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  May 12, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Le Leonardo M-345 décroche sa certification de type

  L'avion d'entraînement M-345 de Leonardo a reçu sa certification initiale émise par la DAAA (Direction de l'armement aérien et de la navigabilité), soit l'autorité du ministère italien de la Défense. Le nouveau M-345 de Leonardo, sur le point d'entrer en service avec l'armée de l'air italienne et futur avion de l'équipe acrobatique de l'armée de l'air italienne Frecce Tricolori, est un appareil capable d'offrir des performances et une efficacité de type avion à réaction au prix d'un turbopropulseur, selon l'avionneur. 200 vols d'essais La DAAA (Direction L'armement aérien et la navigabilité), l'autorité italienne de certification du ministère italien de la Défense, a émis la « certification initiale » pour le nouvel avion d'entraînement M-345 de Leonardo. Cette étape du programme M-345 est le résultat d'intenses activités avec deux cents vols dédiés enregistrés parallèlement aux essais en vol de l'armée de l'air italienne. La certification initiale du M-345 marque le premier cas d'application de la nouvelle règlementation AER (EP) P-21 pour un aéronef à voilure fixe. Règlementation qui applique en fait l'EMAR-21 européen - (European Military Airworthiness Requirements, Exigences militaires européennes en matière de navigabilité) - une exigence de certification internationale stricte qui sera également bénéfique pour l'exportation de l'appareil. Coûts réduits Le M-345, gr'ce à ses performances et son système de formation intégré avancé, fournit à l'Armée de l'air italienne une amélioration significative de l'efficacité de l'entraînement avec une forte réduction des coûts d'exploitation, avance Leonardo. Le nouvel avion, conçu pour répondre aux besoins de formation de base et de base/avancé, complétera les M-346 utilisés pour la phase avancée de la formation des pilotes et, dans le cadre du projet « International Flight Training School », soutiendra le renforcement et l'internationalisation de l'offre de formation lancée par Leonardo en partenariat avec l'armée de l'air italienne. https://air-cosmos.com/article/le-leonardo-m-345-dcroche-sa-certification-de-type-23070

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  May 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Will defense budgets remain ‘sticky’ after the COVID-19 pandemic?

  By: Eric Lofgren Congress' unprecedented fiscal response to COVID-19 has many in the defense community wondering whether belt tightening will hit the Pentagon. On May 19, the Congressional Progressive Caucus wrote a letter arguing for substantial defense budget cuts to support additional spending on the pandemic. Nonprofit progressive supporters have been asking to cut a much larger $350 billion each year from the Pentagon in their “Moral Budget” proposal. What the progressives perhaps do not fully appreciate is the “stickiness” of defense budgets. In economics, stickiness refers to rigidity in the movement of wages and prices despite broader economic shifts pushing for new equilibrium. The phenomenon is apparent in defense budgets as well. Most expectations are that the fiscal 2021 budget will remain over $700 billion. Consider an analogy: the 2008 financial crisis. Lehman Brothers collapsed just a couple weeks before fiscal year 2009 started, leaving that $666 billion defense budget largely beyond recall. The following years' budgets were $691 billion, $687 billion, $646 billion and then finally in FY13 a more precipitous 10 percent fall to $578 billion. It took four years for the Pentagon to really feel the squeeze of the financial downturn. The uninitiated may believe COVID-19 happened with enough of lead time to affect the FY21 budget. Congress received the president's budget in February 2020 and has until the start of October to make targeted cuts without encountering another continuing resolution. The defense budget, however, represents the culmination of a multiyear process balancing thousands of stakeholder interests. It reflects a vast amount of information processed at every level of the military enterprise. The Pentagon's work on the FY21 budget request started nearly two years ahead of time and includes a register of funding estimates out to FY25. Moreover, defense programs are devised and approved based on life-cycle cost and schedule estimates. Cuts to a thorough plan may flip the analysis of alternatives on its head, recommending pivots to new systems or architectures and upsetting contract performance. Not only are current budgets shaped by many years of planning, but they get detailed to an almost microscopic level. For example, the Army's FY21 research, development, test and evaluation request totaled $12.8 billion, less than 2 percent of the overall Pentagon request. Yet the appropriation identifies 267 program elements decomposing into a staggering 2,883 budget program activity codes averaging less than $10 million each. Congressional staff is too small to understand the implications of many cost, schedule and technical trade-offs. To gather information on impacts, the Pentagon is thrown into a frenzy of fire drills. More draconian measures, like the FY13 sequestration, leading to indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts can sidestep hard questions but comes at a significant cost to efficiency. Targeted cuts at a strategic level, such as to the nuclear recapitalization programs and other big-ticket items, can expect stiff resistance. First, there is real concern about great power competition and the damage that may be wrought by acting on short-term impulses. Second, targeted programs and their contractors will immediately report the estimated number of job losses by district. Before measures can get passed, a coalition of congressional members negatively impacted may oppose the cuts. Resistance is intensified considering the proximity to Election Day. Budget stickiness is built into the political process. The FY22 budget is perhaps the first Pentagon budget that can start inching downward. More than likely, severe cuts aren't in the offing until FY23 or FY24 at the very earliest. That gives time for policymakers to reflect on the scale of the rebalancing between defense and other priorities. In some important ways, congressional control of the Pentagon through many thousands of budget line items restricts its own flexibility. For example, continuing resolutions lock in program funding to the previous year's level until political disagreements can be resolved. The military cannot stick to its own plans, much less start new things. If budget lines were detailed at a higher level, such as by major organization or capability area, then the Pentagon could make more trade-offs while Congress debates. Similarly, if the Pentagon had more budget flexibility, then Congress could more easily cut top lines and allow Pentagon leaders to figure out how to maximize with the constraint during the year of execution. Congress could gain the option to defer the hard questions that can make cuts politically difficult. The Space Force recently released a proposal for consolidating budget line items into higher-level capability areas. It reflects the idea that portfolio-centric management is an efficient method of handling rapid changes in technologies, requirements or financial guidance resulting from economic shocks. Until such reforms are pursued, expect defense budgets to remain sticky. Eric Lofgren is a research fellow at the Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. He manages a blog and podcast on weapon systems acquisition. He previously served as a senior analyst at Technomics Inc., supporting the U.S. Defense Department's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/26/will-defense-budgets-remain-sticky-after-the-covid-19-pandemic/

