Navy: Next Large Surface Combatant Will Look A Lot Like Zumwalt

On the same subject

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  June 18, 2019 | International, Other Defence

  CACI Secures $880 Million Task Order to Provide Information Technology and Engineering Services for U.S. Army's Personnel and Force Management Systems

  ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CACI International Inc (NYSE: CACI) announced today it has secured an $880 million task order to provide information technology and engineering services to the U.S. Army's Product Lead Reserve Component Automation System-Force Management System (PL RCAS - FMS). The Information Technology Enterprise Management Systems Solution (ITEMSS) task order, made under the U.S. General Services Administration's Alliant 2 contract vehicle, represents continuing work for CACI and expansion to support the Army's vision for Global Force Information Management. The government will rely upon CACI's Agile Solution Factory (ASF), already one of the largest and most modern Agile frameworks used by the federal government, to more quickly develop software for the Army's personnel and force management systems. Since 2013, the ASF has consistently delivered increased productivity, reduced costs, higher quality, and more secure software to its customers. On the previous RCAS contract, the ASF increased software development productivity by 60% and reduced implementation costs by more than 50%, software quality averaged 99% defect free, and time-to-market was reduced by 70%. Ken Asbury, CACI's President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “CACI's Agile Solution Factory has set the standard for continuous software development on an enterprise scale through its iterative and transparent approach. Under the ITEMSS contract, CACI's ASF will help the Army implement multiple personnel and force management systems, including RCAS and FMS, two of the most efficient large-scale personnel and force management systems in the world.” Under the seven-year ITEMSS task order, CACI will provide a broad range of information technology and engineering services, including hardware and software design, sustainment and modification, and network, cybersecurity, distance learning program, and military construction services to support the Army's dynamic force management, mobilization and readiness missions. CACI provides information solutions and services in support of national security missions and government transformation for Intelligence, Defense, and Federal Civilian customers. A Fortune World's Most Admired Company, CACI is a member of the Fortune 1000 Largest Companies, the Russell 2000 Index, and the S&P MidCap 400 Index. CACI's sustained commitment to ethics and integrity defines its corporate culture and drives its success. With approximately 22,000 employees worldwide, CACI provides dynamic career opportunities for military veterans and industry professionals to support the nation's most critical missions. Join us! www.caci.com. There are statements made herein which do not address historical facts, and therefore could be interpreted to be forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. The factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in CACI's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2018, and other such filings that CACI makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. Any forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied upon and only speak as of the date hereof. CACI-Contract Award https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190618005167/en

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  April 27, 2023 | International, Aerospace

  Safran on board the Eurodrone programme

  Safran Electronics & Defense has also won a contract from Leonardo to develop and supply the high-performance EuroflirTM 610 electro-optical?system, for the Eurodrone.

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  May 12, 2020 | International, Naval

  Build a fleet, not a constituency

  By: Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton The U.S. Navy's long-awaited award of a contract to design and build a new class of frigates has brought with it calls to dramatically expand the planned class of 20 ships to a fleet of 70 or more hulls. Like recent congressional efforts to build more of today's amphibious ships or destroyers, these recommendations risk putting the Navy on an unsustainable path and could fail to influence Chinese or Russian adversaries the U.S. fleet is intended to help deter. The Navy clearly needs guided-missile frigates. By bringing comparable capability with less capacity, frigates will provide a less expensive alternative to Arleigh Burke destroyers that are the mainstay of today's U.S. surface fleet. Freed of the requirement to conduct almost every surface combatant operation, destroyers would have more time to catch up on maintenance and training or be available to conduct missions demanding their greater missile capacity like Tomahawk missile strikes or ballistic missile defense. However, the frigate's size — less than a destroyer, more than a littoral combat ship or corvette — also limits its ability to support U.S. Navy wartime operations. Frigates like the Franco-Italian FREMM can conduct the full range of European navy operations such as local air defense, maritime security and anti-submarine warfare, or ASW. But the American FREMM variant will not have enough missile capacity for large or sustained attacks like those conducted by the U.S. Navy during the last several years in the Middle East, or like those that would be likely in a conflict with China. And although they could defend a nearby ship from air attack, the planned U.S. frigates could not carry enough longer-range surface-to-air interceptors to protect U.S. carrier and amphibious groups, or bases and population centers ashore. Proponents argue frigates' capacity limitations could be mitigated by buying more of them, better enabling distributed maritime operations and growing naval presence in underserved areas like the Caribbean and Arctic. In a post-COVID-19 employment environment, accelerating frigate construction could also create jobs by starting production at additional shipyards. Although they cost about $1 billion each to buy, the money to buy more frigates — at least initially — could be carried in the wave of post-pandemic economic recovery spending. But after a few years, that spigot will likely run dry, leaving the Navy to decide whether to continue spending about half the cost of a destroyer for a ship that has only a third as many missiles and cannot conduct several surface warfare missions. The more significant fiscal challenge with buying more frigates is owning them. Based on equivalent ships, each frigate is likely to cost about $60 million annually to operate, crew and maintain. That is only about 25 percent less than a destroyer. For the U.S. Navy, which is already suffering manning shortages and deferring maintenance, fielding a fleet of 70 frigates in addition to more than 90 cruisers and destroyers will likely be unsustainable. Instead of simply building more frigates to create jobs and grow the Navy, Department of Defense leaders should determine the overall number and mix of ships it needs and can afford within realistic budget constraints. The secretary of defense recently directed such an effort, which continues despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This commentary's authors are participating in the study. As recommended in a recent study, instead of buying more frigates to expand the fleet's capacity, the Navy would be better served by adding missile-equipped corvettes like those in European or Asian navies. These ships could carry as many missiles as the Navy's planned frigate but would not incorporate capabilities for area air defense or ASW. The smaller size and reduced capability of corvettes would reduce their sticker price to about one-third that of a frigate, and their sustainment cost to about a quarter that of destroyers. The lower price for corvettes would allow more of them to be built and deployed, where they could team with other surface forces to provide additional missile magazines that could be reloaded by rotating corvettes to rear areas. In peacetime, corvettes would enable the Navy to expand presence and maritime security to underserved regions and provide more appropriate platforms for training and cooperation. Frigates will still be needed, even with a new corvette joining the U.S. fleet. Frigates would replace destroyers in escort operations to protect civilian and noncombatant ships, like supply vessels. They would also conduct maritime security operations in places such as the Persian Gulf or South China Sea, where piracy, trafficking and paramilitary attacks occur. Most importantly, frigates would lead ASW operations, where their towed sonar systems could be more capable than the systems used by current destroyers. Although ASW is an important naval mission, buying more frigates than planned to expand the Navy's ASW capacity is unnecessary and counterproductive. The Navy could gain more ASW capacity at lower cost and with less risk to manned ships by complementing its planned 20 frigates with unmanned systems including fixed sonars like SOSUS, deployable sonar systems that sit on the ocean floor, unmanned surface vessels that tow sonars and trail submarines, and unmanned aircraft that can deploy and monitor sonobuoys or attack submarines to suppress their operations or sink them. The U.S. Navy is at the beginning of a period of dramatic change. New technologies for autonomy, sensing, weapons and networking are enabling new concepts for naval missions at the same time fiscal constraints and pressure from great power competitors are making traditional approaches to naval operations obsolete or unsustainable. The Navy's frigate award is a great start toward the future fleet, but the Navy needs to take advantage of this opportunity and assess the best mix of ships to field the capabilities it needs within the resources it is likely to have. Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where Timothy A. Walton works as a fellow. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/11/build-a-fleet-not-a-constituency/