Back to news

August 13, 2019 | International, Land

It’s official: US Army inks Iron Dome deal

By: Jen Judson

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The contract to purchase two Iron Dome systems for the U.S. Army's interim cruise missile defense capability has been finalized, according to the deputy in charge of the service's air and missile defense modernization efforts.

Iron Dome was co-developed by American company Raytheon and Israeli defense firm Rafael. It is partly manufactured in the United States.

Now that the contract is set in stone, the Army will be able to figure out delivery schedules and details in terms of taking receipt of the systems, Daryl Youngman told Defense News at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, on Aug. 8.

The Army was shifting around its pots of funding within its Indirect Fires Protection Capability (IFPC) program — under development to defend against rockets, artillery and mortars as well as unmanned aircraft and cruise missiles — to fill its urgent capability gap for cruise missile defense on an interim basis. Congress mandated the Army deploy two batteries by fiscal 2020 in the service's fiscal 2019 budget.

Iron Dome could feed into an enduring capability, depending on how it performs in the interim, Youngman said during a separate interview shortly before the symposium.

“We're conducting analysis and experimentation for enduring IFPC,” Youngman said. “So that includes some engineering-level analysis and simulations to determine the performance of multiple options, including Iron Dome — or pieces of Iron Dome — and then how we integrate all of that into the [integrated air and missile defense] system.”

Col. Chuck Worshim, the Army's project manager for cruise missile defense systems with the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, told Defense News in April that the service was reworking its enduring IFPC program strategy and would experiment throughout the summer and fall to get a better sense of how IFPC might look beyond interim capabilities.

In the meantime, Iron Dome will be fielded to operational units and will likely participate in formal and informal exercises to identify how it can be used as part of the IFPC and air defense architectures, compared to how it is currently employed in Israel countering incoming rockets and missiles at short range.

Iron Dome is one of the most used air defense systems in the world.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/smd/2019/08/12/its-official-us-army-inks-iron-dome-deal/

On the same subject

  • French Naval Group and Germany’s ThyssenKrupp square off in Egyptian warship deal

    September 13, 2018 | International, Naval

    French Naval Group and Germany’s ThyssenKrupp square off in Egyptian warship deal

    By: Pierre Tran PARIS – Naval Group finds itself in direct competition with German rival ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems in Egypt's acquisition of two more corvettes, Hervé Guillou, CEO of the French shipbuilder told Defense News. The contest comes after Egypt in 2014 placed an order for four Naval Group Gowind corvettes worth some €1 billion, with options for two more units. Winning that two-year option has since become anything but certain for the French company. “TKMS is not sitting on its hands,” Guillou said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Summer Defense University event at the military staff college here. There already is a “permanent presence of the Germans” in Egypt, which operates a fleet of German submarines, Guillou explained. Egypt attracts strong international interest, with the Chinese, Koreans, Dutch shipbuilder Damen and French electronics company Thales very active, he added. The TKMS offer consists of two Meko 200 corvettes, worth €1 billion (US $1.2 billion) excluding weapons, business publication La Tribune reported Sept. 3. That is double the value of the two Gowind 2500 corvettes pitched by Naval Group, the report said. A spokesman for Naval Group declined to comment on the prices. If TKMS were to snatch the business in the end, the French interministerial committee overseeing arms export likely would approve a sale of MBDA-made Aster 15 missiles for the German ships, a French government official said. The company, a joint venture by Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo, is pursuing a “platform neutral” sales pitch, placing an emphasis on boosting foreign sales, according to an industry source. Guillou said he attended Egypt's launch on Sept. 6 of the first locally built Gowind, christened Port Said. “It all went well,” he said. The Egyptian Navy sails a FREMM multimission frigate and two Mistral-class helicopter carriers. The four Gowind corvettes will complement that fleet. The day before the Egyptian launch, Guillou was in Poland pitching three Scorpene diesel-electric submarines to the Polish authorities. “There is political support at the highest level,” he said, referring to the French government backing. That offer competes with TKMS offering its 212CD and Saab the A26 boat. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/09/12/french-naval-group-and-germanys-thyssenkrupp-square-off-in-egyptian-warship-deal

  • Naval Group opens new counter-mine warfare, cyber labs in Brussels

    May 2, 2022 | International, Naval

    Naval Group opens new counter-mine warfare, cyber labs in Brussels

    The research centers are meant to support ongoing naval and counter-mine programs run jointly by Belgium and the Netherlands.

  • SCAF : la Suède et le Royaume-Uni cherchent à rompre leur isolement

    August 1, 2019 | International, Aerospace

    SCAF : la Suède et le Royaume-Uni cherchent à rompre leur isolement

    Les ministres suédois et britannique de la Défense ont signé un protocole d'accord concernant le développement conjoint des systèmes de combat aérien du futur. Face à l'axe mis en place entre l'Allemagne, l'Espagne et la France pour développer conjointement un système de combat aérien du futur (SCAF), le Royaume-Uni et la Suède cherchent à rompre leur isolement en s'alliant. La secrétaire d'État à la Défense du Royaume-Uni, Penny Mordaunt, et le ministre suédois de la Défense, Peter Hultqvist, se sont donc rencontrés à Londres pour signer un protocole d'accord portant sur le développement d'un système similaire de combat aérien du futur (SCAF). S'étalant sur dix ans, cet accord doit permettre d'établir les conditions d'une coopération plus étroite concernant le développement d'un SCAF. Cela inclut la possibilité d'intégrer des technologies installées sur les Saab JAS 39 Gripen et BAE Systems Typhoon. Selon les parties concernées, les industriels et les gouvernements des deux pays ont identifié des besoins futurs similaires en matière de combat aérien. Le ministre de la Défense suédois, Peter Hultqvist, a souligné que les relations industrielles partagées par les deux pays étaient essentielles pour garantir cette future puissance aérienne de combat. « La coopération internationale fait partie de la stratégie de croissance de Saab et la collaboration avec les industries britanniques représente cette façon de travailler, également en prévision du futur », commente Håkan Buskhe, président de Saab. Le constructeur suédois rappelle qu'il développe actuellement le chasseur de nouvelle génération, le Gripen E/F, et qu'il « s'engage à le faire en étroite collaboration avec ses partenaires stratégiques, les forces aériennes suédoises et brésiliennes, ainsi qu'avec d'autres clients existants et nouveaux du Gripen, afin que le Gripen évolue pour répondre aux nouvelles exigences opérationnelles des prochaines décennies. » De son côté, le ministre britannique chargé des achats de la Défense, Stuart Andrew, a rappelé que le partenariat entre le Royaume-Uni et la Suède comportait déjà des exercices conjoints dans l'Arctique ainsi que l'exercice Ramstein Alloy au-dessus de l'Europe de l'Est. De même, les Typhoons de la Royal Air force sont équipés de distributeurs de paillettes et de leurres de fabrication suédoise tandis que le radar Giraffe de Saab est un élément clé du système de défense aérienne au sol britannique Sky Saber. Enfin, les Gripen sont équipés de radars conçus et construits par Leonardo à Edimbourg et le Royaume-Uni, en collaboration avec des partenaires européens, dont la Suède, a mis au point des missiles air-air Meteor. https://www.air-cosmos.com/article/scaf-la-sude-et-le-royaume-uni-cherchent-rompre-leur-isolement-21536

All news