March 27, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Par Michel Cabirol
Comment et pourquoi l'organisateur d'Eurosatory ont pris la décision d'annuler l'édition 2020 du plus grand salon d'armements terrestres au monde. Voici les coulisses de cette décision.
C'est bien la mort dans l''me que le Coges a dû annuler l'édition 2020 d'Eurosatory, le plus grand salon international de défense et de sécurité terrestres et aéroterrestres. Car jusqu'à peu la ligne tenue par l'organisateur d'Eurosatory était le déroulement normal du salon, qui aurait été "à l'équilibre" en dépit de quelques annulations d'exposants et de réduction de la voilure (annulation des démonstrations dynamiques...). Toutefois, cette position "n'est plus tenable", estime le Coges dans une note datée du 23 mars que La Tribune s'est procurée. Et de conclure qu'il recommande au bureau exécutif du GICAT l'annulation d'Eurosatory 2020 sans report du salon. Au final, il y avait plus de risques que d'avantages à maintenir le salon.
Son annulation ne devrait pas coûter de l'argent au Coges. Ce denrier a dépensé au 24 mars près de 11 millions d'euros dans la préparation du salon. L'organisateur "fait tout depuis un mois pour différer ses engagements de dépense et a cessé tout engagement depuis le passage au stade 3", explique-t-il dans cette note. Il a également souscrit avec une grande sagesse en décembre 2019 une assurance annulation du salon comprenant une extension "maladies infectieuses", à concurrence de 13 millions d'euros sur un budget de dépense estimé à 20,6 millions. Au 30 avril, les prévisions d'engagement pour la préparation du salon doivent d'élever à 14,3 millions. Cela montre "bien tout l'intérêt d'annuler aujourd'hui", estime le Coges, qui devrait s'en sortir relativement bien au contraire du GICAT, qui ne pourra pas percevoir de dividendes.
Pourquoi Eurosatory ne peut plus tenir ? Après plusieurs annulations de salons comme Dimdex au Qatar (16-18 mars), LAAD Security au Brésil (14-16 avril) et ILA Berlin (13-17 mai), les premières annulations de salons prévues en juin aux mêmes dates que celui d'Eurosatory ont commencé à mettre sous forte pression les organisateurs : Viva Technology (11-13 juin) et Interschutz (salon mondial des pompiers à Hanovre). Mais l'annulation du salon britannique de l'aéronautique de Farnborough, prévu pourtant du 20 au 24 juillet, a été le coup de gr'ce.
Mais là n'est pas la seule raison. Au-delà des quelques annulations d'exposants déjà reçues, le Coges recevait de plus en plus d'appels de sociétés exposantes qui ne souhaitaient plus engager de frais de préparation de leur stand et qui s'interrogeaient sur la présence de visiteurs au salon. Par ailleurs, des sociétés étrangères, qui représentent 65% des exposants à Eurosatory, avaient déjà commencé à annuler le transit de leurs matériels. Par ailleurs, le Coges ne recevait plus de demande de badge de visiteurs depuis plusieurs jours. Et en même temps, les fournisseurs qui permettent de réaliser le salon sont "quasiment tous à l'arrêt et auront des difficultés à redémarrer fin avril pour un salon début juin", explique le Coges. Il faut à minima cinq semaines de montage.
Enfin, et surtout, le ministère des Armées qui invite les hautes personnalités étrangères venant de tous les pays du monde (240 délégations en 2018 représentant près de 1.000 VIP), a d'autres chats à fouetter en ce moment avec la crise du Covid-19 et le lancement de l'opération Résilience. "Nous sommes en contact avec le ministère des armées qui ne pourra sans doute pas lancer ces invitations dans le contexte actuel", estime le Coges dans sa note. "La tenue du salon en juin 2020 n'est aujourd'hui plus envisageable", conclut-il.
Le Coges a étudié un report du salon à la condition de retrouver la disponibilité des exposants et d'un parc d'exposition. Pas facile quand la majorité des exposants sont aussi présents sur d'autres salons de défense dans le monde et très peu sont capables de mener de front deux salons. Des études lancées par le Coges ont trouvé une seule et unique solution : reporter Eurosatory au parc des exposition du Bourget, pendant Euronaval (du 20 au 23 octobre 2020).
Mais cette piste a été abandonnée. Car d'une part, les exposants américains qui participent au salon AUSA début octobre risque de faire défaut, selon le Coges. Surtout, une cinquantaine d'exposants, présents sur les deux salons (Euronaval et Eurosatory), ne réaliseront plus qu'un seul stand. Pas sûr que le Gican voyait cette opération d'un bon œil... D'autant que le Coges estime dans sa note que "sur le plan financier, les chiffres d'affaires des deux salons ne vont pas s'ajouter".
December 13, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
In an effort to spur innovative ideas for how to improve the force, one segment of the Army has created a challenge called the "Dragon's Lair."
