russia's hybrid military campaign against Ukraine in 2014 was a wake-up call for Washington to start paying more attention to “near-peer” threats. China's steadily increasing investment in long-range anti-ship missiles, anti-satellite weapons and cyber warfare reinforced awareness that America's military might be falling behind in the capabilities needed for winning high-end fights.
These trends led the Trump Administration to produce a new national defense strategy in 2018 focused mainly on countering the military challenges posed by Moscow and Beijing. Most of that strategy's content is secret, but one element is clear enough: the Pentagon wants novel solutions to emerging near-peer threats, and it wants them fast.
Policymakers in both the Obama and Trump administrations have repeatedly stated non-traditional military suppliers are a vital part of the Pentagon's effort to get ahead of overseas rivals and stay there. “Non-traditional” has a specific legal definition in defense acquisition policy that potentially allows suppliers to bypass burdensome regulations when offering commercial products from outside traditional military channels.
In more common-sense usage, non-traditional simply means any company capable of offering the military a better mousetrap that doesn't usually do business with the five-sided building. That includes a majority of tech companies in places like Austin, Boston and Silicon Valley, especially startups with cutting-edge ideas. It may also include larger industrial companies like General Motors that are re-entering the military market after a long absence.
The challenge facing policymakers is how to leverage the skills and intellectual property of these non-traditional players without suffocating them under a blanket of bureaucratic requirements that contribute little to finding novel solutions. One way to tap the dynamism of commercial enterprises is to partner them with longtime military contractors who can assume most of the burden for negotiating the bureaucratic landscape.
Here is how two companies, Raytheon and BAE Systems, have stepped up to the challenge.
Raytheon. Massachusetts-based Raytheon has been a major military contractor since it pioneered radar during World War Two. It is in the process of merging with United Technologies, an aerospace conglomerate that has long managed to operate successfully in military and commercial markets (both companies contribute to my think tank).
Raytheon executives say the pace of change and the expectations of military customers have changed radically in recent years. It is not uncommon for military customers to seek new ways of sensing, processing or communicating that must be delivered within months rather than years. This emerging dynamic has led the company to rethink who it partners with in producing such solutions, and how to interact with them.
Raytheon has a cultural affinity for diversity, which may help it to think outside the box about who its partners should be. Although not all of the non-traditional suppliers with whom it teams are Silicon Valley startups, a majority have not previously offered defense products as part of their portfolios.
The role the company has fashioned for itself in partnering with such enterprises is to act as a translator between the fluid world of commercial innovation and the rule-based environment of military acquisition. Raytheon has always been driven by its engineering culture, so the company knows how to identify promising technologies that can be assimilated into cutting-edge combat systems. But it also knows the ins and outs of a baroque acquisition system that outsiders frequently find impenetrable.
Raytheon seeks to leverage the energy of non-traditional sources while remaining in compliance with relevant government standards. For instance, there needs to be effective communication between the company and commercial sources, but the ability of the partner to observe the intricacies of sensitive projects must be tightly constrained. The tension of being a valued supplier but not accustomed to working in a classified environment must be managed.
Non-traditional partners provide Raytheon with base technologies that potentially enable unique military capabilities, and they often can generate novel solutions to technical challenges quickly, thanks to their entrepreneurial cultures. Raytheon configures and integrates these inputs for military customers while translating the needs of those customers into terms the non-traditional supplier can understand.
BAE Systems. The military electronics unit of another major defense contractor, BAE Systems, Inc., is headquartered across the border from Raytheon's home state in Nashua, New Hampshire. BAE concentrates on many of the same technologies Raytheon does such as sensors, signal processing and secure communications—which isn't surprising, since the core of its electronics operation was founded after World War Two by former Raytheon employees. BAE is a consulting client, which has given me some insight into how the company views non-traditional suppliers.
In addition to pursuing partnering initiatives such as those at Raytheon, BAE Systems has fashioned an internal mechanism for leveraging the technology of entrepreneurial startups by helping them to finance their businesses. That mechanism is called FAST Labs, and as the name implies it was conceived to help generate novel solutions to military challenges quickly.
Beyond determining whether the company should manufacture key technology inputs internally or go outside, FAST Labs continuously scouts for promising innovations that are emerging from U.S. startups. When it finds ideas with high potential, it seeks to build trusted partnerships with the enterprises, venture capital investors, universities and government agencies aimed at speeding the pace of innovation. For example, BAE has sponsored technology accelerators at places like MIT.
Most of the startups FAST Labs assists are commercial companies with “dual-use” technologies potentially applicable to military purposes. Although the company has a significant commercial electronics business, the focus of FAST Labs is mainly on meeting the demands of military customers. It takes its cues as to what might be most worthy of support from agencies like the Air Force Research Lab and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
FAST Labs seems to be a unique business model within the U.S. defense sector. Because the electronics technologies on which the Nashua operation concentrates are fungible across diverse markets, BAE Systems has benchmarked FAST Labs against renowned commercial R&D centers such as the old Bell Labs. It is an unusual approach to military innovation, but like executives at Raytheon, BAE execs say the usual approach to developing warfighting systems just doesn't cut it anymore with their Pentagon customer.
