Safran signe un contrat de maintenance pour les moteurs des hélicoptères EH101 Merlin portugais

On the same subject

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  August 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Four rocket companies are competing for Air Force funding, and it is war

  By ERIC BERGER Monday marked the deadline for four US rocket companies to submit bids for Air Force contracts, encompassing all national security launches from 2022 to 2026. This is a hugely consequential and much-contested bid process that has implications for the American aerospace industry for the next decade and beyond. The Air Force is seeking two providers for about two dozen launches. The prime contractor will receive 60% of the launches while the secondary contractor claims the remaining 40%. As the US military pays a premium for launch contracts to its nine reference orbits, this guaranteed revenue is extremely valuable to US companies aspiring to run a profitable launch business. The lead-up to Monday's deadline has included heavy political lobbying from the four companies: United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Northrop Grumman. As a result of this, Congress is considering some changes to the Air Force's procurement policy, including an on-ramp for a third provider during the 2022 to 2026 period. But so far, the Air Force is resisting this. Here's a look at the four bidders and what is at stake for each of them. United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance—a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that enjoyed a monopoly on national security launches before the emergence of SpaceX—may be bidding for its life. To wean itself off its costly Delta boosters (as well as the Russian rocket engines that go with its workhorse Atlas V rocket), ULA has been developing the Vulcan rocket to cut costs while maintaining performance. The company says the Vulcan will be ready for its first flight in 2021. "Vulcan Centaur will provide higher performance and greater affordability while continuing to deliver our unmatched reliability and orbital accuracy precision from our treasured cryogenic Centaur upper stage," ULA's chief, Tory Bruno, said in a news release Monday. "ULA is the best partner for national security space launch, and we are the only provider to demonstrate experience flying to all orbits including the most challenging heavy-class missions, providing the bedrock foundation for the lowest risk portfolio of two launch service providers for the US Air Force." With increasing competition from SpaceX, Europe's Arianespace, Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Russian launch vehicles, ULA has been unable to capture much of the commercial market for satellite launches in the last decade. Therefore, it has largely been reliant on government business, mostly from the military. But ULA also relies on NASA through its science missions and lifting cargo and crew missions to the International Space Station. If the company does not emerge victorious from this competition, it faces an uncertain future unless Vulcan can become commercially viable. Moreover, ULA will lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in government money to finalize Vulcan if it does not receive an award. Historically, Boeing and Lockheed have been stingy parents, and whether or not they would pay to complete Vulcan is unclear. One intriguing twist with ULA's bid is that its Vulcan rocket will use the BE-4 rocket engine, which is being developed and manufactured by Blue Origin—one of the four competitors in the Air Force bidding process. Blue Origin has said the Air Force competition was designed to unfairly benefit ULA. SpaceX The Hawthorne, California-based rocket company is the only bidder proposing to use rockets that are already flying—the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. This family of rockets has had a string of 49 successful launches since a static fire accident in September 2016, and according to SpaceX, it can meet all of the Air Force's desired orbits and payload specifications. "SpaceX means to serve as the Air Force's long-term provider for space launch, offering existing, certified, and proven launch systems capable of carrying out the full spectrum of national security space-launch missions and requirements," said the company's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell. Since the Air Force agreed to admit SpaceX to the national security launch competition in 2015, the company has won several contracts for key missions and begun flying them for the military. These include the National Reconnaissance Office Launch 76, Orbital Test Vehicle 5, Global Positioning System III-2, and STP-2 flights. SpaceX also likely will offer the government the lowest price on service to orbit. However, in its criteria for awarding missions, the Air Force listed price among the last of its considerations. Due to its lower price point, especially with is reusable Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has considerable commercial business to offset the loss of Air Force contracts. But it would hurt financially, all the same. Blue Origin Jeff Bezos' rocket company has bid its very large New Glenn rocket for the Air Force missions. However, when this rocket will begin flying is not entirely clear, as there are questions about whether it will be ready by the beginning of the 2022 contracting period. What is clear is that Blue Origin does not believe the US Air Force has created a fair bidding process. Already, the company has filed a "pre-award" protest with the US Government Accountability Office. "The Air Force is pursuing a flawed acquisition strategy for the National Security Space Launch program," Blue Origin said, according to SpaceNews. The Air Force decision to award contracts to just two companies creates a "duopoly," Blue Origin says, and it limits commercial development of strategic US assets such as rocket engines and boosters. Bezos has been investing about $1 billion a year of his own money into Blue Origin, which has largely been used to support development of the BE-4 engine and New Glenn rocket. He is likely to continue development of the New Glenn rocket without Air Force funding, but company officials say it is not fair to hold their wealthy founder against their bid. Northrop Grumman Northrop has been developing the Omega rocket for this competition since at least 2016. The Omega vehicle differs from the other entrants in the competition as its first and second stages, as well as side-mounted boosters, are powered by solid-rocket motors rather than liquid-fueled engines. The bet by Northrop is that the US military, through its national security launch contract, would want to support one of the nation's most critical suppliers of solid-rocket motors for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Northrop officials have not said whether they would continue development of the Omega rocket if Northrop were to lose out on the Air Force contract. Northrop's bid suffered a setback in May when an "anomaly" occurred during test firing of its solid-propellant Castor 600 rocket motor, the Omega rocket's first stage. From a video provided by the company, a major part of the rocket's large nozzle appeared to break apart, blasting debris around the area. Afterward, a Northrop vice president, Kent Rominger, called the test a success. "It appears everything worked very, very well on this test," he said. "And at the very end when the engine was tailing off, we observed the aft exit cone, maybe a portion of it, doing something a little strange that we need to go further look into." Nevertheless, the test cannot have instilled absolute confidence in the Air Force. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/four-rocket-companies-are-competing-for-air-force-funding-and-it-is-war/

