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June 8, 2021 | International, Naval

Indian navy to float $6 billion tender for six submarines

The approval was granted by the defense ministry’s procurement body, the Defence Acquisition Council, on June 4.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/06/07/indian-navy-to-float-6-billion-tender-for-six-submarines/

On the same subject

  • Covid-19 : quel impact sur les exportations d’armes en 2020 ?

    October 23, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    Covid-19 : quel impact sur les exportations d’armes en 2020 ?

    Dans une réponse au député François Cornut-Gentille, le 22 octobre, le ministère des Armées estime que « les répercussions de la crise Covid-19 sur l'entrée en vigueur en 2020 de certains contrats ou la réalisation de certains prospects sont à craindre ». S'il était signé avant la fin de l'année, le contrat Rafale en Grèce pourrait toutefois limiter l'impact. La Grèce a également mis en vigueur plusieurs autres contrats avec les industriels français : un système de défense anti-aérienne et des contrats-cadre pour la maintenance et la mise à niveau de l'électronique de 24 Mirage 2000-5 (Dassault Aviation, Thales et Safran) pour plus de 260 millions d'euros. Enfin, le Qatar reste très intéressé par deux satellites d'observation de fabrication française et discute depuis de très longs mois avec la France et Airbus Defence and Space sur leur fourniture. La France est par ailleurs engagée dans des compétitions majeures. Dassault Aviation propose le Rafale en Finlande et en Suisse et Thales est en compétition pour le renouvellement de la défense sol-air dans ce dernier pays, dont le choix aura lieu simultanément avec celui de l'avion de combat. Pour l'article complet : https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/crise-du-covid-19-vers-un-impact-sur-les-exportations-d-armements-francaises-en-2020-860366.html

  • What the defense industry is seeing and saying about the election

    November 3, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    What the defense industry is seeing and saying about the election

    By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Anyone will tell you this is the most important election in U.S. history ― unless they happen to run a major American defense firm. In earnings call after earnings call, defense industry executives projected calm ahead of Tuesday's election, mainly because they see the coronavirus pandemic carrying greater uncertainty (especially for firms with commercial aviation businesses). But another reason is that, despite wide projections of flat 2021 defense budgets no matter who controls the White House, industry is confident in the Pentagon's commitment to modernization. “We continue to believe that bipartisan support for defense spending will endure and that our portfolio is well-aligned to support our National Defense Strategy,” Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said in remarks typical of third-quarter earnings calls last week. “While we plan for various budget scenarios, defense spending is largely threat-driven and today's threat environment warrants a strong defense. Emerging threats are intensifying, and we believe both political parties are committed to effectively countering these threats.” If defense firms are upbeat, then Wall Street seems skeptical, with pure-play defense firms down this year and lagging the stock market, said Capital Alpha Partners' aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan. Partisan gridlock, he noted, is what led to the budget caps that bedeviled federal budgeting for the last decade. “You could argue that some of this underperformance is related to concerns about what the election's outcome could be. Even if the president wins, no one's predicting the House will flip, and then you'll still have gridlock in Congress,” Callan said. “Let's say there's a 50-50 split in the Senate. Things can get pretty sporty.” Defense executives were comfortable making warm predictions about 2021, but the lack of comment about 2022 and 2023 was telling, said Callan. Also, Pentagon officials have warned they will have to tap modernization and readiness funds if Congress does not appropriate about $10 billion for defense contractors' coronavirus-related expenses. So why didn't any CEOs use their earnings calls to amplify that message? “That was one of the dogs that didn't bark here. Either industry doesn't see it as an issue, or that it's inevitable it's not going to happen," Callan said. With Democrats readying to debate steep defense cuts if they sweep the election, the expectation is that swollen national deficits ― driven by pandemic aid and Republican-led tax cuts ― will pressure the defense budget downward. But industry is banking on Washington's drive to prepare militarily for a rising China, a disruptive Russia and an unpredictable North Korea. “Whether it's flat with a little bit of rise or flat with a little bit of fall may depend on the election, but I think that's a fairly narrow space you're working in politically, given the deficit and the threat vectors,” Bill Lynn, the CEO of defense and aerospace conglomerate Leonardo DRS, said in an interview. Lynn is a former deputy defense secretary and Raytheon lobbyist. Though there's been speculation Democrats would cut defense spending, former vice president Joe Biden, who is running against Republican President Donald Trump, would face pressure not to for economic and political reasons, said Michael Herson, president and chief executive at American Defense International, a defense lobbying firm. (Biden has said, if elected, he doesn't foresee major defense cuts.) “The first thing that Biden's going to worry about is COVID and the economic recovery,” Herson said in an interview. “So do you really want to touch defense spending, and add to your economic woes ― because it increases unemployment ― in the first year of your presidency?” Defense Secretary Mark Esper has warned that a flat budget will force the armed services to make budgetary trade-offs and likely cuts to legacy programs. But the Pentagon has also communicated a commitment to modernization, and that's part of industry's confidence. In September, Northrop won a $13.3 billion award for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, the U.S. Air Force's effort to replace the LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. But some Democrats have attempted to defund it, and investors grilled executives about the program's post-election survival prospects ― and those of Northrop's B-21 Raider. Warden, Northrop's CEO, argued the nuclear triad becomes more of a budgetary priority when conventional military forces are under pressure. “So we're confident that a new administration would recognize that value and continue to support the modernization efforts that are well underway for both GBSD and B-21,” she said. The Pentagon over recent years has oriented itself toward technological competition with China, with related investments in artificial intelligence, next-generation networks, cybersecurity and space. Companies did not see signs of that momentum reversing. “The government doesn't pivot on a dime,” Booz Allen Hamilton's chief financial officer, Lloyd Howell Jr., told investors. “And a lot of the programs that we currently support ... are increasingly tied to their missions, which is politically agnostic.” The CEO of infrared imaging maker FLIR Systems, Jim Cannon, acknowledged there will be “top-line pressure on the budget ... no matter what happens with the election,” but he put stock in Army leaders' assurances that the service must remedy long-underfunded modernization efforts. “The message that was sent out to industry loud and clear is that, after four decades largely without significant modernization transformation, now is the time,” Cannon said. “And if we look at the priorities that we're aligned against and the work that we've been doing for the past two years, we think we're well positioned there. But look: I agree there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of work yet for us to do, but that's our perspective right now.” When asked, L3Harris downplayed how a drawdown from Afghanistan ― which Trump and Biden both favor ― or hypothetical cuts to end strength would impact the sales of radios or night vision goggles. “We're not even 40 percent through the modernization ramp with radio. So even if end strength comes down, as I expect it likely will, I don't think it's going to affect the growth rate in our radio business,” said CEO Bill Brown, arguing that night vision goggles and radios had “under-penetrated the force.” “So if anything, reduced end strength might actually free up some dollars to be put onto modernization investments that really affect a broad part of our business,” he added. Executives at companies without a stake in a specific major platform had a good story to tell, and several pointed to investments in cybersecurity or artificial intelligence. Leonardo DRS' Lynn said the firm's investments in communications, sensors and computing systems had made it “ambidextrous." "We can go in any direction,” he said. “The larger companies have greater exposure across the breadth of the defense budget. We're more in targeted areas and haven't got broad exposure. “We're in Army sensors, satellite communications; we're in 10 or 12 segments. We can be targeted, and frankly in a flat budget environment, that ability to target's important to grow at all.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/11/02/what-the-defense-industry-is-seeing-and-saying-about-the-election/

