October 21, 2024 | International, Aerospace
France eyes aircraft carrier, frigate order in 2025 spending plan
The French government has proposed to lift the 2025 defense budget to €50.54 billion (US$55 billion) from €47.23 billion this year.
August 17, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Reform efforts in South Korea create ecosystem for defense industry growth
By: Mike Yeo
MELBOURNE, Australia — South Korea has over the past decade become a defense industry powerhouse in its own right, and it's seeking to widen its reach, with progress in international markets in recent years marking the maturity of its defense articles.
This year's Defense News Top 100 list of the biggest defense companies in the world features four South Korean businesses. They are Hanwha (ranked 32rd), Korea Aerospace Industries (55th), LIG Nex1 (68th) and Hyundai Rotem Company (95th), all of which made last year's list.
Continued reform
The strong performance of South Korean defense companies comes in the wake of a series of reforms over the past decade, with the latest designed to consolidate industrial gains and create momentum for growth.
The defense industry reforms are part of President Moon Jae-in's Defense Reform 2.0 program announced in 2018 — a complement to efforts seeking to create a slimmer, yet more efficient South Korean military that is less reliant on foreign defense technology.
The push for further self-reliance is most prominent in Korea Aerospace Industries' KF-X program. KAI is developing a next-generation fighter for the South Korean Air Force. Although an American GE F414 turbofan will power the aircraft, its avionics will primarily be indigenous. These include the active electronically scanned array radar under development by Hanwha and the country's Agency for Defense Development, with support and some components supplied by Israel's Elbit Systems.
Defense Reform 2.0 also puts emphasis on defense industry investment, and it comes as little surprise that the domstic market still takes up the biggest share of the pie where sales are concerned, backed up by the steady growth in defense spending: South Korea's defense budget grew 20 percent from 2009 to 2017, reaching $43 billion.
Export success
The reform program also places an increased priority on defense exports. The country is already successful in this area, with research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank showing the country was the 11th biggest arms supplier in the world in 2017, with sales totaling $5.5 billion.
In a further indication of how much South Korea's industry has grown, SIPRI also noted in a 2018 report that the country's defense exports grew 94 percent in the 10 years prior, a growth figure only bettered by Turkey for the same period.
This growth has been underpinned by two of the highest-profile South Korean defense exports in the past decade: the KAI T-50 Golden Eagle family of trainer and light combat aircraft, and the Hanwha K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer.
The T-50 was earmarked by the Air Force as its mainstay advanced trainer and light combat aircraft. Despite losing a number of trainer competitions, including in Poland, Singapore and the United States, the Golden Eagle has since scored a number of notable contracts for export.
Compared to its rivals in the trainer market, such as the Leonardo M-346 and the Boeing T-7, the main draw of the T-50 family is its combat capability in the form of the TA-50 and FA-50 equipped with sophisticated combat capabilities in the form of radars and precision weapons employment capability. This makes the aircraft attractive to nations unable to afford a high-end trainer with a light attack capability, and the list of the type's customers bears this out, with Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines and Thailand operating the type in their respective air forces. The Philippine Air Force used its FA-50PH fleet to attack Islamic State militants in the southern part of the country in 2018.
Meanwhile, Hanwha's K9 Thunder has carved a niche for itself in the global market for self-propelled howitzers. The 52-caliber, 155mm system has been selected by a number of NATO nations, beating out the similar Panzerhaubitze 2000 by Germany's Rheinmetall in Estonia, Finland and Norway. Turkey is building the K9 under license as the T-155 Firtina.
The system has also been selected for license production by India and Poland, and had previously been selected by Australia in the early part of the 2010s only to be canceled following budget issues caused by the global financial crisis.
Hanwha is also one of two companies left in the running to supply the Australian Army with a new infantry fighting vehicle. The AS21 Redback, which is based on the K21 vehicle operated by the South Korean Army, is to take part in an evaluation program against the Rheinmetall KF41 Lynx to supply 450 vehicles to replace M113 armored personnel carriers.
The evaluation will see three of each vehicle delivered to Australia for testing, with the first two Redbacks due to reach Australia at the end of August, having left South Korea by ship late last month.
Post-pandemic support
Like much the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit South Korea hard, though the worst appears to be over for the country. The local defense industry was forced to adjust financially and operationally, and it remains unclear how revenue will be hit by the events of 2020.
The pandemic has claimed at least one sale for the South Korean defense industry, with Argentina, which had appeared set to be the next customer for the T-50 family, deciding in April to put off the acquisition indefinitely. The South American country is yet to sign a contract, despite choosing the aircraft for purchase in July 2019.
However, the South Korean government is not waiting for foreign action. Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo has unveiled plans for the country to spend more on locally produced defense articles, partly as a move to help curtail the effects of the pandemic.
Jeong said during a mid-June meeting with industry CEOs that his ministry plans to adjust spending plans to continue its drive to spend more on indigenous products, and move delivery timelines to reflect the reality of schedule delays while also waiving penalties for late payments.
He also plans to expand an existing strategy aimed at establishing “defense industry innovation clusters”; this move adds to the first one established in April with an initial government investment. As a result, more funding will be made available to industry and research institutes, and will be used to support regional collaboration in defense-related research and development as well as manufacturing.