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  March 23, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Israelis Worry About CH-53K King Stallion Engines

  The US Director of Operational Test and Evaluation's annual report says the CH-53K engine's performance degrades bellow the accepted minimum after 21 minutes of dust exposure. This is causing great concern in the IAF as it eyes buying the first batch of 20 helicopters.

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  June 8, 2020 | International, Land

  U.S. Army Flickr Page Inadvertently Reveals New Hypersonic Weapon Concept

  Steve Trimble A new hypersonic weapon concept has emerged inadvertently on a social media page managed by U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy that describes a Mach 5-plus projectile with the ability to penetrate into defended airspace and dispense a multi-role loitering air system over a target area. The concept—labeled as the Vintage Racer Loitering Weapon System—reveals a solution to an operational problem for the Army: When high-speed munitions, such as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), enter service with the ability to strike targets thousands of kilometers away, how will the Army find the most elusive targets, such as road-mobile launchers for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) or radars for air defense batteries? The Vintage Racer concept, as revealed so far, suggests it may be possible to launch a hypersonic projectile into a general area without knowing the specific location of the target. As it reaches the target area, the projectile may be able to dispense a loitering air system, which is then uses its own sensors to find and identify the target. If the loitering system also carries a warhead, it may be able to strike the target by itself or transmit the target coordinates to another weapon. Once the existence of the Vintage Racer concept appeared, a Russian expert on military-political affairs noted such an idea has been discussed as a possibility within the hypersonic weapon community. “The fear is that [this] hypersonic ‘something' might reach the patrol area of road-mobile ICBM launchers [after] penetrating any possible air and missile defense, and then dispense loitering submunitions that will find launchers in the forests,” said Dmitry Stefanovitch, an expert at the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council. Only the broadest information about the Vintage Racer weapon is visible on the briefing paper describing the concept. The image appears in an album of photos from the Association of the U.S. Army convention posted to McCarthy's Flickr account last October. Most of the pictures from the event show McCarthy meeting attendees, giving speeches and receiving informal, standing pitches from industry officials in the exhibit hall. One picture shows McCarthy standing at a table across from an unidentified industry official in the exhibit hall. The table is covered with multiple objects, including a General Atomics press release, what appears to be a model of the LRHW and a rifled barrel of a 155mm artillery gun with a hole burned through the object. The table also is covered with at least four sheets of briefing papers, of which three are not visible. The only visible paper, which is partly obscured by McCarthy's right hand, is headlined “Vintage Racer - Loitering Weapon System (LWS) Overview.” The paper includes six main bullet points, which read “Hypersonic Ingress,” “Survivable,” “Time Over Target,” “Multi-role,” “Modular payload,” and “Cost Imposition Strategy.” Ten sub-bullets are also visible on the page, but the letters are not readable. At the bottom of the page, a tag line highlighted in yellow is partly obscured by McCarthy's hand, but the visible portion reads: “Long Range, Rapid Ingress.” A vague reference to Vintage Racer previously appeared in Defense Department budget justification documents released in February, but went unnoticed. Under a line item owned by the Office of Secretary of Defense for a “quick reaction fund,” Vintage Racer is described as a “recent success story.” “The project successfully validated aerodynamic design with wind tunnel testing and integrated a guidance subsystem for targeted kinetic effects before culminating in a fiscal 2019 flight test. Documentation and prototype technologies transitioned to the U.S. Army for additional development and follow-on acquisition activities,” according to budget documents. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/sensors-electronic-warfare/us-army-flickr-page-inadvertently-reveals-new-hypersonic