February 2, 2021 | International, Naval
By: The Associated Press
GROTON, Conn. — General Dynamics Electric Boat plans to add 2,200 jobs this year in Connecticut and Rhode Island as it tackles a $39 billion backlog of work, the submarine maker's top executive said Monday.
Kevin Graney, Electric Boat's president, made the announcement during a video briefing for stakeholders.
He said the company is facing the largest backlog of work in its history, with orders to build two new ballistic missile submarines and 19 new attack submarines, 11 of which are currently under construction.
The company added more than 2,000 jobs a year ago, much of it at the company's Quonset Point site in Rhode Island.
The new jobs will include shipyard workers, engineers and support staff, Graney said, and the firm expects to be in a “stable hiring mode pretty much for the next decade.”
“We're going to need to sustain the Rhode Island workforce as we grow the Connecticut workforce,” he said.
Electric Boat employs more than 17,000 people, including about 12,000 at its Groton shipyard and more than 4,000 in Rhode Island.
Congress increased funding for submarine programs from about $11.1 billion during the last fiscal year to $11.6 billion this fiscal year.
Members of Connecticut's all-Democrat congressional delegation, who took part in the video conference, said the defense contractor can expect to continue receiving work under the Biden administration.
“It may be unmanned as well as manned weapons platforms, but the future of the submarine is critically important,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.
March 15, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Ottawa does not have a national climate security strategy, which leaves Canada vulnerable to security risks related to climate change, writes researcher and policy analyst Luthfi Dhofier.
March 26, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Andrew Eversden To stop the spread of the new coronavirus, federal agencies could shutter facilities. States and localities are already issuing shelter-in-place orders. And with obscure rules surrounding telework for federal contractors as well as the potential for supply chain disruptions and employee infections, there could be a new level of unpredictability for the contractor community. “There's both a little bit of stability and a fair amount of uncertainty,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council, an interest group representing more than 400 government contractors. “Things that were normal yesterday are not normal today. Behaviors that were planned for over the last couple days have been changed as government missions are changing,” he added. In the near term, schedules laid out in contracts will likely experience delays and costs may increase due to disruptions caused by COVID-19, said Jonathan Aronie, head of law firm Sheppard Mullin's government contracts practice group. These disruptions could be caused by employees not coming into work, or their suppliers' employees not working. President Donald Trump said March 18 that he's willing to use the Defense Production Act to force companies to manufacture goods the government needs to fight the virus, like ventilators or masks. These orders become “rated,” essentially allowing the government to skip to the front of the line. That poses other challenges. “While some companies are going to have problems that are slowing them down, other companies are going to have the problems associated with an influx of new orders,” Aronie said. Aronie warned of a complex web of orders that companies could have to fulfill, pulling businesses in different directions. For example, he said, companies could get an order from a hospital, an order from a state government with a preexisting contract, and then a rated order from the federal government as well as agencies without rated authorities — potentially overwhelming and confusing manufacturers. “Somehow you're going to have to make sense of this all,” Aronie said. Effects of telework Across the government, federal employees eligible for telework have generally been allowed to do so. But contractors haven't always followed the same rules. Not allowing contractors to telework could have significant ramifications, experts warned. Many contractors are required by their contracts to work in government facilities. But to stop the spread of COVID-19, access to these facilities could be limited or completely shut off. This conundrum leaves contractors with questions for the government. “Are there going to be access issues? Are contractors going to be asked in some cases to work from home where previously they were going into a government facility? What does that mean from a performance perspective? What does that mean from a cost perspective? How do you work that out with the government?” said Roger Waldron, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement. “These are some of the thing people are thinking about.” On March 20, the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director for management, Margaret Weichert, released a memo urging agencies to “maximize telework for contractor employees.” But, as reported by Federal News Network, Weichert's memo did not mandate telework for federal contractors, leaving industry frustrated. Several interest groups that represent government contractors called on congressional leaders and the White House to allow contractors to work from home. PSC wrote a letter to OMB on March 18 warning that not issuing guidance regarding extending telework flexibility to contractors could lead to layoffs. “The duration of this is a huge uncertainty, if it does get worse before it gets better, if folks are really unable to perform the kind of work that need to be done at some government locations, that'll have some impact on people,” Chvotkin told Federal Times. Over the last few days, several states such as California and New York have begun following shutdown orders that could leave contractors in tenuous positions. A Justice Department memo from March 20 also directed U.S. attorneys general to tell state and local officials that federal employees must be allowed to travel and commute, “even when travel restrictions are in place.” This action didn't mention contractors either. State governments are going to have to “recognize that exceptions are going to be essential and some federal missions are just going to be so important to continue on that they'll have to accommodate them,” Chvotkin said. How does this compare to the government shutdown? This is the second consecutive year that contractors have faced challenges due to a crisis; last year's was the record 35-day government shutdown. Some aspects of the 2019 shutdown and the coronavirus crisis are the same. For example, Aronie said, both increase delays and incur higher costs on contractors. The big difference is that some companies will receive more work, instead of less. Another significant difference is that employees, both from the federal government and contractors, are still working — many federal employees from home. This increase in telework has increased agencies' demands for IT infrastructure as they work to accommodate the rise in telework. Last week, the White House requested several billion dollars for agencies to improve their IT infrastructure. Under the COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertainty is greater than during a government shutdown, experts said, because the ending was solely in the hands of the government. “Even in the shutdown ... everybody recognized that it was going to end sooner or later. It was under both the congressional and presidential control to bring an end to it — not so here,” Chvotkin said. “There's nobody who can just decree that the coronavirus has been cured.” https://www.federaltimes.com/govcon/contracting/2020/03/24/federal-contractors-face-great-uncertainty-as-coronavirus-spreads
August 13, 2019 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The contract to purchase two Iron Dome systems for the U.S. Army's interim cruise missile defense capability has been finalized, according to the deputy in charge of the service's air and missile defense modernization efforts. Iron Dome was co-developed by American company Raytheon and Israeli defense firm Rafael. It is partly manufactured in the United States. Now that the contract is set in stone, the Army will be able to figure out delivery schedules and details in terms of taking receipt of the systems, Daryl Youngman told Defense News at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, on Aug. 8. The Army was shifting around its pots of funding within its Indirect Fires Protection Capability (IFPC) program — under development to defend against rockets, artillery and mortars as well as unmanned aircraft and cruise missiles — to fill its urgent capability gap for cruise missile defense on an interim basis. Congress mandated the Army deploy two batteries by fiscal 2020 in the service's fiscal 2019 budget. Iron Dome could feed into an enduring capability, depending on how it performs in the interim, Youngman said during a separate interview shortly before the symposium. “We're conducting analysis and experimentation for enduring IFPC,” Youngman said. “So that includes some engineering-level analysis and simulations to determine the performance of multiple options, including Iron Dome — or pieces of Iron Dome — and then how we integrate all of that into the [integrated air and missile defense] system.” Col. Chuck Worshim, the Army's project manager for cruise missile defense systems with the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, told Defense News in April that the service was reworking its enduring IFPC program strategy and would experiment throughout the summer and fall to get a better sense of how IFPC might look beyond interim capabilities. In the meantime, Iron Dome will be fielded to operational units and will likely participate in formal and informal exercises to identify how it can be used as part of the IFPC and air defense architectures, compared to how it is currently employed in Israel countering incoming rockets and missiles at short range. Iron Dome is one of the most used air defense systems in the world. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/smd/2019/08/12/its-official-us-army-inks-iron-dome-deal/