Security and defence cooperation: EU will enhance its capacity to act as a security provider, its strategic autonomy, and its ability to cooperate with partners

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  August 9, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land

  Final hypersonic missile contract awards imminent as US Army preps to shoot one in FY21

  HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is just weeks away from awarding the final contracts related to the development of its mobile, ground-launched hypersonic missile. The Army will award a contract within the next three weeks to a company to develop a launching system for the hypersonic missile in co-development across the services, Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, the service's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office director, said Aug. 7 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. RCCTO's job is to serve as a bridge between the science and technology community and the program executive offices, helping bring technology out of development and into soldiers' hands, first on a small scale and then a larger scale when passed off to program offices. The office is primarily focused on hypersonics and directed energy. While the missile is under joint development, the Army needs a special launcher to make the missile road-mobile. The contract will encompass the design and integration of a vertical launcher onto a trailer, Thurgood said. Additionally, the RCCTO is preparing to award a contract, also in the next three weeks, to a vendor to produce the glide body for the hypersonic missile, Thurgood said. The Navy will own the design of the glide body, but the Army will own its production, he said. “We have a company that we are in the final process of negotiating an [other transaction authority contract],” Thurgood said. An OTA is a contract that allows for rapid prototyping by bypassing the usual red tape associated with acquisition. “What is interesting about the glide body technology is we also have to create an industrial base to do this. There is no industrial base in the United States for glide bodies,” Thurgood said. The technology is owned by the government labs, he noted, “so we are transitioning that out of the labs into the commercial marketplace. That is a really hard thing to do, but there's a lot of energy and a lot of momentum behind that outcome.” Unlike other programs, Thurgood said, there is not a single company that can produce a hypersonic missile and its equipment alone. “It actually takes a collaborative effort amongst the industry partners,” he added. The first contract will be awarded to one company, but there will be follow-on contracts for other vendors to learn how to make the glide body at the federally funded lab where it was developed. The methodology energizes the supply chain from the prime contractors all the way to sub-contractors should the service decide to make a large number of the weapons, Thurgood told Defense News in an interview at the symposium. Thurgood noted that in order to bring industry closer to the RCCTO's endeavors, the office established an industry board in addition to its board of directors to promote “horizontal communication.” The Army plans to field a hypersonic missile and launcher to a unit in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021. The unit will train for an entire year without live rounds, Thurgood said, adding that the canisters the unit will use will be cement-filled to match the weight. The first live-round test will take place in FY22 and will be conducted by a battery led by a captain. Thurgood was tasked Feb. 14 to come up with a plan for hypersonic development, and given 30 days to do so. Now, almost six months later, the RCCTO is about to award all associated contracts to move forward in building prototypes that will be in soldiers' hands in just a couple of years, Thurgood said. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/smd/2019/08/07/final-hypersonic-missile-contract-awards-imminent-as-army-preps-to-shoot-one-in-fy21/

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  December 9, 2020 | International, Naval

  The US Navy wants to find ships to kill using aerial drones launched from submarines

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON – The name of the game in the Pacific is stand-off range. But with longer range torpedoes and anti-ship missiles in the arsenal, submariners are looking to a new domain to help them extend their deadly reach: The air. In an October request for information, Naval Sea Systems Command's Submarine Combat and Weapons Control Program Office asked industry for input into a “Submarine-Launched Unmanned Aerial System,” or SLUAS, currently in development. The Navy has been interested in sub-launched drones for some time and has been testing prototypes, but the RFI shows the service is getting serious about the idea as it adds longer-range torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles to the arsenal of its attack submarines. The idea for the SLUAS is an ambitious one. The drone would launch from a submerged submarine out of a 3-inch ejector tube used for sonobuoys, flares and countermeasures among other things. The battery-operated UAS would then deploy its wings and operate for an hour, well beyond the range visible from just the low-in-the-water periscope. Additionally, the UAS should have an “electro-optic capability with reliable target solution analysis,” the RFI said, adding that it should be able to “operate at ranges out to the line-of-sight radio horizon, and use a variable bandwidth encrypted datalink with at least 256-bit encryption strength. The drone should also have a degree of autonomy and “include the ability to operate in an emission-controlled environment and operate without constant radio communication links.” “Every submarine has a 3-inch launcher, so in theory, every submarine could operate with UASs,” said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and senior fellow with The Hudson Institute. “The idea is that you would be about the size of a sonobuoy — it could be pretty long — and you'd put it inside a canister. Then you launch this in a canister, it floats to the surface and the USA deploys from there. “And from there it can either connect up with the submarine or it could connect with another unit, and it gives you the ability to have over-the-horizon surveillance.” “The demonstrations have been pretty successful,” Clark added. The responses to the RFI were due in November. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/12/07/the-us-navy-wants-to-find-ships-to-kill-using-aerial-drones-launched-from-submarines/

