Back to news

July 28, 2023 | International, Aerospace

Saab receives order for airborne early warning aircraft from Poland

These early warning systems comprise the Saab 340 aircraft equipped with Saab’s advanced Erieye radar

https://www.epicos.com/article/769422/saab-receives-order-airborne-early-warning-aircraft-poland

On the same subject

  • Army Ponders What To Cut If Budget Drops: Gen. Murray

    June 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    Army Ponders What To Cut If Budget Drops: Gen. Murray

    The Army Futures commander is making a list of which of the service's 34 top-priority programs to sacrifice first – and which programs outside the top 34 he has to save. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on June 10, 2020 at 4:18 PM WASHINGTON: The Army Secretary and Chief of Staff approved a draft spending plan for 2022-2026 yesterday that funds all 34 of the service's top-priority programs, the Army's modernization chief said this morning. But with the ever-growing cost of COVID looming over the economy and the Pentagon alike, Gen. John “Mike” Murray says he's already made a mental list of which of the 34 the service might have to slow down or sacrifice and which ones it absolutely has to save. “I have a one-to-N list in my mind” of the 34 programs, Murray told an Association of the US Army webcast this morning. “That's only in my mind, right now,” he emphasized. “It's pre-decisional.” In other words, it's not final, it's not official, and it's not ready to share with the public. All that said, however, it's still a telling sign of uncertain budget times that the four-star chief of Army Futures Command not only has such a list, but is willing to say he has it. Meanwhile, Murray's chief civilian partner, Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Bruce Jette, has launched a long-term study of the Army's economic prospects. In effect, Jette's looking at the supply side, asking how tight the budget will be, and Murray is looking at the demand side, asking what the Army should prioritize within that tight budget. Beyond The 34: “Critical Enablers” Gen. Murray is also looking at the Army's 684 other programs, he said, to determine which of them can be cut – while some have been slashed already to free up funding for the 34, others are so far unscathed – and which are essential to the top-34's success. “We can come up with, you know, the most impressive Next Generation Combat Vehicle in the world,” Murray said. “If you can't get fuel to it, then you're wasting your time.” Fuel is just one, particularly knotty logistical problem. Ultimately, Murray wants to reduce Army fuel demands by moving to hybrid diesel-electric motors. While electric power by itself might work for civilian cars, he said, he's skeptical the Army can charge batteries in combat, or that any practical amount of batteries can store enough energy to move, say, a 70-ton main battle tank. Likewise, while civilian quadcopters can run off batteries, the Army's new scout helicopter, the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, requires a high-powered turbine. So for decades to come, the Army will need fuel trucks, storage bladders, pumps, drums, hoses, and so on. And that's just for the gas. Both current and future combat systems require a staggering array of spare parts, repair tools, maintenance facilities, and more. Logistics is historically a US strength, but it's not a major focus of the 34 priority programs, which range from hypersonic missiles to smart rifles, from tanks to aircraft to robots. Besides weapons, the 34 do include a lot of high-tech information-age infrastructure, both to train the troops in virtual and augmented reality, and to share tactical data like target locations across the battlefield. There has not, however, been nearly as much emphasis on supporting functions such as fuel, maintenance, and transport. Murray now aims to fix that. Starting with a study by the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, he said, the Army has come up with a list of “18 key critical enablers that are getting funded,” Murray said, again without naming them. Murray's calling the 34 priority programs “Tier One” and the 18 enablers “Tier Two,” he said. “Then tier three is ammo,” he added. The general didn't elaborate, but certainly a high-tech tank or aircraft can't fight without ammunition, just as it can't move without fuel. The catch is that, in modern warfare, you're not just buying rifle bullets and cannon shells, but a host of precision-guided munitions that are much more expensive to stockpile in bulk for a major war. Even once the Army has figured out which weapons, support systems, and ammunition it can afford to buy, it still won't be able to buy enough of them to equip every unit at once. The service's recent AimPoint study, Murray said, focused on figuring out which units around the world need to be modernized first and which will have to wait. “The whole point behind AimPoint was an understanding that you can't modernize the entire army overnight, or in a year, or really even in a decade,” Murray said. As a young officer, he recalled, his unit had M60 tanks and M113 transports “while the rest of the Army was running around in M1s and Bradleys.” While he doesn't to return to the extreme disparities of the past, he said, “somebody has to be first and somebody has to be last.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/army-ponders-what-to-cut-if-budget-drops-gen-murray/

  • BAE Systems to supply assault amphibious vehicles to Taiwan

    June 27, 2018 | International, Land

    BAE Systems to supply assault amphibious vehicles to Taiwan

    Gabriel Dominguez BAE Systems has been awarded a USD83.6 million contract to provide to Taiwan the “necessary material and technical engineering to build, integrate, test, and deliver” 36 AAV7A1 Assault Amphibious Vehicles. The contract is for 30 AAVP7A1 personnel carriers, four AAVC7A1 command post vehicles and two AAVR7A1 recovery vehicles, according to a 22 June announcement by the US Department of Defense (DoD). This deal, which involves Foreign Military Sales (FMS) under the Taipei Economic Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) – FMS case TW-P-SEQ – also includes support and test equipment, spares, publications, training, engineering services, logistics, and other technical support required. All work will be performed in York, Pennsylvania, and is expected to be completed by 22 July, 2020, said the DoD, adding that this contract “was not competitively procured in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii) - only one responsible source and no other supplies or services that will satisfy agency requirements”. The contracting authority is the US Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Virginia. Once delivered, the AAV7A1s are very likely to be used by the Republic of China Marine Corps (RoCMC), but will not be the first ones to be operated by the Corps. In 2003 Taiwan signed a contract for 54 ex-US Marine Corps AAV7A1-series vehicles that have begun replacing the LVTP5 series of amphibious fighting vehicles used by the RoCMC. The latest contract announcement comes a few weeks after Taiwan said it welcomed a potential shift in policy by the United States' government to facilitate military sales to the island on a case-by-case basis as opposed to the current approach of ‘bundling' several defence deals together, as Jane's reported. The Ministry of National Defense (MND) in Taipei said in comments reported by the state-owned Central News Agency on 5 June that any US transition to approving FMS requests separately would improve its ability to plan and budget military modernisation requirements. http://www.janes.com/article/81335/bae-systems-to-supply-assault-amphibious-vehicles-to-taiwan

  • Lockheed Martin's new sustainment depot receives its first F-16

    March 16, 2021 | International, Aerospace

    Lockheed Martin's new sustainment depot receives its first F-16

    Lockheed Martin's new sustainment support facility in Greenville, S.C., received its first F-16 fighter plane for maintenance, the company announced on Monday.

All news