  • Updating software in flight? The Air Force may be close.

    September 17, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Updating software in flight? The Air Force may be close.

    Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force will soon announce that the service can update an aircraft's software while in flight, the Air Force's chief software officer said Tuesday. Nicolas Chaillan, the service's software czar, hinted at the announcement during a wide-ranging interview on a webcast hosted by C4ISRNET, but he declined to share which aircraft could handle the upgrade before the formal announcement is made. The update is part of a larger push by the Air Force to modernize its software practices. However, Chaillan described the news as a “gamechanger” and offered insight into the challenges associated with updating software during flights. “We need to decouple the flight controls, the [open mission systems], all the air worthiness piece of the software from the rest of the mission [and] capability of [that] software so we can update those more frequently without disrupting or putting lives at risk when it comes to the flying piece of the jet or the system,” Chaillan said. A formal announcement could follow in coming days. The Air Force is embracing agile development and DevSecOps in several of its programs to accelerate development time and deploy tools faster. Critical to this effort has been two Air Force environments — Cloud One and Platform One. Platform One, which was recently deemed an enterprise solution by the Department of Defense, is a software development platform that hosts a broad range of DoD components, including the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The JAIC moved to the Air Force platform as it awaits the results of an ongoing court battle between Amazon Web Services and Microsoft over the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI cloud. Chaillan said the F-35 program is also planning to move to Platform One soon. He added that he wants the platform to serve as a “software factory as a service.” In the next 12 to 18 months, Chaillan said that he sees the service continuing to add artificial intelligence and machine learning into its systems at scale. Both Cloud One and Platform One will be critical to the development of those systems. Cloud One, a multi-cloud environment with Microsoft and AWS, will also be looking to add new vendors “down the road,” Chaillan said. The Air Force's decision to go the multi-award route over the single award structure like JEDI made sense because of the advancement of cloud technology taken by the Air Force, Chaillan said. “When JEDI started, it did make sense to have a single award because cloud is very hard and very complex and it did makes sense to start there. Would I do that now? Probably not. I think technology changed,” Chaillan said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/09/15/updating-software-in-flight-the-air-force-may-be-close/

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