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  November 8, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Cracks emerging in European defence as NATO faces ‘brain death’, Macron warns

  MICHELLE ZILIO ADRIAN MORROWU.S. CORRESPONDENT French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that NATO faces “brain death” because the United States can no longer be counted on to co-operate with the other members of the military and political alliance. In an interview published on Thursday, Mr. Macron said what “we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” citing concerns about the lack of co-ordinated strategic decision-making between the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Speaking more generally about the future of Europe, Mr. Macron said the continent needs to “wake up” to the shift in U.S. foreign policy toward isolationism and the global balance of power, with the rise of China and re-emergence of authoritarian powers such as Russia and Turkey. Mr. Macron said Europe is at risk of disappearing geopolitically and losing “control of our destiny” if it fails to face this reality. U.S. President Donald Trump has condemned NATO as outdated, and complained publicly that the United States contributes the most to its defence operations, while other allies, including Canada, fail to boost their military spending. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was visiting Germany on Thursday for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, hailed NATO's importance in uniting democratic countries to win the Cold War. But at a press conference with his German counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Maas, he repeated Mr. Trump's demand that other members contribute more to the alliance. He said he was glad to see German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's commitment earlier in the day to bring German defence spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2031. “It is an absolute imperative that every country participate and join in and contribute appropriately to achieving that shared security mission,” Mr. Pompeo said. NATO is an alliance of 29 countries from Europe and North America for mutual defence, fighting terrorism and helping manage crises around the world. Its members contribute to its operations mainly by participating in its missions. Members pledged in 2014 to increase their military spending to 2 per cent of GDP by 2024. U.S. military spending was 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2018, according to the World Bank. Canada has no clear plan to reach 2 per cent in the next decade. In a statement, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's office said Canada's total defence spending is expected to reach 1.48 per cent of GDP by 2024. However, spokesperson Todd Lane said the government plans to exceed another NATO target, 20 per cent of defence spending on major equipment. Mr. Maas, the German foreign affairs minister, dismissed Mr. Macron's comments. “I do not believe NATO is brain-dead,” he said. “The challenges should not be downplayed in their importance, those that we are facing, but we have an interest in the unity of NATO and its ability to take action.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday in Berlin, also rejected Mr. Macron's “drastic words.” “That is not my view of co-operation in NATO,” she said at a news conference. “I don't think that such sweeping judgments are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday that NATO continues to play an important role on the world stage. He pointed to Canada's leadership of the NATO training mission in Iraq and its involvement in a mission in Latvia as examples of where the alliance is still valuable. “I think NATO continues to hold an extremely important role, not just in the North Atlantic, but in the world as a group of countries that come together to share values, that share a commitment to shared security,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. Fen Hampson, an international affairs expert at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, said Mr. Macron made a fair point about NATO's problems, but said use of the term “brain death" was a bit hyperbolic. “This [NATO] is a corpse that perhaps has a beating heart in terms of the intergovernmental machinery, but in terms of its political leadership and political commitment ... I think he is on the mark there,” Prof. Hampson said. In the wide-ranging foreign policy interview with The Economist, Mr. Macron also questioned the effectiveness of NATO's Article Five, which says that if one member is attacked, all others will come to its aid. The collective defence article is meant as a deterrent. Mr. Macron said NATO “only works if the guarantor of last resort functions as such,” adding that there is reason to reassess the alliance in light of the U.S. actions. He pointed to the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria last month, abandoning Kurdish allies. The move made way for Turkey to invade and attack the Kurds, whom Turkey has long seen as terrorists. Mr. Macron expressed concern about whether NATO would respect Article Five and back Turkey, a member, if Syria launched a retaliatory attack. “If the [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad regime decides to retaliate against Turkey, will we commit ourselves under it? It's a crucial question,” Mr. Macron said. David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said that while Mr. Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria sent a troubling signal to allies, it would be much more difficult for him to bypass the U.S. national security community, which widely supports NATO, to make drastic changes to his county's involvement in the alliance. “NATO is different in the order of importance than the American relationship was with the Kurds. Because of that there's enough of the national security establishment built in and around Trump that would safeguard the U.S. role in the alliance to prevent anything catastrophic from happening," Mr. Perry said. Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trudeau, said Mr. Macron is right about the need for Europeans to work together more effectively, but said calling NATO's Article Five into question is a “dangerous and irresponsible way to do so.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-says-nato-is-still-important-despite-macrons-warning-of/