May 19, 2023 | International, Other Defence
Pentagon seeks approval to fund NATO defense technology accelerator
The program was created in 2022 to support cooperation among allied nations on emerging technology challenges.
September 18, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Netherlands signs letter of acceptance for $1.2 billion Apache helicopter upgrade
Officials from the Netherlands signed a letter of offer and acceptance to proceed with a $1.2 billion (€878 million) upgrade of the Dutch fleet of AH-64D Apache helicopters with the United States.
State Secretary of Defence for the Netherlands, Barbara Visser and U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency Principal Director for Security Assistance Michèle Hizon signed the letter at Gilze-Rijen Air Base on Friday, September 14, the DSCA said.
The agreement was first announced in February when the U.S. State Department approved the upgrade of 28 Dutch AH-64D Apache attack helicopters to the AH-64E configuration for an estimated cost of $1.191 billion. The principal contractors are Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The Netherlands received its last Apache delivery in 2002 and the helicopters have become technically and operationally out of date after 20 years of service.
The first aircraft will be modernized beginning in 2021 and the first modernized Apaches will be reintroduced to the fleet by mid-2022, according to the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands.
“Reinforcing the armed forces is in full swing. This contract signing is a good example of this. Our operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali have demonstrated the importance of Apaches,” Visser said on Friday. With this modernization our Apaches remain the versatile combat helicopters that our armed forces need.”
Also on Friday, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the Netherlands would pull its F-16 fighter jets from the Islamic State mission in Iraq and Syria by the end of the year. A handful of Dutch special forces will stay in the country to continue training Iraqi forces, while a further 20 military and civil experts will remain part of NATO's capacity-building mission in Iraq, which focuses “on the strengthening of the Iraqi security sector,” the government said.
In June, the Dutch defense ministry said that the Netherlands would end its troop contribution to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali next May. Those troops will be sent to Afghanistan to “extend and intensify” the Dutch contribution to NATO's Resolute Support mission, according to the ministry.
https://thedefensepost.com/2018/09/17/netherlands-apache-helicopter-upgrade-letter/
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August 18, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR
Lockheed develops electronic warfare tools with eye toward multinational interoperability
Mark Pomerleau WASHINGTON — As Lockheed Martin works on the U.S. Army's first ground-based integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber system, the company is placing a heavy focus on coalition interoperability. The Army awarded Lockheed a $6 million other transaction authority contract — a highly flexible contracting tool — in May to build the first phase of the Terrestrial Layer System-Large. Boeing subsidiary Digital Receiver Technology also won an award for the program for $7.6 million. The two companies will build and outfit their systems to Stryker vehicles during the 16-month-long phase one, while also participating in operational assessments, after which the Army will choose one company to move on. John Wojnar, director for cyber and electronic warfare strategy at Lockheed, told C4ISRNET in a July interview that the company had a keen eye toward integrating its system with international partners as well as the Army, given the U.S. military doesn't fight alone. “Being able to bring in our coalition partners, maybe starting with the Five Eyes first and in particular the U.K., and aligning the architecture that we provided ... really drove us to the architecture that we came up with,” he said. He added that Lockheed examined the building blocks of the U.K.'s cyber and electromagnetic activities to help inform the offering. Being in close partnership with coalition members is key, he said, so whatever architectures the company designs should be interoperable with partners to maximize effectiveness on the battlefield. Lockheed's system was an internal research and development project that is a companion of sorts to its aerial cyber/electronic warfare system Silent Crow, which the Army awarded a year ago for its Multi-Function Electronic Warfare-Air Large system. Wojnar said the ground system went through testing in September at the Army's Cyber Blitz event, which helps the service understand how to mature cyber and electronic warfare operations with traditional units through actual experimentation with emerging technologies and soldiers at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. “Based on lessons learned from those tests as well as the other activities that have been underway tied to Silent Crow IRAD, we were able to leverage the best of the best to then come up with our TLS-Large system offering,” he said. The work that will be ongoing between now and next summer when the first phase of TLS wraps up, Wojnar added, includes ensuring all the component parts developed internally and externally have been acquired and integrated into the ground vehicles, as well as conducting a variety of software drops. https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2020/08/17/lockheed-develops-electronic-warfare-tools-with-eye-toward-multinational-interoperability/
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June 30, 2022 | International, C4ISR, Security
NATO forging cyber response force amid growing Russian, Chinese threats
The U.S. will 'offer robust national capabilities' to support the initiative, which is using lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war to tailor its methods.