La disponibilité des aéronefs en 2018

On the same subject

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  July 14, 2020 | International, Naval

  Navy Inks Deal For New Unmanned Fleet

  The $34 million deal marks the service's first real thrust to get unmanned ships into the water, despite Congressional worries the service is moving too fast. By PAUL MCLEARYon July 13, 2020 at 5:37 PM WASHINGTON: Despite deep and bipartisan skepticism from Capitol Hill over its plans to build three new classes of unmanned warships, the Navy went ahead today with its plans to begin building as many as 40 Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels. The service awarded L3 Technologies Inc. a $34.9 million contract for a prototype MUSV, along with an option for up to eight additional ships. If the company builds those eight unmanned ships, the contract will be worth $281 million through June 2027. Overall, the Navy wants to build about 40 MUSVs in coming years, which will clock in at between 45 to 190 feet long, with displacements of roughly 500 tons. The medium ships are thought to skew more toward mission modules revolving around intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads and electronic warfare systems. In their versions of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, however, both the House and Senate told the Navy to slow down on its acquisition of some unmanned ships, specifically the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel. Both documents boost Congressional oversight over the LUSV, an ambitious new ship the Navy hoped to begin building in 2023. While the MUSV will focus on gathering intelligence, the LUSV will act as a forward-deployed missile launcher, bristling with missile tubes and other weapons, Navy planners have said. Lawmakers are looking to ensure the Navy finalizes its design and operational plans before building the larger ship, something the service has struggled with as it built other classes such as the Littoral Combat Ship, the Ford class of aircraft carriers, and the Zumwalt destroyers, all of which fell behind schedule, went over budget and struggled with new technologies. “USVs are one of the centerpieces of distributed maritime operations,” Rear Adm. Casey Moton, head of the Unmanned and Small Combatants office, said last month at a U.S. Naval Institute event. The ships will act as platforms to enable the fleet to spread out and counter China's ambitions in the Pacific either as a forward screen for a carrier strike group or as vessels pressed forward with an acceptable risk of attrition. The Navy hasn't yet fully prepared to deploy or sustain a new fleet of unmanned vessels, Capt. Pete Small, program manager for unmanned maritime systems said in May. “Our infrastructure right now is optimized around manned warships,” Small said. “We're gonna have to shift that infrastructure for how we prepare, deploy, and transit” over large bodies of water before the navy begins churning out unmanned ships in greater numbers, he added. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/navy-inks-deal-for-new-unmanned-fleet

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  December 6, 2023 | International, Land

  Shift5 selected by Army to cyber-harden HIMARS fleet

  The U.S. military’s increasingly computerized weapons are at risk of harassment or hijacking, the Government Accountability Office has said.

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  January 26, 2021 | International, Land

  Infantry Squad Vehicle is a cramped ride, but US Army says it meets requirements

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army's new Infantry Squad Vehicle is a cramped ride and offers limited protection from certain threats, according to a recent report from the Pentagon's chief weapons tester, but it still meets the service's requirements in tests and evaluations, the product lead told Defense News. The ISV “key requirements are being met and we are increasing soldier operational readiness by providing an operationally relevant vehicle that can transport small tactical units to a dismount point faster and in better physical and mental condition for the fight,” said Steven Herrick, the Army's product lead for ground mobility vehicles within the Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Service Support. The vehicle was designed for easy transport to operational environments with the infantry's current rotary and fixed-wing transport platforms. The key performance parameters required that the vehicle's weight not exceed 5,000 pounds and that it fit inside a CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter. Those requirements “force dimensional requirements only allowing the vehicle to be a certain height, width and length,” he said. The requirements led to a vehicle that makes it hard for soldiers with all their gear needed for a 72-hour mission to comfortably fit inside and be able to access rucksacks on the move. The Army assessed three vendors in developmental testing from December 2019 through January 2020. The service chose General Motors Defense to supply the vehicle to the force, with the company beating out an Oshkosh Defense and Flyer Defense team as well as an SAIC and Polaris team. All offerings were capable of carrying a nine-soldier infantry squad with weapons and equipment during movement, the director of operational test and evaluation said in the report. But the Pentagon also noted the ISV “has not demonstrated the capability to carry the required mission equipment, supplies and water for a unit to sustain itself to cover a range of 300 miles within a 72-hour period.” The Army, however, has assessed the ISV requirement and solution set is in alignment, Herrick said. The DOT&E report, he said, “indicates a desire to include more equipment than a standard nine-soldier squad would carry on a 72-hour mission.” This lack of space, the report stated, “may create a logistics and operational burden” and might limit the type of missions and duration for ISVs. The soldiers that participated in the touch point evaluating the vehicles were asked to bring their Advanced Combat Helmet and Improved Outer Tactical Vest with plates; individual weapon; night vision devices; and ruck with three days' worth of supplies, Herrick said. “All vendors' ISVs are cramped and soldiers cannot reach, stow, and secure equipment as needed, degrading and slowing mission operations,” the report explained. During tests “soldiers on all ISVs could not readily access items in their rucksacks without stopping the movement, dismounting, and removing their rucksacks from the vehicle.” The soldier touch point took into account soldier comfort, visibility and ability to execute the mission, Herrick said. This was all factored into the Army's decision to choose GM Defense's vehicle. “Additionally, no current or planned combat or tactical vehicle allows access to rucksacks while moving to support operator safety,” Herrick noted. “Crew spaces on the ISV are designed to allow mission performance of specific duty tasks.” Units also lacked reliable communication capability, according to the report, using hand-held or manpack radios between 62 and 300 miles. The ISV does not have a mounted radio requirement. “Communication between the squad leader, soldiers, and the platoon leader was intermittent and not reliable,” the report found. Because of the concept of the ISV providing an effective aid to insert soldiers into combat operations, the requirements support just what the soldier carries, so there is no mounted requirement yet, Herrick said. That requirement could be added as a growth capability later. The DOT&E report also noted that the ISV doesn't have an underbody and ballistic survivability requirement, which could mean the unit would be susceptible to certain threats, but the ISV's speed as well as its small, low profile might help deal with those issues. Adding protection to the vehicle would sacrifice the speed the squad needs to rapidly inject itself into operations. Overall, GM Defense's vehicle had the highest reliability among the three vendors, demonstrating 585 mean miles between operational mission failures. The Army's user requirement is 1,200 mean miles for that situation. Herrick noted that reliability and maintainability testing was not scheduled or conducted by Army Test and Evaluation Command or the program office, so the calculations used in the DOT&E report were “not supported by traditional [reliability and maintainability] RAM elements, such as scoring conferences and time for the vendor to implement changes.” The mileage accumulated and referenced in the report was “not meant to evaluate RAM by the Army, but rather to provide the program office and contractor an initial insight on the capability of the system over 500 miles,” Herrick added. The vehicle's RAM testing is scheduled to begin this month, he added.. The service wasn't able to evaluate every aspect of the vehicle before moving into production, but it plans to test the vehicle's ability to be carried by a Chinook during its initial operational test and evaluation this year. Now that the Army has chosen the GM Defense vehicle, it has already initiated developmental testing that will lead to an initial operational test and evaluation in August 2021 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. That testing began in November 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2021/01/25/infantry-squad-vehicle-is-a-cramped-ride-but-army-says-it-meets-requirements/