Inmarsat awarded $246M contract for satellite services

On the same subject

• 

  May 12, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security

  Semiconductor companies consider new plants in the US

  By: The Associated Press NEW YORK — Intel and a Taiwanese company are talking to the Trump administration about building new semiconductor plants in the United States amid concern about relying on suppliers in Asia for chips used in a wide variety of electronics. A spokesman for Intel, the biggest American chip maker, said Sunday that the company is in discussions with the U.S. Defense Department about improving domestic technology sources. Spokesman William Moss said Santa Clara, California-based Intel is well-positioned to work with the government “to operate a U.S.-owned commercial foundry.” Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is open to building a plant outside of Taiwan and has talked with the Commerce Department, a spokeswoman said. “We are actively evaluating all the suitable locations, including in the U.S., but there is no concrete plan yet,” said the TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao. The discussions were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which said TSMC is also talking with Apple Inc., one of its biggest customers, about building a plant in the U.S. The newspaper said the coronavirus pandemic has heightened worries about global supply chains, and that U.S. officials are particularly concerned about the growing reliance on Taiwan, the self-ruled island that is claimed by China. Intel CEO Bob Swan said in a letter last month to two Pentagon officials that strengthening U.S. production “is more important than ever, given the uncertainty created by the current geopolitical environment.” He said it would be in the best interests of the United States and Intel to explore how the company could build a plant. Concern about relying so heavily on chips from Taiwan, South Korea and China started even before the coronavirus outbreak. The Pentagon and the Government Accountability Office issued reports on the matter last year. The GAO said that when U.S. companies shift operations overseas it can mean lower prices for components and technology used in weapons systems. However, having global sources “can also make it harder for [the Pentagon] to get what it needs if, for example, other countries cut off U.S. access to critical supplies,” the GAO said in a report last September. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/05/11/semiconductor-companies-consider-new-plants-in-the-us/

• 

  March 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Possible New 'Engine War' Recasts Pratt As Champion Of Competition

  By Steve Trimble Pratt & Whitney's F100 (pictured) is designed to be interchangeable with GE Aviation's F110 as the engine for the Boeing F-15 fleet. A jet engine maker is pressuring the U.S. Defense Department to scrap a plan to award a sole-source contract to a rival for a fleet of new fighters and investigate the opportunity for performance and cost improvements yielded by a competitive selection process. If that narrative sounds familiar, it is because it echoes a role GE Aviation played for more than 40 years, which included a successful bid in the 1980s to launch the “Great Engine War” over the F-15 and F-16 fleets and a failed campaign that ended almost a decade ago to establish the F136 as the alternate engine for the F-35. This time, however, the roles are reversed. Pratt & Whitney, which waged fierce lobbying campaigns against competitive engine policies for the F-15, F-16 and F-35, has switched sides in the debate. In response to the U.S. Air Force's decision to field the F-15EX into production powered solely by GE F110 engines, Pratt has filed two protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is scheduled to render judgments on both cases by early July. The Air Force sided with GE during the Great Engine War in 1984. Seeking to lower costs and motivate Pratt to resolve stall-stagnation problems with the original F100, the Air Force decided that year to split the engine contract for the F-15 and F-16 between GE's F110 and Pratt's F100. Thirty-six years later, the Air Force now worries about the schedule impact if the GAO sustains either or both of Pratt's protests of the F-15EX engine. Service officials decided to acquire the F-15EX after concluding the F-15C/Ds were too costly to sustain and because it would take too long for the Pratt F135-powered F-35A to replace all of them. Pratt's protests threaten to disrupt that schedule and erode the Air Force's original business case for the F-15EX. “If we have to do an engine competition, it will add time—2-3 years,” said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on March 10. Only a decade ago, Pratt welcomed a vote by Congress in 2010 to cancel funding for the F-35 program's alternate engine, along with a decision by GE and Rolls-Royce a year later to abandon a plan to self-fund the certification of the F136. But Pratt now embraces the potential benefits of an engine competition for the F-15EX. “Our government supports competition at all levels, and we're interested in providing the F100 as a competitive alternative,” Pratt Military Engines President Matthew Bromberg told Aviation Week. “If we're not competitive in terms of capability, schedule [and] price, I get it. But after the U.S. government spent all this money creating two engines for the F-15 and F-16 platforms, why would it then not compete a 450-engine program?” Asked if the existing F100 would require additional development to meet the Air Force's requirements for the F-15EX, Bromberg replied that he cannot answer that question in the absence of a competitive process that allows Pratt access to the specifications. He also noted that the F100 exclusively powers the Air Force's existing fleet of F-15Es. The F100 and F110 were designed to fit interchangeably in the F-15, although the heavily modified Saudi Arabian F-15SA and the Qatari F-15QA from which the F-15EX was derived are exclusively powered by GE's engine. The GAO does not release complaints filed by protesters up front, but it does release the full text of decisions. It is not clear why Pratt filed two separate protests on the sole-source decision for the GE engine on the F-15EX, but Bromberg advised not reading too much into it. “I'd like to obviously be able to discuss them, but I can't because it's a legal process,” Bromberg said. “I would really view them as a single protest on a single procurement action, and that is a lack of competition.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/possible-new-engine-war-recasts-pratt-champion-competition

• 

  October 16, 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Army tactical network office wants industry info on SATCOM as a service

  Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army's tactical network modernization office released a request for information Wednesday for commercial satellite communications as a service. The RFI, released by Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, will give the Army tactical network team an improved understanding of existing industry best practices, technological advancements and innovative business models for commercially managed satellites that could replace the operating design of its logistics network, known as the sustainment tactical network. “We are looking to our industry partners to provide us with inventive approaches to meet our logistics transport capabilities needs,” said Col. Shane Taylor, the Army's project manager for Tactical Network (PM TN), in a press release. “This includes both end item material solutions, as well as what corresponding leasing cost models could look like to enable the Army to maximize capabilities while balancing long-term affordability.” Commercially managed SATCOM would be an improvement over the standard SATCOM capabilities because currently the Army must purchase all the hardware, software, maintenance and sustainment needs, along with other related capabilities, on independent, standalone contracts, the press release said. With SATCOM as a service, the PEO C3T will procure all the capabilities under a single contract, paying for each leased Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) ground satellite terminal. "We want to deliver the right STN SATCOM capability at the right price, while keeping current with technology and ahead of obsolescence,” said Lt. Col. Natashia Coleman, product lead for Unified Network Capabilities and Integration. “To do that we need to better understand how and what industry can provide, what their different managed services models would look like, how they could each best support our hardware and support services requirements, and then compare that to the more traditional way we are providing the capability now and determine which would work best. “Whatever the outcome, taking the time upfront to review all of the options will enable us to deliver the best solution for the Army,” she added. According to Paul Mehney, communications director for PEO C3T, the program office expects industry to demonstrate their SATCOM as a service capabilities for engineer and operational assessment. Mehney said that the office will consider the companies' ability to provide and maintain terminals, obtain host nation agreements for use of bandwidth, provide a help desk to address network access issues, and technical support to users and VSAT systems. Mehney also said that the logistics network modernization efforts aligns with increased capacity, resiliency and convergence goals of Capability Set '23, the next iteration of new network tools set to be delivered in fiscal 2023. “We are looking to incorporate STN design goals as part of CS23 and beyond; providing initial STN elements for CS23 (such as modernized VSAT and Local Transport capabilities) to support CS priorities over time,” Mehney said. Responses are due Nov. 6. https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/ausa/2020/10/14/army-tactical-network-office-released-rfi-for-satcom-as-a-service/