Indra leads the European project that will give control of radioelectric space to fighters and aircraft

On the same subject

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  September 1, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Pourquoi l’A400M d’Airbus peut devenir un best-seller à l’exportation comme le Rafale

  Airbus vient de décrocher une commande pour deux appareils A400M auprès de Kazakhstan. Une vente qui pourrait en annoncer d'autres. Comme le...-aero-spatial

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  January 10, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  New Pentagon chief under scrutiny over perceived Boeing bias

  By ELIANA JOHNSON and DAVID BROWN Concerns about Patrick Shanahan's Boeing ties have re-emerged since President Donald Trump said he may be running the Pentagon ‘for a long time.' Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan's private remarks during his 18 months at the Pentagon have spurred accusations that he is boosting his former employer Boeing, people who have witnessed the exchanges told POLITICO — fueling questions about whether he harbors an unfair bias against other big military contractors. Shanahan, who spent 31 years at Boeing before joining the Pentagon in mid-2017, has signed an ethics agreement recusing him from weighing in on matters involving the mammoth defense contractor. But that hasn't stopped him from praising Boeing and trashing competitors such as Lockheed Martin during internal meetings, two former government officials who have heard him make the accusations told POLITICO. The remarks raise questions among ethics experts about whether Shanahan, intentionally or not, is putting his finger on the scale when it comes to Pentagon priorities. They also call new attention to a recent decision by the Pentagon to request new Boeing fighters that the Air Force has said it does not want — a request that Bloomberg has reported came after "prodding" from Shanahan. Concerns about Shanahan's ties to his former employer first surfaced during his confirmation hearing to be deputy secretary, but they have re-emerged since President Donald Trump said last month he may be running the Pentagon “for a long time.” In high-level Pentagon meetings, Shanahan has heavily criticized Lockheed Martin's handling of the production of the F-35 fighter jet, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the life of the program, according to one of the two sources, a former senior Defense Department official who was present. Shanahan, this official said, called the plane “f---ed up” and argued that Lockheed — which edged out Boeing to win the competition to build the plane in October 2001 — “doesn't know how to run a program.” “If it had gone to Boeing, it would be done much better,” Shanahan said, according to the former official. As the Pentagon's No. 2, Shanahan repeatedly "dumped" on the F-35 in meetings, calling the program "unsustainable," and slammed Lockheed Martin's CEO, Marillyn Hewson, according to the second source, a former Trump administration official. "'The cost, the out-years, it's just too expensive, we're not gonna be able to sustain it,'" this person said, quoting Shanahan. The former Trump official said Shanahan "kind of went off" about the F-35 at a retreat for Republican lawmakers last year at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. This angered several members of the delegation who had home-district interests in the F-35 program, the former official said. "He would complain about Lockheed's timing and their inability to deliver, and from a Boeing point of view, say things like, 'We would never do that,'" this former official said. Shanahan is the first Pentagon chief to come purely from the private sector since the 1950s and has virtually no government or policy experience. He became the acting Defense secretary Jan. 1, following former Secretary Jim Mattis' resignation over Trump's abrupt decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria and begin drawing down from Afghanistan. He has signed an ethics agreement barring him from weighing in on any matters involving his former employer, the Pentagon's fifth-largest contractor in 2017. Shanahan's experience at Boeing is “his only reference point," the former Trump administration official said. "He doesn't have a lot of other experiences to draw on. He owns it in a powerful way because he doesn't have the military experience, he doesn't have the experience in government. So when he talks about those things, he's very forceful." His remarks about the F-35 stand in stark contrast to those of the president, who regularly praises the stealth fighter despite initially slamming its high costs. The F-35 program, while experiencing a number of setbacks, technical delays and groundings throughout the years, is generally considered to be on the mend. The Air Force and Marine Corps variants have been declared ready to deploy, and the Navy version is expected to reach that point as early as next month. And unit costs have come down for all three variants as the plane matures. Trump has praised Shanahan's ability to cut costs, calling him a “great buyer.” He is now among the candidates the president is considering as a permanent replacement for Mattis. Asked for comment, Shanahan's office released a statement saying he is committed to his agreement to stay out of matters involving Boeing. “Under his ethics agreement, Mr. Shanahan has recused himself for the duration of his service in the Department of Defense from participating personally and substantially in matters in which the Boeing Company is a party,” his office said. Full article: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/defense-patrick-shanahan-boeing-pentagon-1064203

