Le fabricant de piles thermiques Aérospatiale Batteries augmente ses capacités

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  October 4, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Leonardo: Europe Should Have Role In Future Vertical Lift

  Tony Osborne The managing director of Leonardo's helicopter business says he would like to see a role for European industry in the programs that emerge from the U.S. Army's Future Vertical Lift (FVL). Gian Piero Cutillo told Aerospace DAILY on the sidelines of the 1,000th AW139 helicopter delivery in September that the European helicopter industry had generated the competencies to make it a useful partner in such a program, and said the company was in continuous talks with different partners but “there is nothing concrete.” European industry points to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which while securing significant sales in Europe has had an impact on the sales of European-built combat aircraft. There is a fear that with the volume of FVL platforms likely to be purchased by the U.S., their price could make FVL an attractive proposition for export customers. Sikorsky's Black Hawk has secured an increased customer base, particularly in Eastern Europe in recent years. The U.S. Army's work on a Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) and Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) is beginning to attract attention from European nations, with the U.S. Army planning to begin sharing information with allies shortly. The UK already has personnel embedded into the FVL program and is working on an operational analysis of its future helicopter fleets, with a focus on what high-speed rotorcraft can offer UK land forces. “From my heart, I would like to see European industry become one of the main actors. I strongly believe we have all the capabilities,” Cutillo said. “We are talking about what will be a global program, with more than one technology and room for the traditional technology as well.” Any FVL partnership should not be like that of previous programs, Cutillo said. European industry has already begun the development of high-speed rotorcraft, such as Leonardo's AW609 tiltrotor, Airbus' X3 compound helicopter and a future development of the latter, the Rapid And Cost-Efficient Rotorcraft (RACER). But so far they are targeted to the commercial market. An Airbus proposal for FARA, believed to use the X3 technology, was rejected earlier this year, with only U.S.-based companies awarded contracts. The Italian military is said to be interested in purchasing the Leonardo tiltrotor. But contractual limitations imposed by Bell, which was previously a partner on the AW609, stipulate that the aircraft cannot be offered with armaments. It is unclear whether these limitations extend to future tiltrotor models. Leonardo is investigating future tiltrotor technologies through the European Union Clean Sky 2 program, with a technology demonstrator, the Next Generation Civil Tilt Rotor, due to fly in 2023. https://aviationweek.com/vertical-flight/leonardo-europe-should-have-role-future-vertical-lift

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  September 24, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  New head of Strategic Capabilities Office wants to focus on AI

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The Strategic Capabilities Office is under new management, and its new director intends to doubledown on the agency's emphasis on artificial intelligence. In his first interview since taking over the office, Chris Shank, the new SCO director, made it clear he sees artificial intelligence as a sweet spot for his office. Roughly one third of SCO projects deal with autonomous systems, machine learning or AI in some way, Shank said, including long-range fires programs, cyber programs and some assorted with special forces. Shank is the the group's second leader, following Will Roper, the office's founder who is now the Air Force's top civilian acquisitions official. But don't expect major changes in how the office works. “My job is to keep momentum going,” Shank explained. “It's a very high ops tempo group that [Roper was] able to recruit and attract into the office, in terms of working synergistic teams around that. What I am trying to do is take it from a startup organization to a long-term sustainable one.” Although they share some DNA, the SCO's mission is different from that of the Pentagon's technology office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Where the latter is focused on finding and prototyping the game-changing technologies for future battles, the SCO is trying to understand existing needs and address them in new ways. Getting those projects from tests to prototype to a tool used by the services remains a central challenge, Shank acknowledged, but he said that is one of the office's core function. “Where SCO lives is the valley of death,” Shank said, referencing a term for when technologies infamously tend to fail. The SCO had been reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense, but under the Pentagon's recent reorganization, it now reports to Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin. Shank acknowledged the importance of coordination within that office, particularly with AI, which now has a number of different centers of gravity within the Pentagon – a $2 billion push by DARPA, an AI center under Chief Technical Officer Dana Deasy, a directorate under the R&E enterprise, as well as various service-level initiatives. The R&E enterprise has weekly meetings to deconflict investments in AI, Shank said, emphasizing the different business models and goals between the groups. Shank described two programs — each named after pieces of the Iron Man movie mythos — as examples of how SCO can use AI to assist the services in the near-term. Paladium is a broader Navy logistics effort, which involves “smart sustainment” in support of fourth-generation fighter aircraft. A sub project for that is JARVIS, which involves putting a robotics suite out into the field with maintainers that can scan existing parts and quickly re-manufacture them. Shank said the office identified two parts that would require around 2,000 man hours to build out; JARVIS should be able to quickly recreate those, saving both time and the potential errors that come from human-machined pieces. Perhaps those projects aren't as shiny as some of SCO's other programs, such as the Perdix drone-swam, but finding areas where AI can be injected onto existing system and where “the human brain doesn't have to work” as hard will have benefits across the Pentagon, Shank said. The office is primarily focused on the Indo-PACOM and European Command theaters, Shank said. However, he expects to soon provide an update on the Sea Mob/Ghost Fleet initiative, which involves converting existing naval vessels into unmanned systems. He also indicated that there would be unmanned projects in air and land that are unveiled in 2019. One looming cloud for the office: an attempt earlier this year by members of the House Armed Services Committee to kill the SCO by 2020. However, when asked if he was concerned about that proposal, Shank flatly said “no.” He traveled to the Hill shortly after taking office to address that specific issue. In describing the conversation with lawmakers, Shank said, “'I know this wasn't your intent, but this impacted both morale and my ability to recruit talent into the organization,'” he said, “and they [said] ‘that wasn't our intent.'” The SCO is working on a report for Congress on the future of the organization. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/09/21/new-head-of-strategic-capabilities-office-wants-to-focus-on-ai

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  September 18, 2023 | International, Land

  Directed energy weapons making jump from sci-fi to real world