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  June 3, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Pentagon taps $688 million in coronavirus aid for defense industry

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in coronavirus relief funding to support vulnerable manufacturers of submarine torpedo tubes, aircraft engine parts and hardened microelectronics that were hit by closures or other effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The $688 million defense-industrial base fund is just one category within the $10.5 billion the Department of Defense received from Congress' $2.1 trillion CARES Act package. The department submitted its 54-page spending plan to Congress on Friday amid pressure from lawmakers after DoD had spent only 23 percent of that money weeks after it was signed into law in late March. The Pentagon has thus far obligated $167 million of the $1 billion Congress granted under the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that the president recently invoked, to have industry produce key items such as N95 respirator masks and swabs needed for coronavirus testing, ventilators and other items. Under the same law, the Pentagon's spending plan says it would use $688 million to address impacts to the defense-industrial base caused by COVID-19, "by directly offsetting financial distress in the DIB and providing investments to regions most severely impacted to sustain essential domestic industrial base capabilities and spur local job creation.” The plan calls for $171 million for the aircraft propulsion industrial base; $150 million for shipbuilding and submarine launch tubes; $150 million for the space launch industrial base; $80 million for the microelectronics base; $62 million for body armor suppliers; and $40 million for high-temperature materials used in hypersonic weapons. The priorities likely overlap with vulnerable industrial base areas previously identified by the Pentagon's assessment last year, said Wesley Hallman, the National Defense Industrial Association's senior vice president of strategy and policy . “It makes sense given what's going on now economically to ― under the [coronavirus aid] legislation ― reinforce some of the critical vulnerabilities that were identified in that report,” Hallman said. The Pentagon plans $171 million to sustain and preserve the aircraft propulsion industrial base, as many military aviation suppliers have been hard hit from the commercial side by coronavirus travel restrictions. Some would preserve an "essential workforce through support to sustained operations at key repair facility and stabilizing sub-vendors essential to a healthy propulsion industrial base,” according to the department. What that means is the DoD may have to absorb some of suppliers' overhead costs to keep vital suppliers in business, said Teal Group aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Commercial aviation is in the worst crisis it's ever faced, and aviation propulsion aftermarket is the single part of the industry most hit by COVID-19,” Aboulafia said. “It could be [that] if there's a part like a combustor, DoD could be saying: ‘What do you need by way of guaranteed orders to keep that line open?' ” The department, which relies on a vulnerable network of suppliers for parts for the venerable TF33 engine, hopes to “support initiatives to certify and approve new parts sources for” the engine and “catalyze the sub-tier vendor base and mitigate risk of sub-tier vendors exiting the propulsion business.” Pratt & Whitney hasn't made the TF33 in more than 40 years, but it's still used by the B-52 bomber, and no replacement is due for years. The DoD also planned $150 million for the shipbuilding industrial base in areas such as castings, forgings and submarine launch equipment, as well as to support continuous production of essential components such as missile tubes. (Shipbuilding overall has contracted over the last decade, and there were only four suppliers with the capability to manufacture large, complex, single-pour aluminum and magnesium sand castings, according to the DoD's 2019 industrial capabilities report to Congress.) The CEO of Virginia-based military contractor BWXT, Rex Geveden, said on an earnings call last year that the company ― which makes missile tubes for the Columbia-class submarine ― was mulling an exit from the missile tube business. The Navy and its Naval Sea Systems Command, he said, were seeking more than one supplier, adding: “We're not interested in the future orders unless we do have a way to make money on these orders.” The DoD planned another $150 million to maintain a competitive space launch industrial base. DoD relies on a small pool of companies to launch satellites into orbit, but there are numerous companies of all sizes that support those launches, and the DoD has sought to reintroduce more competition over the enterprise in recent years. The department would also spend $80 million to support several critical suppliers of radiation-hardened microelectronics ― products vital to DoD but with limited commercial applications. The funding would “protect the domestic capacity to ensure radiation hardened microelectronics testing capability, and key subcompacts such as substrates and wafer, are available for DoD weapon systems," according to the spending plan. The $40 million would protect suppliers of high-temperature materials used in potentially game-changing hypersonic weapons. “An expanded, sustainable domestic production capability for hypersonic systems is essential to the Department achieving its modernization priorities,” the plan states. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/06/02/688m-in-covid-aid-helping-defense-firms-per-dod-plan/