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October 4, 2018 | International, Aerospace
US Army triggers design competition for future attack reconnaissance helicopter
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has kicked off a major design competition for its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft by releasing a request to industry on Oct. 3 to submit plans that could lead to a chance to build flyable prototypes in just a few years. The service, in June, released a draft solicitation that outlined its intention to get two different helicopter prototypes flying in 2023. The effort is part of the Army's larger move to procure a family of Future Vertical Lift, or FVL, aircraft in the early 2030s, if not sooner. The Army has been talking about procuring an FVL family of helicopters for the better part of a decade and has debated whether to prioritize the pursuit of a medium-lift helicopter to replace UH-60 Black Hawks and AH-64 Apache helicopters. Alternatively, the service was considering buying an armed reconnaissance helicopter to fill the gap left by the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior's 2014 retirement. With the advent of the Army Futures Command and its focus on six modernization priorities, of which FVL is third, progress is being made at lightning speed to make FVL a reality. The service, through an FVL Cross-Functional Team, led by Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, has settled on going after both a long-range assault helicopter and a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraftsomewhat back-to-back. But the FARA procurement plans are fast-paced and lead straight to a winner through a fly-off competition, which deviates from the way the Army has gone about its future medium-lift helicopter development. While the Army collected designs, reviewed them and selected two teams to build prototypes to fly in a Joint Multi-Role technology demonstration for a medium-lift aircraft, the results will simply inform requirements for the Army to move into a program of record where the service will make a determination on how it will compete, build and procure a long-range assault variant of FVL. With the FARA competition, the Army plans to award four to six initial design contracts in June of 2019, and then nine months later — to avoid camping out in the PowerPoint stage — the service will choose up to two designs to move forward in fiscal 2021 with a fly-off planned to start in the first quarter of 2023 (November 2022 to be specific, according to the solicitation). The Army will choose a winner and move forward into a milestone appropriate to advance the procurement of the helicopter, whether that is a technology development phase or engineering and manufacturing development or even a production phase, Rugen told a small group of reporters in an Oct. 3 media roundtable. It all depends on where the technology stands following the fly-off and what phase of the acquisition process the Army will enter once it chooses a winner, Dan Bailey, the Army's JMR-TD director, said in the interview. “The Army currently lacks the ability to conduct armed reconnaissance, light attack, and security with improved stand-off and lethal and non-lethal capabilities with a platform sized to hide in radar clutter and for the urban canyons and mega cities,” the solicitation states. The helicopter would be the “ ‘knife-fighter' of future Army Aviation capabilities” in a small package with “maximized performance,” it describes. The Army doesn't want to carve out requirements in granite, according to Rugen, and intends to be flexible as technology capability unfolds in the program, but the solicitation does state it wants a 40-foot maximum rotor diameter, and the fuselage should also not exceed 40 feet in width. By staying flexible, the Army hopes to steer clear of some of the mistakes it has made in the past attempting to acquire an armed reconnaissance helicopter. The Army failed three times to procure a new aircraft — the most memorable being the cancellation of the Comanche helicopter program in 2004 after two aircraft were built and $6.9 billion was spent. Rugen said the Army also wants to make sure affordability considerations are driven into the program and the designs from the beginning are a top requirement for industry to consider. The Army also wants the designs to incorporate the Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP,engine that is being competitively developed to replace the engines in Black Hawks and Apaches. The Army is close to choosing a winner from two teams designing engines to move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the program within the next few months. The Army plans to spend approximately $15 million per industry participant in the initial design phase. Participants would receive $8.5 million in FY19 and $6.5 million in FY20. The two participants selected to continue into the prototype phase of the program would receive about $735 million each from FY20 to FY23. Rugen and Bailey said industry interest following the release of the draft solicitation in June has been higher than anticipated and included both industry partners that were not expected and all of those that were. Bailey said that, based on industry interest and participation so far, choosing six designs would be a competitive process because there are more than six possible entrants that have expressed interest in submitting designs. Tim Malia, Sikorsky's program director for FVL light development, told Defense News in a recent interview that the Lockheed Martin-owned company planned to use its X2 technology that is used in its S-97 Raider coaxial helicopter program as the centerpiece to its design offering for the FARA competition. The company is already scaling its X2 technology used in Raider up to a medium-lift aircraft — called the SB-1 Defiant that is participating in the JMR technology demonstration and expected to fly by the end of the year. Malia said it would not be difficult to scale the helicopter from the 34-foot main rotor diameter size of the Raider to the desired 40-foot diameter rotor blades envisioned for FARA. The company has also been working on designs to outfit Raider or any aircraft it builds with X2 technology with the ITEP engine. Sikorsky announced Oct. 3 that its Raider aircraft exceeded 200 knots in a flight test at its West Palm Beach, Florida, flight test center. Bell, which has been flying its V-280 Valor til-trotor helicopter as part of the JMR-TD effort for the better part of a year, continues to hold tight its plans for a design to submit to the FARA competition. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2018/10/03/us-army-triggers-design-competition-for-future-attack-reconnaissance-helicopter
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September 17, 2018 | International, Aerospace
F-35 inventory soars in new Pentagon spending bill
By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON — Beyond the 77 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters authorized by the 2019 defense policy bill, congressional appropriators are adding another 16 for a total of 93. Congressional conferees on Thursday finalized a $674.4 billion defense spending bill for next year packaged with funding for the departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, or Labor-HHS — and a continuing resolution through Dec. 7 for some other parts of the government. As usual, appropriators used their annual defense spending bill to offer tweaks to the existing shopping list for military hardware from the previous version, which President Donald Trump signed into law last month. The new compromise spending bill, which trumps the authorization bill, buys three littoral combat ships instead of two and 13 Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospreys instead of seven — among other differences. The Navy and Marine Corps continue to invest in vertical takeoff aircraft and announced a $4.2 billion contract for dozens of new V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft just weeks ago. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2018/09/14/f-35-inventory-soars-in-new-pentagon-spending-bill