April 23, 2024 | International, Land, Security
July 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Space Force walks back stimulus contracts for small launch providers
Less than two weeks after the U.S. Space Force invoked the Defense Production Act to prop up six small launch providers, those awards have been withdrawn.
On June 16, the Space and Missile Systems Center announced in a beta.SAM.gov post that it was awarding rideshare contracts to six companies approved by the Industrial Base Council: Aevum, Astra, X-BOW, Rocket Lab USA, Space Vector and VOX Space. Each company was to be awarded two rideshare missions to be conducted over the next 24 months. The value of those contracts was not revealed.
But as first reported by SpaceNews, SMC has withdrawn those awards.
A new statement on beta.SAM.gov notes that the government “is re-evaluating its strategy on how best to proceed with this action” after receiving several responses to its decision. As a result, the contracts will not be awarded at this time. A Justification and Approval document was supposed to be made public within 14 days of contract award, but the withdrawal of the awards occurred before that deadline.
While Space Force officials haven't spoken publicly about the Defense Production Act awards since they were announced online, the Pentagon was vocal in expressing concern about COVID-19 impacts on the small launch market in the months leading up to the announcement.
On April 20, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord stated that the small launch market was one of three sectors she was most worried about. The Space and Missile Systems Center elaborated on her remarks in a statement to C4ISRNET.
“There is concern that the current financial and market constraints resulting from the COVID-19 have reduced funding sources necessary to continue development and operations for the nascent small launch industry,” said Col. Rob Bongiovi, director of SMC's launch enterprise directorate. “Much of the industry have limited flight capability or are in the critical transition from development to flight and this funding restriction may prevent or delay these systems. The Space and Missile Systems Center is evaluating the impacts to the small launch industrial base to consider actions to enable a robust U.S. launch industrial base.”
Shortly thereafter, the Space Force Acquisition Council held an emergency meeting to discuss how they could support industry partners negatively impacted by COVID-19. The council ultimately sent out a survey to members of the Space Enterprise Consortium to see what industry needed from the Department of Defense.
Finally on June 16, the same day the announcement went live, SMC Commander Lt. Gen. John “JT” Thompson suggested that the Space Force would use Defense Production Act awards to support the small launch market.
“In the small launch environment, Secretary Lord and [U.S. Space Force Service Acquisition Executive Will] Roper have both commented about how important small launch is to our enterprise, and I can't give you the details right now but I would anticipate here very shortly some very critical Defense Production Act awards to our small launch providers to keep that industry going,” Thompson said
On the same subject
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April 22, 2020 | International, Naval
Defense Department study calls for cutting 2 of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers
By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON – An internal Office of the Secretary of Defense assessment calls for the Navy to cut two aircraft carriers from its fleet, freeze the large surface combatant fleet of destroyers and cruisers around current levels and add dozens of unmanned or lightly manned ships to the inventory, according to documents obtained by Defense News. The study calls for a fleet of nine carriers, down from the current fleet of 11, and for 65 unmanned or lightly manned surface vessels. The study calls for a surface force of between 80 and 90 large surface combatants, and an increase in the number of small surface combatants – between 55 and 70, which is substantially more than the Navy currently operates. The assessment is part of an ongoing DoD-wide review of Navy force structure and seem to echo what Defense Secretary Mark Esper has been saying for months: the Defense Department wants to begin de-emphasizing aircraft carriers as the centerpiece of the Navy's force projection and put more emphasis on unmanned technologies that can be more easily sacrificed in a conflict and can achieve their missions more affordably. A DoD spokesperson declined to comment on the force structure assessment. "We will not comment on a DoD product that is pre-decisional,” said Navy Capt. Brook DeWalt. The Navy is also working on its own force structure assessment that is slated to be closely aligned with the Marine Corps' stated desire to become more closely integrated with the Navy. Cutting two aircraft carriers would permanently change the way the Navy approaches presence around the globe and force the service to rethink its model for projecting power across the globe, said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst with the Telemus Group. “The deployment models we set – and we're still keeping – were developed around 15 carriers so that would all fall apart,” Hendrix said, referring to standing carrier presence requirements in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. “This would be reintroducing reality. A move like this would signal a new pattern for the Navy's deployments that moves away from presence and moves towards surge and exercise as a model for carrier employment.” A surge model would remove