Les français Naval Group et ECA Robotics fourniront 12 chasseurs de mines à la Belgique et aux Pays-Bas

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  November 30, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  Japan sets naval-friendly requirement in search to replace AH-1S Cobra fleet

  By: Mike Yeo Correction: Airbus has not confirmed its H145 multipurpose helicopter will be chosen to compete in Japan's search for a new attack helicopter. TOKYO — Japan is requiring its new attack helicopters be equipped for shipboard operations, as the country looks to replace its legacy Bell/Fuji Heavy Industries AH-1S Cobra attack helos. Japan's request for information issued earlier this year called for the new helicopters to be marinized and able to operate from “expeditionary airfields or sea bases,”, said retired Lt. Gen. George Trautman, an adviser to Bell. Speaking to Defense News at the Japan International Aerospace Exhibition in Tokyo, the former U.S. Marine aviator and commander of Marine Corps aviation said the RFI requested pricing and information for “30, 40 and 50” helicopters. He added that a request for proposals is expected in the next three to four months. Apart from Bell's AH-1Z Viper offer, Japanese firm Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is proposing its UH-60J/JA Black Hawk helicopter fitted with stub wings and weapons stations. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has produced several variants of the Black Hawk and SH-60 Seahawk for the Japan Self-Defense Forces under licence with Sikorsky since the 1990s. European manufacturer Airbus confirmed to Defense News that it is not offering its Tiger attack helicopter, and has not made a final decision on its offering. The company already has a footprint in Japan, as local emergency medical services operate the civilian H145, manufactured by Airbus. The company has also announced it is adding a maintenance, repair and overhaul complex adjacent to its existing facility in Kobe, Japan. Other possible contenders for the competition include Boeing with the AH-64E Apache as well as Italy's Leonardo with its AW249 attack helicopter currently in development. Japan already uses the Apache, with 13 license-produced AH-64Ds currently in service. However, this was a much smaller number than the 62 helicopters it originally planned to manufacture, and like neighboring South Korea, Japan is reportedly unimpressed with the performance of the Apache's Longbow radar. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/japan-aerospace/2018/11/29/japan-sets-naval-friendly-requirement-in-search-to-replace-ah-1s-cobra-fleet

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  April 7, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  With the commercial aviation industry in a nosedive, the Defense Department offers airlines a lifeline

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — As the coronavirus pandemic roils the commercial airline industry, U.S. Transportation Command is becoming increasingly concerned about the impact to the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, a program where U.S. airlines like United and Delta can fly transport missions on behalf of the Defense Department in an emergency. The White House has not officially activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, or CRAF, to support of COVID-19 prevention operations. However, as travel restrictions force airlines to cancel flights and make cuts to their aircraft fleets, the military is looking for opportunities where it can offload work to its CRAF partners in the hopes of softening the financial blow, said Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, who leads TRANSCOM. “On a cargo side, the civil aviation fleet is going pretty strong. On a passenger side, it has dropped off significantly,” Lyons told reporters Tuesday. “We're talking to [commercial airline companies] regularly. I am concerned, to some degree, about impacts on the passenger segment of the aviation industry, so any opportunity we have to push workload in their direction, we're doing that.” According to the Air Force, 25 airlines and a total 433 aircraft are involved in the CRAF program as of April 2019 — though those numbers often change on a monthly basis, the service notes. So far, no commercial airline companies have notified the Defense Department that they will not be able to meet their contractual commitments for the CRAF program, said Air Mobility Command spokeswoman Capt. Nicole Ferrara. But while the churn of the commercial airline industry hasn't immediately resulted in a reduction of assets for the CRAF program, it remains to be seen whether there could be long term impact, especially as companies whittle down the size of their fleets and number of types of aircraft. For instance, Delta Airlines in March announced it would speed up the retirements of its McDonnell Douglas MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft, as well as some older Boeing 767s. Meanwhile, American Airlines announced it would accelerate the retirements of a number of aircraft fleets. Instead of retiring in 2025, its Boeing 757s will be phased out by mid-2021, while its Boeing 767s will leave the fleet this May instead of next year. The airline will also phase out all 20 of its Embraer E190s and all nine of its A330-300s over the next year. To help companies build up revenue, the U.S. government issued contract awards to a number of commercial airlines to perform “repatriation flights” that transport American citizens and U.S. permanent residents, who are stranded in foreign countries, back to U.S. soil. On March 27, TRANSCOM was tapped to assist the Department of State Repatriation Task Force by managing contracts with the U.S. airline industry for commercial aircraft used to return Americans to the United States. So far, TRANSCOM has been responsible for scheduling commercial flights for about 1,200 people since the command took over contracting efforts, Dave Dunn, a spokesman for the command, told Defense News last week. During the first mission, planned for April 4, National Airlines transported U.S. citizens and permanent residents from Nigeria to Washington. TRANSCOM has also awarded contracts to Delta Air Lines and Omni Air for repatriation missions, with total value of $2.5 million across all three vendors. There have still been some limited challenges to scheduling repatriation flights on commercial airlines, noted Dunn. For instance, travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus outbreak have made it difficult to route stopovers for crew rest and fuel, as many normal locations are not available. However, Lyons said he expects the number of repatriation flights performed by commercial vendors to grow “significantly.” “There will still be small numbers that move on a space available basis [via military aircraft] but the main effort is through our Civil Reserve Aviation Fleet partners that we use on a day-to-day basis,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/04/06/with-the-commercial-aviation-industry-in-a-nosedive-the-defense-department-offers-airlines-a-lifeline/