October 29, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Raytheon Technologies is cutting 15,000 staff and 4,000 contractor positions, largely at the company's Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace divisions, due to decreased commercial aerospace sales from COVID-19 pandemic, CEO Greg Hayes said Tuesday on the company's earnings call. The Waltham, Mass., aerospace giant is the latest company to announce losses since the pandemic has sent commercial aerospace companies reeling, costing them tens of thousands of jobs and millions in lost profits. Hayes projected the market segment wouldn't get a sharp rebound, but instead see “a long, slow recovery,” over several years. “We don't expect commercial air traffic to return to 2019 levels, until at least 2023. And that's of course depending upon the timing of a widely distributed vaccine. In the near term, we expect a gradual recovery of commercial air traffic particularly given the recent spike in global cases [of coronavirus],” Hayes said. “As you know, we set aggressive targets in the first quarter to reduce costs by about $2 billion and to take actions to conserve about $4 billion in cash, making difficult but necessary actions to reduce headcount,” Hayes said. The ongoing personnel actions will reflect a 20 percent cut at both divisions, and include both temporary furloughs and a hiring freeze. In its merger with United Technologies in April, the company already planned to cut 1,000 jobs, mostly on its corporate side, Hayes said. The company is also reducing its infrastructure, which takes up 31 million square feet, by more than 20 percent ― beyond an earlier 10 percent goal for the merger. Hayes said that even after the pandemic subsides, it would continue to employ increased remote-work arrangements as part of a multiyear strategy to slash overhead. An announced aerospace-parts facility in western North Carolina is still in the works, as Hayes said the company would need the capacity when demand returns. “I think by the time this comes online in late 2023, we should see a kind of return to normalcy in commercial aerospace, and Pratt will be well positioned with a much lower cost, much more automated production facility,” he said. According to third-quarter numbers posted by Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney posted a $615 million loss in operating profit for the quarter versus a $520 million profit for the same period in 2019. Pratt's military sales rose 11 percent, driven in part by production of the F-35 joint strike fighter. Collins managed to post an operating profit of $526 million for the quarter, but the number marked a 58 percent drop over the prior year. Raytheon's commercial aftermarket business fell 51 percent at Pratt & Whitney and 52 percent at Collins Aerospace, while the company's military side was up. Both Raytheon's intelligence and space and missiles and defense segments offset some of the losses, as the company reported sales of $14.7 billion and an operating profit of $434 million for the quarter. Raytheon executives were upbeat on the defense business's backlog of more than $70 billion, and for the quarter, the segment posted $928 million in classified bookings. Correction: An earlier version of the story misstated the timing of the job cuts. They are ongoing, and most took place prior to Tuesday's call. https://www.defensenews.com/2020/10/27/raytheon-to-lay-off-20000-amid-commercial-aviation-slide/
November 7, 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR
By: Jill Aitoro Most of us are comfortable with Suri, or Alexa, or “Hey, Google.” But many will tell you artificial intelligence and autonomy in the context of military operations is a whole a different animal. That said, if you ask Rear Admiral David Hahn, one factor remains the same: the need for trust. Understand the algorithm and the consequences, he argues, but then relinquish (some) control. He shared his vision of AI in the military in an interview following the Defense News Conference in September. Much of the discussion around artificial intelligence and autonomy involves the proper role of machine versus human. Where do you stand? We're at an inflection point for what technology will allow us to do. For artificial intelligence that could be brought to bear in the military context, there has been anexpectation that the human is always going to be in control. But as the sophistication of these algorithms and the sophistication of the application of the tools now out there mature, and are brought into the operational space, we need to get at a place of trust. [We need trust] between the algorithm, what's behind that curtain, and our ability as the humans to agree that the decision or the space that it's going to operate in – the context in which its making that decision – is understood by us. And that more and more is going to have to happen at machine speed, because when machines are interacting with machines, we're going to have to comfortably move from a human in the loop to a human on the loop. That doesn't mean it's an unsupervised act; it means we understand it well enough to trust it. So, there is relinquishing of control? There is, but there are clearly pieces of our system today where we do that. That happens when you let your car park itself – you relinquish that control and trust that the machine is not going to run into the grocery cart behind you or the car next to you. That's already part of the conversation. And as we get more used to machines performing, and performing accurately over and over and over, our ability to trust these machines [increases], if we understand the algorithm and the consequence. It's not ‘I just ran into a shopping cart' if the consequence we're talking about is the release of weapons, or something along those lines; but we've gotten to the point where we're comfortable [because of our understanding of the technology]. We had similar conversations in recent years on cybersecurity, in terms of confidence in the technology, whether we could be sure networks are properly protected, and accepting a degree of risk. Has progress there helped with progress in AI? I think it's helping and it will continue to drive us toward this human-machine teaming environment that we all see coming. There are clearly pieces of our system that make us uncomfortable. But we see more and more, that if we don't take the action to allow it to occur, we might as well have not even created the tool. It's a shift in culture, beyond policy. Is that happening yet? Or is it too soon to expect that? I don't think we're too early, and I think it's happening. And it's going to be one of those things where we didn't know it was happening, then we find ourselves there. Ten years ago, the App Store opened. Can you imagine a world without the App Store and what that's enabled you to do in your daily life with your smartphone? The young people today are almost at a point where there was never a world without a smartphone, there was never a world without an App Store. If you start at that point, this is not a big leap. It's happening around us, and we just need to find a way to keep up. Looking ahead, 5 or 10 years, how do you see AI being used in an operational capacity? The limiting factor is not going to be the tools. To borrow a phrase, the ‘democratization' of the tools that are associated with developing AI capabilities will allow anybody to work on the data. Our challenge will be whether we have harnessed our own data and done it in a way where we can make the connections between relevant data sets to optimize the mission effect we could get by applying those tools available to everybody. That's our challenge. And it's a challenge we'll need to figure out within each service, amongst the services in the joint environment, from that joint environment into the same space with partners and allies, from the DoD or military into the industrial base, all while moving seamlessly across academia, and [keeping in mind how] the commercial industry plays. If we don't all dogpile on this thing, were going to find ourselves behind in this great power competition in a very important space. So, establish a playbook so to speak? And recognize that as soon as we've established that playbook, it will change. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/11/06/the-chief-of-naval-research-on-ai-if-we-dont-all-dogpile-on-this-thing-were-going-to-find-ourselves-behind