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  June 11, 2019 | International, Land, Security

  Active protection systems demo hits dead end for Stryker, Army evaluating next steps

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — After evaluating two active protection systems in a demonstration late last fall and determining neither were the right fit for the Stryker, the Army is now evaluating how to protect one of its critical combat vehicle. “Unfortunately for Stryker, we have not found a system that is suitable for the platform,” Col. Glenn Dean, Stryker project manager told Defense News in a June 7 interview. The Army has found interim APS for both its Abrams tank and Bradley infantry fighting vehicle but has struggled to find one for Stryker. The service has moved quickly to field combat vehicle protection against rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles while it develops a future system. The service originally considered Herndon,Virginia-based Artis Corporation's Iron Curtain APS for Stryker, but decided in August 2018not to move forward in fielding it to Stryker units. In an effort to expand its search for an appropriate system, the Army then decided to host a demonstration in late fall last year of two additional systems: Rafael's Trophy VPS and Rheinmetall's Active Defense Systems. Signs the demonstration wasn't proving fruitful cropped up in March, when the service said they'd need extra time — an entire year — to evaluate options for Stryker. Dean said the Army was hoping they'd see promise in one of the systems at the end of the demonstration and be able to carry it through more complex characterization for better evaluation in order to make a decision. But as the demonstration wrapped up, the Army decided neither would work. “Both Rheinmetall and the medium-weight Trophy, both have maturity challenges, but the bottom line is that they turned out to not be a suitable fit for Stryker,” Dean said. “We did see some potential in systems,” Dean said, adding, “it is our desire to continue to evaluate them further so we can understand them at a greater level of detail.” Neither system received the same level of testing as Rafael's Trophy on Abrams, IMI's Iron Fist on Bradley or Iron Curtain, Dean said, and the systems could end up being the right fit for some future effort to outfit other vehicles such as the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle program's Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, Mobile Protected Firepower and the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle, “none of which we have identified APS solutions for yet,” Dean said. Through continued evaluation “maybe we will eventually learn something that brings us back to Stryker,” he added. Unlike Bradley and Abrams, Stryker is a relatively light-weight platform, Dean said. “It has challenges in its space, weight and power integration. It has proven difficult for us to find a system that is entirely suitable for integration.” And while no operational APS system evaluated so far seems to work for Stryker, the Army is still looking into ways to protect it as its value on the battlefield only increases with the addition of bigger guns and more expensive weapon systems. Under the Vehicle Protection System (VPS) program office, the Army is working on reactive armor improvements focused on Bradley and AMPV, but that could be of particular value for Stryker, Dean said. The Army's laser warning program that is tied to the Modular Active Protection System (MAPS) program could also contribute to Stryker protection. MAPS is a system under development with the Army featuring a common controller into which hard-kill and soft-kill protection can be plugged. And the Army will be conducting a demonstration with layered hard-kill and soft-kill protection capability later this year as part of culminating exercise for its MAPS program, according to Dean. “The soft-kill may ultimately prove to be particularly well suited for Stryker,” Dean said. Those soft-kill systems are jammers and smoke systems that help obscure and tend to take up relatively little space and are less expensive then hard-kill APS that require the reloading of countermeasures. The service is also studying what it may need for a future APS and plans to initiate a program in the late part of the next fiscal year, which could also be an opportunity to develop something more suitable for Stryker, according to Dean. While the Army does have plans to protect its combat vehicles from rockets and missiles, in a June 6 letter sent to Army Secretary Mark Esper, a group of 13 House lawmakers expressed concern the service isn't doing enough to outfit its current fleet with APS and asked the Army to explain why it hadn't requested any further funding for APS upgrades in the budget According to Dean, for Abrams and Bradley, “we are resourced to meet the requirements that we have on an urgent basis to outfit a limited number of brigades. We are doing analysis right now to support development programs of record in active protection.” He added, “What we are buying is not the end of APS activity, but it is the urgent requirements we have been given.” https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/06/10/active-protection-systems-demo-hits-dead-end-for-stryker-army-evaluating-next-steps/