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  May 6, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  DARPA: Expediting Software Certification for Military Systems, Platforms

  Military systems are increasingly using software to support functionality, new capabilities, and beyond. Before a new piece of software can be deployed within a system however, its functional safety and compliance with certain standards must be verified and ultimately receive certification. As the rapid rate of software usage continues to grow, it is becoming exceedingly difficult to assure that all software considered for military use is coded correctly and then tested, verified, and documented appropriately. “Software requires a certain level of certification – or approval that it will work as intended with minimal risks – before receiving approval for use within military systems and platforms,” said Dr. Ray Richards, a program manager in DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O). “However, the effort required to certify software is an impediment to expeditiously developing and fielding new capabilities within the defense community.” Today, the software certification process is largely manual and relies on human evaluators combing through piles of documentation, or assurance evidence, to determine whether the software meets certain certification criteria. The process is time consuming, costly, and can result in superficial or incomplete evaluations as reviewers bring their own sets of expertise, experiences, and biases to the process. A lack of a principled means of decomposing evaluations makes it difficult to create a balanced and trustworthy process that applies equally to all software. Further, each subsystem and component must be evaluated independently and re-evaluated before it can be used in a new system. “Just because a subsystem is certified for one system or platform does not mean it is unilaterally certified for all,” noted Richards. This creates additional time delays and review cycles. To help accelerate and scale the software certification process, DARPA developed the Automated Rapid Certification Of Software (ARCOS) program. The goal of ARCOS is to create tools and a process that would allow for the automated assessment of software evidence and provide justification for a software's level of assurance that is understandable. Taking advantage of recent advances in model-based design technology, “Big Code” analytics, mathematically rigorous analysis and verification, as well as assurance case languages, ARCOS seeks to develop a capability to automatically evaluate software assurance evidence to enable certifiers to rapidly determine that system risk is acceptable. “This approach to reengineering the software certification process is well timed as it aligns with the DoD Digital Engineering Strategy, which details how the department is looking to move away from document-based engineering processes and towards design models that are to be the authoritative source of truth for systems,” said Richards. To create this automated capability, ARCOS will explore techniques for automating the evidence generation process for new and legacy software; create a means of curating evidence while maintaining its provenance; and develop technologies for the automated construction of assurance cases, as well as technologies that can validate and assess the confidence of an assurance case argument. The evidence generation, curation, and assessment technologies will form the ARCOS tools and processes, working collectively to provide a scalable means of accelerating the pathway to certification. Throughout the program's expected three phases, evaluations and assessments will occur to gauge how the research is progressing. ARCOS researchers will tackle progressively more challenging sets of software systems and associated artifacts. The envisioned evaluation progression will move from a single software module to a set of interacting modules and finally to a realistic military software system. Interested proposers will have an opportunity to learn more during a Proposers Day on May 14, 2019, from 8:30AM to 3:30PM (EST) at the DARPA Conference Center, located at 675 N. Randolph Street, Arlington, Virginia, 22203. The purpose of the Proposers Day is to outline the ARCOS technical goals and challenges, and to promote an understanding of the BAA proposal requirements. For details about the event, including registration requirements, please visit: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=6a8f03472cf43a3558456b807877f248&tab=core&_cview=0 Additional information will be available in the forthcoming Broad Agency Announcement, which will be posted to www.fbo.gov. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-05-03