standing requirements for carriers and would mean that the regional combatant commanders would get carriers when they are available or when they are needed in an emergency. With 9 carriers, the Navy would have between six and seven available at any given time with one in its mid-life refueling and overhaul and one or two in significant maintenance periods. The net result would be significantly fewer carrier deployments in each calendar year. The assessment reducing the overall number of carriers also suggests that the OSD study didn't revamp the Carrier Air Wing to make it more relevant, Hendrix said. Esper has taken a keen interest in Navy force structure, telling Defense News in March that he had directed the Pentagon's Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), along with the Navy, to conduct a series of war games and exercises in the coming months in order to figure out the way forward toward a lighter Navy, but said any major decisions will be based around the completion of a new joint war plan for the whole department, which the secretary said should be finished this summer. “I think once we go through this process with the future fleet — that'll really be the new foundation, the guiding post,” Esper told Defense News. “It'll give us the general direction we need to go, and I think that'll be a big game changer in terms of future fleet, for structure, for the Navy and Marine Corps team.” When it comes to carriers, Esper said he saw a lot of value in keeping carriers in the force structure, and that it wasn't going to be an all-or-nothing decision. “This discussion often comes down to a binary: Is it zero or 12?” Esper said. “First of all, I don't know. I think carriers are very important. I think they demonstrate American power, American prestige. They get people's attention. They are a great deterrent. They give us great capability.” Revamped Surface Fleet The OSD assessment also calls for essentially freezing the size of the large surface combatant fleet. There are about 90 cruisers and destroyers in the fleet: the study recommended retaining at least 80 but keeping about as many as the Navy currently operates at the high end. The Navy's small surface combatant program is essentially the 20 littoral combat ships in commission today, with another 15 under contract, as well as the 20 next-generation frigates, which would get to the minimum number in the assessment of 55 small combatants, with the additional 15 presumably being more frigates. The big change comes in the small unmanned or lightly manned surface combatants. In his interview with Defense News, Esper said the Navy needed to focus integrating those technologies into the fleet. “What we have to tease out is, what does that future fleet look like?” Esper said. “I think one of the ways you get there quickly is moving toward lightly manned [ships], which over time can be unmanned. “We can go with lightly manned ships, get them out there. You can build them so they're optionally manned and then, depending on the scenario or the technology, at some point in time they can go unmanned. “To me that's where we need to push. We need to push much more aggressively. That would allow us to get our numbers up quickly, and I believe that we can get to 355, if not higher, by 2030.” The Navy is currently developing a family of unmanned surface vessels that are intended to increase the offensive punch for less money, while increasing the number of targets the Chinese military would have to locate in a fight. That's a push that earned the endorsement of the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday in comments late last year. “I know that the future fleet has to include a mix of unmanned,” Gilday said. “We can't continue to wrap $2 billion ships around 96 missile tubes in the numbers we need to fight in a distributed way, against a potential adversary that is producing capability and platforms at a very high rate of speed. We have to change the way we are thinking.” Aaron Mehta contributed to this report from Washington. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/04/20/defense-department-study-calls-for-cutting-2-of-the-us-navys-aircraft-carriers/
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January 26, 2021 | International, C4ISR, Security
L'OTAN choisit Thales pour équiper son futur cloud de défense
L'OTAN a sélectionné l'offre Nexium Defence Cloud de Thales afin de déployer le cloud de ses futurs centres de commandement modulaires. La technologie de Thales doit offrir une interopérabilité et une communication ultra-sécurisée entre le centre de commandement et les thé'tres d'opérations, et accélérer la transformation numérique des forces armées coalisées. Déployable en moins de 24 heures, la solution Nexium Defence Cloud permet à l'OTAN de réduire le nombre de ses ingénieurs informatiques sur sites, gr'ce à son système d'orchestration, en réduisant les déploiements des services informatiques et applicatifs de sites distants de plusieurs milliers de kilomètres à quelques heures, avec un nombre d'experts limité. « Basée sur une approche globale incluant à la fois la gestion des applications, l'IT (Information Technology), les réseaux et la sécurité, cette solution repose également sur une architecture adaptée pour divers niveaux de confidentialité », précise Thales. « Cette solution, la plus compacte, intégrée et modulaire du marché, inclut tous les constituants des postes de commandements militaires (caissons, serveurs, stockage de données, système de supervision...), répondant au niveau de performance exigé en termes de volume, taille, poids et consommation énergétique, simplifiant la logistique de déploiement », explique le groupe. Ensemble de la presse du 26 janvier