Les employés du DDPS sommés de refuser les invitations

On the same subject

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  February 22, 2023 | International, Other Defence

  Le ministre des Armées assure que l'industrie de la défense française doit se "mettre en stimulation"

  Depuis Dakar ce mardi, Sébastien Lecornu a plaidé pour "une mise en stimulation" de l'industrie de la défense française, afin d'assurer "l'autonomie stratégique" du pays.

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  March 31, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  USAF Announces New Major Deficiency On KC-46

  Lee Hudson The U.S. Air Force has upgraded an existing deficiency for the KC-46A Pegasus fuel system to Category 1. The service's program office first identified “excessive fuel leaks” in July after an air refueling test. The Air Force and Boeing are working together to determine the root cause and implement corrective actions. A Category 1 deficiency means the government has identified a risk that jeopardizes lives or critical assets. “The KC-46 Program Office continues to monitor the entire KC-46 fleet and is enhancing acceptance testing of the fuel system to identify potential leaks at the factory where they can be repaired prior to delivery,” according to an Air Force statement. Boeing is contractually obligated to rectify this deficiency at no additional cost to the Air Force. “We are disappointed to learn of this development and are already implementing assembly and installation improvements to correct the issue,” Boeing spokesman Larry Chambers said in a statement to Aerospace DAILY. “We have repaired several of the airplanes and will continue to implement repairs as needed. Boeing is working with urgency to address this issue.” The Air Force discovered several required fuel-system repairs, Chambers said. The fuel system is equipped with redundant protection for fuel containment. “In some cases with this issue, aircraft maintenance crews are finding fuel between the primary and secondary fuel barriers within the system,” Chambers said. The KC-46A program still faces other unresolved Category 1 deficiencies that involve the Remote Vision System (RVS) and the boom telescope actuator. The problem with the RVS is what the Air Force calls a “rubber sheet” effect that distorts the image on the visual display used by the boom operator during refueling operations. The actuator on the boom needs to be more sensitive to smaller receiver aircraft, such as A-10s and F-16s. Boeing has agreed to pay for the RVS design fix, while the Air Force will finance the design change to the actuator. “There's profound problems with the system,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said March 3 during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The service is certifying the aircraft to conduct airlift and medical evacuation missions. The plan is for the Air Force to employ the KC-46 in those roles while a long-term fix is being developed, Goldfein said. Goldfein told new Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to focus on the KC-46 program, even as it is fixing the 737 MAX. Calhoun said the KC-46 is his top military priority. “I have seen a change in the behavior of that company since he took over, and so that's why we're more confident sitting here today that we have a serious fix on the table,” Goldfein said. “We're in final negotiations, so we can't go into any more detail than that. But I will say that it's looking better today than it was even six months ago.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/usaf-announces-new-major-deficiency-kc-46

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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/