New Zealand’s military chief talks recruitment, drones and Ukraine

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  February 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Top US Air Force general hopes for major KC-46 fix by March

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — After more than a year of deliberations, the U.S. Air Force is hoping to have a fix in hand for the KC-46 tanker's most critical technical problem by the end of March, the service's top general told Defense News in an exclusive interview. The hope is for the Air Force and Boeing to sign off next month on a finalized design for the KC-46's Remote Vision System, or RVS — a series of cameras and sensors that allow its users to steer the aircraft's boom into a plane for aerial refueling. “The fact [is] that we're in negotiations right now; I can't say anything that would affect those negotiations,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein said in a Feb. 18 interview. “Here's what I will tell you: They're not stagnant in any way, shape or form. It's a very active dialogue. We're working on getting a serious fix,” he said. “We're looking for a serious fix on the table by the end of March, and we're going to be flying that fix and starting to test it by the end of this summer.” For several years, the KC-46 program has grappled with a critical deficiency involving the RVS, which is manufactured by Rockwell Collins. Under certain lighting conditions, the imagery is difficult to see and sometimes distorted, making it difficult for operators to safely move the boom without scraping the aircraft receiving fuel. Despite ongoing RVS problems, the service and Boeing came to a compromise in late 2018 that would allow the aerospace firm to begin delivering the KC-46 if the company would swallow the cost of fixing the system to the Air Force's specifications. At the time, Boeing and the service agreed on nine performance areas where the Air Force wanted to see improvements, but the parties have been embroiled in debate for months over how to turn those into technical requirements that would allow Boeing engineers to make specific hardware and software changes to the RVS design. The first tanker was delivered in January 2019, but months later in September, Air Mobility Command head Gen. Maryanne Miller said Boeing had made no progress on the RVS and that it would take three to four years before the KC-46 was technically mature enough to deploy. Tensions culminated in January 2020 when Goldfein sent a letter to incoming Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun criticizing the company for “unsatisfactory” progress on the RVS despite having a year to make design changes. “We require your attention and improved focus on the KC-46,” Goldfein wrote in the Jan. 9 letter, which was first obtained by Bloomberg News. “The Air Force continues to accept deliveries of a tanker incapable of performing its primary operational mission.” Calhoun came to the Pentagon for a face-to-face meeting with Goldfein on Jan. 15. According to Goldfein, the meeting went well. “[Calhoun] committed to me in the meeting that the KC-46 was his top priority and he was going to put the talent, the resources and whatever the company needed to do to get it on track, so now I'm holding him to his word,” Goldfein said. “I don't want to go into too many details because we're in a pretty intense negotiation, but I've seen a behavior change,” he added. Goldfein declined to provide examples of specific improvements but said he had seen “a different level of intensity from the leadership at Boeing on getting a serious fix for the KC-46.” In a statement to Defense News, Boeing said it valued its partnership with the Air Force and is committed to delivering a KC-46 that matches the service's expectations. “We're engaged in productive discussions with the Air Force about enhancements for the KC-46 Remote Vision System. We expect those discussions will establish a collaborative plan through which we can improve the aircraft's already robust capabilities,” the company said. Having a finalized RVS fix on the books could be crucial for defending the Air Force's fiscal 2021 budget. The service plans to retire 13 KC-135 and 16 KC-10 tankers in FY21, but Congress has been skeptical of making reductions to the Air Force tanker fleet when demand continues to outpace supply. An agreed-upon fix could also bring some financial relief for Boeing. The Air Force is currently withholding $28 million per aircraft upon delivery of each tanker with the hopes of inducing Boeing to arrive at an RVS fix sooner rather than later. However, officials have said the service would be open to rolling back the amount of money the service withholds if it sees progress. According to the terms of Boeing's fixed-price contract for the KC-46 program, the company is responsible for all costs past the award's $4.9 billion ceiling. Boeing has already eaten more than $3 billion in cost overruns, and the final price of the RVS redesign is still unknown and will likely trigger further penalties. So far, 31 KC-46s out of the 179 planned for purchase have been delivered to the service. The Air Force indicated in 2019 that it would take three to four years to develop a fully functioning RVS. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-warfare-symposium/2020/02/20/top-us-air-force-general-hopes-for-major-kc-46-fix-by-march/

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  October 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Dassault Aviation au service des armées

