May 1, 2019 | International, Aerospace
WARSAW, Poland — Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said April 29 that the Polish government aimed to sign a deal to station U.S. troops in Poland this year, and a contract to purchase F-35 fighter jets was “not far away” from being signed.
Blaszczak's announcement in an interview with local broadcaster TVP indicates that Warsaw could aim to negotiate on the potential troop deployment in parallel with the aircraft acquisition. Poland has pitched for the United States to build a permanent military base in the country, offering to pay at least $2 billion toward the project, dubbed “Fort Trump.”
On April 25, during her visit to Warsaw, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said that a U.S. Air Force team was to be sent to Poland in May to demonstrate the capabilities of the F-35 to Polish defence ministry officials, as reported by local news agency PAP.
Last February, Blaszczak said the planned acquisition of 32 fifth-generation aircraft would be carried out as part of the country's military modernization program. Under the initiative, Warsaw aims to spend 185 billion zloty ($48.5 billion) on new weapons and equipment by 2026.
The envisioned procurement is part of Poland's efforts to to replace its outdated Soviet-designed Sukhoi Su-22 and Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets.
February 27, 2024 | International, Aerospace
Just last month, the Bundeswehr entrusted Rheinmetall and its partner contractors with developing a system for short- and very short-range air defence known as the NNbS, in which the Skyranger...
March 14, 2019 | International, Land
DARPA is seeking information on state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies for advanced mapping and surveying in support of the agency's Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. Georeferenced data – geographic coordinates tied to a map or image – could significantly improve the speed and accuracy of warfighters in time-sensitive active combat operations and disaster-related missions in the subterranean domain. Today, the majority of the underground environments are uncharted or inadequately mapped, including human-made tunnels, underground infrastructure, and natural cave networks. Through the Request for Information, DARPA is looking for innovative technologies to collect highly accurate and reproducible ground-truth data for subterranean environments, which would potentially disrupt and positively leverage the subterranean domain without prohibitive cost and with less risk to human lives. These innovative technologies will allow for exploring and exploiting these dark and dirty environments that are too dangerous to deploy humans. “What makes subterranean areas challenging for precision mapping and surveying – such as lack of GPS, constrained passages, dark or dust-filled air – is similar to what inhibits safe and speedy underground operations for our warfighters,” said Timothy Chung, program manager in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office (TTO). “Building an accurate three-dimensional picture is a key enabler to rapidly and remotely exploring and searching subterranean spaces.” DARPA is looking for commercial products, software, and services available to enable high-fidelity, 3D mapping and surveying of underground environments. Of interest are available technologies that offer high accuracy and high resolution, with the ability to provide precise and reproducible survey points without reliance on substantial infrastructure (e.g., access to global fixes underground). Additionally, relevant software should also allow for generated data products to be easily manipulated, annotated, and rendered into 3D mesh objects for importing into simulation and game engine environments. DARPA may select proposers to demonstrate their technologies or methods to determine feasibility of capabilities for potential use in the SubT Challenge in generating and sharing 3D datasets of underground environments. Such accurately georeferenced data may aid in scoring the SubT competitors' performance in identifying and reporting the location of artifacts placed within the course. In addition, renderings from these data may provide DARPA with additional visualization assets to showcase competition activities in real-time and/or post-production. Instructions for submissions, as well as full RFI details, are available on the Federal Business Opportunities website: https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-19-21/listing.html. Submissions are due at 1:00 p.m. EDT April 15, 2019. Please email questions to SubTChallenge@darpa.mil. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-03-07
November 28, 2018 | International, Land
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — German armored vehicles-maker Rheinmetall has confirmed initial talks about an acquisition of its rival Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, a move that would reorder the industry landscape involved in producing a new European main battle tank. According to a brief Rheinmetall statement, on the table is the takeover of KMW in the context of its partnership with French tank maker Nexter, known under the name KNDS. KMW and Nexter each own 50 percent of their Franco-German joint venture. KNDS and Rheinmetall were expected to pitch separate design proposals next year for the Main Ground Combat System, a novel tank meant as one of three signature military projects propelling the Berlin-Paris defense partnership. It remains to be seen how the dynamic of a KMW acquisition by Rheinmetall would play into those plans. Citing industry experts, the newspaper Die Welt on Tuesday wrote that the French government, through state-owned Nexter's deal with KMW, is expected to have a say in the transaction. Paris may even have a right of first refusal for KMW's portion in KNDS, the newspaper reported. Rheinmetall's statement on Monday noted that a final decision regarding the way ahead depends on a “multitude of political, economic and regulatory” aspects still to be sorted out. A takeover deal could put to rest the question of what vehicles German defense companies will pitch for multibillion-dollar modernization programs of the U.S. ground services. Rheinmetall is already offering the Lynx armored fighting vehicle as a Bradley replacement. KMW could make another attempt at selling the Puma vehicle, though Rheinmetall is also part of the joint venture producing that vehicle for the German forces. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/11/27/tank-maker-takeover-germanys-rheinmetall-eyes-acquisition-of-rival-kmw