June 10, 2022 | International, Aerospace
En janvier 2020, le Pentagone publia une demande d'informations auprès de l'industrie afin de lancer le développement du "Stand In Attack Weapon" , un
July 3, 2018 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army's interim short-range air defense system, which will urgently fill a capability gap identified a few years ago in the European theater, has crystallized. The Army had already decided the Interim Maneuver-Short-Range Air Defense system would be developed around its Stryker combat vehicle, but it has now chosen Leonardo DRS to supply a mission equipment package that will include Raytheon's Stinger vehicle missile launcher, according to Col. Chuck Worshim, program manager for cruise missile defense systems with the Army's Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, who spoke to Defense News on June 28. General Dynamics Land Systems — which produces the Stryker — will be the platform integrator for the IM-SHORAD system, he added. The Army went through a selection process through the Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium to determine the best collection of vendors to build prototypes. A Boeing-GDLS team was a front-runner for an interim SHORAD mission package, unveiling before any other vendor a solution in August 2017 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. Using an Avenger system on top of the Stryker, which was the team's solution, sought to take what was already in the Army's inventory to create a system. And a SHORAD demonstration at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, last September saw more possibilities for the interim solution including Rafael's Iron Dome and South Korean defense firm Hanwha's Flying Tiger. But a dark horse emerged at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium, also in Huntsville, in March. Leonardo DRS showed an unassuming small-scale mock-up of its concept at its booth at the symposium that featured its partner Moog's Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform. The platform would provide a choice of sights, direct-fire weapons and missiles, Ed House, DRS Land Systems' business development manager, told Defense News at the show. The system would be able to integrate both Stinger and Longbow Hellfire missiles, requirements for the service's IM-SHORAD solution. It also would come equipped with a complement of direct-fire weapons and sights to include the M230 chain gun and the 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. But the solution also has non-kinetic defeat capabilities and Rada's onboard multimission hemispheric radar. And that dark horse has won the opportunity to provide the mission equipment package for the IM-SHORAD prototype program. The system will also have Hellfire rails as well as an onboard sensor, according to Worshim. The Army decided to choose DRS to provide the mission equipment package because of the flexibility of its reconfigurable turret, which allows for growth opportunities should the threat change or something else change that requires a new interceptor or another capability, Worshim said. The solution also posed less intrusion to the existing Stryker platform, he added, and provided an increased level of protection as the crew reloads ammunition, which can be done under armor. While the Avenger solution was deemed technically acceptable and met requirements, one of the reasons the Army decided against using the Avenger on Stryker as the solution was because the government felt it would require major modifications to the Stryker, according to Worshim. The Army has a desire to keep the Stryker as common across the fleet as possible, Worshim said. Boeing was also looking to the government to supply Avenger turrets, of which a limited amount of those exist readily in the service's inventory, which would have been problematic when considering the Army's goal to deliver 144 IM-SHORAD systems by fiscal 2022, he explained. Now that vendors have been selected, the Army will move into a negotiation period expected to wrap up in mid- to late July. The service expects to officially award the contract to build nine prototypes by Aug. 31, but has the intention to possibly move that date up, Worshim said. Once the contracts are solidified, DRS will provide the first mission equipment package, complete with a new digital Stinger missile launcher in February 2019. Then GDLS will fully integrate the SHORAD prototype by April 2019. The final prototypes will be delivered to the service by the first quarter of fiscal 2020. As the prototypes are coming along, the Army will conduct prototype testing to see if the systems are meeting requirements. “From there, the Army will decide if this solution truly meets requirements in this respect,” Worshim said. If the solution does meet requirements, production efforts to build 144 systems — a total of four battalions — will move forward. The Army's goal is to provide the first battery no later than the fourth quarter of 2020, but that will depend on funding. If funding is lower than expected, the Army will deliver the first platoon by about that time, according to Worshim. The service has moved from receiving a directed requirement in late February 2018 to selecting vendors for the IM-SHORAD solution in just about four months, which, Worshim noted, is moving at “lightning speed” for a typical acquisition process. The hope is the process to build an IM-SHORAD solution will be used as a model for Army procurement that incorporates the “fly before you buy” concept and creates a way to rapidly understand capabilities moving forward, he said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2018/06/28/us-armys-interim-short-range-air-defense-solution-crystallizes/
November 13, 2023 | International, Aerospace
The 7 aircraft delivered by Bombardier to the GlobalEye program highlight a successful collaboration and echo Bombardier’s thriving, long-standing reputation manufacturing specialized aircraft for the defense industry.