  A l'occasion du bilan d'étape dressé par Madame Florence Parly, ministre des Armées, au sujet de la réforme du maintien en condition opérationnelle (MCO), Dassault Aviation tient à rappeler sa fierté de servir les armées françaises en apportant un soutien quotidien aux flottes de Rafale, de Mirage 2000, d'ATL2 et de Falcon de surveillance maritime. Saint-Cloud, le 15 octobre 2020 – A l'occasion du bilan d'étape dressé par Madame Florence Parly, ministre des Armées, au sujet de la réforme du maintien en condition opérationnelle (MCO), Dassault Aviation tient à rappeler sa fierté de servir les armées françaises en apportant un soutien quotidien aux flottes de Rafale, de Mirage 2000, d'ATL2 et de Falcon de surveillance maritime. La décision du ministère des Armées de verticaliser le MCO du Rafale et de l'ATL2, avec les contrats RAVEL et OCEAN, permet d'assurer aux forces aériennes françaises une disponibilité optimale de leurs flottes. Gr'ce à la mise en service de RAVEL depuis 18 mois, Dassault Aviation et ses partenaires industriels, dont Thales, assurent ainsi une disponibilité de 76% des Rafale, soit une valeur supérieure aux 73% prévus contractuellement. La qualité de ce service va encore s'améliorer au fil du temps, comme prévu, avec notamment la mise en place d'un système d'information b'ti en coopération avec les opérationnels par Dassault Aviation ; un outil qui s'appuie sur l'expertise de Dassault Systèmes en matière de gestion/analyse des données et qui sera basé sur sa technologie Cloud et son logiciel EXALEAD. © Dassault Aviation – A. Pecchi « Je m'assure en permanence de la satisfaction de l'armée de l'Air et de l'Espace et de la Marine nationale dans le soutien que leur apportent les équipes de Dassault Aviation. En confiance avec elles et avec la Direction de la maintenance aéronautique, nous recherchons sans cesse toutes les possibilités d'amélioration du soutien qui leur est apporté », a déclaré Éric Trappier, P-DG de Dassault Aviation. Gr'ce à l'étroite coopération avec les personnels des bases aériennes, les équipes de Dassault Aviation sont aussi très fières d'avoir poursuivi efficacement, durant ces derniers mois, le soutien des forces armées, malgré le confinement lié à la crise COVID-19. À PROPOS DE DASSAULT AVIATION Avec plus de 10 000 avions militaires et civils livrés dans plus de 90 pays depuis un siècle (dont 2 500 Falcon), Dassault Aviation dispose d'un savoir-faire et d'une expérience reconnus dans la conception, le développement, la vente et le support de tous les types d'avion, depuis l'appareil de combat Rafale jusqu'à la famille de business jets haut de gamme Falcon en passant par les drones militaires et les systèmes spatiaux. En 2019, le chiffre d'affaires de Dassault Aviation s'est élevé à 7,3 milliards d'euros. Le Groupe compte 12 750 collaborateurs. https://www.dassault-aviation.com/fr/groupe/presse/press-kits/dassault-aviation-au-service-des-armees/

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  December 16, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Slower-than-expected economic growth to help Canada's defence spending numbers

  Lee Berthiaume OTTAWA -- The federal government is predicting Canadian defence spending will inch closer to its NATO promises in the coming years than originally expected -- though not because Ottawa is planning to send new money the military's way. All NATO members, including Canada, agreed in 2014 to work toward spending the equivalent of two per cent of their gross domestic products on defence within the next decade as the military alliance sought to share the burden of defending from new threats like Russia and China. Two years ago, when they unveiled their defence policy, the Liberals said the government would hit 1.4 per cent by 2024-25. But Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan this week said, without providing details, that defence spending would instead reach 1.48 per cent of GDP. An increase of that size could represent close to $2 billion more per year for the military. However, the Department of National Defence told The Canadian Press that there are no new investments on the horizon for the Canadian Armed Forces beyond what's already in the Liberals' policy. Instead, Defence Department spokesman Daniel Le Bouthiller attributed the change to slower-than-expected economic growth over the next few years and more spending on non-military specific activities like veterans' benefits and the Canadian Coast Guard. The government has included such activities in its calculations since 2017 to try to address complaints from the U.S. and other NATO allies that Canada was not investing enough in its military. NATO approved the change. "Approximately two-thirds of the increase from 1.40 to 1.48 per cent is due to increased (other government department) forecasts and one-third due to fluctuating GDP forecasts," Le Bouthillier said in an email. Canada currently spends about 1.31 per cent of GDP -- a common measurement of a country's economic output -- on defence and has no plan to reach NATO's two per cent benchmark, a fact that has made it a target for U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump labelled Canada "slightly delinquent" on defence spending during a meeting in London last week in which he publicly grilled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about Canada's number before subsequently stepping up his calls for the government to meet the NATO target. "He's not paying two per cent and he should be paying two per cent," Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Dec. 4. "It's Canada. They have money and they should be paying two per cent." The Liberal government has in fact refused to say whether it believes in the two-per-cent target and has instead repeatedly pointed to Canada's contributions of forces and equipment to NATO missions in Latvia, Iraq and other places as a better measurement of its contributions to the military alliance. The spending target is an imperfect way of measuring how much individual countries are contributing, said Stefanie von Hlatky, an expert on NATO and the military at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. But all allies are facing pressure to show Trump that they are stepping up on defence spending, she said, which is doubly true for Trudeau after his meeting with the U.S. president in London. "I think there's a little bit of pressure now to maybe update those numbers and probably some rejoicing that it looks better on paper," von Hlatky said. "If we're looking to impress Trump with these minor adjustments, maybe it's all for naught. But there is definitely added pressure with every NATO meeting and NATO summit. And we know it's going to come up as long as Trump is president." Conservative defence critic James Bezan accused the Liberal government of playing a numbers game to make Canada look better rather than investing in the Armed Forces. "It's a sad state of affairs for our military heroes when Justin Trudeau can only improve defence spending figures by engineering a made-in-Canada recession and playing a shell game with other departments' budgets to inflate the numbers," he said. This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Dec. 13, 2019. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/slower-than-expected-economic-growth-to-help-canada-s-defence-spending-numbers-1.4728602