July 18, 2018 | International, Naval
By Stephen Carlson
July 17 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin out of Baltimore, MD. has received a $450.7 million modification to an existing contract for production of four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships for the the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Work will be performed in Crozet, Va., Iron Mountain, Mich., Milwaukee, Wisc., Sweden, Great Britain and other locations across the United States. The contract is expected to be completed by October 2025.
Foreign military sales funding for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the amount of $225.6 million will be obligated at time of award .
The Multi-Mission Surface Combatant is a highly maneuverable surface warfare ship capable of coastal and operations in the open ocean.
The MMSC is equipped with the COMBATSS-21 Combat Management System. It is based off the AEGIS system used by air defense destroyers around the world.
The vessel integrates the Mk110 57mm deck gun into the system as well, allowing for more accurate fires against incoming targets like aircraft and small boats. It can mount the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System which can mount various surface-to-air and surface-to-surface weapons like the Standard and the Tomahawk.
December 26, 2022 | International, C4ISR
Jennifer Swanson spoke to C4ISRNET on the sidelines of the Armyâs Technical Exchange Meeting 9, a military network-and-communications forum in Tennessee.
August 3, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. It was hard enough keeping the data flowing to the far mountains of Afghanistan, but at least the Taliban didn't have the technology to attack the network. Russia and China, however, are investing heavily in capabilities to eavesdrop on or jam the radio transmissions and to blind or outright shoot down the satellites. ASSOCIATION OF THE US ARMY, ARLINGTON: War zones, it turns out, get crappy reception. But the Army, NASA, and multiple private companies are looking to optical communications — that means lasers — off affordable micro-satellites that could dramatically increase bandwidth. Just this morning, the federally funded Aerospace Corporation announced a successful test for NASA that provided bandwidth 50 times higher — an almost 5,000 percent increase — than current military satellites that use radio waves. Bassett: Military Necessity Not three hours before the Aerospace Co. announcement, Maj. Gen. David Bassettwas getting excited about optical satellites at the Association of the US Army's annual cyber and networks conference here. That matters because, after a successful tour in charge of armored vehicle programs, Bassett is now the Army's Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications – Tactical (PEO-C3T). Currently, Bassett said, during a typical exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center, meant to depict realistic combat conditions, an Army brigade HQ gets a satellite link that can transmit two megabits a second. By comparison, he said, one of his fellow panelists, Forcepoint Federal CTO George Kamis, had just clocked his smartphone at 70megabits per second. That's 35 times the power the 4,000-soldier brigade gets, for just one person. “We have to provide more bandwidth to a headquarters than Mr. Kamis has in his pocket,” said Bassett. Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/army-nasa-want-laser-micro-satellites-for-50-times-the-bandwidth
May 31, 2023 | International, Other Defence
The Czech parliament's upper house approved a bill on Wednesday that will set the state's minimum defence spending at 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) from next year, matching its commitment to the NATO military alliance.