December 9, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval
PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Dec. 8 that his country's next aircraft-carrier will be nuclear-powered and should be operational by 2038 in time to replace the Charles de Gaulle, which entered active service in 2001.
The new aircraft carrier is expected to be the biggest warship France has ever built. Florence Parly, the armed forces minister, said in October that the ship, whatever its propulsion, would be designed to deploy the future combat aircraft system (FCAS) and today her ministry confirmed that the vessel would deploy about 30 of these aircraft “which will be bigger than the Rafales.”
The ministry said the ship would be in the 75,000 tonne class (82,673 tons), be around 300 meters long (984 feet) and be able to sail at 27 knots (31 mph), even bigger than the second aircraft carrier that Naval Group was working on in the early 2000s until that program was shelved by the government for lack of money. In comparison, the Charles de Gaulle is 261m (856 feet) long and weighs 42,000 tonnes (46,297 tons) fully loaded. The new ship will have a crew of about 2,000, including the air group.
Speaking at Framatome, France's principal nuclear-power company headquartered at Le Creusot in the centre of France, Macron announced just four minutes before the end of his 28 minute speech that he had “decided that the future aircraft-carrier which will serve our country and our navy will, like the Charles de Gaulle, be nuclear-propelled.”
It will have two K22 power generators each generating 220 megawatts (hence the 22) derived from the K15 (that generate 150 MW each) that currently power the Charles de Gaulle.
Naval Group, which is the prime contractor for these major ship-building projects, immediately issued a statement hailing the decision, pledging to work with its major industrial partners Chantiers de l'Atlantique, TechnicAtome and Dassault Aviation.
Pierre Eric Pommellet, chairman and CEO of Naval Group, said, “We are delighted with the announcement (...) which will enable France to maintain its position in the very restricted circle of major powers holding a nuclear aircraft carrier.”
Echoing what Macron had said in his speech, Pommellet stressed the importance of projects like this to “ensure the continuity of our skills” and of developing innovative solutions “in the fields of propulsion and high added-value military systems, thus maintaining France's technological lead and its position as a key geostrategic player.”
Now that the nuclear option has been chosen to power France's new aircraft carrier, other major decisions will have to be taken, notably concerning the catapults which are a vital part of the project. France has no expertise in this highly specialized technology and so will have to import the catapults from the United States, as it has done for the past 60 years. Those on the Charles de Gaulle are steam-powered, but those on the new aircraft carrier will be electromagnetic.
Naval Group and its partners will now start a two-year preliminary design study, which sources said may use a number of the ideas that had been worked on for the aborted second aircraft carrier. That will be followed by more detailed plans with the development phase expected to finish at the end of 2025 at which point the ministry will order the ship. The design phase up to the end of 2025 is expected to cost some €900 million ($1.09 billion) of which €117 million ($142 million) will be spent in 2021.
October 18, 2021 | International, Land
See the newest tech and hear from leadership in this special episode of Defense News Weekly covers the Association of the U.S. Army conference.
September 11, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Mike Gruss Leaders at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Sept. 7 a $2 billion initiative, known as AI Next, that aims to substantially improve artificial intelligence research. “With AI Next, we are making multiple research investments aimed at transforming computers from specialized tools to partners in problem-solving,” Steven Walker, the agency's director, said in a press release. “Today, machines lack contextual reasoning capabilities, and their training must cover every eventuality, which is not only costly, but ultimately impossible. We want to explore how machines can acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognize new situations and environments and adapt to them.” As a result of the effort, DARPA leaders envision improving day-to-day processes, such as vetting for security clearances in a week or accrediting software systems for operational deployment in a day or less. DARPA said it plans to announce multiple broad agency announcements in the next year. The announcement marks the second major artificial intelligence-related initiative in the last three months. In late June, the Department of Defense announced its Joint AI Center, which is expected to help provide a road map for the department's nearly 600 AI-related programs, including the controversial Project Maven program. The funding is a parallel effort to the Department of Defense's Joint AI Center, known as JAIC, which is expected to cost about $1.7 billion in the coming years. That program is run through the DOD CIO's office and is expected to focus more on applications for artificial intelligence while the DARPA programs will concentrate on answering questions related to the “foundational science” related to AI. DARPA has a history of working on AI project. It is currently funding about 20 AI related programs and said its initial funding on the topic dates back to the 1960s. Leaders describe the new investment as working toward what they call the third wave of AI. The first wave focused on rule-based systems for narrow tasks and a second wave has been used to find statistical patterns in large data sets. But DARPA leaders are describing a third wave as one of “contextual adaptation.” In a press conference at the conclusion of DARPA's D60 symposium, agency leaders said the new initiative would include a focus on explainable AI, in other words, how a machine arrived at its answer. They also said they expect a broader discussion of ethics related to artificial intelligence. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/09/10/darpas-new-2-billion-initiative-for-next-level-ai
December 12, 2023 | International, Land