September 14, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Sept. 11, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak
After nearly shutting down production several times, Lockheed Martin is getting a surge of orders for the F-16. With a current backlog of 130 jets, and several countries on the cusp of making orders, the company sees a possibility of surpassing the 5,000th airplane of the type, Lockheed Martin Executive Vice President of Aeronautic Michele A. Evans said Sept. 9.
“We're seeing a ... resurgence of the F-16 business,” Evans said in an interview with Air Force Magazine. The company is producing Block 70 Falcons for Bahrain, Bulgaria, and Slovakia at its Greenville, S.C., plant, where it moved the F-16 line last year, freeing up space at its Fort Worth, Texas, plant for the F-35 production line.
“We're up to about 4,600 aircraft delivered and can see possibly getting up to 5,000,” Evans said.
Production is ramping up to four aircraft a month at Greenville, which has increased its workforce to 400 employees, she noted. It is also operating under an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity Air Force contract to supply F-16s to Morocco and Taiwan and potential future or repeat customers. The IDIQ vehicle will streamline and speed up contracting so there is a “base configuration” of aircraft to be built, “and then we propose only the unique capabilities for each country,” in the form of specific sensors or capabilities, she said. “We then just negotiate that contract with those countries.”
The backlog does not include India, where Lockheed is seeking a contract for an advanced version of the F-16 to be called the F-21. Along with partner Tata, Lockheed would build 114 airplanes in India, under license, if it wins the competition.
The F-16 sales could also create future F-35 customers, Evans said. “For a lot of these countries, ... as we get them capable with the F-16, we believe the next step for many ... is future procurement of the F-35.”
Evans said the U.S. Air Force is seeking more operational flight program and software updates for its own F-16s, and may be interested in other improvements as well. The Air Force is “looking to advance the capability” of its Falcons, she said.
The current backlog will keep the F-16 in production through 2025, Evans noted, but Lockheed would consider increasing the rate of production if demand increases. Hitting 5,000 Falcons delivered would likely take more than seven years of sustained work, she said. However, “We don't see any issues in terms of being able to meet customer demand,” she added.
Editor's Note: This story was updated at 9:41 a.m. Sept. 12 to include the correct number in the F-16 backlog.
https://www.airforcemag.com/lockheed-new-demand-for-f-16s-could-push-type-past-5000-mark
December 12, 2023 | International, Land
Global leasing giant Avolon said on Tuesday it had agreed to order 100 A321neo aircraft from Airbus and 40 737 MAX aircraft from Boeing in a deal its owner said was worth a combined $18 billion at list prices.
June 1, 2020 | International, C4ISR
"Once a chip is designed, adding security after the fact or making changes to address newly discovered threats is nearly impossible," explains a DARPA spokesperson. By THERESA HITCHENSon May 29, 2020 at 2:46 PM WASHINGTON: DARPA has launched a four-year project to find ways to design security features into microchips as they are being made to help ensure the future supply chain. While the name of the project is daunting — Automatic Implementation of Secure Silicon (AISS) — and the technical requirements are a serious challenge, the concept is pretty simple. “AISS aims to automate the process of incorporating security into chip designs, making it easier and potentially more cost effective for any organization with even a small design team (start-ups, mid-size companies, etc.) to build security measures into their designs,” a DARPA spokesperson told Breaking D today. “Overall, with AISS DARPA aims to bring greater automation to the chip design process to profoundly decrease the burden of including security measures,” the spokesperson said. The two winning teams, according to a May 27 DARPA press release, are: The two AISS research teams are: Synopsys, Arm, Boeing, Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research at the University of Florida, Texas A&M University, UltraSoC, and the University of California, San Diego Northrop Grumman, IBM, University of Arkansas, and University of Florida “Research and development on the $75 million program was commenced two weeks ago and incremental capabilities are expected to roll out to the chip design community over the next four years,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Our hope is that many of the capabilities will start appearing as features in commercial design automation software before the program completion.” Digital integrated circuits are the engines that drive modern computers, and everyday digital devices such as smart phones. They are critical to the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT). As such, they increasingly have become a key target of hacking by US adversaries and cyber criminals alike, DARPA explains. “Threats to IC chips are well known, and despite various measures designed to mitigate them, hardware developers have largely been slow to implement security solutions due to limited expertise, high cost and complexity,” the DARPA release says. “Further, when unsecure circuits are used in critical systems, the lack of embedded countermeasures exposes them to exploitation.” Indeed, the Department of Commerce on May 15 took another swipe at Chinese telecoms behemoth Huawei and tightened its earlier efforts to block it from exporting its semiconductors and products to the US and allies. The Trump administration alleges that Huawei's hardware and software, in particular that related to 5G wireless technology, are full of deliberate security holes in order to enable Chinese government spying. The ruling by Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, which will take effect in September, seeks to prevent companies around the world from using American-made software and machinery develop chips for Huawei or its subsidiary firms. The problem for device-makers, particularly in the IoT world where the market is largely for commercial products (think smart refrigerators), is that fixing potential security holes often isn't seen as worth the time, effort and most importantly, money. “The inclusion of security also often requires certain trade-offs with the typical design objectives, such as size, performance, and power dissipation,” the DARPA spokesperson said. “For example, something like a sprinkler isn't likely to require the highest level of security protections. Investing in security mechanisms that take up a lot of space on the underlying chip, or significantly impact chip performance likely doesn't make sense based on the sprinkler's expected use and application.” And yet, that future IoT sprinkler also will be other IoT devices and computer networks in operation by an individual, a company or a facility, such as a weapons depot. Even more unfortunately, the spokesperson explained, “modern chip design methods are unforgiving – once a chip is designed, adding security after the fact or making changes to address newly discovered threats is nearly impossible.” Thus, the AISS program is aimed at spurring research into two areas that can address four types of microchip vulnerability, the release says: “side channel attacks, hardware Trojans, reverse engineering, and supply chain attacks, such as counterfeiting, recycling, re-marking, cloning, and over-production.” The first area of research will be focusing on “development of a ‘security engine' that combines the latest academic research and commercial technology into an upgradable platform that can be used to defend chips against attacks, and provide an infrastructure to manage these hardened chips as they progress through their lifecycle,” DARPA said. The second area, led by software specialists Synopsys, “involves integrating the security engine technology developed in the first research area into system-on-chip (SOC) platforms in a highly automated way,” the DARPA release said. The Synopsys team also will be working on how to integrate new security designs and manufacturing tools with currently available off-the-shelf products. Nicholas Paraskevopoulous, sector VP for emerging capabilities development at Northrop Grumman, said in a May 27 press release that the firm's “design tools will enable the development of secure and trusted integrated circuits with reduced costs.” Northrop Grumman is involved in the first AISS research area. Synopsis could not be reached for comment by press time. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/darpa-seeks-secure-microchip-supply-chain/
February 8, 2024 | International, Aerospace
The service plans to launch Victus Haze — named to reflect its goal of demonstrating the ability to overcome the fog of war — in 2025.